Fitz-Greene Halleck

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Twilight

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There is an evening twilight of the heart,
When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest,
And the eye sees life's fairy scenes depart,
As fades the day-beam in the rosy west.
'Tis with a nameless feeling of regret
We gaze upon them as they melt away,
And fondly would we bid them linger yet,
But hope is round us with her angel lay,
Hailing afar some happier moonlight hour;
Dear are her whispers still, though lost their early power.


In youth the cheek was crimsoned with her glow;
Her smile was loveliest then; her matin song
Was heaven's own music, and the note of wo
Was all unheard her sunny bowers among.


Life's little world of bliss was newly born;
We knew not, cared not, it was born to die;
Flushed with the cool breeze and the dews of mom;
With dancing heart we gazed on the pure sky,
And mocked the passing clouds that dimmed its blue,
Like our own sorrows then—as fleeting and as few.


And manhood felt her sway too—on the eye,
Half realised, her early dreams burst bright,
Her promised bower of happiness seemed nigh,
Its days of joy, its vigils of delight;
And though at times might lour the thunder storm,
And the red lightnings threaten, still the air
Was balmy with her breath, and her loved form,
The rainbow of the heart, was hovering there.
'Tis in life's noontide she is nearest seen,
Her wreath the summer flower, her robe of summer green.


But though less dazzling in her twilight dress,
There's more of heaven's pure beam about her now;
That angel-smile of tranquil loveliness,
Which the heart worships, glowing on her brow;
That smile shall brighten the dim evening star
That points our destined tomb, nor e'er depart
Till the faint light of life is fled afar,
And hushed the last deep beating of the heart;


The meteor-bearer of our parting breath,
A moon-beam in the midnight cloud of death.

The moral idea of this poem is as charming as its execution. The subject is common enough; but it is the treatment which gives it unction and acceptance.…

"The Field of the Grounded Arms, Saratoga," is a production which has all the spirit, without any of the poetry, of music around or within it. We are surprised that one so accustomed, both by practice and the habitudes of his thought, to harmonious numbers, as Mr. Halleck is, should have written verses like these, which halt so tediously away. Had he treated his theme in blank verse, all would have been well; but as the piece now stands, it is a truly amphibious and hermaphrodite composition. The sentiment is stirring and patriotic; the conceptions, fine; but the construction is a species of composite order, whose constituents it would be difficult indeed to explain or trace home. We copy one quotation as an illustration.

Stranger! your eyes are on that valley fixed
Intently as we gaze on vacancy,
When the mind's wings o'erspread
The spirit-world of dreams.

We may be prejudiced against this nondescript sort of quantity; but the mode strikes us as very nearly akin to the annexed specimen of a verse which we offer with the aid of an indiscriminate memory, from an effusion of Warren, or Day and Martin—a polished press-gang, who are famous for compelling the Nine into their service:

Sixpence a pot, we
Axes for our best jet-
Blacking; but if you
Takes back the pot, we
Makes a deduction.

The reader will bear in mind that we may not quote the foregoing verbatim; but we have preserved the pauses and the system. With respect to structure and motive power, the parallel is almost complete.

