Stanza the fourth, although beginning nobly,
concludes with that very common exemplification of the bathos, the
illustrating natural objects of beauty or grandeur by references to
the tinsel of artificiality.
Oh! for a seat on Appalachia's brow,
That I might scan the glorious prospects round,
Wild waving woods, and rolling floods below,
Smooth level glades and fields with grain embrowned,
High heaving hills, with tufted forests crowned,
Rearing their tall tops to the heaven's blue dome,
And emerald isles, like banners green un-wound,
Floating along the take, while round them roam
Bright helms of billowy blue, and plumes of dancing foam.
In the Extracts from Leon are passages not often surpassed in
vigor of passionate thought and expression- and which induce us to
believe not only that their author would have succeeded better in
prose romance than in poetry, but that his attention would have
naturally fallen into the former direction, had the Destroyer only
spared him a little longer.
This poem contains also lines of far greater poetic power than any
to be found in the Culprit Fay. For example-
The stars have lit in heaven their lamps of gold,
The viewless dew falls lightly on the world;
The gentle air that softly sweeps the leaves
A strain of faint unearthly music weaves:
As when the harp of heaven remotely plays,
Or sygnets wail- or song of sorrowing fays
That float amid the moonshine glimmerings pale,
On wings of woven air in some enchanted vale.
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