of saying, and will be found his most significant and living word.  Yet just in proportion as one’s speech is a pure and simple efflux of his spirit, just in proportion as its utterance lies in the order and inevitable procedure of his life, he will be liable to undervalue it.  Who feels that the universe is greatly enriched by his heart-beats?—­that it is much that he breathes, sleeps, walks?  But the breaths of supreme genius are thoughts, and the imaginations that people its day-world are more familiar to it than the common dreams of sleepers to them, and the travel of its meditations is daily and customary; insomuch that the very thought of all others which one was born to utter he may forget to mention, as presuming it to be no news.  Indeed, if a man of fertile soul be misled into the luckless search after peculiar and surprising thoughts, there are many chances that be will be betrayed into this oversight of his proper errand.  As Sir Martin Frobisher, according to Fuller, brought home from America a cargo of precious stones which after examination were thrown out to mend roads with, so he leaves untouched his divine knowledges, and comes sailing into port full-freighted with conceits.

May not the above considerations go far to explain that indifference, otherwise so astonishing, with which Shakspeare cast his work from him?  It was his heart that wrote; but does the heart look with wonder and admiration on the crimson of its own currents?

* * * * *

AT PORT ROYAL. 1861.

  The tent-lights glimmer on the land,
    The ship-lights on the sea;
  The night-wind smooths with drifting sand
    Our track on lone Tybee.

  At last our grating keels outslide,
    Our good boats forward swing;
  And while we ride the land-locked tide,
    Our negroes row and sing.

  For dear the bondman holds his gifts
    Of music and of song: 
  The gold that kindly Nature sifts
    Among his sands of wrong;

  The power to make his toiling days
    And poor home-comforts please;
  The quaint relief of mirth that plays
    With sorrow’s minor keys.

  Another glow than sunset’s fire
    Has filled the West with light,
  Where field and garner, barn and byre
    Are blazing through the night.

  The land is wild with fear and hate,
    The rout runs mad and fast;
  From hand to hand, from gate to gate,
    The flaming brand is passed.

  The lurid glow falls strong across
    Dark faces broad with smiles: 
  Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss
    That fire yon blazing piles.

  With oar-strokes timing to their song,
    They weave in simple lays
  The pathos of remembered wrong,
    The hope of better days,—­

  The triumph-note that Miriam sung,
    The joy of uncaged birds: 
  Softening with Afric’s mellow tongue
    Their broken Saxon words.