camp of Porsenna; in the unnatural cruelty of Manlius, decapitating his brave son for a violation of military routine; in Regulus, returning with faith inviolate to death amongst his enemies; and in the spirit of despotic and rigorous authority that pervaded the domestic relations of the ancient Romans. How could it be otherwise, when the will does not seek an accordance with the reason,-when the whole soul does not strive after a harmony of its parts,—when the very law of its existence is discord? The necessary product of the effort for harmony, would have been the development of the imagination, and this would have given birth to a national poetry, which the Romans, as it was, never had.

Of what use are the lessons of the past, if we do not apply them to the present? Americans! you are distinguished for your practical spirit; practise, then, on the wisdom of antiquity. You are disposed to neglect literature, and in the fever of action, to disregard meditation. Take warning in the Romans, or their fate will be for you the hand-writing on the wall,-the Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, of your fortunes.

ART. V.-The Dream of a Day, and other Poems. By JAMES G. PERCIVAL. New-Haven: S. Babcock. 1843.

It would be difficult to find a subject, which has provoked more speculation in the literary world, than the character and prospects of American poetry. The claims of some of our poets to distinction, have been urged with a great deal of justice, and have not been denied in the land of Spencer, Shakspeare and Milton. The names of a few American bards, may already be regarded as classic in the English language. Poetry, however, has not been with us a plant cultivated in the literary hot-house, and watered from the founts of classic lore. It has not been trained, from its earliest development, to creep over the trellis-works of art, designed by the genius of former days. It has rather been the wild flower, springing up in the wood, now upon the margin of the stream, and now from the crevice of the rock,-as Nature may have scattered, hither and thither, the seeds;

shooting up boldly into the air, or clinging to the neighboring trunks, as the sun or the storm may have invited it upward, or forced it to seek for sturdier support. Not the less beautiful, however, have been its tints; not the less sweet its perfume! Like the blossoms which adorn our own broad forests, it has derived its sustenance from the bosom of Nature, and blooms with a beauty, and dispenses a fragrance, which are all its own.

Hence it is that American poetry is almost entirely lyrical. We cannot point to our national epics, which stand in the world of literature, like the stately column, or the majestic pyramid, in the world of art. Poetry, with us, has been the expression, not of studied forms of beauty, which have grown beneath time-hallowed models,-which have been forced upward and outward, until they have occupied a certain definite space, and assumed a certain standard appearance ;-but it has served as the embodyment of those transient emotions of the soul, which are lighted and extinguished in an instant;-whose own intensity soon wears them out, but which, though short-lived as the flash of the lightning, yet, like the lightning, are the most brilliant and most dazzling of flames. Of all the various kinds of poetry, we prefer the lyric. The poetic emotion, when fully felt, is too intense, too overwhelming to be long endured. It has, therefore, required the most stupendous genius to produce a readable epic. A long-drawn poem will become tedious; and hence it has been said that even Homer nods. Of all composition, poetry calls for the greatest compression of thought and feeling. Passion, the very soul of poetry, is far from being wordy. Lord Byron has given, in the following lines, a description as just as it is glowing, of the passion, the inspiration of poetry:

"Could I embody, and unbosom now,

That which is most within me,-could I wreak

My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw

Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,

All that I would have sought, and all I seek,

Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe,-into one word,
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak."

The noble poet, in his own writings, has illustrated the truth of the remarks we have made,-and, in some of his smaller lyrics, has poured out more passion, fire, poetry,— more condensed vehemence of thought and power of expres

sion,-than in his longer and more elaborate poems, great as they are. Where in Childe Harold, where in Don Juan, where in any of his more comprehensive writings, do you find so much beauty of thought and expression, as are condensed in the few lines addressed to Thyrza, commencing "Without a stone to mark the spot,

And say what truth might well have said ?"

We know not how it may be with others, but we have perused this piece again and again, committed it to memory, repeated it over and over, and have learned to admire, nay, to feel an affection for its gifted author, which would never have been inspired to so great an extent by his more extended effusions. The same remark will apply to other smaller compositions of the same distinguished writer. Nay, we would be willing to have the principle applied to the writings of all the eminent English poets, with the exception, perhaps, of Milton, Spencer, and Shakspeare; and were we called upon to strike from the English language one of the three great species of its poetry,-the Epic, the Dramatic, or the Lyric,-it certainly would not be the last. We believe that there is more of the genuine inspiration of the muse contained in the lyrics which have proceeded from the pens of Gray, of Burns, of Campbell, of Moore, and of numberless others of English bards, more or less known to fame, than is contained in all of the massive epics which have given celebrity to the English tongue. There is more of nature in the lyric,-more of art in the epic. The lyric comes like the sunshine or shower of a summer's day; with all the resplendent lustre of the one, or all the terrible grandeur of the other. The sunshine of the epic is prolonged until its strains the vision,-or its gloom is continued until the spirit wearies of the darkness.

