The poems are partly narrative and partly lyrical, and among the lyrical are thirty songs. Some of them are of a kindred spirit with the lines we have now been quoting; others of a gay and lively tone; and the rest of that mixed character of feeling and fancy, when the heart takes pleasure in what may be called moonlight moods, when the shadow seems itself a softened light, and melancholy melts away into mirthand mirth soon relapses into melancholy. We quote one sad-and one happy song-from which you may guess the rest.

THE PARTING.

OH! is it thus we part, And thus we say farewell, As if in neither heart Affection e'er did dwell? And is it thus we sunder Without or sigh or tear, As if it were a wonder We e'er held other dear?

That heartswhich love with rapture sigh—

Then is the hour That the voice of love is a spell of power! When surly mastiffs stint their howl, And swathed in moonshine nods the owl; When cottage-hearths are glimmering low, And warder cocks forget to crow;

Then is the hour

That hearts feel passion's overflow

Then is the hour

That the voice of love is a spell of power!

When stilly night seems earth's vast grave,
Nor murmur comes from wood or wave;
When land and sea, in wedlock bound
By silence, sleep in bliss profound;
Then is the hour

That hearts like living well-springs sound

Then is the hour

That the voice of love is a spell of power!

'Tis no easy thing to write a song. If you doubt it, try. A song is something like a sonnet. There must be one pervading Feeling in a song ; and so too, for the most part, in a sonnet-but often in a sonnet it is rather a pervading Thought, which of course has its own feeling, as an accompaniment. The one pervading Feeling expands itself during a song, like a wild-flower in the breath and dew of morning, which before was but a bud, and we are touched with a sweet sense of beauty, at the full disclosure. As a song should always be simple-the flower we liken it to is the lily or the violet. The leaves of the lily are white, but 'tis not a monotonous whiteness-the leaves of the violet, sometimes dim as "the lids of Cytherea's eyes"-for Shakspeare has said so-are, when well and happy, blue as her eyes themselves while they looked languishingly on Adonis. Yet the exquisite colour seems of different shades in its rarest richness; and even so as lily or violet, shiftingly the same, should be a song, in its simplicity, variously tinged with fine distinctions of the one colour of that pervading Feeling, now brighter now dimmer, as open and shut the valves of that mystery -the heart!

It will not do to indite stanza after stanza, each with a pretty and perhaps natural image of its own, or a fanciful; to drop a feeling here and there; or let in suddenly a few rays or a larger light;-and calling that a song, get it set to music, and placed before a young lady at her harpsichord that she may warble you into marriage, by a spell to which you have yourself given more than half the charm, as you may imagine. It is no song. And if the divertisement be " No Song no Supper," you go hungry to bed.

A song is a composition. But it is composed, unconsciously as near as may be, as far as there is art; and all that the Maker's heart has to do, is to keep true to the inspiration that prompted it to breathe a song, and true it will keep, if strong be the delight. Some songs are of affection-some of passion-and some of both-and these last, when perfect, seem self-existent as if they had written themselves-and had afterwards had the name of some poet

attached to them, say Burns. Is it not so with that beautiful and blessed song of his,

"O' a' the airts the wind can blaw, I dearly lo❜e the west;

For there the bonny lassie leeves,
The lass that I lo'e best !"

But we must return, if possible, to the Book; and shall quote a few fine things from the third class of poetry, to which we adverted above, namely, description of Nature, imbued with sentiment. There are a thousand ways of dealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; but sentiment there always must be, else you have but prose

and very poor prose, too, we fear-a multiplication of vain words. You may infuse the sentiment by a single touch-by a ray of light no thicker, nor one thousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded by a lady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or you may splash it in as with a gorgeous cloudstain stolen from sunset; or you may bathe it in with a shred of the rainbow. Perhaps the highest power of all possessed by the sons of song, is, to breathe it in with the breath, to let it slip in with the light, of the common day!

Then some poets there are, who shew you a scene all of a sudden, by means of a few magical wordsjust as if you opened your eyes at their bidding-and in place of a blank, lo! a world. Others, again, as good and as great, create their world, gradually, before your eyes, for the delight of your soul that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap image upon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they were ransacking and robbing and redreavering earth, sea, and sky; yet all things there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, when consummated, is a whole that seems to typify the universe. Others give you but fragments-but such as awaken imaginations of beauty and of power transcendent, like that famous Torso. And some show you Nature glimmering beneath a veil, which, nunlike, she has religiously taken; and, oh! call not Nature ideal only,

Then, oh! why will so many myriads of men and women, denied by nature" the vision and the faculty divine," persist in the delusion that they are poetizing, while they are but versifying, “this bright and breathing world?" They have not learned even the use of their very eyes. They truly see not so much as the outward objects of sight. But of all the rare affinities and relationships in Nature, visible or audible to Fine-ear-and-Far-Eye the Poet, not a whisper-not a glimpse have they ever heard or seen, any more than had they been born deaf-blind!

as it is certain that he never can get out till he becomes a hippogriff.

