The most considerable of these is The Isle of Palms,' which, though it engrosses the whole title-page, fills considerably less than half the volume,-and perhaps not the most attractive half. It is a strange, wild story of two lovers that were wrecked in the Indian Sea, and marvellously saved on an uninhabited, but lovely island, when all the rest of the crew were drowned ;—of their living there, in peace and blessedness, for six or seven yearsand being at last taken off, with a lovely daughter, who had come to cheer their solitude-by an English ship of war, and landed in the arms of the lady's mother, who had passed the long interval of their absence in one unremitting agony of hope and despair. This, in point of fact, is the whole of the story, and nearly all the circumstances that are detailed in the four long cantos which cover the first 180 pages of the volume before us: For never, certainly, was there a poem, pretending to have a story, in which there was so little narrative; and in which the descriptions and reflections bore such a monstrous proportion to the facts and incidents out of which they arise. This piece is in irregular rhymed verse, like the best parts of Mr. Southey's Kehama: to which, indeed, it bears a pretty close resemblance, both in the luxuriance of the descriptions, the tenderness of the thoughts, the copiousness of the diction, and the occasional harmony of the versification, though it is perhaps still more diffuse and redundant. To some of our readers, this intimation will be quite enough; but the majority, we believe, will be glad to hear a little more of it.

The first canto describes the gallant ship, in the third month of her outward bound voyage, sailing over the quiet sea in a lovely moonlight evening, and the two lovers musing and conversing on the deck. There are great raptures about the beauty of the ship and the moon,—and pretty characters of the youth and the maiden in the same tone of ecstacy. Just as the sky is kindling with the summer dawn, and the freshness of morning rippling over the placid waters, the vessel strikes on a sunken rock, and goes down almost instantly. This catastrophe is described, we think, with great force and effect;-allowance being always made for the peculiarities of the school to which the author belongs. He begins with a view of the ship just before the accident.

"Her giant-form

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
Majestically calm, would go

Mid the deep darkness white as snow!

But gently now the small waves glide
Like playful lambs o'er mountain's side.
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
The main she will traverse for ever and aye.
Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast!

-Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her last.
Five hundred souls in one instant of dread

Are hurried o'er the deck;

And fast the miserable ship

Becomes a lifeless wreck.

Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock,

Her planks are torn asunder,

And down come her masts with a reeling shock,

And a hideous crash like thunder.

Her sails are draggled in the brine

That gladdened late the skies,

And her pendant that kiss'd the fair moonshine

Down many a fathom lies.

Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues
Gleam'd softly from below,

And flung a warm and sunny flush

O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow,
To the coral rocks are hurrying down
To sleep amid colours as bright as their own.
Oh! many a dream was in the ship

An hour before her death;

And sights of home with sighs disturb'd
The sleepers' long-drawn breath.
Instead of the murmur of the sea
The sailor heard the humming tree
Alive through all its leaves,

The hum of the spreading sycamore
That grows before his cottage-door,
And the swallow's song in the eaves.
His arms inclosed a blooming boy,
Who listen'd with tears of sorrow and joy
To the dangers his father had pass'd;
And his wife-by turns she wept and smiled,
As she look'd on the father of her child

Return'd to her heart at last.

-He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll,

And the rush of waters is in his soul." p. 32--34

"Now is the ocean's bosom bare,

Unbroken as the floating air;

The ship hath melted quite away,

Like a struggling dream at break of day.

No image meets my wandering eye

But the new-risen sun, and the sunny sky.

Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapour dull

Bedims the waves so beautiful;

While a low and melancholy moan

Mourns for the glory that hath flown."

p. 36.

The second canto begins with a very absurd expostulation to

the Moon, for having let the good ship be lost after shining so sweetly upon it. Nothing but the singular infatuation which seems to be epidemic on the banks of Winander, could have led a man of Mr. Wilson's abilities to write such lines as the following.

"Oh vain belief! most beauteous as thou art, Thy heavenly visage hides a cruel heart."

And a little after,

"Wilt thou not then thy once-lov'd vessel miss,
And wish her happy, now that she is gone?
But then, sad moon! too late thy grief will be;
Fair as thou art, thou canʼst not move the sea."

After this wild fit, however, has spent itself, we are conducted to a little sea-beat rock, where the unhappy lover finds himself stretched in horrible solitude; and where, in a sort of entranced slumber, he has a vision of a blissful land, over which he seems to wander with his beloved. On opening his eyes, he finds her actually leaning over him; and, by and by, the ship's pinnace comes floating alongside, with its oars and sails ready for immediate service. They embark with holy hope and confidence; and, at the close of evening, reach a shady and solitary shore, where they kneel down and return thanks to Providence.

