Bend me towards my kindred dust.

When sorrows come, because they must,
With lips of ice, and looks of clay,
To turn the spirit's tresses grey;

Can stooping age (though fain he would,)
Write earnest thoughts in "weeping blood,"
And o'er his winter spread the glow
Of warm June's dewy roses? No.
Who to the rain-cloud can restore

The bow that "vanish'd in the storm"?
The quench'd heart's fires return no more!
But what I can I will perform.

Long ere I read a thought of thine,
I plann'd a lay, call'd Etheline;
A lay that oft, in hope and joy,
I may have ponder'd when a boy.
Feebly commenced, and idly cast
Aside, to be redeem'd at last,

A thousand lines the song will end;
A hundred are already penn'd.
Lady! I will inscribe to thee

A tale of Love and Jealousy,

And old, old times-when life was young, And wisdom taught what passion sung. Thou, Ellen, thou shalt be my Muse! Power not his own the bard shall use; Thy young soul's beauty, wisdom, truth, Shall wake in me a dream of youth;

VOL. II.

Z

As when a stripling, (skill'd to fling
The glory of a seraph's wing

O'er all the woful gloom and strife
That dully chequer human life,)
Placing, with careless grace and ease,
The time-worn Harp before his knees,
O'er funeral Autumn's pensive flowers
A shower of splinter'd sunbeams showers,
And charms the haunted region round
With ecstacies of sight and sound;
Or, in the soul its thunder waking,
Kindles within the heart that's breaking
Fire, born of darkness that weeps fire
And thoughts that turn men pale,
Bidding the fallen still aspire,

Though still to fail;

And like the Adwick of my strain,

Each doom'd Prometheus smile at pain;
Or, school'd his dire reward to meet,
Die with sad pride, as Cæsar died

At imaged Pompey's feet.

THE subject of this poem is the doom of a female child; a subject less heroic, doubtless, than the quarrel of two soldiers about a female slave. It is the first part of "Eth-Kon-Tel," a story in three parts, each containing four books; each part, as a story, complete in itself; and the three parts, like the trilogies of Eschylus and Schiller, forming one narrative. Thus, "Wallenstein's Camp," "the Piccolomini," and "the Death of Wallenstein," constitute one Play, which might properly have been called "Wallenstein, a Drama in Three Acts."

It may be doubted whether a few supposed incidents in the history of a dead Religion, can form a proper subject for an Epic poem. British history, we are told, furnishes no such subject, and that, if it did, such a work is impossible. But if they who tell us this will find another Homer, I will find a subject worthy of him in the second invasion of Britain by the Romans. Few historic names are written more indelibly on our hearts than those of Caractacus and Togodumnus, sons of Cundbelin. Boadicea, too! was not she

* Morte d'Arthur.

somebody? Venutius unmistakeably was; and in his queen Cartismandua, the betrayer of Caractacus, (given an artist able to draw another Clytemnestra, or Lady Macbeth,) we have a personage worthy of the terrible in heroic song. Why, then, did I not choose that subject? I am no Homer, and my choice corresponds with my powers.

A suggestion has been made to me, that a principal character in my unbated Epic, cannot, without some explanation, be understood. I admit, at once, that the character, or incident, which in a work of art requires explaining, cannot, in art, be tolerated. We know that a madman may believe himself to be the Almighty. But the question is this-Could the madman Adwick, in the circumstances supposed, have used the terms, and expressed the ideas attributed to him? The religion of the ancient Britons was heathenism, with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls superadded; and some of the ideas expressed by Adwick are heathen precepts; others, from the Old Testament, are supposed to have been communicated to him by the father of the heroine, and to have become, if I may so speak, a part of his individuality. The persecution which he had endured, implies that he was of noble nature and superior intellect; and though necessarily unlettered, (if all were so,) he must be understood to have been learned in all the learning of the priesthood, who assuredly did not rule mankind by monopolizing ignorance. Originating in a civilization which was probably the parent of that of Egypt, the religion of the Britons, many centuries before the Christian era, must have retained some traces of its intellectual origi; and philosophy, I think, will allow that a mixture of braminical, pagan, and Jewish doctrines, in the mind of an impulsive and solitary individual who had been persecuted to madness, would in any circumstances find expression; though perhaps, not in the abstract terms which the necessities of verse have compelled me to select. Whether insane persons (they not being moral agents,) are properly admissible as actors or sufferers in fictitious narrative, is another question, and one which has perhaps received a conclusive answer in the Lear of Shakspeare.

This poem was commenced some years ago, and in resuming the composition of it, I was strongly tempted to employ the Spenserian stanza, the best of our measures, with the exception of blank verse; but I had begun with the measure used; and I succeeded, at last,

in persuading myself that it can be pronounced with less effort than any other, and that in it more easily, clearly, and eloquently than in any other, I could express my thoughts and feelings. Without being at all new, and while allowing me to avail myself of the double endings which so seldom occur in English rhyme, it comprises in its structure, with the fatally facile octosyllabic line of Scott, lines of three, four, five, six, and seven syllables; and gives the writer (who need not use any of them,) all the advantages of our ballad line of fourteen syllables, our inevitably halved alexandrine, and our five-feet iambic; enabling him to avoid the great disadvantage of the latter, which, even when written by a master of the art of versification, can seldom be read aloud, without overtasking the breath of the reader; a disadvantage overcome in our days by Hunt in his couplet, Wordsworth in his blank verse-and his imitator as a blank versist, Byron; with two or three others, of whom I may particularize the author of Philip Van Artevelt. After all that can be said for it, the measure chosen is doubtless very inferior, even in variety and melody, and certainly in harmony, to the far-famed and elaborate Spenserian; of the great narrative power of which we have triumphant proof in Wordsworth's Female Vagrant; but so difficult is it to tell a tale well in English rhyme, that he who can lessen the difficulty is not unworthy of praise.

“A

"With a slight change of names and things," I am told by an excellent friendly critic, "the characters, incidents, and sentiments of this poem, would be found marvellously modern." And why not? In exculpation of this supposed modernness, I must beg leave to quote a few more words from the same lady-friend. true tale," she says, "could, with slight adjustment, be made true to any times. The virtues, the strengths, the desire of knowledge, power, and wisdom, are the I AM of all times; and there must have been in far-off barbarous ages grand mental and moral elements, which would now and then peer out on the world-stars of exceeding brightness, not always to be extinguished, but sometimes enlightening after-poets and sages; for as the transitory part of our being is founded on mortality, so must the deathless have an immortal parentage." True. Our eyes have seen the Handel, and the Mozart, but their music was of old, ere death was. If, then, in attempting a hymn to our best affections, my notes partake in any degree of the eternal melodies, I cannot have failed altogether,