Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly
admired for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are
very effective. Nothing can be better than-
-the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Down the corridors of Time.
The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on
the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful
insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character
of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general
manner. This "ease" or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long
been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone- as a point
of really difficult attainment. But not so:- a natural manner is
difficult only to him who should never meddle with it- to the
unnatural.
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