Even where the author essays fine writing,
as in the lines:--
"On spicy shores, where beauteous morning reigns,
Or Evening lingers o'er her favorite plains,"
there is nothing to awaken a single definite image, nothing but glittering
generalities. Dwight's best known poetry is found in his song, _Columbia_,
composed while he was a chaplain in the Revolutionary War:--
"Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies."
JOEL BARLOW (1755-1812) was, like Dwight, a chaplain in the war, but he
became later a financier and diplomat, as well as a poet. He determined in
_The Vision of Columbus_ (1787), afterwards expanded into the ponderous
_Columbiad_, to surpass Homer and all preceding epics. Barlow's classical
couplets thus present a general in the Revolution, ordering a cannonade:--
"When at his word the carbon cloud shall rise,
And well-aim'd thunders rock the shores and skies."
[Illustration: JOEL BARLOW]
Hawthorne ironically suggested that the _Columbiad_ should be dramatized
and set to the accompaniment of cannon and thunder and lightning. Barlow,
like many others, certainly did not understand that bigness is not
necessarily greatness.
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