"She hath been in my dreams"—his voice failed short,
They gave no heed to his dying prayer.—
They have lowered him o'er the vessel's side—
Above him hath closed the solemn tide.
Where to dip her wing the wild fowl rests—
Where the blue waves dance with their foamy crests—
Where the billows bound and the winds sport free,
They have buried him there, in the deep, deep sea.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Calaynos: A Tragedy. By George H. Boker, E. H. Butler & Co. Philadelphia, pp. 218.#/
The spirit of English poetry has been for years eminently lyric; the few attempts at the epic or dramatic having been laid aside, if not permanently, at least for a time. The age has been too busy in working out, with machinery and steam, its own great epic thought, to find leisure to listen to any thing longer than a single bugle-blast encouraging its advancement. We cannot but believe, however, if we may be allowed an analogical inference, that the age is fast approaching the climax of its utilitarian inventions, and that man, instead of chasing through unknown regions every will-o-wisp of his brain, in the hope of bringing it a captive to the Patent-office, will sit modestly down to apply to their various uses the discoveries already made. Then will the healthy feast of literature once more begin, and the public cease to be surfeited by the watery hash which has been daily set steaming before them. In the volume under consideration we think we can discern the promise of the return of the good old spirit of English poetry—of solid honest thought expressed in straight forward Saxon. The story, which is one of the chivalrous days of Spain, while it is devoid of trick is full of thrilling interest, and its style, while it is eminently poetical, neither swells into bombast nor descends to the foppery so common among the verse-makers of our day. There is a stately, old-fashioned tread in the diction, as of a man in armor, who, should he attempt to gather flowers of mere prettiness, would crush them at the first touch of his iron gauntlet, and who, if he seems to move ungracefully at times, owes his motion to his weight of mail. Calaynos, the hero, is in every respect a nobleman, not only in blood, but what is better, in mind. He is a scholar, one who, in the words of Dona Alda his wife,
—uses time as usurers do their gold,
Making each moment pay him double interest.
He is a philosopher—
Things nigh impossible are plain to him;
His trenchant will, like a fine-tempered blade,
With unturned edge, cleaves through the baser iron.
He is generous and has