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Bright history of your life; yes, from your birth

Has beauty’s shadow chased your every step:

The blue sea was your mother, and the sun

Your glorious sire, clouds your voluptuous cradle,

Roofed with o’erarching rainbows; and your fall

To earth was cheered with shouts of happy birds,

With brightened faces of reviving flowers,

And meadows, while the sympathizing west

Took holiday and donn’d her richest robes.

From deep mysterious wanderings your springs

Break bubbling into beauty; where they lie

In infant helplessness awhile, but soon

Gathering in tiny brooks, they gambol down

The steep sides of the mountain, laughing, shouting,

Teasing the wild flowers, and at every turn ­

Meeting new playmates still to swell their ranks;

Which, with the rich increase resistless grown,

Shed foam and thunder, that the echoing wood

Rings with the boisterous glee; while, o’er their heads,

Catching their spirit blithe, young rainbows sport,

The frolic children of the wanton sun.

Nor is your swelling prime, or green old age,

Though calm, unlovely; still, where’er ye move,

Your train is beauty; trees stand grouping by,

To mark your graceful progress; giddy flowers

And vain, as beauties wont, stoop o’er the verge

To greet their faces in your flattering glass;

The thirsty herd are following at your side;

And water-birds in clustering fleets convoy

Your sea-bound tides; and jaded man, released

From worldly thraldom, here his dwelling plants —

Here pauses in your pleasant neighborhood,

Sure of repose along your tranquil shores;

And, when your end approaches, and ye blend

With the eternal ocean, ye shall fade

As placidly as when an infant dies,

And the Death-Angel shall your powers withdraw

Gently as twilight takes the parting day,

And, with a soft and gradual decline

That cheats the senses, lets it down to night.

There is nothing very original in all this; the general idea is, perhaps, the most absolutely trite in poetical literature; but the theme is not the less just on this account, while we must confess that it is admirably handled. The picture embodied in the whole of the concluding paragraph is perfect. The seven final lines convey not only a novel but a highly appropriate and beautiful image.

What follows, of this poem, however, is by no means worthy so fine a beginning. Instead of confining himself to the true poetical thesis, the Beauty or the Sublimity of river scenery, he descends into mere meteorology — into the uses and general philosophy of rain, &c. — matters which should be left to Mr. Espy, who knows something about them, as we are sorry to say Mr. Flaccus does not.

The second and chief poem in the volume, is entitled “The Great Descender.” We emphasize the “poem” merely by way of suggesting that the “Great Descender” is anything else. We never could understand what pleasure men of talent can take in concocting elaborate doggerel of this order. Least of all can we comprehend why, having perpetrated the atrocity, they should ­place it at the door of the Muse. We are at a loss to know by what right, human or divine, twattle of this character is intruded into a collection of what professes to be Poetry. We put it to Mr. Ward, in all earnestness, if the “Great Descender,” which is a history of Sam Patch, has a single attribute, beyond that of mere versification, in common with what even Sam Patch himself would have had the hardihood to denominate a poem.

Let us call this thing a rhymed jeu d’esprit, a burlesque, or what not? — and, even so called, and judged by its new name, we must still regard it as a failure. Even in the loosest compositions we demand a certain degree of keeping. But in the “Great Descender” none is apparent. The tone is unsteady — fluctuating between the grave and the gay — and never being precisely either. Thus there is a failure in both. The intention being never rightly taken, we are, of course, never exactly in condition either to weep or to laugh.

We do not pretend to be the Oracles of Dodona, but it does really appear to us that Mr. Flaccus