from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

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. It is but the result of
writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that _the tone,
_in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would
adopt--and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The
author who, after the fashion of "The North American Review," should
be upon _all _occasions merely "quiet," must necessarily upon _many
_occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be
considered "easy" or "natural" than a Cockney exquisite, or than the
sleeping Beauty in the waxworks.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so mu