nd to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly
admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very
effective. Nothing can be better than--

the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem, on the
whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful _insouciance_
of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the
sentiments, and especially for the _ease_ of the general manner. This
"ease," or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the
fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone--as a point of really
difficult attainment. But not so; a natural manner is difficult only
to him who should never meddle with it--to the unnatural. It is but
the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct,
that _the tone_, in composition, should always be that which the mass
of mankind would adopt--and must perpetually vary, of course, with the
occasion. The author who, after the fashion of the "North American
Review," should be, upon _all_ occasions, merely "quiet," must
necessarily, upon _many_ occasions, be simply silly, or stupid; and has
no more right to be considered "easy," or "natural," than a Cockney
exquisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in the wax-works.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the
one which he entitles "June." I quote only a portion of it:--

There, through the long, long summer hours,
The golden light should lie,
And thick, young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale, clos