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Rh "To the Evening Wind" has been justly admired. It is the best specimen of that completeness which we have before spoken of as a characteristic feature in the poems of Mr. Bryant. It has a beginning, middle, and end, each depending upon the other, and each beautiful. Here are three lines breathing all the spirit of Shelley.

Pleasant shall be thy way, where meekly bows The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass.

The conclusion is admirable—

Go—but the circle of eternal change, Which is the life of Nature, shall restore, With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;

"Thanatopsis" is somewhat more than half the length of "The Forest Hymn," and of a character precisely similar. It is, however, the finer poem. Like "The Waterfowl," it owes much to the point, force, and general beauty of its didactic conclusion. In the commencement, the lines

To him who, in the love of nature, holds Communion with her visible forms, &c.

belong to a class of vague phrases, which, since the days of Byron, have obtained too universal a currency. The verse

Go forth under the open sky and list—

is sadly out of place amid the forcible and even Miltonic rhythm of such lines as