Of these poems it is not easy to give a precise estimate. They are chiefly emotional, and they have the characteristic Celtic fluency and copiousness of language; so compelling is the stream of song with Irish poets, that it carries the reader along too rapidly for him to take the measure of its depth. The swinging pace of many-footed meters, the glow of readily kindled imagination and the fervors of natural rhetoric mark the verse of Mr. Carpenter and his compatriots; while there are passages in his work that show rare ...
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Of these poems it is not easy to give a precise estimate. They are chiefly emotional, and they have the characteristic Celtic fluency and copiousness of language; so compelling is the stream of song with Irish poets, that it carries the reader along too rapidly for him to take the measure of its depth. The swinging pace of many-footed meters, the glow of readily kindled imagination and the fervors of natural rhetoric mark the verse of Mr. Carpenter and his compatriots; while there are passages in his work that show rare qualities of individual temperament and expression, which an austere literary training ought-if he had had longer years-to have polished and enforced. He was not incapable of terse imagery, as is shown by this quatrain on "Sight: " Man in his sorrow sees more clear Through the crystal of one little tear, Than if the whole air, as a spyglass, should Draw Heaven not closest neighborhood. Yet a careful artist would have remedied the various metrical errors in these four lines. Such inequalities in Mr. Carpenter's verse make criticism difficult. We know by instinct that he was capable of better poetry than he ever wrote; that care and labor of the file, accurate study and tranquil self-review after the warmth of composition was past, would have availed him much. -- The Literary World , Vol. 27
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