Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Ay, let me wither like a riven branch,
So thou art lifted, thou art magnified,
And thy pure beauties valued at their worth.
Then, as I hear thy ever-tuneful voice
Roll to the future in a gathering surge,
Resplendent dancing on the van of time,
I'll shout thy praise in loud-tongued jubilee,
Nor pay thee half I owe. In thee alone-
In thee alone I live, refining spirit!
For thou the drooping soul of dross canst purge,
And lift the bard above the common herd
That toil and traffic, till their mental eye
Grows dull or blind, for want of brighter use.
Oh, living triflers! while the roaring waves
Of seas eternal thunder in your ears,

And shake Time's shifting sands beneath your feet,
Rising to gulf ye-pause amid your gains!
Look up to heaven, and dare to tell your souls
This is the destiny which Gon ordain'd.
Oh, frenzy dire! that man should bow his mind
To lick the dust, and conscious pride thence gain.
Dare ye, ye petty things, ye solemn fools,
Who shine, like glow-worms, when all else is dark,
But fade to reptiles when the morn appears—
Dare ye the poet scorn, or by him pass,
As he were noteless mid your brother worms?
Dare ye unfold his book with listless hands,
And trifle o'er the page, to wile an hour?
Oh, dare ye dim the links of that bright chain
Whose highest term but ends in Gon himself?
And, worse than all, dare ye, the gifted few
By nature pure turn faithless, and drag down
Your furled plumes, to trail them in the mire-
Debase your calling-more than all conduce
To bring reproach upon your mystery!
Ye priests of Time, ye Heaven-anointed bards,
Summon'd on earth to lure, to urge, to drive
Reluctant man along the narrow path-
Oh, can ye mingle with the meaner throng,
And waste your glory in neglect? or, worse,
Can ye add lustre to the tempting sins
That, like a wanton's arms, engird our race-
Gilding the slimy pools of sloth and guilt
With brightness for a nobler use bestow'd!
Ye sin in knowledge, and ye know the doom;
Ye need no tutor. Hell, with hollow jaws,
Gapes wide before you, open-eyed ye plunge-
Knowing the better path, ye choose the worst.
Bright Poesy! 't is not alone thy task
To sanctify the forms that deck our earth;
To lend a soul to things all lifeless else;
Or to interpret for mankind the signs
Symbolic, yet unmeaning but for thee-
The God-writ hieroglyphs, that letter earth
In every shape which changing Nature takes,
And have significance, instructing those
On whom thy robe initiatory falls.
No, not alone amid the world of sense
Shouldst thou voluptuous pick thy dainty way:
The winged one, whose birthright is the sky,
Must not forever cull the sweets of earth.
There is a realm where common eyes ne'er gaze,
Circled with sounds which sensual ears ne'er hear,
Peopled with forms that shrink from finest
touch-

Realm of idea, of mind, of abstract truth,
Toward which we ever journey; mid whose forms,
More real than all we see, or hear, or feel
Of the mere shows which fill this phantom world,
Pre-destin'd man shall dwell eternally.

Material life is short, though stretch'd to doom;
But the long morn of life spiritual

Ends but with GoD. O Spirit! thither bend
Thy youthful wings; for to thy purer eyes
All mental powers, all plastic thoughts, that mould
Mankind and matter to created forms,

Are manifest. If 'tis permitted, thither
Thy votary bear; for I am one whose mind
Has cast the dust of earth from off its plumes,
Nor in this world have wish to compass aught,
Save thee to cherish and exalt for man.
Ah no! upon the future rest mine eyes;
And shadowy hopes, beyond the mystic grave,
Beckon and smile, and lure me gently on;
And point to thoughts unrealized on earth-
To yearnings dim, but seen by Faith's pure eyes-
To vast ideas, the eagle brood of mind,
That beat their sensual bars, and fiercely mourn—
As there existent, with full power and scope
To act their parts, unvex'd by stumbling sense,
That dull-eyed agent of the prison'd soul.

