Saw the loved warriors haste away,
And deemed it sin to grieve.

"Already had the strife begun;

Already blood on Concord's plain
Along the springing grass had run.
And blood had flowed at Lexington,
Like brooks of April rain.

"That death-stain on the vernal sward
Hallowed to freedom all the shore;
In fragments fell the yoke abhorred--
The footstep of a foreign lord

Profaned the soil no more."

Mr. Bryant has certainly the rare merit of having written a stanza which will bear comparison with any four lines in our recollection. The thought is complete, the expression perfect.

A

poem of a dozen such verses would be like a row of pearls, each above a king's ransom. A sermon could be preached from such a text as the following. Let every reader commit it to heart, and when battered down by the sudden blow of a deliberate falsehood, let him repeat it to himself, and live on with unabated heart.

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:

The Eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,

And dies among his worshippers."

This verse has always read to us as one of the noblest in the English language.

"The Disinterred Warrior" is probably his best poem, consi

dering its length.

"Gather him to his grave again,

And solemnly and softly lay,
Beneath the verdure of the plain,

The warrior's scattered bones away."

As we regard Mr. Bryant as infinitely the most classical poet of the western world, he must pardon our objecting to the needless epithet of "softly," in the second line of this otherwise fine verse. There is a mincing step in its sound which spoils the effect of the previous one of "solemnly." "Solemn and soft" do not harmonize well, either in poetry or in prose. The idea is complete without. The next stanza is confirmatory of our opinion.

“Pay the deep reverence taught of old,

The homage of man's heart to Death!
Nor dare to trifle with the mould

Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath.

"The soul hath quickened every part,—

That remnant of a martial brow,-
Those ribs, that held the mighty heart,

That strong arm-strong no longer now!"

The last verse is only a dilution of the two preceding lines. It is another proof of how frequently Bryant weakens a noble metaphor by a needless elaboration. Not content, however, with the bold, graphic force of his first expression, he elongates it till the force is considerably impaired.

"Spare them-each mouldering relic spare,
Of God's own image: let them rest,
Till not a trace shall speak of where

The awful likeness was impressed."

There is more of curious thought than truth or simplicity in the following, although it has been highly praised by some critics.

"For he was fresher from the hand

That formed of earth the human face,

And to the elements did stand

this stanza.

We repeat, that there is more of "fancy" than "truth" in We do not see the natural force of Mr Bryant saying that, being born a century ago, brings us nearly related to either fire, air, earth, or water. opinion, a very false species of poetry,

This is, in our humble

"In many a flood to madness tost,

In many a storm has been his path,

He hid him not from heat or frost,

But met them, and defied their wrath.”

*

But we must forgive this probable error when we remember these lines.

"The stars looked forth to teach his way,

The still earth warned him of the foe."

To those who know the nature of a Red Indian these two lines are perfect in their portraiture. Even to us, an Englishman, we

feel the force and beauty of the description, but then we confess to a long and careful study of Cooper, the best substitute for nature. While these sheets have been passing through the press, we have observed how inadequately we have expressed our admiration of this great novelist's scenes from nature. We lately met one who had been a dweller in the woods, and a roamer over the prairies of this magnificent country, and he declared that next to having been in those scenes was the study of Cooper. He concluded by declaring that Mr. Irving's description of the prairie was a mere "pic-nic" account of an amateur visit; if we are wrong here, the American public will very properly correct us.

To return to Mr. Bryant. How gloriously the poet recovers himself, and throws his whole force into the concluding verse.

"A noble race, but they are gone,

With their old forests wide and deep,
And we have built our homes upon
Fields where their generations sleep.
Their fountains slake our thirst at noon,
Upon their fields our harvest waves,
Our lovers woo beneath their moon-

Ah! let us spare at least their graves!"

We cannot resist the temptation of quoting two stanzas from "The Lapse of Time," merely to avow our firm conviction in the truth of the prophecy.

"The years, that o'er each sister land,

Shall lift the country of my birth

And nurse her strength-till she shall stand

The pride and pattern of the earth!

"Till younger commonwealths for aid
Shall cling about her ample robe,

And from her frown shall shrink afraid

The crowned oppressors of the globe!"

It may be safely predicated, by any one accustomed to look philosophically at the movements of time, that it is reserved for the American republic to shield her great parent, England herself, from the assaults of the old despotisms.

From this historical glance into the future, let us turn to a pleasant page in Mr. Bryant's present. It is a short description of an American nymph.

"Oh! fairest of the rural maids!

Thy birth was in the forest shades;

Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thy infant eye.

Thy sports-thy wanderings-when a child,
Were ever in the sylvan wild:
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart, and in thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks ;
Thy step is in the wind that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves;
Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene

And silent waters heaven is seen;

Their lashes are the herbs that look

On their young figures in the brook."

We cannot help breaking off, in this otherwise beautiful poem, to remark that unfortunate taste which compelled Mr.