let us ask whether it must not be admitted to be our own fault, when we find that the spirit of mankind in common has asserted its share in these poets, and laid its blemishing touch upon their mantle, teaching human belief that the poet was not to be considered as a being apart from mankindblending the purity and majesty of his song with mere passion, and teaching its holier capacity the baser language, at once, of earthly love and mortal impurity? It is feeling thus, and feeling it strongly in every pulse that beats within us, that we take up the works of a truly great poet. It is with no common degree of reverence that we do so, when we see that he has conscientiously written scarcely one line which he might in his riper and more mature years wish to blot from the pages of his works. Under these circumstances, he assumes in our eyes a graver and more august proportion. He comes to us, not so much appealing for a favorable verdict as demanding a respectful hearing. If he has already been received by the world as one of its chosen, on the score of his talent he demands from us our veneration. Such is preeminently the case with Bryant. Other poets are there, many perhaps, who have displayed a greater versatility of power, or exhibited a more perfect and thorough art in combining their thoughts and language with themes of human interest. They may have possessed a more vivid and brilliant imagination, or developed a completer fire and more potent energy. But, let us add that there is scarcely one who would appear to have been possessed so completely with the dignity and grandeur of his calling. Scarcely one is there, who seems to have been impressed so firmly with the honest purpose to permit himself in no single instance, to tamper with that which might detract from the great educational purpose to which poetry is so evidently and so distinctly called. Among the purer in intention of the bards of that great era in Anglo-Saxon poetry to which, although one of the youngest, he so clearly belongs, he stands preeminent. Not a blot can be seen which sullies his robe of light. There may undoubtedly be moments in which it becomes dimmer and more clouded in our eyes, but this is from no wanton stain which he has heedlessly permitted it to contract. Rather is it, from our own incapacity to enter into the full appreciation of that poetic purity of spirit which has invariably guided his pen, and permitted it in no instance to accommodate itself to the too prevalent temper or to lend itself to the more profligate impulses of the age in which he first became a writer and a poet. Listen to him. He is now speaking: "Raise then the hymn to Death-Deliverer! In taking this quotation from the volume in which it occurs, it has not been our intention to pluck from it one of the most striking passages of the noble poem from which we excise these lines. It has rather been taken as a fair and average example of the grave and elevated tone of feeling which characterizes the whole of the grand Hymn to Death-a feeling which amply entitles him to claim a brotherhood, in our opinion, with that apostolic line of poets which ranks itself, as we have previously implied, far above that state which the world too generally accords to poetry. In connection with it, we are about to make a few observations upon the more particular æsthetical characteristics of Bryant's poetical powers. Rarely, perhaps, does he elevate himself above us, with the eagle-flight and on the mighty and soaring pinion of the stronger birds of song. But although this is seldom done by him, we must remember that his wing never appears to tire, or seems to flag upon its sustained and equal course. All which he touches becomes grand and poetic under the charm of his calm and powerful will. His blank verse, from which the above is quoted, is admirably equal. In these days it more than favorably contrasts with that which is written by the greater portion of our modern American and English poets. Take up and read, should you have the leisure for doing so, Bailey's poem-we believe it is called "Festus." At the time when this volume first made its appearance, its author was, in the momentary blush of its novelty, actually accepted as a great poet, upon the other side of the Atlantic. Nay! He even found admirers-and these were not a few-upon this side of that huge landmark. Now, upon the pages of this poem, you will find the grossest and most obvious inequalities, whether in sentiment or in diction. Portions of it may certainly be selected which must be pronounced indisputably fine. These would-had they been at all equally sustained-have entitled the author from whose pen they had proceeded, to have assumed the right of taking the foremost rank in modern literature. Unfortunately they do not do this, being in most cases followed by something so grotesque, or such a childish piece of pathos, as at once impairs any and every prepossession in favor of the writer, which may previously have originated or been inspired in our minds. So, at least it does now, although, at the time when "Festus" was first published, these blemishes were literally accepted as portions of the beauties. Perhaps, if we were inclined to ransack our memories at the present moment, we might recall many a criticism in which they were not only palliated, but actually received a large portion of admiration." Or, take up the second portion of a poem which has been written by an infinitely greater man, (we allude to the "Faust" of Goethe,) and which has, unfortunately, begotten too many modern poems which have emulated the original in its peculiarities of manner and language, rather than in its sublimer excellencies. Is not this section of that fine drama-if indeed we may call it a drama-open to precisely similar objections? And ought we, when such poetry courts our attention on the score of its author's name and reputation, to shrink from marking it as a puerility unworthy of his native manhood? Therefore is it that we, not without reason, dwell upon this great element in the poetic excellence of Bryant. Never for a single moment does he condescend to trifle with his calling. None of these wanton pettinesses of diction or littlenesses of feeling, which blemish their writings, are to be met with in his verse. Although, it ispossible, that he may not rise to a similar height, or plume his wing in as lofty a song as some of his abler and mightier