Let us reduce all this to plain English, and we have--what? Why, a flag, consisting of the "azure robe of night," "set with stars of glory," interspersed with "streaks of morning light," relieved with a few pieces of "the milky way," and the whole carried by an "eagle bearer," that is to say, an eagle ensign, who bears aloft this "symbol of our chosen land" in his "mighty hand," by which we are to understand his claw. In the second stanza, the "thunder-drum of Heaven" is bathetic and grotesque in the highest degree--a commingling of the most sublime music of Heaven with the most utterly contemptible and common-place of Earth. The two concluding verses are in a better spirit, and might almost be supposed to be from a different hand. The images contained in the lines, When Death careering on the gale Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back, Before the broadside's reeling rack, are of the highest order of Ideality. The deficiencies {334} of the whole poem may be best estimated by reading it in connection with "Scots wha hae," with the "Mariners of England," or with "Hohenlinden." It is indebted for its high and most undeserved reputation to our patriotism--not to our judgment. The remaining poems in Mr. Dearborn's edition of Drake, are three Songs; Lines in an Album; Lines to a Lady; Lines on leaving New Rochelle; Hope; A Fragment; To ----; Lines; To Eva; To a Lady; To Sarah; and Bronx. These are all poems of little compass, and with the exception of Bronx and a portion of the Fragment, they have no character distinctive from the mass of our current poetical literature. Bronx, however, is in our opinion, not only the best of the writings of Drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem, upon which his admirers would do better to found a hope of the writer's ultimate reputation than upon the _niaiseries_ of the _Culprit Fay_. In the _Fragment_ is to be found the finest individual passage in the volume before us, and we quote it as a proper finale to our Review. Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever; How sweet 'twould be _when all the air In moonlight swims_, along thy river To couch upon the grass, and hear Niagara's everlasting voice Far in the deep blue west away; That dreamy and poetic noise We mark not in the glare of day, Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry, When o'er the brink the tide is driven, _As if the vast and sheeted sky In thunder fell from Heaven_. * * * * * Halleck's poetical powers appear to us essentially inferior, upon the whole, to those of his friend Drake. He has written nothing at all comparable to _Bronx_. By the hackneyed phrase, _sportive elegance_, we might possibly designate at once the general character of his writings and the very loftiest praise to which he is justly entitled.