the absent voice � the window without its light the familiar name � the relics � the harp untouched � the task � the blank at the table up � the garden walks � the flowers � the favourite books closed up as with a seal � in short the total away of that sweet without which the once harmonious strains of social intercourse are musical no more the effect produced upon the mind by the contemplation of death is of a character peculiarly refined and gentle we necessarily forgive the dead even though they may have been our enemies and if our we remember their virtues alone they have lost the power to offend again and therefore their faults are forgotten it is true there are associations with the bodily part of death which scarcely come under the of refined but from these our nature even the common nurse her last sad office in silence and delicacy in everlasting the mortal remains of the deceased it is the task of the poet to record their noble actions � their benevolence � their patient suffering � their � their self denial and while he this sacred duty his bosom with enthusiasm to imitate the virtues he the loss of fortune is another cause of grief not less severely felt for being of common occurrence those who have never tasted the real bitterness of poverty tell us in the language of philosophy that the loss of fortune is a very insufficient cause for the grief of a wise man that our nature is not degraded when our bodies are clad in i homely garments and that the friends j the poetry op grief whose esteem is worthy of our regard will follow us as willingly to the clay cottage as to the courts of kings this might be all very true did reason alone govern the but we have another law � the law of feeling more potent in its influence upon the of mankind and in this law the poet is much better instructed than the philosopher the poet knows that to attempt to remove the pressure of the of life by reasoning however upon their transient or trifling nature is not in effect to speak the language of common sense because it does not itself to the feelings of those to whom it is addressed so as to render it available or even intelligible as well might we tell the victim of raging fever that it is absurd to thirst again because he has but lately his lips as endeavour to persuade him who suffers from the loss of worldly wealth to be comforted because it is vain to grieve the poet s sphere being one of feeling he has within himself so quick and clear an apprehension of all the sources of human pain or pleasure that he sees and at once why the change of fortune the of accustomed privileges and and the gradual sinking to a lower rank in social life should occasion the deepest sorrow and regret were reason the sole of our passions and we never grieve because we arc taught by the experience of every day that good may arise out of what we have blindly called evil and because we are assured upon the highest evidence that our even when darkest and most perplexed are the government of a gracious and providence but the experience of every day teaches us also these important truths have not their proper weight in human calculations who for instance can meet with the attacks of suspicious whose claims he knows he is unable to supply who can bear the mute appeals of those who have been dependent upon his and protection when he has no longer the power to either � the looks of former friends for friendship in the world is not what it is to be in books but will sometimes from the i rule of scripture by showing respect unto the persons of men � the reproaches covert and open which always fall upon those whose success has not been equal to their as if the of this life were so regulated that to succeed in obtaining money were the highest proof of the gradual owing to the taking away of on every side when most needed into a lower grade of society where intellectual refinement is uttle valued and to be maintained � the signs of envious triumph exhibited by those who in our better days would have been our enemies if they had dared who can endure all these and an endless variety of other causes of suffering incident to fallen fortune and yet so his soul by sage reasoning that it shall feel no anguish no the poet knows what is in nature and in man and therefore he finds a fruitful theme of interest in the fountain of his own feelings which through the medium of poetic language is so conducted as to mix and and with those of others a well known cause of grief and one familiar to every poetic mind is loneliness in one sense it may be said that the poet is never alone but let us ask how it is that he to make him of with the and the of the to hold perhaps there never was a poet who had not first sought to find in his own species that real sympathy for which he becomes afterwards satisfied to substitute the ideal it is impossible but that the elevated and finely constituted mind should find itself alone and if morbid and too sensitive as such minds generally are it must be always so in the common of human kind the poet who can be satisfied with nothing less than entire communion and sympathy of soul is alone in the crowded � ity where amidst the rush of thousands of busy feet not one is found to pause because he is near � 