At the same time
we could not but feel that a certain tendency to multiplicity of detail,
and a neglect of form or insensibility to it, hindered the book of that
direct and vigorous effect which its power and variety of resource would
otherwise have produced. Something of the same impression is made by the
present volume. There are glimpses in it of real genius, but it shows
itself generally here and there only, as the natural outcrop, seldom in the
bars and ingots which give proof of patient mining and smelting at
furnace-heat, still more seldom in the beautiful shapes of artistic
elaboration. Here, again, we find the same unborrowed feeling for outward
Nature and familiarity with her moods, the same poetic beauty of
expression, and in many of the pieces the same overcrowdedness, as if the
author would fain say all he could, instead of saying only what he could
not help.
There are some of the poems that do more justice to the abilities of the
author. In "The Year is Gone" there is great tenderness of sentiment and
grace of expression; "Love Disposed of" is a pretty fancy embodied with
true lyric feeling; but the poem which over crests all the others like a
decuman wave is "The Brave Old Ship, the Orient." It is a truly masculine
poem, full of vigor and imagination, and giving evidence of true original
power in the author. There is scarce a weak verse in it, and the measure
has a swing, at once easy and stately, like that of the sea itself.
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