• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lo! where our foe up through these vales ascends,

Fresh from the embraces of the swelling sea,

A glorious, white and shining Deity.

Upon our strength his deep blue eye he bends,

With threatenings full of thought and steadfast ends;

While desolation from his nostril breathes

His glittering rage he scornfully unsheathes

And to the startled air its splendor lends.

This again, however, is worth only qualified commendation. The first six lines preserve the personification (that of a ship) sufficiently well; but, in the seventh and eighth, the author suffers the image to slide into that of a warrior unsheathing his sword. Still there is force in these concluding verses, and we begin to fancy that this is saying avery great deal for the author of “Puffer Hopkins.”

The best stanza in the poem (there are thirty-four in all) is the thirty-third.

No cloud was on the moon, yet on his brow

A deepening shadow fell, and on his knees

That shook like tempest-stricken mountain trees

His heavy head descended sad and low

Like a high city smitten by the blow

Which secret earthquakes strike and topling falls

With all its arches, towers, and cathedrals

In swift and unconjectured overthrow.

This is, positively, not bad. The first line italicized is bold and vigorous, both in thought and expression; and the four last (although by no means original) convey a striking picture. But ­then the whole idea, in its general want of keeping, is preposterous. What is more absurd than the conception of a man’s head descendingto his knees, as here described — the thing could not be done by an Indian juggler or a man of gum-caoutchouc — and what is more inappropriate than the resemblance attempted to be drawn between a single head descending, and the innumerable pinnacles of a falling city? It is difficult to understand, en passant, why Mr. Mathews has thought proper to give “cathedrals” a quantity which does not belong to it, or to write “unconjectured” when the rhythm might have been fulfilled by “unexpected,” and when “unexpected” would have fully conveyed the meaning which “unconjectured” does not.

By dint of farther microscopic survey, we are enabled to point out one, and alas, only one more good line in the poem.

Green dells that into silence stretch away

contains a richly poetical thought, melodiously embodied. We only refrain, however, from declaring, flatly, that the line is not the property of Mr. Mathews, because we have not at hand the volume from which we believe it to be stolen. We quote the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth stanzas in full. They will serve to convey some faint idea of the general poem. The Italics are our own.

The spirit lowers and speaks: “Tremble ye wild Woods!

Ye Cataracts! your organ-voices sound!

Deep Crags, in earth by massy tenures bound,

Oh, Earthquake, level flat! The peace that broods

Above this world, and steadfastly eludes

Your power, howl Winds and break; the peace that mocks

Dismay ‘mid silent streams and voiceless rocks —

Through wildernesses, cliffs, and solitudes.

“Night-shadowed Rivers — lift your dusky hands

And clap them harshly with a sullen roar!

Ye thousand Pinnacles and Steeps deplore

The glory that departs! above you stands,

Ye Lakes with azure waves and snowy strands,

A power that utters forth his loud behest

Till mountain, lake and river shall attest,

The puissance of a Master’s large commands.”

So spake the Spirit with a wide-cast look

Of bounteous power and cheerful majesty;

As if he caught a sight of either sea

And all the subject realm between: then shook

His brandished arms; his stature scarce could brook ­

Its confine; swelling wide, it seemed to grow

As grows a cedar on a mountain’s brow

By the mad air in ruffling breezes took!

The woods are deaf and will not be aroused —

The mountains are asleep, they hear him not,

Nor from deep-founded silence can be wrought,

Tho’ herded bison on their steeps have browsed:

Beneath their banks in darksome