Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851 - Various - Страница 5
SOME AMERICAN POETS.1
THE CHANGELING
Оглавление"I had a little daughter,
And she was given to me
To lead me gently onward
To the Heavenly Father's knee.
I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair.
She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away.
But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,
That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled.
This child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly,
And bless it upon my breast.
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair."
We have still a brief space for Mr Holmes. It is fit that, amongst our list, there should be one representative of the comic muse. Mr Holmes, however, is not always comic. Some of his serious pieces are not without a certain manly pathos. Some, too, are of a quite didactic character, and have the air of college exercises. But it is only a few of his lighter pieces we should feel any disposition to quote, or refer to. Mr Holmes portrays himself to us as a boon companion; – a physician by profession, and one to whom poetry has been only an occasional amusement – one of those choice spirits who can set the table in a roar, and who can sing himself the good song that he indites. Such being the case, we have only to lay down the critical pen to court amusement ourselves, and conclude our paper by sharing with the reader a few specimens of wit or humour.
Civilised life in New York, or Boston, seems to have the same disagreeable accompaniments as with us – as witness.
