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Thou sought’st the Earthly and therefore
The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar!

“4. For the bright World of
Pure and boundless Love
What hast thou found? alas! a narrow room!
Put out that Light,
Restore thy Soul its Sight,
For better ’tis to dwell in outward Gloom,
Than thus, by the vile Body’s eye,
To rob the Soul of its Infinity!

“5. Love, Love has Wings, and he
Soon out of Sight will flee,
Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye,
But the Soul’s Vision true
Can track him, yea, up to
The Presence and the Throne of the Most High:
For thence he is, and tho’ he dwell below,
To the Soul only he his genuine Form will show!”

Mr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he wrote this. That, with so much command of expression and of measure, he should run waste and formless and even void, as he does in other parts of his volumes, is very mysterious and very distressing.

* * * * *

How we became possessed of the poetical Epistle from “E. V. K. to his Friend in Town,” is more easily asked than answered. We avow ourselves in the matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon’s maxim–“La propriete c’est le vol.” We merely say, in our defence, that it is a shame in “E. V. K.,” be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin, or keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as he that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and well-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have genius and judgment to begin with–a part of the poetical stock in trade with which many of our living writers are not largely furnished. The Epistle is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the off-hand of a master, both as to material and workmanship. He is of the good old manly, classical school. His thoughts have settled and cleared themselves before forming into the mould of verse. They are in the style of Stewart Rose’s vers de societe, but have more of the graphic force and deep feeling and fine humor of Crabbe and Cowper in their substance, with a something of their own which is to us quite as delightful. But our readers may judge. After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain faithless town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus describes his residence:–

“Though its charms be few,
The place will please you, and may profit too;–
My house, upon the hillside built, looks down
On a neat harbor and a lively town.
Apart, ‘mid screen of trees, it stands, just where
We see the popular bustle, but not share.
Full in our front is spread a varied scene–
A royal ruin, gray, or clothed with green,
Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees,
Back’d by green fields, which mount by due degrees
Into brown uplands, stretching high away
To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray.
Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea
Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay,
Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar,
And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar.”

Then follows a long passage of great eloquence, truth, and wit, directed against the feverish, affected, unwholesome life in town, before which he fears

“Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew,
Surrounded by blue women and pale men,”