When the Firmament Quivers with Daylight's Young Beam, belongs to a species of poetry which we cannot be brought to admire. Some natural phenomenon is observed, and the poet taxes his ingenuity to find a parallel in the moral world. In general, we may assume, that the more successful he is in sustaining a parallel, the farther he departs from the true province of the Muse. The title, here, is a specimen of the metre. This is a kind which we have before designated as exceedingly difficult to manage.
To a Musquito, is droll, and has at least the merit of making, at the same time, no efforts at being sentimental. We are not inclined, however, to rank as poems, either this production or the article on New England Coal.
The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus has ninety Pentameters. One of them
Kind influence. Lo! their orbs burn more bright, can only be read, metrically, by drawing out influence into three marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable, Lo! and lengthening the short one, their.
June is sweet and soft in its rhythm, and inexpressibly pathetic. There is an illy subdued sorrow and intense awe coming up, per force as it were to the surface of the poet's gay sayings about his grave, which we find thrilling us to the soul.
And what if cheerful shouts, at noon,
Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon
With fairy laughter blent?
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothed lovers walk in sight
Of my low monument?
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.
I know, I know I should not see
The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me
Nor its wild music flow,
But if, around my place of sleep,
The friends I love should come to weep,
They might not haste to go
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.
Innocent Child and Snow-White Flower, is remarkable only for the deficiency of a foot in one of its verses.
White as those leaves just blown apart
Are the folds of thy own young heart. and for the graceful repetition in its concluding quatrain
Throw it aside in thy weary hour,
Throw to the ground the fair white flower,
Yet as thy tender years depart
Keep that white and innocent heart.
Of the seven original sonnets in the volume before us, it is somewhat difficult to speak. The sonnet demands, in a great degree, point, strength, unity, compression, and a species of completeness. Generally, Mr. Bryant has evinced more of the first and the last, than of the three mediate qualities. William Tell is feeble. No forcible line ever ended with liberty, and the best of the rhymes- thee, he, free, and the like, are destitute of the necessary vigor. But for this rhythmical defect the thought in the concluding couplet The bitter cup they mingled strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free would have well ended the sonnet. Midsummer is objectionable for the variety of its objects of allusion. Its final lines embrace a fine thought As if the day of fire had dawned and sent
Its deadly breath into the firmamentbut the vigor of the whole is impaired by the necessity of placing an unwonted accent on the last syllable of firmament. October has little to recommend it, but the slight epigrammatism of its conclusion And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men- as thou dost pass.
The Sonnet To Cole, is feeble in its final lines, and is worthy of praise only in the verses Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen
To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air.
Mutation, a didactic sonnet, has few either of faults or beauties. November is far better. The lines
And the blue Gentian flower that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last, are very happy. A single thought pervades and gives unity to the piece. We are glad, too, to see an Alexandrine in the close. In the whole metrical construction of his sonnets, however, Mr. Bryant has very wisely declined confining himself to the laws of the Italian poem, or even to the dicta of Capel Lofft. The Alexandrine is beyond comparison the most effective finale, and we are astonished that the common Pentameter should ever be employed. The best sonnet of the seven is, we think, that To-. With the exception of a harshness in the last line but one it is perfect. The finale is inimitable.
Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long; another Spring
Shall deck her for men's eyes, but not for thine
Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
And the vexed ore no mineral of power;
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.
Glide softly to thy rest, then; Death should come
Gently to one of gentle mould like thee,
As light winds wandering through groves of bloom
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree.
Close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain,
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again.
To a Cloud, has another instance of the affectation to which we alluded in our notice of Earth, and The Living Lost.
Whose sons at length have heard the call that comes
From the old battle fields and tombs,
And risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe
Have dealt the swift and desperate blow,
And the Othman power is cloven, and the stroke
Has touched its chains, and they are broke.
Of the Translations in the volume it is not our intention to speak in detail. Mary Magdelen, from the Spanish of Bartoleme Leonardo De Argensola, is the finest specimen of versification in the book. Alexis, from the Spanish of Iglesias, is delightful in its exceeding delicacy, and general beauty. We cannot refrain from quoting it entire.
Alexis calls me cruel The rifted crags that hold
The gathered ice of winter,
He says, are not more cold.
When even the very blossoms
Around the fountain's brim,
And forest walks, can witness
The love I bear to him.
I would that I could utter
My feelings without shame
And tell him how I love him
Nor wrong my virgin fame.
Alas! to seize the moment
When heart inclines to heart,
And press a suit with passion
Is not a woman's part.
If man come not to gather
The roses where they stand,
They fade among their foliage,
They cannot seek his hand.
The Waterfowl is very beautiful, but still not entitled to the admiration which it has occasionally elicited. There is a fidelity and force in the picture of the fowl as brought before the eve of the mind, and a fine sense of effect in throwing its figure on the background of the "crimson sky," amid "falling dew," "while glow the heavens with the last steps of day." But the merits which possibly have had most weight in the public estimation of the poem, are the melody and strength of its versification, (which is indeed excellent) and more particularly its completeness. Its rounded and didactic termination has done wonders: on my heart,
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given
And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.
There are, however, points of more sterling merit. We fully recognize the poet in
Thou art gone- the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form.
There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast The desert, and illimitable air Lone, wandering, but not lost.
The Forest Hymn consists of about a hundred and twenty blank Pentameters of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly. With the exception of the line
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds, no fault, in this respect, can be found, while excellencies are frequent of a rare order, and evincing the greatest delicacy of ear. We might, perhaps, suggest, that the two concluding verses, beautiful as they stand, would be slightly improved by transferring to the last the metrical excess of the one immediately preceding. For the appreciation of this, it is necessary to quote six or seven lines in succession