The Ode on the Fourth of July may be liked by some, disliked by others, precisely because it is, like almost every thing in the book, of unequal qualities, being continually marred with feeble lines. It is just as well that the "Unfinished Poem" should not be finished. "Verses to a Lady in May," and "Phases of Love," have enough weak and flattish passages and expressions to spoil them, to say nothing of that wretched, mistaken recourse to half a dozen different measures. The lines on "Leaving the Catskills," and those "To L. L. N.," from the Blue Ridge in Carolina, are good blank verse, with a strong full tone: the author caught something of the spirit of the mountains over which he had wandered. Come in the Moonlight," a small poem, in short lines, not rhyming, produces a very pleasant and peculiar effect.

The summing up is, that the author's thoughts, in nearly every piece, are better than his language; and, before he issues another volume, he would do well to pay a more severe attention to niceties of melody and expression than he appears ever to have expended.

"The Months," by Wm. H. C. Hosmer, is a small series of twelve poems, descriptive of the phases and influences of the twelve parts of the year. They are not very full or extended, the pictures presented being produced by a few particular objects and circumstances, enumerated one by one with little extra coloring. Some might deny to these verses the title of poetry, not only because the merely descriptive is of the lowest department of the art, but for the very reason, that Mr. Hosmer occupies his canvas with so few and detached particulars, not forming, in their view, a blended picture. It must be admitted that "The Months" are wanting in this respect. Like Street, whose manner-and one form of his verse-he has adopted, he daguerreotypes nature, but has by no means Street's completeness or continuity. We shall do him injustice, however, as we

should to any other writer, if we do not judge him by the effect as a whole, which his group of the Months produce upon the mind. To ourselves, at our first reading, the effect was to bring up to us the appearance, and, what is more, the feeling of each month, as we knew it in our boyhood. Nor are we conscious of having filled out the pictures by aid of our own imagination. We think the verses would have the same influence on any ordinarily observing person, whose early life was spent in the country. While they are not, therefore, what they might have been made, on so beautiful a field, they are a pleasing tribute to the seasons. An American "Georgics," or "Seasons," is yet to be written, and a noble achievement it will be, if done by a poet with the "vision and the faculty." Meanwhile, we accept this as a small beginning, with all its inadequacies.

The form of the verse, as we said, is one of those employed by Mr. Street. It is doubtful whether the same should have been used throughout, tending, as it does, to monotony; yet there are advantages on the other side. If Mr. Hosmer had employed more sentiment, or brought in what he does use more happily, we should have been better pleased. It is partly, however, by the introduction of something more than Mr. Street at tempts, that with a less observing and delicate eye, he yet brings over us that decided feeling of the changes and contrasts of the Months.

"January" is by no means the best of the series. We do not like it, that the whole is imbodied in an address of a "Friar of orders white" to the dead Year. It might better have been descriptive and picturesque, merely, like the others. Besides, the address is not particularly happy, though it has good verses.

"The Robin's hymn was wild and sweet
Where harshly croaks the raven dark,
And icy flails the meadow beat

Ah! frozen is the fount that gushed
Where woke, at dawn, the lyric lark.
In music from the rock, and hushed

The runnel's murmur low:

Pale forms along the mountain side-
Mad cavalry of Winter-ride

Through whirling clouds of snow."
"February" is better.

"Where, girt by groves, a clearing spread, The stubble, like a darkening beard On the pale visage of the dead,

Above the level snow appeared.

"March" is vivid and picturesque. If the whole volume were as good, something more had been made of it.

"First of the vernal Triad, March,
Blows, with distended cheek, his horn;
Above, there is a clouded arch,

Below, a landscape drear and lorn:
Dull mists are creeping up the hill,
Though the pale flag of Winter still
Is on its top displayed;
As yet no leaflet braves the cold,
Though, here and there, the watery mould

Sends up a glassy blade.

"Inconstant month! at times thy hand
Parting the curtains of the storm,
Gives promise that the dreary land

Will bask again in sunlight warm;
Thy barbarous strain hath pauses brief,
In which the heart derives relief

From a low, gentle lay,
Like the soft breathing of a flute,
When harsher instruments are mute,
Dying in air away.

"From many a sugar camp upcurls
Blue smoke above the maple boughs,
And shouting boys and laughing girls
Wild Echo from her covert rouse;
The syrup, golden in its flow,
Poured thickly on the hissing snow,

Enchains their eager eyes-
The month of March is dear to them,
Though, nodding lightly on the stem,
No violets arise."

