Her colour comes and goes, like that faint ray,
That flits o'er lilies at the close of day.
O, nature, how omnipotent!-that sigh-
That youthful mother, in her ecstasy,
Feels but the wandering of a husband's eye.
Her lip now ripens, and her heaving breast
Throbs wildly in its light, and now subsides to rest.'

'Come, Glory, come! Let's chant the soldier's dirge;
Step from thy thrones, and from thy clouds emerge!
Bring thy black cypress clotted in the shade;
Of weeping-willow let a wreath be made,
To crown the warrior-brow, that lately sought
Thy battle-laurel; him who lately fought
Reddest and fiercest, where the war-god sung;
Where the loud death-sobs came, and faichions rung;
Twine him a heavy garland! steep it well;
And mutter o'er its gloom thy darkest spell;
With broken heart-strings, be it,twisted round;
Tread it in wrath upon the soaking ground;
And where the stagnant bloou lies deepest, there
Complete thy curse-the chaplet of despair!
Call back his spirit from the eternal bar;
Show him that clotted foliage-talk of war;
Wake thy swift bugle, let it sing away
Freshly and clear, like clarion of the day!
Loosen thy banners on the mountain winds!
Call up thy thunders!-while thy hot hand binds,
That wreath around his mad, consuming brain-
Tell him 'tis his reward!-will he complain
Of wasted life-of bloody hand arrayed

In sacrifice for thee?-when blade met blade;
And man met man, and like the desert beast,

That bleeds and battles 'till his breath has ceased;

Toiled dark upon the mount to spread the vulture's feast.'

6

A shorter poem entitled 'Goldau, or the Maniac Harper,' comprised in the same volume, although the author deems so slightly of it as to place it undistinguished among the other pɔems,' is, we think, a very superior production to the preceding one. The village of Goldau in Switzerland, was destroyed by the sudden fall of part of mount Rosburg, in 1806. This incident Mr. Neal has made the ground work of his poem-and his Maniac Harper' is a youth whom he supposes to have lost all the objects of his affections in that calamity. The idea is a good one, and is very well managed-it only needs the exercise of that last and hardest art, the art to blot' to render it a very beautiful poem. The opening is thus:

"Upon a tranquil-glorious night,

When all the western heaven was bright;
When, thronging down the far blue dome,
The sun in rolling clouds went home;-
There wandered to a goatherd's cot,
A youth, who sought to be forgot;
Who many a long and weary year

Had breath'd his prayer and shed his tear.

Beneath his look of cloud was seen,

Somewhat, that told where fire had been;

For yet, a sorrowing beam was there;
A beam-in mockery of despair;
A beam that gave enough of light
To show his soul had set in night.
His step was slow-his form was bowed;
But yet his minstrel air was proud;
Upon the mountain height he stood,
And looked abroad o'er wave and wood
Yet glowing with the blush of even,
And answering to the hues of heaven,
With such a melancholy grace,
He seemed as thus he stood alone,
Like some young prince upon his throne-
The genius of the lofty place!'

'And this would be while yet the fire
Enkindled by that wondrous lyre,
Was quivering on his downcast lash,
Just like the dying tempest flash!
And those who felt their bosoms swell
Beneath the working of his spell:
Who felt that young enchanter's might,
Whose incantations woke the fight,

And taught to peasant hearts the feeling
That mounts to hear the trumpet pealing,
Then-deemed the youthful minstrel there,
Familiar with the strife had been;

And that his sad, appealing air

His darkened brow-his bosom bare-
His haughty port of calm despair-
Enthusiasm-genius were-

And never but in warriors seen!

'But those who knew him, knew full well

That something terrible once fell

Upon his heart, and froze the source,
Whence comes enthusiasm's force-

Something of icy touch that chills

The heart-drops of our youthful years; Something of withering strength that kills The flowers that Genius wets with tears Fetters the fountain in its flow;

Mildews the blossom in its blow;

And breathes o'er Fancy's budding wreath
The clotting damps of early death;
That spreads before the opening light-
(The sunshine of the heart!)

A cloud that tells of coming night,
And chills the warblers in their fight,
That twinkling gayly to the skies,
With piping throats and diamond eyes,
In unfledged strength depart.'

'The sunset was his favourite hour; His eye would light-his form would tower; And kindle at departing day,

As if its last, and loveliest ray

Would win his very soul away;

And there were those, who, when he stood, Sublime in airy solitude,

Upon his mountain's topmost height,

With arms outstretch'd, to meet the light

With form bowed down, as if it were
In worship to the fiery air;

Who had he been from eastern climes,
From sunnier hills-in earlier times-
When thus he bowed him to the sky-
Had charged him with idolatry;

For when he bowed he bowed in truth;
His adoration was the thought,

And worship, that from heaven is caught
When genius blossoms in its youth.
"'Twas feeling all, and generous love
The reaching of the soul above;—
The intellectual homage pure,
That is sincere, and wili endure:
It was the offering of the heart,
The soul-and pulse-and every part,
That's noble in our frames, or given
To throb for suns, or stars, or heaven;
The spirit that is made of flame,
For ever mounting whence it came;
The pulse that counts the march of time,
Impatient for the call sublime,
When it may spring abroad-away-
And beat the march of endless day-
The heart, that by itself is nurst,

And heaves, and swells, 'till it hath burst;
That never yields-and ne'er complains
And dies-but to conceal its pains,

And the bright, flashing, glorious eye
For ever open on the sky,

As if in that stupendous swell

It sought a spot, where he might dwell,
And pant for immortality.'

