| Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed Intently, as we gaze on vacancy, When the mind's wings o'erspread The spirit world of dreams. |
And again—
O'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers.
Red-Jacket has much power of expression with little evidence of poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in any great degree, with the general tone of the poem.
A Sketch should have been omitted from the edition as altogether unworthy of its author.
The remaining pieces in the volume are Twilight; Psalm cxxxvii; To ****; Love; Domestic Happiness; Magdalen; From the Italian; Woman; Connecticut; Music; On the Death of Lieut. William Howard Allen; A Poet's Daughter; and On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. Of the majority of these we deem it unnecessary to say more than that they partake, in a more or less degree, of the general character observable in the poems of Halleck. The Poet's Daughter appears to us a particularly happy specimen of that general character, and we doubt whether it be not the favorite of its author. We are glad to see the vulgarity of
| I'm busy in the cotton trade And sugar line, |
omitted in the present edition. The eleventh stanza is certainly not English as it stands—and besides it is altogether unintelligible. What is the meaning of this?
| But her who asks, though first among The good, the beautiful, the young, The birthright of a spell more strong Than these have brought her. |
The Lines on the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake, we prefer to any of the writings of Halleck. It has that rare merit in compositions of this kind—the union of tender sentiment and simplicity. This poem consists merely of six quatrains, and we quote them in full.