Like the tree or vine just mention'd, it
stands at last in a beauty, power and productiveness of its own, above
all others, and of a sort and style uniting all criticisms, proofs and
adherences.
Let us diversify the matter a little by portraying some of the
American poets from our own point of view.
Longfellow, reminiscent, polish'd, elegant, with the air of finest
conventional library, picture-gallery or parlor, with ladies and
gentlemen in them, and plush and rosewood, and ground-glass lamps, and
mahogany and ebony furniture, and a silver inkstand and scented satin
paper to write on.
Whittier stands for morality (not in any all-accepting philosophic
or Hegelian sense, but) filter'd through a Puritanical or Quaker
filter--is incalculably valuable as a genuine utterance, (and the
finest,)--with many local and Yankee and _genre_ bits--all hued with
anti-slavery coloring--(the _genre_ and anti-slavery contributions all
precious--all help.) Whittier's is rather a grand figure, but pretty
lean and ascetic--no Greek-not universal and composite enough (don't
try--don't wish to be) for ideal Americanism. Ideal Americanism would
take the Greek spirit and law, and democratize and scientize and
(thence) truly Christianize them for the whole, the globe, all
history, all ranks and lands, all facts, all good and bad. (Ah this
_bad_--this nineteen-twentieths of us all! What a stumbling-block it
remains for poets and metaphysicians--what a chance (the strange,
clear-as-ever inscription on the old dug-up tablet) it offers yet for
being translated--what can be its purpose in the God-scheme of this
universe, and all?)
Then William Cullen Bryant--meditative, serious, from first to last
tending to threnodies--his genius mainly lyrical--when reading his
pieces who could expect or ask for more magnificent ones than such
as "The Battle-Field," and "A Forest Hymn"? Bryant, unrolling,
prairie-like, notwithstanding his mountains and lakes--moral enough
(yet worldly and conventional)--a naturalist, pedestrian, gardener and
fruiter--well aware of books, but mixing to the last in cities and
society.
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