Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 104.djvu/54

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Hueless and boneless, that languidly thicken'd,

Or flat-faced, or spikèd or ridged with humps,

Melting off from their clotted clusters and clumps,

Sprawled over the shore in the heat of the day.

Stanzas abound, too, of pictorial power like the following:

Several of the minor poems in this collection are as fully stored with similar descriptive details; one in particular, whose only title is "Song," riots in wealth of illustration from garden-ground—each allusion betokening a habit of observation on the part of the songster, who testifies what he has seen with his eyes, and heard with his ears, and his hands have handled, feelingly, in the world of nature, not merely in the echo of books—the purple iris hanging its head on its lean stalk, the spider spilling his silver thread between the columbines' bells, the drunken beetle, that,the jasmin dropping her yellow starsthe hollyhocks falling off their tops, the lotus-blooms that "ail white i' the sun," the freckled foxglove fainting and grieving, whileMeanwhile, all to the burden of the song, "suns sink away, sweet things decay," we mark how

Specimens of Mr. Meredith's imagery it were easier to collect than to select, at least so as to do him justice. His similitudes are often striking, sometimes a little overstrained. The forlorn Lady in "The Earl's Return," weary with watching, and wasted with pining regrets, is described at night as putting by