The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 32

In the course of the evening, you find chance for certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain: You tell her your heart can be likened to _one_ flower, 'And that, O most charming of women, 's the sunflower, Which turns'--here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, 270 From outside the curtain, says, 'That's all an error.'

As for him, he's--no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke (Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke); All women he d.a.m.ns with _mutabile semper_, And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 'Twas tow'rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And a.s.sisted her father in making a lexicon; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious 280 About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort,--but, no more to bore ye With character-painting, I'll turn to my story.

Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The _genus_, I think it is called, _irritabile_, Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, And nurses a--what is it?--_immedicabile_, Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, 290 If any poor devil but look at a laurel;-- Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta), Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away; And if that wouldn't do, he was sure to succeed, If he took his review out and offered to read; Or, failing in plans of this milder description, 300 He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, Considering that authors.h.i.+p wasn't a rich craft, To print the 'American drama of Witchcraft.'

'Stay, I'll read you a scene,'--but he hardly began, Ere Apollo shrieked 'Help!' and the authors all ran: And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate, He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle As calmly as if 'twere a nine-barrelled pistol, And threatened them all with the judgment to come, 310 Of 'A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome.'

'Stop! stop!' with their hands o'er their ears, screamed the Muses, 'He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 'Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, 'Tis mere ma.s.sacre now that the enemy's flying; If he's forced to 't again, and we happen to be there, Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether.'

I called this a 'Fable for Critics;' you think it's More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle's slender and slippery, 320 Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling _in loco desipere_ Is free to jump over as much of my frippery As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he May have like Odysseus control of the gales, And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; Moreover, although 'tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, You may e'en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me: 330 If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, And my _membra disjecta_ consign to the breezes, A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those bores, Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, Describes (the first verse somehow ends with _victoire_), As _dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire;_ Or, if I were over-desirous of earning A repute among noodles for cla.s.sical learning, I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis, As new as the jests of _Didaskalos tis;_ 340 Better still, I could make out a good solid list From authors recondite who do not exist,-- But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,-- I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 350 Made up of old jumbles of cla.s.sic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, An 'twere not for the dulness I've kindly omitted.

I'd apologize here for my many digressions.

Were it not that I'm certain to trip into fresh ones ('Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once); Just reflect, if you please, how 'tis said by Horatius, That Maeonides nods now and then, and, my gracious!

It certainly does look a little bit ominous 360 When he gets under way with _ton d'apameibomenos_.

(Here a something occurs which I'll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,-- Any author a nap like Van Winkle's may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he'll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If _they_ fall a-nodding when he nods himself.)

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I-- When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily, Our Hero, whose h.o.m.oeopathic sagacity 370 With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind).

And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O'er his principles, when something else turns up trumps.

He was gone a long time, and Apollo, meanwhile, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it; 380 It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend With a wave-like up-gathering to break at the end; So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. D----, At a few steps behind him, a small man in gla.s.ses Went dodging about, muttering, 'Murderers! a.s.ses!'

From out of his pocket a paper he'd take, With a proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, 390 And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, 'Here I see 'Gainst American letters a b.l.o.o.d.y conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull All American authors who have more or less 400 Of that anti-American humbug--success, While in private we're always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all (They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!'

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, 410 He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pa.s.s in, Expecting the knife of some critic a.s.sa.s.sin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature.

Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits Disperse all one's good and condense all one's poor traits.

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,-- 'Good day, Mr. D----, I'm happy to meet 420 With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub Street the soul of a gentleman carries; What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize The credit of being the New World's metropolis?'

'Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, 429 And a.s.saults the American d.i.c.k--'

Nay, 'tis clear That your Damon there's fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click; Why, I honestly think, if some fool in j.a.pan Should turn up his nose at the "Poems on Man,"

(Which contain many verses as fine, by the bye, As any that lately came under my eye,) Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit 440 The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (this last there's no doubt of) In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of.

Now n.o.body knows when an author is. .h.i.t, If he have not a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether, 450 And n.o.body'd think of his foes--or of him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him; All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban One word that's in tune with the nature of man.'

'Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book, Into which if you'll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted (when once you are through it) As to deem it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, 460 A place in the next Democratic Review.'

'The most thankless of G.o.ds you must surely have thought me, For this is the forty-fourth copy you've brought me; I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I've forty-two left, standing all side by side (The man who accepted that one copy died),-- From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, "With the author's respects" neatly written in each.

The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, When he hears of that order the British Museum 470 Has sent for one set of what books were first printed In America, little or big,--for 'tis hinted That this is the first truly tangible hope he Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy.

I've thought very often 'twould be a good thing In all public collections of books, if a wing Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, Marked _Literature suited to desolate islands_, And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,-- 480 Such books as one's wrecked on in small country taverns, Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented.

Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe; And since the philanthropists just now are banging And gibbeting all who're in favor of hanging (Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter. 490 And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows),-- And folks are beginning to think it looks odd, To choke a poor scamp for the glory of G.o.d; And that He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crus.h.i.+ng his African children with slavery,-- Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon Are mounted for h.e.l.l on the Devil's own pillion, 500 Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes,-- That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored For such as take steps in despite of his word, Should look with delight on the agonized prancing Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter About offering to G.o.d on his favorite halter, And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons;-- Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all 511 To a criminal code both humane and effectual;-- I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, As, by statute in such cases made and provided, Shall be by your wise legislators decided: Thus: Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss----; Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,-- 520 That American Punch, like the English, no doubt,-- Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out.

'But stay, here comes t.i.tyrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,-- A loud-cackling swarm, in whose leathers warm drest, He goes for as perfect a--swan as the rest.

'There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr---- No, 'tis not even prose; 530 I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A gra.s.s-blade's no easier to make than an oak; If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, 540 The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be, But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a tree.

'But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way, I believe we left waiting),--his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; 550 He seems, to my thinking (although I'm afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he's got To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what; For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd He leaves never a doorway to get in a G.o.d.

'Tis refres.h.i.+ng to old-fas.h.i.+oned people like me To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 560 In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself--just a little projected; And who's willing to wors.h.i.+p the stars and the sun, A convert to--nothing but Emerson.

So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, G.o.d, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it; 570 Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he'll sort 'em, But you can't help suspecting the whole a _post mortem_.

'There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle; To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer; 580 He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar; That he's more of a man you might say of the one, Of the other he's more of an Emerson; C.'s the t.i.tan, as s.h.a.ggy of mind as of limb,-- E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one's two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek; C.'s generals require to be seen in the ma.s.s,-- E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the gla.s.s; 590 C. gives nature and G.o.d his own fits of the blues, And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,-- E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,-- While E., in a plain, preternatural way, Makes mysteries matters of mere every day; C. draws all his characters quite _a la_ Fuseli,-- Not sketching their bundles of muscles and thews illy, 600 He paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;-- To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords The design of a white marble statue in words.

C. labors to get at the centre, and then Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly a.s.sumes the said centre as granted, And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. 610

'He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,-- Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it.

'There comes----, for instance; to see him's rare sport, Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short; 620 How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face.

To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace!

He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket.

Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own, Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards alone?

Besides, 'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core,-- ---- has picked up all the windfalls before.

They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em, His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch 'em; 630 When they send him a dishful, and ask him to try 'em, He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'em; He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees on, And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season.

'Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream, And fancies himself in thy groves, Academe, With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-trees o'er him, And never a fact to perplex him or bore him, With a snug room at Plato's when night comes, to walk to, And people from morning till midnight to talk to, 640 And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening;-- So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening, For his highest conceit of a happiest state is Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis; And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better,-- Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter; He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid.

While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper, If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper; 650 Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write; In this, as in all things, a lamb among men, He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen.

'Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull; Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he goes A stream of transparent and forcible prose; He s.h.i.+fts quite about, then proceeds to expound That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind 661 That the weatherc.o.c.k rules and not follows the wind; Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied, He lays the denier away on the shelf, And then--down beside him lies gravely himself.

He's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing To convey friend or foe without charging a s.h.i.+lling, And so fond of the trip that, when leisure's to spare, He'll row himself up, if he can't get a fare. 670 The worst of it is, that his logic's so strong, That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong; If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two, And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue.

That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow.

He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,-- When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,)-gisms that squat 'em Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bottom. 680

'There is Willis, all _natty_ and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!

His prose had a natural grace of its own, And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone; But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, And is forced to forgive where one might have admired; 690 Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, It runs like a stream with a musical waste, And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep;-- 'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep?

In a country where scarcely a village is found That has not its author sublime and profound, For some one to be slightly shallow's a duty, And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty.

His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror: 700 'Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice; 'Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty phiz; It is Nature herself, and there's something in that, Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat.

Few volumes I know to read under a tree, More truly delightful than his A l'Abri, With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook; With June coming softly your shoulder to look over, Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, 710 And Nature to criticise still as you read,-- The page that bears that is a rare one indeed.

'He's so innate a c.o.c.kney, that had he been born Where plain bare-skin's the only full-dress that is worn, He'd have given his own such an air that you'd say 'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway.

His nature's a gla.s.s of champagne with the foam on 't, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the flush of the moment; If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it and shake it, 720 But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make it.

He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, If he would not sometimes leave the _r_ out of sprightfulness; And he ought to let Scripture alone--'tis self-slaughter, For n.o.body likes inspiration-and-water.

