The free-born soul of man?

Can you twist a rope of beams of the sun,
Or have you power to seize,
And round your hand, like threads of silk,
Wind up the wandering breeze?

Can you collect the morning dew
And, with the greatest pains,
Beat every drop into a link,
And of these links make chains?

More fleeting in their nature still,
And less substantial are
Than sunbeam, breeze, and drop of dew,
Smile, sigh, and tear--by far.

And yet of these Love's chains are made,
The only bonds that can,
As iron gyves the body, thrall
The free-born soul of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Printed for the first time from the original MS.

JOHN WRIGHT.

A son of genius and of misfortune, John Wright was born on the 1st
September 1805, at the farm-house of Auchincloigh, in the parish of
Sorn, Ayrshire. From his mother, a woman of much originality and
shrewdness, he inherited a strong inclination towards intellectual
culture. His school education was circumscribed, but he experienced
delight in improving his mind, by solitary musings amidst the amenities
of the vicinity of Galston, a village to which his father had removed.
At the age of seven, he began to assist his father in his occupation of
a coal driver; and in his thirteenth year he was apprenticed to the
loom. His master supplied him with books, which he perused with avidity,
and he took an active part in the weekly meetings of apprentices for
mutual literary improvement; but his chief happiness was still
experienced in lonely rambles amidst the interesting scenes of the
neighbourhood, which, often celebrated by the poets, were especially
calculated to foment his own rapidly developing fancy. He fell in love,
was accepted, and ultimately cast off--incidents which afforded him
opportunities of celebrating the charms, and deploring the inconstancy
of the fair. He composed a poem, of fifteen hundred lines, entitled
"Mahomet, or the Hegira," and performed the extraordinary mental effort
of retaining the whole on his memory, at the period being unable to
write. "The Retrospect," a poem of more matured power, was announced in
1824. At the recommendation of friends, having proceeded to Edinburgh to
seek the counsel of men of letters, he submitted the MS. of his poem to
Professor Wilson, Dr M'Crie, Mr Glassford Bell, and others, who
severally expressed their approval, and commended a publ