Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/891

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The smooth, soft air with pulse-like wavesFlows murmuring through its hidden eaves,Whose streams of brightening purple rushFired with a new and livelier blush,White all their burden of decayThe ebbing current steals away,And red with Nature’s flame they startFrom the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask,Forever quivering o'er his task,While far and wide a crimson jetLeaps forth to fill the woven netWhich in unnumbered crossing tidesThe flood of burning life divides,Then kindling each decaying partCreeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that unchanging flameBehold the outward moving frame,Its living marbles jointed strongWith glistening band and silvery thong,And linked to reason’s guiding reinsBy myriad rings in trembling chains,Each graven with the threaded zoneWhich claims it as the master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming whiteIs braided out of seven-hued light,Yet in those lucid globes no rayBy any chance shall break astray.Hark how the rolling surge of sound,Arches and spirals circling round,Wakes the hushed spirit through thine earWith music it is heaven to hear.
Then mark the cloven sphere that holdsAll thought In its mysterious folds,That feels sensation’s faintest thrillAnd flashes forth the sovereign will;Think on the stormy world that dwellsLocked in its dim and clustering cells!The lightning gleams of power it shedsAlong its hollow glassy threads!
O Father! grant thy love divineTo make these mystic temples thine!When wasting age and wearying strifeHave supped the leaning walls of life,When darkness gathers over all,And the last tottering pillars fall,Take the poor dust thy mercy warmsAnd mould it into heavenly forms!

LITERARY NOTICES

Library of Old Authors.—Works of John Marston. London: John Russell Smith. 1856-7.

Mr. Halliwell, at the close of his Preface to the Works of Marston, (Vol. I. p. xxii.,) says, “The dramas now collected together are reprinted absolutely from the carly editions, which were placed in the hands of our printers, who thus had the advantage of following them without the intervention of a transcriber. They are given as nearly as possible in their original state, the only modernizations attempted consisting in the alternations of the letters i and j, and u and v, the retention of which” (does Mr. Halliwell mean the letters or the “alternations”?) “would have answered no useful purpose, while it would have unnecessarily perplexed the modern reader.”

This is not very clear; but as Mr. Halliwell is a member of several learned foreign societies, and especially of the Royal Irish Academy, perhaps it would be unfair to demand that he should write clear English. As one of Mr. Smith’s editors, it was to be expected that he should not write it idiomatically. Some malign constellation (Taurus, perhaps, whose infaust aspect may be supposed to preside over the makers of bulls and blunders) seems to have been in conjunction with heavy Saturn when the Library was projected. At the top of the same page from which we have made our quotation, Mr. Halliwell speaks of “conveying a favorable impression on modern readers.” It was surely to no such phrase as this that Ensign Pistol alluded when he said, “Convey the wise it call.”


A literal reprint of an old author may be of value in two ways: the orthography may in certain cases indicate the ancient pronunciation, or it may put us on a scent which shall lead us to the burrow of a word among the roots of language. But in order to this, it surely is not needful

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