LITERARY NOTICES.
Poems by James Russell Lowell. In one volume. pp. 279. Cambridge: John Owen. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.
Two years ago Mr. Lowell presented the public with a volume of poems, which after being read and blamed and praised with a most bewildering variety of opinion, lived through it all, and remained as a permanent specimen of unformed but most promising genius. Modest however as the offering was, it was duly valued by discerning judges, not so much for its own ripe excellence, as for its appearing a happy token of something else. In the major part of the annual soarings into Cloud-land which alarm the world, we seem to see the sum total of the aspirant’s power. We feel that he has shown us all, and done his best; that the force of his cleverness could go no farther; and we are willing to give him his penny of praise, and thereby purchase a pleasant oblivion of him and his forevermore. In this attempt of Mr. Lowell’s it was impossible not to see that there lay more beyond. We felt that however boldly he might have dived, he did not yet ‘bring up the bottom,’ as the swimmer’s phrase goes. The faults of his poems were perceptible enough, yet even these were the blemishes of latent strength, and the book was every where welcomed with a hope. We have now to notice the appearance of a second proof of Mr. Lowell’s activity of faculty, in another and larger volume. It confirms the faith of those who read the former one. There is, throughout, the manifestation of growth; of a continuous advance toward a more decided character. Yet it is not without incompleteness of expression; it smacks of immaturity still; but it is the immaturity which presages a man.
The longest, and although not the most pleasing, yet perhaps the best poem in the volume is the ‘Legend of Brittany,’ a romantic story, fringed with rhyme. It contains but one bad line, and that one the first in the book: ‘Fair as a summer dream was Margaret.’ It is not only vague, but common-place: there is no particular reason that we know of why a summer dream should be fairer than a winter dream; and we cannot think that the poet meant to make use of that figure of speech called amphibology, although the line will bear a double interpretation. The legend is of the guilty amour of Mordred, a Knight Templar, with a fair innocent who, upon the point of becoming a mother, is slain by her lover at evening, in the wood. Hereupon—— But let the poet speak:
His crime complete, scarce knowing what he did,
(So goes the tale,) beneath the altar there
In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid,
And then, to ’scape that suffocating air,
Like a scared ghoule out of the porch he slid;
But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere,