"They cannot take my nights!" he exclaimed, with the poet of Clifton Grove; and, to what he deemed no perishable record, he consigned the operations of his labouring intellect. Now might you note his aspect brighten as if with hope,-then the travail, as of a thunder cloud, gloomed his brow,-then at once it cleared away, and his forehead dilated as if with triumph. The labour and the travail of genius were in these mutations. The mysterious and still horror of inspiration was upon him. He had called up to himself a preternatural power in his own spirit, which assumed a portion of the plastic attribute of deity, and emancipated him for the moment from his prison-house of clay. Ye may call it phrenzy,—well, "Great wits to madness ever are allied." This delphic fury,-this preternatural possession-phrenzy, is necessary to the constitution of the true poet. Then he took up a strain of disdainful triumph, and exclaimed that he wanted not the ease of the Poet of Thalaba, or of the Excursion. Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, the poet was only man, nor born to more. Still his joys were more than other men's, and to experience these, the sorrows might well be borne. "Who would not, for the joys to thee belong, -How that the world had brought its tempest forth, To its vile level: and, when I have heard E'en envied them their woes, and with wild zeal And charm me from my fate with its sweet tone ;- Frustrate the storm shall drive along the plain, These lines were balm to him,-there was comfort in their very echo. "They came from the heart," he said, "and therefore go to mine." "Alas! Despair and genius are too oft connected:" and this was the exultation of despair. But when things come to the worst they must change, is a Spanish proverb; and nothing is more true than that hope is so constant a companion of the human breast, springing eternal there, as Pope hath it, that it over-aboundeth in despair, like a fountain in a desart. In the desart a fountain is springing, Despair hath most of hope,-for it hath all to hope, and nothing to fear. Thus it was with him. There was an energy in his spirit, which, though it looked in vain for "green spots in memory's waste," and sighed for recollections of verdant fields and mountain scenery, that the eye of the mind had only contemplated, and the eye of the flesh been a stranger to, sustained him still. Hope was triumphant. This energy, this hope, he was expending on the composition of a tragedy. "With fixed gaze He marks the rising phantoms, now compares Their different forms, now blends them, now divides, Opposes, ranges in fantastic bands, And infinitely varies: hither now, Now thither, fluctuates his inconstant aim, With endless choice perplexed. At length, his plan Begins to open, lucid order dawns; And as from Chaos old the jarring seeds The fairer eminent in light advance, Not long after, he presented his dramatic first fruit to Old Drury. The great lessee returned it with a printed circular, declining its acceptance; thus, with the insolence of authority, anticipating his return to the vulgar crowd whence he had dared for a fond moment to emerge. He had no fields to roam in, whose verdure might soothe the frantic eye of disappointment with cool refreshment; no uninterrupted expanse of the blue heaven bending over all alike, and therefore over him, with undiminished serenity, equal in the distribution of its beauty and love, though man be partial and the world forget. He might not lie at noon "by the forest's edge." "Beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt The witchery of the soft blue sky!" No more-Verily the poet of Cockaigne is a hapless wight. Verily to him the CONDITION OF HAPPINESS is denied—if it consists, as Madame De Stael states, in the CORRESPONDENCE OF DISPOSITION WITH DESTINY-wholly denied. In him extremes meet-Disposition and destiny the most opposite. Wherefore wonder ye, that he cometh forth in the morning pale-emaciated-dejected-torpid? And is there none "To lead him up the hill of fame, And twine the laurels round his humble name?" None-the great and the wealthy have not the genius to feel for the situation of such an one—and Genius is afraid of a rival. ་་་་་་་་་་་་་་འ SONNET. SEVERN! down the fresh waves of thy smooth stream, To a most musical and gentle swell, In multitudinous unity, his soul Numbering a thought for each ?-Thou hast a spell! H. That day's celebration When (bridegrooms) think, or Phoebus' steeds are foundered, "Or night kept chained below." "Blood into the banquet"— SHAKESPEARE. BEN JONSON. I. WELL-SAID the Muse that pensive memory The past was pleasant, and the present is will Thee first she sung, Aristes-thou, whose mind Takes in the family of human kind! Thou art all things to all men they may need, Though less perchance than one debauch had spent; E'er knew that stream one barrier of control? What heaven beyond his simple want supplied? Wondered not Pride to see such frugal store, A heart, which shall all other's sorrows feel, Jove hath no more,-and thine, beloved, is this. For deep in earth, unseen by mortal eyes, Such of Aristes' blest nativity, The edict was-ethereal harmony Whose love should bless him, and bless him alone. II. What was the promise of that golden day, Which seemed as tho' it never would decay, And night were foundered in delay below, Though pleasure swayed the hour, and joy was on tip-toe, And all was smiles and happiness, as much as earth can know! And now this morn returns that happy day, Devoted to be festive, blithe, and gay; |