libri-one lay to test the worth of all -to assure Christopher in his Cave whether Mr Milnes be or be not a Poet. THE WORTH OF HOURS. "Believe not that your inner eye Can ever in just measure try The worth of Hours as they go by: "For every man's weak self, alas! Makes him to see them, while they pass As through a dim or tinted glass : "But if in earnest care you would Mete out to each its part of good, Trust rather to your after-mood. "Those surely are not fairly spent, That leave your spirit bowed and bent In sad unrest and ill-content: "And more, though, free from seeming harm, You rest from toil of mind or arm, "If then a painful sense comes on Of something wholly lost and gone, Vainly enjoyed, or vainly done, "Of something from your being's chain Broke off, nor to be linkt again By all mere Memory can retain,— "Upon your heart this truth may rise,Nothing that altogether dies Suffices Man's just destinies : "So should we live, that every Hour May die as dies the natural flower,A self-reviving thing of power; "That every Thought and every Deed May hold within itself the seed Of future good and future meed; "Esteeming Sorrow, whose employ good. 'Tis pleasant in a Cave to glance, with ever and anon a pausing eye, over a volume like this, of which one by-heart-gotten strain easily persuades us that the rest must be trustworthy to our memory-to glance over it without absolutely reading it, yet all the while feeling the breath, and seeing the glow of its beauty-just as it is pleasant in a room, in like manner, to glance over an array of ladies fair, not one of whom we have looked on long enough to love, yet nothing doubting that had we ever so many hearts we could give them all away among the virgin apparitions. Or, if this simile do not satisfy, let us tell you that we like to look at a Volume as at a Valley-discerning not one feature of the scene distinctly, but feeling its spirit as surely as if we distinctly discerned them all-so that, when our dreamy eyes come to settle down upon it, every object occupies the very place we expected to find it in, and is of the very character and kind we thought it to be, only lovelier in their neighbourhood, because now all understood, and forming in themselves a little world where beauty has reduced them all into order, and order is the expression of peace! Nay, if we still must strive to make clear our meaning, have you never sat in a boat on a lake before known to you but by name, and, unwilling all at once to look steadily on what is nevertheless filling your breast with delight, kept even your hands at times over your eyes, and at others glanced stealthily around, almost as if afraid to lapse into the magical world among whose shadows you were sailing, till, taking courage as it were from the glimpses of beauty that made themselves be seen whether you would or no-perhaps from some other fairy pinnace passing by meteorous with its cloud of sail-or bird floating away undisturbedly among the reeds, too happy to fly from its own bay where there was every thing to love and nothing to fear-you have at last delivered up your whole soul to the scene, and in one minute have become almost as well acquainted with its character as if you had lived for years on its banks, and have added to the domain of memory, never more to fade, a lovelier vision than Imagination's self could have created in the world of Dreams! This comes of soliloquizing criticism on Poetry, with a pen plucked from the wing of a stockdove, and nibbed by Genevieve, in a Highland Cave. Pardon our prolixity-and read THE LONG-AGO. "Eyes which can but ill define Shapes that rise about and near, Through the far horizon's line Stretch a vision free and clear: Memories feeble to retrace Yesterday's immediate flow, Find a dear familiar face In each hour of Long-ago. "Follow yon majestic train "As the heart of childhood brings "Youthful Hope's religious fire, O'er the scenes of Long-ago. "Many a growth of pain and care, "On that deep-retiring shore Frequent pearls of beauty lie, Where the passion-waves of yore Fiercely beat and mounted high: Sorrows that are sorrows still Lose the bitter taste of wo; Nothing's altogether ill In the griefs of Long-ago. "Tombs where lonely love repines, "Tho' the doom of swift decay A green old age is the most loving season of life, for almost all other passions are then dead or dying, or the mind, no more at the mercy of a troubled heart, compares the little pleasure their gra tification can ever yield now with what it could at any time long ago, and lets them rest. Envy is the worst disturber or embitterer of man's declining years but it does not deserve the name of a passion-and is a disease, not of the poor in spirit-for they are blessedbut of the mean, and then they indeed are cursed. For our own parts we know Envy but as we have studied it in others --and never felt it except towards the wise and good-and then 'twas a longing desire to be like them, painful only when our hearts almost died within us to think that might never be, and that all our loftiest aspirations were in vain! Our envy of Genius is of a nature so noble that it knows no happiness like that of guarding from mildew the laurels on the brows of the Muses' Sons. What a dear kind soul of a critic is old Christopher North! Watering the flowers of poetry, and removing the weeds that might choke them letting in the sunshine upon them and fencing them from the blast; proclaiming where the gardens grow, and leading boys and virgins into the pleasant alleys-teaching hearts to love and