Poems by William Cullen Bryant (review) [pp. 41-49]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
45
That death-stain on the vernal sword,
Hallowed to freedom all the shore —
In fiagmients fell the yoke abhorredThe footsteps of a foreign lord
Profaned the soil no more.
The Living Lost has four stanzas of somewhat peculiar construction, but admirably adapted to the tone of
contemplative melancholy which pervades the poem.
We can call to mind few things more singularlyimpressive than the eight concluding verses. They combine
ease with severity, and have antithetical force without
effort or flippancy. The final thought has also a high
ideal beauty.
But ye who for the living lost
That agony in secret bear,
Who shall with soothing words accost
The strength of your despair?
Grief for your sake is scorn for them
Whom ye lament, and all condemn,
And o'er the world of spirits lies
A gloom from which ye turn your eyes.
The first stanza commences with one of those affectations which we noticed in the poem "Earth."
Matron, the children of whose love,
Each to his grave in youth have passed,
And now the mould is heaped above
The dearest and the last.
The Strange Lady is of the fourteen syllable metre,
answering to two lines, one of eight syllables, the other
six. This rhythm is unmanageable, and requires great
care in the rejection of harsh consonants. Little, however, has been taken, apparently, in the construction of
the verses
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the
cool clear sklay.
And thou shonldst chase the nobler game, and I bring
down the bird.
Or that strange dame so gay and fair were some mys terious foe.
which are not to be pronounced without labor. The
story is old-of a young gentleman who going out to
hunt, is inveigled into the woods and destroyed by a
fiend in the guise of a fair lady. The ballad character
is nevertheless well preserved, and this, we presume, is
nearly every thing intended.
The Hunter's Vision is skilfully and sweetly told. It
is the tale of a young hunter who, overcome with toil,
dozes on the brink of a precipice. In this state between
waking and sleeping, he fancies a spirit-land in the fogs
of the valley beneath him, and sees approaching him
the deceased lady of his love. Arising to meet her, he
falls, with the effort, from the crag, and perishes. The
state of reverie is admirably pictured in the following
stanzas. The poem consists of nine such,
All dim in haze the mountains lay
With dimmer vales between;
And rivers glimmered on their way
By forests faintly seen;
While ever rose a murmuring sound
From brooks below and bees around.
He listened till he seem to hear
A strain so soft and low
That whether in the mind or ear
The listener scarce might know.
WVith such a tone, so sweet and mild
Tile watchiig mother lulls her child.
Catterskill Faclls is a narrative somewhat similar. Here
the hero is also a hunter-but of delicate firame. He
is overcome with the cold at the foot of the falls, sleeps,
and is near perishing-but, being found by some woodmen, is taken care of, and recovers. As in the Hunter's
Vision, the dream of the youth is the main subject of
the poem. He fancies a goblin palace in the icy network of the cascade, and peoples it in his vision with
ghosts. His entry into this palace is, with rich imagination on the part of the poet, made to correspond
with the time of the transition from the state of reverie
to that of nearly total insensibility.
They eye him not as they pass along,
But his hair stands up with dread,
When he feels that he moves with that phantom
throng
Till those icy turrets are over his head,
And the torrent's roar as they enter seems
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.
The glittering threshold is scarcely passed
When there gathers and wraps him round
A thick white twilight sullen and vast
In which there is neither form nor sound
The phantoms, the glory, vanish all
With the dying voice of the waterfall.
There are nineteen similar stanzas. The metre is formed
of Iambuses and Anapests.
The Hutnter of the Prairies (fifty six octosyllabic verses
with alternate rhymes) is a vivid picture of the life of
a hunter in the desert. The poet, however, is here
greatly indebted to his subject.
The Damsel of Peru is in the fourteen syllable metre,
and has a most spirited, imaginative and musical commencementWhere olive leaves tvere twinkling in every wind that blew,
There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru.
This is also a ballad, and a very fine one-full of
action, chivalry, energy and rhythm. Some passages
have even a loftier merit-that of a glowing ideality.
For example
For the noon is conming on, and the sunbeams fiercely
beat,
.Jnd the silent hills anid forest-tops seem reeling in the heat.
The Song of Pitcairn's Island is a sweet, quiet, and
simple poem, of a versification differing from that of any
preceding piece. We subjoin a specimen. The Tahetian maiden addresses her lover.
Come talk of Europe's maids with me
Whose necks and cheeks they tell
Outshine the beauty of the sea,
White foam and crimson shell.
I'll shape like theirs my simple dress
And bind like them each jetty tress,
A sight to please thee well,
And for my dusky brow will braid
A bonnet like an English maid.
There are seven similar stanzas.
Rispah is a scriptural theme from 2 Samuel, and we
like it less than any poem yet mentioned. The subject,
we think, derives no additional interest firom its poetical