E260600A. An Essay on Mind.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1826, p. 614.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 1.
This Essay is an imitation of the style of Pope, and contains some beautiful similes. The poetry is of a superior description; and the characters introduced are well drawn. We make one extract:
II
Man! man! thou poor antithesis of power!
Child of all time! yet creature of an hour!
By turns camelion of a thousand forms,
The lord of empires and the food of worms!
The little conqueror of a petty space,
The more than mighty, or the worse than base!
Thou ruin’d landmark in the desert way,
Betwixt the all of glory and decay!
Fair beams the torch of Science in thine hand,
And sheds its brightness o’er the glimmering land;
While in thy native grandeur bold and free,
Thou bid’st the wilds of Nature smile for thee,
And treadest Ocean’s paths full royally!
Earth yields her treasures up—celestial air
Receives thy globe of life, when journeying there,
It bounds from dust, and bends its course on high,
And walks in beauty through the wandering sky.
And yet, proud clay! thine empire is a span,
Nor all thy greatness makes thee more than man!
While Knowledge, Science, only serve t’impart
The god thou would’st be, and the thing thou art!
Reviewed:
An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (EBB), London: James Duncan, 1826.
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