Mark our ways, how noiseless
All, and sweetly voiceless,

Though the March-winds pipe, to make our passage clear;
Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.
We thread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,

And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh a-top, sweet flowers.
The dear lumpish baby,
Humming with the May-bee,

Hails us with his bright stare, stumbling through the grass;
The honey-dropping moon,
On a night in June,

Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bridegroom pass.
Age, the wither'd clinger,

On us mutely gazes,

And wraps the thought of his last bed in his childhood's daisies. See (and scorn all duller

Taste) how heav'n loves colour;

How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green;
What sweet thoughts she thinks
Of violets and pinks,

And a thousand flushing hues, made solely to be seen;
See her whitest lilies

Chill the silver showers,

And what a red mouth is her rose, the woman of the flowers.
Uselessness divinest,

Of a use the finest,

Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use;

Travellers, weary-eyed,
Bless us, far and wide;

Unto sick and prison'd thoughts we give sudden truce:
Not a poor town window

Loves its sickliest planting,

But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylonian vaunting.
Sagest yet the uses,

Mix'd with our sweet juices,

Whether man, or may-fly, profit of the balm;

As fair fingers heal'd

Knights from the olden field,

We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest calm.
Ev'n the terror, Poison,

Hath its plea for blooming;

Life it gives to reverent lips, though death to the presuming.
And oh ! our sweet soul-taker,

That thief, the honey-maker,

What a house hath he, by the thymy glen!
In his talking rooms

How the feasting fumes,

Till the gold cups overflow to the mouths of men!

The butterflies come aping

Those fine thieves of ours,

And flutter round our rifled tops, like tickled flowers with flowers. See those tops, how beauteous!

What fair service duteous

Round some idol waits, as on their lord the Nine?

Elfin court 'twould seem;

And taught perchance that dream,

Which the old Greek mountain dreamt, upon nights divine.
To expound such wonder
Human speech avails not;

Yet there dies no poorest weed, that such a glory exhales not.
Think of all these treasures,
Matchless works, and pleasures,

Every one a marvel, more than thought can say;
Then think in what bright show'rs

We thicken fields and bow'rs,

And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May:
Think of the mossy forests

By the bee-birds haunted,

And all those Amazonian plains, lone lying as enchanted.
Trees themselves are ours;
Fruits are born of flowers;

Peach, and roughest nut, were blossoms in the spring;
The lusty bee knows well

The news, and comes pell-mell,

And dances in the bloomy thicks with darksome antheming.
Beneath the very burthen

Of planet-pressing ocean

We wash our smiling cheeks in peace, a thought for meek devotion.
Tears of Phoebus,-missings
Of Cytherea's kissings,

Have in us been found, and wise men find them still;

Drooping grace unfurls
Still Hyacinthus' curls,

And Narcissus loves himself in the selfish rill:
Thy red lip, Adonis,

Still is wet with morning;

And the step, that bled for thee, the rosy briar adorning.

Oh, true things are fables,

Fit for sagest tables,

And the flow'rs are true things, yet no fables they;

Fables were not more

Bright, nor loved of yore,

Yet they grew not, like the flow'rs, by every old pathway;
Grossest hand can test us;

Fools may prize us never;

Yet we rise, and rise, and rise, marvels sweet for ever.

Who shall say that flowers

Dress not heav'n's own bowers?

Who its love, without them, can fancy,-or sweet floor?
Who shall even dare

To say we sprang not there,

And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav'n the more? Oh pray believe that angels

From those blue dominions

Brought us in their white laps down, 'twixt their golden pinions.

THE POETRY OF MOTION.

Oui, sans doute, la Philosophie est quelque chose, mais La Danse!

THE "New Monthly " has contained, from time to time, much upon the subjects of Poetry, Painting, and Music. Why should not something be said upon a sister art?

I am afraid-and I sigh while I write that simplicity, as well as nationality, that is, all that once was ours,-is fast sliding away from us. I, even I myself I, cannot, it seems, announce my subject in plain English, but must have recourse to a roundabout phrase, and a motto in another tongue, instead of fairly telling my reader that I am going to lead him a dance. Well! now he knows it, and I hope he will not find me a dull partner. I dare be sworn I am not the first female that has done him the like courtesy, and perhaps made him a saucy one at the end, as his only recompense.

