Once, ah! what joy to share With thee the noontide hour; Then, not a grief nor care Had canker’d the heart’s young flow’r The sun seems not to shed A radiance o’er me now, Save mem’ry all seems dead, Since lost, since lost art thou. Why do I weep for thee? Why do I weep for thee? * * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _Aylmere, or the Bondman of Kent; and Other Poems. By Robert T. Conrad. 1 Vol. Philadelphia; E. H. Butler & Co._ The author of this volume is one of those rare organizations, intellectually, which have the power of transmuting whatever they touch into gold. As an orator, he sways his audience at will; as a writer, he storms the reader’s judgment by logic and declamation welded into one; and as a poet, he now charms the fancy with the grace and delicacy of his imagery, and now makes the heart throb with his fiery and impassioned words. “Aylmere” is a dramatic poem, originally written for Mr. Forrest, and still played, under the name of “Jack Cade,” by that eminent tragedian. Though parts of it may derive additional power, on the stage, from the magnificent bursts of the great actor for whom it was composed, the true beauty of the drama, we think, can only be enjoyed by those who peruse it, at leisure, in the closet. Many passages, indeed, are suppressed on the boards, in order to bring the play within accustomed limits; and the benefit of these the spectator loses entirely. The drama of “Aylmere” is founded on the famous insurrection of 1450, in which the English peasantry were headed by a physician, known indifferently as Jack Cade, Aylmere, Mendall and Mortimer. The theme is one peculiarly fitted for a republican poet. Goaded by intolerable wrongs, social as well as political—insults to their women, contumely to themselves, public taxes that reaped them to the last stubble, and private exactions on the part of the nobility, that gleaned what little regal rapacity had left—the people, in which we comprise the yeomen and burghers, as well as the villeins, rose in a body, marched on London, exacted the death of the infamous lord-chamberlain, and procured a charter from the king, guarantying to the commonalty the rights and privileges demanded by their leader. But scarcely had these concessions been granted, when a collision, provoked probably by the royal party, occurred between the citizens of London and the followers of Cade: the insurgents met with a repulse; and the late terrified aristocracy rallying, a total defeat and dispersion of the peasantry ensued. Aylmere himself was hunted down, like a wild beast, and mercilessly put to death. The concessions granted were revoked. And, for centuries after, English historians in the interest of the upper classes, blackened the name and misrepresented the motives of the ill-fated Kentish reformer.