The Poets and Poetry of America

And did I leave thy loveliness, to stand

Again in the dull world of earthly blindness? Pain'd with the pressure of unfriendly hands,

Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness? Left I for this thy shades, where none intrude, To prison wandering thought and mar sweet solitude?

Yet I will look upon thy face again,

My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well-remember'd form in each old tree, And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

WHEN Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurl'd her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,

And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She call'd her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.

II.

Majestic monarch of the cloud,

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven,

When strive the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven, Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given

To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!

III.

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,

And the long line comes gleaming on.
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,

Has dimm'd the glistening bayonet, Each soldier eye shall brightly turn

To where thy sky-born glories burn; And as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud

Heave in wild wreathes the battle-shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall

Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall;

Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall sink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death.

IV.

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave

Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale,

Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea

Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendours fly In triumph o'er his closing eye.

Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valour given; The stars have lit the welkin dome,

And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet!

Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?

TO SARAH.

ONE happy year has fled, SALL,

Since you were all my own;

The leaves have felt the autumn blight,

The wintry storm has blown. We heeded not the cold blast,

Nor the winter's icy air;

For we found our climate in the heart, And it was summer there.

II.

The summer sun is bright, SALL,

The skies are pure in hue; But clouds will sometimes sadden them, And dim their lovely blue; And clouds may come to us, SALL,

But sure they will not stay; For there's a spell in fond hearts To chase their gloom away.

III.

In sickness and in sorrow

Thine eyes were on me still, And there was comfort in each glance To charm the sense of ill; And were they absent now, SALL, I'd seek my bed of pain, And bless each pang that gave me back Those looks of love again.

IV.

O, pleasant is the welcome kiss,

When day's dull round is o'er, And sweet the music of the step

That meets me at the door. Though worldly cares may visit us, I reck not when they fall, While I have thy kind lips, my SALL, To smile away them all.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

[Born, 1795.]

THE author of "Red Jacket, and Peter Castaly's "Epistle to Recorder Riker," is a son of IsRAEL HALLECK, of Dutchess county, New York, and MARY ELLIOT, his wife, of Guilford, Connecticut, a descendant of JOHN ELIOT, the celebrated "Apostle of the Indians." He was born at Guilford, in August, 1795, and when about eighteen years of age became a clerk in one of the principal banking-houses in New York. He evinced a taste for poetry, and wrote verses, at a very early period, but until he came to New York never published any thing which in the maturity of his years he has deemed worthy of preservation. The "Evening Post," then edited by WILLIAM COLEMAN, was the leading paper of the city, and the only one in which much attention was given to literature. It had a large number of contributors, and youthful wits who gained admission to its columns regarded themselves as fairly started in a career of successful authorship. HALLECK's first offering to the "Evening Post" was that piece of exquisite versification and refined sentiment of which the first line is

MAN

"There is an evening twilight of the heart." BRYANT, who was nearly a year older, about the same time published in the "North American Review" his noble poem of "Thanatopsis." COLEgave HALLECK's lines to the printer as soon as he had read them, which was a great compliment for so fastidious an editor. He did not ascertain who wrote them for several months, and the author in the mean while had become so much of a literary lion that he then reprinted them with a preface asserting their merits.

One evening in the spring of 1819, as HALLECK was on the way home from his place of business, he stopped at a coffee-house then much frequented by young men, in the vicinity of Columbia College. A shower has just fallen, and a brilliant sunset was distinguished by a rainbow of unusual magnificence. In the group about the door, half a dozen had told what they would wish could their wishes be realized, when HALLECK, said, looking at the glorious spectacle above the horizon, "If I could have my wish, it should be to lie in the lap of that rainbow, and read Tom Campbell." A handsome young fellow, standing near, suddenly turned to him and exclaimed, "You and I must be acquainted: my name is DRAKE;" and from that hour till his death JoSEPH RODMAN DRAKE and FITZ-GREENE HALLECK were united in a most fraternal intimacy. DRAKE had already written the first four of the once-celebrated series of humorous and satirical odes known as the "Croaker Pieces," and they had been published in the "Evening Post." He

