The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [960]
The editor of “The Poets and Poetry of America” thinks the literary precocity of Bryant remarkable. “There are few recorded more remarkable,” he says. The first edition of “The Embargo” was in 1808 , and the poet was born in 1794; he was more than thirteen, then, when the satire was printed — although it is reported to have been written a year earlier. I quote a few lines.
Oh, might some patriot rise, the gloom dispel,
Chase Error’s mist and break her magic spell!
But vain the wish; for, hark! the murmuring meed
Of hoarse applause from yonder shed proceed.
Enter and view the thronging concourse there,
Intent with gaping mouth and stupid stare;
While in the midst their supple leader stands,
Harangues aloud and flourishes his hands,
To adulation tunes his servile throat,
And sues successful for each blockhead’s vote.”
This is a fair specimen of the whole, both as regards its satirical and rhythmical power. A satire is, of course, no poem. I have known boys of an earlier age do better things, although the case is rare. All depends upon the course of education. Bryant’s father “was familiar with the best English literature, and perceiving in his son indications of superior genius, attended carefully to his instruction, taught him the art of composition, and guided his literary taste.” This being understood, the marvel of such verse as I have quoted ceases at once, even admitting it to be thoroughly the boy’s own work; but it is difficult to make any such admission. The father must have suggested, revised, retouched.
The longest poem of Bryant is “The Ages” — thirty-five Spenserian stanzas. It is the one improper theme of its author. The design is, “from a survey of the past ages of the world, and of the successive advances of mankind in knowledge and virtue, to justify and confirm the hopes of the philanthropist for the future destinies of the human race.” All this would have been more rationally, because more effectually, accomplished in prose. Dismissing it as a poem, (which in its general tendency it is not,) one might commend the force of its argumentation but for the radical error of deducing a hope of progression from the cycles of physical nature.
The sixth stanza is a specimen of noble versification (within the narrow limits of the Iambic Pentameter).
Look on this beautiful world and read the truth
In her fair page; see, every season brings
New change to her of everlasting youth;
Still the green soil with joyous living things
Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings;
And myriads still are happy in the sleep
Of Ocean’s azure gulfs and where he flings
The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep
In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.
The cadences here at page, swarms and surge, cannot be surpassed. There are comparatively few consonants. Liquids and the softer vowels abound, and the partial line after the pause at “surge,” with the stately march of the succeeding Alexandrine, is one of the finest conceivable finales.
The poem, in general, has unity, completeness. Its tone of calm, elevated and hopeful contemplation, is well sustained throughout. There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in
Nurse of full streams and lifter up of proud
Sky-mingling mountains that o’erlook the cloud!”
or of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in
The shock that hurled
To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown,
The throne whose roots were in another world
And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.
But we look in vain for anything more worthy commendation.
“Thanatopsis” is the poem by which its author is best known, but is by no means his best poem. It owes the