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the ideal of her imagination, and that the admiration she once had given was withdrawn? Or should we say of her, in lines of her own: —

      There are hearts

      So perilously fashioned, that for them

      God's touch alone hath gentleness enough

      To waken, and not break, their thrilling strings.

      Of this perhaps some future biographer may tell us. There are many passages in her poetry which show an intense longing for the sympathy of other minds; which show that, while her feelings were of a rare order for their refinement and elevation, she yet sought – what for such a one it was difficult to obtain – for the kindred sympathy of others. She could not worship her goddesses alone. This tendency of mind many of her verses indicate; and there is one sweet little poem where, if our fancy does not mislead us, she secretly reproves herself for having exacted too much in this respect from others: we do not say from any one in particular, for the verses bear reference to a brother, not a husband. Yet some personal reminiscence, or regret of this kind, might lead to the strain of thought so beautifully expressed in the following lines: —

KINDRED HEARTS

      Oh! ask not, hope not thou too much

      Of sympathy below;

      Few are the hearts whence one same touch

      Bids the sweet fountains flow:

      Few – and by still conflicting powers,

      Forbidden here to meet;

      Such ties would make this life of ours

      Too fair for aught so fleet.

      It may be that thy brother's eye

      Sees not as thine, which turns

      In such deep reverence to the sky

      Where the rich sunset burns:

      It may be that the breath of spring,

      Born amidst violets lone,

      A rapture o'er thy soul can bring —

      A dream, to his unknown.

      The tune that speaks of other times —

      A sorrowful delight!

      The melody of distant chimes,

      The sound of waves by night;

      The wind that, with so many a tone,

      Some chord within can thrill —

      These may have language all thine own,

      To him a mystery still.

      Yet scorn thou not, for this, the true

      And steadfast love of years;

      The kindly, that from childhood grew,

      The faithful to thy tears!

      If there be one that o'er the dead

      Hath in thy grief borne part,

      And watched through sickness by thy bed —

      Call his a kindred heart!

      But for those bonds all perfect made,

      Wherein bright spirits blend;

      Like sister-flowers of one sweet shade,

      With the same breeze that bend;

      For that full bliss of thought allied,

      Never to mortals given —

      Oh! lay thy lonely dreams aside,

      Or lift them unto heaven.

      We follow no further the events of her biography. We have here all that reflects a light upon the poems themselves. That Welsh life among the mountains – the little girl with her Shakspeare in the apple-tree – that beauty of fifteen, full of poetry and enthusiasm and love – marriage – disappointment – and the living afterwards, with her children round her, in a condition worse than widowhood; – here is all the comment that her biography affords on her sweet and melancholy verse.

      And how vividly the verse reflects the life! How redolent of nature is her poetry! how true her pictures of mountain, and forest, and river, and sky! It requires that the reader should have been himself a long and accurate observer of rural scenes, to follow her imagination, and feel the truth of her rapid and unpretending descriptions. It is singular how, without the least apparent effort, all the persons she brings before us are immediately localised on the green earth – trees wave around them, flowers spring at their feet, as if this were quite natural and unavoidable. How sweet a part does the quiet charm of nature take in the piece called

THE VOICE OF HOME TO THE PRODIGAL

      Oh! when wilt thou return

      To thy spirit's early loves?

      To the freshness of the morn,

      To the stillness of the groves?

      The summer birds are calling

      The household porch around,

      And the merry waters falling

      With sweet laughter in their sound.

      And a thousand bright-veined flowers,

      From their banks of moss and fern,

      Breathe of the sunny hours —

      But when wilt thou return?

      Oh! thou hast wandered long

      From thy home without a guide;

      And thy native woodland song

      In thine altered heart hath died.

      Thou hast flung the wealth away,

      And the glory of thy spring;

      And to thee the leaves' light play

      Is a long-forgotten thing.

      There is something very touching in the simplicity of these pleasures, contrasted with what imagination immediately suggests of the career and the tastes of the prodigal.

      One great spectacle in nature alone, seems strangely to have lost its fascination upon our poetess – she never kindled to the sea. She seemed to view it as the image only of desolation and of ruin; to have associated it only with tempests and wreck, and have seen in it only the harmless waste of troubled waters. More than once she adopts a scriptural phrase – "And there shall be no more sea," as an expression of singular joy and congratulation. We question whether a single reader of her poems has ever felt the force of the expression as she did. The sea, next to the sky, is the grandest and most beautiful thing given to the eyes of man. But, by some perverse association, she never saw it in its natural beauty and sublimity, but looked at it always as the emblem of ruthless and destroying power. In The Last Song of Sappho, it is singular how much more the dread sea, into which Sappho is about to fling herself, possesses her imagination than the moral tempest within of that hapless poetess: —

      Sound on, thou dark unslumbering sea!

      Sound in thy scorn and pride!

      I ask not, alien world, from thee

      What my own kindred earth has still denied.

               .          .          .          .             .

      Yet glory's light hath touched my name,

      The laurel-wreath is mine —

      With a lone heart, a weary frame,

      O restless deep! I come to make them thine!

      Give to that crown, that burning crown,

      Place in thy darkest hold!

      Bury my anguish, my renown,

      With hidden wrecks, lost gems, and wasted gold.

      And with what an indignant voice, and with what a series of harshest epithets, does she call upon the sea

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