The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-03 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Come hither, my sweet children !
Some time we three must part,
Though linked with living fetters,
Whose padlock is my heart,
Come hither my sweet babe-girls !
Gaze softly iu mine eyes ;
Beams not in your blue vision
Some light from far-off skies ?
I could not welcome daybreak,
1 could,not sleep at night,
If I thought TH s world ended
My tender, true delight ;
I dared not watch your gambols,
1 could not strain you near
Unto my heart of heart throbs
As now, for very fear,
Lest MY days soon bo numbered
A grave face pass away,
And we for aye be sundered,
Mere dead from living clay :
Or as ye hide in playing
Behind my study door,
Some night ye should be hidden,
And laughing come no more.
Save only for the faulty rhyming of "sundered" with
"numbered"—which would be a lapsus simply impos-
sible with the author of " Evangeline"—the whole
passage might have come from the pen of Pro-
fessor Longfellow. One other flaw only have we
been able to detect in " Religio Animas," namely,
the almost painful suggestiveness, through the last
two lines of an otherwise nearly faultless little
poem, of the operation for cataract; that is —em-
ploying the oculist's delicate lancet in lieu of the
poet's " tongue of flame." By an easily contrived
emendation at the two points here indicated, the
author might, according to our appreciation of it,
at least, just perfect this exquisite initial poem of
the volume, the poem giving the book its title
as a collection, namely, as —" Religio Anima),
and Other Poems." Among those forty odd " other
poems" of a miscellaneous kind there are, as a matter
of course, many not alone nominally but literally of
a fugitive character. But, interspersed with these,
there are several charming, some of them even
haunting, lyrics—songs of war, of peace, of love,
of patriotism, idylls, epigrams, what not—that the
readers of the little book " will not willingly let die"
out of their remembrance. Speaking of epigrams
by the way, there is one—it occurs at page 296
which has oddly enough sprung out of a curiously
misplaced or distorted recollection—being in effect
as one may say, the echo of an echo of an echo ;
or, otherwise to put it, the translation of a trans-
lation of a translation. " From the French," it
is called, by Colonel Richards—who adds in a foot-
note I quote the French from memory, and
possibly incorrectly." The French pseudo-original
being there given thus :
" Quand vos yeux en naissant s'ouvraieut k la lumiere,
Chacun 'vous s iriait, mon fits, et vous plouriez ;
Vivez si bien qu'un jour h votro derniere heure,
Chacun verse des larmes et qu'on vous voit sourire."
Evidently, this is, of course, in the unsatisfactory
rhyming of it, a faulty recollection of the sup-
posed French original ; but whether remembered
accurately or not, for such as it is, the quatrain has
been thus ingeniously rendered into English by our -
author—

Thine eyes with early tears were wet, my child,
As at thy birth all gazed on thee and smiled ;
So live, that at Life's close thou may'st be found,
Saintly to smile on those who weep around.
The first word in the last verse, it may be here
said par parentQse, is apparently a misprint for
Faintly. But, however this may be, the epigram,
in its original integrity, is " From the Persian," not
" From the French "—having been first brought
to the knowledge of epigram-lovers throughout
Western Europe in the last century, by that famous
oriental scholar, Sir 'William Jones, whose version
of it, done into English by his own hand, is one
among the choicest gems ever contributed by any
epigrammatist to any literature ; running thus—
On parent's knees a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou satest, whilst all around thee smiled ;
So live, that sinking to thy last long sleep,
Then thou may'st smile whilst all around thee weep.
Sir William Jones, translating from the Persian
into English, must, therefore, have had his English
version done into French by some anonymous
epigrammatist, whose dimly remembered echo of
an echo, must thus have been echoed back again into
our English vernacular by the author of " Religio
Animse." Under the mournful title of " Miserrima,"
there are given, as the second poem in the volume,
a series of melodious verses, the dying cadences of
which, stanza by stanza, have a sad and captivating
beauty of their own—
Sad as first love, and wild with all regrets ;
So sad, so sweet—

these lamenting verses of Miserrima ! Akin to
them in pathetic significance are " Cypress Leaves
and Passion Flowers," given, to the number of ten,

liter en in the volume—" Bleed in the Dark, my
Soul," " Would I might fall asleep," " Pale
memory is mine," and similar cries of lamen-
tation. Among the happiest translations
achieved. by Colonel Richards, is his version of
the "Last Song of Chenier," whose despairing ex-
clamation, as he struck his forehead with his hand,
when mounting the scaffold of the guillotine,
on the morning of his execution, "And there
was something here I" has been so touch-
ingly commemorated in one of the most affecting
of the minor poems of Lord Lytton. If April 23,
1864, brought no other Tercentenary Commemora-
tion with it in any way worthy of evidencing the
universal homage felt for the peerless genius of
Shakspere, it at any rate passed by not altogether
unmarked in a manner befitting so glorious an
anniversary, seeing that it elicited the following
noble lines under the heading :

HIS PRAYSE -1664.

Fayre wisdomo's Bridegroom°, married to her Yong,

That dry'd the inke, wherewith he wrote, with sand
Shedd° from the houre-glasso of admiring Time.
His birth alone had stamp'd the nation great
Whore he was nurtur'd; for indeed he was

Humanitie's bright essence. None e'er liv'd
Compeer° to him, or will ; for ho made all
His owns, that is. Eche moueth he lay within
His mother's wombs, a sevorallo Muse did bears
Her sweetest companio: thus was he framed
To such nice sympathyes; and on the dein
He first did stretche his dimpling- finger tow'rd
Earth's waving flow'res, Apollo loft his throne
To visit him and kisse his smiling brow

IQ sealo of promigo. That yore laurvlls blootti'd

Before their time in this our Britain's isle.
As showing how wide are our author's sympathies,
it is worthy of note that he is equally enthusiastic
in his address " To the Empress Eugenie" on hear-
ing

of her visits to the Sick and Dying in the
Cholera Hospitals of France, and in his address
"To Garibaldi" on the occasion of his visit to, and
his reception in, England. " A Bugle Call to Eng-
and" comes appropriately from the lips of the
author or originator of the whole movement of Our
Rifle Volunteers. And of a-piece with the patriotic
ardour which first inspired that happy thought, and
afterwards so strenuously aided in carrying it to

Anima, and Other Poems. By Alfred B.
Richards. Edward Moxon and Co.
Already known—and we will add with honour
to himself—among living dramatic writers, as the
author of " Crossus, King of Lydia," Colonel
Richards may, not unreasonably, count upon being
borne in remembrance among English lyrist,,, by right
of these tender, yet manly, outpourings of his heart
in verse--" Religio Animas," with six-and-forty
other poems of varied character and pretensions.
For inasmuch as he has placed " Religio AnimEe"
before his readers at the very commencement of the
volume, we think he has acted wisely and with
commendable discretion ; for it not only strikes,
as it were, the keynote, but opens up, as by
a most touching prelude all the manifold and
fluctuating harmonies that follow one another
immediately thereupon. Through his " Religio
Animas" we catch at once a vivid glimpse of the
whole range of those emotional and philosophic
meditations, which have been born, in his inner
heart and conscience, from his reverent coatempla-
tion of the mysteries of the universe. Saddened
and solemnised, yet full of hope—his soul leaps up to
the recognition of those eternal truths and preterna-
tural consolations, which, happily, for all believers
pluck from the grave its sting, and rob death of its
victory. Among the most touching passages in
the whole of this beautiful v ,lume, wo would here
particularise at once the affecting apostrophe to his
children, which occurs in this very poem, Religio