It will not recommend me to his good graces to confess that I have outlived the term of existence allotted to the dances of the three nations, English, Irish, and Scotch, which, though some remembrance of them remains, are, nationally speaking, extinct. The minuet, the country-dance, and the hornpipe-the two last were national-were our own-faded before the French louvre, cotillion, and allemande, an early French corruption of the waltz. These were in their turn tripped up by the Scotch and Irish reels, which gave place to the French quadrille; and the quadrille is now in some danger of being whirled off by the German waltz. Of the galopade I make small account; for, unless rumour be as false as she is trumpet-tongued, this was merely a lame excuse for a faux-pas from the beginning. But royalty, even when it halts, is no subject for a jest, and the galopade is no joke, as every gentleman not in training and in the best wind would soon experience, were it undertaken with a " romp-loving Miss," who enjoys to be

"Haul'd about in gallantry robust ;"

but, thanks to high civilization, there is, now-a-days, no such person. If, however, we have to lament over our lost nationality, we have no reason to dread the want of variety, or of supply; for it is thus that Noverre (the greatest of the two of the name*) encourages true artists

* The two Noverres were both extraordinary men. The younger was brought to England by Garrick, to dance in "The Chinese Festival," a ballet composed by his elder and more celebrated brother, which occasioned a riot, the gutting of the theatre, and wounds, if not death; for the gentlemen leaped from the boxes into the pit with their drawn swords, John Bull being incensed that a whole troop of Frenchmen should be engaged for his amusement, though the entire corps de ballet were Germans, Swiss, and Italians. Garrick, it is known, obtained the presence of the King at its first representation, under the excuse of seeing him act, for the first time, Richard III., in the hope that royalty would repress riot. The play passed peaceably; but "the people," who had been excited by all the violence of the press, rose at once, and, in the words of Garrick's biographer, "all was noise, tumult, and confusion. His Majesty was amazed at the uproar; but being told that it wa because the people hated the French, he smiled, and withdrew from a scene of confusion."-A. Noverre lived in Garrick's house many years, ran away with a Miss Finch, a relative of the Winchilsea family, from a boarding-school, and became a dancing-master. So constantly was he employed, that he was often constrained to

to search for new materials at what he deems the sources of artnamely, in the habits, customs, and manners of nations. "I advise them," he says, "to travel, not only in France, but through other countries they will learn that the minuet came to us from Angoulême; that the bourrée had its rise in Auvergne ;-the mountaineers of that province will give them a dance truly original in character. They will trace the first idea of the gavot at Lyons; in Provence, the model of the tambourine; in Bearn, the Basques will afford them a charming pattern. If they transport themselves to Spain, they will find that the chaconne is a native of that region: they may there study the fandango, a lovely and voluptuous dance, the structure and merits of which give it a charm they are yet unacquainted with. In Germany they will see an immense diversity of different dances; in Austria, in Bohemia, and in Moravia, contrasts still more varied. Should they direct their course towards Hungary, they may there study the dances of the people, and will meet with a multitude of movements, attitudes, and figures, proceeding from a joyousness at once pure and free. Saxony, Prussia, and Poland will furnish them with new species to imitate; and they will perceive that our ancient saraband and our courante have come to us direct from Cracovia. Should their talents impel them to visit Russia, that vast empire will afford them new portraitures."

This was published, it is true, so long ago as 1807, when it appeared "that the world was all before them where to choose;" and although the artist has since made some inquiries, and brought us some of its treasures, there are still vast tracts even of Europe to be explored. We yet know little of many dances beyond the names, the rhythm and the melodies of which have been adopted as themes or embellishments into their works by musical composers.

