Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/323

Rh constitute the very essence of a large portion of modern verse—and allows that he has none of the spirit of Campbell, or the narratiye sprightliness of Scott; and that love is merely recognised in his poems, rarely forming the staple of any composition; and that even sentiment, except that which springs from benevolence, seldom lends a glow to his pages. We remember, however, Wilson's quoting "A Song of Pitcairn's Island" with the remark, "This is the kind of love-poetry in which we delight"—and his eulogising "The Hunter's Serenade" as "a sweet love-lay," and the "Song of Marion's Men" as a spirit-stirring, beautiful ballad, instinct with the grace of Campbell and the vigour of Allan Cunningham. Nor has Mr. Bryant ever, perhaps, been more justly appraised than by the same renowned critic, when he defines the chief charm of the poet's genius to consist in a tender pensiveness, a moral melancholy, breathing over all his contemplations, dreams, and reveries, even such as in the main are glad, and giving assurance of a pure spirit, benevolent to all living creatures, and habitually pious in the felt omnipresence of the Creator. The inspiration of many of his poems is traced to "a profound sense of the sanctity of the affections. That love, which is the support and the solace of the heart in all the duties and distresses of this life, is sometimes painted by Mr. Bryant in its purest form and brightest colours, as it beautifies and blesses the solitary wilderness. The delight that has filled his own being, from the faces of his own family, he transfuses into the hearts of the creatures of his imagination, as they wander through the woods, or sit singing in front of their forest bowers." The tenderness and pathos which mark "The Death of the Flowers," "The Indian Girl's Lament," "The Rivulet," and other pieces, produce in the reader a feeling not exactly, not even approximately, like that (if we may dogmatise at all on so indefinite a sensation) of

Bryant loves to put into simple verse some simple story of the heart, or fragment of legendary lore. For instance, the "African Chief," which tells how a captive prince stood in the market-place, "all stern of look and strong of limb, his dark eye on the ground,"—and there besought his elated conqueror to accept ransom, for the sake of those who were weeping their loss in the shade of the cocoa-tree; and how, when the conqueror spumed that petition, the conquered became at once broken of heart and crazed of brain, and wore not long the chain of serfdom—for at eventide "they drew him forth upon the sands, the foul hyæna's prey." Or again, "The Hunter's Vision,"—which describes the slumber of a weary huntsman upon a rock that rose high and sheer from the mountain's breast—and how he dreamed of a shadowy region, where he beheld dead friends, dear in days of boyhood, and one fair young girl, long since housed in the churchyard, but now bounding towards him as she was wont of yore, and calling his name with a radiant smile on that sweet face which the death damps have so dishonoured—and how the dreamer started forward to greet the rapturous delusion, and, plunging from that craggy height, ended dream and life at once! Or again,—"The Murdered Traveller"—a touchingly mournful elegy on one who died a fearful death in a narrow glen, and whose bones were found and buried there by