Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds

      Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain

      Over the dark brown furrows. All at once

      A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,

      And I am in the wilderness alone."

      It is a natural sentiment, though somewhat difficult to justify, which poets, and others than poets, entertain when they look about for some calm and beautiful spot, some green and sunny slope, for their final resting-place. Imagination still attributes something of sensation, or of consciousness, to what was once the warm abode of life. Mr Bryant, in a poem called "June," after indulging in this sentiment, gives us one of the best apologies for it we remember to have met with. There is much grace and pathos in the following verses: —

      "The Lapse of Time" is a piece which might be quoted as a favourable specimen of Mr Bryant's poetry. It might also serve as an instance of its shortcoming– of its want of concentration – of a distinct, firm tone of thought. As it is not long, we will quote the whole of it. Our complaint of a certain weakness – the want of a steady and strong grasp of his subject – could not be less disagreeably illustrated, nor brought to a more rigid test. Our italics here are not complimentary, but simply serve the purpose of drawing attention to the train of thought or sentiment: —

      THE LAPSE OF TIME

      Brief as the poem is, it should have been divided into two; for it is a song of resignation and a song of hope mingled together. It must strike the least reflective reader that no man needs consolation for the lapse of time, who is occupied with hopeful anticipations of the future. It is because Time carries away our hopes with it, and leaves us the very tranquil pleasures of age, that we "sigh over vanished years." Every sentiment which Mr Bryant expresses in this poem is natural and reasonable; but it follows not that they should have been brought together within the compass of a few verses. At one moment we are looking at the past, or we are told not to grieve the next, we are called upon to sympathise in some unexpected rapture, by no means happily expressed, about the future– "The future!" &c., – as if some one had been threatening to cut us off from our golden anticipations. The only result we are left in unquestioned possession of is, that if the present time did not move on, the future could not advance. But it is not such an abstraction or truism as this, we presume, that the poet intended to teach; he intended to portray the natural sentiments which arise as we reflect on human life, whether passing or past, or as seen in the hopeful future; and these he should not have mingled confusedly together. It would be tedious to carry on the analysis any farther; but we may add, that it is hardly wise, in the same short poem, to speak rapturously of the Elysian glories of the future, and mournfully of "Time's shadowy train," which can be no other than these Elysian glories seen from behind.

      Like Mr Longfellow, Mr Bryant is both a German and a Spanish scholar; and he has enriched his own collection of poems with some very pleasing translations. We are tempted to conclude our extracts from this poet by two brief specimens of these translations – the one from the Spanish, the other from the German: —