much as they show rhetorical skill and training. Reading Wilde's poems give one rather the sensation of marking time than of advancing. Even in the descriptive passages, in which his accumulation of detail has a certain effect, he does not so much produce a picture as recount the objects he would like to combine into one. Perhaps his most successful description is that of the burning pine forest in "Hesperia," I, 61-65.

In that poem, as in the "Ode to Ease," Byron's influence is evident; as well the philosophy as the plan of the poem-descriptions and reflections strung on the thread of a journey-recall "Childe Harold," and we have Wilde's personal testimony in his sonnet to his admiration for Byron, in which, of course, he was typical of the period. Altogether, in spite of its entire lack of narrative interest, this posthumous poem, "Hesperia" (Hesperia, A Poem by Richard Henry Wilde, Edited by his Son, Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1867) is the most valuable as it is the most ambitious of his poetical works. It is also the most interesting, though it is without plot or hero, beginning or end. The interest lies in the key it gives to the character of Wilde himself, whom we learn to know as a man of deep feeling and elevation of character, whose emotion must alter itself in verse but never succeeds in refining itself into poetry; the result has definite value for the student as an example of the literary ambitions and tastes of a widely-traveled, well-read, and thoughtful American of the mid-Nineteenth Century.

"Hesperia" shows an intimate personal acquaintance with all the eastern half of the United States. In its four cantos, Florida, Virginia, Acadia, and Louisiana, there are few picturesque localities, from the everglades to Massachusetts, and, turning south again, from the source of the Mississippi to New Orleans, that are not described or at least mentioned. Whenever Wilde refers to his own thoughts and feelings the tone is that of settled melancholy. In the dedication to the Marchioness Manfredina di Coenza, he writes: "You once advised me to attempt a poem of some length in hopes that an occupation suitable to my inclinations might divert my inexpressible weariness of life and spirit.

"You may remember my telling you some of the difficulties of such an undertaking. Few write well, except from personal experience-from what they have seen and felt-and modern life, in America especially, is utterly commonplace. It wants the objects and events which are essential to poetry-excludes all romance, and admits of but one enthusiasm.

"In addition to these inherent obstacles came my own want of invention, and the impossibility of adopting a foreign story, because the scenes and manners to be painted were unknown to me."

Compare with these words the stanzas 6-11 of the Canto I, and we have Wilde's greatest weakness expressed in his own wordsinability to extract poetry from the life around him. It is the same old complaint, sounded then as now, on this side of the Atlantic and the other "America is the land of deadly prose"-and it is true that the United States of Dickens's 'American Notes' does not seem a poetical country. Then, as now, there was gigantic energy in the country, but very little of it was expended on art. Moreover, such poetry as we had had barely begun to emerge from the imitative period. Poets, so called, there were in plenty-Wilde is only one of one hundred and twelve treated in Rufus Griswold's 'Poets and Poetry in America,'* but to the American public of the 'thirties, poetry meant generally picturesque verse on Old-World themes, or, on the other hand, elaborate treatment of American history in the manner of Scott or Moore. Already the demand was for a "national" poet, for the national note had been already sounded in politics; but while one field was filled with the figures of Calhoun, Webster, and Andrew Jackson, poetry makes but a poor show in comparison, with Poe, Bryant, and Longfellow. Wilde recognized at least the reason. for the state of literature among us-our youthful civilization; but to fill the gap, by celebrating the life of America in a medium adapted to that life, and in a spirit worthy of our highest ideals, was for him, as it has remained for most of his successors, beyond his power.

He is at his best in philosophical reflection and satire, but even in his bitterest moods he does not attack persons, either types or individuals, but pure abstractions-as in his apostrophes to gold, Canto I, 94-106, and to the sword, II, 79-89. It would be interesting to know the date of the passage on evolution in Canto I, 42:

"In Nature . . . scorn superlative

Of individual life throughout we trace

And watchfulness unceasing o'er the race."

It was certainly written before stanza 55 of "In Memoriam," which was not published till three years after Wilde's death. The coincidence is interesting. Tennyson's lines are:

"Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life."

In still another, and that the first of these apostrophes, the riddle of human life and fate is the subject, and in stanzas 44-49 of Canto *Ninth edition, Philadelphia, 1845.

