The Walt Whitman Archive
Commentary
Contemporary Reviews
About this Item
Title: More Skyrocket
Creator: unknown [unsigned in original]
Date: December 25, 1859
Whitman Archive ID: anc.02118
Source: Sunday Times 25 December 1859: [unknown]. The electronic text for this file was prepared by Whitman Archive staff, who transcribed the text from a representation of the original (e.g., digital scan or other electronic reproduction, microfilm copy). For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the reviews, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Jeannette Schollaert, Kevin McMullen, and Nicole Gray
More Skyrocket.—
Mr. "Walt. Whitman" has just published in the "Saturday Press" another of the erratic emanations characteristic of the afflatus of his muse. It is entitled "A Child's Reminiscence," and is a marvel in the way of the gross and the grotesque. Some of the lines go hopping along, like chirping little birds, on two feet, and some creep slowly by, like the centipede insect, on a hundred, and some roll on, Heaven only knows how, like the tumble-bug, as if bent only on gathering feculence—and the latter entirely succeed. We should like to quote the whole poem, but modesty forbids; we give, verbatim, however, about half the twenty-first canto, which may serve as an expressive auto-criticism upon the entire production:
XXI.
"But soft !Sink low—soft !Soft !"