This volume, accordingly, contains some of the finest specimens of intellectual pathos, of the mind in mourning, we have ever seen, and, in English literature, it has no parallel. The author is aware, as well as his critics, of the impossibility of fully conveying his grief in verses, and has anticipated their objection in a short poem of uncommon suggestiveness:
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel,
For words, like nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.
But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,