'Let them die now, thy children! so thy heart
Shall wear their beautiful image all undimm'd,
Within it, to the last! Nor shalt thou learn
The bitter lesson, of what worthless dust
Are framed the idols, whose false glory binds
Earth's fetter on our souls!-Thou think'st it much
To mourn the early dead; but there are tears
Heavy with deeper anguish! We endow

Those whom we love, in our fond passionate blindness,
With power upon our souls, too absolute

To be a mortal's trust! Within their hands

We lay the flaming sword, whose stroke alone
Can reach our hearts, and they are merciful,

As they are strong, that wield it not to pierce us!
Aye, fear them, fear the loved!'

p. 199.

We have no room for further quotations; or the scene in which Elmina, after her visit to the Moorish camp, meets her daughter and her husband, the scene in which her daughter expires, and that in which the battle of the king of Spain with the Moors is described, would furnish us with abundant

matter.

We will now say a few words of 'The Forest Sanctuary.' But it so abounds with beauty, is so highly finished, and animated by so generous a spirit of moral heroism, that we can do no justice to our views of it in the narrow space, which our limits allow us. A Spanish Protestant flies from persecution at home to religious liberty in America. He has imbibed the spirit of our own fathers, and his mental struggles are described in verses, with which the descendants of the pilgrims must know how to sympathize. We dare not enter on an analysis. From one scene at sea in the second part we will make a few extracts. The exile is attended by his wife and child; but his wife remains true to the faith of her fathers.

"Ora pro nobis, mater!"-What a spell

Was in those notes, with day's last glory dying
On the flush'd waters !-seem'd they not to swell
From the far dust, wherein my sires were lying
With crucifix and sword?-Oh! yet how clear
Comes their reproachful sweetness to mine ear!
"Ora!"—with all the purple waves replying,
All my youth's visions rising in the strain-

-And I had thought it much to bear the rack and chain!
VOL. XXIV.-NO. 55.

58

Torture!-the sorrow of affection's eye,
Fixing its meekness on the spirit's core,
Deeper, and teaching more of agony,

May pierce than many swords!--and this I bore
With a mute pang. Since I had vainly striven
From its free springs to pour the truth of heaven
Into thy trembling soul, my Leonor!

Silence rose up where hearts no hope could share :
-Alas! for those that love, and may not blend in prayer!

We could not pray together 'midst the deep,
Which, like a flood of sapphire, round us lay,
Through days of splendor, nights too bright for sleep,
Soft, solemn, holy! We were on our way

Unto the mighty Cordillera land,

With men whom tales of that world's golden strand Had lured to leave their vines.-Oh! who shall say What thoughts rose in us, when the tropic sky Touch'd all its molten seas with sunset's alchemy?'

pp. 74, 75. The strength of Leonor sinks under her sufferings, and meantime the ship is becalmed.

'I knew not all--yet something of unrest

Sat on my heart. Wake, ocean-wind! I said;
Waft us to land, in leafy freshness drest,

Where through rich clouds of foliage o'er her head,
Sweet day may steal, and rills unseen go by,

Like singing voices, and the green earth lie
Starry with flowers, beneath her graceful tread!
-But the calm bound us 'midst the glassy main ;
Ne'er was her step to bend earth's living flowers again.

A fearful thing that love and death may dwell
In the same world!-She faded on-and I—
Blind to the last, there needed death to tell
My trusting soul that she could fade to die!
Yet, ere she parted, I had mark'd a change,
-But it breathed hope-'twas beautiful, though strange:
Something of gladness in the melody

Of her low voice, and in her words a flight
Of airy thought—alas! too perilously bright!

On the mid seas a knell !-for man was there,
Anguish and love--the mourner with his dead!
A long low rolling knell—a voice of prayer—

Dark glassy waters, like a desert spread

And the pale shining Southern Cross on high,
Its faint stars fading from a solemn sky,

Where mighty clouds before the dawn grew red ;—
Were these things round me ?-Such o'er memory sweep
Wildly when aught brings back that burial of the deep.

*

The wind rose free and singing:-when for ever,
O'er that sole spot of all the watery plain,

I could have bent my sight with fond endeavor
Down, where its treasure was, its glance to strain;
Then rose the reckless wind!-Before our prow
The white foam flash'd-ay, joyously-and thou
Wert left with all the solitary main

Around thee-and thy beauty in my heart,

And thy meek sorrowing love,-oh! where could that depart?
I will not speak of woe; I may not tell-

Friend tells not such to friend-the thoughts which rent
My fainting spirit, when its wild farewell
Across the billows to thy grave was sent,
Thou there most lonely!-He that sits above,
In his calm glory, will forgive the love
His creatures bear each other, ev'n if blent
With a vain worship; for its close is dim

Ever with grief, which leads the wrung soul back to Him!

