There is so much that is high and noble and full of great promise in this new writer—for such he really is—and we have been so honest in our admiration of it, that we feel all the more at liberty to point out some of the blemishes that mar a work of rare excellence and strange beauty. Here and there throughout the volume are lines and couplets that linger lovingly in the memory; as, for instance:
“Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe the trodden ground
Till passion’s buried floods be found....”
And again:
“Till inmost absolution start
The welling in the grateful eyes,
The heaving in the heart.”
What could be more tenderly and naturally expressive than those two last lines? Or than this:
“Winnow with sighs, and wash away
With tears the dust and stain of clay.”