New Orleans daily crescent., 1866-10-15

time, and it is wrought with beauty and chaste-
ness almost worthy of the best days of EIizahethan
fanees. The versiication is bold and free, and
quaint, to an extent which would be Objectionable
were it not the medium of marked poetic power,
for the most part quite artistically ruled. The
following lines will abundautly illustrate what we
have said:
Backwards up the glossy glen
Turned and trooped the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
Come buy, come buy
When they reached where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss, ...
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signaling each other
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
One reared his plate
One began to weave q crown
OF ftendrils, leaves and rough nuts brown,
(Men sell not such in any town.;
One heaved the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her;
Come buy, come buy was still their cry.
Laura started, but did not stir,
Longed but had no money;
The whsk-tailed merchant bade her taste,
In tones as smooth as honey,
The cattaeed purred,
The ratpaeed spoke word
Of welcome, and the snailpaced even was
heard
One parrot-voiced and Jolly
Cried Pretty Goblin still for Pretty Polly :
One wliistled like bird"
In the "Goblin Market, as in several Others of
the pieces, there are expressions and comparisons
whichare certainly open to exception. Bloom
down-cheeked peaches is so for several reasons:
Primarily for its unpoetical harshness of sound ;
secondly, for the obscurity of meaning thirdly
for the faulty composition of the epithet
"Bloom" and ''down," with respect to peaches
mean the same thing. In the lines,
Laura stretched her cleaning neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck
Like moonlitpoplar branch,
Like vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone,n
The last simile violates the very prime canon of
criticism. Certainly no one knows how "avessel
at the launch" stretches "her cleaning neck,n at
ALL still less does any one know it, as one should
for the purpose of comparison, better than he
knows the thing compared to it. The express
sion,
The moon bends her arc,"
And the word succous,"
The expressions,
Mad to tug her standard down."
g But not one goblin shuiYied after"
With the epithet windy-paced," will all be
judged open to criticism by polished taste, and
might be easily improved.
To dismiss at once such minor ldpSus as these,
let US say that the authoress falls into sesquipe-
dalianism and reduplicaton rather too frequently
and harahly not to raise exception. AS instances,
read, in their connections
dashed by tides o5st-eperously;"
one shamed herself in love; one tenn
Grew gross in soulless love, sluggish
can erecra57e appetite arose;n
And it will be found that it is not merely to the
length Of the words to which we call attention
Whatever authority Miss Rossettf may think she
has for writing Save myself" and Save only
4" the general decision she will find to be- that
they are not admissible in this day even as poeti.
cal licenses; and although she might be led into
the anachronism of quoting from Milton's Lyei-
das,
"Alas! tohat boots 1t with incessant care
To tend the homely, sighted, shepherds
trade
And strictly mediate the thankless Muse p,
In justification of her,
" Life is not sweet. One day it will be sweet
10 shut our eyes and die i
Nor feel the wild.fowers blow, nor birds dart by
With lifting butterfly,
StVA SiaSS grow 4ouS dDON6 our ieaQS ana feet,
Nor hear the happy lark that scars sI,j-tigb,
NOR sigh that spring is feet and summer fleet
Nor mark the waxing wheat,
Nor know who sits in our accustomed seat"
Yet the objection that "sky hight approaches
too much to a T1!garism not to interfere with
poetic beauty viii undoubtedly be held to be
good one as would have been similar one to
" what boots it," had this phrase been in Milton,s
day, as yulgarized as it is in ours
AS Palgrave with equal taste and justice saws
however, in the preface to that beautiful little
collection, the Golden Treasury of Songs and
Lyrics" published in England by Macmillan s.
Co.: " ESeellence should be looked for rather in
the whole than in the parts." Those who read
Miss Rossetti's poems in this spirit will only do
them justice and will undoabtedly derive great
pleasure. If we have pointed out what NAV be
considered as blemishea to be occasionally found
IN them, it is not with desire that this should be
considered as at all marring the enjoyment of the
general reader, but rather of awakening his mind
o fuller appreciation Of how l4uch delicate
senius, chaste thought, attractive sersfcation,
md felicitous expression are to be found in them
We close our notice of Miss Rossett net without
oping to hear from her again before long, with
IAN END
Love, strong as Death is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers!
green turf at his head;
And stone at his feet,
WhprpnD yVn may Git