That he has done so, is, undoubtedly, one great cause of the poem's popularity. Had he woven any gossamer of reverie or philosophic conjecture over "the Grave," or even shown much personal interest in it, he might have gained a more peculiar set of admirers, but would not have won his way to the world's heart. As it is, the popularity of "The Grave" has been unbounded. Partly from the subject, partly from the shortness, partly from the signal truth and force of the poem, it rose rapidly to fame. It became "everybody's Grave." The poem was copied into all school collections. It lay along with 'Robinson Crusoe' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress', in the windows of cottages, and on the tables of wayside inns--achieving thus what Coleridge predicated over that well-thumbed copy of 'Thomson's Seasons', in the Welsh ale-house--"true fame!" It pervaded America. It was translated into other languages, and in its own it now transmigrated into a tract, now filled the page of a periodical, and now became a small separate book, telling its solemn tale to those who, though at first reluctant, as was the wedding guest to hear the Anciente Marinere, were at last compelled to listen, if not to learn. Light ballads and other amusing and clever trifles, had before and have since thus "put a girdle round about the globe in forty minutes;" but here was the phenomenon of a sad and serious strain, with little merit or charm but Christian truth and rugged poetry, passing, as if on telegraphic wires, through the whole world in a moment of time. Perhaps we should add a reason, although a very subordinate one, for the popularity of the poem. It was its author's 'first' and 'last'. He wrote himself at once and easily 'up'--he never tried and succeeded in writing himself laboriously 'down'. The only books which should gain permanent reputation are those which supply materials for thought, and are studded with moveable gems of expression. We think we may divide the poems of the past and present into two classes, which we may discriminate into 'buildings' and 'quarries'. Many works to which you can hardly deny the character of works of genius may be likened to elegant and splendid edifices, the structure of which you cannot but admire, although the secret of their architecture you do not understand, and although from them you neither do nor can extract a single stone. They stand up before the view, dazzling and confounding,-- "Distinct but distant, clear, but ah! how cold."