Kitabı oku: «The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art», sayfa 10
III. A Fall of Rain
It was at day-break my thought said:
“The moon makes chequered chestnut-shade
There by the south-side where the vine
Grapples the wall; and if it shine
This evening thro' the boughs and leaves,
And if the wind with silence weaves
More silence than itself, each stalk
Of flower just swayed by it, we'll walk,
Mary and I, when every fowl
Hides beak and eyes in breast, the owl
Only awake to hoot.”—But clover
Is beaten down now, and birds hover,
Peering for shelter round; no blade
Of grass stands sharp and tall; men wade
Thro' mire with frequent plashing sting
Of rain upon their faces. Sing,
Then, Mary, to me thro' the dark:
But kiss me first: my hand shall mark
Time, pressing yours the while I hark.
IV. Sheer Waste
Is it a little thing to lie down here
Beside the water, looking into it,
And see there grass and fallen leaves interknit,
And small fish sometimes passing thro' some bit
Of tangled grass where there's an outlet clear?
And then a drift of wind perhaps will come,
And blow the insects hovering all about
Into the water. Some of them get out;
Others swim with sharp twitches; and you doubt
Whether of life or death for other some.
Meanwhile the blueflies sway themselves along
Over the water's surface, or close by;
Not one in ten beyond the grass will fly
That closely skirts the stream; nor will your eye
Meet any where the sunshine is not strong.
After a time you find, you know not how,
That it is quite a stretch of energy
To do what you have done unconsciously,—
That is, pull up the grass; and then you see
You may as well rise and be going now.
So, having walked for a few steps, you fall
Bodily on the grass under the sun,
And listen to the rustle, one by one,
Of the trees' leaves; and soon the wind has done
For a short space, and it is quiet all;
Except because the rooks will make a caw
Just now and then together: and the breeze
Soon rises up again among the trees,
Making the grass, moreover, bend and tease
Your face, but pleasantly. Mayhap the paw
Of a dog touches you and makes you rise
Upon one arm to pat him; and he licks
Your hand for that. A child is throwing sticks,
Hard by, at some half-dozen cows, which fix
Upon him their unmoved contented eyes.
The sun's heat now is painful. Scarce can you
Move, and even less lie still. You shuffle then,
Poised on your arms, again to shade. Again
There comes a pleasant laxness on you. When
You have done enough of nothing, you will go.
Some hours perhaps have passed. Say not you fling
These hours or such-like recklessly away.
Seeing the grass and sun and children, say,
Is not this something more than idle play,
Than careless waste? Is it a little thing?
The Light beyond
I
Though we may brood with keenest subtlety,
Sending our reason forth, like Noah's dove,
To know why we are here to die, hate, love,
With Hope to lead and help our eyes to see
Through labour daily in dim mystery,
Like those who in dense theatre and hall,
When fire breaks out or weight-strained rafters fall,
Towards some egress struggle doubtfully;
Though we through silent midnight may address
The mind to many a speculative page,
Yearning to solve our wrongs and wretchedness,
Yet duty and wise passiveness are won,—
(So it hath been and is from age to age)—
Though we be blind, by doubting not the sun.
II
Bear on to death serenely, day by day,
Midst losses, gains, toil, and monotony,
The ignorance of social apathy,
And artifice which men to men display:
Like one who tramps a long and lonely way
Under the constant rain's inclemency,
With vast clouds drifting in obscurity,
And sudden lightnings in the welkin grey.
To-morrow may be bright with healthy pleasure,
Banishing discontents and vain defiance:
The pearly clouds will pass to a slow measure,
Wayfarers walk the dusty road in joyance,
The wide heaths spread far in the sun's alliance,
Among the furze inviting us to leisure.
III
Vanity, say they, quoting him of old.
Yet, if full knowledge lifted us serene
To look beyond mortality's stern screen,
A reconciling vision could be told,
Brighter than western clouds or shapes of gold
That change in amber fires,—or the demesne
Of ever mystic sleep. Mists intervene,
Which then would melt, to show our eyesight bold
From God a perfect chain throughout the skies,
Like Jacob's ladder light with winged men.
