That, as thy voice doth pierce men’s ears,
So shall thy prayers and vows the spheres.
Thus read, thus sing, and then to thee
The very earth a Heaven shall be;
If thus thou readest, thou shalt find
A private Heaven within thy mind,
And, singing thus, before thou die
Thou sing’st thy part to those on high.
I have modernized the orthography of the foregoing quaint and beautiful stanzas, from the dress in which they are clothed in the second part of the Diary of Lady Willoughby, just published by John Wiley, bookseller, in New York. They are happily imitative of the style of the poets of olden time. They remind one of George Herbert—that “sweet singer in the Israel” of the English church, of Donne, of Wotton, and of other lyrists, who chanted the praises of our God. To my ear, much dearer are such simple, tuneful verses than the grandiloquent outpourings of the more modern muse. They come home, as it were, to one’s child-like sympathies. They awaken the thoughts of “youthly years;” they freshen the withered feelings of the heart, as heaven’s dew freshens the dried leaves in summer.
Let me recommend this most tender, most soul-touching of “late works”—these passages from the Diary of Lady Willoughby. It is not a real “aunciente booke,” but an imitation; yet, like certain copies of a picture by an old master, it may boast some touches better than the original. Chatterton’s forgeries were not more perfect in their way, though this be no forgery, but what it pretends to be—namely, an invention. I feared, when I took up the second part of this remarkable production, that it would deteriorate in interest, that the hand of the artist would become manifest. But it is not so. Here, throughout, is the ars celare artem in perfection.