The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-08-06 00:00:00

"_ttcraturr.

----02.--

POETRY.

THE VALE OF LLA iGOLLEN.

(Thoughts on first seeing the beautiful Vale of Llangollen,
July 30, 1841.)
BY T. J. OUSELEY.

" A little lower than the angels," Man,
with fine perception, half divine, marked out
This glorious spot of his Creator's power
To fashion for a home, where hearts might dwell,
Ever remembering grandeur, pouer. love,
And all the attributes of Him who formed
From chaos this bright sphere f r mortal life.
The distant traveller on this vale looks down,
And as his eyes drink in the magic view,
His heart swells up to heaven in praise of Gon.

Had no created Paradise been formed,
When Man first trod upon his native dust,
Such bliss terrestrial had he fashioned forth
To gild the morning Eden of his joy.
Some wand'ring angel, half out-shut from heaven,
His truant steps ne'er backward to recall,
Might, as his glory I assed, have stained thy breast
With rainbow beauty—wafting with his wings
Colours chalcedony, which, bursting forth,
Made thee the flower garden of the world.

THE SWALLOW.
AN ALLEGORICAL FABLE.

(From Capt. Pidding's Chinese Olio.)

The poetry of the Chinese, unlike the generality of Oriental
composition, is remarkable for the absence of hyperbole either
in expression or feeling, and is characterised chiefly by a tone
of moral reverence, and a devotion to the tenderer affections.
There are delicacies of language and turns of thought of which
no translation can give any idea; but the follovvi”g paraphrase
of a little Poem, written by See-ma-kwang, a prime minister
cf China in the eleventh century, will perhaps afford some no-
iir,o of the mode of thought and sentiment which her rulers
ci.,:ght to honour and to cultivate. Of See-ma-kwang, the
author, we shall perhaps take occasion hereafter to render
some account ; it is sufficient to say for the present, that he
was equally distinguished by his disinterested virtue, and his
abilities as a statesman and scholar. Like almost all the Chi-
nese, he was passionately fond of his garden and rural retire-
ment, and no doubt himself had watched the proceedings of
the swallows which he describes in the Poem with remarkable
grace and graphic power. The simplicity of sentiment in the
Chinese philosopher will remind the reader of Wordsworth,
however its expression a, translated here may, as it doubtless
does, fall much short of him in the original.

When Spring returned, two Swallows came
About my house their home to frame,
A gate's high top their choke ;
And then what fittings far and near
For straws and down, their nest to rear;

What twists, and web, and vc ice !

What cares to give the outside strength—
The inside softness ; till at length
Four eggs the female lail.
Soon bursting from their shelly shrine,
Four tiny ones with chirping whine
Claimed all the parents' aid.

Their piteous cries rang quick and shrill,—
For ants and flies, their crops to fill,

Were difficult to find;
Still seem'd their hunger unappeas'd,
Although th' exhausted mother, pleas'd—
Her share to them resign'd.

She, wasting, scarce could ope her beak,
Her wings became tor flight too weak;
But love upheld her force.
Still far and wide she sought for food
To stave off hunger from her brood,
In daily—hourly course.

When twenty days had circled by,
Worn out, as if about to die;

Her young—how different they !
Without a sorrow to molest,
They ate—they cliirp'd—nor sank to rest
Till pall'd with food and play.

Their down had to full plumage grown,
Their timid cries wax'd bold in tone,
Their pinions strong to soar ;
Their beaks grew harden'd ;—moths and flies
That buzz'd about became their prize,
Snapp'd up in endless store.

Time went—one spread his wings for flight;
Another follow'd—in the sight,
At first. of native nest,
On roof, r r neighbouring tree ;—anon
Each rambler where it lists is gone,
North, south, or east, or we t.

The hapless mother makes the air
Resound with accents of despair,
And flutters to and fro;
Oft leaves—returns—still seeks the spot
'Lorn of those lov'd, still unforgot,
And finds no rest from woe.

O hapless Swallow! now 'tis thine,
As once thy mother, to repi, e
Over thy cherish'd od ;
Thou didst forget her tenderness,—
Remember now, in like distress,
Thine own ingratitude.

SELECTIONS.

TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION.—A poor country
girl travelled from Gee Cross, near Manchester, to Lon-
don, during the troubles in the time of Charles the First,
to seek a place as servant. Failing in this object of her
ambition, she engaged herself as, what was called, tub-
woman to a brewer—that is, she carried out the beer
from his brewhouse., Pleased with her healthy, handsome
face, the brewer raised her to the position of his servant
—then to that of his wife—finally, to that of his widow,
with a handsome dowry. She engaged Mr. Hyde, then
celebrated as a clever lawyer, to settle some puzzling
money matters for her ; and, as his own money matters
happened to be, not only puzzling, but in a very hopeless
state just then, he proposed to the rich widow, and mar-
ried her. Mr. Hyde became Lord Chancellor, and Earl
of Clarendon. The only daughter of the marriage became
wife of James 11. and mother to the Princesses Mary and
Ann; and so the poor tub-woman ended her life as
Countess of Clarendon, wife to the Lord Chancellor of
England, and mother to one, and grandmother to two,
Queens of England.—Our Actresses.
THE BARD OF HOPE.—What has most interested me
of late, has been a visit from Campbell, the sweet Bard
of Hope. You must know his enchanting Gertrude, his
Exile of Erin, and other unequalled lyrics. I wish I
could share with you the satisfaction I felt in seeing him
cheerful, happy, and universally welcomed and caressed
in his dear-" Queen of- the North," from which be had
been so long banished, by the necessity of seeking the
bread that perisheth, elsewhere. He is one who has suf-
fered much, from neither understanding the world nor
being understood by it. He encountered every evil of
poveity, but that of being ashamed of his circumstances;
in that respect he was nobly indifferent to opinion, and
his good, gentle, patient little wife was so frugal, so sim-
ple, and so sweet-tempered, that she disarmed poverty of
half its evils. This, I fear, was not the case with the
Bard of Hope, whose morbid sensibility wars with the
kind and generous part of his character, and who began
the world under the influence of those violent discon-
tented opinions that seem to accuse heaven of injustice,
because the wealth of mind is not accompanied with those
advantages which fat contented ignorance often attains,
and very justly, because it patiently labours for them.
Poor Burns had a great deal too much of this. It is time
I should tell you the bard is now come to Scotland, after
an absence of thirteen years, to receive a legacy left him
by a grand-uncle. You cannot think how much every
.one is delighted : though you did not care for Campbell,
it would charm you to see people rejoice so cordially in
his acquisition. He has visited me several times. and is
so amusing and so original ; his admiration of other peo-
ple's genius, too, is so generous. Scott, though of dif-
ferent opinions, he regards with fond and high admira-
tion :so it seems does Lord Byron. Truly great men
must have a congenial attraction for each other. The
great English moralist is only an exception that confirms
the rule. After being starved for 30 years, married to
Tetty, and afflicted with perpetual ill-health, it is more
wonderful that any benevolence remained, than that all
suavity should have been dried up with Johnson, &c.—
Mrs. Grant of Laggan.
-

INCENDIARISM, ITS CAUSES AND CURE.—We have
ventured elsewhere to insinuate, and here we must repeat
the statement in plain terms, that the prevalence of the
horrid crime of incendiarism is attributable, not to the
operations of the. New Poor-law, nor yet to the indiffe-
rence of parliament and the government, regarded in their
collective or abstract capacities, but to the general neglect
by their natural protectors and immediate employers of
the agricultural labourers of England. The crime was
never heard of till the false prosperity induced by the war
of the French Revolution had entirely changed the nature
of rural life in this country; and a return to a state of
peace brought about the natural results of such a change.
Indeed the New Poor-law was only one more additional to
the many wretched expedients upon which men fall back
when, by a mistaken pursuit of self-interest, they have
thrown their own affairs and those of the community into
confusion, and find themselves at a loss, or profess to be
so, for the proper means of extricating all parties from the
dilemma. Instead of passing that law, had the gentlemen
composing the cabinet and parliament of 1833 set the ex-
ample, in their individual capacities, of a wiser and more
liberal mode of dealing with the agricultural labourers,
the people would have been spared the outlay that was
required for the erection of the union workhouses, and the
nation the disgrace which attaches to it, by reason of the
prevalence in the agricultural districts of a crime so atro-
cious as incendiarism. And we do not hesitate to add
that, even now, the only chance which we have of escape
from the difficulties by which, in the agricultural dis-
tricts, we are surrounded, hangs upon the power of the
landowners to see where their duty lies, and their readi-
ness to act up to it. If they either will not, or cannot,
cut up the large farms into small, let them, at all events,
make terms with their tenants, that every hundred acres
of arable land shall have so many workmen employed
upon them steadily, and at fair wages. They may depend
upon it that the tenants, however they may grumble when
the bargain is forced on them, will find themselves at the
end of the year greatly the tainers by it. For there is not
a wheat field in all England which by proper cultivation
might not be made to produce more than it does. There
are many which require this, and nothing more, to produce
double what they bring home, to the barn-yard at present.
And if, over and above this, the owners of the soil take
care that every good
elabourer shall have his own little
half-acre field in which to his spare hours; then,
at least, they will have
_n e their duty : yea, and they
will reap their reward. No more fires will startle the
midnight air; no more ticket-men will go round from
house to house seeking work, which
c s purposely refused
them. In few words,—the real Ise of the incendiary
fires is the want of employment bya, the labouring classes.
It is in the power of the aristocracy to afford this employ-
ment, if they be willing. And woe be to them,
doubly woe to our beloved country, if they, through aotd.
stinacy, or want of consideration, persist in refusing it !
Fraser's Magazine.