And, with long, living leaps, and rock-struck clang,
From side to side, and slope to sounding slope,
In gleaming whirls swept down the dim ravine."

The finest portion of the poem is the description of that transition of
feeling, through which the maiden, warm with young life and clinging to
life for its own unfulfilled promise, becomes the resigned and composed
victim. No one but a true poet could have so conceived and represented
the situation. The narrative flows in one unbroken current, detached
parts whereof hint but imperfectly of the whole, as do goblets of water
of the stream wherefrom they are dipped. We will only venture to present
two brief passages. The daughter speaks:--

"Let me not need now disobey you, mother,
But give me leave to knock at Death's pale gate,
Whereat indeed I must, by duty drawn,
By Nature shown the sacred way to yield.
Behold, the coasting cloud obeys the breeze;
The slanting smoke, the invisible sweet air;
the towering tree its leafy limbs resigns
To the embraces of the wilful wind:
Shall I, then, wrong, resist the hand of Heaven!
Take me, my father! take, accept me, Heaven!
Slay me or save me, even as you will!"

"Light, light, I leave thee!--yet am I a lamp,
Extinguished now, to be relit forever.
Life dies: but in its stead death lives."

In "Jephthah's Daughter," we think, Mr. Heavysege has found that form of
poetic utterance for which his genius is naturally qualified. It is
difficult to guess the future of a literary life so exceptional
hitherto,--difficult to affirm, without a more intimate knowledge of the
man's nature, whether he is capable of achieving that rhythmical
perfection (in the higher sense wherein sound becomes the symmetrical
garment of thought) which, in poets, marks the line between imperfect
and complete success. What he most needs, of _external_ culture, we have
already indicated: if we might be allowed any further suggestion, he
supplies it himself, in one of his fragmentary poems:--

"Open, my heart, thy ruddy valves,--
It is thy master calls:
Let me go down, and, curious, trace
Thy labyrinthine halls.
Open, O heart! and let me view
The secrets of thy den:
Myself unto myself now show
With introspective ken.
Expose thyself, thou covered nest
Of passions, and be seen:
Stir up thy brood, that in unrest
Are ever piping keen:--