Of the pieces which constitute the present volume there are not more
than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the idea above proposed;
although the volume as a whole is by no means so chargeable with
didacticism as Mr. Longfellow's previous book. We would mention as
poems nearly true, "The Village Blacksmith," "The Wreck of the
Hesperus," and especially "The Skeleton in Armor." In the first-
mentioned we have the beauty of simple-mindedness as a genuine thesis;
and this thesis is inimitably handled until the concluding stanza,
where the spirit of legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed
antithetical deduction of a moral from what has gone before. In "The
Wreck of the Hesperus" we have the beauty of child- like confidence
and innocence, with that of the father's courage and affection. But,
with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed
are not poetic subjects. Their thrilling horror belongs to prose, in
which it could be far more effectively discussed, as Professor
Longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. There are
points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest poetical
themes- points in which pure beauty is found, or, better still, beauty
heightened into the sublime, by terror. But when we read, among
other similar things, that
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes.
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