WHO IS THE POET!

WHO is the Poet? Who the man whose lines
Live in the souls of men like household words?
Whose thought, spontaneous as the song of birds,
With eldest truth coeval, still combines

With each day's product, and like morning shines,
Exempt from age? "Tis he, and only he,
Who knows that Truth is free, and only free;
That Virtue, acting in the strict confines
Of positive law, instructs the infant spirit

In its best strength, and proves its mere demerit
Rooted in earth, yet tending to the sky:

With patient hope surveys the narrow bound,
Culls every flower that loves the lowly ground,

And fraught with sweetness, wings her way on high.

THE USE OF A POET.

A THOUSAND thoughts were stirring in my mind,
That strove in vain to fashion utterance meet,
And each the other cross'd-swift as a fleet
Of April clouds, perplex'd by gusts of wind,
That veer, and veer, around, before, behind.
Now History pointed to the custom❜d beat,
Now Fancy's clue unravelling, led their feet
Through mazes manifold, and quaintly twined.
So were they straying-so had ever stray'd;
Had not the wiser poets of the past
The vivid chart of human life display'd,
And taught the laws that regulate the blast,
Wedding wild impulse to calm forms of beauty,
And making peace 'twixt liberty and duty.

YOUNG LOVE.

THE nimble fancy of all-beauteous Greece,
Fabled young Love an everlasting boy,
That held of nature an eternal lease,

Of childhood, beauty, innocence, and joy;
A bow he had, a pretty childish toy,

That would not terrify his mother's sparrows,
And 'twas his favourite play to sport his arrows,

Light as the glances of a wood-nymph coy.
O happy error! Musical conceit,

Of old idolatry, and youthful time!

Fit emanation of a happy clime,

Where but to live, to breathe, to be, was sweet,

And Love, tho' even then a little cheat,

Dream'd not his craft would e'er be call'd a crime.

DEATH-BED REFLECTIONS OF MICHELANGELO.

Nor that my hand could make of stubborn stone
Whate'er of Gods the shaping thought conceives;
Not that my skill by pictured lines hath shown
All terrors that the guilty soul believes ;
Not that my art, by blended light and shade,
Express'd the world as it was newly made;
Not that my verse profoundest truth could teach,
In the soft accents of the lover's speech;
Not that I rear'd a temple for mankind,
To meet and pray in, borne by every wind-
Affords me peace:-I count my gain but loss,
For that vast love, that hangs upon the Cross.