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Sun-streaks, and glancing wings, and sky
Spotted with cloud-shapes, charm my eye;
While murmuring grass, and waving trees
Their leaf-harps sounding to the breeze,
And water tones that tinkle near
Blend their sweet music to my ear;
And by the changing shades alone,
The passage of the hours is known."

He is a true Flemish painter, seizing upon objects in all their verisimilitude. As we read him, wild flowers peer up from among brown leaves; the drum of the partridge, the ripple of waters, the flickering of autumn light, the sting of sleety snow, the cry of the panther, the roar of the winds, the melody of birds, and the odor of crushed pine-boughs, are present to our senses. In a foreign land, his poems would transport us at once to home. He is no second-hand limner, content to furnish insipid copies, but draws from reality. His pictures have the freshness of originals. They are graphic, detailed, never untrue, and often vigorous; he is essentially an American poet. His range is limited; but he has had the good sense not to wander from his sphere, candidly acknowledging that the heart of man has not furnished him the food for meditation, which inspires a higher class of poets. He is emphatical

A complete and beautiful edition of Mr. Street's poems, in a large octavo volume of more than three hundred pages, was published by Messrs. Clark & Austin of the city of New York. The following criticism of it appeared in the Democratic Review, and we cannot better impart to the general reader an idea of Mr. Street's mental characteristics, than by transferring it, beautifully written as it is, to our pages. It was originally published anonymously, but is understood to be from the fine and graphic pen of H. T. Tuckerman, and was republished in "A Sketch of American Literature," by Mr. Tuckerman, appended to Shaw's "Com-ly an observer. In England we notice plete Manual of English Literature: "

"God has arrayed this continent with a sublime and characteristic beauty, that should endear its mountains and streams

to the American heart; and whoever ably depicts the natural glory of America, touches a chord which should yield responses of admiration and loyalty. In this point of view alone, then, we deem the minstrel who ardently sings of forest and sky, river and highland, as eminently worthy of respectful greeting. This merit we confidently claim for the author of these poems. That he is deficient occasionally in high finish-that there is repetition and monotony in his strain that there are redundant epithets, and a lack of variety in his effusions, we confess, at the outset, is undeniable; and having frankly granted all this to the critics, we feel at liberty to utter his just praise with equal sincerity. Street has an eye for Nature in all her moods. He has not roamed the woodlands in vain, nor have the changeful seasons passed him by without leaving vivid and lasting impressions. These his verse records with unusual fidelity and genuine emotion. We have wandered with him on a summer's afternoon, in the neighbourhood of his present residence, and stretched ourselves upon the greensward beneath the leafy trees, and can therefore testify that he observes, con amore, the play of shadows, the twinkle of swaying herbage in the sunshine, and all the phenomena that make the outward world so rich in meaning to the attentive gaze.

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that these qualities have been recognized; his Lost Hunter' was finely illustrated in a recent London periodical - thus affording the best evidence of the picturesque fertility of his muse. Many of his pieces, also, glow with patriotism. His Gray Forest Eagle' is a noble lyric, full of spirit; his forest scenes are minutely, and, at the same time, elaborately true; his Indian legends and descriptions of the seasons have a native zest which we have rarely encountered. Without the classic elegance of Thomson, he excels him in graphic power. There is nothing metaphysical in his turn of mind, or highly artistic in his style; but there is an honest directness and cordial faithfulness about him, that strikes us as remarkably appropriate and manly. Delicacy, sentiment, ideal enthusiasm, are not his by nature; but clear, bold, genial insight and feeling he possesses to a rare degree; and on these grounds we welcome his poems, and earnestly advise our readers to peruse them attentively, for they worthily depict the phases of Nature, as she displays herself in this land, in all her solemn magnificence and serene beauty."

We extract also a portion of an elaborate and exquisite criticism upon the same volume, which appeared in a late number of the American Review, written by its editor, George H. Colton.

"The rhymed pieces are of different degrees of excellence. There are quite too many careless lines, and here and there is an accent misplaced, or a heavy

word forced into light service; but the rhythm in general runs with an equable and easy strength, the more worthy of regard because so evidently unartificial; and there is often — not in the simply narrative pieces, like 'The Frontier Inroad' or Morannah,' but in the frequent minute pictures of Nature - a heedless but delicate movement of the measure, a lingering of expression corresponding with some dreamy abandonment of thought to the objects dwelt upon, or a rippling lapse of language where the author's mind seemed conscious of playing with them-caught, as it were, from the flitting of birds among leafy boughs, from the subtle wanderings of the bee, and the quiet brawling of woodland brooks over leaves and pebbles.

