roost in some obscure corner, and are no more | Christian Poetry will be deeper and higher far seen among bipeds. than any that has ever yet been known among men. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto have been either religious or superstitious; and as "the day-spring from on High that has visited us" spreads wider and wider over the earth, “the soul of the world, dreaming of things to come," shall assuredly see more glorified visions than have yet been submitted to her ken. That Poetry has so seldom satisfied the utmost longings and aspirations of human nature, can only have been because Poetry has so seldom dealt in its power with the only mysteries worth knowing-the greater mysteries of religion, into which the Christian is initiated only through faith, an angel sent from heaven to spirits struggling by supplications and sacrifices to escape from sin and death. Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spirit of imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two -who for the present must be namelesshave shown feeling; and would they but obey their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own free feet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings, they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditable reputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song. For is not all human nature, and all human life, These, and many other thoughts and feelshadowed forth in those pages? But the heart, ings concerning the "Vision and the Faculty to sing well from the Bible, must be embued divine," when employed on divine subjects, with religious feelings, as a flower is alter- have arisen within us, on reading-which we nately with dew and sunshine. The study of have often done with delight-"The Christian THE BOOK must have been begun in the sim- Year," so full of Christian poetry of the purest plicity of childhood, when it was felt to be in- character. Mr. Keble is a poet whom Cowper deed divine-and carried on through all those himself would have loved-for in him piety silent intervals in which the soul of manhood inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are is restored, during the din of life, to the purity celestialized by religion. We peruse his book and peace of its early being. The Bible must in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that be to such a poet even as the sky-with its which is breathed upon us by some calm day sun, moon, and stars-its boundless blue with in spring, when all imagery is serene and still all its cloud-mysteries-its peace deeper than cheerful in the main-yet with a touch and the grave, because of realms beyond the grave -its tumult louder than that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He who begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himself to it-night and dayand with an humble and a contrite heart as well as an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what he understands, or to understand what he feels-thoughts and feelings breathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery, between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly venture on the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thought of doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem irreverent, it would convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, and the world. a tinge of melancholy, which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once more endearing and more profound. We should no more think of criticising such poetry than of criticising the clear blue skies-the soft green earth-the "liquid lapse" of an unpolluted stream, that "Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every flower It overtaketh on its pilgrimage." All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, we partake of the universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it emanated. Indeed, we do not remember any poetry nearly so beautiful as this, which reminds one so seldom of the poet's art. We read it without ever thinking of the place which its author may hold among poets, just as They alone, therefore, to whom God has we behold a "lily of the field" without comgiven genius as well as faith, zeal, and bene- paring it with other flowers, but satisfied with volence-will, of their own accord, fix their its own pure and simple loveliness; or each Pindus either on Lebanon or Calvary-and separate poem may be likened, in its unosof these but few. The genius must be high- tentations-unambitious-unconscious beauty the faith sure-and human love must coalesce-to with divine, that the strain may have power to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they are in matter, and with all their apprehensions Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair and conceptions blended with material image-earth, the violet is indeed the most delightful ry, and the things of this moving earth and in itself-form, fragrance, and colour-nor less this restless life. in the humility of its birthplace, and in its haunts in the "sunshiny shade." Therefore, 'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that may be said to blossom on Mount Sion. So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen his subject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. His work, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependent on creeds, 1ut out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestly moulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry will outlive every other; for the time will come when "A violet by a mossy stone, The most imaginative poetry inspired by Nature, and dedicated to her praise, is never perfectly and consummately beautiful till it ascends into the religious; but then religion breathes from, and around, and about it, only at last when the poet has been brought, by the SACRED POETRY. leading of his own aroused spirit, to the utmost | Against all such low aims he is preserved, pitch of his inspiration. He begins, and con- who, with Christian meekness, approaches the tinues long, unblamed in mere emotions of muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks beauty; and he often pauses unblamed, and not to force his songs on the public ear; his brings his strain to a close, without having heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetforsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feel-ry is praise and prayer. It meets our ear like ings which