ceeding fear,' moans, shudders, screams, cries aloud,
weeps, and trembles like a leaf, all within the course
of the first book, and continues to make similar mani-
festations of feeling through the whole fifteen. His
roadside acquaintances are not less epicenely demon-
strative. Shrieks, cries, and wails are common ; so are
eyes ' red with tears,' or ' suffused with dew of eas}-
tears,' or ' filled with tearful dew.' Prometheus him-
self trembles and moans at the sight of the bleeding
Cheiron. Such conduct is doubtless to be expected
from beings of the pallid, golden-haired, emaciated type
which Mr. Buchanan affects ; but it grows monotonous
by repetition, and the healthy-minded student is glad
to escape into a saner world.
Still, when all deductions are made, this powerful
and splendid poem may find appreciation from readers
whose convictions are as yet uncrystallised, who are
passing through some of the intellectual and emotional
phases liere depicted, and whose taste is catholic rather
than critical. For the Cii}/ of Dreaiii, though imperfect
as an artistic production, and unsatisfactory as a philo-
sophical allegory, is still a work of genius, and wins
admiration by its picturesque force and its frequent
verbal music. The lyrics scattered through the volume
constitute one of its greatest charms. I quote the first,
though hardly the most beautiful, stanza of one of these
exquisite songs : —
' Come again, come back to me,
White-winged throng of childish Hours,
Lead me on from lea to lea
Ankle-deep in meadow flowers ;
.Set a lily in my hand,
Weave wild pansies in my hair,
Through a green and golden land
Lead me on with fancies fair.
White-wing'd Spirits, come again, —
Heal my pain !
Through the shadows of the rain
Come again ! '
Constance C. W. Naden.
NOVEMBER BOUGHS.
A LARGE fiat volume, strongly, roughly sewn and bound in russet-coloured limp cloth — Walt Whit- man's November Boiiglis — comes over the sea. The author himself (as he expresses it) ' like a dismasted ship,' lying at Camden, New Jersey — occupying the brief remainder of his time, and the intervals of physical prostration and illness, with last editions of, and additions to, his works. (Just now ' I am finishing a big volume of about 900 pages comprehending all my stuff, poems and prose.') When I last saw him — four years and a half ago — he was still able, with the aid of a stick or the arm of a friend, to enjoy a ramble through Camden and across the Ferry to Philadelphia : a fine-looking old man, though crippled somewhat in his gait by pai-alysis, well over six feet in height, with long white hair and beard, something elemental, haughty — the ' I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable ' look about him, more developed even perhaps in age than when those words were written ; withal an infinite tenderness and wistfulness in his eye — surely never in any man those two opposites, love and pride, exhibited side by side in such splendid an- tagonism as in him. Now he writes, ' Have not been out-doors for over six months — hardly out of my room — but get along better than you might think for ' ; his body disabled, and even at times his brain, but his great big heart seemingly the same as ever. But to come to November Boughs. The book con- sists of 140 pp., clear but compact print, prose and poetry ; and to readers of Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days forms a distinct, notable, and even important addition to both these volumes. The introductory essay is ' A backward Glance o'er travel'd Roads,' and is really a history of the genesis and purpose of Leaves of Glass ; the next twenty pages are occupied by poetical pieces, mostly short, under the general head- ing of Sands at Seveiiti/ ; and the remainder of the book consists of short papers on a variety of subjects;, a good many literary — Shakespeare, Burns, Tennyson, the Bible, etc. ; notes on Father Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, Elias Hicks, George Fo.x ; some more diary scraps ; and a few remaining Memoranda of the War and the Hospitals. All these doubtless to be grouped with the earlier work under their different main head- ings in the complete volume which is to come. Of Sands at Seventy, if, as the hour-glass runs out, the movement is a little slower and more laboured, still there is work here to be compared with the author's best : the same flat acceptance of ordinary facts, the same direct gaze into the spiritual world behind tliem ; the same egotism ; the same yearning, obstinately-clinging human love ; the same undipped jagged old lines ; the same (though perhaps fewer) passages of large emotional volume. If there is a variation it is in the nearness of Death, and the many pieces and poems that einbody the experiences of old age and the thoughts of the human creature in pre- sence of the unknown to-come ; and precious are these, for by how few have such subjects been treated with equal candour or with equal penetration !
' Nothing is really ever lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form — no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing ;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space — ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold — the embers left from earlier fires.
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again ;
The sun, now low in the west, rises for mornings and for noons
continual ;
To frozen clods ever tlie spring's invisible law returns.
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.'