III the mystery and awe of the stars in their courses, obeying the one "almighty everlasting power" of motion, are the inspiration of lines that remind the reader of the passage in "The City of Dreadful Night," beginning "How the moon triumphs through the endless nights." Here Wilde refuses belief in any other power than Fate, which he identifies with motion. But he is not consistently a skeptic. In the very next context he declares his belief in Divine Mercy. Most probably, like very many other pessimists, he made no attempt to be consistent in his philosophy; and before the end of the poem it is plain enough that personal griefs-griefs surely real though only shadowed forth-were the causes that lamed both his philosophy and his faith. In a less degree, but truly as in Thomson's case, the enemy must have been within-a "too quick sense of constant infelicity"-the old story of a will crippled by the corrosion of a melancholy it could not or would not shake off.

Lewis Parke Chamberlayne.

AMERICA TOO YOUNG FOR POETRY
Selections from "Hesperia."

For here is matter that the eye and mind
Heart, fancy, memory, could brood upon,
The deep pine forest waving in the wind,
The rapids hoarsely murmuring as they run,
The town within its zone of hills enshrined,
The broad, bright river glittering in the sun-
Such are the sights and sounds that might engage
Man's better thoughts in this lone heritage.

And these are much and all!-what want we here
Of Arqua, but the poet's home and grave?
The woods are all as green, the skies as clear:
Nor is the sun less warm, less pure the wave:
But wanting these, the memories that endear
Spots haunted by the good or wise or brave,
Stream, grove, cliff, fountain, cataract and lake
Transient and slight emotions only wake!

Sweet as Egeria's, bore it but her name,
We have full many a grotto-guarded spring:
Streams not unworthy of Illysus' fame,

Did classic recollections only fling

Grace on their urns-mountains that well might claim
Eagles and poets of as bold a wing

As soared above Parnassus-vales that vie
With Tempé, in the hues of earth and sky!

But the heart seeks, and has forever sought,
Something that man has suffered or enjoyed,
And without human passion, action, thought,
Nature however beautiful is void:

'T is from deep feeling Poetry is wrought;
Such is the spell her master minds employed.
What wins for Arden's wood one Briton's tear
But pensive Jaques with his poor stricken deer?

Could we our country's scenery invest

With history or legendary lore,

Give to each valley an immortal guest,

Repeople with the past the desert shore,

Pass out where Hampdens bled or Shakespeares rest, Exult o'er Memory's exhaustless store,

As our descendants centuries hence may do

We should-and then shall have our poets too!

THE BURNING PINE FOREST

(A description of a tornado.)

And scarcely less terrific and sublime
The kindred element's triumphal glare,
Whose flaming wreaths like fiery dragons climb,
Hiss, dart, and flicker in the midnight air,
Making in hours a ruin which old Time
Even in a century can scarce repair;

How the red torrent drives before the wind
A blazing sea with burning wrecks behind!

Onward and onward still, the flames extend
On every side, as far and fast as eye

Can follow clouds of smoke and sparks ascend,
Dimming the stars and crimsoning the sky,
Whose mingled tints a livid lustre lend
Once more upon the conflagration gaze!
To the pale streams that rush in terror by,
As with loud crash, huge burning masses fall,
And startled echo answers to their call!

Thousands of mighty victims prostrate glow;
Round tens of thousands still the flames aspire,
Drunk with the resinous tears and sweat that flow
Wrung out by torture, and with fierce desire
Quaffed off, as is the blood of mortal foe
By the relentless savage in his ire:

Here is a burnt offering that might claim
Acceptance even by the God of Flame!

Those boundless colonnades of burning pine,
Even more than Moscow's ruins might amaze
Man's mind, as something wondrous and divine!
Column, arch, dome and tower and chancel blaze,
Spirit of Fire! thy palace or thy shrine.

Dark Eblis, come! this dwelling thou alone
Canst challenge! Come! ascend thy fiery throne!

APOSTROPHE TO GOLD

In my hot youth I did account thee base,
Forswore thy worship and renounced thy name,
Defied thy touch, ay! and blasphemed thy face
For empty Pleasure and still emptier Fame:
What brought they? Disappointment and Disgrace,
Imputed faults and genius-pride and shame-
False friends, that cooled, and summer loves, that flew
With the first wintry withering blasts that blew.