----If there be whose tender frames have drooped Even to the dust; apparently, through weight Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power An agonizing spirit to transmute, Infer not hence a hope from those withheld When wanted most; a confidence impaired So pitiably, that, having ceased to see With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love Of what is lost, and perish through regret. Oh! no, full oft the innocent Sufferer sees Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs To realize the Vision with intense And overconstant yearning--there--there lies The excess, by which the balance is destroyed. Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh, This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs, Though inconceivably endowed, too dim For any passion of the soul that leads To extacy; and, all the crooked paths Of time and change disdaining, takes its course Along the line of limitless desires.--p. 148. With the same modifying and incorporating power, he tells us,-- Within the soul a Faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide And darken, so can deal, that they become Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt Her native brightness. As the ample Moon, In the deep stillness of a summer even Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove, Burns like an unconsuming fire of light, In the green tree; and, kindling on all sides Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil Into a substance glorious as her own, Yea with her own incorporated, by power Capacious and serene. Like power abides In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire, From the incumbrances of mortal life, From error, disappointment,--nay from guilt; And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills, From palpable oppressions of Despair.--p. 188. This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of the author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some parts of it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the appearance of a kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished therefore that the tale of Margaret had been postponed, till the reader had been strengthened by some previous acquaintance with the author's theory, and not placed in the front of the poem, with a kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender as it is. It is a tale of a cottage, and its female tenant, gradually decaying together, while she expected the return of one whom poverty and not unkindness had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with the conclusion--