"His poetry has truth, delicacy, and correctness, as well as uncommon vigor and richness; he is always faithful to nature, his delineations are accurate, vivid, and forcible; he selects his groups and images with judgment, and sketches with spirit and exactness. He writes as one, 'who, in the love of nature, holds communion with her visible forms.' Nothing is borrowed, nothing artificial; his pictures have an air of freshness and originality, which could come from the student of nature alone. He is alive to the beautiful forms of the outward world. These forms hold a language to his heart. Nature to him is not an inert mass, mere dead matter; it is almost a feeling, and a sentiment. His poetry is always refreshing; the scenes of stillness and repose, into which he introduces us, seem fitted to exclude care and sorrow; he draws us from the haunts of men, where we become familiar with loathsome forms of vice and misery, where our hearts are torn with anxiety, or wounded by neglect and ingratitude, and makes us 'partake of the deep contentment,' which the mute scenes of earth breathe. He is less the poet of artificial life, than of nature and the feelings. There is something for the heart, as well as for the understanding and fancy, in all he writes: something which touches our sensibility, and awakens deep toned, sacred reflections. ; "Again, Mr Bryant charms us by his simplicity. Like all true lovers of nature, he is fond of those chaste beauties, which strike on the heart at once, and are incapable of being heightened by any extraneous ornament. His pictures are never overcharged. Nothing is turgid or meretricious, strange or fantastic. His heart is open to the healthful influences of nature; he muses among her gay and beautiful forms, and throws out upon the world his visions and feelings in a garb of attractive simplicity and grace. His strains, moreover, are exquisitely finished. He leaves nothing crude and imperfect; he throws off no hasty sketches, no vague, shadowy, and ill assorted images. His portraits have a picturesque distinctness; the outlines are accurately traced, and the colors laid on with delicacy and skill. We are never disgusted with grossness; nothing appears overstrained or feeble, deformed, misshapen, or out of place. "To write such poetry at any time would be no trifling distinction. Mr Bryant deserves the greater praise, as he has exhibited a pure and classical standard in an age, the tendency of which is, in some respects, toward lawless fanaticism and wildness. There is a fashion in literature, as in everything else. The popular style is now the rapid, the hasty, the abrupt, and unfinished. The age is certainly not a superficial one. It is distinguished beyond any former period for habits of deep, earnest thought. But one of its characteristics seems to be an impatience of restraint. It is fond of strong excitement, however produced. Whatever excites the mind into a state of fervor, whatever powerfully awakens the feelings, is listened to and applauded. It may be vague, fantastic, and shapeless, produced by a sort of extemporaneous effort, and sent abroad without the labor of revision. It will not have the less chance of becoming, for a time at least, popular. The press was never more prolific than at present. A great deal is written, and, as might be naturally supposed, much is written in haste. The mass of popular literature is swelling to an overgrown bulk; but much of it is crude, coarse, and immature. Mr Bryant has not been seduced by the temptations to slovenliness and negligence, which the age holds out to view; but, on the contrary, he affords a happy specimen of genuine, classical English. We are gratified to meet with such examples, especially among the distinguished and favored poets of our own country. It augurs well for the interests of taste and letters. "We cannot express in too strong terms our approbation of the moral and devotional spirit, that breathes from all which Mr Bryant writes. Poetry, which is conversant with the deeper feelings of the heart, as well as the beautiful forms of outward nature, has, we conceive, certain affinities with devotion. It is connected with all our higher and holier emotions, and should send out an exalting, a healing, and sustaining influence. We are pleased to find such an influence pervading every strain, uttered by a poet of so much richness of fancy, of so much power and sweetness, as Mr Bryant. No sentiment or expression ever drops from him, which the most rigid moralist would wish to blot. His works we may put into the hands of youth, confident, that in proportion as they become familiar with them, the best sympathies of their nature will be strengthened, and the moral taste be rendered more refined and delicate. Much of his poetry is description; but his descriptions are fitted to 'instruct our piety,' and impart a warmth and glow of moral feeling." THE AGES. WHEN, to the common rest that crowns our days, When, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows, Lest Goodness die with them, and leave the coming years. And therefore, to our hearts, the days gone by,- Of times when worth was crown'd, and faith was kept, Peace to the just man's memory,-let it grow His calm benevolent features; let the light A palm like his, and catch from him the hallow'd flame. But oh, despair not of their fate who rise Of him who will avenge them. Stainless worth, Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth Has Nature, in her calm majestic march, The plenty that once swell'd beneath his sober eye? Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth Will then the merciful One, who stamp'd our race Are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks the day, Oh no! a thousand cheerful omens give VOL. III. And in the abyss of brightness dares to span Sit at the feet of history-through the night To choose, where palm-groves cool'd their dwelling place, The truth of heaven, and kneel'd to gods that heard them not. Then waited not the murderer for the night, But misery brought in love-in passion's strife Grave and time-wrinkled men, with locks all white, Gave laws, and judged their strifes, and taught the way of right. Till bolder spirits seized the rule, and nail'd O'er the dark wave, and straight are swallow'd in its womb. |