His characters, where he introduces such,
are commonly abstractions, with little of the flesh and blood of real
life in them, and this from want of experience rather than of sympathy;
for many of his poems show him capable of friendship almost womanly in
its purity and warmth. One quality which we especially value in him is
the intense home-feeling which, without any conscious aim at being
American, gives his poetry a flavor of the soil surprisingly refreshing.
Without being narrowly provincial, he is the most indigenous of our
poets. In these times, especially, his uncalculating love of country has
a profound pathos in it. He does not flare the flag in our faces, but
one feels the heart of a lover throbbing in his anxious verse.
Mr. Whittier, if the most fervid of our poets, is sometimes hurried away
by this very quality, in itself an excellence, into being the most
careless. He draws off his verse while the fermentation is yet going on,
and before it has had time to compose itself and clarify into the ripe
wine of expression. His rhymes are often faulty beyond the most
provincial license even of Burns himself. Vigor without elegance will
never achieve permanent success in poetry. We think, also, that he has
too often of late suffered himself to be seduced from the true path to
which his nature set up finger-posts for him at every corner, into
metaphysical labyrinths whose clue he is unable to grasp.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135