Text: Helen Lucile Watts, “The Penance of Roland,” Poe's The Life and Writings of Henry Beck Hirst of Philadelphia Story, Masters Thesis, 1925

[page 131:]

Most of the poems in this volume, as in the case of The Coming of the Mammoth, had previously appeared in magazines. This was true even of the long poem which gives the book its title.

The book opens with a piece called “Proem — To My Wife”, written in the very sentimental tone of practically all of Hirst's love poems. It is in octameter couplets, and is poorly versified, which is unusual for Hirst. The poem had been printed earlier in Graham's, and received little revision.

The longest of the poems, “The Penance of Roland” itself, which Hirst called in his dedication “a lyrical legend of the lays of feudal barbarism”, is a melodramatic story of the Middle Ages, dealing with murder, punishment and repentance. The narration is as direct as in “Endymion”, and equally without elevation of thought of loftiness of imagination. There are many passages which speak quite loudly of Poe.

Of the regaining shorter poems in the volume the flattering review if the book in Graham's Magazine(40) says:

“Of the whole nineteen there is not one which is merely a collection of melodious lines, embodying certain fancies and imaginations, but each is a short poem, imaginatively conceived and artistically executed. We have no space to refer to them individually, but it can be said of them generally, that they display a profound insight into the mysteries of melody both in metre and rhythm, and evince [page 152:] great strength and subtilty [[subtelty]] of imagination in the embodiment of varying moods of mind. The volume is a rich addition to the poetical literature of the country.”

Since we have no connection with the magazine in which these poems originally appeared, we shall not be so generous in our criticism. We set against the praise given above the brief criticism given by Griswold:(41) “Its contents are all well versified, and their rhetoric is generally poetical.” This is much nearer to the truth.

Two of the best poems in the book are two poems about birds, “The Wren” and “The Robin”, but both of them are too long for their subject matter.

There are a number of sonnets, including “La Chanteuse” and “Fame” which are worthless, and one called “To One Departed”. Poe's poem “To F — ” once bore that title, but Hirst's poem, has otherwise no relation to this poem of Poe's, and. there were many other poems by the same or similar title in the magazines of the period. Hirst's sonnet is:

There is so little grief of any kind in this sonnet that we seriously doubt whether it was written for anyone who had [page 133:] died. It seems to be merely a poetical exercise. The idea of the gifts from the four elements is not a bad conceit, but Hirst could not sustain it after the first six lines. “Water its sensuous essence” is good, if original with Hirst. But who ever heard of a “tempest” that was “debonair”, or of the word “swanliness”? The opening lines are quite obviously from the first lines of stanza xliii in Shelley's “Adonais”:

But the whole poem has a certain flavor of E.C. Pinkney's writings.

“The Last Tilt”, “The Lost Pleiad”, “No More”, and “Lethe” owe much to Poe. “Madeline”, “Berenice”, “Florence”, and “Mary Grey” belong to the class of his romantic poems about women, while “Coriolanus”and “Lucretia” show a transitory interest in classic subjects. In “On a Summer Night” he dared to print this inexcusable line: —

“O! for the pallor of the polar zones!”

The volume as a whole contains very little that shows any advance over his earlier work. Hirst had acquired neither careful workmanship nor real poetic insight.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 131:]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 132:]