ABOU Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) The angel wrote and vanish'd. The next night It came again, with a great wakening light, And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd, And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. SPRING IN RAVENNA. THE sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May "T is Nature, full of spirits, waked and springing :— The birds to the delicious time are singing, Darting with freaks and snatches up and down, And the far ships, lifting their sails of white TO A CHILD, DURING SICKNESS. I sit me down, and think Of all thy winning ways; Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, Thy sidelong pillow'd meekness, The little trembling hand That wipes thy quiet tears,- Sorrows I've had, severe ones Ah! first-born of thy mother, My bird when prison-bound,— Yet feel we must bear on: To whisper of such wo, Yes, still he's fix'd and sleeping! Seems going by one's ear, BRYAN WALLER PROCTOR. MR. PROCTOR, better known as BARRY CORNWALL, was born in London, and educated at Harrow, where BYRON was among his classmates. On leaving school he entered the office of a solicitor at Calne, in Wiltshire: an uninteresting town, but celebrated for having been at various periods the residence of BOWLES, CRABBE, COLERIDGE, and MOORE, with all of whom PROCTOR became intimately acquainted. At the end of four years, passed in the study of his profession, he went to London, and was soon after called to the bar. Mr. PROCTOR'S Dramatic Scenes-the work in which he first appeared as an author-were published in 1815. They were succeeded by A Sicilian Story, Marcian Colonna, The Flood of Thessaly, the tragedy of Mirandola, and several volumes of dramatic fragments, songs, and miscellaneous poems, which have together won him a very high position among contemporary poets. CHARLES LAMB said of his Fragments, that there was not one of them, had he found them among the Garrick Plays in the British Museum, to which he would have refused a place in his Dramatic Specimens. His songs are among the best in the English language. They are full of tenderness and enthusiasm; and if not as carefully finished as they might be, they flow musically and naturally like the unstudied effusions of an improvisator. PROCTOR has written besides his poems several works in prose, among which are a Life of Edmund Kean, a Life of Ben Jonson, and An Essay upon the Genius of Shakspeare. N. P. WILLIS, a warm admirer of the poet, has given in his Pencillings by the Way an interesting account of his visit to him in 1838. "With the address he had given me at parting," says Mr. WILLIS, "I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not accustomed to find the children of the muses waited on by servants in livery, I made up my mind, as I walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering upon some Mr. PROCTOR of the exchange, whose respect for his poetical namesake, I hoped, would smooth my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found the poet himself-choice old pictures filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all the corners; and, more important for the nonce, a table at the poet's elbow, set forth with as sensible a breakfast as the most unpoetical of men could desire." Mr. PROCTOR married a daughter of BASIL MONTAGU, the best of Lord BACON's editors, and a friend and patron of literary men. “The exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Scenes," our traveller informs us, "interested this lovely woman in his favour before she knew him, and far from worldly-wise as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness. I thought of his touching song, How many summers, love, Hast thou been mine?' and looked at them with an irrepressible feeling of envy. A beautiful girl of eight or nine years, the 'golden-tressed Adelaide,' delicate, gentle, and pensive, as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and knew she was a poet's child, completed the picture of happiness....... "I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company," continues Mr. WILLIS, “with the impression that he makes upon every one-of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, a business-man of the closest habits of industry-one reads his strange imaginations, and high-wrought and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder-the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books." An edition of Mr. PROCTOR's English Songs and other Short Poems was published in London by Moxon in the summer of 1844; and they have been reprinted in this country by Ticknor and Company of Boston. I believe no edition of his dramatic writings has appeared in the United States. The selections in this volume are from the last English edition. THE RISING OF THE NORTH. HARK-to the sound! Without a trump, without a drum, From cellar and cave, from street and lane, In a blackening stream, Come sick, and lame, and old, and poor, Like a demon's dream! Starved children with their pauper sire, And felons, hunted to their den, The good, the bad, come hand in hand, Flaps no proud banner, flaunting high, That word their ensign-that the cause That the sole boon for lives of toil One single year, and some who