Force is its prevailing character- a force, however, consisting more in a well ordered and sonorous arrangement of this metre, and a judicious disposal of what may be called the circumstances of the poem, than in the true material of lyric vigor. We are introduced, first, to the Turk who dreams, at midnight, in his guarded tent, of the hour
When Greece her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power He is represented as revelling in the visions of ambition.
In dreams through camp and court he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring;
Then pressed that monarch's throne- a king;
As wild his thoughts and gay of wing
As Eden's garden bird.
In direct contrast to this we have Bozzaris watchful in the forest, and ranging his band of Suliotes on the ground, and amid the memories of Plataea. An hour elapses, and the Turk awakes from his visions of false glory- to die. But Bozzaris dies- to awake. He dies in the flush of victory to awake, in death, to an ultimate certainty of Freedom. Then follows an invocation to death. His terrors under ordinary circumstances are contrasted with the glories of the dissolution of Bozzaris, in which the approach of the Destroyer is welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm,
And orange groves and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
The poem closes with the poetical apotheosis of Marco Bozzaris as
One of the few, the immortal names
That are not born to die.
It will be seen that these arrangements of the subject are skillfully contrived- perhaps they are a little too evident, and we are enabled too readily by the perusal of one passage, to anticipate the succeeding. The rhythm is highly artificial. The stanzas are well adapted for vigorous expression- the fifth will afford a just specimen of the versification of the whole poem.
Come to the bridal Chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's when she feels
For the first time her first born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke,
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible- the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.
Granting, however, to Marco Bozzaris, the minor excellences we have pointed out we should be doing our conscience great wrong in calling it, upon the whole, any more than a very ordinary matter. It is surpassed, even as a lyric, by a multitude of foreign and by many American compositions of a similar character. To Ideality it has few pretensions, and the finest portion of the poem is probably to be found in the verses we have quoted elsewhere Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land,
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm
And orange groves, and fields of balm
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
The verses entitled Burns consist of thirty-eight quatrains- the three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of three. This poem has many of the traits of Alnwick Castle, and bears also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of Wordsworth. Its chief merits, and indeed the chief merit, so we think, of all the poems of Halleck is the merit of expression. In the brief extracts from Burns which follow, our readers will recognize the peculiar character of which we speak.
Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks:
Thou mind'st me of that autumn noon
When first we met upon "the banks
And braes o'bonny Doon" Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief We've crossed the winter sea, and thou
Art withered-flower and leaf,
There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls and louder lyres
And lays lit up with Poesy's
Purer and holier fires.
And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloways witch-haunted wall
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.
Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined The Delphian vales, the Palastines,
The Meccas of the mind.
They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there. Wyoming is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines which follow are of great beauty.
I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,
In life- a vision of the brain no more,
I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,
That beetles high thy love! valley o'er;
And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.
The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some portions of Alnwick Castle- with such things as he would look particularly droll
In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume; and
A girl of sweet sixteen
Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn
Without a shoe or stocking- hoeing corn, mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.
The Field of the Grounded Arms contains twenty-four quatrains, without rhyme, and, we think, of a disagreeable versification. In this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of Halleck. For example Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed
Intently, as we gaze on vacancy,
When the mind's wings o'erspread
The spirit world of dreams. and again O'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers.
Red-jacket has much power of expression with little evidence of poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in any great degree, with the general tone of the poem.
A Sketch should have been omitted from the edition as altogether unworthy of its author.
The remaining pieces in the volume are Twilight, Psalm cxxxvii; To...; Love; Domestic Happiness; Magdalen, From the Italian; Woman; Connecticut; Music; On the Death of Lieut. William Howard Allen; A Poet's Daughter; and On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. Of the majority of these we deem it unnecessary to say more than that they partake, in a more or less degree, of the general character observable in the poems of Halleck. The Poet's Daughter appears to us a particularly happy specimen of that general character, and we doubt whether it be not the favorite of its author. We are glad to see the vulgarity of
I'm busy in the cotton trade
And sugar line, omitted in the present edition. The eleventh stanza is certainly not English as it stands- and besides it is altogether unintelligible. What is the meaning of this?
But her who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these have brought her.
The Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake, we prefer to any of the writings of Halleck. It has that rare merit in composition of this kind- the union of tender sentiment and simplicity. This poem consists merely of six quatrains, and we quote them in full.
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell when thou wert dying
From eyes unused to weep,
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts whose truth was proven,
Like thine are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth.
And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply,
That mourns a man like thee.
If we are to judge from the subject of these verses, they are a work of some care and reflection. Yet they abound in faults.
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