And with a milder pang if now I bear

To think of thee in thy forsaken rest,
If from my heart be lifted the despair,

The sharp remorse with healing influence prèss'd,
If the soft eyes that visit me in sleep

Look not reproach, though still they seem to weep;
It is that He my sacrifice hath bless'd,
And fill'd my bosom, through its inmost cell,

With a deep chastening sense that all at last is well.'

pp. 76-84.

But we must cease making extracts, for we could not transfer all that is beautiful in the poem, without transferring the whole.

It has been said, that religion can never be made a subject of interest in poetry. The position is a false one, refuted by the close alliance between poetic inspiration and sacred enthusiasm. Irreligion has certainly no place in poetry. There may have been atheist philosophers; an atheist poet is an

impossibility. The poet may doubt and reason like Hamlet, but the moment he acquiesces in unbelief, there is an end to the magic of poetry. Imagination can no longer throw lively hues over the creation; the forests cease to be haunted; the sea, and the air, and the heavens to teem with life. The highest interest, we think, attaches to Mrs Hemans's writings, from the spirit of Christianity which pervades them.

The poetry of our author is tranquillizing in its character, ealm and serene. We beg pardon of the lovers of excitement, but we are seriously led to take notice of this quality as of a high merit. A great deal has been said of the sublimity of directing the passions; we hold it a much more difficult, and a much more elevated task, to restrain them; it may be sublime to ride on the whirlwind, and direct the storm; but it seems to us still more sublime to appease the storm, and still the whirlwind. Virgil, no mean authority, was of this opinion. The French are reported to be particularly fond of effect and display; but we remember to have read, that even in the splendid days of Napoleon, the simplicity of vocal music surpassed in effect the magnificence of a numerous band. It was when Napoleon was crowned emperor in the cathedral of Nôtre Dame. The Parisians, wishing to distinguish the occasion by some novel exhibition, and to produce a great effect, filled the orchestra with eighty harps, which were all struck together with unequalled skill. The fashionable world was in raptures. Presently the pope entered, and some thirty of his singers, who came with him from Rome, received him with the powerful Tu es Petrus of the old fashioned Scarlatti, and the simple majesty of the air, assisted by no instruments, annihilated in a moment the whole effect of the preceding fanfaronade. And in literature the public taste seems to us already weary of those productions which aim at astonishing and producing a great effect, and there is now an opportunity of pleasing by the serenity of contemplative excellence.

It is the high praise of Mrs Hemans's poetry, that it is feminine. The sex may well be pleased with her productions, for they could hardly have a better representative in the career of letters. All her works seem to come from the heart, to be natural and true. The poet can give us nothing but the form under which the objects he describes present themselves to his own mind. That form must be noble, or it is not worthy of our consideration; it must be consistent, or it will fail to be

true. Now in the writings of Mrs Hemans we are shown, how life and its concerns appear to woman; and hear a mother entrusting to verse her experience and observation. So in 'The Hebrew Mother,' the spring tide of nature' swells high as she parts from her son, on devoting him to the service of the temple.

Alas! my boy, thy gentle grasp is on me,
The bright tears quiver in thy pleading eyes,
And now fond thoughts arise,

And silver cords again to earth have won me;
And like a vine thou claspest my full heart—
How shall I hence depart?'

And oh! the home whence thy bright smile hath parted,
Will it not seem as if the sunny day

Turn'd from its door away?

While through its chambers wandering, weary hearted,
I languish for thy voice, which past me still
Went like a singing rill?'

'I give thee to thy God-the God that gave thee,
A wellspring of deep gladness to my heart!

And precious as thou art,

And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,
My own, my beautiful, my undefil'd!

And thou shalt be His child.

Therefore, farewell!--I go, my soul may fail me,
As the hart panteth for the water brooks,
Yearning for thy sweet looks-

But thou, my firstborn, droop not, nor bewail me;
Thou in the Shadow of the Rock shalt dwell,

The Rock of Strength.-Farewell!'

pp. 29-31.

The same high feeling of maternal duty and love inspires the little poem, 'The Wreck,' which everyone has read. The Lady of the Castle,' 'The Grave of Körner,' 'The Graves of a Household,' are all on domestic subjects. But why do we allude to poems, which are in everyone's hands? The mother's voice breaks out again in the piece entitled 'Elysium.' Children, according to the heathen mythology, were banished to the infernal regions, and religious faith had no consolation for a mourning parent.

Calm on its leaf-strewn bier,
Unlike a gift of nature to decay,

Too roselike still, too beautiful, too dear,