It came, the emerald month, and sweetly shed
Beauty for grief, and garlands for the dead.
The Girl of the Sky-blue Lake, is a simple Indian ballad, teeming with pictures as fresh and exquisite to behold as a full-blown wild rose of the wilderness. Some of its versification is remarkably fine, and the idea of the story pleasing and mournful to the soul,—attributes which I fancy are indispensable to the perfection of any poetry; for there is no such thing as poetry without truth, and truth is ever a subject of solemn consideration.
PART I.
“Push off, push off the birch canoe,
The wave and the wood are still;
The screaming loon is fast asleep,
And so is the whip-poor-will.
The moonlight-blowing flowers I love—
On yon little isle they grow;—”