great writers, of Scott's day; borrowing at the same time
a later name. I shall start with that strange figure, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
He was too subjective to be merely a descriptive poet,
too metaphysical to be vague, and too imaginative to be didactic.
As Scott was the most dramatic, Wordsworth the most profound,
Byron the most passionate, so Shelley was the most spiritual writer
of his time. Scott's poetry was the result of vivid emotion,
Wordsworth's of quiet observation, Byron's of passion,
and Shelley's of passion and reflection. Scott races like a torrent,
Byron rolls like a sea, Wordsworth ripples into a lake,
Tennyson flows like a river, and Shelley gushes like a fountain.
As Tennyson is the most harmonious, so Shelley is the most musical
of modern bards. I fear to touch upon that grand old man, Coleridge;
he appears to me so utterly apart from his contemporaries. He stands,
like Teneriffe, alone. Can I liken him to a magnificent thunder-scorched crag
with its summits eternally veiled in vapour?--H.K.

The Bereaved One

She sleeps--and I see through a shadowy haze,
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
In the sunlight of brighter and happier days,
As the mists of the morning, have faded and perished.
She sleeps--and will waken to bless me no more;
Her life has died out like the gleam on the river,
And the bliss that illumined my bosom of yore
Has fled from its dwelling for ever and ever.

I had thought in this life not to travel alone,
I had hoped for a mate in my joys and my sorrow--
But the face of my idol is colder than stone,
And my path will be lonely without her to-morrow.
I was hoping to bask in the light of her smile
When Fortune and Fame with their laurels had crown'd me--
But the fire in her eyes has been dying the while,
And the thorns of affliction are planted around me.

There are those that may vent all their grief in their tears
And weep till the past is away in the distance;
But this wreck of the dream of my sunshiny years
Will hang like a cloud o'er the rest of existence.
In the depth of my soul she shall ever remain;
My thoughts, like the angels, shall hover about her;
For our hearts have been reft and divided in pain
And what is this world to be left in without her?

Dungog

Here, pent about by office wa