As regards the structure of the work looked at as a whole, it strikes us
as a decided fault, that the Saga of King Olaf is so disproportionately
long, especially as many of the pieces which compose it are by no means
so well done as the more strictly original ones. We have no quarrel with
the foreign nature of the subject as such,--for any good matter is
American enough for a truly American poet; but we cannot help thinking
that Mr. Longfellow has sometimes mistaken mere strangeness for
freshness, and has failed to make his readers feel the charm he himself
felt. Put into English, the Saga seems _too_ Norse; and there is often a
hitchiness in the verse that suggests translation with overmuch heed for
literal closeness. It is possible to assume alien forms of verse, but
hardly to enter into forms of thought alien both in time and in the
ethics from which they are derived. "The Building of the Long Serpent"
is not to be named with Mr. Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," which
he learned from no Heimskringla, but from the dockyards of Portland,
where he played as a boy. We are willing, however, to pardon the parts
which we find somewhat ineffectual, in favor of the "Nun of Nidaros,"
which concludes, and in its gracious piety more than redeems, them all.
WHITTIER
IN WAR TIME, AND OTHER POEMS
It is a curious illustration of the attraction of opposites, that, among
our elder poets, the war we are waging finds its keenest expression in
the Quaker Whittier.
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