and serve to exaltHer native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green tree; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like power abides
In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the incumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment—nay from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of Despair.—p. 188.
This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of the author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some parts of it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the appearance of a kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished therefore that the tale of Margaret had been postponed, till the reader had been strengthened by some previous acquaintance with the author's theory, and not placed in the front of the poem, with a kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender as it is. It is a tale of a cottage, and its female tenant, gradually decaying together, while she expected the return of one whom poverty and not unkindness had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with the conclusion—
Nine tedious years;
From their first separation, nine long years,
She lingered in unquiet widowhood,
A Wife and Widow. [Needs must it have been
A sore heart-wasting!] I have heard, my Friend,
That in yon arbour oftentimes she sate
Alone, through half the vacant Sabbath-day;
And if a dog passed by she still would quit
The shade, and look abroad. On this old Bench
For hours she sate; and evermore her eye
Was busy in the distance, shaping things
That made her heart beat quick. You see that path,
[Now faint—the grass has crept o'er its grey line;]
There, to and fro, she paced through many a day
Of the warm summer, from a belt of hemp
That girt her waist, spinning the long drawn thread
With backward steps. Yet ever as there pass'd
A man whose garments shew'd the Soldier's[32] red, [Or crippled Mendicant in Sailor's garb], The little Child who sate to turn the wheel Ceas'd from his task; and she with faultering voice Made many a fond enquiry; and when they, Whose presence gave no comfort, were gone by, Her heart was still more sad. And by yon gate, That bars the Traveller's road, she often stood, And when a stranger Horseman came the latch Would lift, and in his face look wistfully; Most happy, if, from aught discovered there Of tender feeling, she might dare repeat The same sad question. Meanwhile her poor hut Sank to decay: for he was gone—whose hand, At the first nipping of October frost, Closed up each chink, and with fresh bands of straw Checquered the green-grown thatch. And so she lived Through the long winter, reckless and alone; Until her house by frost, and thaw, and rain, Was sapped; and while she slept the nightly damps Did chill her breast; and in the stormy day Her tattered clothes were ruffled by the wind; Even at the side of her own fire. Yet still She loved this wretched spot, nor would for worlds Have parted hence: and still that length of road, And this rude bench, one torturing hope endeared, Fast rooted at her heart: and here, my Friend, In sickness she remains; and here she died, Last human Tenant of these ruined Walls.—p. 44.
[32] Her husband had enlisted for a soldier.
The fourth book, entitled "Despondency Corrected," we consider as the most valuable portion of the poem. For moral grandeur; for wide scope of thought and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender personal appeals; and a versification which we feel we ought to notice, but feel it also so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly mention it as a distinct excellence; it stands without competition among our didactic and descriptive verse. The general tendency of the argument (which we might almost affirm to be the leading moral of the poem) is to abate the pride of the calculating understanding, and to reinstate the imagination and the affections in those seats from which modern philosophy has laboured but too successfully to expel them.
"Life's autumn past," says the grey-haired Wanderer,
——I stand on Winter's verge,
And daily lose what I desire to keep:
Yet rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies
Of a most rustic ignorance, and take
A fearful apprehension from the owl
Or death-watch—and as readily rejoice,
If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;
This rather would I do than see and hear
The repetitions wearisome of sense,
Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;—p. 168.
In the same spirit, those illusions of the imaginative faculty to which the peasantry in solitary districts are peculiarly subject, are represented as the kindly ministers of conscience:
——with whose service charged
They come and go, appear and disappear;
Diverting evil purposes, remorse
Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief,
Or pride of heart abating:
Reverting to more distant ages of the world, the operation of that same faculty in producing the several fictions of Chaldean, Persian, and Grecian idolatry, is described with such seductive power, that the Solitary, in good earnest, seems alarmed at the tendency of his own argument.—Notwithstanding his fears, however, there is one thought so uncommonly fine, relative to the spirituality which lay hid beneath the gross material forms of Greek worship, in metal or stone, that we cannot resist the allurement of transcribing it—
——triumphant o'er this pompous show
Of Art, this palpable array of Sense,
On
