Indeed, farewell to bygone years; The last are birds of feather gay, At times I've envied, it is true, The rogue! how close his arm he wound and dross are painful and wearisome; lineating Rose's childhood, and thus proand this, lyrics, however light and unpre-ceeds: tending, are almost bound, we think, in the name of poetry, to bring home to us. Mr. Locker is very skilful in condensing the sneer, and the shallow mirth, and the shallower regrets of society into his verses; but then he usually shows that he can do so much more, that he can put so true, though delicate, a note of pathos, so tender a gleam of affection, and so wholesome a touch of scorn, into his verse, that one is a little impatient of stanzas in which the polished vulgarities of the world are delineated in a tone of even half-sympathy. It seems to us that Mr. Locker's humour is at its best when there is a touch of depth in it, as in the charming verses on "The Old Oak-tree at Hatfield Broadoak" and on "Bramble- The happy expression of fanciful jealrise," or the very happy ones on "A Hu-ousy, the humorous play on the command man Skull," "The Housemaid," "The to love your neighbour as yourself, and Jester's Moral," "To Lina Oswald," and complaint that that is not equivalent to most others; not but what his chiefly loving somebody else's neighbour, is in playful and bantering ones are often ex- Mr. Locker's quaintest manner, - just tremely good, such as "To my Grand- the same manner in which, addressing mother," "My Mistress's Boots," or "The Castle in the Air" which so gracefully introduces the volume. But the finest of all Mr. Locker's poems, to our taste, are those in which the jest passes into earnest, and the smile dies away in an emotion that is higher and keener, like the lines on "The Unrealized Ideal," "It might have been," "The Widow's Mite," and "Her quiet resting-place is far away.'" The only poems we do not like, and which seem to us unworthy of Mr. Locker, are those, comparatively few we admit, in which the levity of society gives the key-note not only to the picture for that it must do), but to the back-playful poems with a zest which humorground of the picture also. Nor do we care much for the merely sentimental ones, such as those on Gerty's Glove” and "Gerty's Necklace," where the sentiment strikes us as too superficial for the serious manner, or the manner as too little tempered with playfulness for the superficial character of the sentiment. We have said too much, however, of the few exceptions to the easy and graceful pleasantry or pathos of this attractive volume, and will now give some illustrations of Mr. Locker's success in different manners. We will take the first, from "My Neighbour Rose," a playful little poem, for the whole of which we have hardly room, but two verses of which will bear, without injury, separation from the happy context. Mr. Locker has been de the picture of his late grandmother, he better world in which she now is, with a declares in reference to that other and grotesque realism that no one has ever been able to borrow from Mr. Locker, I fain would meet you there ; — Grandmamma, This nether world agrees These are the turns which give the dis- ous poetry, since Hood died, has seldom What soles to charm an elf! And while she toil'd for daily fare, I saw her then,- and now I see She has, HE gave it tenderly, A little crutch. But after all, though Mr. Locker knows, as every mocking poet should, how to write without the laugh or the scornful gleam of something bright and bitter in his verse, when he is expressing a mood of pure, grave feeling, his most characteristic mood is that in which the jest and the kindlier emotions are equally mingled, and we hardly know whether it is the feeling which we like the better for the sarcasm with which it is blended and by which it is veiled, or the taunt which we appreciate the more for the tenderness by which it is half betrayed. It is the mixed feelings by which the surface of society is agitated which Mr. Locker has the greatest skill in embodying in his We like his pure pathos to the full as well as his sadder banter, but it is possibly the less difficult to write of the two, and probably the less unique when it is written. Mr. Locker closed some very graceful verses, which appeared in conjunction with other literary contributions in aid of the operatives who suffered by the cotton famine of 1862, with these two verses, which exactly describe the satiric tenderness of the best things in this vol verse. ume. Nothing we could quote would illustrate better the character of the singer, or the polished warmth of sympathy which so often underlies the smiling levity of the song: I do not wish to see the slaves I bless the Hearts where pity glows, Masters may one in motley clad, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. OF THE LADY PIETRA DEGLI SEROVIGNI. To the dim light and the large circle of shade I have clomb, and to the whitening of the hills, There where we see no colour in the grass, It has so taken root in the hard stone Utterly frozen is this youthful lady, Even as the snow that lies within the shade; And alters