Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), August 16, 1845, vol. 2, no. 6, p. ???, col. ?

[page 88, column 1, continued:]

Critical Notices.

Graham's Magazine, for August, comes to us with a portrait and biography of J. K. Mitchell, the author of “Fly to the Prairie,” &c. We think the likeness by no means a good one. Very certainly it does not flatter Dr. Mitchell. Following this, we have a very fine line engraving of “The Tower-Rock on the Mississippi,” and another (quite as good) of “Rock Mountain” from the north.

In prose, there is an interesting paper called “The Jugglers,” by a New Contributor, and “Ida Grey” a tale of passion, exceedingly well written, by Mrs. Osgood. In poetry, we notice contributions from Longfellow, Lowell, and Mrs. [column 2:] Nichols. That of Mr. Longfellow is constrained and petty in its versification, and throughout is obviously a suggestion from “The Evening Wind” of Bryant, to which we refer our readers — especially for the passage about the sick man looking from his chamber. Nevertheless, the poem is worthy the genius of the author. We quote, from the conclusion two magnificent passages:

He (the poet) can behold

Things manifold

That have not yet been wholly told —

Have not been wholly sung nor said:

For his thought, which never stops,

Follows the water-drops

Down to the graves of the dead —

Down through chasms and gulfs profound

To the dreary fountain-head

Of lakes and rivers underground,

And sees them when the rain is done

On the bridge of colours seven

Climbing up once more to Heaven,

Opposite the setting sun.

 

Thus the seer

With vision clear

Sees forms appear and dissappear,

In the perpetual round of strange

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from Death to birth —

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth —

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things unseen before

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The universe as an immeasurable wheel

Turning forever more

In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

Mr. Lowell's poem, “To the Future,” has a noble commencement, and is altogether a noble composition — although in the last stanza is a palpable plagiarism — e. g.

As life's alarums nearer roll

The ancestral buckler calls

Self clanging from the walls

In the high temple of the soul.

This is Mr. L.'s — but Wordsworth has either the following lines, or something resembling them — for we quote altogether from memory.

Armor rustling on the walls

On the blood of Clifford calls,

And to clash again in the field

Is the wild longing of the shield.

Except in its versification Mr. Lowell has by no means improved the idea of Wordsworth — although “self-clanging” has great force.