DEATH AND THE WARRIOR.

[The following poem was written as an illustration of an engraving by R. Dagley, Esq., in the second edition of a work entitled "Death's Doings." Death is represented as in the act of placing a helmet on the head of a young war rior, who is standing at the door of a tent, while a female is winding a scarf round his arm. A horse caparisoned, military emblems, &c. are seen in the background.]

III.

The battle-steed is waiting nigh,
Nor brooks his lord's delay,

And eager troops are trampling by,
And wave their banners gay.

Nor boding dream, nor bitter care,
In that proud host is found,
While echoing through the startled air

The cheering trumpets sound!

IV.

The maid with mingled pride and grief,
Faint hopes and trembling fears,
Still gazes on the gallant chief

Through dim impassioned tears.

He sees but victory's laurel wreath,
And love's unfading flame,

Nor thinks how soon the form of Death

May cross the path of fame!

V.

"A last farewell—a last embrace

And now for Glory's plain !"

Those parting accents left a trace

Of frenzy on her brain;

And when the warrior's helm was brought

To crown his forehead fair,

Alas! the shuddering maiden thought

'Twas DEATH that placed it there!

SONNET.

LADY when life is desolate and drear,

How sweet to weep, if charms like thine beguile Wild passion's strife and wake the soothing tear! Benign consoler! at thy pensive smile.

Calm piety and trusting faith prevail

O'er sorrow's madness; Hope's rekindled beam The dull gloom cheers, and Peace, so wont to fail, Steals o'er the troubled spirit like a dream!

A cloud is on my heart,-yet, fondly now

I gaze on thee, nor breathe one murmuring sigh;There is a grace upon thy placid brow,

A soul of beauty in thine azure eye,

Blent with a holy meekness in thine air,

That speak not of the earth, and shame the fiend, Despair!

SONNET-TO POESY.

FAIR Ruler of the visionary hour!

Sweet idol of the passionate and wild!

Enchantress of the soul! Lo! Sorrow's child
Still haunts thy shrine, and invocates thy power!
Alas! when Fortune and the false world lower,
Shall thy sad votary supplicate in vain ?
Wilt thou, too, scorn affliction's withered bower,
Nor lend thine ear to misery and pain?
Spirit unkind! And yet thy charms controul
My fervent aspirations-worthless still,---
And fitful visions, all undreamt at will,

With ungrasped glory mock my cheated soul!

Like beauteous forms of hope, that glimmer nigh,

But from Despair's approach for ever fly!

BROWNE'S BRITTANIA'S PASTORALS.

WITH the exception of the plays of Shakespeare, there is very little popularly known of the poetry of the time of Elizabeth and James. Many persons who affect a love of reading are apt to talk familiarly enough of the names of Marlowe, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shirley, Ford, Spenser, Warner, Drayton, and Daniel, while of the works of these authors they are perhaps as ignorant as of the literature in the moon. To those who are stirred with a true and deep affection for genuine poetry, the long buried and but lately resuscitated treasures of the past, are a source of the most exquisite enjoyment. It has been remarked, that if a man would know the magnitude of human genius, he should read the plays of Shakespeare; but if he would know the littleness of human learning, he should study his commentators. Much cannot be said of the taste and sensibility evinced by such men as Warburton, Steevens, Malone and others in their criticisms upon our great dramatic bard; but they have undoubtedly been of some service to literature, by indirectly recalling the public attention to his contemporaries, whose pages they have studied to assist them in explaining the numerous archaisms and obscure allusions of their author's text. Cold and pedantic as they seem, they were amongst our earliest pioneers in clearing the way to the glorious past. If left to themselves, it must be confessed that little would have been gained by their industry and zeal; because their learning was without refinement, and their labours undirected by true taste. By reviving the claims of Shakespeare, and by referring so frequently to the

names of his contemporaries, they excited an eager and wholesome curiosity amongst better judges than themselves; and this, of course, led to the discovery that the wits of Queen Anne's time, with all their sprightliness and polish, were by no means in the highest rank of British genius. We had become so thoroughly Frenchified in our literature, that one of the best. writers of the day had incurred the dishonour of Voltaire's admiration, who wondered how a nation that had produced the tragedy of Cato, could endure the dramas of that "drunken savage," William Shakespeare. We had been intellectually enslaved by a foreign nation, ever since the return of the second Charles.

We conquered France, but felt our captive's charms,
Her arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms.

But as soon as the English people were recalled to a sense of the merits of their own elder writers, they felt the superiority of truth and nature over that flippant wit, and smartness of manner, which form the characteristics of the majority of the popular writers who for so long a period completely hood-winked the public judgment. Bishop Percy, with his collection of old English Ballads, gave a strong additional impulse to the re-action; and Warton, with his History of Poetry, and Cowper, with his fine idiomatic diction and manly simplicity of thought and feeling, almost consummated the revolution. Campbell and Crabbe and Rogers still lingered on the confines of the French School; but Wordsworth and his disciples have sometimes carried the revival of the ancient English simplicity to an objectionable extreme. Those readers, who are ignorant of our old English writers, are apt to look upon the free versification of Leigh Hunt and Barry Cornwall, and the bare simplicity of some of Wordsworth's lyrical ballads, as a modern novelty; whereas they are nothing more than a return to our ancient manners, to which, however, they have added an incongruous mixture of the artifices and