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thus compelled to acknowledge that it is the poet's privilege to shed a charm
"Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty;"
—we are made to feel the truth of L. E. L.'s own beautiful language, and its exquisite classical allusions:—
"It is the minstrel's part to fling
Around the present's common cope
The solemn hues on memory's wing
The spiritual light of hope.
The scene that to a careless eye
Seems nothing but itself to be,
Hath charmed earth and haunted sky
Soon as a minstrel's eye can see.
****
****
Without such lovely light the while,
Dark, silent, strange, all things would be,
And Ithaca were but an isle
Unknown upon a nameless sea;
But now a thousand years come back,
The gift of one immortal line,—
Each with new splendour on its track
As stars upon the midnight shine.
****
****
I ask of every pictured scene,
What human hearts have beaten there,—
What sorrow on their soil has been,—
What hope has blighted human care?"
Drawing-room Scrap Book, 1837.
Yes; and the lessons deduced from every pictured scene are not merely adventitious; they appeal to the general principles of human nature. This is one of the most prominent characteristics of L. E. L.’s