As, on his flapping wing, the crow
O'er passes, heavily and slow.

All steeped in that delicious charm
Peculiar to our land,

That comes, ere Winter's frosty arm
Knits Nature's icy band;

The purple, rich and glimmering smoke That forms the Indian Summer's cloak,

When, by soft breezes fanned, For a few precious days he broods Amidst the gladdened fields and woods.

See, on this edge of forest lawn,

Where sleeps the clouded beam, A doe has led her spotted fawn To gambol by the stream; Beside yon mullein's braided stalk They hear the gurgling voices talk; While, like a wandering gleam, The yellow-bird dives here and there, A feathered vessel of the air.

"Some liquid lines from 'The Willewemoc in Summer' are an example, at summer;' if an ethereal and dreamy "So also of a short piece called 'Midonce, of Mr. Street's sweetness of versifi-landscape by Cole or Durand is a cation, in any of the usual rhyming measpainting, why not this a poem? ures, and still more of his minute picturing of Nature.

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Blue sky, pearl cloud and golden beam
Beguile my steps this summer day,
Beside the lone and lovely stream,

And mid its sylvan scenes to stray;
The moss, too delicate and soft
To bear the tripping bird aloft,
Slopes its green velvet to the sedge,
Tufting the mirrored water's edge,
Where the slow eddies wrinkling creep
Mid swaying grass in stillness deep.

"Still more exquisite — exquisite in every sense of the word - unquestionable poetry—is 'The Callikoon in Autumn. The last verse in particular is of

the finest order.

Sleep-like the silence, by the lapse
Of waters only broke,
And the woodpecker's fitful taps
Upon the hollow oak;
And, mingling with the insect hum,
The beatings of the partridge drum,
With now and then a croak,

An August day! a dreamy haze

Films air and mingles with the skies; Sweetly the rich dark sunshine plays, Bronzing each object where it lies. Outlines are melted in the gauze

That Nature veils; the fitful breeze From the thick pine low murmuring draws, Then dies in flutterings through the trees.

"Another piece of a different style, but equally vivid and felicitous, is the prelude to a scene of Skating.' It is impossible not to admire it in every line. It is, by the way, an example almost faultless of measuring the melody by accents, not by syllables.

The thaw came on with its southern wind, And misty, drizzly rain;

The hill-side showed its russet dress,

Dark runnels seamed the plain;
The snow-drifts melted off like breath,
The forest dropped its load,

The lake, instead of its mantle white,
A liquid mirror showed;

It seemed, so soft was the brooding fog,
So fanning was the breeze,
You'd meet with violets in the grass,

And blossoms on the trees.

"In the use of language, more especially in his blank verse, Mr. Street is simple yet rich, and usually very felicitous. This is peculiarly the case in his choice of appellatives, which he selects and applies with an aptness of descriptive beauty not surpassed, if equalled, by any poet among us - certainly by none except Bryant. What is more remarkable quite worthy of note amid the deluge

The thread-like gossamer is waving past,
Borne on the wind's light wing, and to yon

branch

Tangled and trembling, clings like snowy silk.
The thistle-down, high lifted, through the rich
Bright blue, quick float, like gliding stars, and
then

Touching the sunshine, flash and seem to melt
Within the dazzling brilliance.
That aspen, to the wind's soft-fingered touch,
Flutters with all its dangling leaves, as though
Beating with myriad pulses.

Old winding roads are frequent in the woods,
By the surveyor opened years ago,
When through the depths he led his trampling
band,

