Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848», sayfa 11

HEADS OF THE POETS

BY W. GILMORE SIMMS

I. – CHAUCER

 
– Chaucer's healthy Muse,
Did wisely one sweet instrument to choose —
The native reed; which, tutored with rare skill,
Brought other Muses¹ down to aid its trill!
A cheerful song that sometimes quaintly masked
The fancy, as the affections sweetly tasked;
And won from England's proud and foreign ² court,
For native England's tongue, a sweet report —
And sympathy – till in due time it grew
A permanent voice that proved itself the true,
And rescued the brave language of the land,
From that ³ which helped to strength the invader's hand.
Thus, with great patriot service, making clear
The way to other virtues quite as dear
In English liberty – which could grow alone,
When English speech grew pleasant to be known;
To spell the ears of princes, and to make
The peasant worthy for his poet's sake.
 

II. – SHAKSPEARE

 
– 'T were hard to say,
Upon what instrument did Shakspeare play —
Still harder what he did not! He had all
The orchestra at service, and could call
To use, still other implements, unknown,
Or only valued in his hands alone!
The Lyre, whose burning inspiration came
Still darting upward, sudden as the flame;
The murmuring wind-harp, whose melodious sighs
Seem still from hopefullest heart of love to rise,
And gladden even while grieving; the wild strain
That night-winds wake from reeds that breathe in pain,
Though breathing still in music; and that voice,
Which most he did affect – whose happy choice
Made sweet flute-accents for humanity
Out of that living heart which cannot die,
The Catholic, born of love, that still controls
While man is man, the tide in human souls.
 

III. – THE SAME

 
– His universal song
Who sung by Avon, and with purpose strong
Compelled a voice from native oracles,
That still survive their altars by their spells —
Guarding with might each avenue to fame,
Where, trophied over all, glows Shakspeare's name!
The mighty master-hand in his we trace,
If erring often, never commonplace;
Forever frank and cheerful, even when wo
Commands the tear to speak, the sigh to flow;
Sweet without weakness, without storming, strong,
Jest not o'erstrained, nor argument too long;
Still true to reason, though intent on sport,
His wit ne'er drives his wisdom out of court;
A brooklet now, a noble stream anon,
Careering in the meadows and the sun;
A mighty ocean next, deep, far and wide,
Earth, life and Heaven, all imaged in its tide!
Oh! when the master bends him to his art,
How the mind follows, how vibrates the heart;
The mighty grief o'ercomes us as we hear,
And the soul hurries, hungering, to the ear;
The willing nature, yielding as he sings,
Unfolds her secret and bestows her wings,
Glad of that best interpreter, whose skill
Brings hosts to worship at her sacred hill!
 

IV. – SPENSER

 
It was for Spenser, by his quaint device
To spiritualize the passionate, and subdue
The wild, coarse temper of the British Muse,
By meet diversion from the absolute:
To lift the fancy, and, where still the song
Proclaimed a wild humanity, to sway
Soothingly soft, and by fantastic wiles
Persuade the passions to a milder clime!
His was the song of chivalry, and wrought
For like results upon society;
Artful in high degree, with plan obscure,
That mystified to lure, and, by its spells,
Making the heart forgetful of itself
To follow out and trace its labyrinths,
In that forgetfulness made visible!
Such were the uses of his Muse; to say
How proper and how exquisite his lay,
How quaintly rich his masking – with what art
He fashioned fairy realms and paints their queen,
How purely – with how delicate a skill —
It needs not, since his song is with us still!
 

V. – MILTON

 
The master of a single instrument,
But that the Cathedral Organ; Milton sings
With drooping spheres about him, and his eye
Fixed steadily upward, through its mortal cloud,
Seeing the glories of Eternity!
The sense of the invisible and true
Still present to his soul, and in his song;
The consciousness of duration through all time,
Of work in each condition, and of hopes
Ineffable, that well sustain through life,
Encouraging through danger and in death,
Cheering, as with a promise rich in wings!
A godlike voice that, through cathedral towers
Still rolls, prolonged in echoes, whose deep tones
Seem born of thunder, that subdued to music
Soothe when they startle most! A Prophet Bard,
With utt'rance equal to his mission of power,
And harmonies that, not unworthy heaven,
Might well lift earth to equal worthiness.
 

VI. – BURNS AND SCOTT

 
– Not forgotten or denied,
Scott's trumpet-lay, and Burns's violin-song;
The one a call to arms, of action fond;
The other, still discoursing to the heart —
The lowly human heart – of loves and joys —
Such as beseem the cotter's calm fireside —
Cheerful and buoyant still amid a sadness —
Such sadness as still couples love with care!
 

