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By Root 17032 0

to couple Eden and succeeding — glories and floorwise — burning and morning — thither and aether — enclose me and across me — misdoers and flowers — centre and winter — guerdon and pardon — conquer and anchor — desert and unmeasured — atoms and fathoms — opal and people — glory and doorway — trumpet and accompted — taming and overcame him — coming and woman — is and trees — off and sun-proof — eagles and vigils — nature and satire — poems and interflowings — certes and virtues — pardon and burden — thereat and great — children and bewildering — mortal and turtle — moonshine and sunshine. It would have been better, we say, if such apologies for rhymes as these had been rejected. But deficiencies of rhythm are more serious. In some cases it is nearly impossible to determine what metre is intended. “The Cry of the Children” cannot be scanned: we never saw so poor a specimen of verse. In imitating the rhythm of “Locksley Hall,” the poetess has preserved with accuracy (so far as mere syllables are concerned) the forcible line of seven trochees with a final caesura. The’’double rhymes” have only the force of a single long syllable ca sure; but the natural rhythmical division, occurring at the close of the fourth trochee, should never be forced to occur, as Miss Barrett constantly forces it, in the middle of a word, or of an indivisible phrase. If it do so occur, we must sacrifice, in perusal, either the sense or the rhythm. If she will consider, too, that this line of seven trochees and a ca sure, is nothing more than two lines written in one — a line of four trochees succeeded by one of three trochees and a caesura — she will at once see how unwise she has been in composing her poem in quatrains of the long line with alternate rhymes, instead immediate ones, as in the case of “Locksley Hall.” The result is, that the ear, expecting the rhymes before they occur, does not appreciate them when they do. These points, however, will be best exemplified by transcribing one of the quatrains in its natural arrangement. That actually employed is addressed only to the eye. ­

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird

In among its forest brothers

Far too strong for it, then, drooping,

Bowed her face upon her hands —

And I spake out wildly, fiercely,

Brutal truths of her and others!

I, she planted in the desert,

Swathed her ‘wind-like, with my sands.

Here it will be seen that there is a paucity of rhyme, and that it is expected at closes where it does not occur. In fact, we consider the eight lines as two independent quatrains, (which they are), then we find them entirely rhymeless. Now so unhappy are these metrical defects — of so much importance do we take them to be, that we do not hesitate in declaring the general inferiority of the poem to its prototype to be altogether chargeable to them. With equal rhythm “Lady Geraldine” had been far — very far the superior poem. Inefficient rhythm is inefficient poetical expression; and expression, in poetry, — what is ti? — what is it not? No one living can better answer these queries than Miss Barrett.

We conclude our comments upon her versification, by quoting (we will not say whence — from what one of her poems) — a few verses without the linear division as it appears ai the book. There are many readers who would never suspect the passage to be intended for metre at all. — “Ay! — and sometimes, on the hill-side, while we sat down on the gowans, with the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before, and the river running under, and, across it from the rowens a partridge whirring near us till we felt the air it bore — there, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own — read the pastoral parts of Spenser — or the subtle interflowings found in Petrarch’s sonnets; — here’s the book! — the leaf is folded down!”

With this extract we make an end of our fault-finding — end now, shall we speak, equally in detail, of the beauties of this book? Alas! here, indeed, do we feel the impotence of the pen. We have already said that