of diluted phraseology bestowed on us than some passages from 'A September by most modern writers is the almost Stroll '? exclusive use, in his poems, of Saxon words. We make, by no means, that loud objection to Latinisms which many feel called upon to set forth. In some kinds of verse, and in many kinds of prose, they are of great advantage, mellowing the diction, enlarging and enriching the power of expression. Unquestionably they have added much to the compass of the English language. This is more, however, for the wants of philosophy than of poetry - unless it be philosophical poetry. For in our language nearly all the strongest and most picturesque "Besides this observation, keen as the words, verbs, nouns, adjectives, are of Indian hunter's, of all Nature's slight and one and two syllables only; but, also, simple effects in quiet places, Mr. Street nearly all such words are of Saxon origin. has a most gentle and contemplative eye Descriptive poetry, therefore, to be of for the changes which she silently throws any force or felicity, must employ them; over the traces where men have once and it was this, no doubt, that led Mr. been. For instance, in 'The Old Bridge' Street unconsciously it may be to and 'The Forsaken Road.' So of a paschoose them so exclusively. For the sage in 'The Ambush,' which sinks into same reason, Byron, who in power of the mind like the falling of twilight over description is hardly equalled by any an old ruin. other English poet, used them to a greater extent, we believe, than any other moulder of verse' since Chaucer, unless we may except Scott in his narrative verse; Wordsworth, on the other hand, whose most descriptive passages have always a philosophical cast, makes constant draft on Latinized words, losing as much in vigour as he gains in melody and compass. In all Mr. Street's poems the reader will be surprised to find scarcely a single page with more than three or four words of other than Saxon derivation. This extraordinary keeping to one only of the three sources of our language for the Norman-French forms a thirdis owing, in great part, to the fact that his poetry is almost purely descriptive; yet not wholly to this, for any page of Thomson's 'Seasons,' or Cowper's 'Task,' will be found to have four times as many. It is certain, at least, that the use of such language has added immensely to the simplicity, strength, and picturesque effectiveness of Mr. Street's blank verse; and, as a general consideration of style, we recommend the point to the attention of all writers, whose diction is yet unformed, though we hold it a matter of far less importance in prose than in poetry.

"It will not be, difficult to make good all we have said, by choice extracts, except for the difficulty of choosing. What, for example, could be finer in its way

Startling the crouched deer from the under-
brush,

With unknown shouts and axe-blows.
again

there,

Left

To solitude, soon Nature touches in
The wheel-track
Picturesque graces. Hiding, here, in moss
-blocking up the vista,
In bushes-darkening with her soft cool tints
The notches on the trees, and hatchet-cuts
Upon the stooping limbs across the trail
Twisting, in wreaths, the pine's enormous
roots,

And twining, like a bower, the leaves above.
Now skirts she the faint path with fringes deep
Of thicket, where the checkered partridge

hides

Its downy brood, and whence, with drooping
wing,
It limps to lure away the hunter's foot,
Approaching its low cradle; now she coats
The hollow stripped by the surveyor's band
To pitch their tents at night, with pleasant

grass,

So that the doe, its slim fawn by its side,
Amidst the fire-flies in the twilight feeds;
And now she hurls some hemlock o'er the
track,

Splitting the trunk that in the frost and rain
Of umber dust.
Asunder falls, and melts into a strip

"As the painter of landscapes, however, can never rank among the greatest

of painters, so the merely descriptive | O'er the branch-sheltered stream, the laurel poet can never stand with the highest in

hangs

breathes,

But now the wind stirs fresher; darting round
The spider tightens its frail web; dead leaves
Whirl in quick eddies from the mounds; the
snail

his art. It needs a higher power of the Its gorgeous clusters, and the basswood mind, the transforming, the creative. From its pearl-blossoms, fragrance. Mr. Street endeavours only the pictures of external things. He rarely or never idealizes Nature; but Nature unidealized never brings a man into the loftier regions of poetry. For the greatest and highest use of material Nature, to the poet, is that she be made an exhaustless storehouse of imagery; that through her multitude of objects, aspects, influences, subtle sources of contrast and comparison, he should illustrate the universe of the unseen and spiritual. This is to be | TOITS-Maker, CREATOR. It is that strange power of

Imagination bodying forth
The forms of things unknown.

It is to interpret, 'idealize' Nature.

"This is what Mr. Street never attempts. He never gives wing to his imagination. He presents to us only what nature shows to him-nothing farther. Or, if he makes the attempt, striking out into broader and sublimer fields, he is not successful. He is not at home, indeed, when describing the grander features of Nature herself, but only as he is picturing her more minute and delicate lineaments. He can give the tracery of a leaf, or the gauze wings of a droning beetle, better than the breaking up of a world in the Deluge, or the majesty of great mountains

Throning Eternity in icy halls.

A remarkable example of this is the first
piece, Nature.' Through the first part,
where he is describing the Creation, the
Deluge, the sublime scenery in parts of
the world with which his senses are not
actually familiar, his imagination does
not sustain itself, and his verse is com-
paratively lame and infelicitous. But
when he comes to the quiet scenes in
America, which he has seen and felt, he
has such passages
as these, passages
which, in their way, Cowper, Thomson,
Wordsworth or Bryant never excelled.

"Thus of Spring:

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Wafted up,

Creeps to its twisted fortress, and the bird
Crouches amid its feathers.
The stealing cloud with soft gray blinds the
And in its vapory mantle onward steps
sky,
The summer shower; over the shivering grass
It merrily dances, rings its tinkling bells
Upon the dimpling stream, and, moving on,
It treads upon the leaves with pattering feet
And softly murmured music.

