Time's shadows like the shuttle flee: In the general conduct of the poem we may observe that the intensity of the sorrow appears natural (it was indeed the outcome of actual experience); that this intensity never assumes the form of passion; that calmness and resignation, when obviously the utterance, not of callousness, but of deep feeling, have a decidedly soothing influence; and that the form of the language is in harmony with this impression. Hood has a famous poem, devoted to the incidents of a child's deathbed. There is a suspension of feeling, relieved by the touches of solicitous care, and finally by the favourite device of the peace and happiness attained. We watch'd her breathing thro' the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life So silently we seemed to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers Our very hopes belied our fears, We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died. For when the morn came dim and sad Her quiet eyelids closed-she had The sincerity of feeling seems, however, to be interfered with by the pointedness of expression; though the ingenuities are easy and obvious. The last stanza makes very fine use of external circumstances to chime in with the emotion portrayed, and especially to suggest the contrast of 'another morn'. GRIEF OF CHILDREN FOR PARENTS. The loss of Parents, being in the course of nature, yields the pangs of inconsolable grief only in exceptional cases. Pope's lines to his mother have too much the air of elaborate composition to give the impression of genuine tenderness. FILIAL GRIEF-POPE ON HIS MOTHER. 215 Me, let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; And keep awhile one parent from the sky! The attentions signalized are all of the nature of affectionate care and interest; but the artifice of the verse is too apparent, and leads to a diversion of mind from the real emotion. There is no easy continuity in the circumstantials; they are forced to suit the rhyme: extend a mother's breath,' must have for its rhyming counterpart another metaphor for the same thing-smooth the bed of death'. This would seem the natural close; but the poet goes back to the prior situation, when a smile could be evoked, and the looks interpreted for something that could give relief. The last line of all assumes that life can still be prolonged; and employs the very doubtful figure of keeping back from the joys of heaven a parent supposed to be in the struggles of a deadly malady. Cowper's Lines on his Mother's Picture,' already eferred to, are an expression of filial sorrow, which is the more natural and credible from the poet's special need of a mother's care. The circumstances and arts of pathos may be well studied in Thackeray's picture of Esmond at his mother's grave. "Esmond came to this spot on one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassy mounds, that particular one which marked his mother's resting-place. Many more of those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name with which sorrow had re-baptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint their individual story of love and grief. He fancied her, in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried. Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her) and in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. To this cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister's bed-side (so fresh made that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it); beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth; then came a sound of chanting from the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in peace-might she sleep in peace! and we, too, when our struggles and pains are over! but the earth is the Lord's, as the heaven is; we are alike His creatures here and yonder. I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way like the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again. Silent receptacle of death! tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest and trouble! I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks." The pathetic circumstances in this passage readily disclose themselves, and illustrate the pervading conditions of the tender interest. The mother is presented to our compassion in the aspect of a great sufferer; her sufferings being given in various forms. Esmond's own feelings receive the fullest expansion, and in terms calculated to awaken the reader's sympathies to an acute pitch. The surroundings are vividly conceived so as to be in full harmony with the mourner. The nun is performing like offices to a sleeping sister. The incident of the bird aids in picturing the scene, as a suggestive circumstance. A mourning chant is heard from the chapel of the sisters. To aid in the picture, to bring life and death together, and to introduce a break in the sad offices, the spires and gables of the city are introduced to view. The usual figure of peaceful sleep is indispensable. Resignation to the will of heaven adds to the general effect. The two last sentences are poetry in prose; the pathos touching on the tragic, without losing character. The whole passage is an accumulation of pathetic circumstances and expression, with a careful avoidance of anything either discordant or irrelevant. The manner admits FILIAL GRIEF-THACKERAY'S ESMOND. 217 More of variation, but scarcely of improvement for the end. could have been said of the mother's virtues and charms, but these were left to the story. SORROW FOR FRIENDS. The Pathos of Friendship's losses corresponds to the strength of the feeling, which, in certain exceptional cases, attains the rank of the love passion between the sexes. Tennyson's In Memoriam is wholly based on grief for a great loss. The expansion of the treatment allows every circumstance to be adduced that can add to the intensity of the writer's state of feeling, and inspire the reader with a corresponding intensity. The language resembles what is usual under bereavement in the proper love relation. Following the general requirements in evoking emotion, whether by Strength or by Tenderness, we first ask for an adequate representation of the charms and perfections of the object. This Tennyson supplies, though not at the beginning, in a wonderful panegyric, enumerating the choicest intellectual and moral qualities that a human being could possess. As a noble ideal it is finely drawn, and is strengthened by his own contrasting self-humiliation. To secure not merely admiration, but, what is more difficult, intense personal affection, there are needed such touches as these: And manhood fused with female grace The difficulty of intellectual portraiture lies in being at once apposite and poetical. Tennyson attempts both in this stanza : Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man; The hearer in its fiery course. The portraiture by incident, so much more effectual, is exemplified in the previous quotation. It is not pursued further in the present passage, but occurs at random throughout the poem. We look next for the subjective expression of his own feelings in such form as to command our concurring emotion. The poem opens with the circumstances of the friend's death, the voyage of his remains to his own country, and all the paraphernalia of grief and mourning. The greatness of the loss is at first assumed. Only after the sadness of the interment does he begin to celebrate the intensity of the friendship (22-27) and all the joys that it brought: a splendid picture of happiness, finishing by the well-quoted stanza-Tis better to have loved and lost. . .' This method of treatment is so far true to the natural course of emotion under bereavement. We do not fully realize our loss-still less analyze and examine it—until the parting has been completed by the burial of the friend. The harmonious accompaniments created in aid of the author's emotional states would of themselves make a great poem. They are scattered everywhere, and may be valued by the proper tests. After the preface, the line of thought becomes desultory, and takes the reader through a succession of years after the death of the loved one. A first mournful Christmas is given, and leads to a discussion of the state of departed spirits and the meaningless character of the Universe without immortality. A dawning of comfort arises out of these reflections. A good many sections are devoted to the weakness and imperfections of the writer, his need of support, and his consequent sense of loss; with more reflections upon immortality and the hope of meeting. Then come fears and questionings (54-56), including the difficulty of reconciling Nature's maleficence with immortality. Many fine stanzas follow. In section 75, we have this expression of the intensity of his feelings : I leave thy praises unexpress'd In verse that brings myself relief, I leave thy greatness to be guess'd. A second Christmas is reached (78) distinguished by greater calmness of feeling. It introduces a new vein of moral reflections on the influence of death: the real bitterness is the interruption of communion. In 83, opens a series of recollections and personal incidents, with moralizings as usual; and in 95, there is the reperusal of his letters. After the delineation of character, |