But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely knight, And that he cross'd the mountain woods, Nor rested day nor night; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade, There came and look'd him in the face And that, unknowing what he did, He leap'd amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The lady of the land! And how she wept, and clasp'd his knees; And how she tended him in vain And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain; And that she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest leaves A dying man he lay; His dying words-but when I reach'd Disturb'd her soul with pity! All impulses of soul and sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; The music, and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, She wept with pity and delight, She blush'd with love, and virgin shame; And, like the murmur of a dream, I heard her breathe my name. Her bosom heaved-she stept aside, As conscious of my look she steptThen suddenly, with timorous eye, She fled to me and wept. She half-enclosed me with her arms, 'Twas partly love, and partly fear I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous bride. THE PAINS OF SLEEP ERE on my bed my limbs I lay, In humble trust mine eyelids close, No wish conceived, no thought express'd, A sense o'er all my soul impress'd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me And whom I scorn'd, those only strong. For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo, The third night, when my own loud scream And having thus by tears subdued My anguish to a milder mood, To natures deepliest stain'd with sin,--For aye entempesting anew The unfathomable hell within, And whom I love, I love indeed. CONCEALMENT. TIME, as he ourses onward, still unrolls Of the dim past collect and shape themselves, ROBERT SOUTHEY (Born 1774-Died 1843). Peninsular War, The Book of the Church, Vindiciæ Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, Colloquies on the Progress and Iospects of Society, The Life of Nelson, The Life of Wesley, The Life of Cowper, editions, with memoirs of the authors, of The Pilgrim's Progress, The Works of Chatterton, and The Works of Henry Kirke White, numerous contributions to the Quarterly Review, and that remarkable book, The Doctor. On the death of Mr. PYE, in 1813, SOUTHEY was appointed poet laureate; and in 1821 he received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Oxford. In the spring of 1839 he contracted a second marriage with CAROLINE ANNE, daughter of Mr. CHARLES BOWLES, and one of the most pathetic and natural of the living writers of her sex. DR. SOUTHEY was the son of a linen draper | The History of Brazil, The History of the in Bristol, where he was born on the twelfth of August, 1774. In his sixteenth year he was placed at the Westminster School, and in 1792 at Baliol College, with the design of his entering the church. His career at Oxford was a brief one; his tendency toward Socinianism made the plan marked out for him disagreeable; and he returned to Bristol, where in 1794 he published, in conjunction with ROBERT LOVELL, his first collection of poems. In the autumn of the following year he was married to a sister of the wife of his friend COLERIDGE, and soon after, while he was on his way to Lisbon, appeared his Joan of Arc. It was about this time that he wrote, in three days, his notable drama of Wat Tyler, which was surreptitiously printed some twenty-three years afterward. In the summer of 1796 he returned to England, removed to London, and entered Gray's Inn. A portion of the years 1800 and 1801 were passed in the Peninsula, whence he sent home his romance of Thalaba the Destroyer, which permanently established his reputation as a poet. At the end of a short residence in Dublin, as secretary to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he went to Keswick, where he lived the rest of his life. In 1805 he published Madoc, which had been brought to a close in 1799; in 1810 the Curse of Kehama, in 1814 Roderick the last of the Goths, in 1821 The Vision of Judgment, and in 1825 The Tale of Paraguay, the latest of his longer poems. Beside these he wrote numerous briefer pieces, all of which are included in the ten volume edition of his poetial works which appeared in London under his own supervision in 1837, and was reprinted by Appleton and Company, in New York, in 1839. In addition to his poems, Mr. SOUTHEY produced numerous prose works, of which the principal are Amadis de Gaul, from the Spanish; Palmerin of England, from the Portuguese; Letters from England, written under the fictitious name of Espriella; the Chroniele of the Cid, from the Spanish; Omniana, Intense labour in every department of lite rature-in poetry, philosophy, history, bio graphy and criticism-continued for so many years, at length obscured SOUTHEY's genius, and reduced him to a state of mental darkness. For three years before his death his intellect was nearly gone, and in the