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MODERN POETRY.-NO. VI.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

So it is in poetry; and these brief words of La Bruyère are worth all the canons of criticism: "When a book elevates our minds, and inspires us with noble and courageous sentiments, we need seek for no other test of its merits; it is good, and comes from the hand of a master." If it fails to do this, it has failed of its purpose; and

E place at the head of this paper explain it. But you acknowledge and feel the one of the first names in Ame-effect. rican literature. A professorship in the most distinguished of our colleges, a high reputation for scholarship, and foreign residence, have no doubt had their weight in recommending him to public notice; but his reputation could not have stood and grown as it has done without a solid founda-though it may deserve praise for many of its tion. His works have been widely circulated and read; the seal of public approbation has been set upon them; and we shall therefore, instead of dwelling upon their peculiarities, proceed, as usual, to some more general reflections.

The cant of criticism, which Tristram Shandy satirized, is not less absurdly displayed in our day than it was in his. The critic still applies his measuring rule, and judges the volume by its squareness, and the relation between its length, breadth, and thickness. Thus one author's style is chaste and pure," another's "easy and flowing," another's dignified," another's" tender," &c. &c. and by these ear-marks, his position on the sacred mount is determined. Just as if a question of female beauty were to be settled by the color of the hair and eyes, the shape of the nose, and the size of the mouth, and not by { the effect produced by their peculiar combination.

separate qualities, it lacks the one thing needful, the mens divinior.

It is natural enough that those who have failed to strike the public attention should abuse the age as unpoetic; and accordingly this has been done so often and so long, that it seems now to be the settled opinion of the public themselves. Has it never occurred to those who make this complaint, that the fault is in themselves? that their voices are not heard because they are unworthy of the nineteenth century?

There has been much controversy respecting the merits of the Lake School of Poets; and to the attempt to uphold their system, and the almost universal imitation of their reveries, we verily believe, is in a great measure owing the languid character of modern poetry. Nothing could possibly be more adverse than the spirit of their poems, and the spirit of the present age. This is an age of bold speculation and of bold action. Men now dare and accomplish what would have been deemed madness by our forefathers. The realities of our day far surpass the romance

the Atlantic as regularly and punctually as stage coaches on a turnpike; the Daguerreotype, with no pencil but a sun-beam, in a few moments, producing pictures which the utmost skill of the artist never did and never can equal; the Magnetic Telegraph literally annihilating time and

Two women are equal in the symmetry of their forms, and the regularity and beauty of their several features. The brow of one is as fair as that of the other; the nose as truly Gre-of theirs. Steam ships carrying the mails across cian; the mouth as sweet; the chin as delicately turned; and the cheek as rich; yet one bears the impress of heavenly beauty, and commands the willing admiration of all hearts, whilst the other is a mere creature of clay and passes by unobserved. So, too, with men. It is said that Washington impressed every beholder with senti-space; such are the realities of the nineteenth ments of veneration; that no one could tell how or why, but there was something almost supernatural in his presence. Yet there have been other men as large of stature, with as well proportioned forms and as manly features who produced no such impression. Why is this? The effect is instantaneous; swift as the twinkle of an eye, as the flash of thought. It is not the result of criticism or of analysis; nor can you

century; and yet the poets--to whom it belongs to rise superior to their age, and stir men's hearts with greater things than they have known or seen dream on and seem unconscious that the glorious sun has passed the horizon, and is pouring a flood of light around them. In a faint voice the public attention is invoked to the odor of flowers, and the babbling of brooks. "Lines on a Sleeping Infant;"Stanzas to a Humming.

bird;" “Verses addressed to a new-blown rose"-- { notwithstanding all that has been said on the subsuch are the themes of these masters of the Lyre;ject, both at home and abroad, it is our firm and truly the execution is generally in every way belief that if some man of high and vigorous worthy of the subject. genius were to arise, even now, and freeing himself from the tramels of rules and systems, consult only nature, and the impulses of his own heart, and the spirit of the age, his lofty strains would be received with an acclamation such as has never yet greeted poet.

To return to Professor Longfellow.

