The Reverend Ralph Hoyt is known chiefly — at least to the world of letters — by "The Chaunt of Life and other Poems, with Sketches and Essays." The publication of this work, however, was never completed, only a portion of the poems having appeared, and none of the essays or sketches. It is to be hoped that we shall yet have these latter.
Of the poems issued, one, entitled "Old," had so many peculiar excellences that I copied the whole of it, although quite long, in "The Broadway Journal." It will remind every reader of Durand's fine picture, "An Old Man's Recollections," although between poem and painting there is no more than a very admissible similarity.
I quote a stanza from "Old" (the opening one) by way of bringing the piece to the remembrance of any one who may have forgotten it.
"By the wayside, on a mossy stone,
Sat a hoary pilgrim sadly musing;
Oft I marked him sitting there alone,
All the landscape like a page perusing;
Poor unknown,
By the wayside on a mossy stone."
The quaintness aimed at here is, so far as a single stanza is concerned, to be defended as a legitimate effect, conferring high pleasure on a numerous and cultivated class of minds. Mr. Hoyt, however, in his continuous and uniform repetition of the first line in the last of each stanza of twenty-five, has by much exceeded the proper limits of the quaint and impinged upon the ludicrous. The poem, nevertheless, abounds in lofty merit, and has, in especial, some passages of rich imagination and exquisite pathos. For example —
"Seemed it pitiful he should sit there,
No one sympathizing, no one heeding,
None to love him for his thin gray hair.
"One sweet spirit broke the silent spell —
Ah, to me her name was always Heaven !
She besought him all his grief to tell —
(I was then thirteen and she eleven)
Isabel !
One sweet spirit broke the silent spell.
"'Angel', said he, sadly, 'I am old;
Earthly hope no longer hath a morrow:
Why I sit here thou shalt soon be told" —
(Then his eye betrayed a pearl of sorrow —
Down it rolled — )
'Angel', said he, sadly, I am old !"
It must be confessed that some portions of "Old" (which is by far the best of the collection) remind us forcibly of the "Old Man" of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
"Pröemus" is the concluding poem of the volume, and itself concludes with an exceedingly vigorous stanza, putting me not a little in mind of Campbell in his best days. [column 2:]
"O'er all the silent sky
A dark and scowling frown —
But darker scowled each eye
When all resolved to die —
When (night of dread renown!)
A thousand stars went down."
Mr. Hoyt is about forty years of age, of the medium height, pale complexion, dark hair and eyes. His countenance expresses sensibility and benevolence. He converses slowly and with perfect deliberation. He is married.