While each, the while, by stealth drew nigher,
Covetous of the other’s share.
Oh! ’twas a pitiful sight to see!
And mothers too were there,
With infants shivering on their knee,
Or closer held with a mother’s care,
Or laid to rest with a hurried prayer,
A moan, half hope and half despair,
A muttered, “Pitiless Storm, forbear!”
When we say that there is in this volume some poems that an austere taste would have omitted, we merely say what we suspect is the truth, that the poetess is young, and that this is her first introduction to the public. We might object to a piece, here and there, that the feeling outruns the thought and fancy, and that commonplace lines occasionally glide stealthily in to meet the demands of the rhyme; but the faults which criticism might exhibit are few in comparison with the merits which shine forth of their own light on almost every page. The general impression which the whole book leaves on the memory is very pleasing. The defect of all young poets, that of expansiveness, is continually apparent; but it is a natural result of the movement of a nature so full of sensibility that it refuses to submit to the restraints of condensation, but pours itself out of its own sweet will. As a natural result of this extreme sensitiveness, the volume is comparatively destitute of those electric flashes of impassioned imagination, which come, swift, sure, and smiling from moods of the mind in which thought is condensed as well as animated by passion; but it still exhibits so genial a love of nature, a flow of feeling so kindly and sympathetic, so much beauty, and purity and sweetness of fancy, and withal so much richness of promise, and such a ready yielding of the mind to the poetical aspects of things, that we trust it will meet with the success due to its native excellencies of heart and brain.