VII. – BYRON

 
– For Byron's home and fame,
It needed manhood only! Had he known
How sorrow should be borne, nor sunk in shame,
For that his destiny decreed to moan —
His Muse had been triumphant over Time
As still she is o'er Passion; still sublime —
Having subdued her soul's infirmity
To aliment; and, with herself o'ercome,
O'ercome the barriers of Eternity,
And lived through all the ages, with a sway
Complete, and unembarrassed by the doom
That makes of Nature's porcelain, common clay!
 

VIII. – A GROUP

Shelly and Wordsworth, – Tennyson, Barrett, Horne and Browning; – Baily and Taylor; – Campbell and Moore

 
– As one who had been brought,
By Fairy hands, and as a changeling left
In human cradle, the sad substitute
For a more smiling infant – Shelly sings
Vague minstrelsies that speak a foreign birth,
Among erratic tribes; yet not in vain
His moral, and the fancies in his flight
Not without profit for another race!
He left his spirit with his voice – a voice
Solely spiritual, which will long suffice
To wing the otherwise earthy of the time,
And, with the subtler leaven of the soul,
Inform the impetuous passions!With him came
Antagonist, yet still with sympathy,
Wordsworth, the Bard of the contemplative,
A voice of purest thought in sweetest music!
– These, in themselves unlike, together linked,
Appear in unison in after days,
Making progressive still, the mental births,
That pass successively through rings of time,
Each to a several conquest; most unlike
That of its sire, yet borrowing of its strength,
Where needful, and endowing it with new,
To meet the new necessity which still
Haunts the free progress of each conquering race.
– Thus, Tennyson and Barrett, Browning, Horne,
Blend their opposing faculties, and speak
For that fresh nature, which in daily things
Beholds the immortal, and from common forms
Extorts the Eternal still! So Baily sings
In Festus; so, upon a humbler rank,
Testing the worth of social policies,
As working through a single human will,
The Muse of Taylor argues – Artevelde,
Being the man who marks a popular growth,
And notes the transit of a thought through time,
Growing as still it speeds…
 
 
Exquisite
The ballads of Campbell, and the lays of Moore,
Appealing to our tastes, our gentler moods,
The play of the affections, or the thoughts
That come with national pride; and as we pause
In our own march, delight the sentiment!
But nothing they make for progress. They perfect
The language, and diversify its powers —
Please and beguile, and, for the forms of art,
Prove what they are, and may be. But they lift
None of our standards; help us not in growth;
Compel no prosecution of our search,
And leave us, where they found us – with the time!
 

HOPE ON – HOPE EVER

BY H. CURTISS HINE, U. S. N

 
Poor stricken one! whose toil can gain,
And barely gain, the coarsest fare,
From bitter thoughts and words refrain;
Yield not to dark despair!
The blackest night that e'er was born
Was followed by a radiant morn;
Heed not the world's unfeeling scorn,
Nor think life's brittle thread to sever;
Hope on – hope ever!
 
 
Hope, though your sun is hid in gloom,
And o'er your care-worn, wrinkled brow,
Grief spreads his shadow – 'tis the doom
That falls on many now.
Grim Poverty, with icy hand,
May bind to earth with ruthless band
Bright gifted ones throughout the land;
But struggle still that band to sever —
Hope on – hope ever!
 
 
Sit not and pine that FORTUNE led
Another on to grasp her wreath;
The same blue sky is o'er thy head,
The same green earth beneath,
The same bright angel-eyes look down,
Each night upon the humblest clown,
That sees the king with jeweled crown;
Of these, stern fate can rob thee never —
Hope on – hope ever!
 
 
What though the proud should pass thee by,
And curl their haughty lips with scorn;
Like thee, they soon must droop and die,
For all of woman born,
Are journeying to a shadowy land,
Where each devoid of pride must stand,
By hovering wings of angels' fanned;
There sorrow can assail thee never —
Hope on – hope ever!
 
 
Then plod along with tearless eye,
Poor son of toil! and ne'er repine,
The road through barren wastes may lie,
And thorns, as oft hath mine;
But there was One who came to earth,
Star-heralded at hour of birth,
Humble, obscure, unknown his worth,
Whose path was thornier far. Weep never!
Hope on – hope ever!
 

MEXICAN JEALOUSY

A SKETCH OF THE LATE CAMPAIGN

BY ECOTIER

On the 15th of September, two days after the storming of Chapultepec, a small party of soldiers, in dark uniforms, were seen to issue from the great gate of that castle, and, winding down the Calzada, turn towards the City of Mexico. This occurred at 10 o'clock in the morning. The day was very hot, and the sun, glancing vertically upon the flinty rocks that paved the causeway, rendered the heat more oppressive.