And as this world, all notched to terrene eyes
With Alpine ranges, smoothes to higher ken,
So death and sin and social miseries;
By God fixed as His bow o'er moor and fen.
The Blessed Damozel
The blessed Damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven:
Her blue grave eyes were deeper much
Than a deep water, even.
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift
On the neck meetly worn;
And her hair, lying down her back,
Was yellow like ripe corn.
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers;
Albeit to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.
(To one it is ten years of years:
........ Yet now, here in this place
Surely she leaned o'er me,—her hair
Fell all about my face.........
Nothing: the Autumn-fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace.)
It was the terrace of God's house
That she was standing on,—
By God built over the sheer depth
In which Space is begun;
So high, that looking downward thence,
She could scarce see the sun.
It lies from Heaven across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
With flame and blackness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.
But in those tracts, with her, it was
The peace of utter light
And silence. For no breeze may stir
Along the steady flight
O seraphim; no echo there,
Beyond all depth or height.
Heard hardly, some of her new friends,
Playing at holy games,
Spake, gentle-mouthed, among themselves,
Their virginal chaste names;
And the souls, mounting up to God,
Went by her like thin flames.
And still she bowed herself, and stooped
Into the vast waste calm;
Till her bosom's pressure must have made
The bar she leaned on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.
From the fixt lull of heaven, she saw
Time, like a pulse, shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove,
In that steep gulph, to pierce
The swarm: and then she spake, as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
“I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come,” she said.
“Have I not prayed in solemn heaven?
On earth, has he not prayed?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?
“When round his head the aureole clings,
And he is clothed in white,
I'll take his hand, and go with him
To the deep wells of light,
And we will step down as to a stream
And bathe there in God's sight.
“We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps tremble continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And where each need, revealed, expects
Its patient period.
“We two will lie i' the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Sometimes is felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
Saith His name audibly.
“And I myself will teach to him—
I myself, lying so,—
The songs I sing here; which his mouth
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
Finding some knowledge at each pause
And some new thing to know.”
(Alas! to her wise simple mind
These things were all but known
Before: they trembled on her sense,—
Her voice had caught their tone.
Alas for lonely Heaven! Alas
For life wrung out alone!
Alas, and though the end were reached?........
Was thy part understood
Or borne in trust? And for her sake
Shall this too be found good?—
May the close lips that knew not prayer
Praise ever, though they would?)
“We two,” she said, “will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies:—
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret, and Rosalys.
“Circle-wise sit they, with bound locks
And bosoms covered;
Into the fine cloth, white like flame,
Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.
“He shall fear haply, and be dumb.
Then I will lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak:
And the dear Mother will approve
My pride, and let me speak.
“Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel—the unnumber'd solemn heads
Bowed with their aureoles:
And Angels, meeting us, shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.
“There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:—
To have more blessing than on earth
In nowise; but to be
As then we were,—being as then
At peace. Yea, verily.
“Yea, verily; when he is come
We will do thus and thus:
Till this my vigil seem quite strange
And almost fabulous;
We two will live at once, one life;
And peace shall be with us.”
She gazed, and listened, and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild:
“All this is when he comes.” She ceased;
The light thrilled past her, filled
With Angels, in strong level lapse.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.
(I saw her smile.) But soon their flight
Was vague 'mid the poised spheres.
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)
Reviews
The Strayed Reveller; and other Poems. By A.—Fellowes, Ludgate-street.—1849.
If any one quality may be considered common to all living poets, it is that which we have heard aptly described as self-consciousness. In this many appear to see the only permanent trace of the now old usurping deluge of Byronism; but it is truly a fact of the time,—less a characteristic than a portion of it. Every species of composition—the dramatic, the narrative, the lyric, the didactic, the descriptive—is imbued with this spirit; and the reader may calculate with almost equal certainty on becoming acquainted with the belief of a poet as of a theologian or a moralist. Of the evils resulting from the practice, the most annoying and the worst is that some of the lesser poets, and all mere pretenders, in their desire to emulate the really great, feel themselves under a kind of obligation to assume opinions, vague, incongruous, or exaggerated, often not only not their own, but the direct reverse of their own,—a kind of meanness that has replaced, and goes far to compensate for, the flatteries of our literary ancestors. On the other hand, this quality has created a new tie of interest between the author and his public, enhances the significance of great works, and confers value on even the slightest productions of a true poet.
