which brings them all in as congruous parts uniting in a harmonious whole. The piece

Save where the bold, wild sea-bird makes her home,

highest order; it is full of examples of painting by words, and of the power of flashing a scene upon the eye by a single phrase. It bears evidence throughout to a rare delicacy and refinement of character; there is nothing common in it, nothing that lets the reader unpleasantly down, or gives the sense of feigning which comes from pseudo-poetry.

On the contrary, the most remarkable quality to us in it, is the power with which it is carried through over a very rough and jagged roadway of style. The wonder is, that we are not thrown out. For the metre is a difficult one to manage with effect, owing to the fullness of its cadence; and the abrupt transitions, strange inversions, and tumultuous utterance of the sentences are beyond all example. It is an instance of a poem conceived in the boldness and free power of high genius, and executed in the constraint of "slow endeavoring art." If we may apply the word as it is frequently used in common parlance, it is a "nervous" poem; it is strong and fine, occasionally free, and easy sweeping, but generally over rigid. It does the thing it attempts, but does it laboriously. On the whole, it is a rare example of genius soaring with fettered wings, and ranks among descriptive poems, as Milton's Ode on the Nativity does among lyrics-a piece which, though it has many stanzes quite above admiration, was yet felt by its author to be somewhat harshly executed.

The Introduction to the Buccaneer has always been justly admired. To all who grew up through youth on the shore of the Narraganset, it, and indeed all the sea scenes in the poem, must have the power of reality; with us their impression is intermingled with views about Newport; we have always an indistinct notion that there is an island somewhere between Gayhead and Brenton's reef, to the south-west of Cuttyhunk, (romantic name!) which is this island-and this idea is no less vivid than the one derived from actual observation.

"The island lies nine leagues away.
Along its solitary shore,

Of craggy rock and sandy bay,

No sound but ocean's roar,

foam.

The first three stanzas of this are exquisite; in the fourth, we do not like pastoral bleat,"-perhaps from a remote suggestion of something heard before, e. g. "Flap

oaten stop, or pastoral song." ped in the bay," is like an unexpected blow; and the having every line a clause by itself in the sentence, seems to give it a sudden unnatural intensity. But the next resumes and concludes the melody with a beautiful half-cadence in the last line.

We have not space to follow through the piece; it has many such beautiful stanzas as the following:

"Who's sitting on that long, black ledge,
Which makes so far out in the sea,
Feeling the kelp-weed on its edge?
Poor, idle Matthew Lee!

So weak and pale? A year and little more,
And bravely did he lord it round the shore.

And on the shingle now he sits,
And rolls the pebbles 'neath his hands;
Now walks the beach; now stops by fits,
And scores the smooth, wet sands;

He views the ships that come and go,
Looking so like to living things.
O! 't is a proud and gallant show
Of bright and broad-spread wings,
Making it light around them, as they keep
Their course right onward through the un-
sounded deep.

And where the far-off sand-bars lift
Their backs in long and narrow line,
The breakers shout, and leap, and shift,
And toss the sparkling brine

Into the air; then rush to mimic strife:
Glad creatures of the sea, and full of life!-

the Shakspearian "strange alteration," does not the accent with which we are forced by the measure to prolong the word "alteration" weaken the line? And is not the last couplet, and especially the form in which the idea of the last line is expressed, more singular than natural?

At all events, if we may judge from our own experience, this peculiarity of style and thought in the Buccaneer must always hinder the mass of intelligent readers from doing it justice, or feeling and acknowledging its beauty as a whole; it is only we who have omnivorous stomachs, and have long indulged them, who can relish food in which is mingled sweet and bitter, each of such acrid strength.

For a different reason, the Changes of Home will also never be a favorite with the multitude. It springs from a character too sincere, too intense and delicate in feeling, and shows such a command of grief— grief which the soul must have felt or be capable of conceiving, in order to perceive the power of him who can depict it

-that it cannot touch directly and completely the common heart. Few could suffer what is here controlled. The general breast of humanity, at least in these days of enterprise and bustle, is insensible, fortunately perhaps, to the soothed anguish of spirit which colors this poem.

We talk a great deal about love between men and women; we understand it-on the stage. But how little are its powers and the necessities of them thought of in actual life. Go mad for love, like Jane Vere! The girl must have a weak head. Suffer for love, like Dalton! The young man's crazy" a phenomenon. There are no such creatures in nature. We believe that to more than half the world the genuine passion is a mere name; and that to another large proportion it is wholly conventional something which they can conceive of, as we do of the extravagant honor in Kotzebue's heroes, or the magic of Prospero's wand-but which is never supposed to exist in, much less influence, our real life, we being put here just to be prudent-to invent new machines, make money

and be invited to larger parties.

And as with love, so with all the tender affections. They are much talked of but little felt. The peculiar home-sickness which pervades this poem, the mellow au

tumnal light that shines over it, who is there that can feel its warm rays? Who has suffered from long absence from early scenes, and contemplated in sadness the changes wrought by time among early companions? Not many in sufficient degree to relish the characteristic beauty of this poem.

"How like eternity doth nature seem To life of man,-that short and fitful dream! I look around me; nowhere can I trace Lines of decay that mark our human race. These are the murmuring waters, these the flowers

1 mused o'er in my earlier, better hours. Like sounds and scents of yesterday they

come.

Long years have past since this was last my home!

Yet there was one true heart: that heart was thine,

Fond Emmeline! and every beat was mine. It stopt. That stillness-up it rose, and spread

Above me, awing, vast, strange, living,- dead! No feeble grief that sobs itself to rest,Benumbing grief, and horrors filled my breast: Dark death, and sorrow dark, and terror blind,

They made my soul to quail, they shook my mind,

Wild rushings passed me as of driving wind.

