Dreams that caught the hues and splendors
Which the radiant future shows,

For the past was nought but anguish,
And a sepulchre of woes;

Therefore from its scenes and sorrows
All her heart and soul were riven,
And her thoughts kept ever wandering
With the angels up to heaven.

When they told her of the pleasures
Which the future had in store,
When her sorrows would have faded,
And her anguish would be o'er;
Told her of her wealth and beauty,
And the triumphs in her train;
Told her of the many others

Who would sigh for her again:
She but caught one-half their meaning,
While the rest afar was driven:
'Yes,' she murmur'd 'they are happy-
They, I mean, who dwell in heaven!'

When they wish'd once more to see her
Mingling with the bright and fair;
When they told her of the splendor
And the rank that would be there;
Told her that amid the glitter

Of that brilliant living sea,

There were none so sought and sighed for, None so beautiful as she;

Still she heeded not the flattery,

Heard but half the utterance given:

'Yes,' she answer'd, 'there are bright ones,

Many, too, I know-in heaven!'

When they spoke of sunlit glories,
Summer days, and moonlit hours;
Told her of the spreading woodland,
With its treasury of flowers;

Clustering fruits, and vales, and mountains,
Flower-banks mirror'd in clear springs,

Winds whose music ever mingled

With the hum of glancing wings→→

Scenes of earthly bliss and beauty

Far from all her thoughts were driven,
And she fancied that they told her
Of the happiness of heaven.

For one master-pang had broken
The sweet spell of her young life;
And henceforth its calm and sunshine
Were as tasteless as its strife;
Henceforth all its gloom and grandeur,
All the music of its streams,

All its thousand pealing voices,

Spoke the language of her dreams;
Dreams that wander'd on, like orphans
From all earthly solace driven,
Searching for their great Protector,

And the palace-gates of heaven."

Thirdly, Mr. Bigg exhibits that uoble rushing motion of thought and language which testifies so strongly to a genuine inspiration, in which words seem to pursue each other, like wheels in a series of chariots, with irresistible force and impetuous velocity. Nowhere out of "Festus" do we find passages which heave and hurry along with a more genuine afflatus, than in many of Mr. Bigg's pages. Take two long passages, both of which are "instinct with spirit." The first will be found at page 21:

"The night is lovely, and I love her with
A passionate devotion, for she stirs
Feelings too deep for utterance within me.
She thrills me with an influence and a power,
A sadden'd kind of joy I cannot name,

So that I meet her brightest smile with tears.
She seemeth like a prophetess, too wise,

Knowing, ah! all too much for happiness;

As though she had tried all things, and had found
All vain and wanting, and was thenceforth steep'd
Up to the very dark, tear-lidded eyes

In a mysterious gloom, a holy calm!

Doth she not look now just as if she knew

All that hath been, and all that is to come?

With one of her all-prescient glances turn'd

Towards those kindred depths which slept for aye-
The sable robe which God threw round himself,

And where, pavilion'd in glooms, he dwelt

In brooding night for ages, perfecting

The glorious dream of past eternities,

The fabric of creation, running adown

The long time-avenues, and gazing out

Into those blanks which slept before time was;
And with another searching glance, turn'd up
Towards unknown futurities-the book
Of unborn wonders-till she hath perused
The chapter of its doom; and with an eye
Made vague by the dim vastness of its vision,
Watching unmoved the fall of burning worlds,
Rolling along the steep sides of the Infinite,
All ripe, like apples dropping from their stems;
Till the wide fields of space, like orchards stripp'd,
Have yielded up their treasures to the garner,

And the last star hath fallen from the crown
Of the high heavens into utter night,
Like a bright moment swallow'd up and lost
In hours of after-anguish; and all things
Are as they were in the beginning, ere
The mighty pageant trail'd its golden skirts
Along the glittering pathway of its God,
Save that the spacious halls of heaven are fill'd
With countless multitudes of finite souls,
With germ-like infinite capacities,

As if to prove all had not been a dream.
'Tis this that Night seems always thinking of;
Linking the void past to the future void,
And typifying present times in stars,
To show that all is not quite issueless,

But that the blanks have yielded starlike ones
To cluster round the sapphire throne of God
In bliss forever and for evermore!"

The second, still finer, meets us at page 39:

"O thought! what art thou but a fluttering leaf
Shed from the garden of Eternity?

