Invocation to Peace.

Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night,
When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number,
An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crust white,
Walk the col' starlight into summer;
Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell
Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer
Than the last smile thet strives to tell
O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.

I hev been gladder o' sech things

Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, They filled my heart with livin' springs,

But now they seem to freeze 'em over; Sights innercent ez babes on knee,

Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, Jes' coz they be so, seem to me

To rile me more with thoughts o' battle.

In-doors an' out by spells I try;

Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', But leaves my natur' stiff an' dry

Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same,

Calmer than clock-work, an' not carin',
An' findin' nary thing to blame,

Is wus than ef she took to swearin.
Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane
The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant,
But I can't hark to what they're say'n',
With Grant or Sherman ollers present;
The chimbleys shudder in the gale,

Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin'
Like a shot hawk, but all 's ez stale
To me ez so much sperit-rappin'.

Under the yaller-pines I house,

When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs

The baskin' west-wind purr contentedWhile 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low

Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, Further an' further South retreatin'.

Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street

I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet

Thet follered once an' now are quiet, White feet ez snowdrops innercent,

Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan,
Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't
No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.

Why, han't I held 'em on my knee?
Didn't I love to see 'em growin',

Three likely lads ez wal could be,

Handsome an' brave, an' not tu knowin'?

I set an' look into the blaze

Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways,

An' half despise myself for rhymin'.

Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal,
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
To him who, deadly hurt, agen

Flashed on afore the charge's thunder,
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men

Thet rived the rebel line asunder?

"Tan't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust

To try an' make b'lieve fill their places:

Nothin' but tells us wut we miss,

Ther''s gaps our lives can't never say in, An' thet world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in!

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners ; I pity mothers, tu, down South,

For all they sot among the scorners : I'd sooner take my chance to stan'

At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, Than at God's bar hol' up a han'

Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis !

Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed
For honor lost an' dear ones wasted,
But proud, to meet a people proud,
With eyes that tell o' triumph tasted!
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,

An' step that proves ye Victory's daughter! Longin' for you, our sperits wilt

Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water! Come, while our country feels the lift

Of a gret instinct shoutin' forwards, An' knows thet freedom an't a gift

Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men, A nation saved, a race delivered !

The Courtin'.

Zekle crep up, quite unbeknown,
An' peeked in thru the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.

Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung,
An' in amongst 'em rusted

The ole queen's arm that gran'ther Young
Fetched back frum Concord busted.

The wannut logs shot sparkles out

Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An' leetle fires danced all about
The chiney on the dresser.

The very room, coz she wuz in,
Looked warm frum floor to ceilin',
An' she looked full ez rosy agin

Ez the apples she wuz peelin'.

She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu,
Araspin' on the scraper-
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the seekle;
His heart kep' goin' pitypat,
But hern went pity Zekle.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

The eldest son of the celebrated Dr Arnold of Rugby has inherited no small share of his father's critical talent and independent judgment. MATTHEW ARNOLD was born at Laleham, near Staines, in Middlesex, December 24, 1822. He won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford in 1843, by a poem on Cromwell, and was elected a Fellow of Oriel College in 1845. In 1847 the Marquis of Lansdowne nominated him his private secretary, and he held this post till 1851, when he was appointed one of the government school inspectors.

Previous to this, Mr Arnold published anonymously The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems; in 1853 appeared Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems; and in 1854, Poems, the first volume to which his name was attached, and which consisted of selections from the previous two volumes, with the addition of some new pieces. In 1857 Mr Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford; and in the year following he published Merope, a tragedy after the antique, with a preface, in which he explains and comments on the principles of the Greek tragedy. In 1861 he published Three Lectures On Translating Homer; and in 1867 a new volume of Poems. In 1869 he issued a collected edition of his Poems in two volumes, the first narrative and elegiac, the second dramatic and lyric. As a poet, Mr Arnold may be ranked with Lord Lytton; he is a classic and elaborate versifier, often graceful, but without the energy and fire of the true poet. His prose works include Essays on Criticism, 1865; On the Study of Celtic Literature, 1867; Culture and Anarchy, 1869; St Paul and Protestantism, 1870; &c. A somewhat haughty aristocratic spirit pervades these essays. Mr Arnold has no patience with the middle-class 'Philistines,' the dullards and haters of light, who care only for what is material and practical. He is also a zealous Churchman, with little regard for Nonconformists or Puritans; yet in all these treatises are fine trains of thought and criticism, and original suggestive observations from which all sects may profit. Mr Arnold has received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from both Edinburgh and Oxford universities.

The following is a specimen of Mr Arnold's blank verse:

Mycerinus.

Mycerinus, son of Cheops, reigned over Egypt. He was a just king, according to Herodotus, but an oracle proclaimed that he was to live but six years longer, on which he abdicated his throne, and, accompanied by a band of revellers, retired to the silence of the groves and woods.'

