These in some good measure, though not fully, atone for the loss of the direct mention and open recognition of a religion daily felt in the soul, and they redeem the book from the charges of either infidelity or stoicism. Bryant has the power, if he only had the experience, to embalm in words the entrancing raptures that thrill the heart when man's affections all center in God, not as a part of nature, nor as its Creator and Governor, nor yet as the most wonderfully skillful mechanician, or the most bountiful benefactor, but as the One only lovely, supremely just and holy, revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, and felt in the soul as an indwelling power and impulse. His religion (and there is a large amount of it in various poems) is the natural religion which is content to rest in the inactive organism of the plant or flower, not that of Paul, which burns, and glows, and feels its own life, and demands to be reckoned among the working and transforming powers in the earth. These poems have no Saviour. Almost all their religion might have been known and described (for there is no attempt to dramatize it) by Plato himself. Here is the most observant pantheism, and the most sympathetic accordance with every frown, or smile, or look of nature. And the heaven to which the soul aspires is commonly nothing more than this earth a very little idealized; the heaven of some of Swedenborg's followers, or that of a portion of those who, so proudly and with such arrogant assumption, style themselves spiritualists. This beautifully versified passage is an illustration. It occurs in a poem entitled the " Two Graves," a most lovely painting: ""Tis said that when life is ended here, * 'Tis a cruel creed, believe it not! Death to the good is a milder lot. They are here, they are here, that harmless pair, In the light cloud-shadows that slowly pass, In the sounds that rise from the murmuring grass. Of the brook that wets the rocks below," They watch, and wait, and linger around, Till the day when their bodies shall leave the ground." Pp. 149, 150. This may be very touching, and expressive, and really enchanting "To him who in the love of Nature holds but it is not the desire nor the language of a soul “born of God," and adopted to be the brother and servant of the Lord Jesus, whose whole heart is fired with the blessed idea of Christ's mediatorial office, and who cries with the Psalmist, "Whom have I in heaven but THEE? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides THEE." To such a one, longing to dwell in the immediate and visible presence ("the pure in heart shall see God") of the Creator, all the works of nature, however manifold, and in whatever excellent wisdom made, are but incentives to reach after a still more appreciable intercourse with him in personal communion; and all of God that he sees in the glorious forms of nature, is nothing more than the shadow of its mother which the child sees thrown by the lamplight on the curtains of its couch, making it long to be folded in the warm arms to the beating bosom of that mother. The real Christian, or if an abstract term is preferred, the true religionist only sees the moving shadow of God in these multiform and almost miraculous works of nature. All her divine and soul-elevating beauties are less suggestive even than shadows, and can no more satisfy his soul and fill his love, than the faintest echo of the voice of his newly married bride could satisfy the heart and soul of an enraptured bridegroom. The only reference, except in the translations, to Christ, with any distinctness, occurs in "The Conqueror's Grave" in which he is called "The Mighty Sufferer," and the Great Master." The poem is a grand one, and thus closes in a noble strain of hopeful courage, sublime resolve, and cheering promise: 66 "O gentle sleeper, from thy grave I go Consoled though sad, in hope and yet in fear. The warfare scarce begun; Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won. Still flows the fount whose waters strengthen'd thee; The victor's names are yet too few to fill Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory, That ministered to thee, is open still.”—P. 322. It may be said that Bryant is not a sacred poet, and therefore he is not bound to make any reference to this matter of a personal religion and spiritual communion with God. If this is granted, it follows that instead of striking all the keys in the great organ of the human heart, he has left untouched that which gives forth the most thrilling notes, and produces, in concert with the others, the most exalting harmonies. But it will not do to make this admission, even while it will not cover or excuse his deficiencies. No man who pretends to be a poet has any more right to ignore" God in Christ Jesus," than he has to ignore God in nature; and if he does thus keep silence upon this dearest of all topics, then the world ought to be put on its guard against worshiping him as the perfect poet. Many will be pained to find here no religion of repentance and faith in Christ, nothing but cold communion with nature and with God through her; and there is no Jesus with his wounded flesh and unspeakable love, who appears and becomes most really appreciable