now made HALLECK a partner, and the remaining numbers were signed "Croaker & Co." The last one written by DRAKE was "The American Flag," printed on the twenty-ninth of May, and the last of the series, "Curtain Conversations," was furnished by HALLECK, on the twenty-fourth of the following July. These pieces related to scenes and events with which most readers in New York were familiar; they were written with great spirit and good-humour, and the curiosity of the town was excited to learn who were their authors; but the young poets kept their secret, and were unsuspected, while their clever performances were from time to time attributed to various well-known literary men. Near the close of the year HALLECK wrote in the same vein his longest poem, "Fanny," a playful satire of the fashions, follies, and public characters of the day. It contains from twelve to fifteen hundred lines, and was completed and printed within three weeks from its commencement.

The next year DRAKE died, of consumption, and HALLECK mourned his loss in those beautiful tributary verses which appeared soon after in the" Scientific Repository and Critical Review,” beginning— "Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days; None knew thee but to love thee, None named thee but to praise."

In 1822 and 1823 our author visited Great Britain and the continent of Europe. Among the souvenirs of his travels are two of his finest poems,

Burns," and "Alnwick Castle," which, with a few other pieces, he gave to the public in a small volume in 1827. His fame was now established, and he has ever since been regarded as one of the truest of our poets, and in New York, where his personal qualities, are best known, and his poems, from their local allusions, are read by everybody, he has enjoyed perpetual and almost unexampled popularity.

He was once, as he informs us in one of his witty and graceful epistles, "in the cotton trade and sugar line," but for many years before the death of the late JOHN JACOB ASTOR, he was the principal superintendent of the extensive affairs of that great capitalist. Since then he has resided chiefly in his native town, in Connecticut. He frequently visits New York, however, and the fondness and enthusiasm with which his name is cherished by his old associates was happily illustrated in the beginning of 1854 by a complimentary dinner which was then given him by members of the Century Club.

It was Lord BYRON's opinion that a poet is always to be ranked according to his execution, and

not according to his branch of the art. "The poet who executes best," said he, "is the highest, whatever his department, and will be so rated in the world's esteem. We have no doubt of the justness of that remark; it is the only principle from which sound criticism can proceed, and upon this basis the reputations of the past have been made up. Considered in this light, Mr. HALLECK must be pronounced not merely one of the chief ornaments of a new literature, but one of the great masters in a language classical and immortal for the productions of genius which have illustrated and enlarged its capacities. There is in his compositions an essential pervading grace, a natural brilliancy of wit, a freedom yet refinement of sentiment, a sparkling flow of fancy, and a power of personification, combined with such high and careful finish, and such exquisite nicety of taste, that the larger part of them must be regarded as models almost faultless in the classes to which they belong. They appear to me to show a genuine in

sight into the principles of art, and a fine use of its resources; and after all that has been written about nature, strength, and originality, the true force, not passion, not novelty, but art. Look all secret of fame, the real magic of genius, is not through MILTON: look at the best passages of SHAKSPEARE; look at the monuments, "all Greek and glorious," which have come down to us from ancient times: what strikes us principally, and it might almost be said only, is the wonderfully arti ficial character of the composition; it is the prin ciple of their immortality, and without it no poem larity, and easy to display art in writing, but he can be long-lived. It may be easy to acquire popu who obtains popularity by the means and employ ment of careful and elaborate art, may be confi basis. This-for his careless playing with the dent that his reputation is fixed upon a sure scarcely remembered now-1 muse by which he once kept the town alive, is Mr. HALLECK has done. v-this, it seems to me,

EXTRACT FROM "THE RECORDER."

PETER CASTALY COMPARETH THE RECORDER
WITH JULIUS CÆSAR AND WITH HIMSELF.

My dear RECORDER, you and I

Have floated down life's stream together, And kept unharmed our friendship's tie Through every change of Fortune's sky,

....

