 | Uncollected Poems of James Russell Lowell |  |
XII
Hail too great drummer in the mental march,
Teufelsdröckh! worthy a triumphal arch,
Who send'st forth prose encumbered with jackboots,
To hobble round and pick up raw recruits,
And, able both to battle and to teach,
Mountest thy silent kettledrum to preach.
Great conqueror of the English language hail!
How Caledonia's goddess must turn pale
To hear thy German-Greeco-Latin flung
In Revolutions from a Scottish tongue!
Teufelsdröckh! worthy a triumphal arch,
Who send'st forth prose encumbered with jackboots,
To hobble round and pick up raw recruits,
And, able both to battle and to teach,
223
Great conqueror of the English language hail!
How Caledonia's goddess must turn pale
To hear thy German-Greeco-Latin flung
In Revolutions from a Scottish tongue!
Yet here the muse would fold her wing to weep
O'er genius buried in lethargic sleep,
O'er talents misapplied, o'er heavenly fire
Smothered beneath a mass of wordy mire,
And only bursting forth at times to show
How much still lies to sorrow for below.
Oh! better that the sombre cypress wave
Its mourning branches o'er a fameless grave,
Than gain a name by talents thus applied
To a base intellectual suicide.
Burst, prisoned eagle, burst thy chains and soar
Where soulless eye can track thy flight no more;
Where shafts of satire, feathered from thy wing,
No more can gall thee with their insect sting!
Proud bird of Jove! seek Heaven's purest air,
And dwell forever with thy compeers there;
Go sit at Shakspeare's sainted feet, and see
How man can trample on mortality!
O'er genius buried in lethargic sleep,
O'er talents misapplied, o'er heavenly fire
Smothered beneath a mass of wordy mire,
And only bursting forth at times to show
How much still lies to sorrow for below.
Oh! better that the sombre cypress wave
Its mourning branches o'er a fameless grave,
Than gain a name by talents thus applied
To a base intellectual suicide.
Burst, prisoned eagle, burst thy chains and soar
Where soulless eye can track thy flight no more;
Where shafts of satire, feathered from thy wing,
No more can gall thee with their insect sting!
Proud bird of Jove! seek Heaven's purest air,
And dwell forever with thy compeers there;
Go sit at Shakspeare's sainted feet, and see
How man can trample on mortality!
No one admires Mr. Carlyle's genius more than I do; but his style is execrable, though, for a change, entertaining. His tying himself down to such a diction, &c. reminds one of a punishment still practised in China, chaining a living criminal to a dead body. Of course the ridicule is meant for his imitators—the “servum pecus,” as Horace calls them.
To make the garments you but mar in prose,
You'd find a tailor's wages much more high
And profitable too, as this world goes;
No doubt the balance on your printer's book
Will add its counsel—if you dare but look;
Those winged words, of which you prate so much,
Cannot be yours, and had you any such,
Off from your pens they'd spread their wings and fly
To seek, elsewhere, for better company.
Lay down the goosequill then—take up the goose,
And put your talents to their proper use.
| Uncollected Poems of James Russell Lowell | |