warrant you I shall keep all my
wits about me,--therefore'

'When, in the darkness over me,
The four-handed mole shall scrape,
Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,
Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,
But pledge me in the flowing grape.'

Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and
admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical
antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.

He proceeds:--

'And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the _showery gray_,
And rugged barks begin to bud,
And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'

Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but
as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true
poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with
human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further
on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction
between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh
upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr.
Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human
laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the
woodpeckers and the jays.

'Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnels grow,
Come only when the days are still,
And at my head-stone whisper low,
And tell me'--

Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such
circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or
his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
of his poems had been sold--_papae_! our genuine poet's first wish is

'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'

When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_,
(of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel
pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to
his mother--

'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile
Undimmed'--

but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he
immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the
weather and the forwardness of the spring--

'If thou art blessed--my mother's smile
Undimmed--_if bees are on the wing_?'

No, we believe the whole circle o