Rich in Scripture knowledge and in Christian experience, with a lively imagination and a great command of language, the writer has poured out her melodious strains from the fulness of her heart.
Most of the subjects are taken from the Old Testament or the New, and the versification embraces a great variety of metres, with the ease and sweetness almost peculiar to female writers. The whole book of Jonah is finely illustrated in a series of poems which cannot fail to please.
This little volume is introduced by a modest preface, and a “Sonnet inscribed to the memory of the Rev. J. Saffery,” which is worth transcribing:—
“Thou hadst a soul for melody to greet,
When thou wert here, among the weary-hearted;
And thoughts of thee are like sweet sounds departed,
That visit time with echoes,—and repeat
Strains that were breath’d beside my pilgrim feet;
As if I heard the voice of my past years,
And thou wert singing in this vale of tears.
But ’tis not in the desert we shall meet—
And who would wish thee where the world is weeping?
Thou hast a blessed minstrelsy on high.
The lyre of praise, o’er which thy song is sweeping,
Hath not a pause like mine—a pause to sigh.
Harps strung for holiest themes to both are given;
But mine is tun’d on earth—and thine, in heaven.”
Many others are exquisitely sweet. We have been particularly pleased with one on Jonathan’s friendship, which concludes thus:—
“O chieftain! in thy life was seen
That friendship in immortal mould,
To which ambition’s hope is mean,
And woman’s kindest thought is cold.
“Gilboa! let thy mountain-heath
Like Jesse’s gentle harp complain;
There Israel’s beauty bow’d in death,
There Jonathan, the friend, was slain!”
The work is very neatly got up, and we are glad to observe that the subscribers’ names are numerous, and highly respectable.