He is more at home in the beautiful than in the sublime—more a Warton than a Milton—and may be rather likened to a bee murmuring her dim music in the bells of flowers, than to an eagle dallying with the tempest, and binding distant oceans and chains of mountains together by the living link of his swift and strong pinion. Yet his "Spirit of Discovery" contains some bold fancy. Take this, for instance:—
"Andes, sweeping the horizon's tract,
Mightiest of mountains! whose eternal snows
Feel not the nearer sun; whose umbrage chills
The murmuring ocean; whose volcanic fires
A thousand nations view, hung, like the moon,
High in the middle waste of heaven."
"The Missionary" (of which Byron writes in some playful verses to Murray,
"I've read the Missionary,
Pretty! Very!")
contains much vivid description and interesting narrative; and "St John in Patmos," if scarcely up to the mark of the transcendent theme, has a good deal of picturesque and striking poetry. Perhaps the most interesting of all his minor poems is that entitled "Childe Harold's Last Pilgrimage," quoted, we remember, in Moore's Life of Byron. As proceeding from one whom the angry and unhappy Childe had often insulted in public and laughed at in private, it was as graceful in spirit as it is elegant in composition. "Revenge," it has been said, "is a feast for the gods;" and the saying is true if meant of that species of revenge which gains its end by forgiveness. An act so noble and generous as the writing of this, is calculated to set the memory of Bowles still higher than all his poetry.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| BANWELL HILL: A Lay of the Severn Sea:— | |
| Preface | [3] |
| Part First | [9] |
| Part Second | [20] |
| Part Third | [42] |
| Part Fourth | [61] |
| Part Fifth | [69] |
| THE GRAVE OF THE LAST SAXON; or, The Legend of the Curfew:— | |
| Introduction | [79] |
| Introductory Canto | [81] |
| Canto First | [87] |
| Canto Second | [102] |
| Canto Third | [111] |
| Canto Fourth | [111] |
| Conclusion | [137] |
| Illustrations from Speed | [139] |