When, Sweet! hither to our cottage
From the bridal you were borne;
Scarce, since then, three moons have ripened
Milky greenness in the corn.

She is bending o'er him fondly,
Shedding fast the briny rain;
On his heart her palm she presses,
And-like madness in her brain-
Feels, O God! it beats no longer,
Knows it ne'er can throb again.

"A Mother's Love"-and what love is purer, holier, or more constant?-fittingly finds a place in Mr. Kent's volume. Those who remember Cowper's matchless lines on the receipt of his mother's picture, or Keble's stanzas on the love of a spotless Mother for a divine Child, will admit that Mr. Kent's verses do not fall far short of either. In them burst forth the recollections of olden days and their gladsomeness; in their measures we read the thoughts of past years, blessed, and sanctified, and enlivened by that love, than which earth knows none stronger, than which Heaven, after the love of God, has planted none deeper in the hearts of men, the mutual love of son and mother; whilst in their undertones is heard the chime of an unforgotten joy, whose sweetest memories, chastened, indeed, but still undying, ever recur to the mind of one to whom, alas! a mother's love is now a thing that was:

God! how those tender features now revive

With all their sweet affection, as I trace
On memory's tarnished tablets thoughts that dive
And nestle in my soul and flush mine altered face!
Though time has stamped me since in rugged mould,
And trampled boyhood's blossoms in the dust,
Though worldly cares have o'er my pathway rolled,
And dulled my shattered hopes with selfish rust.
Though other ties have risen since the day,

The wild, wild day when that fond form departed,
Still, still my dreams will wing their drooping way
To her lost image-sad and broken-hearted.
Could that loved spirit, with its power of old,
Delve in the tumult of my aching brain,
Then would a storm of greenling hours unfold,
And bygone pleasures seem to live again.
How plain I see on memory's mirror rise

That look that swayed me in one kindly glance,
The tender goodness of those dark brown eyes,
And each mild beauty of her countenance;
Those gentle fingers seem again to toy

Among my childlike ringlets, while another
Soft whisper fills my bounding heart with joy,
And yet mine eyes are blind with scalding dews,
Dear mother!

They

With these compare the stanzas dedicated to "Amelia. tell of "a beloved memory," of childhood's joys, and of a "grief not med'cinable," of that ruth for death that seems to die, but dies not ever, of that tearless sorrow which longs for a relief attainable alone by the tears so long and so painfully withheld:

The sorrow for the lost and loved,
The agony, the sigh, the groan,
Are cherished in the gloom of night,
And heard by God alone!

O dead and gone! O dead and lost!
For ever, ever more to me,

The thoughts, emotions, pleasures, hopes,-
All that I loved in thee!

The blooming joys of childhood now,
Like apples on the Dead Sea shore,
Are gold and ruddy on the rind,
And ashes at the core.

My eyes would rain but tears of blood,
My heart would burst with woe untold,
But that I know that thou art young,
While I am growing old.

That thou art young, and bright, and fair,
Beyond the loveliness of earth,

And that the hour which sealed thy death
Revealed thy real birth.

And that thy dear beloved brow
Is bound with everlasting palms,
While God's supernal glory garbs

The Virgin of the Lamb.

We give another gem of Mr. Kent's photographs, the loving father fondly bending over the face of his "little rosebud daughter Marianne," and painting her charms as only he can paint them, in whose heart burn the pure fires of domestic love:

Sweetest, when, eve round us creeping,
While dreams lift thy soul above,
On thy mother's breast thou'rt sleeping,
Cradled in those arms of love-
Arms resembling

Nest boughs, trembling

When the night-wind lulls the dove.

Fairer thy pure mind, expanding
As the water-rings enlarge:

Fairest thy white soul, no branding

Blot upon't from marge to marge—

Soul with vision

Half Elysian

Fresh come from her Maker's charge.

