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THE SELECTOR

AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

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DAYS DEPARTED; OR, BANWELL HILL: 

A Lay of the Severn Sea, by the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles.

This is a delightful volume—­full of nature and truth—­and in every respect worthy of “one of the most elegant, pathetic, and original living poets of England.”  Moreover, it is just such a book as we expected from the worthy vicar of Bremhill; dedicated to the Bishop of Bath and Wells; and dated from Bremhill Parsonage, of which interesting abode we inserted an unique description in our last volume.

As our principal object is to give a few of the poetical pictures, we shall be very brief with the prose, and merely quote an outline of the poem.  Mr. Bowles, it appears, is a native of the district in which he resides, and this circumstance introduces some beautiful retrospective feelings:—­

                               But awhile,
  Here let me stand, and gaze upon the scene,
  Array’d in living light around, and mark
  The morning sunshine,—­on that very shore
  Where once a child I wander’d,—­Oh! return
  (I sigh,) “return a moment, days of youth,
  Of childhood,—­oh, return!” How vain the thought,
  Vain as unmanly! yet the pensive Muse,
  Unblam’d, may dally with imaginings;
  For this wide view is like the scene of life,
  Once travers’d o’er with carelessness and glee,
  And we look back upon the vale of years,
  And hear remembered voices, and behold,
  In blended colours, images and shades
  Long pass’d, now rising, as at Memory’s call,
  Again in softer light.

The poem then proceeds with a description of an antediluvian cave at Banwell, and a brief sketch of events since the deposit; but, as Mr. Bowles observes, poetry and geological inquiry do not very amicably travel together; we must, therefore, soon get out of the cave:—­

    But issuing from the Cave—­look round—­behold
  How proudly the majestic Severn rides
  On the sea,—­how gloriously in light
  It rides!  Along this solitary ridge,
  Where smiles, but rare, the blue Campanula,
  Among the thistles, and grey stones, that peep
  Through the thin herbage—­to the highest point
  Of elevation, o’er the vale below,
  Slow let us climb.  First, look upon that flow’r
  The lowly heath-bell, smiling at our feet. 
  How beautiful it smiles alone!  The Pow’r,
  that bade the great sea roar—­that spread the Heav’ns—­
  That call’d the sun from darkness—­deck’d that flow’r,
  And bade it grace this bleak and barren hill. 
  Imagination, in her playful mood,
  Might liken it to a poor village maid,
  Lowly, but smiling in her lowliness,
  And dress’d so neatly, as if ev’ry day