But exuberance of fancy, though perhaps the most prominent, is not the only quality inherent in these poems. We have before alluded to the beauty of their rhythm. This we regard as almost faultless. There is a fitness in the choice of each word, and a care in its location, which imparts to every sentence a high finish and proportion. Each line seems flowing onward, with a light and rapid motion, as it were to blend in union with a graceful whole. There are no rough corners that can meet us at the turn of each expression. The eye reposes upon nothing but a surface of unbroken symmetry, and the ear drinks in a music grateful as the murmurs of some meadow stream. We may deny it, if we choose, but there is a “charm in numbers,” and the one who holds it lightly is deficient in his judgment. The profoundest argument that man can frame, or the proudest monument of pure mind that he can offer, derives much of its impressive force from the garb in which it is presented. Unadorned it is the naked statue, modelled thus far by the youthful pupil, and that needs a master’s polish to display it in perfection. The materials for this statue, abstract intellect may, indeed must furnish, but it yet demands the touches of a cultivated taste. That education which has taught us how to reason has done well, but a different knowledge should be added ere we reap its full advantage. He who has cast loose from the firm rock of thought, that his bark may toss on summer seas to fancied shores of pleasure, has exposed himself to shipwreck--but as sad may be the fate of him, who, relying solely on the native strength of his entrenchment, has erected there no battery to render it impregnable. It would be a source of satisfaction, did our time allow the privilege, to trace still farther the idea which we have started, and to make its application to a multitude of cases, but we leave it, with reluctance, to complete our undertaking. As specimens of graceful diction, and an almost boundless play of fancy, there are many of Drake’s pieces which remind us of the brilliant compositions of another poet--one whose harp has breathed forth strains than which there are none sweeter, and whose life has been one revel around sentiment and song. Who of us can say, whether the young poet of America might not have been to her what Moore is now to Ireland--that he would have loved her with less fervor of devotion, or have sounded forth her praises with a feebler lyre. His would have been a soul to dwell upon her charms with rapture, who when pleading for his parent soil exclaims, “Shame! that while every mountain, stream and plain Hath theme for truth’s proud voice or fancy’s wand, No _native_ bard the patriot harp hath ta’en, But left to minstrels of a foreign strand, To sing the beauteous scenes of nature’s loveliest land.”