"Tis not for naught we suffer what we feel;
'Tis not for naught we battle, day by day,
With falsehoods whose foul touch disgust the heart;
"Tis not for naught that in this empty show,
This mummery of life, we feign a part,
Or bear the sneers and scoffs of heedless men,
O brother bards! This earth is not your sphere;
And all the loud acclaims of listening crowds
But move the blood, or please the tingling ear,
Not satisfy the soul, whose rushing tide,
At the first swelling, into nothingness
Sweeps the faint vestiges of those who stood
Upon the brink, and wonder'd at its voice.
The world of spirits is the poet's home:
There may his nature first be understood-
Yes, by the souls who now no fellowship
Claim or confess. Or haply, if the flesh,
Like a contagion, cling them e'en in heaven,
And dim their eyes; yet are there those-O GOD,
Let me not doubt it!-who may circle us,
And, with congenial thoughts and sympathies,
The thirsting void of love within us fill.

The poet ceased; and down the clamorous brook I heard his footfall faint and fainter grow. I turn'd me home; yet, all the way, that man And his strange song perplex'd my tangled thoughts. I pictured him a home, and rank, and wealth, A gentle, loving wife, and children fair— Fame, and all else which man on earth desires; And over these I spread the curse of song, And wither'd them to naught! What mental pain, What sickness past all cure, what thirsting thoughts, That come, like beggars pale, relief to ask At the closed portals of eternity,

Must he endure who framed that troubled song!
Then thank'd I Heaven, and bless'd the bounteous
ONE

Who, in my keeping, gave not power enough
To shield from jealous Time my humble name.

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

TO-DAY the good ship sails,
Across the sparkling sea-
To-day the northern gales

Are blowing swift and free;
Speed, speed her distant way,
To that far land of gold:

A richer prize we seek than they,
The Argonauts of old!

Who goes with us? who quits the tiresome shore,
And sails where Fortune beckons him away;
Where in that marvellous land, in virgin ore,
The wealth of years is gather'd in a day?
Here, toil and trouble are our portion still,
And still with want our weary work is paid;
Slowly the shillings drop into the till,

Small are the profits of our tedious trade;
There, Nature proffers with unstinted hands,

The countless wealth the wide domain confines, Sprinkles the mountain-streams with golden sands, And calls the adventurer to exhaustless mines. Come, then, with us! what are the charms of home, What are the ties of friends or kindred worth? Thither, oh thither, let our footsteps roam

There is the Eden of our fallen earth! Well do we hold the fee of those broad lands Wrested from feebler hands,

By our own sword and spear;
Well may the weeping widow be consoled,
And orphan'd hearts their ceaseless grief withhold;
Well have our brothers shed their life-blood here.
Say, could we purchase at a price too dear,
These boundless acres of uncounted gold?
Come, then! it is to-day,

To-day the good ship sails,
And swift upon her way

Blow out the northern gales.

A twelvemonth more, and we

Our homeward course shall hold,

With richer freight within than theirs,
The Argonauts of old!

Alas! for honest labour from honest ends averted;
Alas! for firesides left, and happy homes deserted.

Brightly the bubble glitters; bright in the distance
The land of promise gleams;

But ah, the phantom fortunes of existence
Live but in dreams!

[blocks in formation]

THE INCOGNITA OF RAPHAEL.*

LONG has the summer sunlight shone
On the fair form, the quaint costume;
Yet nameless still, she sits unknown,
A lady in her youthful bloom.
Fairer for this! no shadows cast

Their blight upon her perfect lot;
Whate'er her future, or her past,

In this bright moment matters not. No record of her high descent

There needs, nor memory of her name: Enough that RAPHAEL'S colours blent

To give her features deathless fame! 'Twas his anointing hand that set

The crown of beauty on her brow; Still lives its earlier radiance yet,

As at the earliest, even now. "Tis not the ecstasy that glows

In all the rapt CECILIA's grace; Nor yet the holy, calm repose,

He painted on the Virgin's face.

