What influence can produce such happy sensations as religion and poetry can produce in the soul of man, when freed from every narrow or sectarian artifice? They give a new existence, a spiritual etherealized being, to the soul; exhibiting themselves, in all their grandeur, to the mind, through the mystic webwork of imaginative texture they create; wedding themselves to all the generous feelings of the heart, by the enchanting and fascinating display of the ideal pictures, and by the real affections and aspirations they produce.

Religion and poetry are innate parts of ourselves, external parts of the universe. They study not the ginger-bread pageantry of worldly riches, nor the external plainness of poverty; but they deal out the most happiness to the most attentive and deserving of their recipients. They cannot be purchased at a market price by the god of gold; for they stand invulnerable to all the deceitful and uncounted exteriors of conventional forms and ceremonies, that came not direct from the heart in spontaneous and unadorned simplicity, but which are only the creations of pride and worldly vanity bearing their name.

Religion and poetry, in harmonious communion, travel together. They cannot be separated; vain would be all the attempts to destroy them; for, to destroy them, all that is beautiful which excites admiration, all that is sublime which gives birth to awe, all that is wonderful which bespeaks incomprehensible causation must be destroyed; for religion and poetry exist in all these, like angel seraphs winning us by their smiles from giving permanent and soul-engrossing attention to the commonalities, although necessities, of commercial speculation, to feel a something of their influence, which will tend to make us transcendantly more happy than all our competitive scrambles can ever make us, and to create within us a counteracting influence of a softening and humanising tendency, to so act upon our feelings as to prevent our sinking into mere machines of flesh and blood, fit only to be worked in the production of gold, the attainment of which, by unlimited competition without the influence of moral restraint, would set mankind in a chaos of confusion.

PART II.

Having glanced somewhat briefly at a few of the innumerable instances that produce what I have described as the Poetry of Feeling, I shall now endeavour to illustrate what I mean by the Poetry of Diction. Diction is to the

107

poet that which language is to all men-namely, the expression of that which is within-the agent by which he distributes to others that which he feels himself. The poet has a power over other men, in giving an existence, in burning and glowing language, to the ideal musings of his mind, so that other minds may realize the same emotions, the same aspirations, as himself. He gives a tangible shape to the dim and shadowy dreams of others, which, when they behold, they can appreciate and gratefully accept as a much surer guide and a more developed theory of the human heart, for the poet's mission principally is to record the teachings, forebodings, and ecstacies of the human heart, and to prophesy for humanity the coming events-the future of the world. In such a prophesying spirit has one of our greatest living poets, Tennyson, in imaginative beauty of expression, given us his

POET'S SONG.

"The rain had fallen-the Poet arose ;
He passed by the town and out of the street;
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat;
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.

"The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee-
The snake slipt under a spray-

The wild hawk stood with down on his beak,

And stared, with his foot on the prey;

And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,

For he sings of what the world will be

When the years have died away?'"

And when those years shall have "died away," may the prophet-poets of the world, having foretold the truth in the dim departed past, be honoured by a people in the enjoyment of the intellectual and moral powers which they were instrumental in creating.

There is a vast distinction between diction when it stands by itself and when it is wedded to poetry. The one is simply an art, and submits to the regulations of rule. It may be acquired, more or less, with perseverance and practice, by all. It may please and cleverly puzzle, but it can never make an impression like the other, which is capable

108

of raising all the faculties of the mind, and lifting, as it were, the soul from everything that presses it down, that it may soar in regions of mental and emotional joyfulness. The one is a measured amount of words that are deficient alike in lofty and ennobling ideas, while the other is the embodiment of universal, truthful, and eternal ideas, that are capable of expanding the heart and stimulating the mind.

It is with diction, when wedded to poetry, when it becomes the receptacle of thoughtful, sensational, and glorious utterings, and conveys, in musical and pleasing language, those utterings to the soul, that I purpose to treat in this part of my lecture.

We find, in all countries and in all ages, that prophet bards have arisen, and have given to humanity their immortal breathings. 3,000 years have already rolled along the tide-fraught sea of time since Homer gave expression to the poetry of his soul, and still do we find a freshness and an enduring elasticity in his writings.

