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By Root 16463 0

consequence of the one radical error of conception upon which we have commented at length, the reader’s attention, throughout, is painfully diverted. He is always pausing, amid poetical beauties, in the expectation of detecting among them some philosophical, allegorical moral. Of course, he does not fully, because he cannot uniquely, appreciate the beauties. The absolute necessity of re-perusing the poem, in order thoroughly to comprehend it, is also, most surely, to be regretted, and arises, likewise, from the one radical sin.

But of the beauties of this most remarkable poem, what shall we say? And here we find it a difficult task to be calm. And yet we have never been accused of enthusiastic encomium. It is our deliberate opinion that, in all that regards the loftiest and holiest attributes of the true Poetry, “Orion” has never been excelled. Indeed we feel strongly inclined to say that it has never been equaled. Its imagination — that quality which is all in all — is of the most refined — the most elevating — the most august character. And here we deeply regret that the necessary limits of this review will prevent us from entering, at length, into specification. In reading the poem, we marked passage after passage for extract — but, in the end, we found that we had marked nearly every passage in the book. We can now do nothing more than select a few. This, from page 3, introduces Orion himself, and we quote it, not only as an instance of refined and picturesque imagination, but as evincing the high artistical skill with which a scholar in spirit can paint an elaborate picture by a few brief touches. ­

The scene in front two sloping mountains’ sides

Display’d; in shadow one and one in light.

The loftiest on its summit now sustained

The sun-beams, raying like a mighty wheel

Half seen, which left the forward surface dark

In its full breadth of shade; the coming sun

Hidden as yet behind: the other mount,

Slanting transverse, swept with an eastward face

Catching the golden light. Now while the peal

Of the ascending chase told that the rout

Still midway rent the thickets, suddenly

Along the broad and sunny slope appeared

The shadow of a stag that fled across

Followed by a giant’s shadow with a spear.

These shadows are those of the coming Orion and his game. But who can fail to appreciate the intense beauty of the heralding shadows? Nor is this all. This “Hunter of shadows, he himself a shade,” is made symbolical, or suggestive, throughout the poem, of the speculative character of Orion; and occasionally, of his pursuit of visionary happiness. For example, at page 81, Orion, possessed of Merope, dwells with her in a remote and dense grove of cedars. Instead of directly describing his attained happiness — his perfected bliss — the poet, with an exalted sense of Art, for which we look utterly in vain in any other poem, merely introduces the image of the tamed or subdued shadow-stag, quietly browsing and drinking beneath the cedars.

There, underneath the boughs, mark where the gleam

Of sun-rise thro’ the roofing’s chasm is thrown

Upon a grassy plot below, whereon

The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream,

Swift rolling toward the cataract, and drinks.

Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks,

While ever and anon the nightingale,

Not waiting for the evening, swells his hymn —

His one sustained and heaven aspiring tone —

And when the sun hath vanished utterly,

Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade,

With arching wrist and long extended hands,

And grave-ward fingers lengthening in the moon,

Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still

Hung o’er the stream.

There is nothing more richly — more weirdly — more chastely — more sublimely imaginative — in the wide realm of poetical literature. It will be seen that we have enthusiasm but we reserve it for pictures such as this. ­

At page 62, Orion, his brethren dead, is engaged alone in extirpating the beasts from Chios. In the passages we quote, observe, in the beginning, the singular lucidness of detail; the arrangement of the barriers, &c., by which