Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), September 20, 1845, vol. 2, no. 11, p. ???, col. ?

[page 168, column 1, continued:]

The Democratic Review, for September, is particularly strong — containing a good article on Lyell's late work; “La Vendetta,” a clever tale by Fanny Kemble; “The Young Tragedian,” a still better story, by one of our most accomplished and most versatile writers, Mrs. E. F. Ellet; “A Word for Italy,” a gentlemanly essay, by H. T. Tuckerman; Love's Emblems,” by Park Benjamin ; and “Labor,” one of the finest poems we have yet seen from the most graceful of American poetesses, Mrs. Osgood. We quote it in full:

LABOR.

BY MRS. FRANCES S. OSGOOD.

Pause not to dream of the future before us!

Pause not to weep the wild cares that come oe’er us!

Hark, how Creation's deep, musical chorus

Unintermitting, goes up into Heaven!

Never the ocean wave falters in flowing;

Never the little seed stops in its growing;

More and more richly the Rose-heart keeps glowing,

Till from its nourishing stem it is riven.

 

“Labor is worship!” — the robin is singing:

“Labor is worship!” — the wild bee is ringing:

Listen! that eloquent whisper upspringing

Speaks to thy soul from out nature's great heart.

From the dark cloud flows the life-giving shower;

From the rough sod blows the soft breathing flower;

From the small insect, the rich coral bower;

Only man, in the plan, ever shrinks from his part.

 

Labor is life! — ‘Tis the still water faileth:

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;

Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth!

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.

Labor is glory! — the flying cloud lightens;

Only the waving wing changes and brightens;

Idle hearts only the dark future frightens:

Play the sweet keys wouldst thou keep them in tune!

 

Labor is rest — from the sorrows that greet us;

Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,

Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us,

Rest from world-syrens that lure us to ill.

Work — and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;

Work — Thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow; [column 2:]

Lie not down wearied ‘neath Wo's weeping willow!

Work with a stout heart and resolute will!

 

Droop not tho’ shame, sin and anguish are round thee!

Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee!

Look to yon pure Heaven smiling beyond thee!

Rest not content in thy darkness — a clod!

Work — for some good, — be it ever so slowly!

Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly?

Labor! All labor is noble and holy: —

Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God!

There is only one really bad article in the number, and that is insufferable: nor do we think it the less a nuisance because it inflicts upon ourselves individually a passage of maudlin compliment about our being a most “ingenious critic” and “prose poet,” with some other things of a similar kind. We thank for his good-word no man who gives palpable evidence, in other cases than our own, of his incapacity to distinguish the false from the true — the right from the wrong. If we are an ingenious critic, or a prose-poet, it is not because Mr. William Jones says so. This is the same gentleman who, in a previous essay for the Democratic Review. took occasion roundly to assert that nothing beyond “trash” had ever appeared either in the pages of Graham or Godey — to assert this in the face of the fact, that there is scarcely a writer of any eminence in America who has not, at some period, contributed to one or both of these Magazines. But we happen to know the secret of Mr. Jones’ animosity — at least in the ease of Mr. Graham — who rejected, very properly, a stupid article which was almost forced upon him by Mr. J.

A gentleman who on such, or who on any grounds, would suffer himself to speak so flippantly, and with so palpable an injustice, is entitled, of course, to no credit for honesty of opinion. And yet Mr. Jones’ present essay on “American Humor” is sheer opinion — nothing more. There is not a single point which he attempts to demonstrate. His ( Jones’) ipse dixit is all. Mr. Simms, the novelist, he thinks, is a fool — or something very near it. Mr. Jones “regards slightingly the mass of his romantic and poetical efforts” — the romantic and poetical efforts of decidedly the best novelist which this country has ever yet, upon the whole, produced. Of Judge Longstreet, (over whose inimitable “Georgia Scenes” the whole continent has been laughing till the tears rolled from its eyes,) Mr. William Jones has a still more indifferent opinion. “We know only the name of this gentleman,” he says, “and have been unable to get his book, but we apprehend that personal partiality has its undue influence in his (Mr. Simms’) estimate.” Now what right has this Mr. William Jones, who is in the habit of vilifying Magazines by wholesale, whenever the editors turn up their noses at his contributions — what right has he, we say, to suspect any other person in the world than myself, of the vile sin of critical dishonesty? He “has not been able to get” Judge Longstreet's book — what business then has he (Mr. Jones) to form any opinion at all of the correctness or incorrectness of the opinion of Mr. Simms.

“The French,” says this Mr. Jones, “have no humor” — let him pray Heaven that in Hades he fall not into the clutches of Moliere, of Rabelais, of Voltaire! Of the humor of our own countrymen he is much in doubt. A vulgar driveller, however (Harry Franco), the whole of whose point, as far as we can understand it, consists in being unable to pen a sentence of even decent English, our essayist places “on a par with Paulding and much above Miss Leslie and Joseph Neal.” This to be sure is rather an equivocal sentence, bu we would advise Mr. J. not to visit the city of Brotherl [[Brotherly]] [page 169:] Love if he has no inclination to be tarred and feathered: — we could not conceive a grosser or a more ridiculous insult.

The truth is that this essay on “American Humor” is contemptible both in a moral and literary sense — is the composition of an imitator and a quack — and disgraces the Magazine in which it makes its appearance.