"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr." ("Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)
"Meeting at Night." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Night" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"Parting at Morning." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Morning" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.")
"The Patriot. An old Story." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Instans Tyrannus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Mesmerism." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Time's Revenges." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"The Italian in England." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "Italy in England" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"Protus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Apparent Failure." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)
"Waring." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.) This poem is a personal effusion of feeling and reminiscence, which can stand for nothing but itself.
First Group.
"THE LOST LEADER" is a lament over the defection of a loved and honoured chief. It breathes a tender regret for the moral injury he has inflicted on himself; and a high courage, saddened by the thought of lost support and lost illusions, but not shaken by it. The language of the poem shows the lost "leader" to have been a poet. It was suggested by Wordsworth, in his abandonment (with Southey and others) of the liberal cause.
"NATIONALITY IN DRINKS." A fantastic little comment on the distinctive national drinks—Claret, Tokay, and Beer. The beer is being drunk off Cape Trafalgar to the health of Nelson, and introduces an authentic and appropriate anecdote of him. But the laughing little claret flask, which the speaker has on another occasion seen plunged for cooling into a black-faced pond, suggests to him the image of a "gay French lady," dropped, with straightened limbs, into the silent ocean of death; while the Hungarian Tokay (Tokayer Ausbruch), in its concentrated strength, seems to jump on to the table as a stout pigmy castle-warder, strutting and swaggering in his historic costume, and ready to defy twenty men at once if the occasion requires.
"THE FLOWER'S NAME. Garden Fancies," I. A lover's reminiscence of a garden in which he and his lady-love have walked together, and of a flower which she has consecrated by her touch and voice: its dreamy Spanish name, which she has breathed upon it, becoming part of the charm.
"EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES." A sad and subtle little satire on the vaunted permanence of love and fame. The poet's grave falls to pieces. The words: "love me for ever," appeal to us from a tombstone which records how Spring garlands are severed by the hand of June, and June's fever is quenched in winter's snow.
"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA." An utterance of patriotic pride and gratitude, aroused in the mind of an Englishman, by the sudden appearance of Trafalgar in the blood-red glow of the southern setting sun.
"MY STAR" may be taken as a tribute to the personal element in love: the bright peculiar light in which the sympathetic soul reveals itself to the object of its sympathy.
"MISCONCEPTIONS" illustrates the false hopes which may be aroused in the breast of any devoted creature by an incidental and momentary acceptance of its devotion.
"A PRETTY WOMAN" is the picture of a simple, compliant, exquisitely pretty, and hopelessly shallow woman: incapable of love, though a mere nothing will win her liking. And the question is raised, whether such a creature is not perfect in itself, and would not be marred by any attempt to improve it, or extract from it a different use. The author decides in the affirmative. A rose is best "graced," not by reproducing its petals in precious stones for a king to preserve; not by plucking it to "smell, kiss, wear," and throw away; but by simply leaving it where it grows. A "pretty" woman is most appropriately treated when nothing is asked of her, but to be so.