Page:Poems Taggart.djvu/13

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them, to think often of others, or to feel for them, will peruse this volume. Their sphere is too limited for the enlarged and generous sympathies of a rational spirit. But it is hoped that there are few who can peruse it, and remain unaffected by it.

In confirmation of our opinion, that these Poems are not without power to interest, we offer some remarks introductory to one of the pieces, "An Ode to the Poppy," published in the Providence Literary Journal.

"The author of the following Ode is one of those, whom Misery has long since marked for her own, and exercised with the severest forms of physical suffering. Afflicted with a chronic disease of many years' duration (in the seat of thought itself), for which there is no remedy, and which must fatally terminate through slow and protracted degrees of pain and distress; never wholly losing her consciousness of present evil, in the balm of sleep, the author has yet been able briefly to forget her condition, and to find momentary consolation, in dictating to her friends several poetical effusions; from which the present has been selected as one of the most finished. Though secluded from the face of Nature, the memory of its various and beautiful forms is quickened, in her solitude, by a poet's imagination. There is a pathos in some of her pieces, a strength of soul struggling against the doom of its decaying tenement, in the agony of deferred and expiring hope, that excite in us, as we lay them down, a feeling of melancholy regret, that another mind is destined to pass away, and leave so imperfect a record of its origin;—a regret that is but partially alleviated by the conviction, however sincere, that, as well in the universe of mind, as of matter, through all their endless chan-