The Poetical Works of Anna Seward With Extracts from her Literary Correspondence. Edited by Walter Scott ... In Three Volumes |
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The Poetical Works of Anna Seward | ||
GREVILLE AND JULIA
And night's last hour the distant clocks repeat;
The doors unfold!—dead Julia's image glides,
Silent and slow,—and stands at Greville's feet!
And wintry clouds deform the dubious day;
See, from her feet she lifts the folding shroud,
With snow-pale hands, cold as the weltering clay!—
Ah! royal Ciparissis, such thy doom;
Then death shall strike the diadem from thy brow,
The shroud thy robe, the lightless tomb thy home.
As rising flowers beneath the beams of May;
Stood in her eyes, as when it leads the day.
And grief eclips'd the gay and ready smile;
No more the naked lip or laugh'd, or bloom'd;—
Death call'd his worm, and gave th' untimely spoil.
“Sends her pale corse to wander from the grave!
“At length, O! now at length, let pity hear
“Whom changed and faithless love refus'd to save.
“To burst the cerements of the festering dead;
“In vain remorse th'avenging doom may dread!
“Now, if thou canst, thy barbarous crime atone!
“Lo! thy too faithful maid, a spectre drear,
“Gives back thy vows—and sternly claims her own!
“Once prais'd so fondly, why did'st thou desert?
“Why, with thy tender looks, thy pleading sighs,
“Win, but to desolate my yielding heart?
“How could'st thou break, to crush my rising years?
“Yet leave them fading in unpitied tears?
“Shamed the first crimson of the Summer's rose!
“Why said'st thou so?—and why did I presume,
“Rash maid, to credit thy deluding vows!
“This lip, this ghastly lip no blush retains!
“Death is in these sunk eyes!—and on this cold
“And livid cheek no lingering charm remains!
“Feeds on these limbs, insatiate with her prey;—
“A cold,—a long,—a tedious night is ours,
“Till the late rising of the nightless day!
“Hark!—yet again!—A long—a last farewell!
“Come, perjur'd, view thy gift!—the deep, dark grave
“Where thy lost Julia's dismal relics dwell!”
The sun prepares to give the golden day!—
Pale Greville, every horror in his breast,
Leaps from his couch, and frantic speeds away;
Where cold in death his injured Julia lay;—
A moment stands by the rais'd turf!—then down,
Headlong he falls on the dissolving clay.
Thrice does he weep, and thrice, with groans, complain;
Then, clasping wild the swell'd and hallow'd ground,
Nor weeps!—nor groans!—nor speaks!—nor moves again!
The English Ballad uses the past tense thro' the three first stanzas; this Paraphrase the more dramatic, more impressive present tense. The distant clocks, marking the midnight hour, is not in either the Ballad or the Latin poem. In William and Margaret, each stanza rhymes only twice, but the first has no rhyme. Our best writers use the imperfect rhymes freely, and I think to the advantage of their verse, as mourn and scorn, abode, and God, frost and coast;—but feet and sleep, which are given as rhymes in the exordium of that Ballad, are not within the bounds of privilege.
“That held her sable shroud.”
William and Margaret.
The epithet lily is too nice and pretty for its situation, and sable seems utterly improper, since shrouds were white in Mallet's time, as in ours. Perhaps the epithet sable, temporarily inapplicable, has been one reason for believing the whole of this Ballad ancient, since it was probably the old custom to wrap the dead in black stuff, or linen. The gathering up the sepulchral robe from her feet, instead of merely holding it, is one of Vincent Bourne's variations, and adds the grace of motion to the figure. Statue-like stillness is not necessary to apparition -costume. The ghost in Hamlet beckons the prince to follow it.
This apostrophe to a young prince is another improvement in the Latin version. It preserves the moral of the original and less spirited stanza, with heightened force from the personal address, and from the grand image in the third line. Compare it with the stanza in the Ballad:
“When youth and years are flown,
“And such the robe that kings must wear
“When death has reft their crown.”
Here is no picture, and years after youth in the second line, form a pleonasm;—but the exquisite music produced by the alliteration in those two words, and by the number of vowels in the line, disarms criticism.
This stanza in the Ballad is common-place; in the Latin poem it is an original and charming description of a young beauty; yet to that which speaks only of her smiles and blushes, the charms of her eyes are added by the figure of the morning star in this Paraphrase. In the next stanza also, the discriminating “et faciles risus,” of the Latin version, is preserved by the epithet ready. A prompt smile is characteristic of early youth, though Vincent Bourne is the first poet who, by marked description, has recognized the propensity. The word gay does not, in itself, sufficiently express that facility of smile.
“Tandem, O nunc tandem,” the repetition greatly increases the pathos, and is closely rendered in this Elegy.
“When injur'd ghosts complain;
“When yawning graves give up their dead
“To haunt the faithless swain!”
William and Margaret.
Excellent as are the three first lines of this original stanza, yet the Latin quatrain strengthens the awful horrors of inhumation, and the re-translator flatters herself they have not here lost any of their terrific powers. Swain, in the last line of the stanza from William and Margaret, seems a botching appellation, used merely from the rhyme's necessity Whatever might have been the original meaning of the word swain, custom has attached to it a certain character of amorous effemi. nacy and tenderness ill-suited to the perfidious conduct of the accused, and the sepulchral solemnity of the accuser.
These parenthetic and passionate exclamations are all in the Latin poem, and add great effect to the solemn and upbraiding challenge.
The Poetical Works of Anna Seward | ||