Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/36

 2 8 INTR OD UC TION

phraseology of much of the popular verse of the present day. The reader finds in it no far-fetched conceits, no vapid accumulation of mere words, no attempt to disguise commonplace ideas by distorting them into unnatural shapes and decking them out in glaring colors.

" One of the most striking, and the only one founded upon a classical theme, is 'The Lament of Orpheus.' It is admirably conceived, and executed with a vividness of imagination and a condensed forcefulness of expression hardly surpassed, we think, by any poem on a classical subject in English literature. The measure in which it is written is original, and is suited to heighten by its cumula- tive structure the effect of the author's conceptions. We extract a few stanzas which describe the spell diffused by the lyre of Orpheus in the infernal regions, whither he had descended to recover his lost Eurydice. The rapid succession and sharp outlines of the pictures, deficient though they be in delicate limning, betray the bold and masterly touch of a genuine artist.

"The author seems to have taken a comprehensive survey of human society, and to have acquired by a sort of imaginative induction a keen insight into numerous and diverse types of character. He measures life by a lofty standard, and has a warm sympathy with its highest forms. Repays a noble and just tribute to the memory of Samuel Adams, one of the purest, firmest, most disinterested, and magnanimous patriots of any age or country ; another to the memory of Captain Nathan Hale, who with accom- plishments, talents, and character that gave promise of dis- tinguished eminence, shrank from no service, nor from the imminent hazard of an ignominious death, provided he could be useful to his country, and perished in early man- hood, lamenting that he had but one life to lose in its

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