Enough for him if in his boldest word

The beating heart of man be faintly stirr'd.
That mournful music, that, like chords which sigh
Through charmed gardens, all who hear it die;
That solemn music he does not pursue,
To distant ages out of human view.

But musing with a calm and steady gaze
Before the crackling flame of living days,
He hears it whisper, through the busy roar
Of what shall be, and what has been before.
Awake the Present! Shall no scene display
The tragic passion of the passing day?
Is it with man as with some meaner things,
That out of death his solemn purpose springs?
Can this eventful life no moral teach,
Unless he be for aye beyond its reach?

Awake the Present! What the past has sown
Is in its harvest garner'd, reap'd, and grown.
How pride engenders pride, and wrong breeds wrong,
And truth and falsehood hand in hand along
High places walk in monster-like embrace,
The modern Janus with a double face;
How social usage hath the power to change
Good thought to evil in its highest range,
To cramp the noble soul, and turn to ruth
The kindling impulse of the glowing youth,
Crushing the spirit in its house of clay,-
Learn from the lesson of the present day.

Not light its import, and not poor its mien,

Yourselves the actors, and your home the scene.”

We now come to a very curious fact. Mr. R. H. Horne pointed out twenty-five years ago, that a great portion of the scenes describing the death of Little Nell in the "Old Curiosity Shop," will be found to be written-whether by design or harmonious accident, of which the author was not even subsequently fully conscious—in blank verse, of irregular metre and rhythms, which Southey, Shelley, and some other poets have occasionally adopted. The following passage, properly divided into lines, will stand thus:

NELLY'S FUNERAL,

"And now the bell-the bell

She had so often heard by night and day,
And listen'd to with solemn pleasure,
Almost as a living voice—

Rung its remorseless toll for her,
So young, so beautiful, so good.

"Decrepit age, and vigorous life,
And blooming youth and helpless infancy,
Pour'd forth-on crutches, in the pride of strength
And health, in the full blush

Of promise, the mere dawn of life—

To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,
Whose eyes were dim

And senses failing

Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,
And still been old-the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied,

* In "A New Spirit of the Age." (Lond., 1844), Vol. I., pp. 65-68.

The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of this early grave.

What was the death it would shut in,

To that which still could crawl and creep above it!

Along the crowded path they bore her now;

Pure as the new-fall'n snow

That cover'd it; whose day on earth

Had been as fleeting.

Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,

She pass'd again, and the old church

Received her in its quiet shade."

339

Throughout the whole of the above, only two unimportant words have been omitted--in and its; and " grandames has been substituted for 66 grandmothers." All that remains is exactly as in the original, not a single word transposed, and the punctuation the same to a comma. Again, take the brief homily that concludes the funeral:

"Oh! it is hard to take to heart

The lesson that such deaths will teach,

But let no man reject it,

For it is one that all must learn,

And is a mighty, universal Truth.

When Death strikes down the innocent and young,

For every fragile form from which he lets

The parting spirit free,

A hundred virtues rise,

In shapes of mercy, charity, and love,

To walk the world and bless it.

Of every tear

That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves
Some good is born, some gentler nature comes."

Not a word of the original is changed in the above quotation, which is worthy of the best passages in Wordsworth, and thus, meeting on the common ground of a deeply truthful sentiment, the two most dissimilar men in the literature of the century are brought into the closest approximation.

Something of a similar kind of versification in prose may be discovered in Chapter LXXVII. of "Barnaby Rudge," and there is an instance of successive verses in the Third Part of the "Christmas Carol," beginning

"Far in this den of infamous resort."

The following is from the concluding paragraph of "Nicholas Nickleby " :—

"The grass was green above the dead boy's grave,

Trodden by feet so small and light,

That not a daisy droop'd its head

Beneath their pressure.

Through all the spring and summer time

Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands,
Rested upon the stone."

The following stanzas, entitled "A Word in Season," were contributed by Mr. Dickens in the winter of 1843 to an annual edited by his friend and correspondent, the Countess of Blessington. Since that time he has ceased to write, or at any rate to publish anything in verse.

This poem savours much of the manner of Robert Browning. Full of wit and wisdom, and containing some very re

markable and rememberable lines, an extract from it will fitly close this chapter of our volume.

A WORD IN SEASON.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

"They have a superstition in the East,
That ALLAH, written on a piece of paper,
Is better unction than can come of priest
Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper:
Holding, that any scrap which bears that name,
In any characters, its front impress'd on,
Shall help the finder thro' the purging flame,
And give his toasted feet a place to rest on.
"So have I known a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth

Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters:
And yet, where they who should have oped the door
Of charity and light, for all men's finding,
Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,

And rent The Book, in struggles for the binding."*

The Keepsake for 1844, Edited by the Countess of Blessington, pp. 73, 74.