Page:Over the river, and other poems.djvu/33

This page needs to be proofread.
MEMOIR.
27


more of our American newspapers in their issue of that week. We know, indeed, of no bit of poetry of late, from any pen, that has struck the popular mind so exactly. This is due, in a measure, to the facts that death is ever busy in these human households; and little children, in all their early brightness and beauty, are constantly passing out of their earthly to their heavenly home: and these lines contain the very balm of consolation for such wounded and bleeding hearts. But, aside from the subject-matter (for that is common to a great multitude of little poems in our language), there is in this a glory of conception, a beauty of language and of imagery, a burning glow of genius, such as are altogether remarkable."