last year of his life he could not recognise the dearest members of his family. He died at Keswick on the twenty-first of March, 1843, in the sixtyeighth year of his age. SOUTHEY'S prose is hardly exceeded in the English language. It is clear, vigorous, manly, and graceful, worthy of the elder and greatest writers. In his poems, especially his longer ones, we rather admire the author than the works; his energy seems rather force of character than of mind, and we are moro struck by the resistless daring of his temper than the boldness of his faculties. His effusions are not instinctive or spontaneous; he does not seem to have "fed on thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers:" he urges his genius rather than is mastered by it. The goal perhaps is reached in good time, but it is by application of the spur. His poems unquestionably have that pulchritude which bars dispraise; the dulcia sunto which should kindle enthusiasm is lacking Yet, after every abatement, his name will remain one of the greatest in modern poetry. To master and wield the colossal forms of oriental superstition, to animate them with human and familiar interests, to render them ductile to all the demands of art, was a task which only the extravagance of youth would have undertaken, and only the rarest and most remarkable genius could accomplish. This SOUTHEY did, and with entire success. With the exception of BECKFORD, he was the first to invade the gorgeous East: and no man has followed him in any new attempt to construct epics from materials derived only from dictionaries and bibliothèques, and to inspire modern poetry with the faith, the fears and passions of a people extinct for thousands of years. The influence of these extraordinary works upon the literature and taste of England has been much greater than is generally acknowledged. They shattered the sceptre of that bastard empire of decency and imbecility which POPE's successors had set up. If WORDSWORTH has been called the poet of poets in respect to feeling, SOUTHEY may more truly be termed the study of artists in respect to imagination. It was a spark from SOUTHEY'S ardour which kindled in ScoTT the ambition to reconstruct the crumbled temple of Scottish chivalry; and he led BYRON and MOORE to the orient. While the languid tints of HAYLEY and DARWIN and BEATTIE were gathering in the evening of its glory over the once splendid sky of British literature, his spirit suddenly arose above the horizon, and streamed over the scene like "a thunderstorm against the wind." From that time the aspect and the elements of English poetry were changed. We should feel that a man wanted something to a complete insight into the character of modern art who had not read Thalaba and Kehama. When we look at the great poets who commonly appear about the time that a nation is passing from the dominion of sense to that of reason, to HOMER, DANTE, SPENSER,-we find them in possession of all the faculties of art,-invention, construction, decoration, passion, sentiment, moral sense. Their successors, severally, have some one or two of these, in exclusion of the rest; and the popu larity of any poet will depend upon which quality he possesses. But it by no means follows that this popu arity will be a test of the value and dignity of the order of the gift which the poet has; for some of the rarest and ghest capacities of the artist are those whics are not the most highly appreciated by the multitude. SOUTHEY had, in an eminent degree, a power which, with the exception of Scorr, almost all his contemporaries wanted, construction,—the power of giving form to a work,-the architectural faculty of the mind. This is the most uncommon of the poet's powers, and is in itself a grea merit, without which there is no art. It is almost the only faculty which JONSON had; and while the lower benches of critics have held JONSON cheap, those in the highest seats have always deemed that his title to a place among the great authors of his country was unquestionable. SOUTHEY'S Smaller poems, written generally at a later period of life, are very different from the longer ones; and the difference is characteristic of the great and singular change which took place in him in his progress from youth to age. In them he delights chiefly to illustrate and beautify the domestic affections. The spirit that once soared almost beyond following, here loves to nestle in the very bosom of social feeling. Humanity in its genuine sympathies, in its truest and most native interests, in its most sincere and deepborn sentiments, is the sphere around which his fancy makes its willing yet controlled and gentle circuit. Those subjects which most other writers have felt as a dead weight upon their powers, as duty, piety, temperance, and fidelity, seemed to inspire him. To the last his genius always warmed into the beauty of its youthful ardour whenever a good affection was to be expressed, a friend to be commcnorated, or a virtue to be