There by the river banks he wandered on

From palm-grove on to palm-grove, happy trees,
Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneath
Burying their unsunned stems in grass and flowers;
Where in one dream the feverish time of youth
Might fade in slumber, and the feet of joy
Might wander all day long and never tire.
Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn,
Rose-crowned, and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,

Flushed guests, and golden goblets, foamed with wine;
While the deep-burnished foliage overhead
Splintered the silver arrows of the moon.

It may be that sometimes his wondering soul
From the loud joyful laughter of his lips
Might shrink half-startled, like a guilty man
Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale Shape,
Gliding half-hidden through the dusky stems,
Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl,
Whispering: A little space, and thou art mine.'
It may be on that joyless feast his eye
Dwelt with mere outward seeming; he, within,
Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength,
And by that silent knowledge, day by day,
Was calmed, ennobled, comforted, sustained.
It may be; but not less his brow was smooth,
And his clear laugh fled ringing through the gloom,
And his mirth quailed not at the mild reproof
Sighed out by winter's sad tranquillity;

Nor, palled with its own fullness, ebbed and died
In the rich languor of long summer days;
Nor withered, when the palm-tree plumes, that roofed
With their mild dark his grassy banquet hall,
Bent to the cold winds of the showerless spring;
No, nor grew dark when autumn brought the clouds.
So six long years he revelled, night and day;
And when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove's centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile.

Children Asleep.-From Tristram and Isrult?
They sleep in sheltered rest,
Like helpless birds in the warm nest,
On the castle's southern side;
Where feebly comes the mournful roar
Of buffeting wind and surging tide
Through many a room and corridor.
Full on their window the moon's ray
Makes their chamber as bright as day;
It shines upon the blank white walls,
And on the snowy pillow falls,
And on two angel-heads doth play
Turned to each other-the eyes closed,
The lashes on the cheeks reposed.
Round each sweet brow the cap close-set
Hardly lets peep the golden hair;
Through the soft-opened lips the air
Scarcely moves the coverlet.
One little wandering arm is thrown
At random on the counterpane,
And often the fingers close in haste,
As if their baby owners chased
The butterflies again.

Lines written in Kensington Gardens.

In this lone open glade I lie,

Screened by deep boughs on either hand, And, at its head, to stay the eye,

Those dark-crowned, red-boled pine-trees stand.

Birds here make song; each bird has his
Across the girdling city's hum;
How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade

To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead,

Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass!
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirred forest fresh and clear.
Scarce fresher is the mountain sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretched out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,

Counts his day's spoil, his spotted trout.

In the huge world which roars hard by
Be others happy, if they can;
But, in my helpless cradle, I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I on men's impious uproar hurled
Think often, as I hear them rave
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!

When I, who watch them, am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass,

The flowers close, the birds are fed, The night comes down upon the grass, The child sleeps warmly in his bed. Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine,

Man did not make, and cannot mar!

The will to neither strive nor cry,

The power to feel with others, give! Calm, calm me more, nor let me die Before I have begun to live.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI-MISS ROSSETTI.

An English artist, MR D. G. ROSSETTI, one of the originators of what is termed the Pre-Raphaelite style of art, or imitation of the early Italian painters, with their vivid colours, minute details, and careful finish, is known also as a poet and translator. In 1861 Mr Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200–1300), in the original metres, together with Dante's Vita Nuova. In 1870 he issued a volume of Poems, some of which were early productions printed in periodical works. Nearly all of them are in form and colour, subject and style of treatment, similar to the PreRaphaelite pictures. The first relates the thoughts and musings of a maiden in heaven while waiting the arrival of her lover from the land of the living:

From The Blessed Damozel?

The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe ungirt from clasp to hem,
Nor wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift

For service, meetly worn;

And her hair hanging down her back,
Was yellow like ripe corn.

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on,

By God built over the starry depth,
The which is space begun,

So high that looking downward thence,
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in heaven, across the flood
Of ether like a bridge,
Beneath the tides of day and night,
With flame and darkness ridge,
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.

Heard hardly some of her new friends
Amid their loving games,
Spake evermore among themselves
Their virginal chaste names:
And the souls mounting up to God,
Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself, and stooped
Out of the circling charm,

Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep,

Along her bended arm.

From the fixed place of heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.

The Sea Limits.

Consider the sea's listless chime;
Time's self it is, made audible-
The murmur of the earth's own shell
Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's-it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands
Gray and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark when the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
Gather a shell from the strown beach,*
And listen at its lips; they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art ;
And earth, sea, man, are all in each.

Mr Rossetti is a native of London, born in 1828, son of Mr Gabriel Rossetti, Professor of Italian at King's College, London, and author of a Commentary on Dante (1826-27), who died in 1854, aged seventy-one.

