with
those hands manacled--a demon-light in eyes once most angelical--and
ringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekings
and yellings in thy poor distracted brain!--Down went the ship with all
her crew in which Percy sailed;--the sabre must have been in the hand of
a skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholto
down; and the gentle Richard, whose soul--while he possessed it
clearly--was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he was
as a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short time
starlike reappear--and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortal
creatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to save
sinners.

Let us away--let us away from this overpowering place--and make our
escape from such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebration of merry
May-day? Is this the spirit in which we ought to look over the bosom of
the earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just as man's heart should
be teeming--and why not ours--with hopes and joys? Yet beautiful as this
May-day is--and all the country round which it so tenderly illumines, we
came not hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant home, to indulge
ourself in a joyful happiness. No, hither came we purposely to mourn
among the scenes which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And
therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life
is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the
cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after a
life of wandering--and maybe not without sorrow--comes back to gaze on
the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of
Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still--for, praise be to Heaven!
the sense of beauty is still strong within us--and methinks we could
feel the beauty of this scene though our heart were broken.

SACRED POETRY.

CHAPTER I.

We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, so
pertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limited
understandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius,
and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do not
know that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formally
stated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect,
nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine his
statement, which, though, as we