With all its arches, towers, and cathedrals
In swift and unconjectured overthrow.
This is, positively, not bad. The first line italicized is bold and vigorous, both in thought and expression; and the four last (although by no means original) convey a striking picture. But then the whole idea, in its general want of keeping, is preposterous. What is more absurd than the conception of a man’s head descending to his knees, as here described—the thing could not be done by an Indian juggler or a man of gum-caoutchouc—and what is more inappropriate than the resemblance attempted to be drawn between a single head descending, and the innumerable pinnacles of a falling city? It is difficult to understand, en passant, why Mr. Mathews has thought proper to give “cathedrals” a quantity which does not belong to it, or to write “unconjectured” when the rhythm might have been fulfilled by “unexpected” and when “unexpected” would have fully conveyed the meaning which “unconjectured” does not.
By dint of farther microscopic survey, we are enabled to point out one, and alas, only one more good line in the poem.
Green dells that into silence stretch away
contains a richly poetical thought, melodiously embodied. We only refrain, however, from declaring, flatly, that the line is not the property of Mr. Mathews, because we have not at hand the volume from which we believe it to be stolen.
We quote the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth stanzas in full. They will serve to convey some faint idea of the general poem. The Italics are our own.
VI.
The spirit lowers and speaks: “Tremble ye wild Woods!
Ye Cataracts! your organ-voices sound!