brethren, it must be remembered that on the other hand he never sinks helplessly into that trifling inanity which marks with no infrequent touch so many of these poets. Neither is he, as we have previously remarked, by any means a voluminous writer. And this is the more wonderful when we recall the age which Bryant is now living in. Consider amongst what impulses, and in how singular a situation, this great poet has of late years been cast. That which might perhaps not have been worthy of prolonged and definite curiosity at the close of the last century, demands the attention of the thinking man at the present day; and what possibly might not have arrested our notice in the country gentleman, or him who might be placed in a situation remote from the whirl and bustle of public life, becomes more than remarkable when it is noticed in the editor of a daily newspaper-one who is engrossed in the turmoil of daily politics, and to whom the use of the pen of the journalist has almost become as a second nature. This is emphatically the age of celebrity. Or rather— for we are not willing to permit our meaning to be mistakenit is the age of celebrities. Men and women who possess what the world chooses to call genius, but what is more strictly a talent for the mechanical use of their advantages, are scattered everywhere. You can appear in no reunion in the fashionable world, where some of these talents may not be met with. Not the commonest bar-room is there in New-York, in which something approaching it may not be found. A man may retire to his bed, this night in obscurity, and wake on the morrow to find his name decorated with this false celebrity. It is certainly possible, that he may be unlucky enough to find his fame snuffed out for him in the papers of the following day. But what does this matter? In the next month he may perchance blossom anew into a fairer amount of fame. "Fanny Fern" is the last year's marvel, and "Fashion and Famine" has been the literary celebrity of this one. Barnum rises into a novelty with his confessions, and scarcely has his claim upon their attention been recognized by the public, than a new man of mark in literature disputes it with him. This is the Chevalier Wikoff. We are no longer sliding through life in the easy stages with which our fathers were accustomed to progress through it. We whirl through it upon the rail. Reputations are no more formed as they were wont to be. Collisionists and catastrophe-makers have taken the formation of them into their own hands. They organize them upon a grand scale. They are no longer shapen by units, but are turned out largely and incessantly by the hundred. Now, amid such a constant din and roar of daily life, it is one of the most difficult things that we might well imagine, for the voice of the real poet to be heard. Where is he to find an audience amidst such a clang of wheels and such an uproar of human voices? His sweet notes run the risk of being stifled in the clattering of carriages, the shrieking of news-boys laden with the fact and intelligence of the outer world, the screeching of steam-whistles, the rush of railway trains, the announcements of Ethiopian serenaders, the mixture of music and machinery, opera and typography, carriage-wheels and banjoes. It is true, that in the olden time, a stray flower might be found by the road-side, and its perfume and beauty did not altogether fail of attracting attention from the loiterers near it. But now, alas! the roads have been graded. You must travel miles from the city ere you can alight upon the solitary bloom which was wont to sparkle and glisten in the green-sward that couched beside the hedge-row. When it is found, must we not, in our sorrow that it should be so, lament to say--that your soul will have gradually grown so completely deadened to its charms, while your memory will have become so hardened to all that loveliness which you once admired, that you will in all possibility have managed to forget its very name? You will find your eye as dimmed to its beauty as your nostril is choked against its perfume. It is true that you may find, here and there, some of those rare intelligences, that can for a time divest themselves of that ceaseless and restless turmoil. These men do not entirely and altogether exist in the money market. They will return from their counting-houses and places of business at the close of their day of toil, and will shut out from their hearth and the bosom of their families all memories of it. These few will possibly love that genius with an infinitely keener relish, which they, because it is the fashion with the rest of the world, exclude from their daily life. They will take it home to their inner selves, and enjoy its outpouring, with a more intense and thorough delight, from that very contrast which it makes them feel between the life without, and that more silent world whose action and whisperings they feel within them. To such as these we address our remarks upon Bryant's genius. From men like these we ask a reverential hearing for his poetry. To them we speak, for we know that they will listen to us. From every American who professes truly to love and relish poetry, Bryant demands something more than that attention which is accorded to the numerous poetlings and few poets that America has yet produced. Can our readers for a moment entertain any doubt wherefore we say this? Emphatically is Bryant the Sire of all American poetry. That poetry has not yet possibly acquired its full growth, but if it has not, be assured that it will do so. Bryant was the first amongst us, who taught the American spirit to find a vent for its purer and more elevated feelings in song. It is in this respect, that his name will be long hallowed and remembered by our children and descendants, or at least amongst such of them as can more effectually free themselves for a time, however brief, from that world of merchandise and barter which threatens to engross them. What is there that can be finer or more purely American in feeling, for example, than the opening of the "Forest Hymn ?" We take it from the volume in which it is contained, as one of the grandest examples of that devotional feeling which we everywhere find in Bryant: "The groves were God's first temples. Ere man turned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them;-ere he framed The lofty vault to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks." |