That the systematic infusion of this spirit into the drama and epic compositions is incompatible with strict notions of art will scarcely be disputed: but such a general objection does not apply in the case of lyric poetry, where even the character of the subject is optional. It is an instance of this kind that we are now about to consider.
“The Strayed Reveller and other Poems,” constitutes, we believe, the first published poetical work of its author, although the following would rather lead to the inference that he is no longer young.
“But my youth reminds me: ‘Thou
Hast lived light as these live now;
As these are, thou too wert such.’”—p. 59.
And, in another poem:
“In vain, all, all, in vain,
They beat upon mine ear again,
Those melancholy tones so sweet and still:
Those lute-like tones which, in long-distant years,
Did steal into mine ears.”—p. 86.
Accordingly, we find but little passion in the volume, only four pieces (for “The Strayed Reveller” can scarcely be so considered) being essentially connected with it. Of these the “Modern Sappho” appears to us not only inferior, but as evidencing less maturity both of thought and style; the second, “Stagyrus,” is an urgent appeal to God; the third, “The New Sirens,” though passionate in utterance, is, in purpose, a rejection of passion, as having been weighed in the balance and found wanting; and, in the last, where he tells of the voice which once
“Blew such a thrilling summons to his will,
Yet could not shake it;
Drained all the life his full heart had to spill;
Yet could not break it:”—
he records the “intolerable change of thought” with which it now comes to his “long-sobered heart.” Perhaps “The Forsaken Merman” should be added to these; but the grief here is more nearly approaching to gloomy submission and the sickness of hope deferred.
The lessons that the author would learn of nature are, as set forth in the sonnet that opens the volume,
“Of toil unsevered from tranquillity;
Of labor that in one short hour outgrows
Man's noisy schemes,—accomplished in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.”—p. 1.
His conception of the poet is of one who
“Sees before him life unroll,
A placid and continuous whole;
That general life which does not cease;
Whose secret is, not joy, but peace;
That life, whose dumb wish is not missed
If birth proceeds, if things subsist;
The life of plants and stones and rain;
The life he craves:—if not in vain
Fate gave, what chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.”—pp. 123-4.
(Resignation.)
Such is the author's purpose in these poems. He recognises in each thing a part of the whole: and the poet must know even as he sees, or breathes, as by a spontaneous, half-passive exercise of a faculty: he must receive rather than seek.
“Action and suffering tho' he know,
He hath not lived, if he lives so.”
Connected with this view of life as “a placid and continuous whole,” is the principle which will be found here manifested in different modes, and thro' different phases of event, of the permanence and changelessness of natural laws, and of the large necessity wherewith they compel life and man. This is the thought which animates the “Fragment of an ‘Antigone:’” “The World and the Quietest” has no other scope than this:—
“Critias, long since, I know,
(For fate decreed it so),
Long since the world hath set its heart to live.
Long since, with credulous zeal,
It turns life's mighty wheel:
Still doth for laborers send;
Who still their labor give.
And still expects an end.”—p. 109.
This principle is brought a step futher into the relations of life in “The Sick King in Bokhara,” the following passage from which claims to be quoted, not less for its vividness as description, than in illustration of this thought:—
“In vain, therefore, with wistful eyes
Gazing up hither, the poor man
Who loiters by the high-heaped booths
Below there in the Registan
“Says: ‘Happy he who lodges there!
With silken raiment, store of rice,
And, for this drought, all kinds of fruits,
Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,
“‘With cherries served in drifts of snow.’
In vain hath a king power to build
Houses, arcades, enamelled mosques,
And to make orchard-closes filled
“With curious fruit trees brought from far,
With cisterns for the winter rain;
And, in the desert, spacious inns
In divers places;—if that pain
“Is not more lightened which he feels,
If his will be not satisfied:
And that it be not from all time
The law is planted, to abide.”—pp. 47-8.
