Shall You, the meteor of a fickle day,
Blaze for one moment, strike, and pass away?
No—to her sons unborn shall cling your name,
Linked to their country’s proudest hour of Fame;
Till private, public worth, to Ruin hurled,
Shall leave not e’en their shadow in the World;
Then must the Slave, the Patriot, share one lot—
And He, and Washington, shall be forgot.
From the remarks, with which this article began, it is clearly enough to be inferred that we are no admirers of long poems, unless they be of extraordinary and sustained merit. This praise cannot be awarded to Miss Poulter’s production: We believe that we have taken pretty much all that is excellent, though a fine passage or two may be left in the exquisite volume which we have just now cut to pieces—not metaphorically, but literally. It was sad to destroy so charming a library book; but what were the exquisite typography and clear white paper of one of Saunders & Otley’s editions, when compared with the amusement of the friends of Graham’s Magazine? Nothing. Moreover, we should not have quoted so largely as we have, had we not felt assured of the fact that the volume to which we refer was the only copy of Miss Poulter’s poem in America. Such works are not in the least likely to be reprinted here; and our readers would therefore know nothing about them, were it not for the pains we are happy to take in their behalf.