Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/186

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS Rest," which made him eagerly read subsequent offerings by the same unmistakable hand. Among these were "The Shadow," and the most often quoted of the poet's shorter madrigals, "There are gains for all our losses," which bore in Putnam's the title of "Night and Morning." Its author's work culminated in Vol. VIII, 1856, with "The Fisher and Charon," a veritable masterpiece of blank-verse, to which many pages were not begrudged. I would ask any young writer to go back to this heroic idyl, and regard its human pathos, its calm imaginative progress, its stately diction, and mark what a structure its maker,—just escaped from apprenticeship in an iron-foundry,—built upon the stray text of a minor classic, infusing it, by intuition as sure as that of Keats, with the very soul of the antique. If this had been the handiwork of the author of "Sohrab and Rustum" and "Empedocles on Etna," or of Lowell—who had essayed the theme of "Rhœcus," undaunted by the finer classicism of Landor's "Hamadryad,"—it would have vastly impressed the down-east Areopagus to whose verdict alone (as Poe often complained) much deference was shown at that stage of our æsthetic development.

As it was, Ticknor and Fields in 1857 brought out an alluring volume, Songs of Summer, containing the whole series of Stoddard's Putnam contributions and thrice their number of additional poems. This collection, with Taylor's Songs of the Orient, Aldrich's new volumes, and the poems of others affiliated by instinct or association, were fresh with the ardor of a new clan, devoted to poetry for its own [172]