Parsons was probably Gray's inferior in point of taste, for otherwise we can hardly understand how he could put forth in the same volume, and sometimes in the same poem, such inequalities as he permitted himself. Yet it must be said, as an offset to this, that he seldom made himself responsible for a poem by publishing it. He occasionally had verses in the magazines, and even, if the whim took him, in the newspapers; but only twice in his life did he bring the question of his critical judgment fairly within the scope of comment by issuing a volume to the public. The first of these volumes, which contains the famous "Lines on a Bust of Dante," may perhaps rely upon the youth of its author as an explanation of its unevenness. The other, "Circum Præcordia," published in the year of his death, and consisting of a versification of the collects of the Church together with a few original poems of a religious character, is of even and sustained excellence, though rising to the level of his best work only in its concluding poem, "Paradisi Gloria." Mrs. Parsons had several other volumes printed for private circulation only, but of these the author frequently knew nothing until the bound copies were placed in his hands. What he would himself now select to give to the world no one can tell; possibly as carefully edited a volume as even that of Gray.
Such a volume would, I believe, be one of the treasures of American verse--a book that lovers of poetry would carry with them as they would similar thin volumes of Herrick, Marvell, Collins or Landor. The lyrics addressed to Francesca are true Herrick for grace and daintiness, and there is nothing in Landor finer than such passages as this:
"His heart was written o'er, like some stray page Tom out from Plutarch, with majestic names;"
"Be it some comfort, in that hateful hell, You had a lover of your love to tell."
"But he whose numbers gave you unto fame, Lord of the lay--I need not speak his name-- Was one who felt; whose life was love or hate. Born for extremes, he scorned the middle state, And well he knew that, since the world began, The heart was master in the world of man."
I have referred to the "Paradisi Gloria." This poem, with one unwisely altered line restored to its original reading, is one of the few faultless lyrics in the language; and the following stanza, with which it begins, is, I submit, as felicitous as anything Gray ever wrote, and more imaginative;