In The Lapse of Time," Bryant seems to take for granted

part of our theory, for he says:

"Lament who will, in fruitless tears,

The speed with which our moments fly:

I sigh not over vanished years,

But watch the years that hasten by.

"The future!cruel were the power,

Whose doom would tear thee from my heart.
Thou sweetener of the present hour!

We cannot—no-we will not part!"

In the "Forest Hymn," we see a better system at work. Instead of a needless introduction, the poet at once opens boldly and truly into the subject.

"The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned

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,

Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart

Might not resist the sacred influences

Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the grey old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn-thrice happy, if it find

Acceptance in His ear."

Then, however, comes the supererogation we so often have complained of:

"Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns, thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down

Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,

Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker."

All this was surely implied in the foregoing, and had already passed through the reader's mind.

In the later poems we do not see much advance on his earlier effusions. The same calm spirit looking on men, not as one of them fighting in the throng of battle, giving and receiving blows, but on an eminence, where, above the smoke of the conflict and the tumult of the conflict, he can see as a spectator: removed from the turmoil, he can draw his conclusions.

In his verses "To the Apennines," he combines the ideal of paradise with the locale of Peru.

"Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!

In the soft light of these serenest skies;

From the broad highland region, black with pines,

Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,
Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold

In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.”

This is another proof how much some poets feel with the brain. Reflection here has yoked the dissimilar. We must confess that we had hoped for a more personal, humanizing conclusion, than the frigid summing up of

"In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks
Her image; there the winds no barrier know,
Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;

While even the immaterial Mind, below,

And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,
Pine silently for the redeeming hour."

Mr. Bryant very seldom originates his subject; he generally selects some well-known fact, and after amplifying it, he then closes his poem by drawing a moral. That there is a moral in

pro

everything we need no instructor to assure us; but as this pensity to point it out seems part of our poet's nature, we must not blame him for it. We may, however, be permitted to express our opinion, that it very greatly interferes with his immortality as a master of song. In his "Death of Schiller," we have his method of teaching by verse very fairly set down.

""Tis said, when Schiller's death drew nigh,

The wish possessed his mighty mind

To wander forth wherever lie

The homes and haunts of human-kind.

"Then strayed the poet, in his dreams,

By Rome and Egypt's ancient graves;
Went up the New World's forest streams,
Stood in the Hindoo's temple-caves;

"Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark,
The sallow Tartar, midst his herds,

The peering Chinese, and the dark

False Malay uttering gentle words.

"How could he rest? even then he trod
The threshold of the world unknown;

Already, from the seat of God,

A ray upon his garments shone ;

"Shone and awoke the strong desire,

For love and knowledge reached not here,

Till, freed by death, his soul of fire

Sprang to a fairer, ampler sphere.

"Then-who shall tell how deep, how bright
The abyss of glory opened round?

How thought and feeling flowed like light,

Through ranks of being without bound?"

In his lines to the memory of William Leggett, we have a verse which gives a felicitous account of the manner in which impulsive poetry should be written.

And his

"The words of fire that from his pen
Were flung upon the fervent page,
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age."

power

and broad relief.

of personification at times comes out in bold

"Oh FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crowned his slave
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred

With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs

Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;

They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven.
Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep,

And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,

Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound,
The links are shivered, and the prison walls