His arms around her with a mad’ning throw—
Then plunged within the cold unfathomed deep
While sirens sang their victim to his sleep!
Only think of a group of sirens singing to sleep a modern “miniatured” flirt, kicking about in the water with a New York dandy in tight pantaloons!
But not even these stupidities would suffice to justify a total condemnation of the poetry of Mr. Dawes. We have known follies very similar committed by men of real ability, and have been induced to disregard them in earnest admiration of the brilliancy of the minor beauty of style. Simplicity, perspicuity and vigor, or a well-disciplined ornateness, of language, have done wonders for the reputation of many a writer really deficient in the higher and more essential qualities of the Muse. But upon these minor points of manner our poet has not even the shadow of a shadow to sustain him. His works, in this respect, may be regarded as a theatrical world of mere verbiage, somewhat speciously bedizzened with a tinselly meaning well adapted to the eyes of the rabble. There is not a page of any thing that he has written which will bear, for an instant, the scrutiny of a critical eye. Exceedingly fond of the glitter of metaphor, he has not the capacity to manage it, and, in the awkward attempt, jumbles together the most incongruous of ornament. Let us take any passage of “Geraldine” by way of exemplification.
——Thy rivers swell the sea—
In one eternal diapason pour
Thy cataracts the hymn of liberty,
Teaching the clouds to thunder.
Here we have cataracts teaching clouds to thunder—and how? By means of a hymn.