The imagination of Southey is marked by similar traits; there is no flash, no scintillation about it, but a steady light as of day itself. As specimens of his best manner, I would mention the last stage of Thalaba’s journey to the Domdaniel Caves, and, in the “Curse of Kehama,” the sea-palace of Baly, “The Glendoveer,” and “The Ship of Heaven.” As Southey’s poems are not very generally read, I will extract the two latter:
“THE SHIP OF HEAVEN.
“The ship of heaven, instinct with thought displayed
Its living sail and glides along the sky,
On either side, in wavy tide,
The clouds of morn along its path divide;
The winds that swept in wild career on high,
Before its presence check their charmed force;
The winds that, loitering, lagged along their course
Around the living bark enamored play,
Swell underneath the sail, and sing before its way.
“That bark in shape was like the furrowed shell
Wherein the sea-nymphs to their parent king,
On festal days their duteous offerings bring;
Its hue? go watch the last green light
Ere evening yields the western sky to night,
Or fix upon the sun thy strenuous sight
Till thou hast reached its orb of chrysolite.
The sail, from end to end displayed,
Bent, like a rainbow, o’er the maid;
An angel’s head with visual eye,
Through trackless space directs its chosen way;
Nor aid of wing, nor foot nor fin,
Requires to voyage o'er the obedient sky.
Smooth as the swan when not a breeze at even
Disturbs the surface of the silver stream,
Through air and sunshine sails the ship of heaven.”
Southey professes to have borrowed the description of the Glendoveer from an old and forgotten book. He has given the prose