There are many obvious reasons to account for the fact that lyric poetry has alone been cultivated, to any great extent, in this country. In the first place, our poets have not had the time to devote to elaborate works. Poetry, with them, has been more a pastime than a regular occupation. Amid the busy avocations of life, some incident has occurred to awake a harmony in their souls. The passion, to give it a shape,-"a local habitation and a name," has been aroused in their bosoms; the moment of leisure comes, and a tender, passionate or patriotic lyric has been offered to the world.

The history of most of our eminent poets would be but the history of men of business, or men of the world. It has not been for them to wander through the ruins of Rome, to muse over the grave of Virgil, to gaze upon the classic Mediterranean, studded with its diamond-like islands, hallowed by a thousand traditions of hoar antiquity. Their muse has never caught inspiration from the clear blue of the Italian skies, nor from the sound of the Ægean wave as it beats upon the shores of rock-ribbed Attica, or of far-famed Marathon. The mount of Parnassus, the grove of Academus, and the spring of Helien, exist alone for them upon the map, which they pored over in their school-boy days. They have not been able, like Tully of old, in the study of oratory, to devote years to the cultivation of the art of poetry. They have not been men who have secluded themselves from the busy world, in the cloisters of a university, surrounded by the musty tomes, which have been collecting for ages, with nothing to do but to study the models before them, and fashion into approved shapes, the crude imaginings of their own brains. On the contrary, they have been men engaged in the active profession and pursuits of life; some, occupied in the daily routine of merchandize, familiar with the day book and the ledger, busily employed in supplying, with the necessaries and luxuries of life, a vast and growing population; others, immersed, hand and soul, in the bitter strife of the political world, zealous and unsparing partizans, unravelling the secrets of government, and entering, with eloquent tongues, or with pens dipped in gall and wormwood, into the fierce contentions of opposing parties: and others still, toiling along the dreary road of professional life, familiar with the mysteries of preparing a writ, or compounding a pill. The fact of it is, that there are causes at work in this country which prevent a man from becoming the mere poet. Sufficient wealth has not yet been amassed, to support such a class idle in the community. Nay, more, the state of the country calls for the active exertions of all of its citizens. A vast territory is yet unreduced from the wilderness. Immense natural resources are yet undeveloped. The country is yet fresh from the hand of its Maker. Our government is new, is based upon novel principles, and its destiny is full of the profoundest interest to the sensitive mind. The word, with our people, is action, action, action. The morning of our national existence has but a little while broken in unri

valled glory; the time for idling, for slumbering, for dreaming, has not yet come. We are now enacting what poets shall hereafter sing of. We leave much of this for the evening of our being. Ambition, avarice, necessity, more than all, a sense of duty, and frequently of self-respect, call the poet forth from his study, from the world of imagination into the world of reality,-to mingle, to converse, and to deal with, not the creatures of a beautiful dream, not the shapes which have started into life, from the penetralia of his own excited imagination, but with men and women, of flesh and blood and bone, whose favor must be won by other means than the poet's song, and who, not unfrequently, entertain a species of contempt (however unmerited) for the literary idler. In a country where labor meets its reward, where energy leads on to fortune, where the avenues to wealth, to influence, to fame are open to all, and where talents, bestowed by the hand of nature, are not oppressed by the arbitrary distinctions of hereditary aristocracy, few men are willing to sacrifice, for a reputation which brings them no great degree of honor, and but a trifling profit on this side the grave, the immediate advantages resulting from an active employment of their talents and energies.

Moreover, the taste of the public calls for the lyric in preference to the epic. This taste has been fostered by the very causes to which we have alluded. Men have not the time to bestow upon reading lengthy compositions. This is shown in the other branches of literature as well as in poetry. Our age is undeniably a reading age, and the American people a reading people; but it is not long and tedious dissertations that they seek and devour. They become disgusted with thoughts that are spun out beyond endurance, as if the author was writing against space. They call for a condensation of ideas; they would have them compressed into the smallest possible space, into a single word if possible, and flashed like lightning upon the mind. The day, when a work of a number of volumes would be purchased and read, is passed in most other countries, and has never arrived in this. The author must take a great deal for granted. He must recollect that he lives in an intelligent age, and is writing for the benefit of men, who can catch at many of his thoughts without his expressing them. Dr. Johnson said that it was his habit and delight, to tear the lights and lives out of the books which he read; in this country, authors should be