occupied more than ten minutes.' Perhaps because of this happy facility they often fall short of complete attainment; sometimes the vigour of conception suddenly declines, sometimes the touch loses its precision; nor is the poetic mood from which they originate always delivered by the imagination from its surrounding circumstance of prose, or its alloy of humbler feeling. But all that Hartley Coleridge has written is genuine, full of nature, sweet, fresh, breathing charity and reconciliation. His poems of self-portrayal are many, and of these not a few are pathetic with sense of change and sorrowing self-condemnation; yet his penitence had a silver side of hope, and one whose piety was so unaffected, whose faith though 'thinner far than vapour' had yet outlived all frowardness, could not desperately upbraid even his weaker self. For all that is sweet and venerable-for the charm of old age, for the comeliness of ancient use and wont, for the words of sacred poet or prophet, for the traditions of civility, for the heritage of English law and English freedom, for the simple humanities of earth, for fatherhood and motherhood, Hartley Coleridge had a heartfelt and tender reverence. And with a more exquisite devotion he cherished all frail, innocent, and dependent creatures; small they should be or they could not look to their quaint little poet as a protector. To think of the humming-bird's or the cricket's glee made him happy; he bowed over the forgetme not blossom as if it were a sapphire amulet against all mortal taint, and over the eye-bright 'gold-eyed weedie,' which owns such holy, medicinal virtue. He loved with the naïveté of innocenthearted old bachelorhood the paradise of maidenhood; with all its sweet she-slips, in Shakespeare's play and Stothard's page, and, better still, on English lawn or by English fireside. And who has been laureate to as many baby boys and 'wee ladies sweet' as Hartley Coleridge? Rounding the lives of all little children and all helpless things he felt a nearness of some strong protecting Love which called forth his deepest instincts of piety. In Grasmere churchyard, close to the body of Wordsworth, rests that of Hartley Coleridge; so a Presence of strength and plain heroic magnitude of mind environs him. And hard by a stream goes murmuring to the lake. As a mountain rivulet to a mountain lake, so is Hartley Coleridge's poetry to that of Wordsworth; and the stream has a melodious life and a freshness of its own. EDWARD DOWDEN. SONNET. Long time a child, and still a child, when years TO A LOFTY BEAUTY, FROM HER POOR KINSMAN. Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries, Thy mazy motions, striving to elude, And lovely all ;-methinks thy scornful mood, Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee. MAY, 1840. A lovely morn, so still, so very still, It hardly seems a growing day of Spring, Save when the wee wren flits with stealthy wing, TO A DEAF AND DUMB LITTLE GIRL Like a loose island on the wide expanse, What can she know of beaut[eous] or sublime? STANZAS. She was a queen of noble Nature's crowning, Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream But she is changed,-hath felt the touch of sorrow, Oh grief! when heaven is forced of earth to borrow Grows from the common ground, and there must shed That they should find so base a bridal bed, 'Tis vain to say-her worst of grief is only And she did love them. They are past away And like a spectre of an age departed, Or unsphered Angel woefully astray, She glides along-the solitary hearted. SONG. She is not fair to outward view As many maidens be, Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me ; Oh! then I saw her eye was bright, But now her looks are coy and cold, SUMMER RAIN. Thick lay the dust, uncomfortably white, The woods and mountains slept in hazy light; Sudden the hills grew black, and hot as stove |