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

It is probable that there has been written much excellent poetry on the other side of the Atlantic with which we are unacquainted, which perhaps has never crossed the water at all. We should therefore be very unwise if we professed to give here, even if such a plan could be executed within the compass of a few pages, a general review of American poetry. All that we propose is, to make some critical observations on the writers before us, accompanied by such extracts as shall not unworthily occupy the attention of our readers. Even the list of names which we have set down at the head of this paper is the result more of accident than design: the works of these authors lay upon our table. The two first names will be recognised directly as the fittest representatives of American poetry; they rise immediately to the lips of every one who speaks upon the subject. The two last will probably be new to our readers, and if so, it will be our pleasant task to introduce them. One name only, familiar to all ears, has been purposely omitted. We have elsewhere spoken, and with no stinted measure of praise, of the writings of Mr Emerson. That writer has found in prose so much better a vehicle of thought than verse has proved to him, (and that even when the thought is of a poetic cast,) that to summon him to receive judgment here amongst the poets, would be only to detract from the commendation we have bestowed upon him.

We say it is not improbable that there is much poetry published in America which does not reach us, because there is much, and of a very meritorious character, published here at home in England, which fails of obtaining any notoriety. Its circulation is more of a private than a public nature, depending perhaps upon the social position of the author, or following, for a short distance, in the wake of a literary reputation obtained by a different species of writing. Not that our critics are reluctant to praise. On the contrary, they might be accused of rendering their praise of no avail by an indiscriminate liberality, if it were not the true history of the matter that a growing indifference of the public to this species of literature led the way to this very diffuse and indiscriminate commendation. If no one reads the book to test his criticism, the critic himself loses his motive for watchfulness and accuracy: he passes judgment with supreme indifference on a matter the world is careless about; and saves himself any further trouble by bestowing on all alike that safe, moderate, diluted eulogy, which always has the appearance of being fair and equitable. Much meritorious poetry may therefore, for aught we know, both in England and America, exist and give pleasure amongst an almost private circle of admirers. And why not sing for a small audience as well as for a great? It is not every Colin that can pipe, that can now expect to draw the whole countryside to listen to him. What if he can please only a quite domestic gathering, his neighbours or his clan? We are not of those who would tell Colin to lay down his pipe: we might whisper in his ear to mind his sheep as well, and not to break his heart, or to disturb his peace, because some sixty persons, and not six thousand, are grateful for his minstrelsy.

One fine summer's day we stood upon a little bridge thrown over the deep cutting of a newly constructed railway. It was an open country around us, a common English landscape – fields with their hedgerows, and their thin elm-trees stripped of their branches, with here and there a slight undulation of the soil, giving relief to, or partially concealing, the red and white cottage or the red-tiled barn. We were looking, however, into the deep cutting beneath us. Here the iron rails glistened in the sun, and still, as the eye pursued their track, four threads of glittering steel ran their parallel course, but apparently approximating in the far perspective, till they were lost by mere failure of the power of vision to follow them: the road itself was straight as an arrow. On the steep banks, fresh from the spade and pick-axe, not a shrub was seen, not a blade of grass. On the road itself there was nothing but clods of earth, or loose gravel, which lay in heaps by the side of the rails, or in hollows between them: it was enough that the iron bars lay there clear of all obstruction. No human foot, no foot of man or of beast, was ever intended to tread that road. It was for the engine only. From time to time the shrill whistle is heard – the train, upon its hundred iron wheels, shoots through the little bridge, and rolls like thunder along these level grooves. It is soon out of sight, and the country is not only again calm and solitary, but appears for the moment to be utterly abandoned and deserted. It has its old life, however, in it still.

Well, as we were standing thus upon the little bridge, in the open country, and looking down into this deep ravine of the engineer's making, we noticed, fluttering beneath us, a yellow butterfly, sometimes beating its wings against the barren sides, and sometimes perching on the glistering rails themselves. Clearly, most preposterously out of place was this same beautiful insect. What had it to do there? What food, what fragrance, what shelter could it find? Or who was to see and to admire? There was not a shrub, nor an herb, nor a flower, nor a playmate of any description. It is manifest, most beautiful butterfly, that you cannot live here. From these new highways of ours, from these iron thoroughfares, you must certainly depart. But it follows not that you must depart the world altogether. In yonder hollow at a distance there is a cottage, surrounded by its trees and its flowers, and there are little children whom you may sport with, and tease, and delight, taking care they do not catch you napping. There is still garden-ground in the world for you, and such as you.

Sometimes, when we have seen pretty little gilded volumes of song and poetry lying about in the great highways of our industrial world, we have recalled this scene to mind. There is garden-ground left for them also, and many a private haunt, solitary or domestic, where they will be welcome.

