Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), December 27, 1845, vol. 2, no. 25, p. ???, col. ?

[page 388, column 1, continued:]

Graham's Magazine, for January, has a very rich and tasteful engraved title-page, from a design by J. McPherson — tasteful at all points except the centre, which has too much the air of the label on Day & Martin's Blacking. The number opens with an admirable mezzotint by Sartain, and a good line engraving by Smillie, — subject Washington at Princeton. There is also a plate of Fashions — two figures — the whole well-drawn, well arranged and skilfully colored. In a Magazine designed in great part for ladies, a fashion-plate, such as this, is not only not objectionable, but a valuable addition.

Among the contributors we notice Mrs. Stevens, Mrs. Butler, Fanny Forrester, Lowell, Eames, Street, Brooks, Chivers, and others. Lowell has a poem full of nerve and grace. Here is a magnificent stanza:

Titanic shapes, with faces blank and dun,

Of their old Godhead born,]

Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,

Which they misdeem for morn;

And yet the eternal sorrow

In their unmonarched eyes says day is done,

Without the hope of morrow.

And here a melodious one:

Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care

Float the green Fortunate Isles,

Where all our hero spirits dwell, and share

Our martyrdoms and toils;

The present moves attended

With all of brave, and excellent, and fair

That made the old time splendid.

The number contains, also, other excellent poetry. We mention, in especial, the “Proem to the Froissart Ballads” — although this is strongly tinctured with imitation. For example:

The dappled fawns upon the plains,

The birds that love the upper sky

Lived not in lovelier liberty.

Every one remembers the lines ending

Know no such liberty.