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But it was an atmosphere akin to the sun-bright radiance of a prophet's brow, in which he was " hidden;" and the vision of bat-eyed, oblivious dreamers has shrunk before it, because it was of a "Light diviner than the common sun." Such, "muling" in their dull infanticide of thought, have been venomous as they knew how to be in denouncing him as "a cold, incomprehensible Idealist!" Miss Barrett, in her magnificent " Vision of the Poets," has been most shamefully disloyal to the glorious apprehensions in herself, when amidst such "goodlie companie," she dismissed this poet down the ages, on the attenuated echo of this vulgar lie:

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is a falsehood base enough to be Democratic. The "white wings" she prayed might sprout upon the shoulders of George Sand, were singularly unfaithful to her own strong aspirations for the eternally True, at this particular juncture.

A cruel and unrighteous falsehood with regard to that heroic man has been conveyed by her in this characterization. Its meaning, as a Poetical image, most significantly and effectually shuts him out from the whole region of human sympathies. This is the very error in which the mobocracy of mind has persisted with regard to him, and to find a genius possessed of such remarkable prowess as her's has given abundant evidences of, stooping to demagogue with a scrubby prejudice for the sake of an effective image, is painfully displeasing Well might his saddened shade be imagined as exclaiming "et tu Brute!"

to us.

(with a feminine appellative) to a thrust coming from such a hand. Yet, though she, herself, has first really unsexed genius, she has as well unfraternized it in thus countenancing the mongrel herd which has so long been barking at his heels. What, Shelley!-meekest of the "Elder Brothers of humanity "-who would gladly have anointed the feet of the poor fallen ones and wiped them with his hair, could he thereby have raised them up again

"To live, as if to love and live were one”— who informed himself of medical science, and walked the hospitals while a mere youth, in view of no other rewards than those which the consciousness of minis

tering to the woes of others might bring-whose whole private life-with all its passionate derelictions upon mistaken principles-is now acknowledged on every hand to have been spent in the "dedicated air" of universal lovewhose very errors have a sublimity in them approaching to the awful, from the consistent earnestness of this love for the Brotherhood of Humanity which made them blind. He to be stigmatized from such a quarter as whitely cold, in the frozen isolation of his ideality "all statue blind," is too unpardonable. None but fools and fanatics pretend to pin their faith upon any particular poem of Shelley's as the embodiment of a philosophy or creed. To all thinkers, Queen Mab is, to the last intent, false-as he, himself, regretfully acknowledged in later life. But then it is recognized as, artistically, the most intense and finest expression of a peculiar period or phase of development common to that dawn of eager energies which as well makes a

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-Morning like the spirit of a youth, Who means be of note, begin betimes." There is a sublimer thing than Reason, which is Faith-the highest faculty of the human soul-and Shelley has differed from other lofty, earnest minds in the particular, that he has not only thought out and felt out with singular distinctiveness, but left on record every step, feature and condition, of that weary travel from Doubt to assured Truth, each one has to make for himself over the highway of development. All along the way of his pilgrimage, he has left land-marks which may lead the weak, who stop short, to error; but to the strong-visioned and the hardy must prove important guides to that high-placed "house

of life," upon the very threshhold of which he suddenly fell into the abyss of death. As a metaphysician and philosopher, he is not to be classified so much by what he was, as by what the evident tendencies of his later modes of thought showed he would have been. His life was an unfinished act upon which the curtain has fallen. He was a mighty Prophet sitting on his grave, which gaped and took him in before the full burthen of his inspiration had been sung. Therefore should he be dealt with in charity, which forgiveth and hopeth much.

Every thorough student of Shelley smiles at his ravings against Religion, because he perceives that, simply, they are monomaniac. He had dwelt upon the fixed idea of its abuses, which he so keenly deplored until he had come to place them for the thing itself; while he had, in reality-calling it by another name to himself-taken more of its essence into his heart than many who have borne a better name. That all his morality apart from those vagaries with regard to social organization and perfectability which he, in common with Coleridge and other bright and true souls, was misled by in early life-was of a Christian spirit, is perfectly transparent; though he was unconscious of this himself. He was

working his way up through clouds of error, made splendid by his genius, to the clearer atmosphere of Faith-glimpses of which he had already been visited by through the rifts. Had he lived, we have no question, he would have mounted to a realization of Faith, and calmly settled with folded wings upon the "Rock of Ages." We see indications, towards the last, that he might have even reached the opposite extreme of high Conservatism in Christianity. Students who cannot get beyond the "notes to Queen Mab," in their appreciation of Shelley as a Man and a Poet, had better have had nothing to do with him. His works are dangerous play-things for children of any age!