praised. These poems, indeed, possess a charm be yond the scope of criticism. They belong to the now justified excellence of one of the loveliest characters of which literary history bears record. They show us the heart of one of the best men that modern England has con tained. ODE, WRITTEN DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH BONAPARTE, IN JANUARY, 1814. WHO Counsels peace at this momentous hour, When God hath given deliverance to the oppress'd, And to the injured power? Who counsels peace, when vengeance, like a flood, Rolls on, no longer now to be repress'd; When innocent blood From the four corners of the world cries out For justice upon one accursed head; Wo, wo to England! wo and endless shame, False to her feelings and unspotted fame, For by what naine shall right and wrong be known, What new and curtly phrases must we feign For falsehood, murder, and all monstrous crimes, If that perfidious Corsican maintain Still his detested reign, And France, who yearns even now to break her chain, Beneath his iron rule be left to groan? No! by the innumerable dead, Whose blood hath for his lust of power been shed, Death only can for his foul deeds atone; That peace which death and judgment can bestow, That peace be Bonaparte's,-that alone! For sooner shall the Ethiop change his skin, Or from the leopard shall her spots depart, Than this man change his old, flagitious heart. Have ye not seen him in the balance weigh'd, And there found wanting? On the stage of blood Foremost the resolute adventurer stood; And when, by many a battle won, He placed upon his brow the crown, Curbing delirious France beneath his sway, Then, like Octavius in old time, Fair name might he have handed down, Effacing many a stain of former crime. Fool! should he cast away that bright renown! Fool! the redemption proffer'd should he lose! When Heaven such grace vouchsafed him that the No law but his own headstrong will he knew, No counsellor but his own wicked heart. From evil thus portentous strength he drew, And trampled under foot all human ties, All holy laws, all natural charities. O France! beneath tnis fierce barbarian's sway Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times; Rapine, and blood, and fire have inark'd thy way All loathsome, all unutterable crimes. A curse is on thee, France! from far and wide Cry out alike against thee! They who bear, A merciless oppressor hast thou been, When thus in abject servitude resign'd Thyself the while a miserable slave. Behold, the flag of vengeance is unfurl'd! The dreadful armies of the North advance; While England, Portugal, and Spain combined, Give their triumphant banners to the wind, And stand victorious in the fields of France. One man hath been for ten long, wretched years France! if thou lovest thine ancient fame, Of frozen Moscovy; By the bodies, which lie all open to the sky, Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the tyrant's flight; By the widow's and the orphan's cry; By the childless Farent's misery; By the lives which he hath shed; By the ruin he hath spread; Fy the prayers which rise for curses on his head,-Redeem, O France! thine ancient fame, Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame, Open thine eyes!--too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind! By those horrors which the night Witness'd when the torches' light To the assembled murderers show'd Where the blood of Condé flow'd; By thy murder'd Pichegru's fame; By murder'd Wright--an English name; By murder'd Palm's atrocious doom; By murder'd Hofer's martyrdom,-Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt, The villain's own peculiar, private guilt, Open thine eyes!--too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind! THE HOLLY-TREE. O READER! hast thou ever stood to see The eye that contemplates it well perceives Order'd by an intelligence so wise, Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen No grazing cattle through their prickly round But as they grow where nothing is to fear, I love to view these things with curious eyes, And in this wisdom of the holly-tree Can emblem see Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after time. Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear To those who on my leisure would intrude Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. And as, when all the summer trees are seen The holly leaves a sober hue display But when the bare and wintry woods we see So would I seem amid the young and gay That in my age as cheerful I might be THE DEAD FRIEND. Nor to the grave, not to the grave, my soul The form that once was dear! The spirit is not there Earth, air, and water's ministering particles Resolved, their uses done. Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, The spirit is not there! Often together have we talk'd of death; All doubtful things made clear; Sure I have felt thy presence! Thou hast giver Hast kept me from the world unstain'd and pure. Edmund! we did not err ! |