'A soul distinct and sphered, its own true star,
Shining and axled for a separate way.'
An 'axled soul' is good, as Polonius would say; but it is not much better than one or two equally original expressions which ensue:
'Be thou a Heaven of truth and cheerful hope,
Clear as the clear round midnight at its full;
And he, the Earth beneath that elder cope—
And each 'gainst each for highest mastery pull:
The child and father, each shall fitly be—
Hope in the evening vanward paling down,
The one—the other younger Hope upspringing,
With the glancing morning for its crown.'
The writer counsels 'the citizen' not to 'overstalk' his brother, but to show in his mien 'each motion forthright, calm, and free;' and he farther advises in the words following, to wit:
'Feel well with the poised ballot in thy hand,
Thine unmatched sovereignty of right and wrong:
'Tis thine to bless or blast the waiting land,
To shorten up its life or make it long.'
In the annexed stanza there is an assortment of similes, the like of which one seldom encounters in so brief a compass. The lines are addressed to 'the farmer;' and we are acquainted with several excellent persons among that indispensable class of the community, to whom we should like to hear Mr. Mathews read them! It would be a 'rich treat' to hear their opinion of such pellucid poetry:
'When cloud-like whirling through the stormy State
Fierce Revolutions rush in wild-orbed haste,
On the still highway stay their darkling course,
And soothe with gentle airs their fiery breast;
Slaking the anger of their chariot-wheels
In the cool flowings of the mountain brook,
While from the cloud the heavenward prophet casts
His mantle's peace, and shines his better look.'
Cloud-like revolutions stopping on the highway to slake their chariot-wheels in a mountain-brook! If that isn't 'original poetry' we know not what is. Now the opening of the piece from which the above stanza is taken we have no doubt is considered by the writer quite inferior to it; but to our conception, the nature and simplicity which it preserves for a moment are worth all the striking figures to which we have alluded. 'The mechanic,' whose business is to 'shape and finish forth iron and wood,' comes in for his share of rythmical counsel:
'Let consecrate, whate'er it strikes, each blow,
From the small whisper of the tinkling smith,
Up to the big-voiced sledge that heaving slow
Roars 'gainst the massy bar, and tears
Its entrail, glowing, as with angry teeth—
Anchors that hold a world should thus-wise grow.'
Observe the felicitousness of the foregoing poetical terms. The 'tinkling smith,' and the 'big-voiced sledge' roaring against an iron bar, and tearing out its entrails with angry teeth! Could appropriateness and power of metaphor reach much beyond this? 'Not good,' we suspect. We thought to have given our friends, 'the merchants,' a lift with Mr. Mathews's moral instruction; but we can only remind them, with his assistance, that