Less of the heavens, and more of earth,
There lurk within these earnest eyes,
The passions that have had their birth,

And grown beneath Italian skies.

What mortal thoughts, and cares, and dreams, What hopes, and fears, and longings rest, Where falls the folded veil, or gleams

The golden necklace on her breast. What mockery of the painted glow

May shade the secret soul within; What griefs from passion's overflow, What shame that follows after sin!

Yet calm as heaven's serenest deeps

Are those pure eyes, those glances pure;
And queenly is the state she keeps,
In beauty's lofty trust secure.

And who has stray'd, by happy chance,
Through all those grand and pictured halls,
Nor felt the magic of her glance,

As when a voice of music calls?
Not soon shall I forget the day-
Sweet day, in spring's unclouded time,
While on the glowing canvass lay

The light of that delicious clime

I mark'd the matchless colours wreathed
On the fair brow, the peerless cheek,
The lips, I fancied, almost breathed

The blessings that they could not speak.
fair were the eyes with mine that bent
Upon the picture their mild gaze,
And dear the voice that gave consent
To all the utterance of my praise.

The portrait to which these verses refer is in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is one of the gems of that admirable collection.

Oh, fit companionship of thought;
Oh, happy memories, shrined apart;
The rapture that the painter wrought,
The kindred rapture of the heart!

UHLAND.

Ir is the poet UHLAND, from whose wreathings
Of rarest harmony I here have drawn,
To lower tones and less melodious breathings,
Some simple strains, of youth and passion born.

His is the poetry of sweet expression,

Of clear, unfaltering tune, serene and strong; Where gentlest thoughts and words, in soft procession,

Move to the even measures of his song. Delighting ever in his own calm fancies, He sees much beauty where most men see naught, Looking at Nature with familiar glances, And weaving garlands in the groves of thought. He sings of youth, and hope, and high endeavour, He sings of love-O crown of poesy!— Of fate, and sorrow, and the grave, forever The end of strife, the goal of destiny. He sings of fatherland, the minstrel's glory, High theme of memory and hope divine, Twining its fame with gems of antique story, In Suabian songs and legends of the Rhine; In ballads breathing many a dim tradition,

Nourish'd in long belief or minstrel rhymes, Fruit of the old Romance, whose gentle mission Pass'd from the earth before our wiser times. Well do they know his name among the mountains, And plains, and valleys, of his native land; Part of their nature are the sparkling fountains Of his clear, thought, with rainbow fancies spann'd.

His simple lays oft sings the mother cheerful
Beside the cradle in the dim twilight;
His plaintive notes low breathes the maiden tearful
With tender murmurs in the ear of night.

The hillside swain, the reaper in the meadows,
Carol his ditties through the toilsome day;
And the lone hunter in the Alpine shadows
Recalls his ballads by some ruin gray.

O precious gift! O wondrous inspiration!
Of all high deeds, of all harmonious things,
To be the oracle, while a whole nation
Catches the echo from the sounding strings.
Out of the depths of feeling and emotion
Rises the orb of song, serenely bright,
As who beholds, across the tracts of ocean,
The golden sunrise bursting into light.

Wide is its magic world-divided neither
By continent, nor sea, nor narrow zone:
Who would not wish sometimes to travel thither,
In fancied fortunes to forget his own?

BAYARD TAYLOR.

[Born, 1.825.]

BAYARD TAYLOR was born on the eleventh of January, 1825, at Kennet Square, near the Brandywine, in Pennsylvania, and in that rural and classical region he lived until his departure for Europe in the summer of 1844. Having passed two years in Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and France, he returned to the United States, and after publishing an account of his travels, under the title of "Views a-Foot," he settled in New York, where he has since been occupied as one of the editors of "The Tribune," a journal which has derived much advantage from his fine taste in literature and large knowledge of affairs.

