Critical Notices [pp. 326-340]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
333
jects, each individually of great beauty, and, if actually
seen as in nature, capable ofexciting in any mind, through
the means of the Poetic Sentiment more or less inherent
in all, a certain sense of the beautiful. But to view such
natural objects as they exist, and to behold them through
the medium of words, are different things. Let us pursue the idea that such a collection as we have here will
produce, of necessity, the Poetic Sentiment, and we
may as well make up our minds to believe that a catalogute of such expressions as moon, sky, trees, rivers,
mountains &c, shall be capable of excitiing it,-it is
merely an extension of tl'e principle. But in the line
" the earthL is darkl, but the heavens are bright" besides
the simple mention of the "dark ear th" and the " bright
heaven," we have, directly, the moral sentiment of the
brightness of the sky compensating for the darkness of
the earth-and thus, indirectly, of the happiness of a
future state compensating for the miseries of a present.
All this is effected by the simple introduction of the
word but between the " dark heaven" and the " bright
earth"-this introduction, however, was prompted by
the Poetic Sentiment, and by the Poetic Sentiment alone.
The case is analogous in the expression "glimmers and
dies," where the imagination is exalted by the moral
sentiment of beauty heightened in dissolution.
In one or two shorter passages of the Cutlprit Fay the
poet will recognize the purely ideal, and be able at a
glance to distinguish it from that baser alloy upon which
we have descanted. We give them without farther
comment.
The winds are tohist, and the owl is still
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid
And naught is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;
And the plaint of the tvailing whippoorwill
Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and wo
Up to the vaulted firmament
His path thie fire-fly courser bent,
And at everyv gallop on the wind
iHe fitinug a glittering spark behinll.
He blessed the force of the charmnied line,
And hle bIanned the wvater-goblins' spite,
For hie stwv around int the stceet tiiooaishine,
Their little tee fitces above the brile,
Gigglitg and laztughiig tvit!t all their night
At the piteous lhap of the Fairy wvighit.
Tile poem "To a FFrientld" consists of fourteen Spenserian stanzas. They are fine spirited verses, and probably were not supposed by their authior to be mre.
Stanza the fourth, altl-iough beginning nobly, concludes
with that very cotmmon exemplificationi of the bathos,
the illustrating natural objects of beauty or grandeur by
reference to the tinsel of artificiality.
Oh! for a s eat on A ppalachia' s b row,
That I mighit scan the lorious prospects roud,
Wild waving woods, and iolling floods belovw,
Smiooth level lades and field s with grain eml)rowned,
High heavin g hills, with tufted forests crowne d,
Iearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue domne,
And emnerald istes, like banners greiea rtiotioni,
Frao,ting aloneg the lake, thile roetnd thtemn re oat
Bri,ght helms oJ bilowy blue, andpluines of dancingfoam.
In the Extracts Jroin Leon, are passages not often surpassed in vigor of passionate thought and expressionand which induce uis to believe nat onily that tl eir a
thor would have succeeded better in prose romance than
in poetry, but that his attention would have naturally
f,llen into the former direction, had the Destroyer only
spared him a little longer.
This poein contains also lines of far greater poetic
power than any to be found in the Culprit Fay. For
example The stars have lit in heaven thieir lamps of gold,
The viewless dew falls lightly on the world
The gentle air that softly sweeps the leaves
A strain of faint iunearthly mulsic weaves
As when the harp of heaven remotely plays,
Or cygnets wiail-or song, of sorroiving fays
That float atumil the moonishitie glineine?iitgs pale,
On wings of woven air in some enchanted vale.*
Niagara is objectionable in many respects, and in
none more so than in its frequent inversions oflanguage,
and the artificial character of its versification. Tile
invocation,
Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river,
Pour thy vwhite foam on the valley below!
Frown ye dark mountains, &c.
is ludicrous-and nothing more. In general, all such
invocations have an air of the burlesque. In the present instance we may fancy the majestic Niagara replying, "Most assuredly I will roar, whether, worm!
thou tellest me or not."
The.merican Flag commences with a collection of
those bald conceits, which we have already shown to
have no dependence whatever upon the Poetic Power
-springing altogether from Comparison.
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky Ialdric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakiugs of the morning, light;
- Then from his mansion in the sun
Shelo called her eagle bearer down
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chiosen land.
Let us reduce all this to plain English, and we havewhat? Why, a flag, consisting of the " azure robe of
night," "set with stars of glory," interspersed with
"streaklis of morning light," relieved with a few pieces
of "the otilky way," and the whole carried by an
"eagle bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who
bears aloft this "symbol of our chosen land" in his
" nighty hand," by which we are to understand his claw.
In the second stanza, the "thunder-drum of Heaven"
is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degree-a cornmingling of the most stiblinie music of Heaven with the
most utterly contemptible and common-place of Earth.
The two concluding verses are in a better spirit, and
might almost be supposed to be from a different hand.
The images contained in the lines,
When Death careering on the gale
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back,
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
are of the highest order of Ideality. The deficiencies
* The expression "woven air," much insisted upon by the
friends of Drake, seems to be accredited to him as original. It
is to be found in many English writers- and can be traced back
to Apuleius who calls fine drapery ventura textilem.
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