SECTION XVII.

ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1844)

is another poet of the Lake School, who has acquired a just celebrity-more, in late years, however, for his prose than his poetry. In the opinion of S. C. Hall, "No poet, in the present or past century, has written three such poems as Thaliba, Kehama, and Roderic. Others have more excelled in delineating what they find before them in life; but none have given such proofs of extraordinary power in creating. He has been called diffuse, because there is a spaciousness and amplitude about his poetry-as if concentration was the highest quality of a writer. He excels in unity of design and congruity of character; and never did poet more adequately express heroic fortitude and generous affections. He has not, however, limited his pen to grand paintings of Epic character. Among his shorter productions, are found some light and graceful sketches, full of beauty and feeling, and not the less valuable because they invariably aim at promoting virtue."

Southey, among all our living poets, says Professor Wilson, stands aloof, and "alone in his glory." For he alone of them all has adventured to illustrate, in poems of magnitude, the different characters, customs, and manners of nations. Joan of Arc is an English and French story-Thaliba, an Arabian one-Kehama is Indian-Madoc, Welsh and American—and Roderic, Spanish and Moorish: nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr. Southey has most successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any but the highest genius. In Madoc, and especially in Roderic, he has relied on the truth of Nature-as it is seen in the history of great national transactions and events. In Thaliba and Kehama, though in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he follows the leading of fancy and imagination, and walks in a world of wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same poet exhibited such power in such different kinds of poetry, in truth a master, and in fiction a magician. Of all these poems, the conception and the execution are original; in much faulty, and imperfect both, but bearing through

out the impress of highest genius, and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest, and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them forever from oblivion, and embalm them in the spirit of love and of delight.

The following specimens, of this class, are written in a familiar style, and display strong inventive genius, making much out of little-educing useful reflections from objects in themselves worthless :

TO A SPIDER.

"Spider! thou need'st not run in fear about
To shun my curious eyes,

I won't humanely crush thy bowels out,
Lest thou shouldst eat the flies,

Nor will I roast thee with a fierce delight
Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see,
For there is one who might

One day roast me.

"Thou'rt welcome to a Rhymer sore perplex'd,
The subject of his verse:

There's many a one who on a better text
Perhaps might comment worse:

Then shrink not, old Free-mason, from my view,
But quietly, like me, spin out the line;

Do thou thy work pursue,

As I will mine.

"Weaver of snares, thou emblemest the ways
Of Satan, sire of lies;

Hell's huge black spider, for inankind he lays
His toils as thou for flies.

When Betty's busy eye runs round the room,
Wo to that nice geometry if seen!
But where is he whose broom

The earth shall clean?

"Spider! of old thy flimsy webs were thought,
And 'twas a likeness true,

To emblem laws in which the weak are caught,
But which the strong break through;

And if a victim in thy toils is ta'en,

Like some poor client is that wretched fly,
I'll warrant thee thou'lt drain

His life-blood dry.

"And is not thy weak work like human schemes

And care on earth employ'd?

Such are young hopes and Love's delightful dreams,
So easily destroy'd!

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So does the Statesman, while the avengers sleep,
Self-deem'd secure, his wiles in secret lay;
Soon shall destruction sweep
His work away.

"Thou busy laborer! one resemblance more
Shall yet the verse prolong,

For, Spider, thou art like the Poet poor,
Whom thou hast help'd in song:
Both busily our needful food to win,

We work, as Nature taught, with ceaseless pains,
Thy bowels thou dost spin,

I spin my brains."

THE FILBERT.

Nay, gather not that Filbert, Nicholas :
There is a maggot there; it is his house,
His castle; oh, commit not burglary!
Strip him not naked! 'tis his clothes, his shell,
His bones, the case and armor of his life,
And thou shalt do no murder, Nicholas !
It were an easy thing to crack that nut,
Or with thy crackers or thy double teeth,
So easily may all things be destroy'd!
But 'tis not in the power of mortal man
To mend the fracture of a filbert shell
Enough of dangers and of enemies

Hath Nature's wisdom for the world ordain'd;
Increase not thou the number! Him the mouse,
Gnawing with nibbling tooth the shell's defense,
May from his native tenement eject;

Him may the nut-hatch, piercing with strong bill,
Unwittingly destroy; or to his hoard
The squirrel bear, at leisure to be crack'd.
Man also hath his dangers and his foes

As this poor maggot bath; and when I muse
Upon the aches, anxieties, and fears,
The maggot knows not, Nicholas, methinks
It were a happy metamorphosis
To be enkenel'd thus; never to hear
Of wars, and of invasions, and of plots,
Kings, Jacobins, and tax-commissioners;
To feel no motion but the wind that shook
The filbert-tree and rock'd us to our rest;
And in the middle of such exquisite food
To live luxurious! The perfection this
Of snugness! it were to unite at once
Hermit retirement, aldermanic bliss,
And stoic independence of mankind.”

SECTION XVIII.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

The Moravian Hymns are said to have led his mind into the culture of poetry. His chief characteristics are purity and elevation of thought, harmonious versification, and a fine strain of devotional feeling. His poems can not be too highly commended to the frequent perusal of the young. The variety of subject

adds much to the interest of his works.

THE GRAVE.

"There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrim's found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep

Low in the ground.

The storm that wrecks the winter sky
No more disturbs their deep repose,
Than summer evening's latest sigh
That shuts the rose.

I long to lay this painful head
And aching heart beneath the soil,
To slumber in that dreamless bed
From all my toil.

For misery stole me at my birth,
And cast me helpless on the wild:
I perish; O my mother earth,

Take home thy child.
On thy dear lap these limbs reclined,
Shall gently moulder into thee:
Nor leave one wretched trace behind
Resembling me.

We hope to receive the thanks of young ladies who intend to provide themselves with an ALBUM, that social and literary luxury, for inserting here a collection of admirable mottoes, from the versatile and vigorous

pen of the fine poet now under review. Some may need to be informed, that the term Album is derived from a Latin word, signifying white, and is therefore applied usually to an elegant blank book, in which we request our friends to write something as a memorial of themselves. This explanation may be necessary to some, for understanding the second inotto below, and also the sixth.

Here friends assemble, hand and heart;
Whom life may sever, death must part;
Sweet be their deaths, their lives well spent,
And this their friendship's monument.

VI.

My Album is a barren tree,

Where leaves and only leaves you see
But touch it-flowers and fruits will spring,
And birds among the foliage sing.

VIII.

My Album's open; come and see;

What, won't you waste a thought on me?

Write but a word, a word or two,

And make me love to think on you.

In earnestness and fervor (says Professor Wilson), his poem "The Pelican Island" is by few or none ex