At the foot of the hill the party halted, taking advantage of the shade of a huge cypress tree, to set down a litera, which four men carried upon their shoulders. This they deposited under one of the arches of the aqueduct in order the better to protect its occupant from the hot rays of the sun.

The occupant of the litera was a wounded man, and the pale and bloodless cheek, and fevered eye showed that his wound was not a slight one. There was nothing around to denote his rank, but the camp cloak, of dark blue, and the crimson sash, which lay upon the litera, showed that the wounded man was an officer. The sash had evidently been saturated with blood, which was now dried upon it, leaving parts of it shriveled like, and of a darker shade of crimson. It had staunched the life-blood of its wearer upon the 13th. The soldiers stood around the litter, their bronzed faces turned upon its occupant, apparently attentive to his requests. There was something in the gentle care with which these rude men seemed to wait upon the young officer, that bespoke the existence of a stronger feeling than mere humanity. There was that admiration which the brave soldiers feel for him who has led them in the field of battle, at their head. That small group were among the first who braved the frowning muzzles of the cannon upon the parapets of Chapultepec. The wounded officer had led them to those parapets.

The scene around exhibited the usual indications of a recent field of battle. There were batteries near, with dismounted cannon, broken carriages, fragments of shells, dead horses, whose riders lay by them, dead too, and still unburied. Parties were strolling about, busied with this sad duty, but heaps of mangled carcases still lay above ground, exhibiting the swollen limbs and distorted features of decomposition. The atmosphere was heavy with the disagreeable odor, and the wounded man, turning upon his pillow, gently commanded the escort to proceed. Four stout soldiers again took up the litera, and the party moved slowly along the aqueduct, toward the Garita Belen. The little escort halted at intervals for rest and to change bearers. The fine trees that line the great aqueduct on the Tacubaya road, though much torn and mangled by the cannonade of the 13th, afforded a fine shelter from the hot sun-beams. In two hours after leaving Chapultepec, the escort entered the Garita Belen, passed up the Paseo Nuevo, and halted in front of the Alameda.

Any one who has visited the City of Mexico will recollect, that opposite the Alameda, on its southern front, is a row of fine houses, which continue on to the Calle San Francisco, and thence to the Great Plaza, forming the Calles Correo, Plateros, &c. These streets are inhabited principally by foreigners, particularly that of Plateros, which is filled with Frenchmen. To prevent their houses from being entered by the American soldiery upon the 14th, the windows were filled with national flags, indicating to what nation the respective owners of the houses belonged. There were Belgians, French, English, Prussians, Spanish, Danes, and Austrians – in fact, every kind of flag. Mexican flags alone were not to be seen. Where these should have been, at times, the white flag – the banner of peace – hung through the iron railings, or from the balcony. In front of a house that bore this simple ensign, the escort, with the litera, had accidentally stopped.

The eye of the wounded officer rested mechanically upon the little flag over his head, when his attention was arrested by noticing that this consisted of a small, white lace handkerchief, handsomely embroidered upon the corners, and evidently such as belonged to some fair being. Though suffering from the agony of his wound, there was something so attractive in this discovery, that the eyes of the invalid were immediately turned upon the window, or rather grating, from which the flag was suspended, and his countenance changed at once, from the listless apathy of pain to an expression of eager interest. A young girl was in the window, leaning her forehead against the reja, or grating, and looking down with more of painful interest than curiosity upon the pale face beneath her. It was the window of the entresol, slightly raised above the street, and the young girl herself was evidently of that class known to the aristocracy of Mexico as the "leperos." She was tastefully dressed, however, in the picturesque costume of her class and country, and her beautiful black hair, her dark Indian eye, the half olive, half carmine tinge upon her soft cheek, formed a countenance at once strange, and strikingly beautiful. Her neck, bosom, and shoulders, seen over the window-stone, were of that form which strikes you as possessing more of the oval than the rotund, in short the model of the perfect woman.

On seeing the gaze of the wounded man so intently fixed upon her, the young girl blushed, and drew back. The officer felt disappointed and sorry, as one feels when the light, or a beautiful object is suddenly removed from his sight; still, however, keeping his eyes intently fixed upon the window, as though unable to unrivet his gaze. This continued for some moments, when a beautiful arm was plunged through the iron grating, holding in the most delicate little fingers a glass of piñal.

