Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away!
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light;
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest,
Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest!

In "Human Life," written at fifty-six, the poet is happily merged into the philosopher. Love of country life and joy in village folk was with our man of affairs no mere affectation. It runs through all his verse. In a few well-measured lines our poet-philosopher thus compasses the story of man's life here on the earth:

So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.

And soon again shall music swell the breeze;
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees
Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung,
And violets scattered round; and old and young,
In every cottage-porch with garlands green,
Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene;
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side
Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas, nor in a distant hour,
Another voice shall come from yonder Tower;
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen,
And weepings heard where only joy has been;
When by his children borne, and from his door
Slowly departing, to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before.

And such is Human Life; so gliding on,
It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone!
Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange,
As full methinks of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretched in the desert round their evening-fire;
As any sung of old in hall or bower

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour!

As the poem moves gently on to its close, the moralist-in-verse leaves with us a number of quotable passages, such as these:

Through the wide world he only is alone
Who lives not for another. Come what will,
The generous man has his companion still.

But there are moments which he calls his own.
Then, never less alone than when alone,
Those that he loved so long and sees no more,
Loved and still loves-not dead-but gone before,
He gathers round him; and revives at will

Scenes in his life-that breathe enchantment still.

In 1822, there came to Rogers, then fifty-nine years old, a delightfully "soft second summer." The warmth of the South and the atmosphere of old associations quickened the pulsations of his heart, and the product of this rejuvenation is the first part of his "Italy," a poem in blank verse which, well begun, continued to occupy his mind during the remaining years of his long life.

The dominant note of the poem is one of joy. Catch the youthful enthusiasm of these lines:

From my youth upward have I longed to reach
This classic ground; and am I here at last?
Wandering at will through the long porticos
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like,
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?

In the minor verse of Rogers are to be found -by searching a few rememberable beauties and philosophical suggestions. The concluding stanza of "On a Tear" has this profound reflection:

The very law which moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere
And guides the planets in their course.

"To the Butterfly" is perhaps the highest flight of fancy to which our banker-poet attained:

Child of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light;
And, where the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstacy!

Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.

And such is man! soon from his cell of clay

To burst a seraph in the blaze of day.

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LA