But we have not room-in the repletion of a philosophic mood-to say all in this connection we should be glad to say about Shelley. This we intend to make a future occasion to do. We have seen that never were Bird and Poet so mated. Let but the impulse of some holy, even though miscalculated, purpose be presented-of some deed of loyal chivalry to Her he knew as Truth, come to him in the humble walks he chose, and

"The low-roosted lark From its thatched pallet roused" never sprang up on sublimer flights than did this Poet,

"Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good,

"Sunward now his flight he raises,
Catches fire, as seems, and blazes

With uninjured plumes."

With all this flashing wonder of his far and graceful winging, yet is that shrill delight we hear-showering a rain of melody, while soaring he still sings-the voice of our humanity, mellow and rich with old familiar tones. Still we are "overcome, as by a summer cloud," with admiration of this most chaste and sacred enthusiasm, which seems to be mounting, on its own joy, to shake the earth-dews from its pinions off into their old fountains up the sky! Ah, what a charming symbol is it, of the wild, unconquerable might of Love! Though its cradle and its comexultations will not be weighed down and mon home is on the base glebe, yet its tamed-but must as well mount to gladden all above-linking, in "subtle silvery sweetness," the dust-trodden with the characterizes that marvelous and indefistarry fields! Shelley most beautifully nable sympathy between the Earth and the Human Poetry-which we have been endeavoring to illustrate-in one of the concluding stanzas to the Skylark!

Thy

"Better than all measures,
Of delightful sound;
Better than all treasures,

That in books are found,

skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground."

But, ah, wo is me! Weep now, Urania -thou eldest muse-for him! That harmony paused—

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And the spirit of that mighty singing

To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn!" We have not space for a farther extenWe will only sion of these Similes. glance at a few others. There is no English Bird which furnishes a good type of Keats this Country affords, though, a perfect one in the Thrush, or, as it is most beautifully, though technically termed, "Orpheus Rufus," the Brown Orpheus! It is inferior to the King of Song in the infinite variety, the triumphant energy and force of its minstrelsy. But we are constantly reminded of the poetry of Keats, in the deep liquid rush of its strains and the

keen intense melody of each particular note. Like him, it is a plain, humble Bird, hiding in the low thickets, and only coming forth to sing. Then it mounts upon the topmost pinnacle of the highest tree, that all the world may know of itfor now it has forgotten its timid humility-all its heart is big with the melodious prophecy of sound. Its mood of worship is upon it, and what cares it, or knows, that a proud, cruel world lies at its feet, and that it is only mounting to where every shaft may reach it. Death and fear are no more to it now-it must sing-and forth goes the rapt hymn. It has become now

"As one enamored is up-borne in dream O'er lily-paven lake, 'mid silver mist, To wondrous music

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Wondrous, but coming unconscious out of its own heart. Then, to we favored Human listeners,

"O blessed bird, the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place,

That is fit home for thee."

It is one of those strange coincidences we have before noticed-that Keats, without ever having heard his Prototype, should have yet produced the most exact and singularly minute characterization of its peculiar song

-My sense was filled With that new blissful golden melody. A living death was in each gush of sounds, Each family of rapturous hurried notes That fell, one after one, yet all at once, Like pearl-beads dropping sudden from their string,

And then another, then another strain," &c. The very collocation of the words themselves, produces upon the ear the effect of a remote resemblance. Alas, poor Keats! The savage Archers reached him on his airy perch, and cut short, forever, those miraculous strains. But though now he be in his far Rome grave," among" the sleepers in the oblivious valley," yet must the echoes he has waked live in still reverberations musical, through all the enchanted caves of Human thought. They are deathless, for in him

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"Once have I marked thee happyest guest, In all this covert of the blest. Hail to THEE far above the rest

In joy of voice and pinion!

A life, a presence, like the air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair ;

Thyself thine own enjoyment!"

The poet thus furnishes us to hand an exquisite characterization of himself in the choir of this "covert of the Blest," through whose shades we thus tardily linger listening." But which shall be prototype to him?

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"Art thou the Bird whom man loves best, The pious Bird with the scarlet breast,

Our little English Robin ?"

On the highways, in the by-ways, from the green lanes, the hedge-rows and the gardens, by the lintel near the hearthstone, summer in and winter out, under sunshine, under clouds, happy, calm and musical, ever

"A life, a Presence like the air;" over merry England and the world will Robin and the Poet go together,

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"Scattering gladness without care." But the Little English Robin" does not furnish a sufficient Anti-type to the higher powers of song which distinguished Wordsworth, as well as these gentler graces. Our American Robin, which belongs to the Shakspearian family of "The Turdinæ," which includes the Mocking Bird and the Brown Thrush, is, in a better sense, his Anti-type. This Bird is as well a social familiar, and builds its woven house upon the limb that leans nearest the homestead walls.

