A lip for endless love should all prove just ;
An eye that can withdraw into as deep distrust.

While thus with earnest looks the people gaze,
Another shout the neighbouring quarters raise ;
The train are in the town, and gathering near
With noise of cavalry and trumpets clear,
A princely music, unbedimmed with drums,
The mighty brass seems opening as it comes.
And now it fills and now it shakes the air,
And now it bursts into the sounding square,
At which the crowd with such a shout rejoice,
Each think he's deafened with his neighbour's voice.
Then with a long-drawn breath the clangours die,
The palace trumpets give a last reply;

And clustering hoofs succeed with stately stir
Of snortings proud and clinking furniture ;—
The most majestic sound of human will :

Nought else is heard some time, the people are so still.

I would fain go on with this procession, which the art of the poet continues to make us see and hear and almost feel, so vividly does he describe the pageantry, the noise, and the jostling. But it fills the whole canto, and there is yet another poem for which I must make room. Every mother knows these pathetic stanzas. I shall never forget attempting to read them to my faithful maid, the hemmer of flounces, whose fair-haired Saxon boy, her pet and mine, was then fast recovering from a dangerous illness. I attempted to read these verses, and did read as many as I could for the rising in the throat, the hysterica passio of poor Lear, and as many as my auditor could hear for her own sobs. No doubt they have often extorted such praises-the truest and the most precious that can be given.

TO T. L. H., SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICKNESS.

Sleep breathes at last from out thee

My little patient boy;

And balmy rest about thee-
Smooths off the day's annoy.

I sit me down and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish with sudden shrink
That I had less to praise.

Thy sidelong pillowed meekness,
Thy thanks to all that aid,
Thy heart in pain and weakness
Of fancied faults afraid;

The little trembling hand
That wipes thy quiet tears,
These, these are things that may demand
Dread memories for years.

Sorrows I've had, severe ones,

I will not think of now;
And calmly midst my dear ones
Have wasted with dry brow;

But when thy fingers press
And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness,
The tears are in their bed.

Ah, first-born of thy mother
When life and hope were new,

Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father too;

My light where'er I go,

My bird when prison-bound,
My hand-in-hand companion,-no,
My prayers shall hold thee round.

To say He has departed,

His voice, his face is gone!
To feel impatient-hearted
Yet feel we must bear on !

The name of Percy Bysshe Shelley is united to that of Leigh Hunt by many associations. They were in Italy together; they were friends; and the survivor has never ceased to bewail the untimely catastrophe of that great poet. In how many senses does that early and sudden death appear untimely to our dim eyes! Doubtless all was wise, all just, all merciful; yet to our finite perceptions, he seemed snatched away just as his spirit was preparing to receive the truths to which it had before been blinded. However, this rests with an All-wise, and an Allmerciful Judge, and is far beyond our imperfect speculations.

In a literary point of view, there is no doubt but every succeeding poem showed the gradual clearing away of the mists and vapours with which, in spite of his exquisite rhythm, and a thousand beauties of detail, his fine genius was originally clouded.

The first time I ever met with any of his works, this vagueness brought me into a ludicrous dilemma. It was in the great library of Tavistock House that Mr. Perry one morning put into my hand a splendidly

printed, and splendidly bound volume (" Alastor,” I think), and desired me to read it, and give him my opinion: "You will at least know," said he, "whether it be worth anybody else's reading."

Accordingly I took up the magnificent presentation copy, and read conscientiously until visitors came in. I had no marker, and the richly-bound volume closed as if instinctively, so that when I resumed my task on the departure of the company, not being able to find my place, I was obliged to begin the book at the first line. More visitors came, and went, and still the same calamity befell me; again, and again, and again, I had to search in vain amongst a succession of melodious lines as like each other as the waves of the sea, for buoy or landmark, and had always to put back to shore, and begin my voyage anew. I do not remember having been ever in my life more ashamed of my own stupidity than when obliged to say to Mr. Perry, in answer to his questions as to the result of my morning's studies, that, doubtless, it was a very fine poem-only that I never could tell when I took up the book, where I had left off half an hour before; an unintended criticism, which, as characteristic both of author, and reader, very much amused my kind and clever host.

Now, could such a calamity befall even the stupidest of young girls, in reading that perfection of clearness and dramatic construction, "The Cenci ?" Ah! what a tragic poet was lost in that boatwreck! Could it have happened with the "Ode to the Skylark," an ode as melodious, as various, and as brilliant as the song of the bird it celebrates.

Both seem soaring upward to Heaven, and pouring forth an unconscious hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

TO THE SKYLARK.

Hail to thee, blythe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher,

From the earth thou springest;

Like a cloud of fire,

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.