FOR MUSIC. Now whilst he dreams, O Muses, wind him round! Into his charmed sleep all visions fair! So may the lost be found, So may his thoughts by tender Love be crowned, And with its beams adorn The Future, till he breathes diviner air, In some soft Heaven of joy, beyond the range of Care! THE SEA. The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea! It runneth the earth's wide regions 'round; Or like a cradled creature lies. I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go; If a storm should come and awake the deep, I love (oh! how I love) to ride I never was on the dull tame shore, The waves were white, and red the morn, I've lived since then, in calm and strife, With wealth to spend and a power to range, A BACCHANALIAN SONG. Sing! Who sings To her who weareth a hundred rings? Ah, who is this lady fine? The VINE, boys, the VINE! O'er wall and tree, And sometimes very good company. Drink!-Who drinks To her who blusheth and never thinks? Ah! who is this maid of thine? The GRAPE, boys, the GRAPE! O, never let her escape Until she be turned to Wine! For better is she, Than vine can be, And very very good company! Dream-who dreams Of the God that governs a thousand streams? Ah, who is this Spirit fine? 'Tis WINE, boys, 'tis WINE! God Bacchus, a friend of mine. O better is he Than grape or tree, And the best of all good company. A REPOSE. She sleeps amongst her pillows soft, Hang flutes and folds of virgin white: She sleepeth wherefore doth she start? All day within some cave he lies, Dethroned from his nightly sway, Far fading when the dawning skies Our souls with wakening thoughts array. Two Spirits of might doth man obey; By each he's wrought, from each he learns: The one is Lord of life by day; The other when starry Night returns. INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN. Rest! This little Fountain runs Nor the cold of winter days. Touch us gently, Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings: Our ambition, our content Lies in simple things. Humble voyagers are We, O'er Life's dim unsounded sea, EBENEZER ELLIOTT. [Born 17th of March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masbro', near Rotherham, Yorkshire; wrote in his seventeenth year The Vernal Walk; worked in his father's foundry until 1804; made trials of business in Sheffield, of which the first failed; published his first volume of verse, 1823; Village Patriarch, 1829; Corn Law Rhymer, 1831; retired from business, 1841; died 1st of December, 1849.] 'My feelings have been hammered until they have become coldshort, and are apt to snap and fly off in sarcasms.' The betrayal of sensitiveness, the apology for anger in these words, might lead one to surmise that the writer, Ebenezer Elliott, steel-merchant and poet, was no broad-thewed forger of the weapons of revolution who took to his trade with a will, Had one met him, instead of the 'burly ironmonger' described by an American visitor, one would have seen a man slender and of middle stature, with narrow forehead, bushy eyebrows under which gleamed the vivid fire of grey-blue eyes, sensitive nostrils, and a mouth apt to express love as much as scorn. It was not the bread-tax that first made him a poet, but the picture of a primrose in Sowerby's English Botany; this sent him to country lanes, the stream-side, and the moor, and he found his friends in the dragon-fly, the kingfisher, the green snake, and the nightingales of Basingthorpe Spring. Sensitiveness was more Elliott's characteristic than strength, and what strength he had was of an ardent, eager kind, less muscular than nervous. Elliott's imagination was ambitious, and imperfectly trained: he accordingly dealt with large and passionate themes, entering into them with complete abandon; and he was hurried on to passages of genuine inspiration; real heights and depths were within his range; heavenly lights alternate with nether darkness. Few of his longer poems, however, possess imaginative ordonnance; from the sublime he could pass to the turgid; from the pathetic to |