"There is no bard in all the choir, Not Homer's self, the poet sire, Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure, Or Shakespeare, whom no mind can measure, Nor Collins' verse of tender pain, Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, Scott, the delight of generous boys, Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,-- Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse, The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of the kingfisher; Saw bonfires of the harlot flies In the lowland, when day dies; Or marked, benighted and forlorn, The first far signal-fire of morn. These syllables that Nature spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke, Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, would thrill and ring. "Not long ago, at eventide, It seemed, so listening, at my side A window rose, and, to say sooth, I looked forth on the fields of youth: I saw fair boys bestriding steeds, I knew their forms in fancy weeds, Long, long concealed by sundering fates, Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates, Stronger and bolder far than I, With grace, with genius, well attired, And then as now from far admired, Followed with love They knew not of, With passion cold and shy. O joy, for what recoveries rare! Renewed, I breathe Elysian air, See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,-- Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb! Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil Of life resurgent from the soil Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil." Among the other poems in this volume, it appears to us that "The Romany Girl," "Voluntaries," and "The Boston Hymn" are in their widely different ways the best. The last expresses, with a sublime colloquiality in which the commonest words of every-day parlance seem cut anew; and are made to shine with a fresh and novel lustre, the idea and destiny of America. In "Voluntaries" our former great peril and delusion--the mortal Union which lived by slavery--is at first the theme, with the strong pulse of prophecy, however, in the mournful music. Few motions of rhyme so win and touch as those opening lines,-- "Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the tropic sea,"-- in which the poet, with a hardly articulate sorrow, regards the past; and Mr. Emerson's peculiarly exalted and hopeful genius has nowhere risen in clearer and loftier tones than in those stops which open full upon us after the pathetic pleasing of his regrets:--