"They cannot take my nights!"

he exclaimed, with the poet of Clifton Grove; and, to what he deemed no perishable record, he consigned the operations of his labouring intellect. Now might you note his aspect brighten as if with hope,-then the travail, as of a thunder cloud, gloomed his brow,-then at once it cleared away, and his forehead dilated as if with triumph. The labour and the travail of genius were in these mutations. The mysterious and still horror of inspiration was upon him. He had called up to himself a preternatural power in his own spirit, which assumed a portion of the plastic attribute of deity, and emancipated him for the moment from his prison-house of clay. Ye may call it phrenzy,—well,

"Great wits to madness ever are allied."

This delphic fury,-this preternatural possession-phrenzy, is necessary to the constitution of the true poet.

Then he took up a strain of disdainful triumph, and exclaimed that he wanted not the ease of the Poet of Thalaba, or of the Excursion. Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, the poet was only man, nor born to more. Still his joys were more than other men's, and to experience these, the sorrows might well be borne.

"Who would not, for the joys to thee belong,
Endure the sorrows of a child of song?
For where's the mortal so completely blest,
That trouble never interrupts his rest?
Why launch I not out on this world's wide sea?
And if storm-taken,-well,-so let it be, —
Treck not! It were but to grasp at more
Than I could reach, as many have before,-
And they have borne it,-I could bear the same,—
Be mine their sorrows then, if mine their fame!
And have I not, when I the griefs have read
Of many of the learned and tuneful dead;

-How that the world had brought its tempest forth,
To beat their eagle spirits down to earth,

To its vile level: and, when I have heard
Their sorrows on their magic harps preferred,-
Have I not, as each melancholy lay
Dissolved my soul in passion all away,

E'en envied them their woes, and with wild zeal
To plain like them, e'en wished like them to feel?
Then swell, ye billows! burst above my head!
And I, like them, will wake my harp to life,
That shall reprove you for your uproar dread,
And calm my soul amid external strife!
For it shall have the power of Orpheus' strain,

And charm me from my fate with its sweet tone ;-
While its kind voice I listen to alone,

Frustrate the storm shall drive along the plain,
And threatening thunders roar-winds rage in vain!
Then swell, ye billows! high as Jove's arched roof!
I reck ye not, for I am tempest-proof."

These lines were balm to him,-there was comfort in their very echo. "They came from the heart," he said, "and therefore go to mine."

"Alas!

Despair and genius are too oft connected:"

and this was the exultation of despair. But when things come to the worst they must change, is a Spanish proverb; and nothing is more true than that hope is so constant a companion of the human breast, springing eternal there, as Pope hath it, that it over-aboundeth in despair, like a fountain in a desart.

In the desart a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird' in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to his spirit.

Despair hath most of hope,-for it hath all to hope, and nothing to fear. Thus it was with him. There was an energy in his spirit, which, though it looked in vain for "green spots in memory's waste," and sighed for recollections of verdant fields and mountain scenery, that the eye of the mind had only contemplated, and the eye of the flesh been a stranger to, sustained him still. Hope was triumphant. This energy, this hope, he was expending on the composition of a tragedy. "With fixed gaze

He marks the rising phantoms, now compares

Their different forms, now blends them, now divides,
Enlarges and extenuates by turns;

Opposes, ranges in fantastic bands,

And infinitely varies: hither now,

Now thither, fluctuates his inconstant aim,

With endless choice perplexed. At length, his plan

Begins to open, lucid order dawns;

And as from Chaos old the jarring seeds
Of Nature at the voice divine repaired
Each to its place, till rosy earth unveiled
Her fragrant bosom, and the joyful sun
Sprung up the blue serene, by swift degrees
Thus disentangled his entire design
Emerges. Colours mingle, features join,
And lines converge; the fainter parts retire,

The fairer eminent in light advance,
And every image on its neighbour smiles;
Awhile he stands, and with a father's joy
Contemplates.

Not long after, he presented his dramatic first fruit to Old Drury. The great lessee returned it with a printed circular, declining its acceptance; thus, with the insolence of authority, anticipating his return to the vulgar crowd whence he had dared for a fond moment to emerge. He had no fields to roam in, whose verdure might soothe the frantic eye of disappointment with cool refreshment; no uninterrupted expanse of the blue heaven bending over all alike, and therefore over him, with undiminished serenity, equal in the distribution of its beauty and love, though man be partial and the world forget. He might not lie at noon "by the forest's edge."

"Beneath the branches high,

The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart, he never felt

The witchery of the soft blue sky!"