He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,-- The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town.

'Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 730 Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban (The Church of Socinus, I mean),--his opinions Being So-(ultra)-cinian, they shocked the Socinians: They believed--faith, I'm puzzled--I think I may call Their belief a believing in nothing at all, Or something of that sort; I know they all went For a general union of total dissent: He went a step farther; without cough or hem, He frankly avowed he believed not in them; And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented, 740 From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented.

There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right Of privately judging means simply that light Has been granted to _me_, for deciding on _you;_ And in happier times, before Atheism grew, The deed contained clauses for cooking you too: Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut, And we all entertain a secure private notion, That our _Thus far!_ will have a great weight with the ocean, 'Twas so with our liberal Christians: they bore 751 With sincerest conviction their chairs to the sh.o.r.e; They brandished their worn theological birches, Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches, And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale; They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See, And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.; But he turned up his nose at their mumming and shamming, And cared (shall I say?) not a d---- for their damming; 760 So they first read him out of their church, and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it.

But the ban was too small or the man was too big, For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig (He scarce looks like a man who would _stay_ treated shabbily, Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais);-- He bangs and bethwacks them,--their backs he salutes With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots; His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced, And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, Ca.s.s, Zerduscht, 770 Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, Dathan, Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, _that_ he's no faith in), Pan, Pillic.o.c.k, Shakespeare, Paul, Toots, Monsieur Tonson, Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben Jonson, Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, Judah Monis, Musaeus, Muretus, _hem_,--[Greek: m] Scorpionis, Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac--Mac--ah! Machiavelli, Condorcet, Count d'Orsay, Conder, Say, Ganganelli, Orion, O'Connell, the Chevalier D'O, (See the Memoirs of Sully,) [Greek: to pan], the great toe 780 Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pa.s.s For that of Jew Peter by good Romish bra.s.s, (You may add for yourselves, for I find it a bore, All the names you have ever, or not, heard before, And when you've done that--why, invent a few more).

His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand, If in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned, For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired) That all men (not orthodox) _may be_ inspired; Yet though wisdom profane with his creed he may weave in, He makes it quite clear what he _doesn't_ believe in, 791 While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb Would be left, if we didn't keep carefully mum, And, to make a clean breast, that 'tis perfectly plain That _all_ kinds of wisdom are somewhat profane; Now P.'s creed than this may be lighter or darker, But in one thing, 'tis clear, he has faith, namely--Parker; And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher, 800 There's a background of G.o.d to each hard-working feature, Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest: There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest, If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least, His gestures all downright and same, if you will, As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill; But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak, You forget the man wholly, you're thankful to meet 810 With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, And to hear, you're not over-particular whence, Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense.

'There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.

He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation (There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation), Your topmost Parna.s.sus he may set his heel on, 820 But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,-- He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on: Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

'He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter Nos_, we don't want _extra_ freezing in winter; Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. 830 But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities-- To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?

No, to old Berks.h.i.+re's hills, with their limestone and granite.

If you're one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice, And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, 840 If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain.

Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd's worth.

No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, By attempting to stretch him up into a giant; If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per- -sons fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper;[2] 850 I don't mean exactly,--there's something of each, There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness, And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,-- A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on The heart that strives vainly to burst off a b.u.t.ton,-- A brain which, without being slow or mechanic, Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic; 860 He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten, And the advantage that Wordsworth before him had written.

'But, my dear little bardlings, don't p.r.i.c.k up your ears Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers; If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say There is nothing in that which is grand in its way; He is almost the one of your poets that knows How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose; If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar His thought's modest fulness by going too far; 870 'T would be well if your authors should all make a trial Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, Which teaches that all has less value than half.

'There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; 880 And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it) From the very same cause that has made him a poet,-- A fervor of mind which knows no separation 'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing; Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, While, borne with the rush of the metre along, The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 890 Content with the whirl and delirium of song; Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes, And he's p.r.o.ne to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, And can ne'er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before: Like old what's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings (Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings), Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 900 For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor; _Anne haec_, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, _Vestis filii tui_, O leather-clad Fox?

Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling? 910

'All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave When to look but a protest in silence was brave; All honor and praise to the women and men Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then!

It needs not to name them, already for each I see History preparing the statue and niche; They were harsh, but shall _you_ be so shocked at hard words Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords, 920 Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain By the reaping of men and of women than grain?

Why should _you_ stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff?

Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long Doesn't prove that the use of hard language is wrong; While the World's heart beats quicker to think of such men As signed Tyranny's doom with a b.l.o.o.d.y steel-pen, While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators fright one With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 930 You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others;-- No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the few, Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved, But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved!