The lurking dagger, and the turbid storms
Of wasting war with death in all its forms.
Nor aught could daunt. Unspeakably serene,

Thy conscious soul smiled o'er the dreadful scene."

I pass over the tributes to Brown, Scammel, and Laurens, which, according to the Journal de Paris, "will ever be read with sympathetic sorrow." One more passage must suffice for the dark side of the picture, and in it you will find two lines which come nearer to truth of coloring than any we have yet read:

"What! when you fled before superior force,
Each succor lost, and perished each resource!
When nature, fainting from the want of food,
On the white snow your steps were marked in blood!
When through your tattered garbs you met the wind!
Despair before, and ruin frowned behind!"

Peace approaches:

"Anon the horrid sounds of war shall cease,
And all the Western world be hushed in peace:
The martial clarion shall be heard no more,
Nor the loud cannon's desolating roar :
No more our heroes pour the purple flood,
No corse be seen with garments rolled in blood;
No shivering wretch shall roam without a shed:
No pining orphans raise their cry for bread;
No tender mother shriek at dreams of woe,
Start from her sleep, and see the midnight foe;
The lovely virgin, and the hoary sire,
No more behold the village flame aspire,

While the base spoiler, from a father's arms

Plucks the fair flower, and riots on its charms."

Do you not recognize in these lines a mingled imitation of Pope and Goldsmith? It is still more evident in the following passage, which is, perhaps, a nearer approach to real poetry than any he ever

wrote.

66

Then, O my friends! the task of glory done,
Th' immortal prize by your bold efforts won;
Your country's saviours by her voice confessed,
While unborn ages rise and call you blest,
Then let us go where happier climes invite,
To midland seas, and regions of delight;
With all that's ours, together let us rise,
Seek brighter plains, and more indulgent skies;
Where fair Ohio rolls his amber tide,
And Nature blossoms in her virgin pride;

Where all that beauty's hand can form to please
Shall crown the toils of war with rural ease.
The shady coverts, and the sunny hills,
The gentle lapse of ever-murm'ring rills,
The soft repose amid the noontide bowers,
The evening walk among the blushing flowers,
The fragrant groves that yield a sweet perfume,
And vernal glories in perpetual bloom,

Await you there; and heaven shall bless the toil,
Your own the produce, as your own the toil."

"The Happiness of America" does not, strictly speaking, come within the limits of my subject, for it was not written till after the war. I allude to it however, because, although in nearly the same style, it is a much more poetical specimen of that style than the "Address." And that it was looked upon by Humphreys's contemporaries as a true

poem, or at least as a work of great merit, may be fairly inferred from the fact that it passed through ten editions in the author's lifetime. If I should be thought to have dwelt longer upon Humphreys's defects than the subject required, remember that in the eyes of his contemporaries he was more especially the poet of the Revolution, that he was the first to attempt a picture in verse of the scenes of the war, and the first to whose pages Europeans went for indications of the poetical promise of the new nation.

It is with reluctance that I pass by that singular instance of African genius, Boston trained, Phillis Wheatley, whose verses lose nothing by a comparison with those of Dwight and Barlow. Freneau's Muse, too, began her multitudinous labors while the war was still raging, producing, at least, one piece of real value, the lines on the battle of Eutaw; and other names might be added to the catalogue, if to make a catalogue were my aim. But it is the character of the poetry that we are studying, and the true nature of the poetical element, and these are best found in the writings of the acknowledged masters of song.

We have seen that in their serious attempts these masters failed. In humorous poetry, however, one among them was, if not fully successful, yet enough so to deserve honorable mention among the writers of his class, and to interest and amuse even the readers of an age familiar with the keen

satire of Lowell and the sparkling wit of Holmes. This was John Trumbull, of Connecticut, whose long life, beginning in 1750, reached down to 1831: the friend and fellow-laborer of Dwight, and Humphreys, and Barlow, yet living to see with his own eyes the birth of a new literature, and read the early verses of Bryant and Longfellow. Trumbull's serious poems are neither very numerous nor very good. The longest of them is an "Elegy on the Times," written at Boston during the operation of the Port Bill. I select the closing stanzas both as the best and because they express with much force an opinion, which does not seem to have been confined to poets, that the loss of the Colonies would be the ruin of England:

:

"And where is Britain? In the skirt of day,
Where stormy Neptune rolls his utmost tide,
Where suns oblique diffuse a feeble ray,

And lonely streams the fated coasts divide,

"Seest thou yon Isle, whose desert landscape yields
The mournful traces of the fame she bore,
Whose matted thorns oppress th' uncultured fields,
And piles of ruin load the dreary shore?

"From those loved seats, the virtues sad withdrew
From fell corruption's bold and venal hand;

Reluctant Freedom waved her last adieu,

And devastation swept the vassalled land.

"On her white cliffs, the pillars once of fame,
Her melancholy Genius sits to wail,

Drops the fond tear, and o'er her latest shame
Bids dark oblivion draw th' eternal veil," *

But Trumbull's true field was satire, not the elaborate didactic satire of Pope, but the swift moving, narrative satire of Butler. Hudibras must have been his favorite study; and it must be acknowledged that he, more than once, caught the spirit of his great master. His verse has something of the same rapid and spontaneous flow, and his rhymes come with something of the same ease from remote distances. It should be remembered, however, that while Butler's style is the low burlesque, Trumbull, with great judgment, has chosen the high.†

But Butler's wit was fed from an exhaustless fountain of learning. He not only surprises you by the novelty and variety of his illustrations, but often compels you to pause and follow out the trains of thought that he suggests. Trumbull's subject, it may be said, would hardly have admitted of this, but it is equally certain that his learning fell far short of that apparent mastery over the whole field of erudition, which was a principal source of Butler's power.

The earliest of his humorous

poems was

"The

*An "Elegy on the Times," Trumbull's Works, Vol. II. (205) 217.

† See Trumbull's letter to the Marquis de Chastellux in the Appendix to the second volume of Goodrich's edition of Trumbull's Works.