Though not egotistical, there is scarcely an author more easily detected in his works. And this is not from any of those tricks of style in which alone consists the individuality of so many; but his sincere, frank, and enthusiastic spirit, grateful while aspiring, calm while struggling, and humble while attaining; and his life, which moves in order in the crowd and jar of society, in the solitude where Nature is seen with reverence, "up heights of rough ascent," and over streams and chasms, by shapely ways constructed by his will and knowledge. We do not remember any book of travels in which an author appears altogether so amiable and interesting as he in his " Views a-Foot." He a'ways lingers in the background, or steps forward modestly but to solicit more earnestly our admiration for what has kindled his own: but undesignedly, or against his design even, he continually engrosses our interest, as if he were the hero of a novel; and as we pass from scene to scene with him, we think of the truth and poetry of each only to sympathize in his surprise, and joy, and wonder.

BAYARD TAYLOR's first move in literature was a sma I volume of poems, of which the longest, and the longest he has yet published, was upon an incident in Spanish history. This was written when he was about eighteen years of age, and my acquaintance with him commenced when he arrived in the city with his manuscripts. We read "Ximena" together; and, while negotiations were in progress for its publication, discussed the subject of Americanism in letters. I urged upon his consideration the themes I thought best adapted to the development and illustration of his genius.

Here was a young author, born and nurtured in one of the most characteristic and beautiful of our rural districts, so removed from the associations that vitiate the national feeling and manner, and altogether of a growth so indigenous, that he was one of the fittest types of our people, selecting the materials for his first production from scenes and actions which are more picturesque, more romantic, or in any way more suitable for the purposes of art, only as they have been made so by art, and

are seen through the media of art, in preference to the fresh valleys and mountains and forests, and lakes and rivers and cataracts, and high resolve, and bold adventure, and brave endurance, which have more distinctly marked, and varied, and ennobled our history than all other histories, in events crowding so fast upon each other, that our annals seem but a rehearsal of all that had been before, with years for centuries-divided by the Declaration of Independence, which is our gospel-beyond which the colonies are ancient nations, and this side of which our states have swept, with steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs, the whole breadth of Time; and ere the startled empires are aware, are standing before them all, beckoning them to the last and best condition, which is the fulfilment of farthest-reaching prophecy. In such a choice, he had not only to enter into a competition with the greatest geniuses of the countries and ages he invaded, but, worse than this, to be a parasite of their inspiration, or to animate old forms, disciplined to a mere routine, with the new life to which he was born-sacrificing altogether his native strength, or attempting its exhibition in fetters.

Genius creates, but not like the Divine energy, from nothing. Genius creates from knowledge; and the fullness of knowledge necessary to its uses can be acquired, not from any second-hand glimpses through books, or pictures, or discourse, but from experience in the midst of its subjects, the respiration of their atmosphere, a daily contact with their forms, and a constant sympathy with their nature. This pervading intelligence gives no transient tone to the feelings, but enters into the essence of character, and becomes a part of life. He who would set aside the spirit of his age and country, to take upon himself another being, must approach his task with extraordinary powers and an indomitable will, or he will fail utterly. It is undoubtedly true that, to be American, it is not needful in all cases to select subjects which are so geographically; but this admission does not justify an indiscriminate use of foreign life, or a reckless invasion or assumption of foreign sentiment. There must be some relationship of condition and aspiration. Of all writers who have yet written, MILTON was the most American. All the works of CHANNING embrace less that is national to us than a page of the "Defence of the People of England;" and a library larger than that which was at Alexandria, of such books as IRVING's, would not contain as much Americanism as a paragraph of the "Areopagitica." But the Genius of America was born in England, and his strength was put forth in those conflicts of the commonwealth which ended in the exile of the young Hercules. During the Cromwellian era, England offers almost as ap

propriate a field for illustration by the American as Massachusetts under HUTCHINSON, except in the accessories of nature, which should enter into the compositions of art. Not so Spain or Russia, at the extremes of Europe, without affinities with each other or with us. There is very little in the life or nature, or past or present or future, of either of these nations, with which the American can have any real sympathy; and for an American author, whose heart keeps time with his country's, to attempt the illustration of any character from either, while his own domain, far more rich in suggestion and material, lies waste, is a thing scarcely possible to the apprehension of a common understanding. In a remote and shadowy antiquity, like that of Egypt, or in such a darkness as envelops Mexico or Peru, or our own continent before its last discovery, the case is different: we are at liberty, with conditions, to make these the scenes of our conventionalities, because there is scarcely a record to contradict the suggestions of the imagination.