now Come forth, with oaths and haggard brow, In quiet homes: their sole desire And Sabbath calm. But hunger is an evil foe: It striketh truth and virtue low, Wild hunger, stripp'd of hope and fear! For mark what comes:-To-night the poor (All mad) will burst the rich man's door, And wine will run In floods, and rafters blazing bright And plate carved round with quaint device, In Indian heat! And queenly silks, from foreign lands, And trampling feet: And murder-from his hideous den For good (whose hearts kind pity nursed) But yester-morn. So, wealth by want will be o'erthrown, Sweet peace! who sitt'st aloft, sedate, Between the pomp of Croesus' state, "Tween "thee" and "me""Tween deadly frost and scorching sunThe thirty tyrants and the oneSome space must be. Must the world quail to absolute kings, Or tyrant mobs, those meaner things, All nursed in gore Turk's bowstring-Tartar's vile ukase- O God!-since our bad world began, War, to the knife! For bread-for gold-for words-for air! STANZAS. THAT was not a barren time When the new world calmly lay Bare unto the frosty rime, Open to the burning day. Though her young limbs were not clad There was beauty, such as feeds And the signs of all the flowers. There was wealth, beyond the gold "Tween our cradles and our graves. Judge not, then, the poet's dreams Fables, with a heart of truth; Starry lessons for the night. Unto man, in peace and strife, True and false, and weak and strong, Unto all, in death and life, Speaks the poet in his song. And never, from that moment THE RETURN OF THE ADMIRAL. Save one shudder through the sea, Saw we (or heard) the shark How gallantly, how merrily, We ride along the sea! And bounding in the light, Strange birds about us sweep; In our wake, like any servant, Follows even the bold sharkOh, proud must be our admiral Of such a bonny bark! Proud, proud, must be our admiral, Whene'er he touch the shore. And straight rise up a lord! Who follows in our lee, "Some day I'll make thee carry me, -The admiral grew paler, And smiled upon his crew; Ran crimson to his heart, Till all chances he defied: That night, a horrid whisper Fell on us where we lay; And we knew our old fine admiral Among the billows in our lee! FORBIDDEN LOVE. I LOVE thee! Oh, the strife, the pain, O stars! that thou couldst read my soul: I would thy bright bright eye could pierce The crimson folds that hide my heart; Then wouldst thou find the serpent fierce That stings me-and will not depart ! Look love upon me, with thine eyes! Yet, no men's evil tongues are nigh: Look pity, then, and with thy sighs Waste music on me-till I die! Yet, love not! sigh not! Turn (thou must) Thy beauty from me, sweet and kind; 'Tis fit that I should burn to dust To death: because-I am not blind! I love thee-and I live! The moon A REPOSE. SHE sleeps among her pillows soft, Hang flutes and folds of virgin white : Her glance outshines the starry sky; She sleepeth wherefore doth she start? Without a wish, without a sound; All day within some cave he lies, Dethroned from his nightly sway— Far fading when the dawning skies Our souls with wakening thoughts array. Two Spirits of might doth man obey; By each he's wrought, from each he learns: The one is Lord of life by day; The other when starry night returns. A STORM. THE spirits of the mighty sea, Baring their foreheads where the gleams The spirits of the sea are waging Loud war upon the peaceful night, What ghost now, like an Até, walketh Methinks their colloquy sublime Behold! like millions mass'd in battle, And look! where on the faithless billows Lie women, and men, and children fair; Some hanging, like sleep, to their swollen pillows, With helpless sinews and streaming hair, And some who plunge in the yawning graves! Ah! lives there no strength beyond the waves? "Tis said, the moon can rock the sea From phrensy strange to silence mildTo sleep-to death :-But where is she, While now her storm-born giant child Upheaves his shoulder to the skies? Arise, sweet planet pale-arise! She cometh-lovelier than the dawn In summer, when the leaves are greenMore graceful than the alarmed fawn, Over his grassy supper seen: The supernatural storm-he waketh Scorn on the jewell'd locks of night. And never wake nor weep, I DIE FOR THY SWEET LOVE. I DIE for thy sweet love! The ground A hundred men are near thee now- They look on thee, as men will look Who round the wild world laugh and rove: I only think how sweet 't would be To die for thy sweet love! /A PETITION TO TIME. TOUCH us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream Husband, wife, and children three- Touch us gently, Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings; Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things, Humble voyagers are We, O'er life's dim unsounded sea, Seeking only some calm clime;Touch us gently, gentle Time! A CHAMBER SCENE. TREAD Softly through these amorous rooms; The carpet's silken leaves have sprung, The deity of love reposes, And passion fills the arched halls; Of Winter, shod with fleecy snow, Who cometh white, and cold, and mute, Lest he should wake the Spring below. Oh, look for here lie Love and Youth, Fair spirits of the heart and mind: Alas! that one should stray from truth; And one-be ever, ever blind! |