Without Mrs. Sigourney's high reach of thought, Miss Gould surpasses her rival in the mere vehicle of thought—expression. "Words, words, words," are the true secret of her strength. Words are her kingdom—and in the realm of language, she rules with equal despotism and nonchalance. Yet we do not mean to deny her abilities of a higher order than any which a mere logocracy can imply. Her powers of imagination are great, and she has a faculty of inestimable worth, when considered in relation to effect—the faculty of holding ordinary ideas in so novel, and sometimes in so fantastic a light, as to give them all of the appearance, and much of the value, of originality. Miss Gould will, of course, be the favorite with the multitude—Mrs. Sigourney with the few.
We can think of no better manner of exemplifying these few observations, than by extracting part of Miss G's little poem, The Great Refiner.
| 'Tis sweet to feel that he, who tries The silver, takes his seat Beside the fire that purifies; Lest too intense a heat, Raised to consume the base alloy, The precious metal too destroy. 'Tis good to think how well he knows The silver's power to bear The ordeal to which it goes; And that with skill and care, He'll take it from the fire, when fit For his own hand to polish it. 'Tis blessedness to know that he The piece he has begun Will not forsake, till he can see, To prove the work well done, An image by its brightness shown The perfect likeness of his own. |
The mind which could conceive the subject of this poem, and find poetic appropriateness in a forced analogy between a refiner of silver, over his crucible, and the Great Father of all things, occupied in the mysteries of redeeming Grace, we cannot believe a mind adapted to the loftier breathings of the lyre. On the other hand, the delicate finish of the illustration, the perfect fitness of one portion for another, the epigrammatic nicety and point of the language, give evidence of a taste exquisitely alive to the prettinesses of the Muse. It is possible that Miss Gould has been led astray in her conception of this poem by the scriptural expression, "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."
From the apparently harsh strictures we have thought it our duty to make upon the poetry of Miss Gould, must be excepted one exquisite little morceau at page 59 of the volume now under review. It is entitled The Dying Storm. We will quote it in full.
| I am feeble, pale and weary, And my wings are nearly furled; I have caused a scene so dreary, I am glad to quit the world! With bitterness I'm thinking On the evil I have done, And to my caverns sinking From the coming of the sun. The heart of man will sicken In that pure and holy light, When he feels the hopes I've stricken With an everlasting blight! For widely, in my madness, Have I poured abroad my wrath, And changing joy to sadness, Scattered ruin on my path. Earth shuddered at my motion, And my power in silence owns; But the deep and troubled ocean O'er my deeds of horror moans! I have sunk the brightest treasure— I've destroyed the fairest form— I have sadly filled my measure, And am now a dying storm. |
We have much difficulty in recognizing these verses as from the pen of Miss Gould. They do not contain a single trace of her manner, and still less of the prevailing features of her thought. Setting aside the flippancy of the metre, ill adapted to the sense, we have no fault to find. All is full, forcible, and free from artificiality. The personification of the storm, in its perfect simplicity, is of a high order of poetic excellence—the images contained in the lines italicized, all of the very highest.
Many but not all of the poems in Mrs. Ellet's volume, likewise, have been printed before—appearing, within the last two years, in different periodicals. The whole number of pieces now published is fifty-seven. Of these thirty-nine are original. The rest are translations from the French of Alphonse de Lamartine and Beranger—from the Spanish of Quevedo and Yriarte—from the Italian of Ugo Foscolo, Alfieri, Fulvio Testi, Pindemonte, and Saverio Bettinelli,—and from the German of Schiller. As evidences of the lady's acquaintance with the modern languages, these translations are very creditable to her. Where we have had opportunities of testing the fidelity of her versions by reference to the originals, we have always found reason to be satisfied with her performances. A too scrupulous adherence to the text is certainly not one of her faults—nor can we yet justly call her, in regard to the spirit of her authors, a latitudinarian. We wish, however, to say that, in fully developing the meaning of her originals, she has too frequently neglected their poetical characters. Let us refer to the lady's translation of the Swallows. We have no hesitation in saying, that not the slightest conception of Pierre Jean de Beranger, can be obtained by the perusal of the lines at page 112, of the volume now before us.