GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS
the whole effect is Elizabethan rather than Homeric.
Nothing can be more clear and fascinating than Mr. Bryant's narrative, conveyed in the true epic manner with regard to directness and nobility of style. In striking passages, whose original beauty is high-sounding and polysyllabic, he most frequently obtains a corresponding English effect by reliance upon the strength of monosyllabic words:—
For his is the black doom of death, ordained
By the great gods.
Hear me yet more:
When she shall smite thee with her wand, draw forth
Thy good sword from thy thigh and rush at her
As if to take her life, and she will crouch
In fear.
I hate
To tell again a tale once fully told.
But occasionally he uses to advantage the Latinism peculiar to his reflective poems. Such lines as Shakespeare's,
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
show by what process the twin forces of our English tongue are fully brought in play. Verses of this sort, formed by the juxtaposition of the numerous Greek particles with ringing derivative and compound words, make up the body of the Homeric song. Mr. Bryant accordingly varies his translation with lines which remind us of "Thanatopsis" or "A Forest Hymn":—
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