We are almost tempted to say, with old Mr Osbaldistone, that the bellman makes better verses: certainly he could hardly construct more dislocated specimens of versification than these.
Sometimes, even when revelling in the luxuriance of verse, Mr Longfellow commits strange improprieties. To the structure and music of the lines which we shall now transcribe, no abstract objection need be stated, though such objection could be found; but they are terribly out of place in a poem of this kind, and inconsistent with its general structure. An eclogue after the manner of Virgil or Theocritus would hardly appear more incongruous if introduced in the middle of a Shakspearean drama—
ELSIE.
"Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing
Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring!
PRINCE HENRY.
This life of ours is a wild æolian harp of many a joyous strain,
But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain.
ELSIE.
Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma
Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma.
PRINCE HENRY.