No more-Verily the poet of Cockaigne is a hapless wight. Verily to him the CONDITION OF HAPPINESS is denied—if it consists, as Madame De Stael states, in the CORRESPONDENCE OF DISPOSITION WITH DESTINY-wholly denied. In him extremes meet-Disposition and destiny the most opposite. Wherefore wonder ye, that he cometh forth in the morning pale-emaciated-dejected-torpid? And is there none "To lead him up the hill of fame,

And twine the laurels round his humble name?" None-the great and the wealthy have not the genius to feel for the situation of such an one—and Genius is afraid of a rival.

་་་་་་་་་་་་་་འ

SONNET.
SABRINA.

SEVERN! down the fresh waves of thy smooth stream,
Laughing in th' azural heaven's own golden light,
As my skiff gaily danceth, and her bright
Pennon doth flutter in the gale, and gleam
Back the sun's glories - hast thou no old theme,
Wherewith to guile the pleasant hour,-fit rite
For her whose moist curb swayeth thee-fit dream
For the young bard who loves, silent as night,
Musing, to watch thy billows softly roll

To a most musical and gentle swell,

In multitudinous unity, his soul

Numbering a thought for each ?-Thou hast a spell!
She whom thou worshippest-Whose virgin name,
Spencer's and Milton's song have hallowed to all fame!

H.

That day's celebration

When (bridegrooms) think, or Phoebus' steeds are foundered, "Or night kept chained below."

"Blood into the banquet"—

SHAKESPEARE.

BEN JONSON.

I.

WELL-SAID the Muse that pensive memory
Run o'er the chords of former pleasures still;
Why should we fright away the pictured joy
With the grim visage of futurity?

The past was pleasant, and the present is
One cherished scene of still continued bliss.

will

Thee first she sung, Aristes-thou, whose mind

Takes in the family of human kind!

Thou art all things to all men they may need,
Lord of the feeling heart and generous deed!
Ample thy store, because thou art content,

Though less perchance than one debauch had spent;
Enough for thee, and thy benevolence,
An open palm, and liberal competence!
Hither all ye oppressed by fortune's hand,
Hither before my just tribunal stand,
And answer to the thing I shall demand:
Can ye arraign the bounty of his soul?

E'er knew that stream one barrier of control?
Spent ever he in vanity of pride,

What heaven beyond his simple want supplied?
Did he hoard ever the superfluous gold,
And faithless to his trust the wealth withhold,
Given him by Jove, as steward of his good,
To deal to need, in avaricious mood?
When did the orphan's prayer arise unheard?
When was the widow's plaint in vain preferr'd?

Wondered not Pride to see such frugal store,
Pour forth such bounty, yet have still to pour?
Hear then, O Pride! the secret hid from thee,
The secret of heaven-fostered charity!
Wills Jove complete to bless a son of earth,
Thus runs the edict of the favored birth-
"Hear all ye thrones of heaven! Upon this child,
I do bestow a spirit meek and mild;

A heart, which shall all other's sorrows feel,
And, as its own, still prompt the hand to heal,
And he shall heal,—the heart shall sing again,
And his own bosom catch the extatie strain !
Beloved of heaven, awake! to life awake!
In all the bliss of all the world partake,
Or, hath it sorrow, share it for its sake!-
Yet, while thou sharest, sooth; and soothing, fill
Thine own soul with a glow ineffable-
The glow of love divine, that still derives
Its solace from the very joy it gives.
This is the highest luxury of bliss!

Jove hath no more,-and thine, beloved, is this.
Not large thy store to human ken shall be,
Just a due mean 'twixt wealth and poverty;
Yet shall thy bounty never know decay,
For what thou givest, in secret I'll repay.
It shall be a perpetual water-run,
Which ever flows, and flows for ever on;
With vast expence, it nurtures all the plain,
Yet instantly is plenished again;

For deep in earth, unseen by mortal eyes,
Formed by the gods, the eternal fountain lies."

Such of Aristes' blest nativity,

The edict was-ethereal harmony
Rose from the synod to acclaim the deed-
Then was a peerless, noble dame decreed
To share his life, and perfect every joy,
With nuptial faith and love without alloy-
Sabina then they nam'd the paragon

Whose love should bless him, and bless him alone.

II.

What was the promise of that golden day, Which seemed as tho' it never would decay,

And night were foundered in delay below,

Though pleasure swayed the hour, and joy was on tip-toe, And all was smiles and happiness, as much as earth can know! And now this morn returns that happy day,

Devoted to be festive, blithe, and gay;