O how more sweet is bird's harmonious moan, The sonnets, which dwell upon his own afflictions, are to us very affecting, and as full of true feeling as poetic beauty: "Sweet Spring, thou com'st with all thy goodly train, The sad memorials only of my pain Do with thee come, which turn my sweets to sours. Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair; But she whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air, Neglected virtues, seasons go and come, "What doth it serve to see the sun's bright face, The mountain's pride, the meadow's flow'ry grace, The sport of floods which would themselves embrace ? "My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more, Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear, Or if that any hand to touch thee deign, O! It is not to me, bright lamp of day, It is a while but to bewail my case.' Though joyless, forsaken, and deprived of all that put a spirit into life, he finds consolation in the powers of thought that remain to him. "As when it happeneth that some lovely town Who both by sword and flame himself instals, His spite yet cannot so her all throw down, But that some statue, pillar of renown, Yet lurks unmaim'd within her weeping walls: So after all the spoil, disgrace and wreck, That time, the world, and death, could bring combin'd, Amidst that mass of ruins they did make, Safe and all scarless yet remains my mind: From this so high transcendent rapture springs, That I, all else defac'd, not envy kings." The opening of the following song, we also think, has great beauty; and the idea, towards the close, " Night, like a drunkard, reels beyond the hills," has something more than beauty: "Phœbus, arise, And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tython's bed, Give life to this dark world which lieth dead, In larger locks than thou wast wont before, With diadem of pearls thy temples fair: Chase hence the ugly night, Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light. This is that happy morn, That day, long-wished day, Of all my life so dark, (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn, Which (purely white) deserves An everlasting diamond should it mark. But shew thy blushing beams, And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see than those which by Peneus' streams Nay, suns which shine as clear As those when two thou did'st to Rome appear. Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise. If that, ye winds, would hear A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre, Your furious chiding stay, Let Zephyr only breathe, Kissing sometimes those purple ports of death. And Phoebus in his chair Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels. The fields with flowers are deck'd in every hue, The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue. Here is the pleasant place; And nothing wanting is, save she, alas !" Feeling, as we have before observed, is the very essence of Drummond's poetry; where he did not feel, or where he affected to do more than feel, he not unfrequently fails altogether. His ode on the Death of Gustavus Adolphus is of this class; and the madirgals and epigrams, beginning at page 99, are the worst part of the volume. Tears on the Death of Maliades* are infinitely better. There are a great many well-measured and highsounding lines which, after poetry, are the next best thing; but of poetry itself,-of that holy and consecrating essence, which gives life and beauty to the "meanest flower that blows;" (and in proof of what we mean, we offer the "young eye-speaking lovers" in this very elegy ;) which ennobles the lowest, and neither seeks, nor needs, the majesty of language, though enriched by it, to give it universal currency, or to touch the heart, there is very little.-That little, Th' immortal amaranthus, princely rose, it is probable that the young Milton remembered when he wrote Lycidas. One other whole poem we must extract;—it is full of imagination and delicacy, and the recurrence of the same rhymes throughout, we feel as making more touching its subdued and quiet feeling : "Sith gone is my delight and only pleasure, That clear'd my life's dark sphere, nature's sweet treasure, Fresh, fair, delicious, crystal, pearly fountain, Dost thou not mourn to want so fair a treasure? * Miles á Deo-an anagram chosen by Prince Henry, and used by him in his martial sports. While she here gaz'd on thee, rich Tagus' treasure In which that hunter saw the naked moon; Absence hath robb'd thee of thy wealth and pleasure, Depriv'd, that dies by shadow of some mountain. Nymphs of the forests, nymphs who on this mountain Among the lesser lights as is the moon, Blushing through muffling clouds on Latmos' mountain; As is our earth in absence of the sun, Ne'er think of pleasure, heart; eyes, shun the sun; We feel it to be particularly difficult to do justice to Drummond by extracts. Many of his poems are admirable for what we may, perhaps, be allowed to call the stately march of language and thought; but without any of those brilliant passages that enchain the fancy and delight the reader. Others, in which the most exquisitely beautiful passages are to be found, are, by length, or other circumstances, unsuited to our purpose. "Forth Feasting," which Jonson commended, is one of these. The opening, spoken by the River God, is, however, as good as laureate poems usually are. "What blustering noise now interrupts my sleeps? |