deness of the newer strain,--as in many
flowers and fruits Nature herself repeats a streak of color or a dash of
flavor belonging to some alien growth.

Thus, Drayton says,--

"With Spanish yew so strong.
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents _stung_."

And Brownell,--

"Trust me, our berth was hot;
Ah, wickedly well they shot;
How their death-bolts howled and _stung_!"

A mere coincidence, in all probability, but the word one which none but
a poet could have used. There are reminiscences of Cowper's grand and
simple lines on the "Loss of the Royal George," of Campbell's "Battle of
the Baltic," of Tennyson's "Charge of the Six Hundred," not one of which
but has a pleasing effect in the midst of such vigorous pictures as the
new poet has given us fresh from the terrible original. The most obvious
criticism is one which applies to the "River Fight," and which is
directed against what might be thought an overstraining of the singular
power in the use of words which is one of Mr. Brownell's most
remarkable characteristics. "General Orders," not essential to the
poem, may be admired as a _tour de force_, but cannot be properly called
poetry. It is a condensed, versified edict,--true, no doubt, to the
prose original, but on the whole better printed by itself, if printed at
all, than suffered to distract the reader from the main narration by its
elaborate ingenuity.

These two poems--the "River Fight" and the "Bay Fight"--are better
adapted for public reading and declamation than almost any in our
literature. They hush any circle of listeners, and many cannot hear
those exquisitely tender passages which are found toward the close of
each without yielding them the tribute of their tears. They are to all
the drawing-room battle-poems as the torn flags of our victorious
armadas to the stately ensigns that dressed their ships in the harbor.

Such pictures, if they do not kill everything hung on the walls with
them, make even a brilliant canvas look comparatively lustreless. Yet
the first poem of Mr. Brownell's which ever attracted our attention,
"The Fall of Al Accoub," is of great force, and shows much of the same
red light and black shadow, much of the same Vulcanic power over words,
as with blast and forge and hammer, which startle us in the two
battle-pieces. The lines "Annus Memorabilis," dated Jan. 6th, 1861, read
like prophecy in 1865. "Wood and Coal" (November, 1863)