HAT to us were this world and its burden of woe,
But a fetter of clay that in slavery bound us,

Were our troubles not smoothed by the smiles of the fair,
And if poetry spread not its magic around us?

In the hour of our gladness, if Woman be near,
More smoothly the stream of enjoyment will flow;
And where can our grief find a balm like the tear
From the bright eyes of her who partakes of our woe?

To the Poet a power of enchantment is given
Which time cannot limit, space cannot define;
Which can lift on its wings the rapt spirit to heaven,
And make dull mortality almost divine!

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THE BIRTH OF A POET.

Oh! Woman and Poetry, each is a treasure,

A mine of delight that enriches life's span;

The first is a ministering angel of pleasure,

While the gift of the next makes an angel of man!

ANONYMOUS.

POETRY.

EVER did Poesy appear

So full of heaven to me, as when

I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear

To the lives of coarsest men!

I thought, these men will carry hence

Promptings their former life above,
And something of a finer reverence

For beauty, truth, and love.

J. R. LOWELL.

THE BIRTH OF A POET.

N a blue summer night,

While the stars were asleep,

Like gems of the deep,

In their own drowsy light;

While the newly mown hay

On the green earth lay,

And all that came near it went scented away

From a lone woody place

There looked out a face,

THE BIRTH OF A POET.

With large blue eyes,

Like the wet, warm skies,

Brimful of water and light;

A profusion of hair

Flashing out on the air,

And a forehead alarmingly bright:

'Twas the head of a poet! He grew

As the sweet, strange flowers of the wilderness grow,
In the dropping of natural dew,

Unheeded-alone

Till his heart had blown

As the sweet, strange flowers of the wilderness blow;

Till every thought wore a changeable stain,
Like flower-leaves wet with the sunset rain.
A proud and passionate boy was he,
Like all the children of Poesy;

With a haughty look and a haughty tread,
And something awful about his head;
With wonderful eyes,

Full of woe and surprise,

Like the eyes of them that can see the dead.
Looking about,

For a moment or two he stood

On the shore of the mighty wood;
Then ventured out,

With a bounding step and a joyful shout,

The brave sky bending o'er him!

The broad sea all before him!

JOHN NEAL

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190

POETRY ALL-PERVADING.

THE POET'S PEN.

THE Poet's pen is the true divining rod

Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling;
Bringing to light and use, else hid from all,

The many sweet, clear sources which we have
Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms:

And marks the variations of all mind

As does the needle.

BAILEY.

POETRY ALL-PERVADING.

THE world is full of Poetry-the air
Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkles in its brightness. Earth is veiled
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls,

That close the universe with crystal in,

Are eloquent with voices that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,

In harmonies, too perfect, and too high,
For aught but beings of celestial mould,
And speak to man in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty and unyielding power.

The

year leads round the seasons in a choir, For ever charming and for ever new;

POETRY ALL-PERVADING.

Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay,
The mournful, and the tender, in one strain,
Which steals into the heart, like sounds that rise
Far off in moonlight evenings, on the shore
Of the wide ocean resting after storms;

Or tones, that wind around the vaulted roof,
And pointed arches, and retiring aisles
Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand,
Skilful, and moved with passionate love of art,
Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft
The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls,
By mellow touches, from the softer tubes,
Voices of melting tenderness, that blend
With pure and gentle musings, till the soul,
Commingling with the melody, is borne,
Rapt and dissolved in ecstacy, to heaven.

'Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move

In measured file and metrical array ;
'Tis not the union of returning sounds,
Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme,
And quantity, and accent, that can give
This all-pervading spirit to the ear,

Or blend it with the movings of the soul.
'Tis a mysterious feeling, which combines
Man with the world around him in a chain
Woven of flowers, and dipped in sweetness, till
He tastes the high communion of his thoughts
With all existences, in earth and heaven,
That meet him in the charm of grace and
'Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays,

power.

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