Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Price 3d.

MAY 16, 1853.

for post, 4d.

[blocks in formation]

This work is designed to form a collection of the choicest Poetry in the English language. Nothing but what is really good will be admitted. No original poetry will find a place.

London:

JOHN CROCKFORD, 29, ESSEX STREET,
STRAND.

To Correspondents.

66

The following, or some of them, will appear: "E. G. C.," " Corilla," "Mildred," "An Admirer (Liverpool)," "O. P. Q.," "Jane D. (Glasgow)," "F. R. S.," "Rev. È. G.," "B. A. (Oxford.)"

The following are not quite fitted for this collection: "Janus," "M. F.," "George (Glasgow)," "N. R. S. (Saint Heliers)," "Julia (Ennis)," "S. K.," "D. (Bristol)," "A. K. (Norwich.)"

"The Old House," has not sufficient excellence. It is commonplace in conception and composition.

Parts I. and II. are now ready, price 1s. each. Also,

Part I. of Wit and Humour, price 18.

No. V. of Wit and Humour on June 1.

SACRED POETRY.

At the request of many readers we purpose to publish a collection of the choicest Sacred Poetry, similar in all respects to this. A number will appear on the 1st of every month, and the 1st number on the 1st of June.

ADVERTISEMENTS.

AS BEAUTIFUL POETRY is a good medium for Advertisements, and as only a few can be inserted, the following will be the Scale of Charges:

[blocks in formation]

For every 10 words above 40...... 0 9

Advertisements should be sent to the Office by the 20th of the

month.

LEE PRIORY IN MAY.

EDWARD QUILLINAN was a son-in-law of WORDSWORTH, and the following short sketch of his career is taken from The Athenæum:— "Mr. Quillinan's birth took place at Oporto in 1791,-his entering the army in 1808,-his contributing to a satirical publication called The Whim' (whence the three duels),-and his further steps in literary enterprise, possibly were quickened by his entering the family of Sir Egerton Brydges, whose second daughter he married in 1817. Somewhere about 1819 we are told-on the authority of Mr. Gillies-that Lieutenant Quillinan visited Edinburgh, not altogether without some hostile intention towards the supposed author of a bantering, yet severe, critique upon his early poems, called "Dunluce Castle," which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine.' In the year 1821 a personal introduction to Mr. Wordsworth, after years of distant admiration, was followed by this militant poet quitting the army, and pitching his tent on the banks of the Rotha. Thenceforward his life flowed in the more peaceful channels of gentle authorship and companionship with authors, not without its vicissitudes in the form of severe sorrow-for the loss of his first wife, who died in 1822,-not wholly without subsequent outbreaks of polemical ire, mantained not by the pistol but by the pen. Having become Wordsworth's son-in-law by his second marriage, with the poet's only daughter, in the year 1841, he took up the quill against Mr. Walter Savage Landor, in Blackwood, by way of answer to one of those pieces of severity in which that Archimage among paradoxical poets has, from time to time, delighted to play at pulling down the world's idols, and impugning his own critical taste. Mr. Quillinan's happiness in married life was a second time brought to an abrupt close by the death of his wife,--after that visit to Portugal of which her own delicate pen has left the world so pleasing a picture. He survived his second bereavement only four years, dying of a fever in 1851." The following poem appears in a collection of his poetical remains recently published. It exhibits all the peculiarities of "the Lake School," its weaknesses as well as its powers; its nature and its art.

WHEN squirrels dance, and humble-bees
Come murmuring out of hollow trees

To rifle primrose flowers;

When cuckoos come o'er southern seas,
And with them bring the genial breeze
That wakes the drowsy hours-

When colts are frisking in the glade,
Lambs racing in the light and shade,

K

On green and woody slopes,

Where daisies, violets, spread their treasures,
As pure, as rich, as children's pleasures,
As lively as their hopes-

Then is the seasonable time,

When all things sweet are in their prime,
To ramble and to see

Fair sights and hear delightful sounds,
Where every woodland charm abounds,
Among the groves of Lee.

Then tender leaves on tree and bush
Scarce hide the blackbird and the thrush,
The linnets green and brown,
The wren, and every shyest bird
Whose madrigals from morn are heard,
Until the sun goes down.

Then that fond bird, the sylvan dove,
Whose name and nature chime to love,
Sends forth his long low call;
And all are sweetly heard in spite
Of clouds of rooks, from morn till night,
Discordant over all,

But when the vernal daylight fails,
Then is the time for nightingales,
The air is all their own-

Save when the gray-owl shrilly sends
His shout abroad, or sheep-bell blends
A soothing pastoral tone;

Save when the distant Minster clock
Distinetly breathes, with solemn shock,
The oracles of time,

Which sleepless echo loves to mock,
While faintly crows the pheasant-cock,
Awaken'd by the chime.

They who thus in star-lit vales
Listen to the nightingales:

They may sometimes fairly doubt
That far more cunning sprites are out
Than ever taught the little throats
Of birds to trill melodious notes.

They may believe such strains to be
The songs
of ladies of the sea,

Mermaidens come from Thanet's coves
To pass the night in Ickham groves,
And stud with pearls the flowering thorn,
To please the curious eye of morn.

IDLENESS.

Gracefulness is the characteristic of this poem by N. P. WILLIS.

THE rain is playing its soft pleasant tune
Fitfully on the skylight, and the shade
Of the fast flying clouds across my book
Passes with delicate change. My merry fire
Sings cheerfully to itself; my musing cat
Purrs as she wakes from her unquiet sleep,
And looks into my face as if she felt
Like me the gentle influence of the rain.
Here have I sat since morn, reading sometimes,
And sometimes listening to the faster fall
Of the large drops, or rising with the stir
Of an unbidden thought, have walk'd awhile
With the slow steps of indolence, my room,
And then sat down composedly again
To my quaint book of olden poetry.
It is a kind of idleness, I know;
And I am said to be an idle man-
And it is very true. I love to go
Out in the pleasant sun, and let my eye
Rest on the human faces that pass by,
Each with its gay or busy interest:
And then I muse upon their lot, and read
Many a lesson in their changeful cast,
And so grow kind of heart, as if the sight
Of human beings were humanity.

« AnteriorContinuar »