FRAGMENTS.

FROM PLATO.

LOOKEST thou on the stars of heaven?
That heaven were it mine to be,
With all the myriad eyes of heaven
Would I look down on thee!

PLATONIC LOVE.

In this sweet creed, no longer wild
Is Love, nor like a wilful child :
Him Psyche weds; he takes his seat
Among the gods, and soars above
All fickle passion, and the sweet
Folly of beauty-seeking love,

Whose brief excitement soon gone,
And yields to hate, disgust, and scorn.

GOETHE'S "TASSO."

Youth is a tender flower,

And love its bloom; and he is blest Who sees its growth calm hour by hour, Then plucks, and wears it in his breast.

PINDAR.

"A MOTTO."

FROM "FAUST."

LIKE a star, without haste,

Like a star, without rest,

Let each be fulfilling

The God-given hest.

LAST SONG.

"O MUSE," I murmured with a sigh,
"My farewell song I sing;
To meet contempt in every eye,-
It is a bitter thing.

Better to let all music die,

Than lone and thankless sing!

"Cease your impertinent strains," men say, "That meddle with our life; Your dreams that you as laws would lay On man, are danger rife."

One only praises,-loves my lay,

That one, my gentle wife.

Without the thanks of flowers, no stream
Would care to glide along;
Vain is the friendly guiding gleam

To him who deems it wrong!
And thankless songs so thankless are,—
So take my latest song.

I thought that I was free once more
From song and singer's care;
But nature's sweet ineffable lore
Will come along the air,

Which I must coin in poems, nor

Refuse the office fair.

The voices of all beautiful things -
Still tell their secresies ;
And musics, with their airy rings,
Bind up hearts' sympathies;
Sacrednesses, with snowy wings,
Still shine before my eyes.

If I keep silence, I must die;
Poet, who liveth, sings;

Yet men's cold blame, my own heart's sigh,
My singing surely brings :
Flee to the singing land would I ;

But, ah! I have no wings.

DURING A STORM.*

O GOD, I hear Thee. All the world is mute,
Listening to Thy great sermon. Some in fears,
Of their weak pleasures and their idle years
Ashamed, Thou dost so awfully refute
Their vain imaginations. But no lute
Could breathe a sweeter music in their ears,-
A music winning them to gentle tears—

Who know that men can bring on them but brute
Terrors and pains; having no fear of Thee,
Who alone wieldest might invincible,

Because Thou lovest them; although they fall,
And faint, being very weak; since Thou dost see
Flesh is not spirit. Therefore trustfully
They look toward death, and venturing, win all.

* Written May 29th, 1859, a few days before the author's death.

MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

(PUBLISHED IN THE "CAMB. TERMINAL MAGAZINE," APRIL, 1859.)

In the literature of most nations there is something distinctive, but this is scarcely the case with regard to America. At the American Revolution, English literature, which had erst flowed in an unbroken stream, broke into a double one, flowing on each side of the Atlantic. The distinctive characteristics are the same. The genius of Shakspeare and Milton, the works of all our great writers, belong to our transatlantic brothers, and mould their thought and style.

American literature is yet to be. A literature vast, strong, somewhat rugged, in consonance with the genius of the country, one would fancy it; a literature that will not concern itself with the dead past, but find its materials in the present. One American writer has indeed ventured to say,—

"The world has lost its dewy prime;

Alas, the golden age is dead,

And we are of the iron time."

Very different is the creed of the true poet. He knows that, as Carlyle says,

"Poetry must dwell in reality, and become manifest to men in the forms among which they live and move.'

And Schiller shows us how the true poet takes the matter of his works from the present. The poet's sub

ject is his age, not some imaginary, fairy-like age, far away, beautiful, but dim in the haze of tradition. It is not his highest work to picture some ideal world, peopled by his sweet fancies, but out of this real world of ours to gather the beautiful and the true; for our age is lovely, and the true poet will see beauty in our manufactories, our mighty ships, our world-wide enterprizes, our monster meetings, our London strife, our science with its grand research; aye, even in the gaunt telegraph posts along our roads, albeit they spoil the landscape somewhat. The poet's materials are crowding round him; he sees that the ideal is in the actual, as the soul in the body; and that ideal too, which chiefly concerns him, which if he be unable to discern, he is a pretender, and no poet.

Poets are representative they speak for us; let them then speak of the things which belong to, which interest and influence us. Our own age must be nearer and dearer to us than any past time, being the nurse of our powers, and the sphere of our duties. The past forms the foundation whereon we build somewhat for the superstructure of the future; our work lying in the present, aided by the experience of the time gone by, and cheered by the anticipation and hope of the time to come. Our own is our golden age. We are not to depreciate antiquity; it were folly and shame so to do, when those men over whose dust we walk daily have all contributed something to advance our estate; when every past century did some work which becomes a blessing to this. Nor, on the other hand, must we deny the glory of the times not to be seen by us; but we must recognise that this age demands our chief care, our chief love and reverence; that there is a halo of glory around it, a world of beauty within it. Assuredly the critic will not blame the poet for singing of the past. We are glad to learn aught concerning those who have prepared for us, and whose glories we have inherited; and so great