 | Poems by Hartley Coleridge |  |
XX.
Whither—Oh—whither, in the wandering air,Fly the sweet notes that 'twixt the soul and sense
Make blest communion? When and where commence
The self-unfolding sounds, that every where
Expand through silence? seems that never were
A point and instant of that sound's beginning,
A time when it was not as sweet and winning,
As now it melts amid the soft and rare,
And love-sick ether?
The winds were love-sick with them.
Shakspeare: Antony and Cleopatra, Act. 2.
Imitators and alterers do not often improve upon Shakspeare, but when they do, it is but fair to give them credit for it. Dryden, in his “All for Love,” has omitted all the philosophy, and two thirds of the poetry of Shakspeare's play, but he has certainly made a much more compact and consecutive drama; and by putting the description of Cleopatra's “grand aquatic procession” into the mouth of Antony himself, has made it a natural and dramatic portion of the play; whereas, in Shakspeare, it has too much the air of a quotation from an epic or descriptive poem. Neither Shakspeare nor Dryden have done much more than versify Plutarch's, or rather Dr. Philemon Holland's prose, and they were wise in not hunting after useless originality: but Shakespeare has added some exquisitely poetical touches.
At the helmA seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackles
Swell with the touches of those flower soft hands,
That yarely frame their office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And left a gap in nature.
If Antony owed to the Egyptian Queen the loss of his empire and life, he is indebted to her for a less hateful renown than would have clung to his name had she never “pursed up his heart on the river of Cydnus.” The murderer of Cicero is merged in the lover of Cleopatra.
Hath pass'd for ever from the middle earth,
The phrase occurs in a hymmn of the Saxon poet Cædmon, and seems to imply, not the supposed centrality of the earth in the firmament, but the intermediate condition between the poles of good and evil. I have here adapted it to signify, that on earth we only contemplate objects in transitu, being unable to trace any process to its origin or its termination.
Yet not to perish is the music flown—
Ah no—it hastens to a better birth—
Then joy be with it—wheresoe'er it be,
To us it leaves a pleasant memory.
| Poems by Hartley Coleridge | |