There's not within this broad domain
A single rood of sea or earth,
But, dyed with many a murderer's stain,
Will give a slaughtered Indian birth!"
"Father of light, and life, and form!
Who dwelt before the birth of time.
When chaos, like a mighty storm.
Starless and boundless, rolled sublime."
And for a striking instance of sustained grandeur, see the poem "Invocation." But we need not multiply citations; the reader will at once see the predominance of this element in all Mr. Cutter's poems.
There is another trait closely allied to genuine sublimity, which distinguishes most of Mr. Cutter's poetry, and that is perspicuity: you can see through it and tell what he is driving at. Now, this is a great excellence, and a rare excellence, too. The transcendental, the mystic prettytudes of the modern school have not affected him; the Tennysonophobia has not reached his blood at all. He has gone to Burns, and Byron, and Dante, and the Grand Old Masters. Though his muse is unequal—sometimes prosy—yet he is always intelligible; never talks in riddles like an insane sibyl. His dreamy mystery of delicious words, so prevalent in all latter-day poetry, saying much to signify nothing, has no adaptation to Mr. Cutter's genius: it would have emasculated his sublimity entirely. A school of poetry which is all expression, he had not, as we have said, the patience to excel in.
Next to "The Song of Steam," which is Mr. Cutter's masterpiece, his best poem is "The Song of Lightning," composed in the same vein. Indeed, there is little to choose between the two; and if the latter had been published first, it is doubtful which would have attained the greater popularity.
"E Pluribus Unum," another of Mr. Cutter's most popular poems, shows that, if he had given the study and labor he ought, he might have produced us the one great national song which we yet lack.
Mr. Cutter is the most intensely patriotic poet we have. The poem "Never" might be profitably read and reread by the political madmen of these times. And as further lessons in the same doctrine, "Washington's Birthday," and "God and Liberty."
But it must not be supposed that Mr. Cutter is all patriot and warrior; no, to be poet, he must be lover, too. These two stanzas show what our poet feels about that subject:
"Who hath not knelt at beauty's feet,
And felt the very air more mild.
The sky more soft, the earth more sweet,
When woman sighed—when woman smiled?
"Who hath not felt love's sway sublime,
Till joy could only speak in tears—
And tasted, in a breath of time,
The rapture of a thousand years?"
