Agnes, and the remarkable fragment, Hyperion, together in My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains One minute past, and Lethe-ward had sunk: Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, O for a draught of vintage that hath been Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! Full of the true, the blissful Hippocrene, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; And leaden-eyed despairs; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards ! and the lovely poetic consciousness in the Lamia of Keats, in which the lines seem to take pleasure in the progress of their own beauty, like sea-nymphs luxuriating through the water, he would be a perfect master of rhyming heroic verse." Already with thee! Tender is the night, But here there is no light Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, Darkling I listen, and, for many a time, I have been half in love with easeful Death,1 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To seize upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still would'st thou sing, and I have ears in vain- Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Shelley had probably this line in his ear, when in the Preface to his Adonais, which is an elegy on Keats, he wrote-describing "the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants" at Rome, where his friend was buriedThe cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." 66 Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my soul's self! As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Was it a vision, or a waking dream? HUNT. These last names can hardly be mentioned without suggesting another-that of one who has only the other day been taken from us. Leigh Hunt, the friend of Shelley and Keats, had attracted the attention of the world by much that he had done, both in verse and prose, long before the appearance of either. His Story of Rimini, published in 1816, being, as it was, indisputably the finest inspiration of Italian song that had yet been heard in our modern English literature, had given him a place of his own as distinct as that of any other poetical writer of the day. Whatever may be thought of some peculiarities in his manner of writing, nobody will now be found to dispute either the originality of his genius, or his claim to the title of a true poet. Into whatever he has written he has put a living soul; and much of what he has produced is brilliant either with wit and humour, or with tenderness and beauty. In some of the best of his pieces too there is scarcely to be found a trace of anything illegitimate or doubtful in the matter of diction or versification. Where, for example, can we have more unexceptionable English than in the following noble version of the Eastern Tale?— There came a man, making his hasty moan, "Sorrow," said Mahmoud, "is a reverend thing; One of thine officers-he comes, the abhorred, And the wild villain comes, and makes me mad with life." "Is he there now ?" said Mahmoud :-" No; he left The house when I did, of my wits bereft; And laughed me down the street, because I vowed I'd bring the prince himself to lay him in his shroud. And, oh thou Sultan Mahmoud, God cries out for thee!" The Sultan comforted the man, and said, "Go home, and I will send thee wine and bread " (For he was poor), " and other comforts. Go: And, should the wretch return, let Sultan Mahmoud know." In three days' time, with haggard eyes and beard, And said, "He's come."-Mahmoud said not a word, And went with the vexed man. They reach the place, And hear a voice, and see a female face, But tell the females first to leave the room; The man went in. There was a cry, and hark! "Now light the light," the Sultan cried aloud. In reverent silence the spectators wait, The man amazed, all mildness now, and tears, About the light; then, when he saw the face, The Sultan said, with much humanity, By whom such daring villanies were done Must be some lord of mine, perhaps a lawless son. I knelt, and thanked the sovereign arbiter, Whose work I had performed through pain and fear; And then I rose, and was refreshed with food, The first time since thou cam'st, and marr'dst my solitude." Other short pieces in the same style are nearly as good-such as those entitled The Jaffar and The Inevitable. Then there are the admirable modernizations of Chaucer-of whom and of Spenser, whom he has also imitated with wonderful cleverness, no one of all his contemporaries probably had so true and deep a feeling as Hunt. But, passing over likewise his two greatest works, The Story of Rimini and The Legend of Florence (published in 1840), we will give one other short effusion, which attests, we think, as powerfully as anything he ever produced, the master's triumphant hand, in a style which he has made his own, and in which, with however many imitators, he has no rival: THE FANCY CONCERT. They talked of their concerts, their singers, and scores, And pitied the fever that kept me in doors; And I smiled in my thought, and said, "O ye sweet fancies, And animal spirits, that still in your dances Come bringing me visions to comfort my care, Now fetch me a concert,-imparadise air." Then a wind, like a storm out of Eden, came pouring And filled, with a sudden impetuous trample |