By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer—a shade.
This plagiarism, by a Scot who ought to have known better, must be taken as a real case of extremely petty larceny. Any mortal who cared for grammar would have written, not "The hunter and the deer—a shade"—for arithmetically there were two shades—but
The hunter like the deer, a shade.
Campbell, if not Freneau, must have known that the passage coincides with the scene in Homer ("Odyssey," Book XI.) where the shade of Heracles pursues the shades of the animals which on earth he had slain. The cadences of Freneau are those of Mickle in "Cumnor Hall".
The dews of summer night did fall,
The Moon, sweet Regent of the sky,
Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall
And many an oak that grew thereby.
As a rule, Freneau's "Muse," like that of Mr. Lothian Dodd when slightly exhilarated, "was the patriotic," inspiriting to the contemporary warrior, but not of imperishable literary value. As senior in years to Tennyson and Browning, Freneau's compatriots, Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow, may here follow him in chronological order.
William Cullen Bryant.
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was one of those concerning whom Sainte-Beuve says that they carry about in them a poet who died young. His tendency was to write Hymns to Proserpine; among the works which fascinated his boyhood were Blair's "Grave," Bishop Porteous on "Death" (the ghost of Mrs. Veal (1705), a qualified critic, preferred Drelincourt), and the hectic verses of Kirke White. Later came Wordsworth, perhaps too late; for Bryant's "Thanatopsis," written when he was 17, descends from such later works as follow the author of the Anglo-Saxon poem of "The Grave". Not much later came "The Water Fowl," a favourite of the compilers of anthologies. "Thanatopsis" was frequently retouched, and now closes with a passage of the highest ethical dignity, though to be sure there is little of hope in the idea that
each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of Death.