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

[page 169, column 1, continued:]

The American Review for September contains, among other able papers, one of especial value by Hon. J. R. Ingersoll on the National Institute — also an article of much interest on the Bhagoat Geeta and the Doctrine of Immortality. “Helicon in Hot Weather” is the title of a pungent and discriminating review of numerous late poems — principally abortions — Mr. Lord's among the number. J. Ross Browne contributes an amusing “Extract from the Journal of a Whale Cruiser,” and William Wallace has a noble poem entitled “Statuary” from which we venture to make an extract:

Under the music of my heart and brain

Marble should start and tremble into life;

And men should mark beneath the daring strain,

The troubled quarry's strife:

There, one by one, the blocks should swiftly fall

From grand and beautiful creatures, who would rise

Like buried kings and queens from prison pall,

And look at me with wondering eyes:

Brave men and lovely women — they who gave

The advancing plume of Time a starry lire;

Who talked with Spirits — carried Freedom's glaive,

Or grasped the Immortal with a lyre:

***********

Then I would plant soft grasses, trees, and flowers

Of rarest crlour over all the mould,

And fountain-streams should murmur in some bowers, —

Fenced by a trellis work of fretted gold.

A lofty portal ever open seen

Should woo the city's toil-o’erwearied race

To that fair sculpture! They would lean

On rosy plots amid the holy place,

When Night lay dreaming under a rounded moon.

And from those Statues (glimmering through the leaves

That softly whispering to the listening Eves

Some touching tunc learned long ago)

A solemn grandeur and a lender grace

Into their souls should flow.

The stalwart man should learn a nobler strength;

The blooming boyhood an aspiring fire;

And reverend Age should deem he heard at length

The soft, low prelude of a seraph's choir;

The mother there should gently lean and press

On little rosy feet a tenderer kiss,

And lovers light the shadows of the night

With eyes that shone to each in mutual bliss.

Reclined amid my labor, I would hear

Their voices in the leaves; and I would sec

The throng, unseen, and whisper with a tear

Of joy, — “They owe it all to me;

To me, who would a-temper so their souls

That they should veil the fierce flash of the spears

Clashing for blood; Look back! See how it rolls

In yon deep channels of the parted years,

Thick with the wave-uplifted hands of Those

Who fought their fellows and went swiftly down

Beneath the Victor; over their repose

He shook an idle crown.

But not like these, my Brothers! shall ye die;

Something of Heaven is left; and the Ideal.

With all her stars is found, at last, to lie

In that which we have called the REAL.’”