The author applies this basis of fixity in nature generally to the rules of man's nature, and avow himself a Quietist. Yet he would not despond, but contents himself, and waits. In no poem of the volume is this character more clearly defined and developed than in the sonnets “To a Republican Friend,” the first of which expresses concurrence in certain broad progressive principles of humanity: to the second we would call the reader's attention, as to an example of the author's more firm and serious writing:—
“Yet when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud;
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme:—
Seeing this vale, this earth whereon we dream,
Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high
Uno'erleaped mountains of necessity,
Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
When, bursting thro' the net-work superposed
By selfish occupation—plot and plan,
Lust, avarice, envy,—liberated man,
All difference with his fellow-man composed,
Shall be left standing face to face with God.”—p. 57.
In the adjuration entitled “Stagyrus,” already mentioned, he prays to be set free
“From doubt, where all is double,
Where Faiths are built on dust;”
and there seems continually recurring to him a haunting presage of the unprofitableness of the life, after which men have not “any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.” Where he speaks of resignation, after showing how the less impetuous and self-concentred natures can acquiesce in the order of this life, even were it to bring them back with an end unattained to the place whence they set forth; after showing how it is the poet's office to live rather than to act in and thro' the whole life round about him, he concludes thus:
“The world in which we live and move
Outlasts aversion, outlasts love.....
Nay, and since death, which wipes out man,
Finds him with many an unsolved plan,....
Still gazing on the ever full
Eternal mundane spectacle,
This world in which we draw our breath
In some sense, Fausta, outlasts death.....
Enough, we live:—and, if a life
With large results so little rife,
Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth,
Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,
The solemn hills around us spread,
This stream that falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice.
And, even could the intemperate prayer
Man iterates, while these forbear,
For movement, for an ampler sphere,
Pierce fate's impenetrable ear,
Not milder is the general lot
Because our spirits have forgot,
In actions's dizzying eddy whirled,
The something that infects the world.”—pp. 125-8.—Resignation.
“Shall we,” he asks, “go hence and find that our vain dreams are not dead? Shall we follow our vague joys, and the old dead faces, and the dead hopes?”
He exhorts man to be “in utrumque paratus.” If the world be the materialized thought of one all-pure, let him, “by lonely pureness,” seek his way through the colored dream of life up again to that all-pure fount:—
“But, if the wild unfathered mass no birth
In divine seats hath known;
In the blank echoing solitude, if earth,
Rocking her obscure body to and fro,
Ceases not from all time to heave and groan,
Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe,
Forms what she forms, alone:”
then man, the only self-conscious being, “seeming sole to awake,” must, recognizing his brotherhood with this world which stirs at his feet unknown, confess that he too but seems.
Thus far for the scheme and the creed of the author. Concerning these we leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
Before proceeding to a more minute notice of the various poems, we would observe that a predilection is apparent throughout for antiquity and classical association; not that strong love which made Shelley, as it were, the heir of Plato; not that vital grasp of conception which enabled Keats without, and enables Landor with, the most intimate knowledge of form and detail, to return to and renew the old thoughts and beliefs of Greece; still less the mere superficial acquaintance with names and hackneyed attributes which was once poetry. Of this conventionalism, however, we have detected two instances; the first, an allusion to “shy Dian's horn” in “breathless glades” of the days we live, peculiarly inappropriate in a sonnet addressed “To George Cruikshank on his Picture of ‘The Bottle;’” the second a grave call to Memory to bring her tablets, occurring in, and forming the burden of, a poem strictly personal, and written for a particular occasion. But the author's partiality is shown, exclusively of such poems as “Mycerinus” and “The Strayed Reveller,” where the subjects are taken from antiquity, rather in the framing than in the ground work, as in the titles “A Modern Sappho,” “The New Sirens,” “Stagyrus,” and “In utrumque paratus.” It is Homer and Epictetus and Sophocles who “prop his mind;” the immortal air which the poet breathes is “Where Orpheus and where Homer are;” and he addresses “Fausta” and “Critias.”
There are four narrative poems in the volume:—“Mycerinus,” “The Strayed Reveller,” “The Sick King in Bokhara,” and “The Forsaken Merman.” The first of these, the only one altogether narrative in form, founded on a passage in the 2nd Book of Herodotus, is the story of the six years of life portioned to a King of Egypt succeeding a father “who had loved injustice, and lived long;” and tells how he who had “loved the good” revels out his “six drops of time.” He takes leave of his people with bitter words, and goes out
“To the cool regions of the groves he loved........
