Then paused I o’er some sad, wild notes,
Sweet as the spring-bird’s lay withal;
Telling of hopes, and feelings past,
Like stars that darkened in their fall.
Hopes, perishing from too much light,
“Exhausted by their own excess;”
Affections trusted till they turned,
Like Marah’s wave to bitterness.
And is this then the curse that clings
To minstrel hope, to minstrel feeling?
Is this the cloud that destiny
Flings o’er the spirit’s high revealing?
It is—it is! tread on thy way,
Be base, be grovelling, soulless, cold,
Look not up from the sullen path
That leads to this world’s idol—gold.
And close thy hand, and close thy heart,
And be thy very soul of clay,
And thou wilt be the thing the crowd
Will worship, cringe to, and obey.
But look thou upon Nature’s face,
As the young poet loves to look;
And lean thou where the willow leans,
O’er the low murmur of the brook:
Or worship thou the midnight sky,
In silence, at its moon-lit hour;
Or let a single tear confess
The silent spell of music’s power:
Or love, or feel, or let thy soul
Be for one moment pure or free;
Then shrink away at once from life,—
Its path will be no path for thee.
Pour forth thy fervid soul in song—
There are some that may praise thy lays;
But of all earth’s dim varieties,
The very earthliest, is praise.
Praise! light and dew of the sweet leaves,
Around the poets’ temples hung,
How turned to gall, and how profaned
By envious or by idle tongue!
Given by vapid fools, who laud
Only if others do the same;
Forgotten even while the breath
Is on the air that bears your name.
And He! what was his fate; the bard,
He of the Desert Harp, whose song
Flowed freely, wildly as the wind,
That bore him and his harp along?
That fate which waits the gifted one,
To pine, each finer impulse checked;
At length to sink and die beneath
The shade and silence of neglect.
And this, the polished age, that springs
The Phœnix from dark years gone by,
That blames and mourns the past, yet leaves
Her warrior and her bard to die.
To die in poverty and pride;
The light of hope and genius past;
Each feeling wrung, until the heart
Could bear no more, so broke at last.
Thus withering amid the wreck
Of sweet hopes, high imaginings,
What can the minstrel do but die,
Cursing his too beloved strings!
THE LONDON MAGAZINE V. THE REPRESENTATIVE.
The attempts of the London Magazine to wriggle itself into notice are sufficiently ludicrous. The whole measure of Mr. Southern’s gall is divided betwixt Mr. Murray and Mr. Colburn. His pages are half filled with the sayings and doings—the Ana of these gentlemen! They take turn and turn about, from month to month, in his magazine. The mortal offence of Mr. Murray is, that he has treated Mr. Southern and his paltry tirades, with the most supreme contempt, (and people had rather be abused than not noticed at all); and the never to be forgiven sin of Mr. Colburn, is, that he is the publisher and proprietor of a periodical, that circulates somewhere about seven times as many as the London! In the last number of the latter publication, there are no less than five pages and a half of a sneering attack upon Mr. Colburn,
