Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined-- _The Delphian vales, the Palestines, The Meccas of the mind_. * * * * * _They linger by the Doon's low trees, And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr_, And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries! The Poet's tomb is there. _Wyoming_ is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines which follow are of great beauty. I then but dreamed: thou art before me now, In life--a vision of the brain no more, I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow, That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er; And now, _where winds thy river's greenest shore, Within a bower of sycamores am laid; And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head_. The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some portions of Alnwick Castle--with such things as he would look _particularly droll_ In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume; and a girl of sweet sixteen Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn _Without a shoe or stocking--hoeing corn_, mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty. _The Field of the Grounded Arms_ contains twenty-four quatrains, without rhyme, and, we think, of a {336} disagreeable versification. In this poem are to be observed some of the finest passages of Halleck. For example-- Strangers! your eyes are on that valley fixed Intently, as we gaze on vacancy, _When the mind's wings o'erspread The spirit world of dreams_. And again-- _O'er sleepless seas of grass whose waves are flowers_. _Red-Jacket_ has much power of expression with little evidence of poetical ability. Its humor is very fine, and does not interfere, in any great degree, with the general tone of the poem. _A Sketch_ should have been omitted from the edition as altogether unworthy of its author. The remaining pieces in the volume are _Twilight_; _Psalm_ cxxxvii; _To ****_; _Love_; _Domestic Happiness_; _Magdalen_; _From the Italian_; _Woman_; _Connecticut_; _Music_; _On the Death of Lieut. William Howard Allen_; _A Poet's Daughter_; and _On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake_. Of the majority of these we deem it unnecessary to say more than that they partake, in a more or less degree, of the general character observable in the poems of Halleck. The _Poet's Daughter_ appears to us a particularly happy specimen of that general character, and we doubt whether it be not the favorite of its author. We are glad to see the vulgarity of I'm busy in the cotton trade And sugar line, omitted in the present edition. The eleventh stanza is certainly not English as it stands--and besides it is altogether unintelligible. What is the meaning of this?