But our national dances are departed! And does not their departure denote, and curiously mark, a change in manners? For a long course of years, her Majesty's birthday Queen Charlotte, of virtuous memory, was celebrated by a ball, at which the gallants and the beauties of the Court displayed their graceful forms and dignity of deportment in minuets and country-dances. Sir Christopher Hatton himself won not more upon the virgin Queen and her ladies by his gravity in the pavan, and his agility in the galliard, than did George Prince of Wales upon our Duchesses and Countesses in the dances of his day. But for our English practice of dancing, if we go so far back, we shall find if not a mystical origin, at least a mystical signification, for Sir Thomas Elyot, in his "Governor," thus typifies the pastime :-" It is diligently to be

dine in his carriage, while passing from pupil to pupil, and could rarely get more than half a night's sleep.

The elder brother, who, having a Portuguese order, was called in England Sir George Noverre, was a man of the very highest talent. The inscription at the foot of the portrait prefixed to his works is really no exaggeration of his merits :

"Du feu de son génie il anima la Danse;

Aux beaux jours de la Grèce il sut la rappeler,
Et recouvrant par lui leur antique éloquence
Les Gestes et les Pas aprirent à parler."

For the manner in which Arteaga, in his "Rivoluzione del Teatro Musicale," speaks of him, I may refer to one of the former Numbers of the "New Monthly," that of December, 1833. Noverre was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, released, and pensioned by Buonaparte in his extreme old age.

noted that the company of man and woman in dauncing, they both observing one number and time in the mouvings, was not begun without a special consideration as well for the conjunction of those two persounes, as for the imitation of sundry vertues which be by them represented. And forasmuch as by the joyning of a man and woman in dauncing may be signified matrimony, I could, in declaring the dignitie and comoditie of that sacrament, make intier volumes, if it were not so commonly knowen to al men, that almost every frier lymitour caryeth it written in his bosome."

Some persons might be so fond as to imagine that the matrons of this our age had embraced the doctrines contained in this passage; but that such a supposition is entirely contradicted by the fact, that it lies as far out of the track of the researches of dowagers of quality, and the patronesses of Almacks, as of the wives of merchants, manufacturers, and shopkeepers; and also but for the fact so perfectly well understood amongst the most civilized persons,' no less than amongst

the letters of land and the makers of cloth and calico, that mothers would be the very last persons to encourage balls, were that amusement held in the light of a provocative to matrimony. And, after reading this passage of Sir Thomas, who will doubt the "dignitie and comoditie thereof?" But there is, it must be acknowledged, some difficulty, for elsewhere he says, "In every daunce of a most ancient custome ther daunced together a man and a woman, holding each other by the hand or by the arme, which betokeneth concord, how it behoveth the dauncers, and also the beholders of them, to know al qualities incident to a man, and also al qualities to a woman likewise appertaining." If the dauncers and beholders could now-a-days attain this insight into character, it would have an influence almost miraculous; but this rare perception unhappily is lost to our times.

Sir Thomas makes mention of the braule, the bargenett, the pauyons, turgyon, and round; "In every of the said daunces," he observes, "there was a continuitie of mouving the foote and body expressing some pleasaunt or profitable affects, or motions of the mind." To these we may add, from Shakspeare, the cinque-pace and the coranto. The lovers of the Bard will not have forgotten the compliment 'to Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the "excellent constitution of whose leg," Sir Toby avers, "was formed under the star of a galliard;" nor his recommendation to the Knight, "to go to church" in that measure, and "to come home in

a coranto."

All memory of the pavan is now lost, but that it must have been noble its very name declares. Sir John Hawkins says, "The pavan, from pavo, a peacock, is a grave and majestic dance. The method of performing it was anciently by gentlemen, dressed with a cap and sword; by those of the long robe, in their gowns; by princes, in their mantles; and by ladies, in gowns with long trains, the motion whereof in the dance resembled that of a peacock's tail. This dance is supposed to have been invented by the Spaniards. Grassineau says its tablature on the score is given in the Orchesographia' of Thoinet Arbeau. Every pavan has its galliard, a lighter kind of air, made out of the former." If, dear reader, you have travelled out of the sound of Bow-bell, you may have seen a peacock, the bird of Juno, sunning himself in the bright beams of summer. How beautifully-lofty is his air,