O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. This is a magnificent passage; but the noble simplicity of Homer is better rendered in Chapman's version:: As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind, And stars shine clear; to whose sweet beams, high prospects, and the brows Of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows; When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light, The spirit of ancient song was never more beautifully seized upon than in Jonson's exquisite hymn to Cynthia: Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Seated in thy silver chair, Earth, let not thy envious shade Heav'n to clear, when day did close: Bless us then with wished sight, Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal shining quiver; Space to breathe, how short soever : Sidney's Sonnet is full of conceits, as the Sonnet poetry of his day was generally; but the opening lines are most harmonious: With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! What! may it be, that e'en in heav'nly place Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess? Keats, who of all our recent poets was the most imbued with a conception of the poetical beauties of the Greek mythology, has a passage full of antique grace :— By the feud 'Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear, Eterne Apollo! that thy Sister fair Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest. When thy gold breath is misting in the west, And there she sits most meek and most alone; As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent O Moon! the oldest shadows 'mongst oldest trees Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,, Coleridge sees in the shifting aspects of the Moon emblems of human griefs and joys: Mild Splendour of the various-vested Night! With the glories of the Moon are associated the " company of stars." Leyden's Ode to the Evening Star is full of tenderness: How sweet thy modest light to view, Or hanging o'er that mirror-stream Though blazing o'er the arch of night, Her rays can never vie with thine. Fair star! though I be doom'd to prove That rapture's tears are mix'd with pain; But sweeter to be loved again, But there is something higher in the contemplation of the starry heavens than thoughts "to love and lovers dear." Shakspere has seized upon the grandest idea with which we can survey the firmament -an idea which two other great poets have in some degree echoed : Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins: But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.-SHAKSPERE. In deep of night, when drowsiness Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Sirens' harmony, - That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, After the heavenly tune, which none can hear Soul of Alvar! Hear our soft suit, and heed my milder spell ;- Who in broad circle, lovelier than the rainbow, Fitliest unheard! For oh, ye numberless 174.-DEAFNESS. J. KITTO. [ONE of the most interesting auto-biographical books, perhaps, that ever was published, whether considered in a physiological or moral point of view, appeared in the series of Knight's Weekly Volumes. It is entitled The Lost Senses-Deafness,' and is written by Dr. Kitto, the editor of the Pictorial Bible.' The introductory chapter of this little book, which we subjoin, is most curious in itself, and renders any further explanation unnecessary.] Any one who has spent a considerable time under peculiar, or at least undescribed, circumstances, must have been very unobservant |