LITERARY NOTICES.

THE RED EAGLE: A POEM OF THE SOUTH. By A. B. MEEK. In one volume: pp. 108. New-York: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, Broadway and Leonard-street.

men.

THAT Mr. MEEK is a true poet, the volume before us affords incontestable proof. For rapid and stirring action, vivid and faithful pictures of nature and character, and for general melody of versification, we scarcely know when we have met the superior, in its kind, of this most spirited Indian poem. We intend to show 'the reason of the faith that is in us' by a few extracts, which we think will be found fully to justify our encomiums. Let us first, however, present the reader with a syllabus of the subject-matter of the volume. The author informs us that the leading incidents of the poem, romantic as they may seem, are all strictly historical. They are drawn from that remarkable and sanguinary chapter in South-Western annals, known as 'The Creek War of 1813,' which has never been depicted in such vivid colors as its interest deserves. The hero of the story is the celebrated chieftain, Weatherford, or 'The Red Eagle,' as he was called by his countryAs a warrior and an orator, gifted with all the physical graces that could contribute to preeminence, he never had his superior among our aboriginal tribes. He was the principal leader of the Creek or Muscogee Indians, in the terrific struggle which began, after some preliminary skirmishes, in the bloody massacre at Fort Mimms, sixty miles above Mobile, upon the Tensaw, a branch of Alabama River, on the thirtieth of August, 1813, when near five hundred persons, including all the adjacent white inhabitants of the insulated back-woods settlement, two companies of United States troops, and many friendly Indians, were indiscriminately butchered, through the criminal recklessness of a drunken commander, who, though warned of his danger, would not even close the gates of his fortress. But seven of the number miraculously escaped to tell the bloody story. This brought the speedy invasion of the Creek nation, by the various armies, from Tennessee under General JACKSON, from Georgia under Generals FLOYD and PINCKNEY, and from Mississippi under General CLAIBORNE, resulting in the rapid series of sanguinary battles, which, in a few months, almost depopulated the na

tion; near five thousand warriors having laid down their lives in the struggle to which they had been incited by religious fanaticism, the wily schemes of TECUMSEH, and their aggravated hatred of the white man, so constantly encroaching upon their primitive hunting-grounds, then extending from the Chattahoochee to the Tombecbee.

The principal events of this war-which, from its commencement to its close, presents a species of epic progress and retributive results seldom found in actual occurrences - have been narrated in a general way by our historians; but all its minor incidents, its local and personal features and characteristics, in which reside its vitality and chief attractiveness, have been suffered to pass unnoticed, and to lapse into perishing tradition. To rescue these in some degree from oblivion, and to preserve them in those hues of poetry to which they seem so eminently adapted, was the object of Mr. MEEK in the poem before us. While he has adhered strictly to historical truth, even in detail, he has so arranged the lights and shadows of his picture as not to mar the grace and beauty, which are the prime objects of all true poetic creation. The character of his hero has greatly aided him in this: The love-life of WEATHERFORD, here truthfully narrated; his dauntless gallantry, his marvellous personal adventures and hair-breadth escapes, and, chief of all, his wonderful eloquence, which eventually saved his life, when all other means would have failed, afford as fine a theme for the poet as any in American history. It may be stated that the version given of WEATHERFORD's speech to General JACKSON, after the crushing and conclusive battle of the Horse-Shoe, is as literal as the necessities of verse would permit.'

We commence our extracts with a passage which will at once show what a minute observer and faithful describer of natural scenery is our poet: nor must we omit to note how felicitously the mellifluous aboriginal names of natural objects are introduced:

'FAIR Alabama's forest land,

In its primeval verdure drest,
With waving woods, and rivers grand,
And mountains that like giants stand

To guard its pictured valley's rest!

'FROM morn till eve, that sun has seen
But one unbroken world of green.
From Chattahoochee's yellow wave,
By Tallapoosa's waters clear,
Where Coosa's isle-gemmed currents lave
And young Cahawba's hills uprear;
To where fair Tuscaloosa glides,
And dark Tombecbee pours his tides;
Incessant wilds, o'er hill and plain,
In virgin loveliness remain,
And scenes as fresh and bright display
As ever met the eye of day:
No lovelier land the PROPHET viewed,
When on the sacred mount he stood,
And saw below transcendent shine
The streams and groves of Palestine!

'All through this lordly realm so wideThis wilderness of woods and flowers,

This paradise of fragrant bowers—
No human home that sun espied,
Save cone-like cabins, 'mid the trees,
Whose bark-roofs totter in the breeze,
And scarcely serve as shelter rude
For their red tenants of the wood.
Northward, amid his mountains free,
The wigwams of the Cherokee;
And southward, by each winding stream
That veins the earth's enamelled breast,
Muscógee's scattered camp-fires gleam-
The tameless Arab of the West!
These only met his morning eye,
Though far the sun flamed in the sky:
But westward, where he now delays,
The white man's home arrests his rays;
The dauntless pioneer who came
From distant lands, these wilds to tame,
And bid, beneath their genial skies,
His farms extend, his domes arise;
By Alabama's lordly tide,

And Tensaw's dark and turbid stream, Whose mingling waves now gulfward glide,

Through forests vast, in golden pride,

Lit by the day's departing beam!