Mr. TAYLOR happily went abroad just after the publication of his story of the Sierra Morena, and though he had then travelled but little in his native country, and Europe, "seen with a staff and knapsack," opened all her gates before him with circumstances to produce the most vivid and profound impressions, his love of home grew stronger, and he felt at length the truth which might never have come to him if he had remained here, that for him the holiest land for the intellect, as well as the affections, was that in which he was born. The fables of genius and the records of history may kindle the fancy and give activity to the imagination, but they cannot rouse the passions,

which must best dispose the illustrations of fancy, and can alone give vitality and attractive beauty to the fruits of a creative energy. In all his later writings the influence of the inspirations which belong to his country and his age are more and more apparent, and in his volume entitled "Rhymes of Travel, Ballads, and other Poems," published in New York in 1848, the most spirited, natural, and altogether successful compositions, are those which were suggested by the popular impulses and the peculiar adventure which have distinguished the recent life of the republic. "El Canalo," The Bison Track," and "The Fight of Paso del Mar," belong entirely to the years in which they were written, but the inspiration of which they are fruits was not more genuine than that from which we have "The Continents," "In Italy," or "The Requiem in the North."

[ocr errors]

The finest and most sustained specimens of Mr. TAYLOR's imagination and passion are "Ariel in the Cloven Pine," and the "Ode to SHELLEY," both of which have been written since the appearance of his “ Rhymes of Travel." The latter is conceived in a spirit and expressed in a sounding rhythm worthy of the sublime intelligence to whom it is addressed. His mastery of the harmonies of the English language is perhaps best exhibited, however, in some of his translations from the German and Italian, particularly in a version of his friend FREILIGRATH's splendid appeal of "The Dead to the Living," a lyric which has been historical from the day on which it first startled the Prussians, and which he reproduced for the columns of "The Tribune" in a manner worthy of the original.

A REQUIEM IN THE NORTH. SPEED Swifter, Night!-wild northern Night, Whose feet the arctic islands know, When stiffening breakers, sharp and white, Gird the complaining shores of snow. Send all thy winds to sweep the wold

And howl in mountain-passes far, And hang thy banners, red and cold, Against the shield of every star! For what have I to do with morn,

Or summer's glory in the valesWith the blithe ring of forest-horn,

Or beckoning gleam of snowy sails? Art THOU not gone, in whose blue eye The fleeting summer dawn'd to me?Gone, like the echo of a sigh

Beside the loud, resounding sea!

Oh, brief that time of song and flowers,
Which blest, through thee, the Northern Land!

I pine amid its leafless bowers

And on the black and lonely strand.
The forest wails the starry bloom
Which yet shall pave its shadowy floor,
But down my spirit's aisles of gloom
Thy love shall blossom nevermore!

And nevermore shall battling pines
Their solemn triumph sound for me;
Nor morning fringe the mountain-lines,
Nor sunset flush the hoary sea;
But Night and Winter fill the sky
And load with frost the shivering air,
Till every gust that hurries by

Chimes wilder with my own despair!

The leaden twilight, cold and long,

Is slowly settling o'er the wave; No wandering blast awakes a song In naked boughs, above thy grave. The frozen air is still and dark;

The numb earth lies in icy rest; And all is dead save this one spark

Of burning grief, within my breast.

Life's darken'd orb shall wheel no more
To Love's rejoicing summer back;
My spirit walks a wintry shore,

With not a star to light its track.
Speed swifter, Night! thy gloom and frost
Are free to spoil and ravage here;
This last wild requiem for the lost,
I pour in thy unheeding ear!

« ZurückWeiter »