Poems of the Fancy; Studies from Classical Statuary and Gothic Romance, &c. Many of them, from the apparent unintelligibility of their external shape, have been supposed to bear an esoteric meaning. The "Princess" especially, apparently a Gothic romance in a drawing-room dress, has been supposed to figure forth, not merely the position which women and their education hold in the scale of modern civilization, but to indicate also the results of modern science on the relations, affections, and employments of society. The verse of Mr Tennyson is a composite melody, it has great power and large compass; original, yet delightfully mingled with the notes of other poets. His mind is richly stored with objects which he invests sometimes with the sunny mists of Coleridge, sometimes with the amiable simplicity of Wordsworth, or the palpable distinctness of Hood. Mr Tennyson is the youngest of our "Sons of Song" whose name of late years has attracted conspicuously the public attention.

LOVE AND DEATH.

What time the mighty moon was gathering light,
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight:

"You must begone," said Death, "these walks are mine."
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans1 for flight;

Yet, ere he parted, said,—“ This hour is thine:

Thou art the shadow of life; and as the tree

Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,

So in the light of great eternity

Life eminent creates the shade of death;

The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,

But I shall reign for ever over all."

THE GOLDEN YEAR.

We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move;

The sun flies forward to his brother sun;

The dark earth follows, wheeled in her ellipse,
And human things returning on themselves,

Move onward, leading up the golden year.

Ah, though the times, when some new thought can bud, Are but as poets' seasons when they flower,

Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore

I Wings; so Milton has "sail-broad vans," Par. Lost, ü. 927: see the old form of the word, note 6, p. 38, supra.

Have ebb and flow conditioning their march,
And slow and sure comes up the golden year.

When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps,
But smit with freer light, shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man
Through all the season of the golden year.

Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?
If all the world were falcons, what of that?
The wonder of the eagle were the less,
But he not less the eagle. Happy days,
Roll onward, leading up the golden year!

Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the Press;
Fly, happy with the mission of the Cross:
Knit land to land, and blowing havenward
With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll,
Enrich the markets of the golden year.

But we grow old. Ah, when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Through all the circle of the golden year?

THE POET.

The Poet in golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,

The love of love.

He saw through life and death, through good and ill,

He saw through his own soul.

The marvel of the everlasting will,

An open scroll,

Before him lay: with echoing feet he threaded

The secret'st walks of fame :

The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed

And winged with flame,

Like Indian reeds blown1 from his silver tongue,

And of so fierce a flight,

From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung,

Filling with light

Any work on the Indian Archipelago-Keppel's Expedition to Borneo, for examplewill give an account of the Indian practice of shooting game by blowing poisoned arrows through a tube.-Calpe, see note 1, p. 422.

u u

And vagrant melodies the winds which bore
Them earthward till they lit;

Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower,
The fruitful wit,

Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew,
Where'er they fell, behold,

Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew
A flower all gold,

And bravely furnished all abroad to fling
The wingéd shafts of truth,

To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring
Of Hope and Youth.

So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,
Though one did fling the fire;

Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams
Of high desire.

Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world
Like one great garden show'd,

And through the wreaths of floating dark upcurl'd,
Rare sunrise flowed.

And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise

Her beautiful bold brow,

When rites and forms before his burning eyes
Melted like snow.

There was no blood upon her maiden robes,
Sunn'd by those orient skies;

But round about the circles of the globes
Of her keen eyes,

And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame
WISDOM! a name to shake

All evil dreams of power-a sacred name;
And when she spake,

Her words that gather thunder as they ran,
And as the lightning to the thunder
Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
Making earth wonder,

So was their meaning to her words. No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirled,

But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word
She shook the world.

CHARLES LAMB.

(1775-1834.)

FEW men have been more beloved amidst their sphere of friends, and consequently more lamented in removal, than Charles Lamb. Full of quaint humour and practical kindliness of heart, and characterised by every attractive peculiarity of temperament and disposition, he was formed to be the pet of friendship. Born in comparatively humble circumstances, and educated in Christ Church, he was destined for the ecclesiastical profession; an impediment in his speech precluded this prospect, and his life was devoted to the desk of a clerk in the India House. His affectionate care of his sister, to one of whose fits of insanity her mother had fallen a victim, forms the most beautiful trait in Lamb's character. He has the feelings rather than the formal accomplishments of a poet; and he had dived with true relish into the spirit and essence of the elder English writers. He was the dearest friend of his school-fellow, Coleridge, whose genius he almost idolised, and whose reputation in the criticism of early English literature he shares. Lamb's most popular works are his charming essays under the whimsical signature of Elia; his selections from the early dramatists; and the tales compiled by himself and his sister from Shakspeare's plays.

OLD FAMILIAR FACES.

I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man ;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly ;—
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood;
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother
Why wert not thon born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces ;-

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces,

THE SABBATH BELLS.

The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one who, from the far-off hills, proclaims
Tidings of good to Zion: chiefly when

Their piercing tones fall sudden on the ear
Of the contemplant solitary man,

Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure
Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft,
And oft again, hard matter, which eludes
And baffles his pursuit,-thought-sick
Of controversy, where no end appears,
No clue to his research, the lonely man
Half wishes for society again.

and tired

Him, thus engaged, the Sabbath bells salute,
Sudden! his heart awakes, his ears drink in
The cheering music; his relenting soul
Yearns after all the joys of social life,
And softens with the love of human kind.

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON. (L. E. L.)

(1802-1838.)

PREVIOULSY to the year 1824, when her "Improvisatrice" appeared, Miss Landon, under the signature L. E. L. had acquired considerable celebrity by her fugitive pieces in the Literary Gazette. Between 1825 and 1829, her "Troubadour," " Golden Violet,” and “Venetian Bracelet," contributed to enhance her reputation; and during these and the subsequent years she produced several novels, and multitudes of contributions in prose and verse to the annuals and other periodicals. In 1838 she married Mr George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle, in Guinea. Shortly after her arrival in Africa. in the midst of apparent prospects of domestic happiness and increased literary activity, she was found dead in her room, having, it was supposed, swallowed poison in mistake for a medicine for the cure of a spasmodic affeetion. Her tragical fate excited universal commiseration and regret, as her name stood among the first of the literary reputations of the period. Miss Landon's poetry, melancholy, delicate, sentimental, meditative, and passionate, has been remarked to have been in singular contrast with the external manners of its authoress, which wore so lively, buoyant, and unconstrained a character, setting at nought many of the small conventional decorums of society, as to subject her name to cruel and unjust calumny. Her poetry, though much of it is cast in the elegant and dreamy sphere of sentiment, the taste for which is rapidly passing away before a more solid and practical style of poetical thinking, is still popular. Her writing was advancing in the more valuable qualities of composition, when her genius was so suddenly quenched. Miss Landon was the daughter of an army agent in London; losing her father in early life, her generous kindness devoted much of the emoluments of her pen to the support of her relatives.