O little brethren of the fervid soul, Kissers of flowers, lords of the golden bowl, follow to your fields and tufted brooks : Winter's the time to which the poet looks For hiving his sweet thoughts, and making honied books.

7

POWER AND GENTLENESS.

I'VE thought, at gentle and ungentle hour,
Of many an act and giant shape of power;
Of the old kings with high exacting looks,
Sceptred and globed; of eagles on their rocks,
With straining feet, and that fierce mouth and drear,
Answering the strain with downward drag austere;
Of the rich-headed lion, whose huge frown
All his great nature, gathering, seems to crown;
Of towers on hills, with foreheads out of sight
In clouds, or shown us by the thunder's light,
Or ghastly prison, that eternally

Holds its blind visage out to the lone sea;
And of all sunless, subterranean deeps

The creature makes, who listens while he sleeps,
Avarice; and then of those old earthly cones,
That stride, they say, over heroic bones;

And those stone heaps Egyptian, whose small doors
Look like low dens under precipitous shores;
And him, great Memnon, that long sitting by
In seeming idleness, with stony eye,
Sang at the morning's touch, like poetry;
And then of all the fierce and bitter fruit
Of the proud planting of a tyrannous foot,—
Of bruised rights, and flourishing bad men,
And virtue wasting heavenwards from a den;

Brute force, and fury; and the devilish drouth
Of the fool cannon's ever-gaping mouth;

And the bride-widowing sword; and the harsh bray
The sneering trumpet sends across the fray;
And all which lights the people-thinning star
That selfishness invokes,-the horsed war,
Panting along with many a bloody mane.

I 've thought of all this pride, and all this pain,
And all the insolent plenitudes of power,
And I declare, by this most quiet hour,
Which holds in different tasks by the fire-light
Me and my friends here, this delightful night,
That Power itself has not one half the might
Of Gentleness. "Tis want to all true wealth;
The uneasy madman's force, to the wise health;
Blind downward beating, to the eyes that see;
Noise to persuasion, doubt to certainty ;
The consciousness of strength in enemies,
Who must be strain'd upon, or else they rise;
The battle to the moon, who all the while,
High out of hearing, passes with her smile;
The tempest, trampling in his scanty run,
To the whole globe, that basks about the sun;
Or as all shrieks and clangs, with which a sphere,
Undone and fired, could rake the midnight ear,
Compared with that vast dumbness nature keeps
Throughout her starry deeps,

}

Most old, and mild, and awful, and unbroken, Which tells a tale of peace beyond whate'er was spoken.

A HYMN TO BISHOP ST. VALENTINE.

THE day, the only day returns,
The true redde letter day returns,
When summer time in winter burns;
When a February dawn

Is open'd by two sleeves in lawn
Fairer than Aurora's fingers,
And a burst of all bird singers,
And a shower of billet-doux,
Tinging cheeks with rosy hues,
And over all a face divine,
Face good-natured, face most fine,
Face most anti-saturnine,
Even thine, yea, even thine,
Saint of sweethearts, Valentine !
See, he 's dawning! See, he comes
With the jewels on his thumbs
Glancing us a ruby ray

(For he's sun and all to day)!
See his lily sleeves! and now
See the mitre on his brow!
See his truly pastoral crook,
And beneath his arm his book
(Some sweet tome De Arte Amandi):
And his hair, 'twixt saint and dandy,
Lovelocks touching either cheek,
And black, though with a silver streak,
As though for age both young and old,
And his look, 'twixt meek and bold,
Bowing round on either side,
Sweetly lipp'd and earnest eyed,
And lifting still, to bless the land,
His very gentlemanly hand.

}

Hail! oh hail! and thrice again
Hail, thou clerk of sweetest pen!
Connubialest of clergymen !
Exquisite bishop !-not at all
Like Bishop Bonner; no, nor Hall,
That gibing priest; nor Atterbury,
Although he was ingenious, very,,
And wrote the verses on the "Fan ;"
But then he swore,-unreverend man!
But very like good Bishop Berkeley,
Equally benign and clerkly;

Very like Rundle, Shipley, Hoadley,
And all the genial of the godly;
Like De Sales, and like De Paul ;
But most, I really think, of all,
Like Bishop Mant, whose sweet theology
Includeth verse and ornithology,
And like a proper rubric star,
Hath given us a new Calendar,"
So full of flowers and birdly talking,
'Tis like an Eden bower to walk in.
Such another See is thine,
O thou Bishop Valentine;
Such another, but as big
To that, as Eden to a fig;
For all the world's thy diocese,
All the towns and all the trees,
And all the barns and villages:
The whole rising generation
Is thy loving congregation :
Enviable 's indeed thy station;
Tithes cause thee no reprobation,
Dean and chapters no vexation,
Heresy no spoliation.

Begg'd is thy participation;
No one wishes thee translation,
Except for some sweet explanation.
All decree thee consecration!

Beatification!
Canonization !

All cry out, with heart-prostration,
Sweet's thy text-elucidation,
Sweet, oh sweet 's thy visitation,
And Paradise thy confirmation.

A THOUGHT OR TWO ON READING
POMFRET'S "CHOICE."

I HAVE been reading Pomfret's "Choice" this spring,
A pretty kind of—sort of—kind of thing,
Not much a verse, and poem none at all,
Yet, as they say, extremely natural.

And yet I know not. There's an art in pies,
In raising crusts as well as galleries;

And he's the poet, more or less, who knows
The charm that hallows the least truth from prose,
And dresses it in its mild singing clothes.
Not oaks alone are trees, nor roses flowers;
Much humble wealth makes rich this world of ours.
Nature from some sweet energy throws up
Alike the pine-mount and the buttercup;
And truth she makes so precious, that to paint
Either, shall shrine an artist like a saint,
And bring him in his turn the crowds that press
Round Guido's saints or Titian's goddesses.

Our trivial poet hit upon a theme

Which all men love, an old, sweet household dream Pray, reader, what is yours?—I know full well What sort of home should grace my garden-bell,No tall, half-furnish'd, gloomy, shivering house, That worst of mountains labouring with a mouse;