All those mighty and heroic men who built the superstructure of antique poetry, have long since passed from the noisy stage of societarian tumult, leaving their works behind them as the monumental proofs of their own immortal greatness. Such men as Chaucer, the father of English poetry, with Spencer and Milton, and with Shakspeare, our great dramatic poet, they, too, have passed away, leaving their magnificent and majestic legacies of eternal greatness to posterity. We have men living amongst us, in this mechanical, practical, but not unpoetical age, who have spoken, and are still speaking, to mankind in the soul-stirring language of poetry.

I shall give a few specimens of poetic diction from the poets of the present century, to show how much there is of the sublime, the beautiful, the truthful, and the useful, contained in a few lines of musical and touching poetry. The first two selections I shall give are from the pens of two of our best Scottish poets-namely, Robert Nicoll and Robert Burns. Poor Nicholl! when he wrote his " Bacchanalian," so touchingly descriptive of necessitated drunkenness by the human mocker, poverty, he little thought that he would lie in the grave, prematurely killed by excessive toil at the age of three-and-twenty. The "Bacchanalian" strikingly contrasts the different inducements to drink of the rich and the poor; and, at the same time, displays much of bitter sarcasm and apparently hard-hearted recklessness which both drunkenness and poverty abundantly produce in their vic

tims. The poverty-stricken drunkard Nicoll has made to speak in the following truthful lines :—

"THE BACCHANALIAN.

"They make their feasts, and fill their cups

They drink the rosy wine

They seek for pleasure in the bowl:

Their search is not like mine.

From misery I freedom seek

I crave relief from pain;

From hunger, poverty, and cold

I'll go get drunk again!

"The wind doth thro' my garments run-
I'm naked to the blast;

Two days have fluttered o'er my head
Since last I broke my fast;

But I'll go drink, and straightway clad
In purple I shall be;

And I shall feast at tables spread
With rich men's luxury!

"My wife is naked-and she begs
Her bread from door to door;

She sleeps on clay each night beside
Her hungry children four !

She drinks-I drink-for why? it drives
All poverty away;

And starving babies grow again

Like happy children gay!

"In broadcloth clad, with belly full,
A sermon you can preach;
But hunger, cold, and nakedness,
Another song would teach.

I'm bad and vile-what matters that

To outcasts such as we ?

Bread is denied-come, wife, we'll drink
Again, and happy be!"

66

Such is the language of the actions of thousands, that with a heedlessness, for the doubly piercing pangs that must of necessity, sooner or later, twitch their hearts, their cry is, We'll drink, and happy be!" and, with a restless, feverish excitement, they rush from the home of poverty, to drown, as they think, their misery in the happiness of drunkenness. Short-sighted, pitiable folly! they do not see their own handiwork-the self-created slavery they produce by rushing from poverty to drunkenness.

K

The poet Burns, who knew how to suffer poverty rather than stoop to sycophancy, has built for himself a home in the hearts of all true lovers of poetry. He was almost the only man who had the courage to preserve his own native tongue; and he has shown how beautiful is that tongue for poetic diction. He wrote nearly the whole of his poems in the Scotch dialect, never giving an unnecessary quantity of words to express an idea. The "Cotter's Saturday Night," Tam O'Shanter," and "Man was made to Mourn," are among the best of his productions-the latter containing some sturdy honest-hearted sentiments, showing forcibly to the mind their truthfulness:

"When chill November's surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,
One evening, as I wander'd forth,
Along the banks of Ayr,

I spied a man, whose aged step
Seem'd weary, worn with care;
His face was furrow'd o'er with years,
And hoary was his hair.

"Young stranger, whither wand'rest thou?
Began the rev'rend sage:

'Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain,
Or youthful pleasures rage?
Or, haply prest with cares and woe,
Too soon thou hast began

To wander forth with me to mourn
The miseries of man.

"The sun which overhangs yon moors,
Outspreading far and wide,
Where hundreds labour to support

A haughty lordling's pride;
I've seen yon weary winter's sun
Twice forty times return,

And every time has added proofs
That man was made to mourn.

"Oh, man! while in thy early years,
How prodigal of time!
Misspending all thy precious hours,
Thy glorious youthful prime!
Alternate follies take the sway,
Licentious passions burn,

Which tenfold force gives nature's law,
That man was made to mourn.