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However intolerably absurd this skeleton of the story may appear, a thorough perusal will convince the reader that the entire ­fabric is even more so. It is impossible to convey, in any such digest as we have given, a full idea of the niaiseries with which the narrative abounds. An utter want of keeping is especially manifest throughout. In the most solemnly serious passages we have, for example, incidents of the world of 1839, jumbled up with the distorted mythology of the Greeks. Our conclusion of the drama, as we just gave it, was perhaps ludicrous enough; but how much more preposterous does it appear in the grave language of the poet himself!

And round her neck the miniature was hung

Of him who gazed with Hell’s unmingled wo;

He saw her, kissed her cheek, and wildly flung

His arms around her with a mad’ning throw —

Then plunged within the cold unfathomed deep

While sirens sang their victim to his sleep!

Only think of a group of sirens singing to sleep a modern “miniatured” flirt, kicking about in the water with a New York dandy in tight pantaloons!

But not even these stupidities would suffice to justify a total condemnation of the poetry of Mr. Dawes. We have known follies very similar committed by men of real ability, and have been induced to disregard them in earnest admiration of the brilliancy of the minor beauty of style. Simplicity, perspicuity and vigor, or a well-disciplined ornateness of language, have done wonders for the reputation of many a writer really deficient in the higher and more essential qualities of the Muse. But upon these minor points of manner our poet has not even the shadow of a shadow to sustain him. His works, in this respect, may be regarded as a theatrical world of mere verbiage, somewhat speciously bedizzened with a tinselly meaning well adapted to the eyes of the rabble. There is not a page of anything that he has written which will bear, for an instant, the scrutiny of a critical eye. Exceedingly fond of the glitter of metaphor, he has not the capacity to manage it, and, in the awkward attempt, jumbles together the most incongruous of ornament. Let us take any passage of “Geraldine” by way of exemplification.

——— Thy rivers swell the sea —

In one eternal diapason pour

Thy cataracts the hymn of liberty,

Teaching the clouds to thunder. ­

Here we have cataracts teaching clouds to thunder — and how? By means of a hymn.

Why should chromatic discord charm the ear

And smiles and tears stream o’er with troubled joy?

Tears may stream over, but not smiles.

Then comes the breathing time of young Romance,

The June of life, when summer’s earliest ray

Warms the red arteries, that bound and dance

With soft voluptuous impulses at play,

While the full heart sends forth as from a hive

A thousand winged messengers alive.

Let us reduce this to a simple statement, and we have — what? The earliest ray of summer warming red arteries, which are bounding and dancing, and playing with a parcel of urchins, called voluptuous impulses, while the bee-hive of a heart attached to these dancing arteries is at the same time sending forth a swarm of its innocent little inhabitants.

The eyes were like the sapphire of deep air,

The garb that distance robes elysium in,

But oh, so much of heaven lingered there

The wayward heart forgot its blissful sin

And worshiped all Religion well forbids

Beneath the silken fringes of their lids.

That distance is not the cause of the sapphire of the sky, is not to our present purpose. We wish merely to call attention to the verbiage of the stanza. It is impossible to put the latter portion of it into anything like intelligible prose. So much of heaven lingered in the lady’s eyes that the wayward heart forgot its blissful sin, and worshiped every thing which religion forbids, beneath the silken fringes of the lady’s eyelids. This we cannot be compelled to understand, and shall therefore say nothing further about it.

She loved to lend Imagination