Here came the king holding high feast at morn,
Rose-crowned; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree, all thro' the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine;
While the deep-burnished foliage overhead
Splintered the silver arrows of the moon.”—p. 7.
(a daring image, verging towards a conceit, though not absolutely such, and the only one of that character that has struck us in the volume.)
“So six long years he revelled, night and day:
And, when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove's centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile.”—pp. 8, 9.
Here a Tennysonian influence is very perceptible, more especially in the last quotation; and traces of the same will be found in “The Forsaken Merman.”
In this poem the story is conveyed by allusions and reminiscences whilst the Merman makes his children call after her who had returned to her own earth, hearing the Easter bells over the bay, and who is not yet come back for all the voices calling “Margaret! Margaret!” The piece is scarcely long enough or sufficiently distinct otherwise than as a whole to allow of extract; but we cannot but express regret that a poem far from common-place either in ubject or treatment should conclude with such sing-song as
—–“There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she;
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.”
“The Strayed Reveller” is written without rhyme—(not being blank verse, however,)—and not unfrequently, it must be admitted, without rhythm. Witness the following lines:
“Down the dark valley—I saw.”—
“Trembling, I entered; beheld”—
“Thro' the islands some divine bard.”—
Nor are these by any means the only ones that might be cited in proof; and, indeed, even where there is nothing precisely contrary to rhythm, the verse might, generally speaking, almost be read as prose. Seldom indeed, as it appears to us, is the attempt to write without some fixed laws of metrical construction attended with success; never, perhaps, can it be considered as the most appropriate embodiment of thought. The fashion has obtained of late years; but it is a fashion, and will die out. But few persons will doubt the superiority of the established blank verse, after reading the following passage, or will hesitate in pronouncing that it ought to be the rule, instead of the exception, in this poem:
“They see the merchants
On the Oxus stream:—but care
Must visit first them too, and make them pale:
Whether, thro' whirling sand,
A cloud of desert robber-horse has burst
Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
In the walled cities the way passes thro',
Crushed them with tolls; or fever airs
On some great river's marge
Mown them down, far from home.”—p. 25.
The Reveller, going to join the train of Bacchus in his temple, has strayed into the house of Circe and has drunk of her cup: he believes that, while poets can see and know only through participation in endurance, he shares the power belonging to the gods of seeing “without pain, without labour;” and has looked over the valley all day long at the Mœnads and Fauns, and Bacchus, “sometimes, for a moment, passing through the dark stems.” Apart from the inherent defects of the metre, there is great beauty of pictorial description in some passages of the poem, from which the following (where he is speaking of the gods) may be taken as a specimen:—
“They see the Indian
Drifting, knife in hand,
His frail boat moored to
A floating isle, thick-matted
With large-leaved low-creeping melon plants,
And the dark cucumber.
He reaps and stows them,
Drifting—drifting:—round him,
Round his green harvest-plot,
Flow the cool lake-waves:
The mountains ring them.”—p. 20.
From “the Sick King in Bokhara,” we have already quoted at some length. It is one of the most considerable, and perhaps, as being the most simple and life-like, the best of the narrative poems. A vizier is receiving the dues from the cloth merchants, when he is summoned to the presence of the king, who is ill at ease, by Hussein: “a teller of sweet tales.” Arrived, Hussein is desired to relate the cause of the king's sickness; and he tells how, three days since, a certain Moollah came before the king's path, calling for justice on himself, whom, deemed a fool or a drunkard, the guards pricked off with their spears, while the king passed on into the mosque: and how the man came on the morrow with yesterday's blood-spots on him, and cried out for right. What follows is told with great singleness and truth: “Thou knowest,” the man says,
“‘How fierce
In these last day the sun hath burned;
That the green water in the tanks
Is to a putrid puddle turned;
And the canal that from the stream
Of Samarcand is brought this way
Wastes and runs thinner every day.
“‘Now I at nightfall had gone forth
Alone; and, in a darksome place
Under some mulberry-trees, I found
A little pool; and, in brief space,
With all the water that was there
I filled my pitcher, and stole home
Unseen; and, having drink to spare,
I hid the can behind the door,
And went up on the roof to sleep.
