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With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired
for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective.
Nothing can be better than--
---------------the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Down the corridors of Time.
The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on the
whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance
of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the
sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. This
"ease" or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion
to regard as ease in appearance alone--as a point of really difficult
attainment. But not so:--a natural manner is difficult only to him who
should never meddle with it--to the unnatural. It is but the result of
writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone,
in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would
adopt--and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The
author who, after the fashion of "The North American Review," should
be upon all occasions merely "quiet," must necessarily upon many
occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be
considered "easy" or "natural" than a Cockney exquisite, or than the
sleeping Beauty in the waxworks.
Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the
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