e beside my cell;
The idle butterfly
Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife-bee and humming-bird.

And what, if cheerful shouts at noon,
Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon
With fairy laughter blent?
And what, if in the evening light,
Betrothed lovers walk in sight
Of my low monument?
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know that I no more should see
The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,
Nor its wild music flow;
But if, around my place of sleep,
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go.
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
Should keep them, lingering by my tomb.

These to their softened hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,
And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene;
Whose part, in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
Is--that his grave is green;
And deeply would their hearts rejoice
To hear again his living voice.

The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous--nothing could be more
melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner.
The intense melancholy, which seems to well up, perforce, to the
surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find
thrilling us to the soul, while there is the truest poetic elevation in
the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness.

And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you,
there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind
you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is
inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true
Beauty. It is, nevertheless,

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so
full of brilliancy and spirit as the "Health" of Edward C. Pinkney:--

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
'Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music's own,
Like those of morning birds,
And somethi