human love, is but the prelude to an infinite future. Not in nature, not in art, not in sympathy must the weary spirit hope for rest. 'Earth has no heart, fond dreamer, with a tone To send thee back the spirit of thine own; Seek it in heaven.' The transitoriness of this world is the dominant note of her music ; loudest in all the chords of warning, consolation, and regret. This is the chief distinction of Mrs. Hemans' poetry. Her other qualities may be referred to the influence of contemporary writers. The knowledge of many literatures preserved her from the servile adoption of any master's manner, but her early romantic poems are certainly suggested by those of Scott and of Southey; and the beauty of Childe Harold probably guided her choice of subject when she wrote a poem On the Restoration of the Arts to Italy, and another on Modern Greece. The last is a long attempt at loftiness of style whose passion for the beautiful burns with the warmth of painted fire. Mrs. Hemans was little qualified for such ambitious efforts. The habit of improvisation, never disciplined, disposed her to a looseness of style, an incoherence of thought, that no after revision corrected. Even her sweetest lyrics are somewhere imperfect, but to her more aspiring poems these weaknesses are fatal. After the year 1828, when she fell in with Wordsworth's poetry, a simpler spirit moved her, and her gifts developed on a line more suited to their scope. Her simplicity was never the result of an inspired clearness of vision, as with Wordsworth or with Blake, but was rather the expression of a nature whose vistas were not wide enough to be indistinct, and whose plan of the globe ignored the unseen side. Still, such as it is, it counts for a merit. Her domestic lyrics are often spirited and tender. Some of these, The Child's First Grief, Casabianca, and others, are household words among our children. In such work, simple, chivalrous, pathetic, her real strength lies, and only by such poems can she assert a claim on our remembrance. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. A BALLAD OF RONCESVALLES. "Thou hast not been with the festal throng At the pouring of the wine, Men bear not from the hall of song So dark a mien as thine! There's blood upon thy shield, There's dust upon thy plume, Thou hast brought from some disastrous field That brow of wrath and gloom.' 'And is there blood upon my shield? Maiden, it well may be! We have sent the streams from our battle field All darkened to the sea! We have given the founts a stain Midst their woods of ancient pine; And the ground is wet-but not with rain, Deep dyed-but not with wine. 'The ground is wet-but not with rain; And the noblest blood of Christian Spain I have seen the strong man die, 'In the gloomy Roncesvalles' Strait There's many a fair young face 'Alas for love, for woman's breast, If woe like this must be! Hast thou seen a youth with an eagle crest With his proud quick-flashing eye, And his mien of kingly state, Doth he come from where the swords flashed high 'In the gloomy Roncesvalles' Strait 'Thou canst not say that he lies low, Oh none could look on his joyous brow Dark, dark perchance the day 'There is dust upon his joyous brow, And the warhorse will not wake him now, VOL. IV. A DIRGE. Calm on the bosom of thy God, Fair spirit, rest thee now! E'en while with ours thy footsteps trod His seal was on thy brow. Dust, to its narrow house beneath! Soul, to its place on high! They that have seen thy look in death No more may fear to die. CASABIANCA. The boy stood on the burning deck, As born to rule the storm! A creature of heroic blood, A proud, though child-like form! The flames roll'd on-he would not go That Father, faint in death below, He knew not that the chieftain lay 'Speak, father!' once again he cried, And but the booming shots replied, Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair; And look'd from that lone post of death In still, yet brave, despair; And shouted but once more aloud, 'My father! must I stay?' While o'er him fast through sail and shroud, And stream'd above the gallant child There came a burst of thunder-sound- With fragments strewed the sea, But the noblest thing which perish'd there Was that young faithful heart! |