Perhaps at this particular moment there are no American poems held
in so high estimation by our countrymen, as the poems of Drake, and of
Halleck. The exertions of Mr. George Dearborn have no doubt a far
greater share in creating this feeling than the lovers of literature
for its own sake and spiritual uses would be willing to admit. We have
indeed seldom seen more beautiful volumes than the volumes now
before us. But an adventitious interest of a loftier nature- the
interest of the living in the memory of the beloved dead- attaches
itself to the few literary remains of Drake. The poems which are now
given to us with his name are nineteen in number; and whether all,
or whether even the best of his writings, it is our present purpose to
speak of these alone, since upon this edition his poetical
reputation to all time will most probably depend.
It is only lately that we have read The Culprit Fay. This is a
poem of six hundred and forty irregular lines, generally iambic, and
divided into thirty-six stanzas, of unequal length. The scene of the
narrative, as we ascertain from the single line,
The moon looks down on old Cronest,
is principally in the vicinity of West Point on the Hudson. The plot
is as follows. An Ouphe, one of the race of Fairies, has "broken his
vestal vow,"
He has loved an earthly maid
And left for her his woodland shade;
He has lain upon her lip of dew,
And sunned him in her eye of blue,
Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air,
Play'd with the ringlets of her hair,
And, nestling on her snowy breast,
Forgot the lily-kings behest-
in short, he has broken Fairy-law in becoming enamored of a mortal.
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