We have heard it objected against American poets, but chiefly by their own countrymen, that they are not sufficiently national. This surely is a most unreasonable complaint. The Americans inhabit what was once, and is still sometimes called, the New World, but they are children of the Old. Their religion grew, like ours, in Asia; they receive it, as we do, through the nations of the west of Europe; they are, like us, descendants of the Goth and the Roman, and are compounded of those elements which Rome and Palestine, and the forests of Germany, severally contributed towards the formation of what we call the Middle Ages. They have the same intellectual pedigree as ourselves. No Tintern Abbey, or Warwick Castle, stands on their rivers, to mark the lapse of time; but they must ever look back upon the days of the monk and of the knight, as the true era of romance. Proud as they may be of their Pilgrim Fathers, one would not limit them to this honourable paternity. It is very little poetry they would get out of the Mayflower– or philosophy either.

There are, it is true, subjects for poetry native to America – new aspects of nature and of humanity – the aboriginal forest, the aboriginal man, the prairie, the settler, and the savage. But even in these the American poet cannot keep a monopoly. Englishmen and Frenchmen have visited his forests; they have stolen his Red Indian; and have made the more interesting picture of him in proportion as they knew less of the original. Moreover, many of the peculiar aspects of human life which America presents may require the mellowing effect of time, the half obscurity of the past, to render them poetic. The savage is not the only person who requires to be viewed at a distance: there is much in the rude, adventurous, exciting life of the first settlers which to posterity may appear singularly attractive. They often seem to share the power and the skill of the civilised man, with the passions of the barbarian. What a scene – when viewed at a distance – must be one of their revivals! A camp-meeting is generally described by those who have witnessed it, in the language of ridicule or reproof. But let us ask ourselves this question – When St Francis assembled five thousand of his followers on the plains of Assisi, and held what has been called, in the history of the Franciscan order, "the Chapter of Mats," because the men had no other shelter than rude tents made of mats – on which occasion St Francis himself was obliged to moderate the excesses of fanaticism and fanatical penance in which his disciples indulged – what was this but a camp-meeting? In some future age, a revival in the "Far West," or a company of Millerites expecting their translation into heaven, will be quite as poetical as this Chapter of Mats. For ourselves, we think that any genuine exhibition of sentiment, by great numbers of our fellow-men, is a subject worthy of study, and demands a certain respect. Those, however, who can see nothing but absurdity and madness in a camp-meeting, would have walked through the five thousand followers of St Francis with the feeling only of intolerable disgust. Yet so it is, that merely from the lapse of time, or the obscurity it throws over certain parts of the picture, there are many who find something very affecting and sublime in the fanaticism of the thirteenth century, who treat the same fanaticism with pity or disdain when exhibited in the nineteenth.

"Miltons and Shakspeares," says an editor of one of the volumes before us, "have not yet sprung from the only half-tilled soil of the mighty continent; giants have not yet burst from its forests, with a grandeur equal to their own; but," &c. &c. Doubtless the giant will make his appearance in due course of time. But what if he should never manifest himself in the epic of twelve, or twenty-four books, or in any long poem whatever? A number of small poems, beautiful and perfect of their kind, will constitute as assuredly a great work, and found as great a reputation. We are far from thinking that the materials for poetry are exhausted or diminished in these latter days. As a general rule, in proportion as men think, do they feel, – more variously, if not more deeply, themselves – and more habitually through sympathy with others. Love and devotion, and all the more refined sentiments, are heightened in the cultivated mind; and speculative thought itself becomes a great and general source of emotion. As almost every man has felt, at one period of his life, the passion of love, so almost every cultivated mind has felt, at one period of his career, what Wordsworth describes as —

We are persuaded that both the materials and the readers of poetry will increase and multiply with the spread of education. But there is apparently a revolution of taste in favour of the lyric, and at the expense of the epic poet. A long narrative, in verse of any kind, is felt to be irksome and monotonous: it could be told so much better in prose. We do not speak of such narrations as The Paradise Lost, where religious feeling presides over every part, and where, in fact, the narrative is absorbed in the sentiment. If Milton were living at this day, there is no reason why he should not choose the same theme for his poem. But Tasso and Ariosto would think long before they would now select for their flowing stanzas the Jerusalem Delivered, or the Orlando Furioso. Such themes, they would probably conclude, might be far more effectively dealt with in prose.

Fiction, told as Sir Walter Scott tells it – history, as Macaulay narrates – such examples as these put the reading world, we think, quite out of patience with verse, when applied to the purpose of a lengthy narrative. They and others have shown that prose is so much the better vehicle. It may be rendered almost equally harmonious, and admits of far greater variety of cadence; it may be polished and refined, and yet adapt itself, in turns, to every topic that arises. No need here to omit the most curious incident, or the most descriptive detail, because it will not comport with the dignified march of the verse, or of the versified style. The language here rises and falls naturally with the subject, or may be made to do so; nor is it ever necessary to obscure the meaning, for the sake of sustaining a wearisome rhythm. If you have a long story to tell, by all means tell it in prose.

