_Bitter-Sweet. A Poem_. By J.G. HOLLAND, Author of "The Bay Path,"
"Titcomb's Letters," etc. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street.
pp. 220. 1859.
Unexpectedness is an essential element of wit,--perhaps, also, of
pleasure; and it is the ill-fortune of professional reviewers, not only
that surprise is necessarily something as rare with them as a June
frost, but that loyalty to their extemporized omniscience should forbid
them to acknowledge, even if they felt, so fallible an emotion.
Unexpectedness is also one of the prime components of that singular
product called Poetry; and, accordingly, the much-enduring man whose
finger-ends have skimmed many volumes and many manners of verse may be
pardoned the involuntary bull of not greatly expecting to stumble
upon it in any such quarter. Shall we, then, be so untrue to our
craft,--shall we, in short, be so unguardedly natural, as to confess
that "Bitter-Sweet" has surprised us? It is truly an original poem,--as
genuine a product of our soil as a golden-rod or an aster. It is as
purely American,--nay, more than that,--as purely New-English,--as the
poems of Burns are Scotch.
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