button to main menu  Gents Mag 1842 part 1 p.16
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Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.16
career in the very first stanza, and appears at intervals boldly sustaining it to the utmost close. The organ of vision is addressed in person; and then a spirit aerial is supposed to exist, who

"Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind;
Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought
To enter than oracular cave:
Strict passage, through which sighs are brought,
And whispers for the heart, their slave;
And shrieks, that revel in abuse
Of shivering flesh; and warbled air,
Whose piercing sweetness can unloose,
The chains of frenzy, or entice a smile
Into the ambush of despair."
In the second stanza, the invisible Spirit is again addressed; and at the close of it we have a new personification -

"Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird, toll!
At the still hour to Mercy dear,
Mercy from her twilight throne
List'ning to nuns' faint throb of holy fear,
To sailor's prayer breathed from a dark'ning sea;
Or widow's cottage lullaby."
In the third stanza, again personification!

"Ye Voices, and ye Shadows,
And images of Voice - to hound and horn,
From rocky steep and rock bestudded meadows
Flung back, and in the sky's blue caves reborn!
On with your pastime! 'till the church tower bells
A greeting give of measured glee;
And milder Echoes from their cells
Repeat the bridal symphony."
In the fourth, the blessings of song are described by very lively images of its effects.
The lute of Amphion, the harp of Arion, and the pipe of Pan, with their respective fancies or fabled effects, are also well described, and the Poet tunes his strains, at the call of Imagination, to paint the saddest images of reality:-

"Ye, who are longing to be rid
Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear
The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell
Echoed from the coffin lid!
The convinct's summons in the steeple's knell.
'The vain distress-gun,' from a leeward shore,
Repeated - heard - and heard no more."
Then we are again thrown into the hands of Fancy, who introduces us to the "wandering utterances" of earth and sky; and who teaches that -

"The towering headlands, crowned with mist,
Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist;
Thy pinions, universal Air,
Ever waving to and fro,
Are delegates of harmony, and bear
Strains that support the seasons in their round;
Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound."
In the two superb stanzas with which this too short poem concludes, Fancy and Imagination play alternately before us, and leave us at a loss which we should admire most, the manifest beauty and approaching sublimity of the one, or the brilliancy and richness of the other.
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