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sionally torn in turn; but what a sublime picture of the poet tearing away at all the creeds in this frantic way is this?-now transpiercing the Nicene, now transfixing the Athanasian, now dandling them playfully on his horns, and tickling the Augsburg Confession with the tip of his tail! But although he has "stout notions" about the ereeds, he has no doubt whatever that the souls of men are very sadly used and abused in this vale of tears. Α greater than our author has told us of the "base uses" to which the body may be put after death; but long before that event, see how the soul suffers:

"In the dark house of the body, cooking rictuals, lighting fires,

Swelters on the starry stranger, to our nature's base desires.

God!—our souls are aproned waiters! God!

our souls are hired slaves. Let us hide from life, my brothers! let us hide us in our graves !"-p. 33.

What a novel meaning does not the second class of souls in the first line of the foregoing quotation give to a favourite phrase in general use among our rural countrymen ! How often do we not hear them say, in their genuine patois, "Ah! but he had a tindher soul;" meaning, of course, one of those ill-treated souls whose occupation in this life is "lighting fires!" As to the second division, we suppose that the poet meant only to convey that some souls, like politicians of whom we have heard, were only "waiters" upon Providence!

As to the "lady" who is introduced into this scene, and with whom the poet of course falls in love-what shall we say of her courage in addressing the following query to a youth, with all the dangerous inclination to scepticism and ringlets of which we have read above? She is asking him what will be the subject of the poem, which he pretty plainly indicates he is about to astonish the world with

"Wilt write of some young wanton of an isle, Whose beauty so enamoured hath the sea, It clasps it ever in its summer arms, And wastes itself away on it in kisses?" -p. 38.

Moore had a much better couplet, on the same subject, in his early poems. Speaking of some " young wanton of

an isle" (thanks to God, it can't be "Old Ireland"), he said—

"It lay in the giant embrace of the deep
Like a Hebé in Hercules' arms."

These lines, though much more felicitous than Mr. Smith's, he had the good taste to expunge in the collected edition of his poems- an example which, here and elsewhere, our author may follow with advantage.

The poem, however, which the poet intends to write, is really a comprehensive work. It is, as the lady says—

"As wide and daring as a comet's spoom."

It is to begin before the creation of anything, and end after the destruction of everything, containing

"The tale of earth,

By way of episode or anecdote."

What is this after all, but a poetical version of the famous Welch pedigree, in the middle of which the genealogist parenthetically mentions, "about this time the world was created ?" The scene concludes, of course, with another allusion to Marc Anthony and Cleopatra.

As might have been expected, the poet has fallen in love with the lady, and the third scene describes him as anxiously looking forward to their next interview. She has asked him to have a poem ready for that occasion, or as she expresses it in her truly feminine

way

"Wilt trim a verse for me by this night week?" Just as she would say to her milliner, in an easy colloquial tone

"Canst trim a cap for me by this night week ?"

We

He feels quite satisfied of his own love, but he is not so certain of hers. If she would but return his affection what would he not do for her? have heard of many generous promises made under similar circumstances, but never anything like the following. These promissory notes generally drawn at "three months after marriage," and too easily "accepted" by the fair fiancée, are in most cases protested against at the expiration of that period; but our present lover puts any fear of that out of the question. He will begin at the beginning:

"Would she but love me I would live for her."

He says (what a pity it was not "with

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urges their steps to the sea-shore-the same dream or vision of

"A maiden singing in the woods alone;"

the same rapture and the same vague and mysterious termination. That there are beautiful lines and thoughts here as elsewhere through Mr. Smith's poem we freely admit, but these do not atone or account for his giving an abridged and more prosaic version of what Shelley had already done so inimitably well. Shelley, who described the voice and music of his ideal maiden in the following lines

"Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought: its music long,

Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues," would never have gone bird-nesting for an illustration like our own poet"More music! music! music! maid divine! My hungry senses, like a finch's brood, Are all a-gape."—p. 48.

Walter and the lady meet in the fourth scene on the banks of a river. Before repeating the promised poem he again alludes to his departed friend, "the feeder of his soul," pointing out the places where they had read the poets together, where they had drank

"The breezes blowing in old Chaucer's verse," or hung

“O'er the fine pants and trembles of a line,”

they being, we suppose, the unavoidable breaches or inexpressible modulations of the verse. The lady becomes impatient for the tale, which the poet will only recite beside a certain well, where once

"A prince had woo'd a lady of the land,

And when, with faltering lips, he told his love,

Into her proud face leaped her prouder blood;

She struck him blind with scorn, then with an air,

As if she wore the crowns of all the world, She swept right on and left him in the dew."-p. 56.

We do not know how it is, but we lways read this last line

"She swept right on and left him in the dumps,"

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"O Sir! within a month my bridal bells Will make a village glad. The fainting earth

Is bleeding at her million golden veins, And by her blood I'm bought. The sun shall see

A pale bride wedded to grey hair, and eyes Of cold and cruel blue; and in the spring A grave with daisies on it."-p. 79.

