Sydney Dobell.

Not that our sires did love in years gone by,
When all the Pilgrim fathers were little sons
In merrie homes of Englande? Back, and see
Thy satchelled ancestor! Behold, he runs

To mine, and clasped, they tread the equal lea
To the same village-school, where side by side
They spell "Our Father." Hard by, the twin-pride
Of that gray hall whose ancient oriel gleams
Thro' yon baronial pines, with looks of light
Our sister-mothers sit beneath one tree.
Meanwhile our Shakespeare wanders past and dreams
His Helena and Hermia. Shall we fight?'

"Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! Oh ye
Who north or south, on east or western land,
Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth,
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God
For God; Oh ye who in eternal youth
Speak with a living and creative flood
This universal English, and do stand

Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand
Heroic utterance-parted, yet a whole,
Far, yet unsevered,-children brave and free
Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be
Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare's soul,

Sublime as Milton's unmemorial theme,

And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream.'

307

The latter half of this last sonnet recalls, and is a weak echo of that grand sonnet of Wordsworth, in which occur the lines

“We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold

That Milton held.'

None of Poe's sonnets are specially noteworthy. Here is one,

'To Silence,' which is as characteristic of his manner as any of the few that he has left:

"There are some qualities—some incorporate things,

That have a double life, which thus is made

A type of that twin entity which springs

From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a two-fold Silence-sea and shore-

Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,

Render him terrorless: his name 's "No More."
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)

Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!"

“Professor,” I said, "I have here a sonnet by Oliver Wendell Holmes, on 'Joseph Warren,' which I admire greatly for its earnestness of tone, and for the graceful ingenuity of its. double tribute to the hero-patriot and to the healing art, of which both the poet and patriot were devotees.”

"Read it, my lad, read it," he exclaimed. "I remember it well, and like its poetry and its patriotism."

"I wish the ‘Autocrat' were here in person, with his genial presence and no less genial voice, to read it for us in his own genial fashion. Perhaps, if you close your eyes, you may fancy it to be so while I read:

"Trained in the holy art whose lifted shield
Wards off the darts a never-slumbering foe,
By hearth and wayside lurking, waits to throw,
Oppression taught his helpful arm to wield

Holmes and Turner.

The slayer's weapon; on the murderous field
The fiery bolt he challenged laid him low,
Seeking its noblest victim. Even so

The charter of a nation must be sealed!
The healer's brow the healer's honor crowned,
From lowliest duty, called to loftiest deed;
Living, the oak-leaf wreath his temples bound,
Dying, the conqueror's laurel was his meed,
Last on the broken rampart's turf to bleed

Where Freedom's victory in defeat was found.'"

309

"My budget is far from being exhausted," resumed the Professor, when I had ceased; "but, unfortunately, it is otherwise with the day. We have yet time, however, for a fine sonnet, entitled 'The Sea Shell and the Sonneteer,' by Charles Tennyson Turner, a half-brother, I believe, of the Laureate. It is an exquisite specimen of true art:

"Fair Ocean-shell! The poet's art is weak

To utter all thy rich variety;

How thou dost shame him, when he tries to speak,

And tell his ear the rapture of his eye!

I can not paint, as very truth requires,

The gold-green gleam that o'er thy surface rolls,
Nor follow up with words thy flying fires,

Where'er the startled rose-light wakes and moves;
O! why perplex with all thy countless hues,
The single-hearted sonnet? Fare thee well!

I give thee up to some gay lyric muse,

As fitful as thyself, thy tale to tell;
The simple sonnet can not do thee right,

Nor fuse in one bright thought thy many modes of light.""

As the Professor closed the last long resounding line of this beautiful sonnet, the stars were coming out silently, one by one, in the slowly darkening sky, first and brightest of them,

"in the painted oriel of the West," being the Star of Evening. When the brilliant planet caught his eye, he exclaimed, in a transport of rapturous delight:

"How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:

How beautiful is night!'

"How beautiful, indeed," he went on, "and how full of mystery it must have seemed to Adam when it first fell on the earth, shutting out its beauty, but revealing to his wondering. gaze the hitherto unseen stars and all the shining frame of heaven. So thought Blanco White, when he wrote the sonnet which Leigh Hunt. tells us 'Coleridge pronounced to be the best in the English language,' and with whose hymn-like tones we will now bring our last afternoon with the poets to a fitting close:

"Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew

Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?

Yet, 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,

And, lo! creation widened in Man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
While fly, and leaf, and insect lay revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ?'"

A.

Album, lines on the, by Charles Lamb, 242.

Album Sonnets, by Charles Lamb, 241, 242.

Aldrich, Thomas B., sonnet by, 303.

Alford, Henry, sonnet by, 305.

Allston, Washington, notice of early life of, 275; his literary companion-

ship with Coleridge, 275; sonnet by, to memory of Coleridge, 276.

Amatory sonnets and poetry by women, character of, 263–265.

Amoretti, Edmund Spenser's, 55.

Ancients, sonnet not known to, 12.

Apostolical and poetical succession, similarity between, 42.

Arcadia, the, Sir Philip Sidney's, 51..

Arnold, Matthew, sonnets by, 302.

Astrophel and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney's, 52.

B.

Barry Cornwall, see Procter.

Barton, Bernard, character of his poetry, 247; sonnets by, 248.

Basilicon Doron, the, purity of style of, 120-122.

Beaumont and Fletcher, 82.

Beaumont, Francis, character of his sonnets, 82.

Beaumont, Sir John, 85.

Bell-ringing, Ben Jonson's simile for, 9.

Blank Verse, the first English, 29; second English tragedy in, 44.

Boleyn, Anne, Sir Francis Wyatt's sonnet to, 28, 33.

Boleyn, George (Lord Rochford), 44.