AMERICAN BALLAD POETKT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 6, 20 May 1871, Page 5

AMERICAN BALLAD POETKT.

Genuine popular poetry —never common in any age—in our age and country would seem nearly dead. " Champagne Charley," and the melodious woes of consumptive maidens, no more satisfy its requirements than the hectic weakness of modern patriotic songs. Strange that in America, real ballad poetry should here and there put forth a bud—real poetry, expressing the popular ideal, with much of the popular faith, and iv the " vulgar tongue." Superfine critics will sneer at form and language; the unco-quid will be

pained at a certain familiarity with things sacred ; but the simple folk, and the true critic, and the genuine post, will rejoice in hearing once more popular thought, and the popular faith, set forth with real human feeling—not in the language of books, but in the language of the steamboat and the prairie. We give two specimens of American ballad literature, which for the unaffected quaintness of their piety, and their real human feeling, are, we think, not to be surpassed by even the best Scotch or Spanish ballads :—: —