["Mr. Whittier is emphatically the apostle of all that is pure, fair, and morally beautiful."-Athenæum, 1882. The delightful weather which generally falls to us in November is often known as St. Martin's Summer, from its arriving about Martinmas Day (November 11).] The sweet day, opening as a flower The Summer's tempered splendor. The birds are hushed; alone the wind, But still the balsam-breathing pine No hint of loss from air like wine The Summer and the Winter here The silent woods, the lonely hills, How strange! the Autumn yesterday And now while over Nature's mood My Autumn time and Nature's hold I lean my heart against the day I will not let it pass away Before it leave its blessing. The King's Missive, Mabel Martin, and Later Poems (1881). TO AUTUMN. JOHN KEATS (1795-1821). [By general consent of critics this ode ranks among the very finest in English literature.] Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing Sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells: Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? ay, where are they? Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; WORDSWORTH IN HIS INDIAN SUMMER. F. W. H. MYERS. We have reached the Indian Summer of Wordsworth's genius: it can still shine at moments bright as ever, and with even a new majesty and calm; but we feel, nevertheless, that the melody is dying from his song, that he is hardening into self-repetition, into rhetoric, into sermonizing commonplace, and is rigid where he was once profound. The Thanksgiving Ode (1816) strikes death to the heart. The accustomed patriotic sentiments-the accustomed virtuous aspirations— these are still there; but the accent is like that of a ghost who calls to us in hollow mimicry of a voice that once we loved. And yet Wordsworth's poetic life was not to close without a great symbolical spectacle, a solemn farewell. Sunset among the Cumbrian hills, often of remarkable beauty, once or twice, perhaps, in a score of years, reaches a pitch of illusion and magnificence which indeed seems nothing less than the commingling of earth and heaven. Such a sight-seen from Rydal Mount in 1818-afforded once more the needed stimulus, and evoked that “Evening Ode, composed on an evening of extraordinary splendor and beauty," which is the last considerable production of Wordsworth's genius. In this ode we recognize the peculiar gift of reproducing with magical simplicity, as it were, the inmost virtue of natural phenomena. "No sound is uttered, but a deep Of beamy radiance, that imbues In vision exquisitely clear Herds range along the mountain side; Once more the poet brings home to us that sense of belonging at once to two worlds which gives to human life so much of mysterious solemnity. "Wings at my shoulder seem to play; But, rooted here, I stand and gaze On those bright steps that heavenward raise Their practicable way." And the poem ends-with a deep personal pathos-in an allusion, repeated from the Ode on Immortality, to the light which "lay about him in his infancy "-the light "Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored; Which at this moment on my waking sight Appears to shine, by miracle restored! 'Tis past, the visionary splendor fades, WORDSWORTH, in English Men of Letters. PLACE DE LA BASTILLE,* PARIS. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882). [The Bastille, the old State prison and citadel of Paris, had been for centuries a fearful engine of despotism. The cell windows were but four inches wide, and they allowed only two inches of unobstructed light. The Bastille was captured and destroyed by a revolutionary mob, 14th July 1789, and the stones were used to construct the Bridge De la Concorde.] How dear the sky has been above this. place! Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year; Those nights when through the bars a wind left clear So was it, till one night the secret kept Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor Was blown abroad on gospel-tongues of flame. O ways of God, mysterious evermore! How many on this spot have cursed and wept That all might stand here now and own thy name. THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE. THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). ["His 'French Revolution' is a series of lurid pictures, unmatched for vehement power, in which the figures of such sons of earth as Mirabeau and Danton loom gigantic and terrible as in the glare of an eruption, their shadows swaying far and wide grotesquely awful. But all is painted by eruption-flashes in violent light and shade. There are no half-tints, no gradations, and we find it impossible to account for the continuance of power of less Titanic actors in the tragedy, like Robespierre, on any theory, whether of human nature or of individual character, supplied by Mr. Carlyle. Of his success, however, in accomplishing what he aimed at, which was to haunt the mind with memories of a horrible political nightmare, there can be no doubt."-J. R. LOWELL: My Study Windows.] On Monday, the 14th of October 1793, a cause was pending in the Hall of Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as those old stone walls never before witnessed the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at the judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To "Bastille Square." * |