It gives us pleasure to continue our course through Mr. Halleck's volume, and to find that a weakened gust for one poem, may be succeeded by the strongest admiration for another. "Red Jacket" is one of those lofty and fervid effusions, that one reads to remember. The author's humorous propensity creeps out in it occasionally; but, as a whole, it is magnificently done. There is a pathetic under-song in this production, which leaves its echo in the heart. The author has represented Red Jacket very much to the life; though the transatlantic allusions might have been well dispensed with. That noble old chief had a spice of the philosopher about him, which would have done honour to the wiliest potentate that ever bent the million to his beck, or swayed a party with his nod. There was a natural grandeur about him, forest-born; the air that circulates over inter-minable wildernesses, and sweeps in freedom across inland seas, was the vital aliment for which his free nostrils thirsted; the perfume that goes up to the sky from vast reservations, as it went from the flowery tops of Carmel in the olden time, was his chosen element of respiration; the anthem for his ear was the voice of Niagara. We can readily believe that he admired his own untrammeled way of life; revered Manitou; and, perhaps, loved the fire-water which drowned the memory of his wrongs. In a part of his tenets, he had wisdom on his side. The man who chooses to run wild in woods, a noble savage, can find many enlightened wights in the purlieus of Christendom to bear him out in his partialities. The dress of Red Jacket, in his primitive condition, was of the simplest kind. He was not in the straitened, tailor-owing condition of many at the present day. "I have thatched myself over," says a modem European writer, perhaps in the predicament just hinted at, "with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the entrails of furred beasts, and walk abroad a moving ragscreen, overheaped with shreds and tatters, raked from the charnel-house of nature." In his best days, Red Jacket had no fancy for integuments like these: and his bard should not have stooped to compare his dress at any time with that of "George the Fourth, at Brighton;" for Halleck is a man who cannot easily conceal from himself the fact that there are noblemen of nature,—and that a drawing-room, whether of the British monarch, or of le Roi Citoyen, "is simply a section of infinite space, where so many Godcreated souls do for the time meet together." But we keep the reader from our quotation.

Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whaler's?
Thou are as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth's first kings—the Argo's gallant sailors,
Heroes in history, and gods in song.


Is beauty?—Thine has with thy youth departed;
But the love-legends of thy manhood's years,
And she who perished, young and broken-hearted,
Are—but I rhyme for smiles and not for tears.


Is eloquence?—Her spell is thine that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery—they are short.


The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding,
The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon,
Of winning, fettering, moulding, wielding, banding,
The hearts of millions till they move as one;


Thou hast it. At thy bidding men have crowded
The road to death as to a festival;
And minstrels, at their sepulchres, have shrouded
With banner-folds of glory the dark pall.


Who will believe? Not I—for in deceiving
Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream;
I cannot spare the luxury of believing
That all things beautiful are what they seem.


Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing
Would, like the patriarch's, sooth a dying hour,
With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing,
As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlit bower;

With look, like patient Job's, eschewing evil;

With motions graceful, as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil
That e'er clenched fingers in a captive's hair!


That in thy breast there springs a poison fountain,
Deadlier than that where bathes the Upas tree;
And in thy wrath, a nursing cat-o'-mountain
Is calm as her babe's sleep, compared with thee!


And underneath that face, like summer ocean's,
Its lip as moveless, and its cheek as clear,
Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart's emotions,
Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow—all save fear.


Love—for thy land, as if she were thy daughter,
Her pipe in peace, her tomahawk in wars;
Hatred—of missionaries and cold water;
Pride—in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars;


Hope—that thy wrongs may be by the Great
Spirit Remembered and revenged, when thou art gone;
Sorrow—that none are left thee to inherit
Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne!

We now take our leave of Mr. Halleck, with the expression of a hope that he will not keep his light, which sends its beams so far, under the bushel hereafter. We counsel no neglect of his day-book; but we entreat him not to let his inspiration expire over the entries therein. He must have a good share of leisure after all. Let him not waste it in society; let him bear in mind that, with respect to his commodity at least, poetry will sell as well as peltry; that he has a mine of inalienable bullion in his brain, which no pressure can drive away, no commercial revulsion diminish. The paper in his escritoire, if he choose to stain it with poetic notes of hand, will always command a premium. He can serve both Apollo and the Syrian god; and to him each will be true. He has written enough to secure that fame hereafter, of which he has already had a not disgracious foretaste. He has no right to stifle the stirrings of the power within his soul. We speak this more in reference to his duty to the public than to himself; since in the selfish sense, so far as fame is concerned, he might contemplate his dissolution with composure; assured by the past, that when his death-hour comes, be it soon or late, he will leave behind a name which his countrymen, and the lovers of genius every where, would not willingly let die; and that even now he might enrobe himself in the cere-cloth, and contentedly "take his farewell of the sun."

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