| Roar, raging torrent! and thou, mighty river, Pour thy white foam on the valley below! Frown ye dark mountains, &c. |
is ludicrous—and nothing more. In general, all such invocations have an air of the burlesque. In the present instance we may fancy the majestic Niagara replying, "Most assuredly I will roar, whether, worm! thou tellest me or not."
The American Flag commences with a collection of those bald conceits, which we have already shown to have no dependence whatever upon the Poetic Power—springing altogether from Comparison.
| When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light; Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land. |
Let us reduce all this to plain English, and we have—what? Why, a flag, consisting of the "azure robe of night," "set with stars of glory," interspersed with "streaks of morning light," relieved with a few pieces of "the milky way," and the whole carried by an "eagle bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who bears aloft this "symbol of our chosen land" in his "mighty hand," by which we are to understand his claw. In the second stanza, the "thunder-drum of Heaven" is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degree—a commingling of the most sublime music of Heaven with the most utterly contemptible and common-place of Earth. The two concluding verses are in a better spirit, and might almost be supposed to be from a different hand. The images contained in the lines,
| When Death careering on the gale Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back, Before the broadside's reeling rack, |
are of the highest order of Ideality. The deficiencies of the whole poem may be best estimated by reading it in connection with "Scots wha hae," with the "Mariners of England," or with "Hohenlinden." It is indebted for its high and most undeserved reputation to our patriotism—not to our judgment.
The remaining poems in Mr. Dearborn's edition of Drake, are three Songs; Lines in an Album; Lines to a Lady; Lines on leaving New Rochelle; Hope; A Fragment; To ——; Lines; To Eva; To a Lady; To Sarah; and Bronx. These are all poems of little compass, and with the exception of Bronx and a portion of the Fragment, they have no character distinctive from the mass of our current poetical literature. Bronx, however, is in our opinion, not only the best of the writings of Drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem, upon which his admirers would do better to found a hope of the writer's ultimate reputation than upon the niaiseries of the Culprit Fay. In the Fragment is to be found the finest individual passage in the volume before us, and we quote it as a proper finale to our Review.
| Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever; How sweet 'twould be when all the air In moonlight swims, along thy river To couch upon the grass, and hear Niagara's everlasting voice Far in the deep blue west away; That dreamy and poetic noise We mark not in the glare of day, Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry, When o'er the brink the tide is driven, As if the vast and sheeted sky In thunder fell from Heaven. |