alike of superabundant imagery and of harmonious verbosity, which has had the happiest results. She is one of the greatest sonnet writers in our language, worthy for this at all events to be ranked side by side with Milton and with Wordsworth. Our own generation is probably inclined to give the poetess less than her due, and for obvious reasons. The art of versemaking has been carried to a point of technical perfection that she hardly dreamt of, and her laxity offends. Moreover, her innocent and heartfelt enthusiasms fall a little dully on the ear of a perverse and critical generation. We should call her naive, almost silly, where she has merely been artless and confiding. Her enthusiasm for Bulwer Lytton's weaker work and the traces of his influence on her earlier poems we cannot easily away with. There are passages in Aurora Leigh, particularly the passages describing the bad people, which might make an unkindly critic describe the authoress as a hysterical school-girl; and indeed it would not be easy to confute the critic, except by putting passage against passage, and showing how, with her, a lapse is always followed by a rise. What valuable and original elements her thought possesses have for the most part been absorbed long ago, have become common property, and are no longer recognisable as hers. The great struggle for Italian unity has inspired some of her best verses, and that struggle has already become very much a matter of ancient history. Yet in spite of all deductions that can be made-deductions, be it remembered, which are sometimes to be counted against the reader, and only sometimes against the poetess-she remains an attractive and delightful personage, and she has stamped enough of herself upon her poetry to give it an enduring charm. Her deep tenderness and genuineness of feeling, showing themselves in such poems as the Cry of the Children or Cowper's Grave, will never fail of their rightful power. She has touched all the chief human relationships, that of friend and friend, that of husband and wife, that of mother and child, with an exquisite insight and sensitiveness and delicacy, and her style, when she touches them, attains almost always that noble and severe simplicity which is so greatly to be preferred to her most luscious and copious versification. She has added a charm to motherhood only less than that added by Raffaelle himself, and the pleasant fate will be hers of being faithfully read by many a generation of youthful lovers. WILLIAM T. ARNOLD. IRREPARABLENESS. I have been in the meadows all the day, When such do field-work on a morn of May. My heart is very tired, my strength is low, GRIEF. I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air Under the blanching vertical eye-glare Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe, SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. I thought once how Theocritus had sung To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: 'Guess now who holds thee?'—'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang-'Not Death, but Love.' IV. Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor, In folds of golden fulness at my door? VI. Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore,— With pulses that beat double. What I do XXVII. My own beloved, who hast lifted me From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown, A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully XXVIII. My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! XLIII. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.' Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street Like blind slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat By a single man, dust-white from head to heel, So swept, in mute significance of storm, The marshalled thousands; not an eye deflects Of Florence city adorned by architect And carver, or of Beauties live and warm Scared at the casements,-all, straightforward eyes |