Page images
PDF
EPUB

Pollok, Morris,

Rogers, Boies, Campbell, Osgood,

Hood, Maclean, Eastman, Elliott, Blanchard, Moir,

Spencer, Wordsworth, Shelley. Keats, Whittier, Keble,

Burbidge, Eliza Cook, Milman, Swain, Mrs. Norton. Hervey, Tuckerman, Bowles. Praed, Linen, Motherwell, Mrs. Prowning, Barbauld,

Lover, Peabody, Sterling. Jones, Wilson,

Mackay, Vedder, Cooke, Willis,

Clarke, Smith.

[graphic][merged small]

The solitude of vast extent, untouched

By hand of art, where Nature sowed herself,

And reaped her crops; whose garments were the clouds;

Whose minstrels, brooks; whose lamps, the moon and stars; Whose organ-choir, the voice of many waters;

Whose banquets, morning dews; whose heroes, storms;
Whose warriors, mighty winds; whose lovers, flowers;
Whose orators, the thunderbolts of God;
Whose palaces, the everlasting hills;
Whose ceiling, heaven's unfathomable blue;
And from whose rocky turrets battled high,
Prospect immense spread out on all sides round,-
Lost now beneath the welkin and the main,
Now walled with hills that slept above the storms.
Most fit was such a place for musing men,
Happiest sometimes when musing without aim.
It was, indeed, a wondrous sort of bliss

The lovely bard enjoyed, when forth he walked—
Unpurposed-stood, and knew not why; sat down,
And knew not where; arose, and knew not when;
Had
eyes, and saw not; ears, and nothing heard;

And sought-sought neither heaven nor earth-sought naught;
Nor meant to think; but ran, meantime, through vast

Of visionary things; fairer than aught

That was; and saw the distant tops of thoughts,

Which men of common stature never saw,

Greater than aught that largest worlds could hold,
Or give idea of, to those who read.

This bold and beautiful conception of Nature, and her influences upon a heart and intellect attuned to her ministries, is from POLLOK's Course of Time. The author, like Kirke White, became an early victim of his devotion to the Muse; for the same year that he gave his epic to the world, he had himself to bid adieu to it.

MORRIS'S song, Woodman, spare that Tree! has not only taken its place among our household lyrics, but is not unknown abroad. It owes its existence to the following incident :-The author, some years since, was riding out with a friend in the suburbs of New

« PreviousContinue »