The third canto is filled almost entirely with the description of this enchanted island, and of the blissful life which these lovers lived in its beautiful seclusion; and, certainly, a more glowing picture of Elysium has not often been brought before us, than is contained in these pages: such shades and flowers-and wooded steeps and painted birds-and sunny bays and cascades-and dewy vales and thickets-and tufted lawns!-The following are but cold and tame citations.

“There, groves that bloom in endless spring
Are rustling to the radiant wing
Of birds, in various plumage bright
As rainbow-hues, or dawning light.
Soft-falling showers of blossoms fair
Float ever on the fragrant air,
Like showers of vernal snow,
And from the fruit-tree, spreading tall,
The richly ripen'd clusters fall

Oft as sea-breezes blow.

The sun and clouds alone possess

The joy of all that loveliness.

How silent lies each shelter'd bay!
No other visitors have they

To their shores of silvery sand,

Than the waves that, murmuring in their glee,
All hurrying in a joyful band

Come dancing from the sea." p. 75, 76,

"Like fire, strange flowers around them flame, Sweet, harmless fire, breathed from some magic urn, The silky gossamer that may not burn,

Too wildly beautiful to bear a name.

And when the Ocean sends a breeze,
To wake the music sleeping in the trees,

Trees scarce they seem to be; for many a flower,
Radiant as dew, or ruby polish'd bright,
Glances on every spray, that bending light
Around the stem, in variegated bows,
Appear like some awakened fountain-shower,
That with the colours of the evening glows.
And towering o'er these beauteous woods,
Gigantic rocks were ever dimly seen,
Breaking with solemn gray the tremulous green,
And frowning far in castellated pride;
While, hastening to the Ocean, hoary floods
Sent up a thin and radiant mist between,
Softening the beauty that it could not hide.
Lo! higher still the stately Palm-trees rise,
Chequering the clouds with their unbending stems,
And o'er the clouds amid the dark-blue skies,

Lifting their rich unfading diadems." p. 87, 88.

On the first Sabbath day, they take each other for husband and wife; and five or six years pass over, the reader does not well know how ;-and still we find them enraptured with their flowers and their birds, and their own prayers, songs, and meditations. All at once a fairy child comes singing down a mountain, in a frock of peacock's feathers;-and we find they have a lovely daughter.

"Sing on! Sing on! It is a lovely air.
Well could thy mother sing it when a maid:
Yet strange it is in this wild Indian glade,
To list a tune that breathes of nothing there,
A tune that by his mountain springs,
Beside his slumbering lambkins fair,
The Cambrian shepherd sings.

Up yon steep hill's unbroken side,
Behold the little Fairy glide.

Though free her breath, untired her limb,
For through the air she seems to swim,

Yet oft she stops to look behind

On them below;-till with the wind

She flies again, and on the hill-top far
Shines like the spirit of the evening star.
Nor lingers long as if a sight

Half-fear, half-wonder, urged her flight,
In rapid motion, winding still

To break the steepness of the hill,

With leaps, and springs, and outstretch'd arms,
More graceful in her vain alarms,
The child outstrips the Ocean gale,
In haste to tell her wondrous tale.
Her parents' joyful hearts admire,
Of peacock's plumes her glancing tire,
All bright with tiny suns,

And the gleaming of the feathery gold,

That play along each wavy fold

Of her mantle as she runs." p. 113, 114, 115.

The blessed babe comes to tell of a strange sight she has seen on the sea; and her father soon discovers it to be a ship steering towards their shore.

Fitting it was that first she shone

'Before the wondering eyes of one,

'So beautiful as thou.

'See how before the wind she goes,

.

Scattering the waves like melting snows!' &c.

They cast their eyes around the isle:

But what a change is there!

For ever fled that lonely smile

That lay on earth and air,

That made its haunts so still and holy,
Almost for bliss too melancholy,
For life too wildly fair.

Gone-gone is all its loneliness,
And with it much of loveliness.
Into each deep glen's dark recess,
The day-shine pours like rain,
So strong and sudden is the light
Reflected from that wonder bright,
Now tilting o'er the Main.

Soon as the thundering cannon spoke,
The voice of the evening-gun,

The spell of the enchantment broke,
Like dew beneath the sun."

p. 118, 119.

The fourth and last canto carries us back to England, and to the woes of the despairing mother, whose daughter had embarked so many years before, in that ill-fated ship, of which no tidings