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With the lines on Vallambrosa, as deeply though less painfully expressive of the same sympathies, we leave this writer.

VALLAMBROSA.

I.

Dim is the eye that never sees
A spirit in the pathless wood;
Dull is the ear that in the breeze
No magic hears, nor in the flood:
Oh! let not such ascend the hill,
Where holiest superstition still
Retains her ancient sway.
To me a cross all rudely made
Beneath the giant pine-tree's shade,
Most solemn words can say.

I cannot form my lips to sneer
At rites or abstinence severe,

Nor laugh at deeds of saintly men,

Who, far in some sequestered glen,
From noise, and sin, and wrath, and strife,
Passed a hermit's holy life.

To me the cave in which they slept,
The rock on which they sternly kept
Their vigils, has a power t' impart
Softened feelings to my heart.
Go, man of pride, philosopher,
Who trust to reason not to err,
Go! and view with scornful eye
These monuments of piety;
But leave me to my musings still,
On Vallambrosa's forest hill!

II.

Bright green lawns with wild flowers gay,
Songsters warbling on each spray;
While above the gloomy pines
Rise like guardians of the spot,
And below the burdened vines
Shadow many a humble cot;
Chapels perched on airy steep,
Sacred caves in legends blest,
Crosses hid in thickets deep,
Relics of some sainted guest,
All proclaim religion dwells
In Vallambrosa's pine-clad dells.
Here blest content, and peace of mind,
Cause each reverend face to smile,
And virtue here delights to find
Israelites that know no guile.

In this most gay and thoughtless land
Behold a meek unworldly band,
With ceaseless prayer and sacrifice,
And incense wreathing to the skies,
Doth intercession make.

And who shall say no blessings spring
To nobles, people, church, and king,
For these poor churchmen's sake?

Mr. Knyaston's is a very pretty little collection, combining qualities that rarely meet; domestic sources of interest, naturalness of sentiment, elegance of classical allusion, and an apparent thorough acquaintance with the poetry of kindred spirits of the present age; and all this clothed in numbers sweet and flowing. We find it difficult to quote, as the various pieces are so interwoven that there is something of style to be known before one can fully go along with any given passage. Perhaps, therefore, we are not doing full justice to the writer in presenting the following very affecting poem, without the whole of the previous one to which it alludes. One or two stanzas of the last mentioned, however, are all that we have room for.

After reading some Lines written by her, addressed to the Morning.
Nay, but this doth surpass belief!

My little Bess, what heavenly store
Of peace is thine, to soothe thy grief,

And make us love thee more?

What is it, then, to thee the world,
Enlivened by the wreath of dawn,

The flowers with dewdrops fresh impearled,
When May is on the lawn?

What if, before the gladsome light,

Fast flit sad darkness o'er the lea,

If morn be there, what makes the sight
To such, poor child, as thee?

Yet has her soul, unhelped by sense,
Drunk deep the spirit of the day;
Such charm has heavenly innocence

To scare all gloom away.

Said I not well, that "Nature's soul,

Received into thy mind at will,"

Though darkness held her stern control,

Might commune with thee still?

* St. John's Gospel in raised characters, for the use of the blind.

Had I been there, thou gifted child!

I should have deemed thee compassed round
By holy things, whose harpings wild

Pealed o'er that hallowed ground.

Who could have helped thy sightless mind
To that glad vision of the morn?

I'll never dream, dear girl, again,

That thou canst feel forlorn.

THOU, who hast taught man's soul to read
Sweet Nature's book, if sick with care;
To make our hearts her lessons heed,
When she invites to prayer;

THOU, who couldst find, in every field,
A voice which whispered heavenly peace;
Bless this Thy world, that it may yield
To her that glad release.

Oh! I could weep my soul away,
For very joy, thou saint-like child,
That this fair earth, in bright array,
Shows all to thee so mild!

Yea, I do weep, and with the dew
Of pearly tears, my prayers shall rise
For thee: they may prevail, who sue

To God with streaming eyes.

Perhaps the following, which is the second of two sonnets on "Marriage in Heaven," betrays a little too much of what we should call religious fiction, and a somewhat too earthly realization of the joys of heaven. It is of course to be understood only as contradicting the idea of an intellectual heaven. But one could wish "Paradise" had not been described exclusively as a lofty and ethereal sort of family reunion.

