The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [962]
[This latter passage is especially beautiful. Happily to endow inanimate nature with sentience and a capability of action, is one of the severest tests of the poet.]
. . . . . There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone, wandering, but not lost. . . . . .
Pleasant shall be thy way, where weekly bows
The shutting flowers and darkling waters pass,
And ‘twixt the o’ershadowing branches and the grass. . . . . .
Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore,
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. . . . . .
In a “Sonnet, To —— ,” are some richly imaginative lines. I quote the whole.
Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long: another spring
Shall deck her for men’s eyes, but not for thine,
Sealed in a sleep which knows no waking.
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
And the vexed ore no mineral of power;
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.
Glide softly to thy rest, then: death should come
Gently to one of gentle mould like thee,
As light winds, wandering through groves of bloom,
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree,
Close thy sweet eyes calmly and without pain,
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again.
The happiest finale to these brief extracts will be the magnificent conclusion of “Thanatopsis.”
So live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave —
Like one that draws the drapery of his couch
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.
In the minor morals of the muse Mr. Bryant excels. In versification (as far as he goes) he is unsurpassed in America — unless, indeed, by Mr. Sprague. Mr. Longfellow is not so thorough a versifier within Mr. Bryant’s limits, but a far better one upon the whole, on account of his greater range. Mr. B., however, is by no means always accurate — or defensible, for accurate is not the term. His lines are occasionally unpronounceable through excess of harsh consonants, as in
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.
Now and then he gets out of his depth in attempting anapæstic rhythm, of which he makes sad havoc, as in
And Rispah, once the loveliest of all
That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul.
Not unfrequently, too, even his pentameters are inexcusably rough, as in
Kind influence. Lo! their orbs burn more bright.
which can only be read metrically by drawing out “influence” into three marked syllables, shortening the long monosyllable “Lo!” and lengthening the short one “their.”
Mr. Bryant is not devoid of mannerisms, one of the most noticeable of which is his use of the epithet “old” preceded by some other adjective, e.g. —
In all that proud old world beyond the deep; . . . .
There is a tale about these gray old rocks; . . . . .
The wide old woods resounded with her song; . . . . .
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven,
etc. etc. etc. These duplicates occur so frequently as to excite a smile upon each repetition.
Of merely grammatical errors the poet is rarely guilty. Faulty constructions are more frequently chargeable to him. In “The Massacre of Scio” we read —
Till the last link of slavery’s chain
Is shivered to be worn no more.
What shall be worn no more? The chain, of course — but the link is implied. It will be understood that I pick these flaws only with difficulty from the poems of Bryant. He is, in the “minor morals,” the most generally correct of our poets.
He is now fifty-two years of age. In height, he is, perhaps, five feet nine. His frame is rather robust. His features are large but thin. His countenance is sallow, nearly bloodless. His eyes are piercing