But the short poem – need we say it? – is not ephemeral because it is brief. The most enduring reputation may be built upon a few lyrics. They should, however, not only contain some beautiful verses – they should be beautiful throughout. And this brings us to the only real complaint which we, in our critical capacity, have to allege against the tuneful brethren in America. We find too much haste, far too much negligence, and a willingness to be content with what has first presented itself. Instead of recognising that the short poem ought to be almost perfect, they seem to proceed on the quite contrary idea, that because it is brief, it should therefore be hastily written, and that it would be a waste of time to bestow much revision upon it. We often, meet with a poem where the sentiment is natural and poetic, but where the effect is marred by this negligent and unequal execution. A verse of four lines shall have three that are good, and the fourth shall limp. Or a piece shall consist but of five verses, and two out of the number must be absolutely effaced if you would re-peruse the composition with any pleasure. Meanwhile there is sufficient merit in what remains to make us regret this haste and inequality. To our own countrymen, as well as to the American, we would suggest that the small poem may be a great work; but that, to become so, it should not only be informed by noble thought, it should exhibit no baser metal, no glaring inequalities of style, and, above all, no conflicting, obscure, or half-extricated meanings. We believe that it would be generally found, if we could penetrate the secret history of really beautiful compositions, that, however brief, and although they were written at first during some happy hour of inspiration, they had received again and again new touches, and the "fortunate erasures" of the poet. By this process only did they grow to be the completely beautiful productions which they are. Such exquisite lyrics are very rare, and we may depend upon it they are not produced without much thought and labour, joined, as we say, to that happy hour of inspiration.

Mr Longfellow occupies, and most worthily, the first place on our list. He has obtained, as well by his prose as his poetry, a certain recognised place in that literature of the English language which is common to both countries. His Hyperion has been for some time an established favourite amongst a class of readers with whom to be popular implies a merit of no vulgar description. Mr Longfellow has relied too much, for an independent and permanent reputation, on his German and his Spanish friends. An elegant and accomplished writer, a cultivated mind – a critic would be justified in praising his works, more than the author of them. He has studied foreign literature with somewhat too much profit. We have no critical balance so fine as would enable us to weigh out the two distinct portions of merit which may be due to an author, first as an original writer, and then as a tasteful and skilful artist, who has known how and where to gather and transplant, to translate, or to appropriate. It is a distinction which, as readers, we should be little disposed to make, but which, as critics, we are compelled to take notice of. We should not impute to Mr Longfellow any flagrant want of originality; but a fine appreciation of thoughts presented to him by other minds, and the skill and tact of the cultivated artist, are qualities very conspicuous in his writings. Having once taken notice of this, we have no wish to press it further; still less would we allow his successful study, and his bold and felicitous imitations of the writings of others, to detract from the merit of what is really original in his own.

What a noble lyric is this, "The Building of the Ship!" It is full of the spirit of Schiller. A little more of the file – something more of harmony – and it would have been quite worthy of the name of Schiller. The interweaving of the two subjects, the building and launching of the vessel, with the marriage of the shipbuilder's daughter, and the launching of that other bride on the waters of life, is very skilfully managed; whilst the name of the ship, The Union, gives the poet a fair opportunity of introducing a third topic in some patriotic allusions to the great vessel of the state: —

Such is the merchant's injunction to the master-builder, who forthwith proceeds to fulfil it.

Under such auspices the vessel grows day by day. The mention of the tall masts, and the slender spars, carry the imagination of the poet to the forest where the pine-trees grew. We cannot follow him in this excursion, but here is a noble description of some part of the process of the building of the ship: —

At length all is finished – the vessel is built: —

This noble ode leads the van of a small collection of poems called, "By the Seaside." A series of companion-pictures bear the name of, "By the Fireside." We may as well proceed with a few extracts from these. The following are from some verses on "The Lighthouse."

This is bold and felicitous: the following, to "The Twilight," is in a more tender strain. The first verse we cannot quote: we suspect there is some misprint in our copy. Mr Longfellow could not have written these lines —

Whether women's caps or men's nightcaps are alluded to, the image would be equally grotesque. The poem continues —

Mr Longfellow understands how to leave off– how to treat a subject so that all is really said, yet the ear is left listening for more. "By the Fireside" is a series, of course, of mere domestic sketches. The subjects, however, do not always bear any distinct reference or relation to this title. That from which we feel most disposed to quote is written on some "Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass." It has been always a favourite mode of composition to let some present object carry the imagination, by links of associated thought, whithersoever it pleased. This sort of reverie is natural and pleasing, but must not be often indulged in. It is too easy; and we soon discover that any topic thus treated becomes endless, and will lead us, if we please, over half the world. At length it becomes indifferent where we start from. Without witchcraft, one may ride on any broomstick into Norway. But the present poem, we think, is a very allowable specimen of this mode of composition. The poet surveys this sand of the desert, now confined within an hour-glass; he thinks how many centuries it may have blown about in Arabia, what feet may have trodden on it – perhaps the feet of Moses, perhaps of the pilgrims to Mecca; then he continues —

We notice in Mr Longfellow an occasional fondness for what is quaint, as if Quarles' Emblems, or some such book, had been at one time a favourite with him. In the lines entitled "Suspiria," solemn as the subject is, the thought trembles on the verge of the ridiculous. But, leaving these poems, "By the Seaside," and "By the Fireside," we shall find a better instance of this tendency to a certain quaintness in another part of the volume before us. The "Old Clock on the Stairs" is a piece which invites a few critical observations. It is good enough to be quoted almost entirely, and yet affords an example of those faults of haste and negligence and incompleteness which even Mr Longfellow has not escaped.