Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/891
Flows murmuring through its hidden eaves,
Whose streams of brightening purple rush
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
White all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature’s flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then kindling each decaying part
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
Behold the outward moving frame,
Its living marbles jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason’s guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.
Is braided out of seven-hued light,
Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear
With music it is heaven to hear.
All thought In its mysterious folds,
That feels sensation’s faintest thrill
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads!
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have supped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms
And mould it into heavenly forms!
LITERARY NOTICES
Library of Old Authors.—Works of John Marston. London: John Russell Smith. 1856-7.
Mr. Halliwell, at the close of his Preface to the Works of Marston, (Vol. I. p. xxii.,) says, “The dramas now collected together are reprinted absolutely from the carly editions, which were placed in the hands of our printers, who thus had the advantage of following them without the intervention of a transcriber. They are given as nearly as possible in their original state, the only modernizations attempted consisting in the alternations of the letters i and j, and u and v, the retention of which” (does Mr. Halliwell mean the letters or the “alternations”?) “would have answered no useful purpose, while it would have unnecessarily perplexed the modern reader.”
This is not very clear; but as Mr. Halliwell is a member of several learned foreign societies, and especially of the Royal Irish Academy, perhaps it would be unfair to demand that he should write clear English. As one of Mr. Smith’s editors, it was to be expected that he should not write it idiomatically. Some malign constellation (Taurus, perhaps, whose infaust aspect may be supposed to preside over the makers of bulls and blunders) seems to have been in conjunction with heavy Saturn when the Library was projected. At the top of the same page from which we have made our quotation, Mr. Halliwell speaks of “conveying a favorable impression on modern readers.” It was surely to no such phrase as this that Ensign Pistol alluded when he said, “Convey the wise it call.”
A literal reprint of an old author may be of value in two ways: the orthography may in certain cases indicate the ancient pronunciation, or it may put us on a scent which shall lead us to the burrow of a word among the roots of language. But in order to this, it surely is not needful