But we really must return to our esteemed friend, Motherwell. He learned early in life,

They paint a landscape, but nothing "prates of their whereabouts," while they were sitting on a tripod, with their paper on their knees, drawing-their breath. For, in the front ground, is a castle, against which, if you offer to stir a step, you infallibly break your head, unless providentially stopped by that extraordinary vegetable-looking substance, perhaps a tree, growing bolt upright, out of an intermediate stone, that has wedged itself in long after there had ceased to be even standing room in that strange theatre of nature. But down from " the swelling instep of a mountain's foot," that has protruded itself through a wood, while the body of the mountain prudently remains in the extreme distance, descends on you, ere you have recovered from your unexpected encounter with the old Roman cement, an unconscionable cataract. There stands a deer or goat, or, at least, some beast with horns, " strictly anonymous," placed for effect contrary to all cause, in a place where it seems as uncertain how he got in

«To muse on Nature with a poet's eye ;” and now when he lets down the lids, he sees her still, just as well, perhaps better than when they were up; for in that deep, earnest, inward gaze the fluctuating sea of scenery subsides into a settled calm, where all is harmony as well as beauty-order as well as peace. What though the poet have been fated, through youth and manhood, to dwell in city smoke? His childhood-his boyhood-were overhung with trees, and through its heart went the murmur of waters. Then it is, we verily believe, that in all poets, is filled with images up to the brim, Imagination's treasury. Genius, growing, and grown up to maturity, is still a prodigal. But he draws on the Bank of Youth. His bills, whether at a short or long date, are never dishonoured; nay, made payable at sight, they are good as gold. Nor cares that Bank for a run, made even in a panic, for, besides, bars and billets, and wedges and blocks of gold, there are, unappreciable beyond the riches which, against a time of trouble,

"The Sultaun hides in his ancestral tombs,"

jewels and diamonds sufficient

"To ransom great kings from captivity."

We sometimes think that the power of painting Nature to the life, whether in her real or ideal beauty (both have life), is seldom evolved to its utmost, until the mind possessing it is withdrawn in the body from all rural environment. It has not been so with Wordsworth, but it was so with Milton. The descriptive poetry in Comus is indeed rich as rich may be, but certainly not so great, perhaps not so beautiful, as that in Paradise Lost.

It would seem to be so with all of us, small as well as great; and were we-Christopher North-to compose a poem on Loch Skene, two thousand feet or so above the level of the sea, and some miles from a house, we should desire to do so in a metropolitan cellar. Desire springs from separation. The spirit seeks to

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unite itself to the beauty it loves, the grandeur it admires, the sublimity it almost fears; and all these being o'er the hills and far away, or on the hills, but cloud-hidden, why it-the spirit-makes itself wings-or rather they grow up of themselves in its passion, and nature-wards it flies like a dove or an eagle. People looking at us believe us present, but they never were so far mistaken in their lives, for in the Seamew are we sailing with the tide through the moonshine on Loch Etive; or hanging o'er that gulph of peril on the bosom of Skyroura. Motherwell has, manifestly, communed with Nature, not so much among mountains, as among gentle slopes and swells, hedgerowed fields of laughing labour," green silent pastures," and the "bosoms, nooks, and bays" of such rivers as the Cart and the Clyde, crowned with such castles as Cruikstone and Bothwell, and winding their way, when wearied of sunshine, through the woods. There he hears the hymns of the mavis and the throstle-there he sees the silent worship of the primrose and the violet, and with them holds Sabbath.

A SABBATH SUMMER NOON.

THE calmness of this noontide hour,
The shadow of this wood,
The fragrance of each wilding flower,
Are marvellously good;

Oh, here crazed spirits breathe the balm
Of nature's solitude!

It is a most delicious calm

That resteth everywhereThe holiness of soul-sung psalm,

Of felt but voiceless prayer! With hearts too full to speak their bliss, God's creatures silent are.

They silent are; but not the less,
In this most tranquil hour
Of deep unbroken dreaminess,

They own that Love and Power Which, like the softest sunshine, rests On every leaf and flower.

Heart forth! as uncaged bird through

air,

And mingle in the tide

Of blessed things that, lacking care,
Now full of beauty glide
Around thee, in their angel hues
Of joy and sinless pride.

How silent are the song-filled nests

That crowd this drowsy treeHow mute is every feathered breast

That swelled with melody! And yet bright bead-like eyes declare This hour is ecstasy.

And on May-morn, all the most innocent "ministers of love" are floating in the air, inspiring youthful bosoms that begin to beat then, for the first time, with pulsations that, ere the full June moon looks down on the yellow couch spread aloft by the midsummer woods, will have ripened into panting passion, desirous in vain of the bliss for which, whether it be life-in-death or death-inlife, so many millions of beautiful insects, men, women, and butterflies, go careering together up into the sunny air of existence, but to drop down into dust.

But this joyous little poem has nothing to do with dust, but with the

morn and liquid dew of youth," when, though "contagious blastments be most imminent, the sweetest flowers do yet escape them wholly," and live to die with gradual decay of beauty, in almost unperceived-almost unfelt decay.