The ‘Changeling’ alone would sustain a reputation.  It seems always like the plaintive but sweet warble of some unknown bird rising from the midst of tall water-rushes in the day’s dim dawning.  A wonderful melody as of Mrs. Browning’s best efforts pervades every verse, priceless and rare as some old intaglio.  But when we come to his ’Odes to the Past and the Future,’ the full power of poesy unfolds before us.  Their images are not the impalpable spectres of a poet’s dream, but symbols hardened into marble by his skill, and informed with the fire of life by his genius.

  ’Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls,
    O kingdom of the past! 
  There lie the bygone ages in their palls,
    Guarded by shadows vast;
  There all is hushed and breathless,
    Save when some image of old error falls,
  Earth worshiped once as deathless.’

Was ever picture of silence more effective and complete?  We can see the desolate quiet of the vast arched halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death.  And the hymn to the Future, with all the joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through ‘golden-winged dreams’ of the ’Land of Promise’:—­

  ’To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered hands
    And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile
  Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,
    And her old woe-worn face a little while
  Grows young and noble:  unto thee the Oppressor
      Looks and is dumb with awe;
      The eternal law
  Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser,
  Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,
      And he can see the grim-eyed Doom
      From out the trembling gloom
  Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading.’

We pass by the ‘Legend of Brittany,’ which, as a mere artistic study of light and shade in words, is worthy an extended notice.  Its fine polish and refinement of feeling remind us of Spencer’s silver verses, frosted here and there with the old fret-work of his lovable affectations.  But we pause at the ‘Prometheus,’ honestly believing that no poem made up of so many excellences was ever written in America.  Its defects are not of conception, but in an occasional carelessness of execution—­a gasp in the rhythm; and when we consider its richness and majesty, when we feel its resistless grasp upon the heart, we could pardon it if its great pearls were strung on straws or its diamonds hidden in a sand-hill of sentimentality.  But never was poem freer from morbidness:  it repels the sickly pallor of our modern stereotyped sorrow, and is made up only of a grief that is regal—­more—­divine.  If any place by its side the Prometheus of AEschylus and appeal to the unapproachable dignity of their