them afresh from white to green, Covering their sides again with flowers and grass. When on her hair she sets a crown of grass Love who has shut me in among low hills She is more bright than is a precious stone; My life was laid upon thy love; Then how could'st let me die? The flower is loyal to the bud, The bee is constant to the hive, Yet if again, false Love, thy feet To tread the pathway burn And stand beside thy maiden's bier, F. T. PALGRAVE. hand, When shall the Fury lift the flaming brand, O Clytemnestra! calling thee to smite? But he, the king, thy lord, by Ida's hill, Hears even now the pæan sound on high, Yet shall the streams turn back and climb the Feels even now that hour's triumphant thrill hills When wifely welcome and a city's cry Shall drown in joy the faint, sad memory Of her who perished when the winds were still. Spectator. R. C. JEBB. SONNET. WEEP lovers, sith Love's very self doth weep, warm Dwelt with the joyful beauty that is fled. Dante, translated by Rossetti. From The New Quarterly Review. BY GEORGE BARNETT SMITH. and the courtliness which made life pleasurable. Poets no longer wander in sylvan glades, or indite "sonnets to their AN excursion into the domains of mistress's eyebrows." The lives of many the old English poets is one of the of the most excellent lyric poets, if led pleasantest recreations in literature. now, would be accepted as affording amThis field of research certainly shows ple evidence of insanity; but we, who no. paucity of attractions for the pa- would never think of imitating them in tient and enthusiastic student, though that respect, never laugh at those lives it is one which has been too often neg- of theirs. A charm clings to them belected. The names of some of the sweet-cause of their work. They were the foreest writers in the language are probably runners of the giants of mind; they sang entirely unknown to the vast majority of before the times were fully ripe; their readers. Nor, perhaps, ought we greatly notes were delightful, if not strong; and to wonder at this, seeing that it is a work because their music was true we hold of extreme difficulty to keep abreast of them in reverent and continual rememthe writers of our own era. The multi-brance. plication of books compels the individual Amongst these early singers who dereader to restrict his acquaintance to serve well of posterity was William those works which either his taste or ne- Drummond, commonly called Drummond cessity suggests. Occasionally, however, of Hawthornden. He was decidedly the it is well to take note of the progress we best poet of his age in Scotland, and have made since the age of the Renais- there were few in England who could be sance in England, and useful to turn accounted his superior. It was no small from the busy highways of the modern tribute to his work that old Ben Jonworld to those by paths which lead to for- son, the acknowledged sovereign of the saken garden lands which have yielded so realms of contemporary English literamuch richness and fragrance. Perchance ture, should take upon himself a journey we may discover that, after all and set- from London to the North to see him, ting aside those great lights of the earlier when that rough and burly Briton was ages of letters - there were still in these scarcely in a fit condition to do so. ages many who, though now compara- The lowest estimate which has ever tively unknown, were the equals in genius been given of Drummond still leaves him of the favourite authors of our later time. a very high rank as a poet, whilst the Where shall we look, for instance, for a highest lifts him to a pedestal so lofty as repetition since their own period of the almost to be inconceivable. Hazlitt, a grace of Herrick, of the delicious feeling critic of no mean power and acumen, and tenderness of Suckling, or of the says: "Drummond's Sonnets, I think, stateliness of Shirley? One searches in come as near as almost any others to the vain for any approach to the music of the perfection of this kind of writing, which poets of the Renaissance amongst the should embody a sentiment and every later singers. Possibly, very probably, shade of a sentiment, as it varies with this age of iron and gold has stamped its time, and place, and humour, with the impress upon the poetry too, which loses extravagance or lightness of a momentary in graceful fancy what it gains in realistic impression." On the other hand, Halpower. And the change may be justified lam, the ever calm and philosophic, treats when we remember that with changing these same sonnets rather contemptuages come changing manners. The ro- ously, affirming that they "have obtained mance that clung to the lives and charac-probably as much praise as they deserve." ters of our forefathers has very nearly The historian, however, doubtless wished died out amongst us; our virtues are by this not so much really to dispraise the more solid, our vices are not so obnox- sonnets themselves, as to give a soberer ious, but with these strikingly preponder-tone to the opinions which had been genant advantages, we have lost the ease erally current respecting them, and to |