Yet
are the failures of genius better than the victories of talent; and
we are sure that some crude manuscript poems have yielded us a more
sustaining and a more stimulating diet, than many elaborated and
classic productions.
We have been led to these thoughts by reading some verses,
which were lately put into our hands by a friend with the remark,
that they were the production of a youth, who had long passed out of
the mood in which he wrote them, so that they had become quite dead
to him. Our first feeling on reading them was a lively joy. So then
the Muse is neither dead nor dumb, but has found a voice in these
cold Cisatlantic States. Here is poetry which asks no aid of
magnitude or number, of blood or crime, but finds theatre enough in
the first field or brookside, breadth and depth enough in the flow of
its own thought. Here is self-repose, which to our mind is stabler
than the Pyramids; here is self-respect which leads a man to date
from his heart more proudly than from Rome. Here is love which sees
through surface, and adores the gentle nature and not the costume.
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