The whole thing is redolent with poetry of the very loftiest order. It is positively crowded with nature and with pathos. Every line is an idea—conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the artlessness of the maiden, or the love of the maiden, or her admiration, or her grief, or the fragrance and sweet warmth, and perfect appropriateness of the little nestlike bed of lilies and roses, which the fawn devoured as it lay upon them, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile upon her face. Consider the great variety of truth and delicate thought in the few lines we have quoted—the wonder of the maiden at the fleetness of her favorite—the “little silver feet”—the fawn challenging his mistress to the race, “with a pretty skipping grace,” running on before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her approach only to fly from it again—can we not distinctly perceive all these things? The exceeding vigor, too, and beauty of the line
And trod as if on the four winds,
which are vividly apparent when we regard the artless nature of the speaker, and the four feet of the favorite—one for each wind. Then the garden of “my own,” so overgrown—entangled—with lilies and roses as to be “a little wilderness”—the fawn loving to be there and there “only”—the maiden seeking it “where it should lie,” and not being able to distinguish it from the flowers until “itself would rise”—the lying among the lilies “like a bank of lilies”—the loving to “fill” itself with roses,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,
and these things being its “chief” delights—and then the pre-eminent beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines—whose very outrageous hyperbole and absurdity only render them the more true to nature and to propriety, when we consider the innocence, the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate grief, and more passionate admiration of the bereaved child.
Had it lived long it would have been
Lilies without—roses within.
SOUTH-SEA EXPEDITION.
Report of the Committee on Naval Affairs, to whom was referred memorials from sundry citizens of Connecticut interested in the whale fishing, praying that an exploring expedition be fitted out to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas. March 21, 1836.