We commend to the attention of our metropolitan musical composers the sweet and graceful love-song, commencing:

It almost sings itself from the printed page. But we must pass to another and a different theme the tragedy of Fort Mimms. And we ask the reader to remark the vivid action which characterizes the entire sketch:

'Brave, brave they fought, those forest men,
With overwhelming numbers then!
Not manlier, in his mountain-pass,
Withstood the foe, LEONIDAS!
Nor NELSON, on his slippery deck,

Amid the battle's storm and wreck!

And feebler woman, nerved by fear,
In the dread combat bore her share,
With frantic hope to save her child
From this red HEROD of the wild!
But all in vain his strength and hers,
No mercy know the murderers!'

Is not that a stirring picture?—and said we not well that Mr. MEEK WAS an admirable descriptive poet? The foregoing pleased us so well that it irked us to see on the very next page so forced a line as :

'WHERE yester dwelt manhood, and beauty, and grace.'

'Yester' is a 'vile phrase' as a substitute for yesterday. But let that pass. There is retribution at hand for the murderers of Fort Mimms:

'RINGS through the woods of Tennessee,

Rings over Georgian hills, that cry,

Down Mississippi to the sea,

And thousands to their standards fly.

Brave armies form, and leaders bold

Pour their dark squadrons through the wold.
From swarming north, and east and west,
Muscógee's borders they invest.

O'er Chattahoochee's silvery stream,
The arms of FLOYD and PINCKNEY beam;
By dark Tombecbee, CLAIBORNE comes,
Frightening the echoes with his drums;
And, from the North, a bolder yet

Spurs through the forest; bayonet
And sword and flag the distance fill,
Long-gleaming over Coosa's hill!
Brave JACKSON leads his warriors down
By Indian hunting-range and town,
And from their ranks the cry is heard:
'Revenge! revenge on WEATHERFORD!
No mercy shall the murderers know,

Who crushed Fort Mimms with treacherous blow.'

As a sententious sketch of the horrors of border warfare, and the progress of 'the Avenging Hand,' we cannot resist the inclination to quote the following, albeit our 'inner sense' of a lack of space cries 'Hold!' though not 'Enough:'

'An! demon WAR!-what scenes of woe
Rise ever in thy fearful path!
The green land reddens 'neath thy blow,
And wilts before thy fiery wrath.
The orphan's tears, the widow's wail,
The father's curse denote thy way;
The plundered town, the smoking vale,
The white bones bleaching in the day.
They call thee glorious!-yet thy plumes,
Nod as they may, are bathed in blood;
Thy splendor human hope consumes;
Thy field of fame, death's solitude!
And though full well deserved the doom
On Alabama's children brought,
Yet who but weeps the woe and gloom,
Demon! thy twenty battles wrought!

'Through all those fierce and bloody fields,
One arm terrific vengeance wields;

He guides the conquerors through the wood,
To each inviolate solitude;

Applies the torch with readiest hand,

To every wigwam in the land;

Aye foremost in the hottest strife,
He riots in the loss of life;
Before his blows the stoutest fall,
No foe escapes his rifle ball;

His red eyes gleam with fiendish fire,
His wrinkled cheeks are pale with ire.
'Ah! yes,' he cries, 'they long shall rue
The hellish deed they dared to do,
And in their graves remember well
The music of the WHITE WOLF's yell!'

'One touch of NATURE makes the whole world kin,' says the poet. We have no fear, therefore, that the following pen-painting will be lost upon any reader :

'For many a league the broad slopes sweep away,
O'erhung with groves of hickory, beech, and bay;
All forest trees that mark the generous soil,
The gnarled white-oak, and the large vine's coil;
The sugar-maple and the tulip high,

Lift their huge branches to the favoring sky.
When Spring comes smiling over hill and dale,
What light and fragrance in these woods prevail;
Then all his banners of far-flushing green,

O'er every forest monarch's tent are seen.

The graceful dogwood waves his crown of flowers,
Diffusing snow-stars through the vistaed bowers.
The tasseled chinkapin perfumes the hill;
The luscious honeysuckles, by the rill,
Faint with a sweetness which by far excels
All the rich odors of Cathayan dells.
And oh! what minstrelsy of bee and bird,
Throughout the greenful paradise is heard!
The mock-bird, swinging on the locust limb,
Pours down the forest a perpetual hymn :
The whistling partridge in the meadow grass,
The amorous wild-duck on her swaying glass,
The chattering blue-jay, and the pine-perched crow,
And screaming river-crane, with wing of snow,
Their motley voices through the green aisles fling,
And keep the anthems of orchestral Spring!
'Tis Winter now: but still the land displays
O'er hill and slope and dell its peerless grace.
Well had the Red Man chosen here a seat
For ever sacred from intruders' feet.
Here through the trees his scattered wigwams rise,
The blue smoke rippling slowly to the skies:
Around each door the naked children play;
The squaws are at their labor all the day;
And through the vistas on the stream you view
The patient fisher in his still canoe.
These clustered cabins form a village group,
Where sounds discordantly the drunken whoop;
In yonder open space, with circuit wide,
Behold the Council-House, in bark-built pride;

Where savage statesmen hold their Congress rude,
And gravely cogitate the nation's good!'

Here too the Prophets of the Simple Race

Keep in these druid groves their dwelling-place.

Rude their religion: yet they deem that death
Brings to the warrior immortal breath,