We must not, however, omit mentioning that the principal character in the poem recited by Walter, is a young Indian page "a cub of Ind," as his proud mistress calis him, and certainly the most precocious" cub" that we ever had the misfortune to meet with or read of. This "lustrous Leopard," another pet epithet for Young Ebony, though generally candid enough to declare

How poor our English to his Indian darks !"

was satisfied to put up with his haughty mistress as his mistress, if she had no objection. How the modest proposition was received may be imagined. At first, she mocked and sneered at him, principally, as it would seem, for his having

"A chin as smooth as her own."

But fearing, we suppose, that the youth would promise to use a double quantity of bear's grease for the future, she orders him off

"Go now, sir go,'

As thence she warned him with arm-sweep superb,

The light of scorn was cold within her eyes."

The whole of this episode, we must say, appears to us extravagant and unreal, with a decided smack of minor theatrical ranting. We cannot further pursue our minute analysis of the poem. The story can be told in a few words. The lady, who marries the old gentle, man with the eyes of "cruel blue," keeps her word, and dies exactly at the time she promised. Walter is, of course, much grieved; goes on a pilgrimage to her grave, and is rather angry that the daisies have not yet co

He is

vered the fresh, red earth. shortly after induced by another friend of his, a new "feeder of his soul," to go down to Bedfordshire with him on a visit to an old gentleman, named Mr. Willmott, who has a charming daughter of the still more charming name of Violet. This old gentleman must have had the most extraordinary notions of propriety, as the first evening they are all assembled in his comfortable parlour, and in his daughter's presence, he sets the two young men singing "roaring songs" which, without the wit or melody, have a thousand times the warmth and amativeness of those of Mr. Thomas Little. Miss Violet obligingly joins in this family concert. Such a beginning, of course, speedily brings on an appropriate termination. The young lady and the young visitor Walter, mutually seduce each other (we know not which is most or least to blame) on "the lawn," probably opposite the very window where the good Mr. Willmott is reading the morning's Times. Remorse seizes on Walter; he flies away; he has serious notions of throwing himself from some rural "Bridge of Sighs," but thinks better of it; writes a great poem, and then rushes headlong into dissipation, exactly in the way Byron has described the class of people, who

"First write a novel, and then play the devil."

He disappears for three years; returns; makes an honest woman of Violet, and the last we hear of them is their going in together into their house to avoid the night dews, with a degree of matrimonial quiet perfectly delightful, after the fever of unrest in which author, hero, heroine, and reader have been so long kept.

Before concluding our observations on this remarkable poem, we must adduce a few more passages in support of the opinion we have expressed both of its beauties and of its defects. A fatiguing brilliancy, a straining after novel and singular combinations, is, no doubt, one of the most obvious characteristics of our author, but that he can err in the very opposite direction is equally true. already given, we must offer a few In addition to the passages of this kind others. In the first one, we have our old friend, Marc Anthony, again :

"Gods! I cried out, Anthony, Anthony! This moment I could scatter Kingdoms like halfpence.”—p. 164.

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It were easy to multiply passages of greater and certainly of more striking beauty even than these, but it is unnecessary. We have said enough to show, that if we cannot be blind to the defects of our author, we are not insensible to his great and unquestionable merits. He has gained two important results by his present publication. He has obtained a hearing, and he has awakened expectation-two memorable triumphs which neither Shelley nor Keats (the influence of whose writings in the best portions of his book is perceptible), ever achieved during their lives, though now, as he himself truly says:—

"The fame that scorned them while they lived, Waits on them like a menial."

We look with hope and curiosity for his next work. Let it be a simpler, if a loftier temple, to the true divinity of song, to whose service and worship we think he is called. To do this he must, in the first place, turn away from his pagan idolatry of images, becoming as it were the iconoclast of his own fancy. He must abandon the affected jargon of little cliques and coteries, and use the universally received language of good sense and good taste. He must divest his mind of an idea that seems very strongly impressed upon it in the present poem, that not only

"It is love, 'tis love, 'tis love

That makes the world go round,"

but that the same powerful passion is the one thought and sole occupation of everything in creation, from the sun, moon, and stars, which are perpetually ogling each other, to the waves and winds, that are eternally kissing and embracing, as well beings of their own species as everything else within their reach, in the most ardent and extraordinary manner. In this respect, his present poem is but an expansion of Shelley's little lyric, "Love's Philosophy":

"See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another."

Finally, he must be less liberal with
his brilliants, or distribute them with
more judgment. Were they all even
of the first water, he must recollect that
diamonds were never so valueless
as in the "6
Valley of Diamonds" it-
self.

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Strip to the wooing wind. From rocks romantic

Plunge in the fresh, green, laughing, quivering brine: Sate thee with kisses of the fair Atlantic,

And then-go home and dine.

A PIC-NIC.

I.

The lake is calm. A crowd of sunny faces

And plumed heads, and shoulders round and white, Are mirrored in the waters. There are traces

Of merriment in those sweet eyes of light.

Lie empty hampers round; in shady places

The hungry throw themselves with ruthless might On lobsters, salads; while Champagne, to cheer 'em, Cools in the brook that murmurs sweetly near 'em.

II.

Green leagues of park and forest lie around;

Wave stately antlers in the glimmering distance;

Up from the dusky arches comes a sound

That tells the story of old Pan's existence.
And now in song the summer wind is drowned;
Now comes a call that conquers all resistance-

A dance upon the turf! up, up, instanter !
Away with quarried pie and stained decanter.

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