We mean the abrupt employment of a direct
pronoun in place of the customary relative. For example-
Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die-
For living things that trod awhile thy face,
The love of thee and heaven, and how they sleep,
Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds
Trample and graze?
The note of interrogation here, renders the affectation more
perceptible.
The poem To the Apenines resembles, in meter, that entitled The
Old Man's Funeral, except that the former has a Pentameter in place of
the Alexandrine. This piece is chiefly remarkable for the force,
metrical and moral, of its concluding stanza.
In you the heart that sighs for Freedom seeks
Her image; there the winds no barrier know,
Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks;
While even the immaterial Mind, below,
And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power,
Pine silently for the redeeming hour.
The Knight's Epitaph consists of about fifty lines of blank
Pentameter. This poem is well conceived and executed. Entering the
Church of St. Catherine at Pisa, the poet is arrested by the image
of an armed knight graven upon the lid of a sepulchre. The epitaph
consists of an imaginative portraiture of the knight, in which he is
made the impersonation of the ancient Italian chivalry.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85