It is always a pleasure to come across an American poet who is not national, and who tries to give expression to the literature that he loves rather than to the land in which he lives. The Muses care so little for geography! Mr. Richard Day's Poems have nothing distinctively American about them. Here and there in his verse one comes across a flower that does not bloom in our meadows, a bird to which our woodlands have never listened. But the spirit that animates the verse is simple and human, and there is hardly a poem in the volume that English lips might not have uttered. Sounds of the Temple has much in it that is interesting in metre as well as in matter:-- Then sighed a poet from his soul: 'The clouds are blown across the stars, And chill have grown my lattice bars; I cannot keep my vigil whole By the lone candle of my soul. 'This reed had once devoutest tongue, And sang as if to its small throat God listened for a perfect note; As charily this lyre was strung: God's praise is slow and has no tongue.' But the best poem is undoubtedly the Hymn to the Mountain:-- Within the hollow of thy hand-- This wooded dell half up the height, Where streams take breath midway in flight-- Here let me stand. Here warbles not a lowland bird, Here are no babbling tongues of men; Thy rivers rustling through the glen Alone are heard. Above no pinion cleaves its way, Save when the eagle's wing, as now, With sweep imperial shades thy brow Beetling and grey. What thoughts are thine, majestic peak? And moods that were not born to chime With poets' ineffectual rhyme And numbers weak? The green earth spreads thy gaze before, And the unfailing skies are brought Within the level of thy thought. There is no more. The stars salute thy rugged crown With syllables of twinkling fire; Like choral burst from distant choir, Their psalm rolls down. And I within this temple niche, Like statue set where prophets talk, Catch strains they murmur as they walk, And I am rich.