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So does the Statesman, while the avengers sleep,
Self-deem'd secure, his wiles in secret lay;
Soon shall destruction sweep
His work away.

"Thou busy laborer! one resemblance more
Shall yet the verse prolong,

For, Spider, thou art like the Poet poor,
Whom thou hast help'd in song:
Both busily our needful food to win,

We work, as Nature taught, with ceaseless pains,
Thy bowels thou dost spin,

I spin my brains."

THE FILBERT.

Nay, gather not that Filbert, Nicholas :
There is a maggot there; it is his house,
His castle; oh, commit not burglary!
Strip him not naked! 'tis his clothes, his shell,
His bones, the case and armor of his life,
And thou shalt do no murder, Nicholas !
It were an easy thing to crack that nut,
Or with thy crackers or thy double teeth,
So easily may all things be destroy'd!
But 'tis not in the power of mortal man
To mend the fracture of a filbert shell.
Enough of dangers and of enemies

Hath Nature's wisdom for the world ordain'd;
Increase not thou the number! Him the mouse,
Gnawing with nibbling tooth the shell's defense,
May from his native tenement eject;

Him may the nut-hatch, piercing with strong bill,
Unwittingly destroy; or to his hoard
The squirrel bear, at leisure to be crack'd.
Man also hath his dangers and his foes

As this poor maggot hath; and when I muse
Upon the aches, anxieties, and fears,
The maggot knows not, Nicholas, methinks
it were a happy metamorphosis
To be enkenel'd thus; never to hear
Of wars, and of invasions, and of plots,
Kings, Jacobins, and tax-commissioners;
To feel no motion but the wind that shook
The filbert-tree and rock'd us to our rest;
And in the middle of such exquisite food
To live luxurious! The perfection this
Of snugness! it were to unite at once
Hermit retirement, aldermanic bliss,
And stoic independence of mankind."

SECTION XVIII.

JAMES MONTGOMERY,

The Moravian Hymns are said to have led his mind into the culture of poetry. His chief characteristics are purity and elevation of thought, harmonious versification, and a fine strain of devotional feeling. His poems can not be too highly commended to the frequent perusal of the young. The variety of subject

adds much to the interest of his works.

THE GRAVE.

"There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrim's found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep

Low in the ground.

The storm that wrecks the winter sky
No more disturbs their deep repose,
Than summer evening's latest sigh
That shuts the rose.

I long to lay this painful head
And aching heart beneath the soil,
To slumber in that dreamless bed
From all my toil.

For misery stole me at my birth,
And cast me helpless on the wild:
I perish; O my mother earth,

Take home thy child.
On thy dear lap these limbs reclined,
Shall gently moulder into thee:
Nor leave one wretched trace behind
Resembling me.

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We hope to receive the thanks of young ladies who intend to provide themselves with an ALBUM, that social and literary luxury, for inserting here a collection of admirable mottoes, from the versatile and vigorous

pen of the fine poet now under review. Some may need to be informed, that the term Album is derived from a Latin word, signifying white, and is therefore applied usually to an elegant blank book, in which we request our friends to write something as a memorial of themselves. This explanation may be necessary to some, for understanding the second motto below, and also the sixth.

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Here friends assemble, hand and heart;
Whom life may sever, death must part;
Sweet be their deaths, their lives well spent,
And this their friendship's monument.

VI.

My Album is a barren tree,

Where leaves and only leaves you see:
But touch it-flowers and fruits will spring,
And birds among the foliage sing.

VII.

Fairies were kind to country jennies,

And in their shoes dropp'd silver pennies;
Here the bright tokens which you leave,
As fairy favors I receive.

VIII.

My Album's open; come and see;

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What, won't you waste a thought on me?
Write but a word, a word or two,

And make me love to think on you.

‣ In earnestness and fervor (says Professor Wilson), his poem "The Pelican Island" is by few or none ex

celled: it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall not fade away, neither shall it moulder. Not that it is a mummy; say, rather, a fair form laid asleep in immortality its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly, a celestial smile.

In proof that a great poet, like Montgomery, does not need a great subject to display his powers upon, we give you his

EPITAPH ON A GNAT,

found crushed on a leaf of a lady's album, and written (with a different reading in the last line) in lead-pencil beneath it.

Lie there, embalm'd from age to age!
This is the album's noblest page,
Though every glowing leaf be fraught
With painting, poesy, and thought;
Where tracks of mortal hands are seen
A hand invisible has been,

And left this autograph behind,
This image from the Eternal mind;
A work of skill surpassing sense,
A labor of Omnipotence!

Though frail as dust it meet the eye,
He form'd this gnat who built the sky;
Stop-lest it vanish at thy breath-

This speck had life, and suffer'd death!
Sheffield, July 18, 1827.

You will find another fine specimen of the style of Montgomery, both prosaic and poetic, in the sketch of Burns on a subsequent page.

SECTION XIX.

LORD BYRON (1788-1824).

In many respects one of the most talented of writers, both in prose and verse. Many of his works are altogether unexceptionable, though his private character and not a few of his writings are to be considered infamous. His own feelings were, for the most part, bitter, misanthropic, and violent, and to these he is continually giving expression in his poems. "Childe Harold," his "Apostrophe to the Ocean," and his "Prisoner of Chillon," have been much admired. Sheridan Knowles sets forth the grand peculiarities of By

His

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ron as follows: Year after year, and month after month, he continued to repeat that to be wretched is the destiny of all, that to be eminently wretched is the destiny of the eminent that all the desires by which we are cursed lead alike to misery-if they are not gratified, to the misery of disappoint ment; if they are gratified, to the misery of satiety. Ilis principal heroes are men who have arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair, who are sick of life, who are at war with society, who are supported in their anguish only by an unconquerable pride, resembling that of Prometheus on the rock or of Satan in the burning marl; who can master their agonies by the force of their will; and who, to the last, defy the whole power of earth and Heaven.

BYRON and MOORE are compared by Hazlitt in the follow ing terms:

Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is forever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright, as the insects that people the sunbeam. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the fragrance of a thousand shores, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. His variety cloys; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. The sweetness of his poetry evaporates like the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers! His Irish Melodies are not free from affectation and a certain sickliness of pretension. His serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness; his pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and bur lesque poetry is his best. He resembles the bee: he has its honey and its sting.

Lord Byron, unlike Moore, shuts himself up in the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts, and buries the natural light of things in "nook monastic." The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold, are all the same person, and they are apparently all himself. The everlasting repetition of one subject the same dark ground of fiction, with the darker colors of the poet's mind spread over it-the unceasing accumulation of horrors on horror's head, steels the mind against the sense of pain, as inevitably as the unwearied siren sounds and luxurious monotony of Mr. Moore's poetry make it inaccessible to pleasure

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