Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal

on,

He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal

-on :

Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em,

But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm ; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,

Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

"He is very nice reading in summer, but inter Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him,

He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;

And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,

Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities,—

To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?

No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite.

If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece;

But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice,

And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain,

If you only could palm yourself off for a moun

tain.

Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning,

Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Words. worth

Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's

worth.

No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client,

By attempting to stretch him up into a giant : If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per

-sons fit for a parallel-Thomson and Cowper ;* I don't mean exactly, there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach;

Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of crazi

ness

Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless,

quiet,

Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,——
A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on
The heart which strives vainly to burst off a but-
ton,-

A brain which, without being slow or mechanic,
Does more than a larger less drilled, more vol-

canic;

He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written.

“But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up

your ears,

*To demonstrate quickly and easily how per-versely absurd 'tis to sound this name Cowper, As people in general call him named super,

I just add that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper.

Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers;

If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say

There is nothing in that which is grand, in its way;
He is almost the one of your poets that knows
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in
Repose;

If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar
His thought's modest fulness by going too far;
"Twould be well if your authors should all make a
trial

Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial,
And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff,
Which teaches that all has less value than half.

"There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart

Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,

And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the

swing

Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,)

From the very same cause that has made him a poet,—

A fervor of mind which knows no separation "Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing

If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing;

Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflec

tion,

While, borne with the rush of the metre along,
The poet may chance to go right or go wrong,
Content with the whirl and delirium of song;
Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his
rhymes,

And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats

When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats,

And can ne'er be repeated again any more

Than they could have been carefully plotted before:

Like old what's-his-name there at the battle of

Hastings,

(Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings,)

Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights

For reform and whatever they call human rights,
Both singing and striking in front of the war
And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor;
Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks,
Vestis filii tui, O, leather-clad Fox?

Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din,
Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in
To the brain of the tough old Goliah of sin,
With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's
spring

Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?

“All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard,

Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave

When to look but a protest in silence was brave; All honor and praise to the women and men

Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden

then!

I need not to name them, already for each

I see History preparing the statue and niche; They were harsh, but shall you be so shocked at hard words

Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords,

Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain By the reaping of men and of women than grain Why should you stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if

You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff? Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long

Don't prove that the use of hard language is wrong; While the World's heart beats quicker to think of such men

As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody steel

pen,

While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators fright

one

With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton,

You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others;

No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and

true

Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the few,

Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved, But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved!

“Here comes Dana, abstractedly loitering along, Involved in a paulo-post-future of song, Who'll be going to write what'll never be written