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grass,

Drip on the ear, and the far partridge-drum
Like a winged violet, floating in the meek
Rolls like low thunder. The last butterfly,
Pink-coloured sunshine, sinks his velvet feet
Within the pillared mullein's delicate down,
And shuts and opens his unruffled fans.
Lazily wings the crow, with solemn croak,
From tree-top on to tree-top. Feebly chirps
The grasshopper, and the spider's tiny clock
Ticks from its crevice.

"How exquisite are these pictures! with what an appreciation, like the minute stealing in of light among leaves does he touch upon every delicate feature! And then, in how subtle an alembec of the mind must such language have been crystallized. The curiosa felicitas' cannot be so exhibited except by genius.

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"Mr. Street has published too much; he should have taken a lesson from Mr. Bryant. He constantly repeats himself, too, both in subjects and expression. His volume, therefore, appears monotonous and tiresome to the reader; without retrenchment it can hardly become popular. But we shall watch with much interest to see what he can do in other and higher spheres. Meanwhile, however, we give him the right hand of fellowship and gentle regard, for he has filled a part at least, of one great department of the field of poetry, with as exquisite a sense, with as fine a touch, with as loving and faithful an eye, heart and pen, as any one to whom Nature has

ever whispered familiar words in solitary | the volume a poem in a vein somewhat places. different from Mr. Street's usual descriptive efforts.

"In addition to the above, we quote a few felicities of thought and expression from the volume before mentioned.

A fresh damp sweetness fills the scene,
From dripping leaf and moistened earth;
The odor of the wintergreen

Floats on the airs that now have birth.

The whizzing of the humming-bird's swift wings

Spanning gray glimmering circles round its shape.

When the strawberry ripe and red, Is nestling at the roots of the deep grass.

The trees seem fusing in a blaze Of gold-dust sparkling in the air.

Merrily hums the tawny bee.

The wind that shows its forest search
By the sweet fragrance of the birch.

The moving shades

THE HARMONY OF THE UNIVERSE.

God made the world in perfect harmony.
Earth, air, and water, in its order each,
With its innumerable links, compose
But one unbroken chain; the human soul
The clasp that binds it to His mighty arm.

A sympathy throughout each order reigns
A touch upon one link is felt by all
Its kindred, and the influence ceaseth not
Forever. The massed atoms of the earth,
Jarred by the rending of its quivering breast,
Carry the movement in succession through
To the extremest bounds, so that the foot,
Tracking the regions of eternal frost,
Unknowing, treads upon a soil that throbs
With the Equator's earthquake.

The tall oak,

Thundering its fall in Appalachian woods,
Though the stern echo on the ear is lost,
Displaces with its groan the rings of air,
Until the swift and subtle messengers
Bear, each from each, the undulations on

Have wheeled their slow half circles, pointing To the rich palace of eternal Spring

now

To the sunshiny East.

A landscape frequent in the land

Which Freedom with her gifts to bless, Grasping the axe when sheathing brand, Hewed from the boundless wilderness.

And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness.

Where, grasping with its knotted wreath
Of roots the mound-like trunk beneath,
In brown, wet fragments spread,
A young usurping sapling reigned;
Nature, Mezentius-like, had chained
The living with the dead.

Within the clefts of bushes, and beneath
The thickets, raven darkness frowned, but still
The leaves upon the edges of the trees
Preserved their shapes.

A purple haze,

Blurring hill-outlines, glazing dusky nooks,
And making all things shimmer to the eye.
The sunshine twinkles round me, and the wind
Touches my brow with delicate downy kiss.

Through the dark leaves the low descending

sun

Glows like a spot of splendour from the shade
Of Rembrandt's canvas.

Listen - a murmuring sound arises up;
'Tis the commune of Nature- the low talk
She holds perpetually with herself.

That smiles upon the Ganges. Yea, on pass
The quick vibrations through the airy realms,
Not lost, until with Time's last gasp they die.

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Thus naught is lost in that harmonious chain,
That, changing momently, is perfect still.
God, whose drawn breaths are ages, with those
breaths

Till, with one wave of his majestic arm,
He snaps the clasp away, and drops the chain
Again in chaos, shattered by its fall."

Renews their lustre. So 'twill ever be,

In 1842, appeared "The Burning of Schenectady and other Poems" from the pen of Mr. Street.

William Gilmore Simms in the Maga"We end our notice with selecting from zine he established, "The Southern and

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