To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees, To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells For summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Or, by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they? Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. TENNYSON. THE POET AND HIS POETRY. [ALFRED TENNYSON is the son of a clergyman residing in Lincolnshire; he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree. He has a brother, Charles, who has published a volume of graceful and beautiful "Sonnets;" and another brother, Frederick, is said to possess considerable poetical powers. He is of the school of Keats; that is to say, it is difficult not to see that Keats has been a great deal in his thoughts; and that he delights in the same brooding over his sensations, and the same melodious enjoyment of their expression. He is, also, a great lover of a certain homkind of landscape, which he delights to paint with affecting minuteness. His compositions are, undoubtedly, brilliant and beautiful: their merit is sufficient to justify the praise he has received; and it is only because he has afforded ample proof of his capacity to do better, that we lament he has not yet fulfilled the earliest promise of his genius.] EXTRACT FROM TENNYSON. MARIANA. With blackest moss the flower plots Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, "My life is dreary, She said, "I am aweary, aweary,- Her tears fell with the dews at even, Her tears fell ere the dews were dried! She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!" Upon the middle of the night, Waking, she heard the night fowl crow : The cock sung out an hour ere light; From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her without hope of change, : In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, She only said, "The day is dreary, About a stone-cast from the wall, A sluice with blackened waters slept, All silver green with gnarled bark, She only said, "My life is dreary, And ever when the moon was low, In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell, The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow. All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creaked; The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peered about. Old faces glimmered through the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!" The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The poplar made, did all confound CLARE. THE POET AND HIS POETRY. [JOHN CLARE, called the Northamptonshire Poet, was the son of a day labourer, and was born in the year 1793, and is self-educated in the truest sense of the word, not having been even taught to read, till by working overhours, he saved money enough to pay for a few weeks' schooling. From being at all times abroad with nature, he soon began to woo, and afterwards to worship her, and thus became a poet. For many years he made attempts in verse, and at last published a volume of poems, which passed through several editions. This has been followed by other volumes which have not detracted from the merit of their author. There is little to be said of the poetry of Clare, except that it is full of simplicity and an artless pathos, which steals upon the heart before the reader is aware, and melts him into tenderness and love. Like the soft sweet pipings of the redbreast, every note has a touching melancholy about it, and the poet is never so felicitous as when those chords are struck, which respond to the "sad sighings of the spirit." Few authors are more worthy of a sweet place in our remembrance than Clare; and we trust that the world will not suffer a pure and noble mind, to languish in the poverty which was his only birthright, nor to pass the evening of its decline, in the coldness of neglect, with the blight of misery on the silver hairs. There are many "Brother Poets," basking in the world's favour, and reaping not only golden opinions from all sorts of people, but golden rewards; the world may be cold and heartless, but Poets at least ought not to be so.] EXTRACTS FROM CLARE. THE QUIET MIND. Though low my lot, my wish is won, If I have foes, no foes I fear, And that's a quiet mind. |