es,
Where Winter reigns in sullen mirth,
The Summer binds a golden belt
About the middle of the Earth,
The sky is soft, and blue, and bright,
With purple dyes at morn and night:
And bright and blue the seas which lie
In perfect rest, and glass the sky;
And sunny bays with inland curves
Round all along the quiet shore;
And stately palms, in pillared ranks
Grow down the borders of the banks,
And juts of land where billows roar;
The spicy woods are full of birds,
And golden fruits, and crimson flowers;
With wreathed vines on every bough,
That shed their grapes in purple showers;
The emerald meadows roll their waves,
And bask in soft and mellow light;
The vales are full of silver mist,
And all the folded hills are bright;
But far along the welkin's rim
The purple crags and peaks are dim;
And dim the gulfs, and gorges blue,
With all the wooded passes deep;
All steeped in haze, and washed in dew,
And bathed in atmospheres of Sleep!

_Stoddard_, _page_ 14.

Passages like these say more for their authors than could any
commendation from the critic. Observe how soon mere description is
abandoned by Mr. Taylor, and he begins to put life and feeling into his
scene. The deep is "enamored," the island is "in a charmed sleep," the
palms are "imperial," and "crowd the hills," and "out the headlands go
to watch the lazy brine," &c. All nature is alive. On the other hand,
Mr. Stoddard loves nature for its beauty alone, without desiring in it
any imaginable animation. The man who can read Mr. Taylor's "Kubla,"
without feeling the blood dance in his veins, should never confess it,
for he is hardening into something beyond the reach of sympathy. In "The
Soldier and the Pard," a poem of curious originality, Mr. Taylor pushes
his belief in the all-pervading existence of moral nature to its last
extreme. It closes with the following emphatic lines:

"And if a man
Deny this truth she [_the Pard_] taught me, to his face
I say he lies: a beast may have a soul!"

Without drawing too much on the tables of contents, we could not
enumerate the many note-worthy pieces in these volumes; and it would
much exceed our limits to give them even a passing word of comment.
Among Mr. Stoddard's unmentioned poems, the "Hymn to Flora," an "Ode" of
delicious melancholy, full of exquisite taste and