A soldier stepped up, and taking the proffered glass, held it to the lips of the wounded officer, who gladly drank of the cool and refreshing beverage, without being able to thank the fair donor, who had withdrawn her hand at parting with the glass. The glass was held up to the window, but the hand that clutched it was coarse and large, and evidently that of a man. A muttered curse, too, in the Spanish language, was heard to proceed from within. This was heard but indistinctly. The invalid gazed at the window for some minutes, expecting the return of the beautiful apparition, then as if he had given up all hope, he called out a "gracias-adios!" and ordered the escort to move on. The soldiers, once more shouldering the litera, passed up the Calle Correo, and entered the Hotel Compagnon, in the street of Espiritu Santo.

For two months the invalid was confined to his chamber, but often, during that time, both waking and dreaming, the face of the beautiful Mexican girl would flit across his fevered fancy. At the end of this time his surgeon gave him permission to ride out in an easy carriage. He was driven to the Alameda, where he ordered the carriage to halt under the shade of its beautiful trees, and directly in front of the spot where he had rested on entering the city. He recognized the little window. The white flag was not now there, and he could see nothing of the inmates. He remained a considerable time seated in the carriage, gazing upon the house, but no face appeared at the cold iron grating, no smile to cheer his vigil. Tired and disappointed, he ordered his carriage to be driven back to the hotel.

Next day he repeated the manœuvre, and the next, and the next, with a like success. Probably he had not chosen the proper time of day. It was certainly not the hour when the lovely faces of the Mexican women appear in their balconies. This reflection induced him to change the hour, and, upon the day following, he ordered his carriage in the evening. Just before twilight, it drew up as usual under the tall trees of the Alameda. Imagine the delight of the young officer, at seeing the face of the beautiful Mexican through the gratings of the reja.

The stir made by the stopping of the carriage had attracted her. The uniform of its inmate was the next object of her attention, but when her eyes fell upon the face of the wearer, a strange expression came over her countenance, as if she were struggling with some indistinct recollections, and all at once that beautiful countenance was suffused with a smile of joy. She had recognized the officer. The latter, who had been an anxious observer of every change of expression, smiled in return, and bowed an acknowledgment, then turning to his servant, who was a Mexican, he told him, in Spanish, to approach the window, and offer his thanks to the young lady for her act of kindness upon the 15th of September.

The servant delivered the message, and shortly afterward the carriage drove off. For several evenings the same carriage might be seen standing under the trees of the Alameda. An interesting acquaintance had been established between the young officer and the Mexican girl. About a week afterward, and the carriage appeared no more. The invalid had been restored to perfect strength.

December came, and upon the 15th of this month, about half an hour before twilight, an American officer, wrapped in a light Mexican cloak, passed down the Calle San Francisco, and crossed into the Alameda. Here he stopped, leaning against a tree, as though observing the various groups of citizens, who passed in their picturesque dresses. His eye, however, was occasionally turned upon the houses upon the opposite side of the street, and with a glance of stealthy, but eager inquiry. At length the well-known form of the beautiful "lepera" appeared at the window, who, holding up her hand, adroitly signaled the officer with her taper, fan-like fingers. The signal was answered. She had scarcely withdrawn her hand inside the reja when a dark, scowling face made its appearance at her side, her hand was rudely seized, and with a scream she disappeared. The young officer fancied he saw the bright gleaming of a stiletto within the gloomy grating.

He rushed across the street, and in a moment stood beneath the window. Grasping the strong iron bars, he lifted himself up so as to command a view of the inside, which was now in perfect silence. His horror may be imagined when, on looking into the room, he saw the young girl stretched upon the floor, and, to all appearances, dead. A stream of blood was running from beneath her clothes, and her dress was stained with blood over the waist and bosom. With frantic energy the young man clung to the bars, and endeavored to wrench them apart. It was to no purpose, and letting go his hold, he dropped into the street. The large gate of the house was open. Into this he rushed, and reached the patio just in time to catch a glimpse of a figure escaping along the azotea. He rushed up the steep stone stairway, and grasping the parapet, raised himself on the roof. The fugitive had run along a series of platforms of different heights, composed by the azoteas of houses, and had reached a low roof, from which he was about to leap into an adjoining street, where he would, in all probability, have made good his escape. He stood upon the edge of the parapet, calculating his leap, which was still a fearful plunge. It was not left to his choice whether to take or refuse it. A pistol flashed behind him, and almost simultaneously with the report he fell forward upon his head, and lay upon the pavement below, a bruised and bleeding corpse. His pursuer approached the parapet, and looked over into the street, as if to assure himself that his aim had been true, then turned with a fearful foreboding, and retraced his way over the azoteas. His fears, alas! were but too just. She was dead.