belong alone to this earth. But the sound of psalms from some unseen dwellpoetry like that of the "Christian Year" springs ing among the woods or hills, at which the at once, visibly and audibly, from religion as wayfarer or wanderer stops on his journey, its fount. If it, indeed, issue from one of the and feels at every pause a holier solemnity in Such poetry is indeed many springs religion opens in the human the silence of nature. heart, no fear of its ever being dried up. got by heart; and memory is then tenacious to Small indeed may seem the silver line, when the death, for her hold on what she loves is first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, But how soon it begins to sing with a clear when even hope itself is dead-if, indeed, hope loud voice in the solitude! Bank and brae-ever dies-the trust is committed to despair. tree, shrub, and flower-grow greener at each successive waterfall-the rains no more disturb that limpid element than the dews-and never does it lose some reflection of the hea vens. In a few modest words, Mr. Keble states the aim and object of his volume. He says truly, that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to possess in her authorized formularies an ample and secure provision, both for a sound rule of faith and a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publication will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has been attained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in a thousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deaf yet to lovely sights and sounds-and a true poet is as certain of recognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we have no prayer-book printed on paper-perhaps it would be better if we had; but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr. Keble, is compiled and composed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotland than in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is felt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said, no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, and which in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inward observances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling here; and therefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart, will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration-for the Christian creed is "wide and general as the casing air," and felt as profoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms is heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities of England, where so often "Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise." Poetry in our age has been made too much a thing to talk about-to show off upon-as if the writing and the reading of it were to be reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy-for it implies much voluntary self-degradation-is mere popularity. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want, In pastures green: he leadeth me These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathers and mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring. Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest and wisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories; the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smoky day; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallow up the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as But a separate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy, and forlorn! he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees far into the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying-" Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that poetry throws back upon the New Testament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortal brother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of man. On a dead, insensible flower-a lily-a rose-a violet-a daisy, Poetry may pour out all its divinest power-just as the sun itself sometimes seems to look with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once made transparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all its leaves-and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves be dead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall change death into sleep--till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shall seem a bed of bright and celestial repose. 'rom poetry, in words or marble-both alike still and serene as water R 2 by filial affection, that affection grows reverent even to earthly parents-and, erelong, becomes piety towards the name of God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must not be too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No-let religion-a myriadmeaning word-be whispered and breathed round about them, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens their ears, while enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yet multitudinous world. upon grass-we turn to the New Testament, | holds. Almost as soon as the heart is moved and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We look down into the depths of that text-and we then turn again to Keble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon the uninspired page! Yet not uninspired-if that name may be given to strains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise, "whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets." Revelation has shown us that "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy of that Being for whom Godhead died! They who read the lines on "the Holy Innocents in a mood of mind worthy of them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "The Epiphany." They are separated in the volume by some kindred and congenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy the still region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seem to occupy the entire sky. How far better than skilfully-how inspiredly does this Christian poet touch upon each successive holy theme-winging his way through the stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving one place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding and unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attempted the theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on such a subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger. Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few words-" Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was: when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to a strain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism." How soon the infant spirit is touched with love-another name for religion-none may dare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling and thought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration-so strong it often is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of natural processes going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often been seen in the simplicity of childhoodcreatures but five or six years old-soon perhaps about to disappear-astonishing, and saddening, and subliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by a holy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into a mysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink of leath and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine unfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influence should not be rareor are they rare-in truly Christian house Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read with tears by many a grateful heart-on the "Churching of Women." What would become of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen the piety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holy and divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify the affections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before a father's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the father yearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving after childbirth! "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." What is all the poetry that genius ever breathed over all the flowers of this earth, to that one divine sentence! It has inspired our Christian poet-and here is his heart-felt homily. FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew, "Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, As pure, as fragrant, and as fair, "But cheerful and unchanged the while And as we gaze we know. "Ye dwell beside our paths and homes, "Ye fearless in your nests abide Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise, "Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour, As when he paused and own'd you good What care ye now, if winter's storm "Alas! of thousand bosoms kind, And Heaven thy morn will bless." " stead of leaving him in utter darkness, seemed to be accompanied with a burst of light. Much of our most fashionable Modern Poetry is at once ludicrously and lamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthful creatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins of shameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and by persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to that vulgar altitude-the gallows. The darker-the stronger passions, forsooth! And what hast thou to do-my dove-eyed Margaret Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still, serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and the weaker passions thinebrighter indeed—yet say not weaker, for they are strong as death;-Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, and Sorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears—be these all thy own-and sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imagination be spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescencea Lunar Rainbow. Such poetry as this must have a fine influence on all the best human affections. Sacred are such songs to sorrow-and sorrow is either a frequent visiter, or a domesticated inmate, in-with the darker and stronger passions? every household. Religion may thus be made to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours, into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not the mother unhappy who closes the eyes of her dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in the house, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed among other flowers, now all drooping for its sake-nor yet call the father unhappy who lays his sweet son below the earth, and returns to the home where his voice is to be heard never more. That affliction brings forth feelings unknown before in his heart; calming all There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christurbulent thoughts by the settled peace of the tian Year," such perfect sincerity, and conse grave. Then every page of the Bible is beau-quently such simplicity, that though the protiful and beautiful every verse of poetry that duction of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot thence draws its inspiration. Thus in the pale doubt that it will some day or other find its way and almost ghostlike countenance of decay, our into many of the dwellings of humble life. hearts are not touched by the remembrance Such descent, if descent it be, must be of all alone of beauty which is departed, and by the receptions the most delightful to the heart of a near extinction of loveliness which we behold Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more fading before our eyes-but a beauty, fairer widely over the land, why fear that it will and deeper far, lies around the hollow eye and deaden religion? Let us believe that it will the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time of the untroubled spirit that has heard resigned true poetry, such as this, of a character somethe voice that calls it away from the dim shades what higher than probably can be yet felt, unof mortality. Well may that beauty be said to derstood, and appreciated by the people, will be religious; for in it speaks the soul, con- come to be easy and familiar, and blended with scious, in the undreaded dissolution of its all the other benign influences breathed over earthly frame, of a being destined to everlast- their common existence by books. Meanwhile ing bliss. With every deep emotion arising the "Christian Year" will be finding its way from our contemplation of such beauty as this into many houses where the inmates read from -religious beauty beaming in the human coun- the love of reading-not for mere amusement tenance, whether in joy or sadness, health or only, but for instruction and a deeper delight; decay-there is profoundly interfused a sense and we shall be happy if our recommendation of the soul's spirituality, which silently sheds causes its pages to be illumined by the gleams over the emotion something celestial and di- of a few more peaceful hearths, and to be revine, rendering