Bret Harte's emphasised modernity has, in its own sphere, won
equal, or almost equal, triumphs. Wit, pathos, humour, realism,
exaggeration, and romance are in this marvellous story all blended
together, and out of the very clash and chaos of these things comes life
itself. And what a curious life it is, half civilised and half
barbarous, naive and corrupt, chivalrous and commonplace, real and
improbable! Cressy herself is the most tantalising of heroines. She is
always eluding one's grasp. It is difficult to say whether she
sacrifices herself on the altar of romance, or is merely a girl with an
extraordinary sense of humour. She is intangible, and the more we know
of her, the more incomprehensible she becomes. It is pleasant to come
across a heroine who is not identified with any great cause, and
represents no important principle, but is simply a wonderful nymph from
American backwoods, who has in her something of Artemis, and not a little
of Aphrodite.

* * * * *

It is always a pleasure to come across an American poet who is not
national, and who tries to give expression to the literature that he
loves rather than to the land in which he lives. The Muses care so
little for geography! Mr. Richard Day's Poems have nothing distinctively
American about them. Here and there in his verse one comes across a
flower that does not bloom in our meadows, a bird to which our woodlands
have never listened. But the spirit that animates the verse is simple
and human, and there is hardly a poem in the volume that English lips
might not have uttered. Sounds of the Temple has much in it that is
interesting in metre as well as in matter:--

Then sighed a poet from his soul:
'The clouds are blown across the stars,
And chill have grown my lattice bars;
I cannot keep my vigil whole
By the lone candle of my soul.

'This reed had once devoutest tongue,
And sang as if to its small throat
God listened for a perfect note;
As charily this lyre was strung:
God's praise is slow and has no tongue.'

But the best poem is undoubtedly the Hymn to the Mountain:--

Within the hollow of thy hand--
This wooded dell half up the height,
Where streams take breath midway in flight--
Here let me stand.

Here warbles not a lowland bird,
Here are no babbling tongues of men;
Thy rivers rustling through the glen
Alone are heard.

Above no pinion cleaves its way,
Save when the eagle's wing, as now,
With sweep imperial shades thy brow
Beetling and grey.

What thoughts are thine, majestic peak?
And moods that were not born to chime
With poets' ineffectual rhyme
And numbers weak?

The green earth spreads thy gaze before,
And the unfailing skies are brought
Within the level of thy thought.
There is no more.

The stars salute thy rugged crown
With syllables of twinkling fire;
Like choral burst from distant choir,
Their psalm rolls down.

And I within this temple niche,
Like statue set where prophets talk,
Catch strains they murmur as they walk,
And I am rich.