Her pleasant and her rainy weather.
Full sixty times since first we met,
Our birthday suns have risen and set,
And time has worn the baldness now
Of JULIUS CESAR on your brow,
Whose laurel harvests long have shown
As green and glorious as his own. ....
Both eloquent and learned and brave,
Born to command and skilled to rule,
One made the citizen a slave,

The other makes him more- a fool.
The CESAR an imperial crown,

His slaves' mad gift, refused to wear,
The RIKER put his fool's cap on,
And found it fitted to a hair.
The CESAR passed the Rubicon
With helm, and shield, and breastplate on,
Dashing his warhorse through the waters;
The RIKER Would have built a barge
Or steamboat at the city's charge,

And passed it with his wife and daughters.
But let that pass. As I have said,
There's naught, save laurels, on your head,
And time has changed my clustering hair,
And showered snow-flakes thickly there;
And though our lives have ever been,
As different as their different scene;
Mine more renowned for rhymes than riches,
Yours less for scholarship than speeches;
Mine passed in low-roof'd leafy bower,
Yours in high halls of pomp and power,
Yet are we, be the moral told,
Alike in one thing-growing old.

EXTRACT FROM "FANNY."

WEEHAWKEN.

WEHAWKEN! in thy mountain scenery yet,
All we adore of nature in her wild
And frolic hour of infancy is met;

And never has a summer's morning smiled
Upon a lovelier scene than the full eye
Of the enthusiast revels on- -when high

Amid thy forest solitudes, he climbs

O'er crags, that proudly tower above the deep, And knows that sense of danger which sublimes

The breathless moment-when his daring step
Is on the verge of the cliff, and he can hear
The low dash of the wave, with startled ear,
Like the death music of his coming doom,

And clings to the green turf with desperate force,
As the heart clings to life; and when resume
The currents in their veins their wonted course,
There lingers a deep feeling-like the moan
Of wearied ocean, when the storm is gone.
In such an hour he turns, and on his view,

Ocean, and earth, and heaven, burst before him;
Clouds slumbering at his feet, and the clear blue

Of summer's sky in beauty bending o'er him —
The city bright below; and far away,
Sparkling in golden light, his own romantic bay.
Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement,

And banners floating in the sunny air;
And white sails o'er the calm blue waters bent,
Green isle, and circling shore, are blended there
In wild reality. When life is old,
And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold
Its memory of this; nor lives there one
[days
Whose infant breath was drawn, or boyhood's
Of happiness were passed, beneath that sun,

That in his manhood's prime can calmly gaze
Upon that bay, or on that mountain stand,
Nor feel the prouder of his native land.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

A nation's glory-be the rest
Forgot-she's canonized his mind;
And it is joy to speak the best
We may of human kind.

I've stood beside the cottage-bed
Where the bard-peasant first drew breath:
A straw-thatch'd roof above his head,
A straw-wrought couch beneath.

And I have stood beside the pile,

His monument-that tells to heaven
The homage of earth's proudest isle,
To that bard-peasant given.

Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot,
Boy-minstrel, in thy dreaming hour;
And know, however low his lot,
A poet's pride and power.

The pride that lifted BURNS from earth,
The power that gave a child of song
Ascendency o'er rank and birth,

The rich, the brave, the strong;
And if despondency weigh down
Thy spirit's fluttering pinions then,
Despair-thy name is written on

The roll of common men.

There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls, and louder lyres,
And lays lit up with Poesy's

Purer and holier fires:

Yet read the names that know not death;
Few nobler ones than BURNS are there;
And few have won a greener wreath
Than that which binds his hair.

On fields where brave men "die or do,"

In halls where rings the banquet's mirth, Where mourners weep, where lovers woo, From throne to cottage hearth;

What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed, What wild vows falter on the tongue, When "Scots wha hac wi' WALLACE bled," Or "Auld Lang Syne" is sung!