The storm went o'er me. stand

Once again I

Amid God's works, his broad and lovely land.
I cannot feel, though lovely all I see;
It is not what it was,-no, not to me;
A void is in my soul; my heart is dry:
They touch me not, these things of earth and
sky.

Een grief hath left me now; my nerves are
steel;
Dim, pangless dreams my thoughts;-Would

I could feel!

"No

passion? There may be those, as we have observed, who can conceive it superficially; but to the greater part, yes, even among women, this must seem affectation. feeble grief that sobs itself to rest;" "this is pure pride, Mr. Dalton," they will exclaim to themselves. "You flatter yourself you are so much finer than other people that you think you ought to suffer more, and so you make yourself miserable. Set to work, man; leave off thinking upon it. We have our troubles too, but we took resolution, and forgot them.”

Such Polonius-like overwise folks should remember that

"it is as proper to their age To cast beyond themselves in their opinions, As it is common for the younger sort To lack discretion."

They will not believe that there are spirits more affectionate than theirs, in which also the sentiments are more awake, and the memory more retentive. Would God they could! Would they could see the sorrow they daily cause in the affairs of life by arrogant interference! Would they could perceive how they bear down and oppress the more retiring and more deeply sensitive natures with whom they come in contact! But no, they must go on, such is the mystery of Providence, parcelling out the race, visiting their own sins upon their children, condemning their sons to resolution and their daughters to patience, till they attain the same induration which they themselves possess, and are ready to renew the never ending series.

But at long intervals, the same Providence permits the angel visits of true poets--they who can "suffer and be strong," who love what is beautiful, hate what is false, and dare to speak in free words. They seem to be sent to agitate and warm up the life-blood that would otherwise thicken and congeal around the heart. With them the words love, beauty, faith, are not mere words, but the names of realities; and they live in the open air, out of the reach of what is dark and mean. All that is lovely and tender in life grows the love of those who ought most to desire around them; they are followed, if not by home-felt joys, at least by the affection of those to whose spirits their spirit has imparted strength.

We have never felt this so strongly in the case of any other writer as with Dana. Both in his prose and poetry he comes to us like one who has thought and felt as we have thought and felt ourselves-insomuch that we might almost apply to him the words of the woman of Samaria. It was not always so; this poem, the Changes of Home, in boyhood, affected us so gloomily, that we could never read it with pleasure. Now it inspires us with a strong rapture, makes us feel less alone, and more determined, not because "misery loves company," "but because here is one who soars above sorrows that encompass us, and cries for life out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

It is this great power which we would make the first characteristic quality of all Dana's writings. He speaks to us from "out of the deep." For those who have not, or can not, suffer, he has not written. Nor is it for all those who can, that he writes. It is mostly for those who have. And of these, they will understand him best who have groped their way through the peculiar gloom of New England Calvinism, who have been driven back into darkness from youth. To those bred under pleasanter influences, he must seem austere, and his thought minutely common. He is the hero who has fought through the mental diseases entailed upon the descendants of the Puritans. Old cherished judices come through him fanned and winnowed. "This and that," we say to ourselves, as we read in him, "is what we would have thought before, only that we dared not think it." In him it appears something which he had observed from a level quite above it. But we are anticipating ourselves in saying what applies with most force to his prose.

pre

Is there none of our readers who, from any cause, "the heart-ache, or any of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," have felt deeply enough to have experienced this utter waste and desolation of spirit?

"The spring was come again.-There is a grief

Finds soothing in the bud, and bird, and leaf, A grief there is of deeper, withering power, That feels death lurking in the springing flower, That stands beneath the sun, yet circled round

By a strange darkness,-stands amid the sound
Of happy things, and yet in silence bound;
Moves in a fearful void amid the throng,
And deems that happy nature does it wrong;
That not on earth is one to hear its moan,
Thinks joy unkind; feels it must walk alone,
Or bring assuaging sympathies, or bind
A broken heart, or cheer a desert mind."

If not they can not with us derive a comfort, feigned, if they must so style it, from the thought of the following:—

"I know, decay nor age awaits on truth; And he who keeps a simple heart and kind May something there of early feelings find. For in all innocent and tender hearts A spirit dwells that cheerful thoughts imparts; 'Midst sorrows, sunny blessings it bestows On those who think upon another's woes."

Nor will such be able ever to appreciate clearly, as observers, much less to feel the loftiness, of the conclusion to the Thoughts upon the Soul:

"Creature all grandeur, son of truth and

light,

Up from the dust! the last great day is bright, Bright on the Holy Mountain, round the Throne,

Bright where in borrowed light the far stars shone.

Look down! the Depths are bright!-and hear them cry,

Light! light!-Look up! 'tis rushing down from high!

Regions on regions, far away they shine: 'Tis light ineffable, 'tis light divine! 'Immortal light, and life for evermore,' Off through the deeps is heard from shore to shore Of rolling worlds!-Man, wake thee from the sod;

Awake from death! awake, and live with God!"

un

The poem, Factitious Life, is a fine sermon in verse against the superficiality of the world and in defence of true feeling. It is to our soi disant "good society," what Burns' "Holy Fair" was to the " co guid" of the Scottish peasantry. A beautiful elegance pervades it in its versification, which is peculiarly easy, its language, its satire, and its seriousness. has the best qualities of Pope and Cowper, translated, as it were, into our social life. We would there were more room for quotation. There are many truths in this

It