to the reader,-if you don't like the body of this polypus, perhaps you will fancy some of the radii better!-We only know as yet, about the animal part of the book. Of that we informed ourselves slightly the other morning. It seems, as Mr. Hirst tells us, the continent, formerly, was black with MAMMOTH-terrible fellows-so huge, that "Lake and river, A draught of theirs made dry forever"!! The Indians prayed, and the Great Spirit slew his "favorite cattle" with thunderballs and fire-all but one. A hardened old patriarch sinner-he! His hide was proof. He simply turned tail to the storm, with some bellowing-shook his horns at the thunder, and his heels at the lightning-bounded over the Mississippi leaped on the top of the Rocky Mountains and with one jump plunged into the Pacific Ocean!!-A sprightly old fellow ! But, for our part, we believe it: our idea is, that the electricity which had got into him, by the time he reached the Mississippi, made him limber. But it would really be too warm work to follow the animal this noontime. Poems by W. W. Lord-Beautifully printed! Let us open it at random. "St. Mary's Gift,”- -hum, one hasn't forgot the "Eve of St. Agnes!"The Golden Isle" "A Peak that from the sea Shoots upward like a spire- "Higher, and higher, climbed the sun"Something like Coleridge, that! -And then the measure- -this noontime, or something, is most sleepThe-measoppressive! -Golden Isle -Lord Shelley -fire! -Faith! we must have slept? We must have done it! Thought we heard ourself talking in sleep-about-what was it!-some mariner's golden isle, or something and about old bards, that lived a great while ago!-Thought it grew hotter and hotter-the sun turned VOL. II.-NO. III. 22 red-the sky grew brazen-and how No bigger than the moon.": How is the mercury, I wonder? fried-singed-roasted-toasted-and whatever like terms are significant of fire!-What's the use of water? We've drunk a pitcher-full !— -Whew! Boiled-baked-stewed "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" -that is, if this "dew" would only be cool, then, like that which lies down in narrow glens, or on the under side of "low-browed rocks!"-What time can it be?--One hour "ayont the twal❞—just the highest heat!— "The bloody sun at noon Just up above our chamber stands." Yes, and has it all to himself as he has had for a month! No one disputes his" fierce sovereignty." On every sidefrom the long sea-coasts to great Northern Lakes and "rivers of the west," fields, cattle, men, are scorched brown. Only a deep stretch of forest, here and there,-impenetrable greenness !-holds its own. We begin to think that fond Phœbus has yielded again his reins and day-steeds to rash Phæton, and the youth -giddy with sudden power-has been whirled by the fiery coursers through unwonted regions of the North, and not very far above the earth.—What a time to talk about poetry! For it needs some inspiration to discuss it properly a fact lost sight of by the great race of small critics! But now-your Helicon, of "margent green," is a very steam-bath the singing swans would scald their legs in Arethusa-and we doubt if the springs of Delphi have trickled down those mossy cliffs for a week.—And what a time must the Cyclops and swart Vul The literary commissaries and sutlers of the public have an extraordinary aptitude for the extremes of blessing or cursing. They know no such thing as "a decent medium." Nor can the ob jects of their notice ever be permitted to steal along unobtrusively in the middle. Like the Spirits of Good and Evil, in the Indian legend, they alike overwhelm with their bestowments-whether of stones or fruit-such simple-minded ones, that try to keep somewhere between, at the bottom of the valley. We have seldom seen an author more indiscriminately belabored or bepraised, than this new poet. Friends, before and after publication, piled up encomiums "Pelion upon Ossa." Rival Critics, inspiring themselves with "Pythian rage," have let go opposing avalanches of heaped epithets upon his head. But that tremendous "I" which stood "The two-fold centre and informing soul" to Niagara, [Hymn to Niagara, p. 38,] cannot, perhaps, be much in danger, from either material or verbal avalanches! Yet it is really unfortunate for Mr. Lord-as it is for any author, especially at his first appearance, that he should have been so introduced by his well-wishers to the public. If he were a true modern prodigy, inheritor of Coleridge's mantle, worthy co-mate of Wordsworth-nay, the greatest since Milton-all which opinions were somewhat broadly intimated-it was not wise to say so. It only provoked excessive abuse per contra. And the public were far more likely, in the end, to give credence to the latter, since they are always certain to take revenge for over-praise. We fear they have done so; and an indifferent observer may, hereafter, (though we hope not,) in view of the failure of such efforts to float Mr. Lord's convoy too triumphantly, call to mind the Epigram applied to the British Admiral, Howe, who was sent out with a large fleet and great expectations, but experienced a wretched dispersion: "Lord Howe, he went out, And-Lord! how he came in!" We believe ourselves to be entirely unprejudiced in the matter We do not know Mr. Lord. We have read all his poems carefully; most of them two or three times. We know we are not influenced by anything we have read on either side. If anything, we were inclined towards him from the previous commendations of some accomplished mutual