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“Whatever ’tis, whose beauty here below
Attracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow,
And winde and curle, and wink and smile,
Shifting thy gate and guile.”

He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature subjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure by Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.

We shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the Silex by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made very free use.

THE TIMBER.

“Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers
Past o’er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings,
Which now are dead, lodg’d in thy living bowers.

“And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies;
While the low Violet thriveth at their root.

“But thou beneath the sad and heavy Line
Of death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.

“And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent,
Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,
Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent,
Before they come, and know’st how near they be.

“Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath
Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;
But this thy strange resentment after death
Means only those who broke in life thy peace.”

This poem is founded upon the superstition that a tree which had been blown down by the wind gave signs of restlessness and anger before the coming of a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall. It seems to us full of the finest fantasy and expression.

THE WORLD.

“I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d, in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.”

There is a wonderful magnificence about this; and what a Bunyan-like reality is given to the vision by “the other night”!

MAN.

“Weighing the stedfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date
And Intercourse of times divide,
Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs,
Early as well as late,
Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs:

“I would, said I, my God would give
The staidness of these things to man! for these
To His divine appointments ever cleave,
And no new business breaks their peace;
The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine,
The flowres without clothes live,
Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.

“Man hath still either toyes or Care;
He hath no root, nor to one place is ty’d,
But ever restless and Irregular
About this Earth doth run and ride.
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;
He says it is so far,
That he hath quite forgot how to go there.

“He knocks at all doors, strays and roams:
Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have,
Which in the darkest nights point to their homes
By some hid sense their Maker gave:
Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest
And passage through these looms
God order’d motion, but ordain’d no rest.”