"Why have ye lingered on your way so long,
Bright visions, who were wont to hear my call,
And with the harmony of dance and song

Keep round my dreaming couch a festival?
Where are ye gone, with all your eyes of light,
And where the flowery voice I loved to hear,
When, through the silent watches of the night,
Ye whispered like an angel in my ear?

O! fly not with the rapid wing of time,

But with your ancient votary kindly stay;
And while the loftier dreams, that rose sublime
In years of higher hope, have flown away:
O! with the colours of a softer clime,

Give your last touches to the dying day."

The next poem, entitled "Genius Slumbering," is successful neither in design nor execution. However ethereal the essence of a spirit may be, it does not send forth a more intense fire for having rested dimly awhile. To say that it does, is neither good poetry nor good sense; nor are the metaphors quite accommodated to each other.

There follows a series of pieces, in which Greece is the principle of main interest. "Greece from Mount Helicon," is the longest poem in the volume, and is now for the first time published. It contains a poet's pilgrimage over classic ground. It opens abruptly and in a fine style. The sources of interest in scenes consecrated by classic recollections, are at once employed. Throughout the whole, the memory of ancient glory is connected with the description of present ruin. It is the poet's walks, up the stream of Permessus;* through the vale of Aganippe; by the columns that yet stand to show where was the Temple of Apollo and the Muses. Visions of Grecian girls, in all their splendour and loveliness, are seen peeping from the rocky dells. A chapel stands on the hill-side. A hermit utters there his feeble orisons, The poet pursues his way by a gentle stream; and, advancing through flowers that are populous with honey-bees, arrives at the fountain of Hippocrene, and to the rock, where

"Apollo sat,

With all his train of muses, and indulged

The charm of thought. Here many a poet dreamed,
When night was full of stars, that heavenly voices
Came from that shadowy summit, and they told
The bliss of song. They kindly led him on,
Spite of a scornful world, and filled his heart
With self-approving joy."

At length the highest point is gained; and from the summit of Helicon, the poet looks abroad on Greece, and indulges in rhapsody. The splendours of the Grecian landscape are described, as

* By some mistake, Mr. Percival or the printer has put Termessus for Permes qus throughout the poem. The two are not to be confounded.

they glow in the season of sunset; the vesper-knoll of the convent is the only sound that tells of life; while a crescent is seen in the distance on a minaret. The plains of Thebes, and the chain of Euboea, are within view :

"Far in the East

The Egean twinkles, and its thousand isles
Hover in mist, and round the dun horizon
Are many floating visions, clouds, or peaks,
Tinted with rose. Before me lies a land,
Hallowed with a peculiar sanctity,

The eye of Greece-a wild of rocks and hills,
Lifted in shadowy cones, and deep between
Mysterious hollows, once the proud abodes
Of Genius and of Power, Now twilight throws
Around her softest veil, a purple haze
Investing all at hand, and farther on

Skiey, and faint, and dim. Methinks I catch,
Through the far opening heights, the Parthenon,
And all its circling glories. Salamis

Lies on its dusky wave; and farther out
Islands and capes, and many a flitting sail

White as the sea-bird's wing. The stars are out,
And all beneath is dark. The lower hills

Float in obscurity, and plain and sea
Are blended in one haze. Cyllene still
Bears on her snowy crown the rosy blush

Of twilight; and thy loftier head, Parnassus,

Has not yet lost the glory and the blaze

That suit the heaven of song. There let me pause;
There fix my latest look. How beautiful,
Sublimely beautiful, thou hoverest

High in the vacant air! Thou seemest uplifted
From all of earth, and like an island floating
Away in heaven. How pure the eternal snows
That crown thee! yet how rich the golden blaze
That flashes from thy peak! how like the rose,
The virgin rose, the tints that fade below,
Till all is sweetly pale! Are there not harps
Warbling above thee? voices, too, attuned
To an unearthly song? Methinks I hear them
Breathing around me, with a charm and spell,
That melt my heart to weeping. It is sad,
That song of heaven,—the funeral symphony
Of ancient worthies, for the murdered peace
And glory of their land. They greet the heroes,
Who rise to meet them in these iron times,
And hail them as their sons."

And then the poem closes, with an address to Christian nations, to take the cross and sword, and give to Greece her ancient liberty.

The long passage, just cited, is a favourable specimen of the beauties with which the poem abounds; the enthusiasm, the variety and richness of diction, the copiousness of imagery. But the poem is too learned, too descriptive. Attention flags as we read; the words are but a dead letter, unless an active imagination con

verts them into bright images; and the scenes presented are so numerous, that the most diligent mind can hardly represent them all. Nor do we think excellence in this species of poetical composition by any means the highest. There is the same, or at least a similar, difference between this kind of poetry and the highest, that there is between a panorama and one of Raphael's pictures.

Of several shorter poems which follow, all relating to Greece, the one entitled Grecian Liberty is the best; but so generally known, that it needs neither illustration, nor praise.

In the ode for the celebration at Bunker Hill, and that for the fiftieth anniversary of Independence, Mr. Percival is unsuccessful. In the Sea Pictures and the Fragments, we meet again with his fine faculty of description.

The Mythology of Greece is a very successful effort,—the contrast between an age when nature was abandoned to the sway of imagination, and the present, is drawn in brilliant and lively colours.

