How, with that strong, mimetic art,

Which is its life and soul, it takes
All shapes of thought, all hues of heart,
Nor feels, itself, one throb it wakes-
How like a jem its light may smile

O'er the dark path, by mortals trod,
Itself as mean a worm, the while,

As crawls along the sullying sod—
What sensibility may fall

From its false lip, what plans to bless,
While home, friends, kindred, country, all,
Lie waste beneath its selfishness.
How, with the pencil hardly dry

From colouring up such scenes of love

And beauty, as make young hearts sigh,

And dream, and think through heaven they rove, They who can thus describe and move,

The very workers of these charms,
Nor seek, nor ask a heaven above,

Some Mamau's or Theresa's arms!
"How all, in short, that makes the boast
Of their false tongues they want the most;
And, while with freedom on their lips,
Sounding her timbrels to set free
This bright world, labouring in the eclipse
Of priestcraft and of slavery,
They may, themselves, be slaves as low
As ever Lord or Patron made,
To blossom in his smile, or grow,

Like stunted brushwood, in his shade!

Out on the craft !-I'd rather be

One of those hinds that round me tread,

With just enough of sense to see

The noon-day sun that's o'er my head,
Than thus with high-built genius curst,
That hath no heart for its foundation,
Be all at once, that's brightest-worst-
Sublimest-meanest in creation!"

THOS. MOORE.

THE ENCHANTED FLUTE,

With other Poems, and Fables from La Fontaine. By E. P. Wolferstan.

A CRITIC, commenting on the following beautiful lines, professes to admire the image conveyed by

The play

Of moonlight on the wave.

We should admire it also if we did not know it to be a copy of a still more beautiful image.

How sweet the moonbeam sleeps on yonder bank. The imitation is so obvious that we could not profess to admire it without becoming imitators ourselves, for this image has been admired over and over by the critics. At the same time, we do not find fault with its introduction here in a new dress, and we consider the entire passage exceedingly tender and poetic.

ED.

Beats there a heart no care is near

No sorrow dare invade?

Glows there a cheek where never tear
Has taught the rose to fade?

Lives one in all this scene below,
Where troubles stalk around,
Who from the very touch of woe
Has strange exemption found.

With spirits lighter than the play
Of moonlight on the wave,

A frame where health with even sway
Maintains the law she gave.

A mind in whose gigantic grasp

All science lives enrolled;

A memory whose tenacious clasp
Can all the past unfold.

A soul where blazing genius breaks
In visions from on high,
And ever thinking fancy wakes
Her world of ecstacy?

No! such exuberance of bliss
Was never in a world like this!

'Tis all a dream, a beau ideal---
Seldom imagined, never real;

By reason crushed, as when you stir
You break the filmy gossamer.

75

THE MANIAC.

MORAL reflections are not easily clothed in the smiling robes of poetry, because they possess neither the levity of its lighter graces, nor the pathos of its deeper tones. When they are grafted, however, upon a pathetic subject, they are capable of producing an admirable effect. The piety that arises from sympathy is of a much higher order than that which emanates from a cold sense of duty. We have seldom met with moral reflections so happily introduced, or which leave a more pleasing impression on the mind, than those which occur in the following lines. They render us pious, and so far from resisting the hallowed emotion, we yield to it with pleasure, an effect entirely arising from our sympathy with the Maniac, or rather from our fears of that mental anarchy to which our nature is exposed. The effect, however, would have been stronger had the reflections been grafted on the story of some particular maniac.-ED.

To see the human mind o'erturn'd,-- -
Its loftiest heights in ruin laid,

And reason's lamp, which brightly burn'd,
Obscur❜d or quench'd in frenzy's shade;
A sight like this may well awake
Our grief, our fear,---for nature's sake.

It is a painful, humbling thought
To know the empire of the mind,
With wit endow'd, with science fraught,
Is fleeting as the passing wind;
And that the richest boon of Heaven
To man is rather LENT than GIVEN.

To-day he sits on Reason's throne,
And bids his subject powers obey;
Thought, memory, will,---all seem his own,
Come at his bidding, list his sway ;---
To-morrow from dominion hurl'd,
Madness pervades the mental world!

Yet think not, though forlorn and drear
The Maniac's doom,---his lot the worst;
There is a suffering more severe

Than these sad records have rehears'd :
"Tis his---whose virtue struggles still
In hopeless conflict with his will.

There are before whose mental eye
Truth has her chastest charms display'd,
But gaudier phantoms, fluttering by,
The erring mind have still betray'd;
'Till gathering clouds, in awful might,
Have quench'd each beam of heavenly light.

There are whose mental ear has heard

The "still small voice!" yet, prone to wrong,

Have proudly, foolishly preferr'd

The sophist's creed, the syren's song ;-

And staked, upon a desperate throw,
Their hopes above,---their peace below.

There are, in short, whose days present
One constant scene of painful strife;

Who hourly for themselves invent

Fresh conflicts ;---'till this dream of Life

Has made their throbbing bosoms ache,

And yet, alas! they fear to wake.