So high is heaven, or I so low,
That the least things that come and go

My wandering moods obey,

In thoughts that linger by me many a busy day."

Two of the most exquisite sonnets in the language are the following, and we do not forget that Wordsworth is preeminent in that department of poesy.

"THE FUNERAL.

"Slowly and softly let the music go,

As ye wind upwards to the gray church-tower;
Check the shrill hautboy, let the pipe breathe low, -
Tread lightly on the pathside daisy-flower.
For she ye carry was a gentle bud,

Loved by the unsunned drops of silver dew;
Her voice was like the whisper of the wood
In prime of even, when the stars are few.
Lay her all gently in the sacred mould,

Weep with her one brief hour; then turn away, -
Go to hope's prison, and from out the cold

And solitary gratings many a day

Look forth; t is said the world is growing old,
And streaks of orient light in Time's horizon play."

“THE MASTER IS COME, AND CALLETH FOR THEE. }}

"Rise, said the Master, come unto the feast;

She heard the call, and came with willing feet;

But thinking it not otherwise than meet

For such a bidding to put on her best,

She is gone from us for a few short hours

Into her bridal-closet, there to wait

For the unfolding of the palace-gate,

That gives her entrance to the blissful bowers.

We have not seen her yet, though we have been

Full often to her chamber-door, and oft

Have listened underneath the postern green,

And laid fresh flowers, and whispered short and soft.
But she hath made no answer, and the day

From the clear west is fading fast away."

Mr. Bennett has never collected his poems for publication, but we happen to be in possession of a friendly little volume sent across the Atlantic, from which we shall take the liberty of giving two specimens of its author's poetic ability.

1850.]

William C. Bennett.

51

We know of nothing in its way more alive with music than the following.

"THE SKYLARK.

"Quiverer up the golden air,

Nested in a golden earth,

Mate of hours when thrushes pair,

Hedges green, and blooms have birth,-
Up, thou very shout of joy;

Gladness wert thou made to fling
O'er all moods of earth's annoy,

Up, through morning, soar and sing.

"Shade by shade hath gloom decreased,
Westward stars and night have gone,
Up and up the crimsoning east
Slowly mounts the golden dawn.
Up, thy radiant life was given
Rapture over earth to fling;
Morning hushes, hushed is heaven,
Dumb to hear thee soaring sing.

"Up,―thy utterance silence robs
Of the ecstasies of earth,
Dowering sound with all the throbs
Of its madness, of its mirth;
Tranced lies its golden prime,
Dumb with utter joy;- O, fling
Listening air the raptured time,
Quivering gladness, soar and sing!

66

"Up,—no white star hath the west,
All is morning, all is day;
Earth in trembling light lies blest,-
Heaven is sunshine,

up, away;

Up, the primrose lights the lane,-
Up, the boughs with gladness ring;
Bent are bright-belled flowers again,
Drooped with bees, O, soar and sing!

And with this keen and glowing tribute from Mr. Bennett's heart to a buried bard, we leave this nest of poetbrethren with our readers.

"SONNET.-TO KEATS.

"O nightingale, thou wert for golden Junes,
Not for the gusts of March!— O, not for strife
With wind and tempest was thy summer life,
Mate of the sultry grasshopper, whose tunes
Of ecstasy leap faint up steaming noons,
Keen in their gladness as the shrilling fife;

With smiles, not sighs, thy days should have been rife,-
With quiet, calm as sleeps 'neath harvest-moons;

Thee, nature fashioned like the belted bee,

Roamer of sunshine, fellow of the flowers,

Hiving up honeyed sweets for man, to see

No touch of tears in all thy radiant hours;
Alas, sweet singer, that thou might'st not live
Sunned in the gladness that thou cam❜st to give!"

Perhaps neither of the authors whose volumes we have thus briefly mentioned could ever achieve an epic or a tragedy. But what they have written is none the less worthy of a welcome. To indite a song or a sonnet which shall quicken the pulse and warm the heart,which shall go sounding on into the soul of the reader, and leave, like spring, "no corner of the land untouched," - this is surely an art worth attaining, and one de

1850.]

Baron Humboldt's Cosmos.

53

serving the world's best praise. There are occasions in the life of every one when the louder and loftier measures of the lyre sound like discords, "out of tune and harsh." There are pauses in the swift-winged flight of time, when the calmer strains of poesy come with a singular sweetness to the weary, fainting pilgrim. It is for such moments that Swain, and Hervey, and Alford, with others of a kindred genius, are living, to cheer, and soften, and purify with a human tenderness the throbbing heart of man.

J. T. F.

ART. IV. - BARON HUMBOLDT'S COSMOS.*

IF the modesty of an age were commensurate with its ignorance, if its aim were proportioned to its ability to perform, then we might expect that a Cosmos, or a sketch of a physical description of the universe, would be among the latest attempts of the human mind. But, in every generation, there have been men of self-confidence, who, elated by the little acquisitions which had been made in positive knowledge, were unable or unwilling to fathom the deep abysses of human ignorance. They have ever been ready to discourse on the structure and workings of this great universe of matter, and expound even the act of creation. By a rich and magical style of description, by poetical fancies, by native vigor of thought, or by a brilliant imagination, they have entranced their readers, and concealed from them the meagreness of the positive information dispensed with their charm. Not only the majestic march of the phenomena of nature, but the origin of this matchless order and harmony, was the object of contemplation and description at an early period of man's intellectual development.

If this array of material things were brought into exist ence, partly at least, for the delight and study of man,

Cosmos: a Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. By ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Translated from the German by E. C. OTTÉ. London: Henry G. Bohn. 1849. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 742.

the human mind has been moulded, without doubt, with principles of perception and thought in harmony with it. The highest intellectual view which man ever gains of nature is when he penetrates to its mechanism. Then he beholds it as an exquisitely ordered, though wonderfully complex machine, animated by manifold forces, and unfolding in quiet accordance with those mechanical laws which are inseparably entwined with his fundamen tal conceptions of matter and motion in relation to force. Some suppose that these primal conceptions do not grow up spontaneously in the mind, but that they are deductions from experience and observation, so that, if nature had moved on by different laws, reason would not have contradicted this new order of things, but have been developed in harmony with it. Others enlarge the prerogatives of the human mind, and give it sovereignty over all outward impressions. In their view, the general laws of mechanics, as understood by minds most highly cultivated in the science, are necessary truths, and a universe in which they were violated would not be fitted for the education of man. Upon this hypothesis, even, who shall say how much of the development of these ideas must be conceded to the unassisted struggles of the mind itself, and how much is prompted by the kindly suggestions of an indulgent nature, made transparent and luminous in the abundant facts of modern science? Tycho Brahe and Galileo, Descartes and Leibnitz, Huyghens and Newton, rejected, each in his turn, what are now held among the commonplaces of science. What imperfect notions of mechanical principles must Galileo have had at one time, to suppose that a magnetic force was requisite, in some point of external space, to keep the earth poised and pointing ever in the same steadfast direction!

But whatever be the origin of those elementary and far-reaching principles of mechanical reasoning to which we have referred, they alone are not sufficient to reveal the Cosmos to us. These principles teach us the relations which exist between force and its effects, particu larly its most remarkable effect, which is motion. Even if the laws of motion are necessary, the forces which produce motion, such as gravitation, for example, are not necessary. They might have been different from what