friends respecting his general attainments. shall speak sincerely, we hope justly. We The great and most unpleasant impression gathered from reading the poems-insulting the reader with their bareness and frequency-is that of imitation, imitation, constant similarity and borrowing, to call it by no harder name. On almost every page we are reminded of the spirit and tone-often of the very thought, cast, and language-of some favorite passage, in some great and favorite author, who happened to live before Mr. Lord. It must be impossible for any one, of poetical reading, not to see it. Thus, the first and longest piece, 66 Worship," is, very much of it, in some way, caught from admired masters. The more evident model of a large portion of it will appear (to many readers) in Coleridge's "Hymn in the Vale of Chamouny." The great objects of Nature are called upon to praise the Deity. Thus Mr. Lord: storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element ! Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! &c. Great Hierarch! and tell the silent sky, The similarity here is manifest enough. But both Mr. Lord and Mr. Coleridge are deeply indebted to Milton, an old bard of some note formerly. We are glad to find that Mr. Lord is familiar with him. Coleridge has been accused of plagiarizing from a German poet, both in the form of his Hymn and much of the language. If so, the German must have acquainted himself with that sublime Hymn which Milton puts into the mouth of Adam and Eve. It is the unquestionable prototype of the whole. It is surprising that Coleridge has not been referred before to that source: but Paradise Lost is too little read! The cast of Mr. Coleridge's is quite different, and the tone of it altogether his own. That great man never failed to transfuse his own "Speak, ye who best can tell, ye sons of On earth, join all ye creatures to extol Fairest of stars, last of the train of night, Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul, Acknowledge him thy greater, sound his praise. Moon, that now meet'st the orient Sun, now fly'st, With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies, And ye five other wandering Fires that move In mystic dance, not without song, resound His praise, who out of darkness called up light. Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth. Let your ceaseless change In honor to the world's great author rise, Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, With every plant, in sign of worship wave. Join voices all, ye living Souls; ye Birds, Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk Thus it is seen that Mr. Lord is not the first who has represented Nature as worshiping the Deity. Milton himself took a little from the old Greek Callimachus' "Hymn to Jove;" and a vast "A shadow in the else unbroken light Of God's pure being❞— and that all her perpetual "sights and sounds," are a kind of Catholic service, to be employed by us in adoring deal more from that source of two-thirds of the contradiction? Which does Mr. of all modern poetry--the Old Testament. Lord consider the orthodox faith respectThe remainder of the piece-several pages ing Nature? But this kind of excellence -is but an extension of this idea of Na- is characteristic of the whole poem. It is ture "worshiping,"- enumerating the the most confused "worship" we ever various parts and modes assigned to dif- listened to. Like a priest overcome with ferent objects and elements. The only the splendor of a new temple, he keeps idea superadded, seems to be, that, "in- repeating the service-constantly driving sentient Nature" is made for "our use at some great conception which he suconly"-standing really, of herself, ceeded in half developing before. We defy any one to tell at the end of the piece, what the bard really set out to say. This kind of confusion is increased by a pleasant complexity of style. The Poet, burdened with thought, has so much to say between two full stops! Twenty and thirty lines in a sentence, with seven kinds of pauses, (see especially the Odes,) are a trifle to his wants. But perhaps he thinks himself fortunate in this medium of translating himself. With him, as with Coleridge, the philosophical must have a fair chance with the poetical! This is to be, by making language difficult to get through with; and the bard-philosopher proceeds to the seige of a great thought, with as many circumambulations, and nearly as much noise, as the Levites with their rams' horns about the city of Jericho.By the way-and we are reminded of it by a passage in "Worship" about "harmony" building constantly the "frame of the heavens," an idea, however, as old as the Greek Fables-what very different effects different kinds of music are found to have! Amphion, with one sort of melody built up the walls of Thebes; the Israelites, with another sort threw the walls of Jericho down! Mr. Lord's music is, at times, we think, of a nature to be effective rather in the latter kind of execution. “In the earth and heavens clothed, Stand up and worship!" The idea is partly filtered out of Wordsworth, though Mr. Lord has more definitely set it forth. It is no decided honor to either of them. The uses of the objects and elements of Nature are in gradation to myriad different creatures; and though the universe of things together makes a very magnificent medium for men to worship the Highest through, and its great design, beyond any question, is for the THOUGHT that is in it, it would not, we