April" well recalls to us the capricious month of our boyhood.

"By April of the sunny tress

The mighty spell of death is broke,
As marble, with a fond caress,

To life the son of Belus woke:
His magic flute of many keys
Gives to the soft, enamored breeze,
Notes that recall the lost-

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Plumed exiles far away that flew
When brown the leaves of Autumn grew,
Touched by a killing frost.'

"Buds of the maple, redly tinged,

Are bursting in the naked wood,
And passing clouds, with amber fringed,
Drop diamonds on the dimpling flood:
Moist mould, disturbed by spade or plough,
A grateful smell is yielding now,

In field and garden-close;
Bright trout are leaping in the brook,
And craftily his baited hook

The silent angler throws.

"Earth's Laureate Bard in other years,
Warmed into being by thy breath,
Drank from thy cup of sun-lit tears,
And learned thy spell to conquer Death:
The lights and shadows of thy face
Upon his pictured leaves we trace,

Thy humors quaint and wild :
The Skeletons of Ruin heard
His awful, vivifying word,

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And, like thy landscape, smiled."

The holy calm of thought.'

'He hears, at length, with other ears,

And sees, alas! with other eyes. Back comes young Sommer with the glow That flushed her features long ago,

And Nature still is true; [deadBut hopes that charmed thy youth are The sunshine of thy heart is filed,

Its innocency too." "

“July” and “ August" are unequal; nor does he, except in the first verses of the latter, succeed as well as in others of the months, in making us feel the influence of the season." September" has a more pleasing treatment :

"On a few children of the shade

That pale, fantastic painter, Frost,
Warm colors with cold hand hath laid,
Though not a leaf is lost :
Blood-drops may, here and there, be seen
On the low Sumach's vest of green,

As if its heart had bled;
And, where tall maples form a screen,
The grove is growing red."

"October" is a failure; and " December" is infelicitously managed. Mr. Hosmer's attempt is a pleasant one, and it is for this reason that we have spoken at greater length than we otherwise should. Every such effort, though slight and defective, to exhibit the peculiarities of our American year, is worthy of notice.

We welcome Mr. Hoyt's few poems, in a collected form, with great pleasure. That they are so few is a decided merit. It is a mortal error which almost every poet in the language has committed, from several old poets down to Mr. Kidney, to publish bad or indifferent verse with that of unquestioned merit. If a man has five unquestionably good poems, why should he unite them with fifteen that are worthless, or that are not positively good? What does he gain by it? Nothing, but to give the impression that he writes well by chancethat where he has one poetical bump he has five of a very different order. Nothing, except the satisfaction, often, of not being read at all. But few as are Mr. Hoyt's pieces-ten only-he has found room for one that should have been left out. "Outalissa" is not well told, and produces not the least effect. Mr. Hoyt has in this wandered out of his true field, which is rural scenes and rural life. Here he is more at home, and has, perhaps, a more natural eye and heart than any of our writers. Nothing could be much finer than Snow," the larger part of which we quoted in our Feb. No., three

years ago. It is the most perfect picture of a winter morning in the country, that has ever fallen under our eye. Elward Bell," a "Rural Sketch of May," is equally delightful-in fact, by far the best American Buccic 0.4" possesses a peculiar merit. It is exceedingly quaint, simple and touching, and of the picturwith one old man and a flock of rosy esqueness of an old Dutch landscape, children in the foreground. It has been a favorite with the public, as our exchange papers testify. Rain," again, is delicious-a perfect representation of a brimming cloud broken over a hot and thirsty summer landscape. We do not know why Mr. Hoyt should have put "Julia, an Autumnal Tale," in the beginning of his book, unless for modesty's sake. It is not equal to the other rural sketches. There are melodious verses and pleasing pictures, but, as a whole, it is not weil managed. There is a quaint kind of affectation, which Mr. Hoyt has carried to excess in some of his pieces. In "Old," the repetition of the first line of each stanza, at the end of the same stanza, has a pleasing effect. But, in

New," he repeats part of the first line twice, and the third also:

"Still sighs the world for something new, For something new ;

Imploring me, imploring you,

Some Will-o'-wisp to help pursue; Ah, hapless world, what will it do! Imploring me, imploring you,

For something new!"