Many a time have we seen it, about dusk, catch the fire-flies within ten feet of the door-sill-as if it swallowed their weird light to feed and go flashing through the tender magic of its vesper hymn! And ah! who-that has heard that vesper hymn, beneath the last golden pauses of the twilight, swell out as if it took the plaintive echo of a saddened Human heart for key-note, and set it in gradations up through the soft notes of Hope to the shrilly clamors of a Joy set free, chastened by the memory of prison barswill fail to understand how the American Robin is the true Anti-type of Wordsworth! But with thee, venerable an most venerated melodist!" Sunset is on the dial," and soon we may expect thee to be numbered with 66 The Prophets Old." Though thy head is silvered, Time clothes himself in gray when his top

most deeds of wisest strength are to be done, and, in the language of another daring Singer, to whom, like this Robin, our new world has given birth, we would address thee on this dreadful pause betwixt Sublimity and Death:

"Then let the sunset fall and flush Life's Dial!

No matter how the years may smite my frame,

And cast a piteous blank upon my eyes That seek in vain the old, accustomed stars, Which skies hold over blue Winandermere, Be sure that I a crowned Bard will sing, Until within the murmuring barque of verse My Spirit bears majestically away, Charming to golden hues the gulf of deathWell knowing that upon my honored grave, Beside the widowed lakes that wail for me, Haply the dust of four great worlds will fall And mingle-thither brought by Pilgrim's feet."

Byron stands in singular contrast with Wordsworth. Of Wordsworth's calm, slumberous, Oceanic mind, Earth is populous with Similitudes; but of Byron our Mother furnishes no Anti-type. We know of no sentient natural thing upon her broad placid bosom which symbolizes him and unless we adopt the old Greek Fancy, and embody the distortions of Human action and passion in scenes like those in which

"the half horsy people, Centaurs hight, Fought with the bloudie Lapithies at bord," we are utterly at a loss to conceive how he is to be illustrated. We might create some monstrous cross of the dull, filthy, ravin-hearted Vulture upon the beamy, bounding Lark, and thereby make a tame "similitude" of him to the apprehension of the shadow-substanced Citizens of

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Faery"! But to the Common World Wordsworth has quietly and fitly designated his hybrid entity, when he says:

"thou surely art A creature of a fiery heart; Those notes of thine, they pierce and pierce Tumultuous harmony and fierce."

We cannot dwell longer in the atmosphere of Him who tortured music through his whole dissonant volcanic life into singing-that

"Our life is a false nature-'tis not in

His

any distinct Anti-type of Coleridgethough not for the same cause. magnificent Genius hangs upon the Times like some clouded mystic Fantasy.

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Up from the lake a shape of golden dew, Between two rocks athwart the rising moon, Dances i'the wind where eagle never flew."

Though there is a Bird-as yet unknown and unclassified of Naturalistswe heard of, and saw a single specimen It is of very splendid plumage and most of, in Mexico, which fully expresses him. miraculous powers of song, and the superstitious natives hold it in great veneration. It haunts the deep groves about the old Catholic Missions, and they say is often heard to imitate from its hidden coverts the strains and voices of the Nuns singing their Aves to the Virgin. We heard it singing one night, and shall never forget the wild unearthly mellowness of that song—

-and all the place Was filled with magic sounds, woven into

one

Oblivious melody, confusing sense." So this stranger from a "far countrie," -a Bird more bright

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Than those of fabulous stock," can alone stand as Anti-type of the weird melodist of Christabel and the Ancient Mariner.

The same difficulty presents itself with regard to the gorgeous metaphysical Genius of Old Spenser. We shall have to find his Anti-type in that peopled realm of majestic shadows where he lived. We see

"A Bird all white, well feathered on each wing,

Hereout up to the throne of God did flie, And all the way most pleasaunt notes did sing,

Whilst in the smoak she unto heaven

did stie."

And are we not satisfied-filled to the fullness of repletion-with the beauty of the "Similitude?" But we have already sufficiently extended our recreations in this sunny latitude of charming thought. There are very many Similitudes of equal appropriateness and loveliness which present themselves. These are the chief

The harmony of things-this hard decree, est. As for the smaller flock, we will only
This uneradicable taint of sin-
This boundless Upas," &c.

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say in the quaint simile of Spenser: "The Nightingale is Sovereigne of song: Before him sits the titmouse, silent bee." Here we will dismiss this, to us, inexpressibly delightful theme.

"So let it slip, like a bright-footed dream, Out of the chambers of our daily life!"

TO A FLY IN WINTER,

ON BEING AWAKENED BY A SOLITARY FLY IN MIDWINTER; HAVING FALLEN ASLEEP WITH A BOOK IN MY HAND.

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