'Have you not seen her in the public way,
Snare-setting? In the ball-room marked her eyes,
Pursuing, like a very snake's, her prey?
And vainly would he dodge them, and be wise!
In flight alone is safety. Do you stray
Beside her, when the moon is in the skies?
Or by the brooklet, or along the sea,
Or in the garden, parlor, buttery?'
'Do you stray beside her in the—buttery!' Does not this word 'buttery' seem impressed for the sake of oddity and the rhyme? To our apprehension and ear it is objectionable, alike in truth and in sound; scarcely less so, indeed, than the close of the annexed lines, which require no comment. Don Ponce, a Spanish knight,
'Had passed his days in stupor most sublime,
His nights in deep allegiance to his pillow;
Untroubled by the crown, the church-bell's chime,
Sleep, garlic, wine, and oil, a constant fill o'!'
In prose as well as in verse Mr. Simms, by common consent of his critics, fails in the humorous. It is not his rôle. How much more creditable, even than the foregoing, are the subjoined stanzas, illustrating the fact that it is mental and not physical suffering which constitutes the pain of death; the 'parting from those who loved and love us:'
'This is the mental death—the agony
Beyond all pain of limb, all fever smart,
All racking of the joints: this is to die;
Sad burial of the hope that lit the heart;
Love mourning, doomed affections lingering by,
Muttering the words of death: 'We part, we part!'
Ah! what the trial, where the pangs, the fears,
To equal this sad source of thousand tears?
'And when the lamp of life upon a verge
Unseated as a vision, sinks at last;
And when the spirit launches on the surge
Of that dark, drear, unfathomable vast
We call eternity, its latest dirge
Bemoans not pangs, still pressing, not o'erpast,
But that all natural things, forms, stars, and skies,
And the more loved than all, are fading from its eyes.
'Thus still beloved, though all relentless fair,
I part from thee and perish. Never more
Shall I win sweetness from the desolate air,
Or find a fragrant freshness in the shore;
The sea that images my deep despair
Hath still a kindred language in its roar,
And in the clouds that gather on our lee
A mournful likeness to my soul I see.
'The sense of life grows dim; the glories pass,
Like those of melting rainbows from my sight;
Dark aspects rise as in the wizard's glass,
Reflect my inner soul, and tell of night;
Glooms gather on my vision, in a mass,
And all my thoughts, beheld in their dread light,
Rise like unbidden spectres; rise to rave
Above the heart, which soon may be their grave.'
The purpose of the author to preserve this youthful effort of his muse from oblivion, by giving it in a printed form to the public, will not, we may believe, be subserved; for although portions of it are undeniably clever, yet as a whole it lacks the elements of life; a fact, indeed, of which the writer himself seems sufficiently aware, if we interpret aright the long introduction with which he has deemed it necessary to preface a short poem. The little volume, which is very neatly executed, is dedicated to one who is himself well qualified to appreciate, and on occasion to produce, good poetry—James Lawson, Esq., of this city.