_Shelly and Wordsworth,--Tennyson, Barrett, Horne and Browning;--Baily and Taylor;--Campbell and Moore._
----As one who had been brought, By Fairy hands, and as a changeling left In human cradle, the sad substitute For a more smiling infant--Shelly sings Vague minstrelsies that speak a foreign birth, Among erratic tribes; yet not in vain His moral, and the fancies in his flight Not without profit for another race! He left his spirit with his voice--a voice Solely spiritual, which will long suffice To wing the otherwise earthy of the time, And, with the subtler leaven of the soul, Inform the impetuous passions!
With him came Antagonist, yet still with sympathy, Wordsworth, the Bard of the contemplative, A voice of purest thought in sweetest music! --These, in themselves unlike, together linked, Appear in unison in after days, Making progressive still, the mental births, That pass successively through rings of time, Each to a several conquest; most unlike That of its sire, yet borrowing of its strength, Where needful, and endowing it with new, To meet the new necessity which still Haunts the free progress of each conquering race. --Thus, Tennyson and Barrett, Browning, Horne, Blend their opposing faculties, and speak For that fresh nature, which in daily things Beholds the immortal, and from common forms Extorts the Eternal still! So Baily sings In Festus; so, upon a humbler rank, Testing the worth of social policies, As working through a single human will, The Muse of Taylor argues--Artevelde, Being the man who marks a popular growth, And notes the transit of a thought through time, Growing as still it speeds.....
Exquisite The ballads of Campbell, and the lays of Moore, Appealing to our tastes, our gentler moods, The play of the affections, or the thoughts That come with national pride; and as we pause In our own march, delight the sentiment! But nothing they make for progress. They perfect The language, and diversify its powers-- Please and beguile, and, for the forms of art, Prove what they are, and may be. But they lift None of our standards; help us not in growth; Compel no prosecution of our search, And leave us, where they found us--with the time!
Poor stricken one! whose toil can gain, And barely gain, the coarsest fare, From bitter thoughts and words refrain; Yield not to dark despair! The blackest night that e'er was born Was followed by a radiant morn; Heed not the world's unfeeling scorn, Nor think life's brittle thread to sever; Hope on--hope ever!