CHRISTINA GAbriela RosseTTI (born in 1830), daughter of the Professor, and sister of the above Dante Gabriel, is also an author, having written Goblin Market, and other Poems, 1862; Prince's Progress, 1866; Commonplace and other Short Stories (in prose), 1870; Nursery Rhyme Book, 1872; &c.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

In 1865 appeared a dramatic poem entitled Atalanta in Calydon, founded on the beautiful Greek legend of Calydon, and thoroughly Grecian in form and spirit. This work was hailed, both by the lovers and critics of poetry, as one of the most finished imaginative poems produced since the days of Shelley. It is the produce,' said the Edinburgh Review, 'not of the tender lyrical faculty which so often waits on sensitive youth, and afterwards fades into the common light of day, nor even of the classical culture of which it is itself a signal illustration, but of an affluent apprehensive genius which, with ordinary care and fair fortune, will take a foremost place in English literature.' In truth, the young poet had by this one bound

*This image of the sea-shell had been previously used both by Landor and Wordsworth.

placed himself in the first rank of our poets. His next work, Chastelard (1865), was a tragedy founded on the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the unfortunate young chevalier who accompanied the queen from France, and who fell a victim to his romantic and extravagant passion for Mary. The subject was a perilous one for the drama, even when handled with the utmost delicacy; but MR SWINBURNE treated it with voluptuous warmth; while his portrait of the heroine, whom he represented as cruel, relentless, and licentious, shocked the admirers of the queen. In 1866 appeared a volume of Poems and Ballads, which was considered so strongly objectionable, that Mr Swinburne's publishers, Messrs Moxon & Co., withdrew it from circulation. To the critical outcry against it, the poet replied in a pamphlet of Notes protesting against the prudery of his assailants; and one of his friends, Mr W. M. Rossetti, in a Criticism on Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, pleaded that 'in fact Mr Swinburne's mind appeared to be very like a tabula rasa on moral and religious subjects, so occupied is it with instincts, feelings, perceptions, and a sense of natural or artistic fitness and harmony!' The subsequent works of the poet areA Song of Italy, 1867; William Blake, a Critical Essay, 1867; Siena, a poem, 1868; Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic, 1870; and Songs before Sunrise, 1871. He has also edited selections from the poems of Byron and Coleridge, and contributed a few admirable critical essays to literary journals.

Mr Swinburne is a native of London, son of Admiral Swinburne, and born in 1837. He received his earlier education in France and at Eton; in 1857 he was entered a commoner of Balliol College, Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree. In his twenty-third year he published two plays, The Queen Mother and Rosamund, which exhibit literary power, but are crude and immature productions. We subjoin some extracts from Calydon. In these may be noted one drawback, which has come to be a mannerism of the poet-a too great proneness to alliteration. 'I will something affect the letter,' says Holofernes, 'for it argues facility;' but in highly poetical and melodious lines like the following, it is a defect.

Extract from 'Atalanta in Calydon?

CHIEF HUNTSMAN.

Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars
Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven,
Goddess whom all gods love with threefold heart,
Being treble in thy divided deity,

A light for dead men and dark hours, a foot
Swift on the hills as morning, and a hand

To all things fierce and fleet that roar and range.
Mortal, with gentler shafts than snow or sleep;
Hear now and help, and lift no violent hand,
But favourable and fair as thine eye's beam
Hidden and shewn in heaven; for I all night
Amid the king's hounds and the hunting men
Have wrought and worshipped toward thee; nor shall

man

See goodlier hounds or deadlier hedge of spears;
But for the end, that lies unreached at yet
Between the hands and on the knees of gods.
O fair-faced sun, killing the stars and dews
And dreams and desolation of the night!

Rise up, shine, stretch thine hand out, with thy bow

Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven,
And burn and break the dark about thy ways,
Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair
Lighten as flame above that flameless shell
Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world,
And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth
Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet
Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs,
And foam in reddening flakes, and flying flowers
Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs,
Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave
With salt tresses cleaving lock to lock,
All gold, or shuddering or unfurrowed snow;
And all the winds about thee with their wings,
And fountain-heads of all the watered world.

Chorus.

Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And Madness, risen from hell;
Strength, without hands to smite;

Love, that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,

And Life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;

And dust of the labouring earth;
And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after,

And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,

They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein
A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him a light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

In 1874 Mr Swinburne published an epic drama or tragedy, Bothwell, continuing the history of Mary, Queen of Scots, after the episode of Chastelard. This tragedy of Bothwell is a most voluminous work-upwards of 15,000 lines-and with a numerous dramatis persona, including, besides Darnley and the Queen, the four Maries, Rizzio, John Knox, the Regent Murray, French

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