"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation, (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,-- He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole, "He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter_ _Nos_, we don't want _extra_ freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities-- To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, If you could only palm yourself off for a mountain. Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth. No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, By attempting to stretch him up into a giant: If you choose to compare him, I think there are two persons fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper; I don't mean exactly,--there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,-- A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,-- A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic; He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written.