when life is in its bloom and promise, were subjects suited to his temper and powers. The latter, accordingly, are displayed in all their force throughout that passage, which no one who has read it can forget, beginning," There was a sound of revelry by night, In his description of the sorrow of those who mourn for the dead, gloomy and striking images are accumulated, with a profusion unusual in his poetry; for in general he has more of passion and strong conception, than of that power of mind, which apprehends resemblances and illustrations, imparting a moral type to material things. They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn; The tree will wither long before it fall; The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn ; Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone; The day drags through though storms keep out the sun; And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on'; Even as a broken mirror, which the glass The same, and still the more, the more it breaks; Living in shatter'd guise, and still, and cold, Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold. It was in the same spirit, and with equal power, that he had already described the death of Lara, and the agony of Kaled. A breathing but devoted warrior lay; His follower once, and now his only guideh Indon page, nor sees, Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees;Save that pale aspect, , where the eye, though dim, all the light t'that short Held shone on earth for him. That deep sense of the quietness, beauty, and still sublimity of nature, which is professed so strongly in the last two cantos of Childe Harold, seems rather assumed than real. It does not appear to be, has their author professes, a true "love," if such may exist, "of earth only for its earthly sake;" but rather a factitious sentiment, intended to strengthen, by contrast, the impression which he wished to give of his indisposition for human converse. He would have it thought, that he was so separated in character from his fellowmen, that though he had filed" (that is, defiled) "his mind," and brought it nearer to their level, still his soul could not bear to hold communion with them, and fled from their intercourse to the solitudes of nature. "To me," he tells us, High mountains are a feeling, but the hum though, in fact, they were his chosen places of residence. Regarded in any other light, the sentiment of which we are speaking was inconsistent with his character. We accordingly find that much of the language, in which it is expressed, is misty and unmeaning, artificial and extravagant. Ye stars! that are the poetry of heaven ! Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. No one, whose mind was really elevated and purified by the solemn grandeur of a midnight sky, would think of expressing his feelings by an allusion to the forgotten folly of astrology, or to the metaphorical uses of the word star. To the latter, the last line may be conjectured to refer; but one can hardly feel certain, that he has divined its meaning. But in his descriptions of the loveliness of nature, there is sometimes great beauty.— |