His biting satires on the grim old Puritans, quaint and cruel, godly and greedy, forgiving any thing to no men except their own pet sins to themselves, most clamorous for tolerance to their own creed, most intolerant to that of all others, are most refreshing in this age of cant and fulsome section-adulation. The following stanzas, in a bolder vein, following up his expedition of Mather’s mendacity, are as sublime as they are bold and independent— XVII. No: a born Poet at his cradle fire The Muses nursed him as their bud unblown, And gave him, as his mind grew high and higher, Their ducal strawberry leaf’s unwreathed renown. Alas! that mightiest masters of the lyre, Whose pens above an eagle’s heart have grown, In all the proud nobility of wing, Should stoop to dip their points in passion’s poison spring. XVIII. For Milton, weary of his youth’s young wife, To her, to king, to church, to law untrue, Warred for divorce and discord to the knife, And proudest wore his plume of darkest hue: And Dante, when his Florence, in her strife, Robbed him of office and his temper, threw ’Mongst friends and foes a bomb-shell of fierce rhymes, Shivering their names and fames to all succeeding times. The two closing stanzas of this fragment are so perfectly, chastely and inimitably beautiful, that they induce a strong hope that Mr. Halleck’s fastidious judgment—for it is neither indolence of habit, nor difficulty of composition, which keeps our poet for periods so long and tedious behind the curtain, but the severe taste and chariness of his muse, which causes him to reject as unworthy of his pen what most writers would rejoice to put forward as the cope-stone of their renown—will suffer him ere long to give us his “Connecticut” entire. XXIV. Beneath thy star, as one of the THIRTEEN, Land of my lay! through many a battle’s night, Thy gallant men stepped, steady and serene, To that war-music’s stern and strong delight. Where bayonets clenched above the trampled green, Where sabres grappled in the ocean fight; In siege, in storm, on deck or rampart, there They hunted the wolf Danger to his lair, And sought and won sweet peace, and wreaths for Honor’s hair. XXV. And with thy smiles, sweet Peace, came woman’s, bringing The Eden sunshine of her welcome kiss, And lover’s flutes, and children’s voices singing The maiden’s promised, matron’s perfect bliss, And heart and home-bells blending with their ringing Thank-offerings borne to holier words than this, And the proud Queen of Glory’s laurel leaves, And gold, the gift to Peace, of Plenty’s summer sheaves.