ng more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,--
The idol of past years!

Of her bright face one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain;
But memory, such as mine of her,
So very much endears,
When death is nigh, my latest sigh
Will not be life's, but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon--
Her health! and would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south.
Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been
ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which
has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting
the thing called the "North American Review." The poem just cited is
especially beautiful; but the poetic elevation which it induces we must
refer chiefly to our sympathy in the poet's enthusiasm. We pardon his
hyperboles for the evident earnestness with which they are uttered.

It was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the _merits_
of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for
themselves. Boccalini, in his "Advertisements from Parnassus," tells
us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a
very admirable book; whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of
the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On
hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him
pick out _all the chaff_ for his reward.

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics; but I am by
no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain
that the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly
misunderstood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered in
the light of an axiom, which need only be properly _put_, to become
self-evident. It is not excellence i