The verses entitled Burns consist of thirty eight quatrains—the three first lines of each quatrain being of four feet, the fourth of three. This poem has many of the traits of Alnwick Castle, and bears also a strong resemblance to some of the writings of Wordsworth. Its chief merit, and indeed the chief merit, so we think, of all the poems of Halleck is the merit of expression. In the brief extracts from Burns which follow, our readers will recognize the peculiar character of which we speak.
| Wild Rose of Alloway! my thanks: Thou mind'st me of that autumn noon When first we met upon "the banks And braes o' bonny Doon"— |
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| Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough, My sunny hour was glad and brief— We've crossed the winter sea, and thou Art withered—flower and leaf. |
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| There have been loftier themes than his, And longer scrolls and louder lyres And lays lit up with Poesy's Purer and holier fires. |
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| And when he breathes his master-lay Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall All passions in our frames of clay Come thronging at his call. |
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| Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined— The Delphian vales, the Palestines, The Meccas of the mind. |
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| They linger by the Doon's low trees, And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr, And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries! The Poet's tomb is there. |
Wyoming is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines which follow are of great beauty.
| I then but dreamed: thou art before me now, In life—a vision of the brain no more, I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow, That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er; And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore, Within a bower of sycamores am laid; And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head. |
The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some portions of Alnwick Castle—with such things as
| he would look particularly droll In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume; |
and
| a girl of sweet sixteen Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn Without a shoe or stocking—hoeing corn, |
mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.
The Field of the Grounded Arms contains twenty-four quatrains, without rhyme, and, we think, of a disagreeable versification. In this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of Halleck. For example—