The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! O dread and silent Mount! I gaz'd upon thee, Didst vanish from my thought: entranc'd in prayer Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven! Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale ! And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!? Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded (and the silence came), Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow The glaciers assume in the sunshine all manner of colours. 2 Besides the rivers Arvé and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides." Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Slow trav'ling with dim eyes suffus'd with tears, To rise before me-Rise, oh, ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth! "Within a few paces of the glaciers the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its flowers of loveliest blue.'" 2 This striking use of the great name possibly suggested the similar phraseology in the commencement of Mr Bailey's recent poem, "Festus:" Coleridge himself was perhaps thinking of Milton's repetition of " Death" in Par. Lost, ii. 787-789; while Milton evidently echoed Virgil's "Insonuere cavae, gemitumque dedere cavernae,”-Æn. ii. 53; and possibly also Virgil's "Eurydice," Georg. iv. 525, and "Hytas," Ecl. vi. 44.See Newton's note on Milton. It is interesting to observe the bee-like manner, to take Mr Gilman's simile in defending Coleridge, in which poets elaborate honey from the flowers of their predecessors. Compare the spirit of the Hymn with that of Shelley. 3 The structure of this Hymn is extremely noble; it commences and concludes with the idea of the mount in its one-ness, while the mind is allowed in the intervening strains to mingle with the individualities of its scenery; it constitutes a picture as unique in its grandeur as any that poetry presents. In relation to Coleridge's mind, the Hymn may be compared with "Love" (Genevieve), and the "Address to Wordsworth" in the Sybilline Leaves. The three poems seem to exhibit a modus of the development of his poetical faculty towards three classes of objects, those of Nature, of Passion, and of Intellect. ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL. D. (1774-1843.) INTIMATELY associated with the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge is that of the late laureate, Robert Southey, the brother-in-law of the latter poet. He was the son of a linen-draper in Bristol: though intended for the Church, he disqualified himself for the honours of Oxford by the adoption, like Coleridge, of Socinian opinions. With Coleridge he became acquainted in 1794, and, warmly sympathizing with his political and religious opinions, Southey entered into the pantisocratic scheme to which we have alluded in Coleridge's life. The drama, " Wat Tyler," and his epic," Joan of Arc," prove the fervour of the young poet's enthusiasm in the Jacobinical notions, which he lived with equal fervency to execrate. The marriages of himself and Coleridge to sisters put an end, as has been mentioned, to the dream of pantisocracy; and, after a residence for some time at Lisbon, a short studentship of law in London, and a brief period of secretaryship to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, he settled ultimately on the banks of the Greta near Keswick. From this period his life was one round of incessant study and voluminous authorship; his library was the world in which he lived and moved. Like Sir Walter Scott, he seems to have worn out, by over-demand on their activity, the material organs which are the mind's instruments of thought: the last years of his life were spent in utter extinction of intellect, and death, in 1843, mercifully relieved his friends from the painful spectacle. Southey shipwrecked his poetry on his scholarship: he used too much the "spectacles of books;" the gilding and regilding of his eloquence fatigues with its splendour: his greater poems have no relief; the mouth of his reader's mind is perpetually crammed to choking his words frequently serve rather as a splendid case for a little thought, than as a crystal lantern to transmit the intellectual light in the tempered harmony of its outline. His eloquence lies too often in the rhetoric of the words merely any reader will be sensible of this who compares Campbell's "Dirge of Wallace" with Southey's verses on a similar subject. His characters have not sufficiently distinctive features. In "Madoc," except by names, the hearer could not distinguish Welshmen from Americans; or, in "Roderic," Moors from Spaniards. Notwithstanding these defects, the intellectual wealth of Southey's mind, his graceful skill in gorgeous ornament, the purity of his English style, and his sympathy with all that is noble and virtuous in history and humanity, render him a poet of great practical use to the student. His aims were too wide, and his grasp of subject too universal: his idea, for instance, of a series of poems illustrative of the superstitions of all nations, of which Thalaba and Kehama are examples, was evidently, for perfection of poetic result, beyond the faculty of any one mind. His smaller pieces-as, "Mary the Maid of the Inn," "The Holly Tree," &c.-display all the graces of simple and genuine poetry. Their popularity should have taught the author a lesson in his art: it is only among those whose attainments enable them to appreciate him, that Southey, so far as regards the mass of his poetry, will probably be a favourite. : 1 After the loss of his first wife (Edith), Southey married, in 1839, Miss Caroline Bowles, a kindred spirit in poetry. He left four children, and a fortune of L.12,000. The poet's eminence, industry, and loyalty were rewarded in 1813 with the laureateship. His Jacobinism and Socinianism were, like the similar principles of Coleridge, thrown aside with his youth. He received his doctor's degree from Oxford University in 1821. He judiciously refused the offer of a baronetcy. Dr Southey's more important works are, "Thalaba," a tale of Arabian demonology; "Madoc," an epic founded on a tradition of the discovery of America by a Welsh prince; "The Curse of Kehama," a tale of Indian superstition, adorned with incalculable gorgeousness of imagery and learning; a multitude of ballads, sonnets, odes, &c. His prose works are esteemed for beauty of style and picturesqueness of narrative. They consist of histories, biographies, translations, &c. The copiousness of his mind seemed inexhaustible; he is said to have destroyed more than he ever published. THE HOLLY TREE. Oh Reader! hast thou ever stood to see The eye that contemplates it well perceives Order'd by an Intelligence so wise, As might confound the Atheist's sophistries. 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 emblems see, Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear To those, who on my leisure would intrude, Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be And as when all the summer trees are seen The Holly leaves a sober hue display Less bright than they; But, when the bare and wint'ry woods we see, So serious should my youth appear among So would I seem amid the young and gay That in my age as cheerful I might be แ FROM THE ECLOGUE, THE ALDERMAN'S FUNERAL." This man of half a million Had all these public virtues which you praise: To that hard face. Yet he was always found His alms were money put to interest Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer Who should lament for him, Sir, in whose heart His Pater-noster, and his Decalogue. When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed The open air and sunshine of the fields, To give his blood its natural spring and play, He, in a close and dusky counting-house, Smoke-dried, and sear'd, and shrivell'd up his heart. |