Coupled with the knowledge of grief is this of prayer,—­“that mystery when God in man is one with man-in-God,”—­which is said when Enoch had resolved to surrender his Annie rather than to break in upon her happiness:—­

      “His resolve
    Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore
    Prayer, from a living source within the will,
    And beating up through all the bitter world,
    Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
    Kept him a living soul.”

And so we close the poem, which touches us again more than we deemed possible, till each renewal of the reading stirs again the depths of passionate sympathy.  A pure manhood among the poets, a heart simple as the simplest, an imperial fancy, whose lofty supremacy none can question, a high faith, and a spirit possessed with the sublimest and most universal of Christ’s truths, a tender and strong humanity, not bounded by a vague and misty sentiment, but pervading life in all its forms, and with these great skill and patience and beauty in expression,—­these are the riper qualities to which “Enoch Arden” testifies.  They are qualities whose attainment and retention are singularly rare, and whose value we cannot easily overrate.

And thus much having been said of “Enoch Arden,” we find no space for consideration of the other poems contained in the new volume.  “Aylmer’s Field” is in some respects, perhaps, more remarkable than the poem which precedes it, since the poet never loses sight of England, in its course, nor the old familiar scenes, but tugs at the fetid roots of shallow aristocracy with the relentless clutch of one of God’s noblemen laboring for the right.

Shut in these few pages we find the substance of a three-volume novel; and while the mind sways slowly to the music of its “sculptured lines,” the lives of men move on from birth to death, leaving their meaning stamped in rhythmic beauty on our heart and brain.

Nor must we forget, while contemplating the two principal poems in the volume,—­finished heroic lessons of the poet’s mature life,—­the songs, singing themselves like summer ripples on the strand, which are their melodious companions.  Among them we dare to mention “In the Valley of Cauteretz,”—­

    “Sweeter thy voice, though every sound is sweet.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[A] Madame Recamier, with a Sketch of the History of Society in France.  By Madame M——.  London. 1862.

[B] Causeries de Lundi.

[C] Coppet et Weimar:  Madame de Stael et la Grande Duchesse Louise.

[D] Madame de Chateaubriand.

[E] This term designated a larger class of young men than that to which it is now confined.  It took in the articled clerks of merchants and bankers, the George Barnwells of the day.