D. M. MOIR (DELTA).

(1798-1851.)

DAVID MACBETH MOIR (better known by his signature of Delta in Blackwood's Magazine) was a medical practitioner in Musselburgh. He was an amiable man, strongly attached to literature, but still rendering it subordinate to his professional duties. His poetry is soft and tender, but deficient in originality and vigour. His works have been collected and published in two volumes, 1852, with a memoir by Thomas Aird. Mr. Moir was author of a prose tale, illustrative of Scottish Life, entitled Mansie Wauch, and also of a volume of Lectures on Poetry.

THE SILENT EVE.

Lo! in the south a silver star,
With amber radiance shines afar ;—
The eldest daughter of the night,
In glory warm, and beauty bright.
Thou diamond in the pathless dome
Of azure, whither dost thou come?—
Far-far, within the orbless blue,
A tiny lustre twinkles through,
With distant and unsteady light,
To catch the eye, then mock the sight;
Till-as the shades of Darkness frown,
And throw their viewless curtains down,
The very veil that mantles earth
Awakens thee to brighter birth,
And bids thee glow with purer ray,
A lily on the tomb of Day!

THE BARD'S WISH.

Oh! were I laid

In the greenwood shade,

Beneath the covert of waving trees;
Removed from woe,

And the ills below,

That render life but a long disease!

No more to weep,
But in soothing sleep

To slumber on long ages through ;—
My grave-turf bright
With the rosy light

Of eve, or the morning's silver dew!

For all my dreams,

And vision'd gleams,

STANZAS WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT.

Are not like those of this earthly span ;
My spirit would stray

For ever away

From the noise of strife, and the haunts of man.

STANZAS WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT.

'Tis night-and in darkness the visions of youth Flit solemn and slow in the eye of the mind: The hope they excited hath perished, and truth Laments o'er the wrecks they are leaving behind. 'Tis midnight-and wide o'er the regions of riot

Are spread, deep in silence, the wings of repose; And man, soothed from revel, and lulled into quiet, Forgets in his slumbers the weight of his woes.

How gloomy and dim is the scowl of the heaven,
Whose azure the clouds with their darkness invest!
Not a star o'er the shadowy concave is given,

To omen a something like hope to the breast.
Hark! how the lone night-wind uptosses the forest!
A downcast regret through the mind slowly steals;
But ah! 'tis the tempest of fortune that sorest

The bosom of man in his solitude feels!

Where, where are the spirits in whom was my trust,
Whose bosoms with mutual affection did burn?
Alas! they have gone to their homes in the dust,
The grass rustles drearily over their urn:

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While I, in a populous solitude, languish

'Mid foes that beset me, and friends that are cold: Ah! the pilgrim of earth oft has felt in his anguish, That the heart may be widowed before it is old!

Affection can sooth but its votaries an hour,
Doomed soon in the flames that it raised to depart;
And, ah! disappointment has poison and power
To ruffle and sour the most patient of heart.
Too oft 'neath the barb-pointed arrows of malice,
Has merit been destined to bear and to bleed;
And they, who of pleasure have emptied the chalice,
Have found that the dregs were full bitter indeed.

Let the storms of adversity lour; 'tis in vain,

Though friends should forsake me, and foes should combine; Such may kindle the breasts of the weak to complain, They only can teach resignation to mine:

For, far o'er the regions of doubt and of dreaming,

The spirit beholds a less perishing span ;

And bright through the tempest the rainbow is streaming,
The sign of forgiveness from Heaven to man!

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
(Circa 1814; died 1861.)

THIS lady was by the general critical consent of her contemporaries placed at the head of English poetesses. In extent of learning, and depth of feeling and imagination, she is unrivalled; but her works are occasionally disfigured by mysticism and extravagance. She first appeared before the public as a translator, having, when very young, rendered the "Prometheus Bound" of Eschylus into English verse. This work was published in 1833. A dangerous illness, protracted for years, confined Miss Barrett to her chamber, and during this time she studied the classic authors, and " gave herself, heart and soul," as her friend Miss Mitford has related, "to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." In 1844 she published a collection of her Poems in two volumes. She afterwards married Mr. Robert Browning, also a poet, and removed to Italy. She was in Florence during the revolutionary outbreak of 1848; and her feelings and impressions, at this exciting period, she has embodied in a narrative poem, entitled "Casa Guidi Windows." In this work the poetess evinces a warm sympathy with the Italians in their struggle for national independence, while many of her sketches of scenery and character are graphic and spirited. Her next work, "Aurora Leigh," 1856, is a novel in blank verse, designed to convey the highest convictions of the authoress on nature and art. The plot is complicated and improbable, and the course of the story is interrupted by metaphysical and polemical discussion, with much rambling, commonplace dialogue. But, notwithstanding these defects, the poem is a work of real genius

COWPER'S GRAVE.

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and intellectual power. The smaller pieces of Mrs. Browning have always been the most popular of her productions. Some of her sonnets are not unworthy of Wordsworth; while, in her happiest descriptive passages and chivalrous love stories, she has much of Tennyson's power of word-painting, and delicate, subtle imagination. In other pieces, as "Bertha," "The Cry of the Children," and "Cowper's Grave," we have a strain of natural and affecting pathos. Mrs. Browning died at Florence in 1861, and a volume of unpublished remains was collected and printed after her death.

LOVE-A SONNET.

I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one, in a gracious hand, appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old and young ;
And as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw a gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backwards by the hair,

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

"Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I said; but there
The silver answer rang,—“ Not Death, but Love."

COWPER'S GRAVE.

I.

It is a place where poets crown'd may feel the heart's decaying,
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying;
Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish,
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her
anguish.

II.

O poets! from a maniac's tongue was pour'd the deathless singing;
O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging;
O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were
smiling.

III.

And now what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,

How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory;

And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights

departed,

He wore no less a loving face, because so broken-hearted.

IV.

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration;
Nor ever shall he be in praise by wise or good forsaken;

Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken!

V.

With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him; With meekness that is gratefulness to God, whose heaven hath won him ;

Who suffer'd once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him,

But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him.

VI.

And wrought within his shatter'd brain such quick poetic senses As hills have language for, and stars harmonious influences! The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number; And silent shadows from the trees refresh'd him like a slumber.

VII.

Wild, timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home caresses,

Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses;

The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing,

Its women and its men became beside him true and loving!

VIII.

And though in blindness he remained unconscious of that guiding,
And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing:
He testified this solemn truth, while frenzy desolated,-
Nor man nor nature satisfy whom only God created.