Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-03-27
will quote it

On his quarry in the desert,
On the SICK or wounded bison,
But another vHlture. watching
| From his high aerial look out,
! Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third puTsues the secOnd,
| Coming from the invisible ether
First speck, and then vulture,
" Ii | the air is dark with pinions
So disasters come not sin.ly;
But as il they watched and waited,
| Scanning one another's motions.
| When the first descends the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded
| First a shadow, then a sorrow,
! Till the air is dark with anguish"
! 1t has been said tina. the idea of this is
not original. OF course it is net The
idea is common to the human race, be-
cause it is the suggestion Of human ex-
perience. But it is none the less true that
it has never been expressed 80 beautifully
by any other poet. And in this complete
expression of ideas which have long been
familiar to the human family, lies the
attraction and the power of all the poets
who 8 tir and enchain the hearts of the
multitude. 1t is the craving for sympathy,
for the utterance Of the sentiments which
lie locked up in the hearts of millions of
tuneless poet" which causes them to
welcome even the platitudes Of q Upper
when they embody the fruits of a common
| experience. How much more should the
grace and the must, of Longfellow's
verse charm and soothe the world chafed
and life-wearied crowds who found in his
poems so much of the freshness and the
! light and the sweetness which, alas, had
passed away from them beyond recall.
Not to him must be awarded the palm
for embodying the loftiest aspirations and
most profound thoughts of his day. There
is deeper and a more virile thought in
Tennyson's 4" In Memoriam " than in any.
thing Longfellow wrote. There is mas.
siveness and strength in some of Brown
ing's best work which the American poet
could not reach But it does not follow
that he occupied an inferior position to
any of his contemporaries For who shall
determine whether it is the higher and
the nobler work to voice the uttermost
! speculations of the strongest minds con-
corning the mystery of being or to be the
mOuthpiece Of the simpler and more com.
mon and unambitious life whose tide
swells and sinks all around US? Longfel-
low was not the first but the second of
these. He was emphatically and distinc
lively poet of the People. Yet it must
be said also that he was very much more
than reflector of popular yearnipgs and
ideas. He took the experiences common
to the race, and he so combined them with
elevating and ennobling sentiments as to
make OF them both lessons and consultations.
And in this idealization of real life con-
sists much of his charm for the average
reader, since of all the resources Of the
intellect there is assuredly most demand
fer Imagination, wherewith to disguise
The harshnesses and conceal the deformities
Of the Actual.
Longfellow was decidedly the most arts.
tic of American poets. He had made
study of melody. He had attained an al.
most faultless precision in the choice of
words and phrases. His measures were
carefully polished, yet seemingly easy and
unrestrained. He knew the ars celare
artem which is the crowning triumph OF