We take leave for the present of these American bards, from all of whom we shall be glad to hear again. Let them proceedwith a just confidence in their own powers, joined with a conviction of the indispensable necessity of industry and a free application of the 'limæ labor'-indispensable to the greatest minds as well as to the least-and they cannot fail to add nobly to their own reputation and that of their country.

ART. VI.-Milton and Homer contrasted and compared. POETRY is the most antient of the fine arts. For, it preceded statuary, architecture and eloquence. It is the best of the fine arts; for, painting illustrates its scenes; sculpture immortalises its heroes; and music is only its hand maid, although she sometimes appears more beautiful than her mistress.

Poetry is the rarest of the fine arts. Is not the art rare, which touches with propriety and power, every feeling of the soul, agitates our bosoms with fear and hope, keeps the imagination glowing, and the soul expanding? Yet this is poetry. The true poet carries in his bosom, a lyre, strung with each of the passions; which he can tune to the treble of hope or the bass of despair.

Upon his harp play fancy and reason. We all carry within us this lyre, differently strung. In some it responds the sweet notes of joy; in others the dull tones of fear. But in one breast, fancy will usurp all the strings, and reason bind the fingers of fancy in another. Favoured must he be, the wildness of whose fancy is curbed by the sobriety of reason, and whose torpid reason is aided by the liveliness of fancy. Happy country, which produces one such man. Fortunate Greece, where Homer was born, and envied England, the birth place of Milton.

The lives of Milton and Homer present some points of analogy, and others of contrast. Both were poets in youth. Both were travellers, both were musicians, and both were blind. Both possessed a diamond genius, and both were men of erudition. For Homer early drank of the wells of Greece and of Egypt, and Milton exhausted the springs of the South, the East, and the North.But Homer was never enriched by the poems of Milton, while Milton could repeat the Iliad.-Milton, with difficulty sold his immortal poem, the labor of ten years, for five pounds; while Homer sung his rhapsodies, accompanied by the harp, to admiring circles, whose warm applauses afforded a sweet foretaste of future fame.

Of the productions of mind the Epic Poem stands preeminent, because it requires the union of those streams of Genius, which flow in every other channel of literature. Homer and Milton probably first formed the narration of their poems. This, critics have said, should be one, whole, great.

The narration of the Iliad is one; it sings the wrath of Achilles. That of Paradise Lost is one; for it pictures the effects of man's disobedience.-Each fable is a whole. The one begins with the retirement of Achilles; its intermediate part relates the subsequent ill-success of the Greeks, and it concludes with the capture of Troy.--The other commences with the lapse of the angels, which draws on the middle part, Adam's fall; and this leads to the conclusion, his expulsion from Eden. The story of each poem is great. All nations, when Homer wrote, were well acquainted with the ten years' siege of Troy. The first song of the nurse to her babe was the song of Troy. The first story told the warlike boy, was the wrath of Achilles; and the last recollections of the silvered head hovered round the plains of Ilium.

Was the narration Homer selected great? What will you call that of Paradise Lost, which relates the expulsion of one third of heaven, the ruin of earth, and the peopling of the infernal regions? Its foundations are, literally, laid in hell. Its superstructure rises through and above the earth; and, as it describes man's exaltation to a celestial paradise, its dome is in Heaven.

Paradise

After the story the machinery arrests our thoughts. In the Iliad, the gods and goddesses of Elysium, the guardians of the earth, with heroes and heroines compose the personages. But how do the Dianas and Pans of the forest, the fawns and dryads of the groves, diminish and disappear before that Being, who

with the majesty of darkness round,

Covers his throne.'

Diomede, that war-comet, is not more portentous in counsel than he, who, rather than

'Be less than God cared not to be at all.'

And the dews of persuasion, distilled from Nestor's tongue, are not sweeter than the honey of eloquence, that dropped from the lips of Belial.

Over both poems, moral and religious instructions are scattered; and episodes, imagery, similes and descriptions checker them with diversity.

The moral of Homer is political; that of Milton religious; the former demonstrates the folly of earthly princes; the latter the goodness of the prince of all.

The verse of each is heroic, and if the Ionic numbers of Homer are harmony, the Iambic diction of Milton is melody.

In contrasting the epithets of Homer and Milton, we may observe Homer has fewer sentimental than descriptive epithets. If he speaks of Juno, you hear of her white arms; Helen is only a black-eyed damsel, and Bryseis a rosy-cheeked nymph. But Milton annexes to his substantives, a weighty adjunct. Thus you read of 'darkness palpable'—' missive ruin- damp horror'—which are not only living but winged words.

Contrast their heroes' speeches. The second book of Milton, which opens with a debate, in the regions below, affords specimens of eloquence. In Moloch,

'Whose sentence was for open war,'

you discover an inventive imagination and plausible reasoning. On the other hand, Agamemnon loads with indifference a hero, or an army with irritating reproaches; and Homer suddenly checks his captains in battle, that they may pronounce orations, graced with all the beauties of style, and studded with the gems of rhetoric: while Belial, in the debate of Pandemonium,

'Than whom, a fairer spirit lost not Heaven,'

interweaves philosophy and ethics in his peaceful address; and is at once so beautiful and sublime, you start to think of such eloquence in hell.

Figures are the loopholes, through which we see nature. They are the windows of a literary edifice. Both these poems are spangled with metaphors and images; but Milton does not abound with such clusters of similes as Homer. Hence the one was more the child of nature; the other of art. In Homer's personification, Chimæra is a compound monster, breathing flames of sulphur; but one of Milton's porters at Hell-gate, is a

an image, as Shakspeare's are, 'come, hot from hell.' Both however seem to use comparisons and similes, with all the figures of