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Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1786, 23 September 1874, Page 3

Duiogtte in A Cemeteby.—-Wife: "Ah husband, do you see this beautiful carving?—how delicately cut in the pure white stone! '•' Husband: " Yes, very pretty." Wife: "But William, you have no taste for art; you don't enjoy these things as I do. Just notice this this slender column of immaculate marble, with the touching question so beautifully carved, 'Do they miss, me at home? "5 Husband: " Yes, I see; and here is her name on the foot-stone—' GK A. B. Yes I guess they miss her, if that was her name." And there came silence. How thb "Psalm op Life" was WwTTBK.—The "Psalm of Life" came into existence on a bright Summer morning in July, 1838,. in, Cambridge, as the poet sat between two windows at the small table in the cornerofhis chamber. It was a voice from his inmost heart, and he kept it some time in manuscrip, unwilling to part with it. It expressed his own feelings at that time, when he was rallying from the depression-of a deep afflicton, and he hid the poem in His own heart for many months. He was accused of taking th* famous verse, " Art is long •nd time is fleeting," from Bisbop's poeny *I happen to know that was not in his i, and that the thought came to him with as much freshness and originalty as if nothing. had been written, before. " There is a reaper whose name is Death" crystallised at once, without effort, in the poet's mind, and he wrote it rapidly down, with tears filling his eyes as he composed it. ■ "The light of the Stars'/ was composed as the poet looked out upon a calm and beautiful Summer evening, exactly suggestive of the poem. The moon a little strip of silver, was just setting behind Mount Auburn, and Mars was blazing in the t outh. That fine ballad,"The Wreck'of the Hesperus," was written in 1839. A violent storm had occured the night before. As the poet sat smoking hi* pipe about midnight by the fire, the wrecked Hesperus came sailing into his mind. He went to his bed, but the poem had seized him, and he could not sleep. He got up and wrote the celebrated verses. " The clock was striking three," he laid, " when I finished the last stanza." It did not come into his mind by lines, but flowing without let or hindrance.— ' James T. Fields.