[BURPEE]) CHARLES HEAV YSEGE 47 
In addition to the main poem, in this volume, are contained some 
twenty sonnets, or quasi-sonnets. These Heavysege had not thought of 
including, but was persuaded to do so by some of his Montreal friends.* 
The poems are very irregular in form, hardly ever fulfilling all the de- 
mands of the sonnet, and in some cases bearing no resemblance to it, 
except that they contain fourteen lines. Strictly, therefore, as sonnets, 
one cannot unreservedly commend them; but as short poems, several 
of them are strikingly beautiful and suggestive. Here is one:— 
’Twas on a day, and in high, radiant heaven, 
An angel lay beside a lake reclined, 
Against whose shores the rolling waves were driven, 
And beat the measure to the dancing wind. 
There, rapt, he meditated on that story 
Of how Jehovah did of yore expel 
Heaven’s aborigines from grace and glory,— 
Those mighty angels that did dare rebel. 
And, as he mused on their dread abode 
And endless penance, from his drooping hands 
His harp down sank, and scattered all abroad 
Its rosy garland on the golden sands, 
His soul mute wondering that the All-wise Spirit 
Should have allowed the doom of such demerit. 
A comparison of the following sonnet, as it appears in Jephthah’s 
Daughter, with its original form, in the 1855 volume of Sonnets,? is 

1 They were selected from Heavysege’s early book of Sonnets, by Dr. S. E. 
Dawson, who had to a certain extent revised Jephthah’s Daughter, and pre- 
pared it for publication. Dr. Dawson was at that time a member of the 
publishing firm which brought out Jephthah’s Daughter. 
2 The stars are glittering in the frosty sky, 
Rank as the pebbles on a broad sea-coast ; 
And o’er the vault the cloud-like galaxy 
Has marshalled its innumerable host : 
Alive all heaven seems! with wondrous glow 
Tenfold refulgent every star appears ; 
As if some wide, celestial gale did blow 
And thrice illume the ever-kindled spheres. 
How awful is the night when thus it comes ! 
How terrible the grandeur of its gloom, 
When, in one visit, recklessly it sums 
Glory a whole dull age could scarce consume. 
Methinks in heaven there’s revelry to-night, 
And solemn orgies of unknown delight. 
