In most distressful mood (some inward pain And he beheld the moon; and, hush'd at once, DISJOINTED FRIENDSHIP. Alas, they had been friends in youth: But neither heart, nor frost, nor thunder, The marks of that which once hath been. SONG. Hear, sweet Spirit, hear the spell, And at evening evermore, Shall the chanters, sad and saintly, Hark! the cadence dies away On the quiet moonlight sea: The boatmen rest their oars and say, YOUTH AND AGE. Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding like a beeBoth were mine! Life went a maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young! When I was young?—Ah, woful when! That fear no spite of wind or tide! Naught cared this body for wind or weather, When Youth and I lived in't together. Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Ere I was old?-Ah, woful ere, Dew-drops are the gems of morning, That only serves to make us grieve SOUTHEY. ROBERT SOUTHEY was born in 1774. He was educated in Bristol and Westminster, and subsequently at Balliol College, Oxford, which he entered in 1793. Devoting himself to literature as his profession, he became, with the exception perhaps of Scott, the most voluminous writer of the age. The purity, correctness, and beauty of his style, and his singular felicity in narrative, impart a high value to his numerous biographies and histories, as well as to his prose fictions, imitated from the old chivalrous romances: but it is by his poetry that he has been best known, and will be longest remembered. He began to write in early boyhood. Joan of Arc was composed the year that he entered college. Thalaba, Madoc, Kehama, Roderick, The Poet's Pilgrimage, The Tale of Paraguay, The Vision of Judgment, and innumerable shorter poems, followed at intervals, during the long retirement which he passed in the bosom of his family beside the lake of Derwentwater. His life was a laborious and honourable one; and the only drawbacks to his happiness for many years were the deaths of two of his children, both of them commemorated in his poems. For a short time before his death Southey suffered from a softening of the brain, attributed by some to the intensity of his studies; for even in his walks he carried a book in his hand. He died in 1843, and was buried in the churchyard of Keswick. In the church hard by a monument has been erected to him. The longer poems of Southey possess in a remarkable degree the rare merit of invention. They are distinguished besides by a various and ardent, if not plastic, imagination, a tender and reverential humanity, a sustained moral elevation, and a perfect purity. They are also sound in diction and happy in style, especially as regards his later works. Their chief defect is want of condensation. Southey composed with too much facility to write his best on all occasions; and the more important among his minor poems, such as the "Ode written during the Negotiations for Peace, in 1814," and "Funeral Song on the Death of the Princess Charlotte (the latter written in his character of poet-laureate), suffer much in consequence of being surrounded by a multitude of inferior pieces, which the author had thrown off with a careless exuberance. In the inexperience of early youth, Southey had precipitated himself on political opinions of an ultra-democratic nature, as well as on Unitarianism in religion. At an early period of his mature life he adopted conservative views in politics, and the tenets of the Established Church. The aberrations of his youthful enthusiasm subjected him to extravagant invectives at a later period (his Wat Tyler, which was published without his knowledge, having brought them prominently forward),-invectives proceeding chiefly from those who resented his change of views, or the somewhat intolerant vehemence with which he denounced the "liberalism" of a later day. Among the many high characteristics of Southey, was the zeal with which he fostered the genius of literary aspirants contending against adverse circumstances or defects of early education. THE HOLLY-TREE. O reader, hast thou ever stood to see The eye that contemplates it well perceives Order'd by an Intelligence so wise, As might confound the atheist's sophistries. Below a circling fence its leaves are seen No grazing cattle through their prickly round But, as they grow where nothing is to fear, I love to view these things with curious eyes, And in this wisdom of the holly-tree Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear To those who on my leisure would intrude, Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be And as when all the summer trees are seen The holly-leaves a sober hue display But, when the bare and wint'ry woods we see, So serious should my youth appear among So would I seem amid the young and gay That in my age as cheerful I might be NIGHT IN THE DESERT. How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine The desert-circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. Who, at this untimely hour, Nor palm-grove islanded amid the waste. The widowed mother and the fatherless boy,- Wander o'er the desert sands. Alas! the setting sun when the daughters of Arabia named, |