eyes to see their beauty, and classifying, by the attributes it has pleased nature to bestow on the various orders, the plants of Paradise-this is our occupation-and the happiness of witnessing them all growing in the light of admiration is our reward. How many will be induced to read this volume by the specimens now selected by us in our Cave! How harmoniously they combine-rather selecting themselves-offering themselves to us by force of fine affinities-families of kindred emotions that come flocking of their own accord to our feet. THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH, "No, tho' all the winds that lie They may follow on his track, But He never will come back, Never again! "Youth is gone away, Cruel cruel Youth, Full of gentleness and ruth "Bow your heads very low, Let the nightshade's beaded coral "Alas, we know not how he went, We knew not he was going, For had our tears once found a vent, We had stayed him with their flowing. It was as an earthquake, when We awoke and found him gone, We were miserable men, We were hopeless, every one! Yes, he must have gone away In his guise of every day, In his common dress, the same Perfect face and perfect frame; For in feature, for in limb, Who could be compared to him? Firm his step, as one who knows He is free, where'er he goes, And withal as light of spring At the arrow from the string; His impassioned eye had got Fire which the sun has not; Silk to feel, and gold to see, Fell his tresses full and free, Like the morning mists that glide Soft adown the mountain's side; Most delicious 'twas to hear When his voice was trilling clear, As a silver-hearted bell, Or to follow its low swell, When, as dreamy winds that stray Tepid embers, where still lingers We read these lines without fearing to let all their pathos fall upon our spirits-for into its depths should that pathos sink, it will find there a repose it cannot disturb, or a trouble it cannot allay. The truths they tell have been so long familiar there, that we seem to hear but our own voice again giving utterance to thoughts that for many years have lain silent, but alive, in their cells-like slumberers awakened at midnight by solemn music, lifting up their heads for a while to listen, and then laying them down to relapse into the same dreams that had possessed their sleep. But ye who are still young-yet have begun to experience how sad it is and mournful exceedingly to regret, perhaps to weep over, the passing away and the past, because that something was that never more may be-ponder ye on the strain, and lay the moral, the religious lesson it teaches within your hearts. So may the sadness sanctify-and the Spirits that God sends to minister unto us children of the dust, find you willing to be comforted, when Youth has left you, heedless if to despairfor Angel though he seem, he is not of heaven-but of heaven are they, and therefore immortal. Now receive into your hearts, O Youths!-undivided by any commentary of ours-these three strains potent in the peace they breathe-and verily, even in this noisy world the peaceful are the strong. The first, it is true, speaks of change, decay, and trouble and the second is saddened by the melancholy which imagination often carries into the heart-but the third is elevating and ennobling-and the three, thus read as one, leave the spirit calm, and prepared to face the future in the confidence of love and truth. TO MY BROTHER. "Six years, six cycles of dead hours, And be not now, as we were then. Yon stream will ne'er to time surrender Yon orb, but now who swept the East, With train of ruby and amethyst, Rides on, unweariedly as ever, O'er frowning rock, and glitt'ring river; Those trees, I own, are somewhat higher,— The ivy round the village spire In fuller-clust'ring leaf has grown,We cannot call that cot our own,But what has changed in this sweet glen As we from what our hearts were then? Say you, the glow of hope is bright, And if it be a meteor light, That hurtles through the thick'ning sky, 'Tis wise to catch it ere it die? Tell you me, 'tis a joy to feel Our toil increase a fellow's weal? That, 'mid these fainting, fading, bowers, There linger still some am'ranth flowers, And honest will, and honest prayer, Will find them lurking every where ?__ Say on, I can but add, Amen,— We are not now as we were then. "Oh, Brother! when I gaze upon Remember you a flower Which we with care, from sun and shower, It was our mother's,-loved to guard, The flowers fell off,-the stalk was gathered, The root grew dry, the lank leaves withered, And, sad to lose its only pride, "Between the cradle and the shroud, If chance, amid the pilgrim crowd, Though strange the time and strange the place, We light on some familiar face, Once loved and known, as friend knows In whom a thousand memories blend, "O that the painter's fav'rite scheme THE FRIENDSHIP FLOWER. Little of care or thought are wanted "It is not Absence you should dread,- In which, if sound at root, the head "But oft the plant, whose leaves unsere "Rare is the heart to bear a flower, "Yet when, at last, by human slight, Sick odours of departed pride, "When first the Friendship-flower is Hoard as ye will your memory's gain, planted Within the garden of your soul, But let them perish where they died." FAMILIAR LOVE. "We read together, reading the same book, In its half slumbering harmony, You might not call it song; More like a bee, that in the noon rejoices, "Then if some wayward or disputed sense A strife of gracious-worded difference, Too light to hurt our souls' dear unison, |