verses in 66 Red Jacket" to be complimentary to Mr. Cooper or not; some suppose there is a gentle sarcasm on the great novelist's national egotism. "Cooper, whose name is with his country's woven, First in her files her Pioneer of mind, A wanderer now in other climes, has proven His love for the young land he left behind. "And faithful to the act of Congress quoted In Paris, full of song, and dance, and laugh, And furthermore, in fifty years or sooner, There are somewhere about half-a-dozen more verses, but they are not written with the poet's usual felicity. This inconsistency of mood betrays itself in most of Mr. Halleck's productions. Byron had the power to check this feeling. When he wrote a Mephistophilean poem he openly worked it out; in his serious productions he never suffered this disturbing, inharmonious spirit, to appear. He was too much of an artist to do this. But his American brother in verse seems to be governed by this mood, and not to rule it. In the verses to "Alnwick Castle" we have an instance of this besetting sin. To be sure, the author may turn round and say that he meant it should assume this bantering tone, but there is an instinct in every reader which tells him how far such a purpose is legitimate. In "Beppo" and "Don Juan" we feel the whole work is in keeping, but in "Alnwick Castle" we only observe the poet's infirmity of purpose. We feel pretty well convinced that Mr. Halleck intended to write a serious heroic poem, when he commenced the lines in question, but finding his impulse or inspiration dying, he resuscitated it by calling upon the Genius of Banter. Notwithstanding this centaur-like appearance, it possesses some fine stanzas. "Home of the Percies' high-born race, Home of their beautiful and brave, "Still sternly-o'er the castle-gate As in his proud departed hours: "A gentle hill its side inclines, Lovely in England's fadeles green, Through this romantic scene. "As silently and sweetly still As when at evening on that hill, While summer's winds blow soft and low, Seated at gallant Hotspur's side, A thousand years ago. "Gaze on the abbey's ruined pile; Does not the succoring Ivy, keeping As o'er a loved one sleeping. Still tells, in melancholy glory, The legend of the Cheviot day, The Percy's proudest border story. "That day its roof was triumph's arch; The music of the trump and drum. And the manly hymn and minstrel's song, And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long, Welcomed her warrior home. After two or three more stanzas, written in the same spirit, the jeering fiend comes over Mr. Halleck, and he breaks off thus: "I wandered through the lofty halls, Trod by the Percies of old fame, Each high, heroic name. From him who once his standard set, Where now o'er mosque or minaret Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons, To him who when a younger son Fought for King George at Lexington, A major of dragoons!" Was the temptation of rhyming "dragoons" to "moons" too strong for the poet, or did his American indignation, to find a Percy against the cause of freedom, in the old war, dissipate the chivalric vision? When we read this for the first time, we were under the momentary impression that we had got hold of, by mistake, "The Rejected Addresses," so like a parody on Sir Walter Scott did the verses sound: To proceed, however, with Mr. Halleck's own account of the matter, he says: "The last half stanza: it has dashed From my warm lips the sparkling cup, And this, alas! its market day, And beasts and borderers throng the way, Men in the coal and cattle line, From Teviot's bard and hero land, The poet concludes this address to the Home of the Percies: "You'll ask if yet the Percy lives In the armed pomp of feudal state? Of Hotspur and the gentle Kate, A chambermaid whose lip, and eye, And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling, Spoke nature's aristocracy, And one, half-groom, half-seneschal, Who bowed me through the court, bower, hall, For ten and six pence sterling." As a proof of the fire with which Halleck treats a congenial theme, we quote some verses from his Marco Bozzaris. This brave warrior fell in an attack on the Turkish camp, during the Grecian war for independence, in 1823. The opening is full of spirit and beauty. "At midnight in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour In dreams through camp and court he bore In dreams his song of triumph heard ; |