imagine, be utterly useless or less fair, if the race of Men were swept from being, or had never been. The idea, however, was originally quite poetical and lofty. But Mr. Lord, by a knack peculiar to him, has contrived to spoil what he borrowed, by presenting the external universe-called Nature-as in itself, a "shadow," a kind of blot before the face of Deity, only tolerated by Him for the sake of his creatures. Absurdest! As if for ages which no cycles have measured, every world,-coming suddenly, to the wonder of angels! forth from the darkness and abysses of chaos, glorious in beauty-were not thought into existence in the calm visions of the Infinite Intellect, to be forever afterwards a joy to the Soul of Deity. Mr. Lord seems, indeed, to have half entertained this idea, also. Some four pages afterwards, he finds himself saying, "The flowerets are God's thoughtsBeautiful thoughts that, long before he gave Their loveliness to bless thy thankless sight, Blossomed and shed their fragrance in his soul." A beautiful conceit, and original perhaps, with him, as applied to flowers; but what But the greatest confusion of all is created by the constant appearance of fragmented thoughts and expressions, which we half (often, indeed, wholly) remember to have seen before-gleaming in upon us, sometimes among things of original and striking beauty, sometimes by the side of such as, we are at once too well aware, could hardly belong to any body but himself. The pavement he has laid down-taking the whole collection of the volume-and which so much fuss has been made to have people admire, is a kind of Mosaic-quite peculiar and curious. An extensive traveler observes materials in it from all parts of the world. Here shines the marble of Pentelicus, or Parian stone so fair"-there, dark fragments of polished pillar and cor 66 nice, from the Tiber or the Arno. Somewhat rougher and sublimer, the ruined glory of Zion has been made to contribute and, ruder yet, the massive and solemn masonry of the Runic North. Some broken granite and sandstone may be noticed, from old castles of the Rhine,--and very many pieces clipped from the mausoleums, and tombs, and low graves, of England-ah! not spared even where the moss had grown around their names! There are, too, with the rest, not a few pebbles belonging to curious countrymen of our own, found smooth by our lake or sca-shores; an occasional brick is seen, manufactured by Yankees, at home, and now and then a slice of soap-stone! We are afraid Mr. Lord cannot "worship" with great sincerity on all parts of this tesselated work. We should think it would be especially hard on this first rod of it-where he particularly stands and calls on us and Nature to hear him " worship." As this charge of imitation-still more, of plagiarism-is one of the greatest that can be made against any author, most of all a poet, we shall further substantiate what we have said, by making a few notes through the volume. On p. 2d of " Worship," is an imitation, in form, of one of the finest passages in the small remains of Brainarda gentle man among us once, who was simple-hearted enough to die singing. Mr. Lord, after describing the sound of winds and waters through a number of quite beautiful lines, suddenly asks:"Yet what is all this deep, perpetual sound, These voices of the earth, and sea, and air,— All these,-what are they?-in the boundless void, An insect's whisper in the ear of night, Then what is one weak voice," &c. This whole effect of sudden question and answer is plainly caught, we think, from Brainard's noble lines on Niagara :Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we That hear the question of that voice sublime? Oh! what are all the notes that ever rung From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side? Yea, what is all the riot man can make HIM, Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far Above its loftiest mountains? a light wave, That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might. Now this, for any charge of imitation, is no great matter, yet we dislike to be so immediately and inevitably reminded of so peculiar and beautiful a form of expression. Besides, it is more closely repeated in the "Magian Hymn." Then what are we Who worship thee in Sun, and Moon, and Stars, And earthly fires unseen of eyes impure! Motes in the gleam of all-creating Light? Thin shadows, atoms," &c. As to the Hymnic part of "Worship," it has been shown to be a most palpable copy of Coleridge and Milton. On the succeeding leaf to that we find :— "Of all that tread the earth or wing the air, Her daily and perpetual sacrifice: Of every plant and flower, she offers up The clod beneath our feet, the soil that clothes Her discontinuous valleys ridg'd and pierced That from the mighty holocaust ascends." Notice here the sudden and entire change of style. The flow of the verse, tone, character, even a part of the thought and expression, are from Bryant's Thanatopsis. No one can mistake it. "Templehaunting martlets," p. 8th, is, we believe, from Shakspeare. At least, p. 13, we have "There is in nature nothing mean or base But only as our baseness thinks it so-" a simple transcript from Hamlet's "For there is nothing either good or bad But thinking makes it so." Such imitations in single lines are quite numerous. Mr. Lord was even bold enough to appropriate one of the most famous and wonderful lines in all Milton. The Blind Poet speaks somewhere-in Paradise Lost, we think-of music that |