he passage we have quoted are the following lines:

'Aloft the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock.'

The poet looking up at the trees firmly rooted in the rifts of the rock,
defying the tempest and storm, felt an emotion of pleasure which the sight
of their lofty position, and the apparent danger of their being hurled
headlong at the first blast of wind, contrasted with the sense of their
real security, produced. To express this pleasurable emotion, he fastens
upon the resemblance between a root of the tree and an anchor; a
resemblance not between the things themselves, but between their uses.
Neglecting all the points of difference, and confining his attention to
this single point of similarity, he presents an image which all admit to
be highly forcible and poetical.

The great merit of all descriptive poetry consists in the unity of feeling
which pervades it. Unlike the epic, or the drama, it has none of the
interest which arises from a connected narrative, or the development of
individual character in reference to a certain end. The poet confines
himself to the expression of those feelings which are awakened by the
sight of the beauty and sublimity of nature. Passing, as he necessarily
must, from one object to another, each fitted to excite in his bosom
conflicting emotions, his attention is so much diverted, that none of them
produces upon him its legitimate effect. There is wanting some central
object of interest to which all others are subordinate. Hence is explained
the listlessness of which every one is conscious in the continuous perusal
of the Seasons. We find the greatest pleasure by reading a page here and a
page there, according to the state of our feelings.

It is never in short poems that the descriptive poets succeed best.
L'Allegro and Le Penseroso are gems; but all Milton's genius could not
have made the Paradise Lost readable, were it deprived of its unity as an
epic, and broken up into a series of detached pictures. The Deserted
Village of Goldsmith is the longest poem of this class that we now
remember, having all its parts so pervaded by a common spirit that a
succession of new objects does not impair the designed effect. Sweet
Auburn as it was in its palmy days, and as it is in its desolation,
presents two distinct pictures, yet so closely connected that each
heightens the effect of the other by the contrast. Nothing can exceed the
exquisite art with which Goldsmith has seiz