According to most poets, "eventide" is "betokened" by a stillness. The third stanza informs us that "The robins all are still." My own experience has been that at the time of twilight the robins are the only creatures that are not still. A short piece entitled "In May Days" has a somewhat peculiar construction. The writer begins by enumerating some of the features of spring, and in the first three stanzas rolls up a ponderous compound subject, containing, among other things, a relative clause attached to a relative clause, but as yet brings in no predicate; in the fourth stanza he takes a fresh start and sums up the long subject, - still no predicate; here he evidently gives up the idea of getting in that predicate at all, for, putting a semicolon at the end of the fourth stanza, he takes another new start in the fifth, and the rest of the poem is rather pretty and quite well expressed. A piece addressed "To Fancy," published about a year ago, presents some curiosities in the way of figures. The third stanza is as follows: -

"Upon the glassy floor

Of ocean we will sit,

And list the mellowed roar

Of storms that o'er us flit."

Why "glassy" floor? A surface of hard sand is not well described by "glassy." To be sure, sand is a necessary ingredient of glass, could the poet have been thinking of any thing so practical. The stanza before the last is as follows: -

"With thee will I abide,

Till, of my mortal part,

All shall have sweetly died

Save mind and soul and heart."

How does it feel to "sweetly die"? and isn't it a little unusual to call "mind and soul and heart" portions of one's "mortal part"?

There is one more of this kind that I must quote, and a most curious piece it is. As it is short I will quote it in full: -

"A LAMENT.

"It was a summer eve

Beside a summer sea,