"Twilight steals
Great stealthy veils of silence over all,"
occur the following lines, full of the tranquil sweetness and the delicacy of feeling characteristic of Mr. Piatt's best mood:—
"O, dear to me the coming forth of stars!
After the trivial tumults of the day
They fill the heavens, they hush the earth with awe,
And when my life is fretted pettily
With transient nothings, it is good, I deem,
From darkling windows to look forth and gaze
At this new blossoming of Eternity,
'Twixt each To-morrow, and each dead To-day;
Or else, with solemn footsteps modulate
To spheral music, wander forth and know
Their radiant individualities,
And feel their presence newly, hear again
The silence that is God's voice speaking, slow
In starry syllables, forevermore."
Such thoughts as these are themselves like the star-rise described, and shine out distinctly above the prevailing twilight of the book, everywhere haunted by breaths of fragrance, and glimpses of beautiful things, which cannot be determined as any certain scent or shape. For example, who can guess this riddle?
"Come from my dreaming to my waking heart!
Awake, within my soul there stands alone
Thy marble soul; in lonely dreams apart,
Thy sweet heart fills the stone!"
It is altogether probable that here the poet had some meaning, though it is entirely eclipsed in its expression. At other times his meaning is not to be detached from the words by any violence of utterance; and if, speaking of the winged steed, he says,
"When in the unbridled fields he flew,"
we understand perfectly that the steed flew unbridled in the limitless fields. But no thanks to the poet!
Among the poems of Mr. Piatt which we understand best and like most, "Riding the Horse to Market"—or the poet's experience of offering his divine faculty to the world's rude uses—is in a spirit of fine and original allegory; "September" and "Travellers" are very noble sonnets; "Fires in Illinois," though a little thin in thought, is subtly and beautifully descriptive, and so is "Sundown," with the exception of a few such unmeaning lines as
"Where the still waters glean
The melancholy scene."