Bryant faced the
thought as calmly, as majestically, at seventeen as when he wrote
"The Flood of Years" at eighty-two. He is a master of
description, though he has slight gift for narrative or drama,
and he rarely sounds the clear lyric note. But everywhere in his
verse there is that cold purity of the winter hills in Western
Massachusetts, something austere and elemental which reaches
kindred spirits below the surface on which intellect and passion
have their play, something more primitive, indeed, than human
intellect or passion and belonging to another mode of being,
something "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun."
A picture of the Knickerbocker era is not complete without its
portraits of the minor figures in the literary life of New York
up to the time of the Civil War. But the scope of the present
volume does not permit sketches of Paulding and Verplanck, of
Halleck and his friend Drake, of N. P. Willis and Morris and
Woodworth. Some of these are today only "single-poem" men, like
Payne, the author of "Home Sweet Home," just as Key, the author
of "The Star-Spangled Banner," is today a "single-poem" man of an
earlier generation.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134