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The past is the poet's,—that world is his own;
Thence hath his music its truth and its tone.
He calls up the shadows of ages long fled,
And light as life lovely illumines the dead;
And the beauty of time, with wild flowers and green,
Shades and softens the world-worn, the harsh and the mean."
Vow of the Peacock, pp. 1-6.
Mary Howitt is deservedly a favourite with many, for her sweet pictures of natural objects; yet where even in her works can be found aught more exquisitely true to nature than in L. E. L.'s poem, "The Old Times"? Take one verse,—
"Ah! little recked we then of those sick fancies
To which in after-life the spirit yields;
Our world was of the fairies and romances
With which we wandered o'er the summer fields;
Then did we question of the downballs blowing
To know if some slight wish would come to pass;
And if we feared a shower, we sought where growing,
Some weather-flower, which was our weather-glass
In the old old times,
The dear old times."
These are not solitary passages; similar ones abound in her pages equally beautiful, as descriptions of the outward world, and all fraught with suggestions of truth to the inner world of the heart. We would just observe here in passing, that some of the most lovely and touching reminiscences of childhood ever written, are sufficient of themselves to prove that there is no deficiency of natural truth in the productions of this fascinating writer.
It is true that L. E. L. does not so frequently as Mrs. Hemans devote whole poems to studies from nature; her descriptive passages are rather wrought in as illustrative of subjects immediately associated with the spirit of humanity.
