There are seven similar stanzas.
Rispah is a scriptural theme from 2 Samuel, and we like it less than
any poem yet mentioned. The subject, we think, derives no additional
interest from its poetical dress. The metre resembling, except in
the matter of rhyme, that of "Catterskill Falls," and consisting of
mingled Iambuses and Anapaests, is the most positively disagreeable of
any which our language admits, and, having a frisky or fidgetty
rhythm, is singularly ill-adapted to the lamentations of the
bereaved mother. We cannot conceive how the fine ear of Mr. Bryant
could admit such verses as,
And Rispah once the loveliest of all
That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, &c.
The Indian Girl's Lament and The Arctic Lover have nearly all the
peculiarities of the "Song of Pitcairn's Island."
The Massacre at Scio is only remarkable for inaccuracy of expression
in the two concluding lines-
Till the last link of slavery's chain
Is shivered to be worn no more.
What shall be worn no more? The chain- but the link is implied.
Monument Mountain is a poem of about a hundred and forty blank
Pentameters and relates the tale of an Indian maiden who loved her
cousin. Such a love being deemed incestuous by the morality of her
tribe, she threw herself from a precipice and perished.
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