Eye hath not seen, ear heard, or heart conceived
What God has there prepared:-of saints above
We know but that they weep not, that they love.
Let others dream of wondrous lore achieved
By disembodied souls, as some believed,—
That is no heaven for me; this cannot move
My thoughts to sense of bliss. I yearn to prove
The purer joy, when those whom death has grieved
Shall part no more. I love to think of eyes
Which he hath dimmed serenely fixed on mine,
Loving, beloved them would I have to twine
My wreath, whom God hath taken to the skies-
Wife, brothers, kindred, friends. My Paradise

Is to be one with them,-with them to sing and shine.

The" Sacred Mountains and Waters versified" is an unpretending little volume, most diffidently put forth, which deserves a good word, not only because the tone is in correspondence with the sacredness of the subject, and the object of the publication is one of pure benevolence, but because some of the verses are really very good, and need no extrinsic recommendation. We have only room for the two following. The former of them

brings to our remembrance the invocation addressed to the "great father of waters," by "the daughter of his native king;" the writer of which, it has always struck us, did wrong to criticise so ill-naturedly Gray's address to "Father Thames:" though we might allow that the passage in Rasselas was the more consistent and beautiful of the two.

EUPHRATES.

Jeremiah li.

Speak, ancient river! tell the tale
Of thy primeval source,
What time sweet Eden's happy vale
Was bounded by thy course;

What time, with haughty impious rule,
Blaspheming monarchs sway'd
Where now the dragon and the owl

Their loathsome haunts have made.

Tell of proud reason's swift decay,
Of faith's meek triumphs tell;
The long-drawn chronicles display
Of all thou know'st so well.

And tell me how thine own proud tide
Still seeks the mighty sea:

So may my ransom'd spirit glide
To blest eternity.

SEA OF TIBERIAS.

Matthew xiv. 22-33.

"Could all the deeds thy waters knew
Be call'd by memory's art
Full to the wond'ring ear and view,
Home to the marv'lling heart;

Could yet the voice that calm'd thy wave
Again the blast arrest;

And the strong hand, outstretch'd to save,
Its pow'r divine attest;—

Think'st thou that ev'ry sinful doubt
To faith thou could'st submit,
Banish each graceless stubborn thought,
And all to Christ commit?

Let not such smooth deceit be thine,
But humbly, meekly own,

What wonders daily round thee shine,
Unheeded and unknown.

The peculiar interest of the Christian Ballads is, that they are as it were a birth-day address from our grandchildren across the Atlantic. They demonstrate forcibly the power of Catholic feeling to assimilate men's minds, however differently circumstanced, and to renew in a seemingly deteriorated offspring the paternal virtue. The United States have hitherto been looked on as scornfully as if the muse had not yet ventured across the gulf of waters, or had been banned from these otherwise all

hospitable shores. Undoubtedly it has appeared that their taste and ours do not quite agree, and the peculiar puritanic and democratic media through which the English mind has there been passed seem to have produced a certain strange variety from the parent stock. But already we see the church rising in that moral waste, and attuning men's hearts to love and reverence: even now we see it a refuge there, as here, from the storms of party, the asperities of schism, the deadness of the world, and the bleak desolation of unbelief. Thus does she triumph over the untowardness both of the natural and the moral clime, and find the coast peopled with her true children, ready everywhere to return her smiles, and sing her praises, and thankfully accept her teaching.

Pone me, pigris ubi nulla campis
Arbor æstivâ recreatur aurâ ;
Quod latus mundi nebulæ, malùsque
Jupiter urget;

Pone sub curru nimiùm propinqui
Solis, in terrâ domibus negatâ ;
Dulcè ridentem Lalagen amabo,
Dulcè loquentem.

We will not say that there is no Americanism in the style of the following ballads, as there is perhaps in the whole idea. But we are not disposed to help the reader to detect it.

One thing have I desired of the Lord, which I will require, even that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple.-Psalter.

1.

The first dear thing that ever I loved

Was a mother's gentle eye,

That smiled as I woke on the dreamy couch

That cra lled my infancy :

I never forgot the joyous thrill

That smile in my spirit stirred,

Nor how it could charm me against my will,
Till I laughed like a joyous bird.

II.

And the next fair thing that ever I loved
Was a bunch of summer flowers,
With odors, and hues, and loveliness,
Fresh as from Eden's bowers.

I never can find such hues agen,

Nor smell such a sweet perfume: And if there be odors as sweet as then, 'Tis I that have lost my bloom.

III.

And the next dear thing that ever I loved
Was a fawn-like little maid,

Half-pleased, half-awed by the frolic boy
That tortured her doll, and played:

I never can see the gossamere

Which rude rough zephyrs tease,
But I think how I tossed her flossy locks,
With my whirling bonnet's breeze.