What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian,
and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much
more of Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry
like the Greek and Latin before it, seems well advanced toward
its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage of the season,
with bright autumnal tints, but soon the winter will scatter its
myriad clustering and shading leaves, and leave only a few
desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and
creak in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impression
that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to
the literature of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various
ages and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and lyric, and
narrative, and didactic; but the poetry of runic monuments is of
one style, and for every age. The bard has in a great measure
lost the dignity and sacredness of his office. Formerly he was
called a _seer_, but now it is thought that one man sees as much
as another. He has no longer the bardic rage, and only conceives
the deed, which he formerly stood ready to perform.
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