At the same time the piece is especially free from errors. Once only we meet with an unjust metonymy, where a sheet of water is said to

Cradle, in his soft embrace, a gay

Young group of grassy islands. We find little originality of thought, and less imagination. But in a poem essentially didactic, of course we cannot hope for the loftiest breathings of the Muse.

To the Past is a poem of fourteen quatrains- three feet and four alternately. In the second quatrain, the lines

And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. are, to us, disagreeable. Such things are common, but at best, repulsive. In the present case there is not even the merit of illustration. The womb, in any just imagery, should be spoken of with a view to things future; here it is employed, in the sense of the tomb, and with a view to things past. In Stanza XI the idea is even worse. The allegorical meaning throughout the poem, although generally well sustained, is not always so. In the quatrain

Thine for a space are they

Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;

Thy gates shall yet give way

Thy bolts shall fall inexorable Past! it seems that The Past, as an allegorical personification, is confounded with Death.

The Old Man's Funeral is of seven stanzas, each of six lines- four Pentameters and Alexandrine rhyming. At the funeral of an old man who has lived out his full quota of years, another, as aged, reproves the company for weeping. The poem is nearly perfect in its way- the thoughts striking and natural- the versification singularly sweet. The third stanza embodies a fine idea, beautifully expressed.

Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled,

His glorious course rejoicing earth and sky,

In the soft evening when the winds are stilled,

Sings where his islands of refreshment lie,

And leaves the smile of his departure spread

O'er the warm-colored heaven, and ruddy mountain head. The technical word chronic should have been avoided in the fifth line of Stanza VI No chronic tortures racked his aged limb.

The Rivulet has about ninety octo-syllabic verses. They contrast the changing and perishable nature of our human frame, with the greater durability of the Rivulet. The chief merit is simplicity. We should imagine the poem to be one of the earliest pieces of Mr. Bryant, and to have undergone much correction. In the first paragraph are, however, some awkward constructions. In the verses, for example

This little rill that from the springs

Of yonder grove its current brings,

Plays on the slope awhile, and then

Goes prattling into groves again. the reader is apt to suppose that rill is the nominative to plays, whereas it is the nominative only to drew in the subsequent lines,

Oft to its warbling waters drew

My little feet when life was new. The proper verb is, of course, immediately seen upon reading these latter lines- but the ambiguity has occurred.

The Praries. This is a poem, in blank Pentameter, of about one hundred and twenty-five lines, and possesses features which do not appear in any of the pieces above mentioned. Its descriptive beauty is of a high order. The peculiar points of interest in the Prairie are vividly shown forth, and as a local painting, the work is, altogether, excellent. Here are moreover, evidences of fine imagination. For example The great heavens

Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love A nearer vault and of a tenderer blue

Than that which bends above the eastern hills.

Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed

In a forgotten language, and old tunes

From instruments of unremembered form

Gave the soft winds a voice.

The bee

Within the hollow oak. I listen long

To his domestic hum and think I hear

The sound of the advancing multitude

Which soon shall fill these deserts.

Breezes of the south!

Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,

And pass the prairie-hawk that poised on high,

Flaps his broad wing yet moves not!

There is an objectionable ellipsis in the expression "I behold them from the first," meaning "first time;" and either a grammatical or typographical error of moment in the fine sentence commencing

Fitting floor

For this magnificent temple of the sky With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

Rival the constellations!

Earth, a poem of similar length and construction to The Prairies, embodies a noble conception.