at last appears in a volume
wholly his, which we may regard as the work of a mind in some degree
confirmed in its habits of perception and expression.

We must allow to the author as great originality as belongs to any of
our younger poets. It is true that the presence of the all-pervading
Tennyson is more sensibly felt here than in the first poems of Mr.
Piatt; but even here it is very faint, and if the diction occasionally
reminds of him, Mr. Piatt's poems are undoubtedly conceived in a spirit
entirely his own. This spirit, however, is one to which its proper sense
of the beautiful is often so nearly sufficient, that the effort to
impart it is made with apparent indifference. The poet's ideal so wins
him and delights him, in that intangible and airy form which it first
wore to his vision, that he seems to think, if he shall put down certain
words by virtue of which he can remember its loveliness, he shall also
have perfectly realized its beauty to another. We do not know one poem
by Mr. Piatt in which a full and clear sense of his whole meaning is at
once given to the reader; and he is obscure at times, we fear, because
he has not himself a distinct perception of that which he wishes to say,
though far oftener his obscurity seems to result from impatience, or the
flattery of those hollow and alluring words which beset the dreams of
poets, and must be harshly snubbed before they can be finally banished.
There are many noble lines in his poems, but not much unity of effect or
coherence of sentiment; and it happens now and then that the idea which
the reader painfully and laboriously evolves from them is, after all,
not a great truth or beauty, but some curious intellectual toy, some
plaything of the singer's fancy, some idle stroke of antithesis.

In the poem called "At Evening," in which the poet can be so
preposterous as to say,

"Twilight steals
Great stealthy veils of silence over all,"

occur the following lines, full of the tranquil sweetness and the
delicacy of feeling characteristic of Mr. Piatt's best mood:--

"O, dear to me the coming forth of stars!
After the trivial tumults of the day
They fill the heavens, they hush the earth with awe,
And when my life is fretted pettily
With transient nothings, it is good, I deem,
From darkling windows to look forth and gaze
At this new blossoming of Eternity,
'Twixt each To-morrow, and each dead To-day