ON READING SOME LINES BY WILLIAM ARCHER BUTLER.

As when at night we tread the lonely deck,
In the first hour of moonlight on the wave,
Far, far away, the watcher marks some streak
Which dying day hath pencill'd o'er his grave:

So more than living lights, beyond all fair,
In living genius, is departed worth-
Man's spirit makes love-tokens of whate'er

Hath come from genius now no more on earth.

As in a gold-clasp'd volume closely hid,

The pale, pale leaves of some remember'd rose, Dating the heart's deep chronicles unbid,

Suggest more thought than all which greenly grows;

As in the winter, from some marble jar,

Whose sides are honey'd with a rosy breath,

You catch faint footfalls of the spring afar,
And find a memory in the scent of death :

So these, the characters of Butler's pen,

Are more to us than all that, day by day, Are traced by mightiest hands of living men,

T'is death that makes them more esteem'd than they.

'Tis not because the affluent fancy flung

Such pearls of price ungrudging at thy feet, 'Tis not because that blessèd poet sung

His Heavenly Master's truth in words so sweet:

No; 'tis because the heavy churchyard mould Lies on the dear one in that lonely dellLies on the hand that held the pen of gold, The brain that thought so wisely, and so well.

Nay, say not so ;-write epitaphs like these

For sons of song who fling light words abroad, Whose art is canker'd with a sore disease,

Who feed a flame that tends not up to God.

But he, the empurpled cross with healing shadow Was the great measure of the much he knew ; 'Twas this he saw on mountain, and on meadow, The only beautiful, the sternly true.

Not vague to him the great Laudate still
Stirring the strong ones of the waterflood,

And the deep heart of many an ancient hill,
And light-hung chords of every vocal wood;—

Not dark the language written on the wide
Marmoreal ocean-written on the sky,
On the scarr'd volume of the mountain side,
On many-pagèd flowers that lowly lie ;-

Nor dark, nor vague; not Nature, but her God; Nor only Nature's God, but Three in One, Father, Redeemer, Comforter-bestow'd

On hearts made temples by the Incarnate Son.

All sweetest strains rang hollow to his ear,
Wanting this key-note; earthy, of the earth,
Seeming like beauty to the eye of fear,

Like the wild anguish of a harlot's mirth.

True Poet, true Philosopher-to whom

Beauty was one with truth, and truth with beauty; True Priest, no flowers so sweet upon thy tomb As those pure blossoms won from rugged duty.

He might have sung as precious songs as e'er

Made our tongue golden since its earliest burst, But those poetic wreaths him seem'd less fair Than moral truth o'er science wide dispersed.

He might have read man's nature deeper far
Than any since his broad-brow'd namesake died,
But like those Eastern Sages, so the star

He follow'd-till he found the cradle side.

And now, ye mountains and ye voiceful streams!
For your interpreter ye need not weep;
On the eternal hills fall brighter gleams,
Through Eden more delightful rivers sweep.

Friends, kinsmen, fellow-churchmen, fellow-men,
Yes, ye may weep, but be it not for him.

Life might have brought him larger lore--what then? It would have kept him from the seraphim.

Dear hand, dear lines, in them still undeparted
Tokens I see of one before the Throne,—
Butler the child-like, and the tender-hearted,
Taken so young by Him who takes His own.

1848.

N

DEATH OF THE EARL OF DERBY.

"Ille ego qui quondam."

As looks a hero after fields of battle

On those whose skill hath been the charge to shun, On craven cohorts with unbloody armour,

Chattering of the achievements they have done—
A tragic look and solemn,

Sorrow, contempt, and pity all in one :

So when those fatal nights of great debating
And pettiest sequel paled to their last dawn,
So look'd our Derby ere he left for ever

The red-bench'd chamber with its rows long drawn-
Look'd on his broken party,

Look'd ominous on the triple lines of lawn,

And then pass'd out; but ere he left he turn'd him
And on his gather'd Peers he gazed again—

So in the olden days some strong pathetic
Face of a wounded prophet gazed, and then
Sank in God's darkness grandly

From out the infinite littleness of men,—

Pass'd from the petty policies around him.

To ampler spheres, where all is large and deep,-
Pass'd to the summer morning in its calmness,
Colouring the space divine and skiey sweep
O'er Westminster and London

That starts and talks and tosses in its sleep ;—

Pass'd onward for a little, peradventure,

To realms enchanted, loved in days gone by,
To hear the music intricate yet familiar
That Horace meditates, or with kindling eye
To listen to the ancient

Majestic roll of Homer's poetry;

Pass'd for a while to think of manly triumphs
Won in the full assembly of the State,

Long since, when principles were powers in England,
When parties and their orators were great,

The golden days when Stanley

Was still the star and marvel of debate;

When, not with swollen limb and pallid forehead
And faltering memory, but with faultless word
And rolling fire of eloquence and sarcasm
He spoke the speeches that a nation heard,
And all the stormy pulses

Of the Commons House of Parliament were stirr'd;

Pass'd to the things of more abiding import,

The silent agonies of frame and brain,

That sometimes bring the sick man from Christ's Presence The light that makes so many mysteries plain,

The solemn wine of gladness

That cometh with the sacrament of pain ;—