Another interior gives us a view of the author's study invaded

by an army of young scamps, eager to engage their father in “a game of romps," and, heedless of his graver cares and studies, to inveigle him into throwing aside his "peerless Pascal" or his Aquinas in favour of roystering gambols at blind-man's buff or puss in the corner:

Trooping to my study,
In the fire-glow ruddy,
Rolling by the fender,
Tumbling down my books,
Scaring student labours
More than pipes and tabours,
Sweeps or kettle-menders,
Philosophic looks!

Come five urchins rattling,
Seeing who by battling,
With victorious laughter,
First shall climb my knee;
Helter-skelter, scrambling,
Dancing, leaping, ambling,
As though each a rafter
Strove to rend with glee!

But it is not only as a poet of the affections that Mr. Kent shines. We have purposely dwelt upon him in this character in order to recommend him the more strongly as a welcome guest to the home circle in his other capacity of a scholar and a metaphysician. The latter quality he exhibits chiefly in his longest and most ambitious poem, "Aletheia," in which his appreciation not only of truth itself, but of the Author of all Truth, is displayed in language as rich in its beauty as it is majestic in its solemnity: His attributes, all infinite and holy;

Omniscience his in wisdom, and in strength

Omnipotence combined with goodness solely,

In height and depth, in boundless breadth and length;
Mighty, yet loving as a Child Divine,

Lull'd in a manger of old Palestine.

His scholarship peeps out in his various references to the poets of a bygone age, and most of all in his charming imitations of our best English bards, which he aptly entitles "Dreamland; or Poets in their Haunts." Of these, the most fascinating-if we may call one more fascinating than another, when all are equally charming -is his description of "Shelley at Marlow." The poet is there presented to our view in a manner which savours of a picture of Carlo Dolce rather than a poem :

We dare not make further extracts, and yet it is with difficulty, we may say with absolute pain, that we refrain from setting before our readers beauties which can best be appreciated by reading them with their context. Each poem is as a jewel, and the whole volume is as a necklace of gems artfully strung, in which the diamond reflects the bright green of the emerald, which again is mellowed by the intense purple of the amethyst, relieved by the occasional flash of the mingled rays of the topaz and the ruby, whilst, attempering them all, the pale, delicate purity of the pearl makes up a collection of valuables equalled by few and rivalled hardly by any.

The author's lowly and grateful utterances of thanks to her from whom in this world all his inspirations came, whilst they will give our readers an insight into what is the mainspring of Mr. Kent's powerful and poetic intellect,

-that home-muse who can render Half divine this human life,

will form a fitting close to our notice:

For whatever visual glories,
Like the bluebells on the lea,
Scattered through my sylvan stories,
Lure the reader like the bee,

By the same serene relation,
Clouds rain blossoms from above,
Owe their lowly revelation

To the Nephele of thy love.

Are my thoughts the merest king-moths,
Floating by on wings of gloom-
Gloom of fragile gold and purple-
Thine the radiance, thine the bloom.
Do they fall as tear-drops glimmer
O'er the garlands of a bier,
Thine their fitful diamond shimmer
When diaphanously clear.
Or, like fragrance aromatic

From the censer of my verse,

Do they rise in coils erratic,

Thine the fire those fumes rehearse.

Silvery from this censer lowly,

Let their soaring wreaths then shine,

What they breathe o'er earth mine wholly,

What towards heaven less mine than thine.

SUN AND SHADOW.

SPRING-TIME for happy lovers made-
No spring-time, what sweet vows were said?
Or lovers for the Spring, I trow-

No lovers, what sweet flowers would blow?

Young men and maidens fair to see
As blooming roses on the tree;
While underneath the ground is red
With fallen rose-leaves shrunk and dead.

Laughter and song for hearts that beat
From noon to night in rapture sweet;
Dreams of the days when hearts were young,
Faint echoes of a song that's sung.

Sun for the flowers that love the light,
Young roses red and lilies white;

Shadow for the anemones

And violets, whose portion it is.

Wedding bells merrily pealing, flowers
Strewn o'er the bridal-path in showers;
And happy feet that on them tread,
Above the ashes of the dead.