America. We prefer his poetry to his prose for several reasons, but chiefly on account of its comprising the qualities of that species of composition with a higher faculty. His verse is carefully finished, and displays occasionally a vein of imagination, which, if more sustained, would place him very high in the rank of even English poets. He has less unmeaning epithets than any American poet, except Emerson, we have met with, and some of his illustrations are remarkably happy. There is, however, a want of constructiveness in his mind which impairs his power as a narrative poet. His prose writings are full of sound thought in sound English, and evince in every page, if not the man of an original genius or a wide range of mind, at all events one who has the sagacity to think for himself, and the honesty to write what he thinks. FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. Ir is very seldom that a woman of any real genius has so great a facility of throwing her fancies into shape as Mrs. Osgood. Had her utterance been more difficult she would have written better. Mrs. Hemans was an example of how much fine poetry is weakened by that elegant clothing of satin which she could so easily throw over her children. The very opening poem of the American poetess is a striking instance. It reminds us of a weak translation of some of Anacreon's odes by Thomas Moore. "Love, no more with that soul of fire When thy touch awakes the strain. With its blush of childish grace, Still thy sweet entrancing tone, Fold thy wings and weep alone!" The idea is here positively so weakened by amplification that we can hardly be said to recognise one in the whole eight lines. What can be done in that number of verses every reader of Goldsmith can tell "When lovely woman stoops to folly." The lady whom we thus criticise tells us what she can per form in a small compass, when she pleases This species of verse is very captivating. It seems as though it were the same that Pope said-"Lord, Fanny spins a thousand such a day." To be closely written it is perhaps more difficult than any in the language. Lord Byron was one of the few that could wield the Anacreontic rhythm with much effect. In her "Spirit of Poetry" there is a great tenderness and a deep yearning after the undefined. "Leave me not yet! leave me not cold and lonely, Thou dear ideal of my pining heart! Thou art the friend--the beautiful--the only Whom I would keep, though all the world depart! Of the dim future, in my wistful youth." There are, however, far too many lines in this poem; nevertheless there is a fine vein of impassioned feeling throughout. In Ermengardes Awakening" there are many stanzas of great beauty. "And the proud woman thrilled to its false glory, And when the murmur of her own true soul She dreamed that music from the statue stole, Her own divinity had made divine. "Like Egypt's queen in her imperial play, She in abandonment more wildly sweet And poured the rich libation at its feet; This stanza is full of woman's best thought: "And in her desolate agony she cast Her form beside love's shivered treasure there, In her "Eurydice" there are lines so full of passionate feeling that we seem to be sharing the thought of something between man and woman: "Now soft and low a prelude sweet uprings, As if a prisoned angel, pleading there For life and love, were fettered 'neath the strings, And poured his passionate soul upon the air. Till the full pæan peals triumphantly through hell.” In the verses to Queen Victoria on her way to Guildhall, we noticed that yearning after the glitter of the old despotism which is so marked a feature in the upper classes of American society. Turkey carpets, brilliant furniture, and crowded balls, insensibly undermine that republican independence so indispensable to the welfare of the American people. Sometimes she endeavors to mix up instruction with song, as in "Laborare est Orare," but she is not successful in these attempts. "Labor is worship,'-the robin is singing: 66 'Labor is worship,'-the wild bee is singing: Listen that eloquent whisper upspringing, Speaks to thy soul from out nature's great heart.” The greatest attempt Mrs. Osgood has made is in her Fragments of an Unfinished Story." Here we have a poem of nearly four hundred lines in blank verse, which we have been told by the authoresses themselves is the most difficult of all for a lady to write. One can easily comprehend this; the delicate feminine nature is carried along by her musical sympathies, and there is something too independent in a verse which leans not on rhyme for support. The commencement contains a very startling creed, which we suppose few are ready to give faith to. |