little things of life. Thus, in conduct or writing, they tend to weary us by a morbid sentimentalism. From this fault Miss Barrett is wholly free. Personal feeling is in its place; enlightened by Reason, ennobled by Imagination. The earth is no despised resting place for the feet, the heaven bends wide above, rich in starry hopes, and the air flows around exhilarating and free.
The mournful, albeit we must own them tuneful, sisters of the lyre might hush many of their strains at this clear note from one who has felt and conquered the same difficulties.
| PERPLEXED MUSIC. |
| “Experience, like a pale musician, holds |
| A dulcimer of patience in his hand: |
| Whence harmonies we cannot understand |
| Of God’s will in his worlds the strain unfolds, |
| In sad perplexed minors. Deathly colds |
| Fall on us while we hear and countermand |
| Our sanguine heart back from the fancy land, |
| With nightingales in visionary wolds. |
| We murmur—‘Where is any certain tune, |
| Or measured music in such notes as these?’ |
| But angels leaning from the golden seat, |
| Are not so minded; their fine ear hath won |
| The issue of completed cadences; |
| And smiling down the stars, they whisper—SWEET.” |
We are accustomed now to much verse on moral subjects, such as follows the lead of Wordsworth and seeks to arrange moral convictions as melodies on the harp. But these tones are never deep, unless the experience of the poet, in the realms of intellect and emotion, be commensurate with his apprehension of truth. Wordsworth moves us when he writes an “Ode to Duty,” or “Dion,” because he could also write “Ruth,” and the exquisitely tender poems on Matthew, in whom nature
| “—for a favorite child |
| Had tempered so the clay, |