it not only different in degree, hearsed by a few more happy voices in the but altogether distinct in kind, from all the feel-"parlour twilight." ings that things merely perishable can inspireso that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feeling of beauty is but a vivid recognition of its own deathless being and ethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly known to the human heart in those ages of the world when all other feelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the most pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over the beauty intensely worhipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever over its now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the living lustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone a beauty in his latest smile, which spoke not alone of a brief scene closed, but of an endless scene unfolding; while its cessation, in We cannot help expressing the pleasure it has given us to see so much true poetry coming from Oxford. It is delightful to see that clas sical literature, which sometimes, we know not how, certainly has a chilling effect on poetical feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, and causing it to produce itself in song. Oxford has produced many true poets; Collins, Warton, Bowles, Heber, Milman, and now Kebleare all her own-her inspired sons. Their strains are not steeped in "port and prejudice;" but in the-Isis. Heaven bless Iffley and God. stow-and many another sweet old ruined place-secluded, but not far apart from her own inspiring Sanctities. And those who ove her not, never may the Muses love! "Lo! there, in yonder fancy-haunted room, What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom, "From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell, gether, and such as ought to be expunged from all paper. But that is not all we have to say against it it is radically and essentially bad, because it either proves nothing of what it is meant to prove-or what no human being on earth ever disputed. Be fair-be just in all that concerns religion. Take the best, the most moral, if the word can be used, the most enlightened Skeptic, and the true Christian, and compare their death-beds. That of the Skeptic will be disturbed or disconsolate-that of the Christian confiding or blessed. But to contrast the death-bed of an absolute maniac, muttering curses, gnashing and scowling, and "raising a hideous shriek," and "rounding his eyes with a ghastly glare," and convulsed, too, with severe bodily throes-with that of a convinced, confiding, and conscientious Christian, a calm, meek, undoubting believer, happy in the "hope religion pillows on his heart," and enduring no fleshly agonies, can serve no purpose under the sun. Men who have the misery of being unbelievers, are at all times to be pitied-inost of all in their last hours; but though theirs be then dim melancholy, or dark despair, they express neither the one state nor the other by mutterings, curses, and hideous shrieks. Such a wretch there may sometimes be-like him "who died and made no sign;" but there is no more sense in seeking to brighten the character of the Christian by its contrast with that of such an Atheist, than by contrast with a fiend to brighten the beauty of an angel. Finally, are the deathbeds of all good Christians so calm as this-and do they all thus meekly How could they?-The line but one before is, "What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom." This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot doubt that Mr. Montgomery will confess that it is so; but independently of that, he is describing the death-bed of a person who, ex hypothesi, could have no bright hopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. "Pant for where congenial spirits stray," He might as well, in a description of a negress, have told us that she a line, besides its other vice, most unscriptuhad no long, smooth, shining, yellow locks-ral? Congenial spirit is not the language of no light-blue eyes--no ruddy and rosy cheeks -nor yet a bosom white as snow. The execution of the picture of the Christian is not much better-it is too much to use, in the sense here given to them, no fewer than three verbs-"pales"-"rolls"-"starts," in four lines. the New Testament. Alas! for poor weak human nature at the dying hour! Not even can the Christian always then retain unquaking trust in his Saviour! "This is the blood that was shed for thee," are words whose mystery quells not always nature's terror. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is renewed in "The hope Religion pillows on the heart," vain--and he remembers, in doubt and disis not a good line, and it is a borrowed one. may, words that, if misunderstood, would appal all the Christian world-"My God-my "When with a dying hand he waves adieu," God-why hast thou forsaken me?" Perhaps, conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do before the Faith, that has waxed dim and died not act so. Not thus are taken eternal fare-in his brain distracted by pain, and disease, and long sleeplessness, and a weight of wofor he is a father who strove in vain to burst those silken ties, that winding all round and about his very soul and his very body, bound wells. The motion in the sea-song was more natural "She waved adieu, and kiss'd her lily hand." "Werps so true," means nothing, nor is it him to those dear little ones, who are of the English. The grammar is not good of, "He pants for where congenial spirits❞— Neither is the word pants by any means the right one; and in such an awful crisis, admire who may the simile of the infant longing for its mother's breast, we never can in its present shape; while there is in the line, same spirit and the same flesh,--we say, before that Faith could, by the prayers of holy men, be restored and revivified, and the Christian, once more comforted by thinking on Him, who for all human beings did take upon him Death may have come for his prey, and left the rueful burden and agonies of the Crossthe chamber, of late so hushed and silent, at "Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away;" full liberty to weep! Enough to know, that prettiness we very much dislike-alter one though Christianity be divine, we are human, word, and it would be voluptuous--nor do we that the vessel is weak in which that glorihesitate to call the passage a puling one alto-ous light may be enshrined-weak as the pot |