Its rounded and
didactic termination has done wonders:
on my heart,
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given
And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.
There are, however, points of more sterling merit. We fully
recognize the poet in
Thou art gone- the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form.
There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-
The desert, and illimitable air-
Lone, wandering, but not lost.
The Forest Hymn consists of about a hundred and twenty blank
Pentameters of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible
to speak too highly. With the exception of the line
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds,
no fault, in this respect, can be found, while excellencies are
frequent of a rare order, and evincing the greatest delicacy of ear.
We might, perhaps, suggest, that the two concluding verses,
beautiful as they stand, would be slightly improved by transferring to
the last the metrical excess of the one immediately preceding. For the
appreciation of this, it is necessary to quote six or seven lines in
succession
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the warmth
Of the mad unchained elements, to teach
Who rules them.
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