The robe in which the soul invests itself

To join the countless myriads of the skies-
The very air they breathe in heaven--the gleam
That lights it up, and makes it what it is-
The light that glitters on its pinnacles-

The luscious bloom that flushes o'er its fruits-
The odour of its flowers, and very soul
Of all the music of its million harps-
The dancing glory of its angels' eyes-
The brightness of its crowns, and starlike glow
Of its bright thrones--the centre of its bliss,
For ever radiating like a sun--

The spirit thrill that pulses through its halls,
Like sudden music vibrating through air-
The splendor playing on its downy wings-
The lustre of its sceptres, and the breeze
Which shakes its golden harvests into light-
The diamond apex of the Infinite-
A ray of the great halo round God's head--
The consummation and the source of all,
In which all cluster, and all constellate,
Grouping like glories round the purple west
When the great sun is low. For what are stars
But God's thoughts indurate--the burning words
That roll'd forth blazing from his mighty lips,
When he spake to the breathless infinite,
And shook the wondrous sleeper from her dream?
Thus God's thoughts ever call unto man's soul
To rouse itself, and let its thoughts shake off
The torpor from their wings, and soar and sing

Up in the sunny azure of the heavens;
And when at length one rises from its rest,
Like the mail'd Barbarossa from his trance,
He smiles upon it in whatever garb

It is array'd-whether it stretches up

In grand cathedral spires, whose gilded vanes,

Like glorious earth-tongues, lap the light of heaven,
Or rounds itself into the perfect form

Of marble heroes looking a reproof

On their creators for not gifting them
With one spark of that element divine

Whose words they are; or points itself like light

Upon the retina, in breathing hues

And groups of loveliness on speaking canvas;
Or wreaths itself in fourfold harmony,
Making the soul a sky of rainbows; or
Sweeping vast circuits, ever stretching out,
Broad-arm'd, and all-embracing theories;
Or harvesting its brightness focal-wise,
All centring in the poet's gem-like words,
Fresh as the odours of young flowers, and bright
As new stars trembling in the hand of God.
In all its grand disguises he beholds
And blesses his fair child.

One human thought, invested in an act,
Lays bare the heart of all humanity,
And holds up, globule-like, in miniature
All that the soul of man hath yet achieved,
Its Paradises Lost, its glorious Iliads,
Its Hamlets and Othellos, and its dreams
Rising in towering Pyramids and Fanes,
To show that earth hath raptures heavenward;
And like the touch'd lips of a hoary saint,
Utter dim prophesies of after-worlds,
Making sweet music to the ear of God,
Like Memnon's statue thrilling at the sun;-
And as the New Year opening into life

Is all-related to the ages, so

Are man's works unto thine, Almighty God;
And as the ages to eternity,

So are all works to thee, Great Source of all!"

Fourthly, the author of "Night and the Soul" has a quick perception of those real, but mysterious analogies, which bind mind and nature together. The whole poem is indeed an attempt to show the thousand points in which Night, in its brightness and blackness, its terror and its joy, its clouds and its stars, its calm and its storm, comes in contact with human hopes, fears, aspirations, doubts, faults, and destinies. For example, he says

"The solemn Night comes hooded, like a nun
From her dark cell, while all the laughing stars
Mock the black weeds of the fair anchorite.
Sorrow is but the sham and slave of joy;
And this sweet sadness that thou wottest of
Is but the dusky dress in which our bliss,
Like a child sporting with the weeds of wo,
Chooses a moment to enrobe itself."

Two beautiful separate strains will show still better what
One we find at page 113:-

we mean.

"Thou pleadest, love, and all things plead;
For what is life but endless needing?
All worlds have wants beyond themselves,
And live by ceaseless pleading.

The earth yearns towards the sun for light;
The stars all tremble towards each other;
And every moon that shines to-night

Hangs trembling on an elder brother.

Flowers plead for grace to live; and bees
Plead for the tinted domes of flowers;
Streams rush into the big-soul'd seas;
The seas yearn for the golden hours.

The moon pleads for her preacher, Night;
Old ocean pleadeth for the moon;
Noon flies into the shades for rest;
The shades seek out the noon.

Life is an everlasting seeking;

Souls seek, and pant, and plead for truth;
Youth hangeth on the skirts of age;
Age yearneth still towards youth.

And thus all cling unto each other;

For nought from all things else is riven;
Heaven bendeth o'er the prostrate earth;
Earth spreads her arms towards heaven.

So do thou bend above me, love,

And I will bless thee from afar;
Thou shalt be heaven, and I the sea
That bosometh the star."

The other occurs at page 117 and is a powerful collection

f gloomy images :—

"I stand beside thy lonely grave, my love,

The wet lands stretch below me like a bog;