We must not be understood as meaning that genius can not extract poetry even from trifles; or as depreciating wit and pathos. We trust that we have an ear for the melody of verse, and a heart not insensible to the livelier or to the softer emotions. Some of the trifles" of the poets are among the works which we love best. But We recognize in some of his compositions a where almost the whole poetry of an age consists degree of truth and nerve which redeems hini of trifles; where it is made a rule to select the from the censure which we have been endeavorfamiliar and the low as the objects of poetry; anding to express, and promises still better things where these mean subjects are treated by men than he has yet given us. His admirers would whom the muse has never inspired, what wonder no doubt differ in their selections, but no one that a "leaden age" should be the consequence? can dispute that the true spirit of poetry breathes In any other pursuit of life a theory or course of throughout practice which had been fairly tried, and had produced evil instead of good consequences, would be condemned and discarded. Have not the Lake School, with Wordsworth at their head, fairly tried their system for almost half a century? and, notwithstanding the fine genius of the master, and of some of his followers, has not poetry, under the baleful influence of that system, drivelled down to general imbecility? Is not this enough? The world has become full grown, and is not to be entertained with the amusements of prattling infants; and such poetry as we are speaking of belongs to the nursery and not to the walks of men. At least, when it does rise above the level of nursery rhymes, it enters the regions of dreams and abstractions.

Such productions never could, and never did produce a deep or lasting effect. In a listless age they might amuse the listless; but in this age something deeper, stronger, and bolder is required to reach the public heart. The fire and energy which every day events call forth must be stirred to its inmost depths by him who would be called a great poet now; and such poets of past generations are now reaping their harvest of fame. Men turn instinctively from the drivellers of the new school to the bold, vigorous men of the old.

In our own country, especially, is a manly literature called for. Boldness and enterprise are our great characteristics as a people. No man can prosper in real life among us without these qualities. How then can we appreciate the dreamy and the trifling in poetry? Individuals may, but the nation will not. It is absurd to say that we have no taste for poetry. We are a nation of readers beyond any other in the world, and we read every thing. There is scarce a dwelling in the land that does not possess volumes of poetry, or in which they are not read; and

"THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
"Under a spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

"His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;

Ilis brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can;
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

"Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

"And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,

And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor.

"He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
IIe hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;

And with his hard rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

OT more than fifty years, wilderness now "blossoms as the rose," and the ago, unbroken forests country which was once a Pandemonium, has covered the broad re- become a Paradise. This truly wonderful change gions which are now has been effected as if by magic. The son of comprised in the boun- the veteran pioneer, as he wonders at the spacious daries of some of our most magnificence of some western city, may hear his flourishing states. The changes father tell of the days, scarcely gone by, when which have given a totally the gloomy forests sighed over the spot on which different appearance to the are now reared the splendid structures of the western portion of this Union, have been no less growing metropolis of wealth and trade. The rapid than wonderful. The prophecy of the poet, conception of the dream of Rip Van Winkle, Campbell, who has made the name of sequestered would find an admirable application here. The Wyoming immortal, has already, in effect if not sleeper might have sought repose beneath some literally, been fulfilled. venerable tree, waving in the midst of a thousand others, extending on every side, for as many

"On Erie's stormy banks, where panthers steal miles, and on waking from his slumbers of a score

along,

And the dread Indian chants a dismal song,
Where human fiends on midnight errands walk,
And bathe in blood the murderous tomahawk,-
There shall the flocks on thymy pastures stray,
And shepherds dance at summer's opening day.
Each wandering genius of the lonely glen
Shall start to view the glittering haunts of men;
And silent watch, on woodland heights around,
The village curfew, as it tolls profound."

Thus has the poet's dream of the future, become the reality of the present. Hideous Barbarism no longer holds her darkened sway o'er the broad and fertile regions bounded by the lakes, and watered by the Ohio and Mississippi,she has dropped her iron sceptre, and fled abashed, before the advance of smiling civilization. The

of years, he would find himself surrounded by the bustle and enterprise of a growing city.

This rapidity of improvement, has given a peculiar appearance to the vicinities of many of our most flourishing western towns.

The city is frequently seen surrounded by the wilderness; and, as the great American novelist has said, a state of high civilization, infant existence, and portions of barbarity are often brought almost together. The traveler, who has passed the night in an inn that would not disgrace the oldest country in Europe, may be compelled to dine in the shantee of a hunter; the smooth and graveled road sometimes ends in an impassible swamp; the spires of a town are often hid by the branches of a tangled forest, and the canal leads to a seemingly barren and useless mountain.