"I, too, could look on thee until I wept.—
Blind me with kisses! Let me look no longer;
Or change the action of thy loveliness,
Lest long same-seemingness should send me mad!—
Blind me with kisses!"

There are many songs introduced in this, which may be described as the more terrestrial portion of the drama. They are not, in general, commendable. The substance of them is no better nor higher than love songs and drinking songs are very properly composed of, whilst the verse is destitute of that polish, grace, and harmony, which trifles of this description ought to possess. We select one stanza, as the happiest specimen which occurs to us of this kind of composition. Helen is singing:—

"Like an island in a river,
Art thou, my love, to me;
And I journey by thee ever
With a gentle ectasie.
I arise to fall before thee;
I come to kiss thy feet;
To adorn thee and adore thee,
Mine only one! my sweet!"

In his description of nature, and especially of night, the stars, the moon, the heavens, our poet often breaks upon us with a truly noble and poetic imagination:—

"How strangely fair,
Yon round still star, which looks half-suffering from,
And half-rejoicing in its own strong fire;
Making itself a lonelihood of light."

Of the moon he is a most permissible idolator:—

"See,
The moon is up, it is the dawn of night.
Stands by her side one bold, bright, steady star—
Star of her heart— ...
Mother of stars! the Heavens look up to thee:
They shine the brighter but to hide thy waning;
They wait and wane for thee to enlarge thy beauty;
They give thee all their glory night by night;
Their number makes not less thy loneliness
Nor loveliness."

This is of the full moon: what follows is addressed to her when she passes as the young moon, and brings her fresh bright crescent of light into the sky:—

"Young maiden moon! just looming into light—
I would that aspect never might be changed;
Nor that fine form, so spirit-like, be spoiled
With fuller light. Oh! keep that brilliant shape;
Keep the delicious honour of thy youth,
Sweet sister of the sun, more beauteous thou
Than he sublime. Shine on, nor dread decay.
It may take meaner things; but thy bright look,
Smiling away on immortality,
Assures it us——God will not part with thee,
Fair ark of light, and every blessedness!"

Here are some scattered fragments which pleased us very much, but which cannot be introduced under any formal classification. Describing his desertion of his first love, Angela, Festus says,—