"Each lonely spot was hallowed then-the oak
That o'er the village altar hung, would tell

Strange hidden things;-the old remembered well,
How from its gloom a spirit often spoke.
There was not then a fountain or a cave,
But had its reverend oracle, and gave
Responses to the fearful crowd, who came
And called the indwelling deity by name.
Then every snowy peak, that lifted high
Its shadowy cone to meet the bending sky,
Stood like a heaven of loveliness and light;
And as the gilt cloud rolled its glory by,
Chariots and steeds of flame stood harnessed there,
And gods came forth and seized the golden reins,
Shook the bright scourge, and through the boundless air
Rode over starry fields and azure plains.

It was a beautiful and glorious dream,

Such as would kindle high the soul of song;

The bard who struck his harp to such a theme,

Gathered new beauty as he moved along

His way was now through wilds and beds of flowers;
Rough mountains met him now, and then again
Gay valleys hung with vines in woven bowers
Led to the bright waves of the purple main.

All seemed one bright enchantment then ;-but now
Since the long sought-for goal of truth is won,
Nature stands forth unveiled with cloudless brow,

On earth ONE SPIRIT OF LIFE, in heaven ONE SUN."

We find not much to admire in "Painting-a personification." In the several sketches entitled "Musings," we have much of Mr. Percival's peculiarities. The most unfortunate thing about them is the redundancy of description. His thoughts are not pointed; like arrows, which being too long, do not move rapidly, nor reach their aim securely; and his brilliancy is like that of a comet, which always has a long tail of feebler brightness.

Again and again we lose sight of the thought with which a sentence commences, and are either lost in a maze of illustration, or bewildered in a long parenthesis. We laugh at the rustic, who cannot tell his homely tale without glancing incessantly at unnecessary details and irrelevant circumstances, and desire to cut his story short. It is the same in poetry, except that the poet builds his periods of nobler materials. What should we think of an architect, who, instead of selecting one chaste style, should crowd all kinds of beautiful ornaments on the exterior of one building? It is equally a mistake in the poet to use his means lavishly. It argues not so much the abundance which can venture to be lavish, as it does the want of discretion and taste to manage that abundance wisely, so as to produce the best effects. Take an example, where images are piled on images, till the mind is weary:

"Then my thoughts,

Now freed from their dark burden, took a flight
Into a fonder region, and they went

Back to remembered days, when summer smiled,
Not only in the blue sky, and the fields

Ripe for the harvest, but more sweetly smiled

In my young heart, and in its livery dressed

All forms that moved around me, and endowed
The lovely with a spirit's loveliness,

And made them so divinely beautiful,

I lived in beauty, and it was the sum

Of all my thoughts and feelings, and it threw

Its mantle o'er all creatures, and it gave

An all-pervading colour to my life,

And happiness alone was centered in

The contemplation of the fairest things;

And whether it were forms, or hues, or sounds;
Or looks that speak the heart, and shadow out
The workings of the faculty within,
Which images all nature, and anew
Shapes it to fresh creations of a port
More lofty, and an attitude and air

More kindred to its tastes and tendencies
Whether it was in things, that have no life,
The sports of Nature's handy-work, or those
Eternal statues, where the soul of Man
Stands fixed in immortality-in flowers
Or leaves light-dancing, or in waving woods -
Poised in luxuriant majesty aloft

On the uplifted mountain-in the wing,
That glided through the yielding element
In every curve of gracefulness, and swept
Proudly the deepest bosom of the air,
And rode in light triumphant-in the forms,
That bounding scoured the meadow, tense with life,
And nerved to trembling buoyancy-or those
Who are like us in shape, in look and soul,
Only more beautiful, and nicely tuned

To a far softer harmony-where'er
Nature was in its being, there my eye

Drank nothing in but BEAUTY, and my thoughts
Were hidden in a tide of loveliness,

And with the delicate motion of young life

My senses were one ecstasy, one thrill,

Which was not hushed, but heightened in my dreams.”

The passage is such, as none but a gifted poet could have written. We selected it, as one more full of mind, than any which would serve to illustrate our meaning. Still it is a toil, to read poetry, where, page after page, the ideas are expanded with such a talent for amplification; and the book is closed in weariness. In another passage, he compares the look of a fine woman, to the "unclouded beauty of an April eve," and straightway we have a long description of a moonlight scene, extending so far as to thrust the lady entirely out of mind. The description being at an end, the poet proceeds:

J

"Thus she seemed,

And fairer in my fancy, and where'er

My eye roved in its wandering through dark shades,
Down close embowered dells, where brooklets steal
Their steps o'er glossy pebbles and bright sands-
Where'er my quick eye wandered, she was still
The spirit of the beauty it beheld,

The living thing that animates the wild,

The nymph of the still waters, and the woods
Uttering unnumbered whisperings of joy
In their soft-rustling leaves, the Deity
That consecrates the valley and the lake
To her peculiar worship,--so her fair
And tranquil features, and her sylph-like form
Wrought in a purer world, and o'er-informed
With the quick life of feeling,-so she filled
Nature with her dear presence, and alone
Adorned the rudest landscape, and embraced
The desert with an atmosphere of love,
And lent my hours of utter solitude

A fellowship of fondest thoughts, too bright
To be aught else than momentary gleams

Of unsubstantial pleasure."

The last part of this description is feelingly expressed; and, but for the defect of style, which pervades the piece, is of high beauty. Passing over several poems of unequal merit, and turning to another part of the volume, let us, by way of contrast, quote three stanzas from a poem entitled "Home."

"My place is in the quiet vale,

The chosen haunt of simple thought;
I seek not fortune's flattering gale,
I better love the peaceful lot.

I leave the world of noise and show,
To wander by my native brook;

I ask, in life's unruffled flow,

No treasure but my friend and book.

Fancy can charm and feeling bless

With sweeter hours than fashion knows;

There is no calmer quietness,

Than home around the bosom throws."