"_Angel of Earth._--Stars, stars! Stop your bright cars! Stint your breath-- Repent ere worse-- Think of the death Of the universe. Fear doom, and fear The fate of your kin-sphere. As a corse in the tomb, Earth! thou art laid in doom. The worm is at thy heart. I see all things part:-- The bright air thicken, Thunder-stricken: Birds from the sky Shower like leaves: Streamlets stop, Like ice on eaves: The sun go blind: Swoon the wind On the high hill-top-- Swoon and die: Earth rear off her cities As a horse his rider; And still, with each death-strain, Her heart-wound tear wider: The lion roar and die, With his eyeball on the sky: The eagle scream, And drop like a beam: Men crowd and cry, 'Out on this deathful dream!' A low dull sound-- 'Tis the march of many bones Under ground: Up! and they fling, Like a fly's wing, Off them the gray grave-stones; They sit in their biers-- Father and mother, Man and wife, Sister and brother, As in life; Lady and lover-- Love all over. Their flesh re-appears-- Their hearts beat-- Their eyes have tears: Woe--woe! Do they speak? Stir? No. Tongues were too weak, Save to repeat 'Woe!' But they smile In a while," &c.--(P. 84.) In these days, when it is said that verse has hard matter to keep its ground, and is thought to be going altogether into disrepute, is it wise to give us such verse as this? Or was it well to conjure up angelical or supernatural persons to repeat it? Or, again, is it wise of one, who really has poetic power, to abuse it in such rant and hyperbole as the following? We quote from a part of the poem where the author is dealing with the most popular and favourable subject a reflective poet could select. Festus, under pretence of giving an account of another, describes his own early emotions at his first intercourse with nature and with life--those emotions which made a poet of him. Our extract leads off with a noble line, as happy as it is bold--"All things talked thoughts to him;" and we would wish to rescue from apparent censure the fine expression for the sky--"The blue eye of God." For the rest, it is what we have attempted to characterise as _poetical rant_--imagination grown raving and delirious.