ight and day:
And, when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove's centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile."--pp. 8, 9.

Here a Tennysonian influence is very perceptible, more especially in
the last quotation; and traces of the same will be found in "The
Forsaken Merman."

In this poem the story is conveyed by allusions and reminiscences
whilst the Merman makes his children call after her who had returned
to her own earth, hearing the Easter bells over the bay, and who is
not yet come back for all the voices calling "Margaret! Margaret!"
The piece is scarcely long enough or sufficiently distinct otherwise
than as a whole to allow of extract; but we cannot but express regret
that a poem far from common-place either in ubject or treatment
should conclude with such sing-song as

------"There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she;
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea."

"The Strayed Reveller" is written without rhyme--(not being blank
verse, however,)--and not unfrequently, it must be admitted, without
rhythm. Witness the following lines:

"Down the dark valley--I saw."--
"Trembling, I entered; beheld"--
"Thro' the islands some divine bard."--

Nor are these by any means the only ones that might be cited in
proof; and, indeed, even where there is nothing precisely contrary to
rhythm, the verse might, generally speaking, almost be read as prose.
Seldom indeed, as it appears to us, is the attempt to write without
some fixed laws of metrical construction attended with success;
never, perhaps, can it be considered as the most appropriate
embodiment of thought. The fashion has obtained of late years; but it
is a fashion, and will die out. But few persons will doubt the
superiority of the established blank verse, after reading the
following passage, or will hesitate in pronouncing that it ought to
be the rule, instead of the exception, in this poem:

"They see the merchants
On the Oxus stream:--but care
_Must visit first them too, and make them pale:_
Whether, thro' whirling sand,
_A cloud of desert robber-horse has burst_
_Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,_
_In the walled cities the way passes thro',_
Crushed them with tolls; or fever airs
On some great river's marge
Mown them down, far