"Look not alone on youthful prime,
Or manhood's active might;
Man, then, is useful to his kind,
Supported in his right;

But see him on the edge of life,

With cares and sorrows worn;

Then age and want-oh, ill-matched pair!Show man was made to mourn.

"A few seem favorites of fate,
In pleasure's lap carest;

Yet think not all the rich and great
Are likewise truly blest.

But, oh what crowds in every land,
All wretched and forlorn !

Thro' weary life this lesson learn-
That man was made to mourn.

"Many and sharp the num'rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!

More pointed still we make ourselves,
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And man, whose heaven-erected face
The smiles of love adorn-

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!

"See yonder poor o'er-labour'd wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,

Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly fellow worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful though a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.

"If I'm designed yon lordling's slaveBy nature's law designed

Why was an independent wish

E'er planted in my mind?

If not, why am I subject to

His cruelty and scorn?

Or why has man the will and power
To make his fellow mourn?

"Yet let not this too much, my son,
Disturb thy youthful breast:

This partial view of human kind
Is surely not the best!

The poor, oppressèd, honest man
Had never sure been born,

Had there not been some recompense
To comfort those that mourn.

""O Death! the poor man's dearest friend-
The kindest and the best!
Welcome the hour my aged limbs

Are laid with thee at rest!

The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow,
From pomp and pleasure torn!
But, Oh! a blest relief to those

That weary laden mourn.'"

Such was the language of Burns, the "Poet of the Poor," who knew something of their sufferings and position in relation to the wealthy classes of the land, and who, from the simple ploughman to the exciseman (the contemptible gift of a country to its greatest poet), had passed through much of struggling with the social evils of poverty.

I do not presume to place R. Nicoll on the same footing with Burns, although there is much in his writings to evince a genius of no common order; but I believe, had he had lived as long as Burns did, he would have attained a position equal, perhaps, to any of the Scotch poets.

Let us now take a glimpse of the poetic diction of two of our American poets-Professor Longfellow, whose writings abound with imaginative_brilliancy and true descriptive beauty, and Edgar Allan Poe, whose life was almost one changeless scene of dissipation and misery, but whose writings evince more of American originality than any other of the American poets. In the "Psalm of Life" we have a beatiful specimen of Longfellow's powers. It is a poem full of truthful advice, and faithfully delineates the mission of our existence in the "World's Broad Field of Battle." With a strong faith in the immortality of the soul, he commences with the following lines :--

"THE PSALM OF LIFE."

"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers.

And things are not what they seem.

"Life is real! Life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day.

"Art is long, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

"In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,

Be not like dumb, driv'n cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

"Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, act, in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

"Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime-
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of Time.

"Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

"Let us then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait."

Who can read that "Psalm of Life" and not feel that he has a mission to perform, and duties to fulfil, in society? Why, it gives one a stronger faith in one's self, and an earnest faith in the realization of those political and social changes in society, which philosophers, statesmen, and poets have laboured unceasingly to attain. There is a true manliness in it, which we feel ashamed to acknowledge without determining at the same to be more zealous in our endeavours to help each other in bringing about a state of mental and moral freedom.

Leaving Longfellow, we will now introduce ourselves to Edgar Allan Poe, whose diction possesses a remarkable dissimilarity and characteristic distinction from the poetic diction of any other writer; indeed, you cannot read his poems without instantly being struck with the peculiarities

K 2

and singular ideas pervading them. But they are full of true poetry. In the "Raven" and the " Bells," two of his best productions, we have specimens of his own original powers. In the "Raven' he foreshadows the dim perspective of his own existence, which was one of the darkest pictures and most terrible warnings that genius ever presented to us. I shall content myself by selecting a portion of the "Raven" and a portion of the "Bells," as both these poems are too long for entire quotation. After describing how he heard "a tapping" at his chamber door, and that he flung open the " shutter," when a raven came in and perched itself above his chamber door, to whom he put the questionings that arose in his mind, which were answered repeatedly by the raven's monotonous "Never more." Poe, addressing the Raven, thus continues ;—

"Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil-prophet still, if bird or

devil!

By that heaven that bends above us, by the God we both

adore

Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name

Lenore

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name

Lenore'

Quoth the Raven, 'Never more.'

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked up starting

'Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore !

Leave no black plume as a token of the lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'

Quoth the Raven 'Never more.'

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throw shis shadow on the

floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on my

floor,

Shall be lifted, 'Never more.'"

I shall just give one verse from the Poem entitled the "Bells," and then take leave of Poe, feeling assured that you will appreciate the talent and musical melody of his versification :-

"Hear the loud alarum bells

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells;
In the startled ear of night,

How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
Mith a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavour
Now-now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the air it fully knows,

By the twanging,

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling,

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells;

*

Of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

In the clamour and the clangour of the bells!"

Having glanced briefly at some of the Scotch and American Poets, it will be necessary to give a few specimens of English Composition. I shall not be able, for want of time, to select from the writings of Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, and many others, who have gained the laurels of poetic excellence and immortal endurance. But I must content myself with giving illustrations from Kirk White, Charles Swain, Mr. Mackay, and Eliza Cook (the three latter