“‘But, in the night, which was with wind
And burning dust, again I creep
Down, having fever, for a drink.
“‘Now, meanwhile, had my brethren found
The water-pitcher, where it stood
Behind the door upon the ground,
And called my mother: and they all,
As they were thirsty and the night
Most sultry, drained the pitcher there;
That they sat with it in my sight,
Their lips still wet, when I came down.
“‘Now mark: I, being fevered, sick,
(Most unblessed also,) at that sight
Brake forth and cursed them. Dost thou hear?
One was my mother. Now, do right.’
“But my lord mused a space, and said,
‘Send him away, sirs, and make on.
It is some madman,’ the king said.
As the king said, so was it done.
“The morrow at the self-same hour,
In the king's path, behold, the man,
Not kneeling, sternly fixed. He stood
Right opposite, and thus began,
“Frowning grim down: ‘Thou wicked king,
Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear;
What? Must I howl in the next world,
Because thou wilt not listen here?
“‘What, wilt thou pray and get thee grace,
And all grace shall to me be grudged?
Nay but, I swear, from this thy path
I will not stir till I be judged.’
“Then they who stood about the king
Drew close together and conferred;
Till that the king stood forth and said:
‘Before the priests thou shalt be heard.’
“But, when the Ulema were met
And the thing heard, they doubted not;
But sentenced him, as the law is,
To die by stoning on the spot.
“Now the king charged us secretly:
‘Stoned must he be: the law stands so:
Yet, if he seek to fly, give way;
Forbid him not, but let him go.’
“So saying, the king took a stone,
And cast it softly: but the man,
With a great joy upon his face,
Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.
“So they whose lot it was cast stones,
That they flew thick and bruised him sore:
But he praised Allah with loud voice,
And remained kneeling as before.
“My lord had covered up his face:
But, when one told him, ‘He is dead;’
Turning him quickly to go in,
‘Bring thou to me his corpse,’ he said.
“And truly, while I speak, oh king,
I hear the bearers on the stair.
Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?—
Ho! enter ye who tarry there.”—pp. 39-43.
The Vizier counsels the king that each man's private grief suffices him, and that he should not seek increase of it in the griefs of other men. But he answers him, (this passage we have before quoted,) that the king's lot and the poor man's is the same, for that neither has his will; and he takes order that the dead man be buried in his own royal tomb.
We know few poems the style of which is more unaffectedly without labor, and to the purpose, than this. The metre, however, of the earlier part is not always quite so uniform and intelligible as might be desired; and we must protest against the use, for the sake of rhyme, of broke in lieu of broken, as also of stole for stolen in “the New Sirens.” While on the subject of style, we may instance, from the “Fragment of an Antigone,” the following uncouth stanza, which, at the first reading, hardly appears to be correctly put together:
“But hush! Hœmon, whom Antigone,
Robbing herself of life in burying,
Against Creon's laws, Polynices,
Robs of a loved bride, pale, imploring,
Waiting her passage,
Forth from the palace hitherward comes.”—p. 30.
Perhaps the most perfect and elevated in tone of all these poems is “The New Sirens.” The author addresses, in imagination, a company of fair women, one of whose train he had been at morning; but in the evening he has dreamed under the cedar shade, and seen the same forms “on shores and sea-washed places,” “With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands.”
He thinks how at sunrise he had beheld those ladies playing between the vines; but now their warm locks have fallen down over their arms. He prays them to speak and shame away his sadness; but there comes only a broken gleaming from their windows, which “Reels and shivers on the ruffled gloom.” He asks them whether they have seen the end of all this, the load of passion and the emptiness of reaction, whether they dare look at life's latter days,
“When a dreary light is wading
Thro' this waste of sunless greens,
When the flashing lights are fading
On the peerless cheek of queens,
When the mean shall no more sorrow,
And the proudest no more smile;
While the dawning of the morrow
Widens slowly westward all that while?”
And he implores them to “let fall one tear, and set him free.” The past was no mere pretence; it was true while it lasted; but it is gone now, and the East is white with day. Shall they meet again, only that he may ask whose blank face that is?