Pure hopes, that lift the soul above,

Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise, And dreams of youth, and truth, and love, With "Logan's" banks and braes.

And when he breathes his master-lay

Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall, All passions in our frames of clay Come thronging at his call.

Imagination's world of air,

And our own world, its gloom and glee,
Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,
And death's sublimity.

And BURNS-though brief the race he ran,
Though rough and dark the path he trod-
Lived-died-in form and soul a man,
The image of his God.

Though care, and pain, and want, and wo,
With wounds that only death could heal,
Tortures-the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel;

He kept his honesty and truth,

His independent tongue and pen,
And moved, in manhood and in youth,
Pride of his fellow-men.

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,

Of coward, and of slave;

A kind, true heart, a spirit high,

That could not fear and would not bow, Were written in his manly eye,

And on his manly brow.

Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven,
The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,
As when a loved one dies.

And still, as on his funeral day,

Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
To consecrated ground.

And consecrated ground it is,

The last, the hallow'd home of one
Who lives upon all memories,

Though with the buried gone.

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined-
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.

Sages, with Wisdom's garland wreathed,
Crown'd kings, and mitred priests of power,
And warriors with their bright swords sheathed,
The mightiest of the hour;

And lowlier names, whose humble home
Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star,
Are there-o'er wave and mountain come,
From countries near and far;

Pilgrims, whose wandering feet have press'd

The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the west,
My own green forest-land;

All ask the cottage of his birth,

Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung,
And gather feelings not of earth
His fields and streams among.

They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries!
The poet's tomb is there.

But what to them the sculptor's art,
His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns?
Wear they not graven on the heart
The name of ROBERT BURNS?

And faithful to the act of Congress, quoted As law-authority-it pass'd nem. con.— He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted, The most enlighten'd people ever known. That all our week is happy as a Sunday

In Paris, full of song, and dance, and laugh; And that, from Orleans to the bay of Fundy, There's not a bailiff nor an epitaph.

And, furthermore, in fifty years or sooner,
We shall export our poetry and wine;
And our brave fleet, eight frigates and a schooner
Will sweep the seas from Zembla to the line.
If he were with me, King of Tuscarora,
Gazing as I, upon thy portrait now,
In all its medall'd, fringed, and beaded glory,
Its eyes' dark beauty, and its thoughtful brow-
Its brow, half-martial and half-diplomatic,
Its eye, upsoaring, like an eagle's wings;
Well might he boast that we,
the democratic,
Outrival Europe-even in our kings;

For thou wert monarch born. Tradition's pages
Tell not the planting of thy parent tree,
But that the forest-tribes have bent for ages

To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee.

[thyme,

Thy name is princely. Though no poet's magic
Could make RED JACKET grace an English
Unless he had a genius for the tragic,
And introduced it in a pantomime;
Yet it is music in the language spoken
Of thine own land; and on her herald-roll,
As nobly fought for, and as proud a token
AS CŒUR DE LION's, of a warrior's soul.
Thy garb-though Austria's bosom-star would
frighten

That medal pale, as diamonds the dark mine, And GEORGE the FOURTH wore, in the dance at Brighton,

A more becoming evening dress than thine; Yet 'tis a brave one, scorning wind and weather,

And fitted for thy couch on field and flood, As ROB Ror's tartans for the highland heather, Or forest-green for England's ROBIN Hood. Is strength a monarch's merit? (like a whaler's) Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong As earth's first kings-the Argo's gallant sailors, Heroes in history, and gods in

song.

Is eloquence? Her spell is thine that reaches The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport, And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches, The secret of their mastery-they are short. Is beauty? Thine has with thy youth departed, But the love-legends of thy manhood's years, And she who perish'd, young and broken-hearted, Are-but I rhyme for smiles, and not for tears. The monarch mind-the mystery of commanding, The godlike power, the art NAPOLEON, Of winning, fettering, moulding, wielding, banding The hearts of millions till they move as one;

« Zurück Weiter »

Books