Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part, The muse forgot, and thou belov'd no more!" Among elegies of the subjective class may be mentioned the lines written by Raleigh the night before his death, Cowley's elegy on Crashaw, Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard, and Shelley's Adonais. At the close of his meteor-like career the gallant Raleigh wrote his own epitaph in these few pious and feeling lines: "Even such is Time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, this dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust!" Lycidas was written by Milton to commemorate the death of a college friend, Mr. King, who was drowned on the passage from England to Ireland. But Milton's grief sets him thinking; and in this remarkable poem the monotone of a deep sorrow is replaced by the linked musings of a mind, which, once set in motion by grief, pours forth abundantly the treasures of thought and imagination stored up within it. The following eloquent passage contains a line that has almost passed into a proverb: "Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights, and live laborious days; And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies: As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." So also in Adonais, which is an elegy on Keats, the glorious imagination of Shelley transports him into regions far beyond the reach of the perturbations of a common grief: "The breath whose might I have invoked in song I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." It would be impossible to give an adequate idea of Gray's famous elegy by a short extract, but the student is recommended to read the entire poem carefully. He will find it eminently subjective in spirit; and may compare it with Hamlet's moralisings over the skull of Yorick. Both may be regarded as products of a mind in which there is a morbid preponderance of the contemplative faculty - the balance not being duly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect.* * See Coleridge's remarks on Hamlet. Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 204. Miscellaneous Poems. A large number of poems, chiefly belonging to modern times, still remain unnoticed, because they refuse to be classified under any of the received and long-established designations. This miscellaneous section we propose to divide into 1. Poems founded on the Passions and Affections. 2. Poems of Sentiment and Reflection. 3. Poems of Imagination and Fancy. 4. Philosophical poetry. 1. Poems of the first kind are evidently of the lyrical order, but they are not to be classed among lyrics, because they are deficient in the excitation of thought and rapidity of movement which the true lyric must exhibit. They occur in great numbers in the works of modern poets, and, if a type of excellence in the kind were required, a purer one could not easily be found than Wordsworth's Michael. Many have seen the unfinished sheepfold in Green Head Ghyll, referred to in the following lines, which Michael, the old Westmoreland "statesman," after the news had come that the son so tenderly cherished had brought disgrace and peril on his head, had never afterwards the heart to complete: "There is a comfort in the strength of love; Did he repair, to build the fold of which There, by the sheepfold, sometimes was he seen Then old, beside him, lying at his feet. The length of full seven years, from time to time, Survive her husband: at her death the estate Was sold, and went into a stranger's hand. The cottage which was named the Evening Star Is gone the ploughshare has been through the ground -- That grew beside their door; and the remains Of the unfinished sheepfold may be seen, Beside the boisterous brook of Green Head Ghyll." Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, a poem in which love, pride, repentance, and despair seem to be striving together for the mastery, and an overcharged heart seeks relief in bursts of wild half-frenzied eloquence, must also be placed among poems of this class. 2. Sentiment may be regarded as the synthesis of thought and feeling; and therefore poems of this second class hold an intermediate place between those founded on the passions and affections, and those in which intellectual faculties are, solely or principally, exercised. They are very numerous in every period of our literary history. Spenser's Ruines of Time is an early and very beautiful example. In the midst of a personified presentment of Fame, the wish recorded of Alexander is thus strikingly related : "But Fame with golden wing aloft doth flie And with brave plumes doth beat the azure skie Admir'd of base-born men from farre away; "For not to have been dipt in Lethe lake Sir John Davies's poem on the Immortality of the Soul may be classed either with the present series, or under the head of didactic poetry. The poetry of Quarles is partly sentimental, partly fantastic. A fine couplet occurs in the poem entitled Faith: "Brave minds oppressed, should, in despite of Fate, The Soul's Errand, said to be by Raleigh, Milton's Penseroso, Dryden's Religio Laici, and Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night, are additional examples. Cowper's Lines on his Mother's Picture deserve special mention. The chief merits of this celebrated poem are a remarkable tenderness and purity of feeling; the vividness of imagination with which past scenes and circumstances are represented; and, occasionally, dignity of thought couched in graceful expressions. Its demerits are the egotistic strain which is apt to infect a poet who leads an unemployed and retired life, leading him to dwell on circumstances trivial or vulgar, equally with those of a truly poetical cast, because they interest himself; and a lamentable inequality hence arising such worthless lines as or "The biscuit or confectionary plum," "I pricked them into paper with a pin,” |