to the longing soul. On those great subjects that interest all and make men always feel them, life and death, there are some excellent descriptions and some noble moralizings. The “Hymn to Death" is sublime, wonderfully so in parts, and is highly suggestive of patient heroism, brave endurance, and lofty philosophy. Its calm and defiant waiting for a better day, and its certain faith in the steady approach of that good time, are more than heroic. And the pathos of its close, sung apparently upon the harp, with its strings broken by the rude. hand that had struck down the father of the poet while he was singing, is irresistible. Yet he might have spared the last line, or at least changed the last two words, which are unworthy both the poet and his theme: "Shuddering I look On what is written, yet I blot not out Few poems of its kind in our English tongue are finer, notwithstanding the grand doctrine of immortality does not sufficiently add its cheering strains to swell the noblest part of the chorus, an omission detracting from its real power and lasting influence. listen to a few lines from it: "Raise then the hymn to Death. Deliverer! And crush the oppressor. When the armed chief, The conqueror of nations, walks the world, Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes Gather within their ancient bounds again."-P. 48. Yet "Life" is rather the poetical conception of the philosopher than of the immortal saint. It is full of beauty nevertheless; and while it seems to lack the religious element of faith, it yet has the anxious tone that inquires for it. Somewhat more definite and hopeful is the desire to "know as we are known" which glows in "The Future Life." "How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps The disembodied spirits of the dead, “For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. "The love that lived through all the stormy past, And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, "Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky, "Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home, Thy fit companion in that land of bliss ?"-P. 263, 264. But these are not the subjects on which this poet is most at home. He does not ascend naturally into the dim mysterious regions of the spirit of man, and hear the voice of God's inward inspiration revealing to him the secrets of the soul's eternity, and all the deep meanings of its heart-longings after a higher life when earth has fled, a life not of languid and idle dreamings, but a higher life of doing and ripening by means of vigorous labor, every day and every hour voluntarily undertaken and resolutely gone through. He has looked upon the "visible forms of nature," not upon the invisible realities of the Spirit; and though he sees and describes a splendid significance in those forms, he has not yet conceived, and therefore he cannot paint the sublimity of those realities. He is therefore more Greek than Jew or Christian, and he has the pantheistic spirit that glows and burns, that kindles and loves when it can feel or see, but which darkens and dies, and cannot be made to burn nor adore, where its intuitions are the only light on which it must depend. low logic and the senses, but not the godlike reason. He can folHence he is tame here compared to what he is when abroad in the fields. With nature he is alive and genial, suggestive and ennobling; but alone with his own spirit, silent and unsocial, bashful and unsatisfactory: so in regard to the subject of Home he is Greek and not English, at least not in the sense in which Cowper and Wordsworth are English. There is no lack of allusion to the home affections, but there are few pictures of home and its heart-softening influences, and that too in the midst of poetry that riots in descriptions of nature, the beauty and suggestive power of which are so much increased by cottagehomes scattered along all her hillsides and valleys. In "The Murdered Traveler," however, is a picture of home, where all the love of wife and children are mingled with that "fond anxiety" which makes "home" one of the most foreboding, yet one of the dearest and sweetest words in the language. The whole piece is inimitable, entirely in the spirit of the old English home-poetry, and yet American in all its scenery and associations: "When spring, to woods and wastes around, The murder'd traveler's bones were found, "But long they look'd, and fear'd, and wept, And dream'd and started as they slept, For joy that he had come."-Pp. 96, 97, 98. After having made the foregoing exceptions there is nothing else to be said in disparagement of these poems, or in abatement of the highest praise that can be bestowed upon them. The topics most often touched upon, and most lovingly sung, are nature and her teachings; freedom and patriotism, with their arousing, exalting influences; human affections and their heart-soothing tendencies, and the grand movements and progressions of the race, gradually bringing on a better time for mankind. In relation to those poems that simply describe nature, and overflow with her delightful moralities, nothing can be found written in English sweeter in spirit and flow of language, or better seeing what ought to be seen, and more |