Go thou forth, if the brim of thy heart with its tropical fullness of life overflow— If the sun of thy bliss in the zenith is hung, and no shadow reminds thee of wo! Leave the home of thy love; leave thy labors of fame; in the rain and the darkness go forth, When the cold winds unpausingly wail as they drive from the cheerless expanse of the North. Thou shalt turn from the cup that was mantling before; thou shalt hear the eternal despair Of the hearts that endured and were broken at last, from the hills and the sea and the air! Thou shalt hear how the Earth, the maternal, laments for the children she nurtured with tears— How the forest but deepens its wail and the breakers their roar, with the march of the years! Then the gleam of thy hearth-fire shall dwindle away, sad the lips of thy loved ones be still: And thy soul shall lament in the moan of the storm, sounding wide on the shelterless hill. All the woes of existence shall stand at thy heart, and the sad eyes of myriads implore, In the darkness and storm of their being, the ray, streaming out through thy radiant door. Look again: how that star of thy Paradise dims, through the warm tears, unwittingly shed— Thou art man, and a sorrow so bitterly wrung, never fell on the dust of the Dead! Let the rain of the midnight beat cold on thy cheek, and the proud pulses chill in thy frame, Till the love of thy bosom is grateful and sad, and thou turn'st from the mockery of Fame! Take with humble acceptance the gifts of thy life; bid thy joy brim the fountain of tears; For the soul of the Earth, in endurance and pain, gathers promise of happier years! * * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _The Child of the Sea and Other Poems. By Mrs. S. Anna Lewis, Author of “Records of the Heart,” etc. etc. New York: George P. Putnam._ A large edition of “Records of the Heart” was sold in a few months, and the fair author stepped at once into a very enviable position. “The Child of the Sea,” etc. will add much to her poetical fame. The poem which gives name to the volume, and occupies most of it, is a romantic and passionate narrative, and embodies all the main features of Mrs. Lewis’s thought as well as manner. The story is well conducted and somewhat elaborately handled; the style, or general tone, is nervous, free, dashing—much in the way of Maria del Occidente—but the principal ground for praise is to be found in the great aggregate of quotable passages. The opening lines, for example, are singularly vivid: Where blooms the myrtle and the olive flings Its aromatic breath upon the air— Where the sad Bird of Night forever sings Meet anthems for the Children of Despair. The _themes_ of the poem—a few lines farther on—are summed up in words of Byronic pith and vigor:—