The Burden of the Bell and Other Lyrics :: :: University of Virginia Library

What! you would speak out your thought—
Out, quite plainly!—sore distraught,
You must be, young Poet;—know,
Nowadays, bards sing not so.
What! espouse that worn-out style,

“The worn-out poetry of antique times,
I fling aside—”

Exclaims our latest Poet, the Author of “Reverberations.” An ungracious abnegation, to say the least, seeing that the writer of lt never so clearly proves his poetship as when he reverts to those very antiquities of the Muse. Treating of Free Trade and Modern Revolutions, he does but attain to rash prophecy, or mere prosiness, but when he goes back to Thor, and Balder, and Alcestis, and Admetus, he makes ns feel two things—his own skill and high quality as a Poet, and the beauty of the antique song.

Spencer's, Chaucer's—flowing bright
As the full, clear morning light,
With no symptom in the air
Of the least fog anywhere;
Pshaw! the world would only smile
At your folly—folks have grown
All too wise to spend their praises
On such antiquated graces.
No, the plan, by which alone
Bards win honour for their verse
Now, is the complete reverse
Of your own, and lies in hiding
All their thoughts and all their meanings,
So that not the smallest gleanings,

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High or low, be found abiding;
So that men may read and read
This way, that way, up and down,
And when the obscure has grown
Into a conglomeration
Past all human extrication,
May cry—“Very fine indeed!”
Fancying, poor simple souls,
That in the midst of such a pother,
Under all the dust and smother,
There must lie, spread richly out,
Hints, suggestions, parts and wholes
Of grand truths—too grand, no doubt,
To adopt a simpler fashion,
For their mighty revelation.

In old Egypt, land of sages,
Lighter of the dusky ages,
Men, by mummy wrapping arts,
Strove to save their mortal parts;
Stuffing each departed friend,
With all sorts of compound messes,
Drugs and other nastinesses,
Smearing them with oils and greases,—
And concluding with no end

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Of tight folds and bands, whereby
Every trace of human creature,
Each familiar form and feature,
Vanished, faded utterly,
And the poor defunct, forgotten
Before long, as well might be,
Grinned beneath his mile of cotton
With a ghastly irony.

Poets, in these latter days,
Go ahead of such trite ways;
Let their bodies seek the goals
Natural to them—life once ended,
But meanwhile, make wonderful
Mummies of their sentient souls;
Wrap them round with strange devices,
And embalm with mystic spices,
So that when the oracle
To set speech hath condescended,
Seems it, that whate'er he says
Hath had very far to travel,
And the labyrinth unravel
Of a thousand bandages;
Which begets a sad delusion
In some minds, that such orations

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Reveries, dreams, vaticinations,
Are mere chaos and confusion.
But the World, young poet, oh!
Take my word for it, draws no
Such deductions;—it descries
Glories, graces, ecstacies,
In this muffled speech, which it
Honours with a tribute fit
Of gold-scatterings—whence you'll see
Ev'n great minds take readily
To the fashion—minds that might
Fill the whole earth with their light,
Shining, like fixed stars sublime,
In the zenith of all time;
But who, bitten by this mimic,
Mystic, masking epidemic,
Hurry, and are all agog
To be lanterns in a fog.
Go, ask famous Emerson,
How his crowns and palms are won,
And he'll tell you, it may be—
“Partly by the verity
And the luminous discourse,
That my soul would utter, by
Right of its nobility,
And that men approved, perforce;

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But far more, young bard, I deem,
By my new, fine-writing scheme,
That the age greets with such clapping;
Or, to use a figure, screening
An immensity of meaning—
By my skill in mummy-wrapping.”

Lest any wrong inference be drawn from this passage, let me hasten to say that I join gratefully in the verdict which assigus to Mr. Emerson a foremost place amongst the earnest and original thinkers of the day. That he should have adopted, at times, an eccentricity of style, which must too often serve as a wall of partition between him and his readers, cannot fail to be matter of regret to all bnt those who look upon such eccentricity, not only as a proof of originality, but also as its fit and necessary accompaniment. Mr. Emerson himself, however, in his “Representative Men,” accepts the axiom that every thought clearly conceived may also be clearly expressed, and thereby either condemns his own practice, or reflects on the lucidity of his thinking. Would it be too much to ask of him, and of his English friend, Mr. Carlyle also,—vehement declaimers, as they both are, against the “shams” and “cants” of the day, to think a little of this sham also, and for the sake of their consistency, to “put it down”

Go, ask scores of others—you'll
Find them an extensive school;—
Although differing of course
Chiefly from that famous one,
The aforesaid Emerson,
By still less of verity
And of luminous discourse;
Yet, in the main, they all agree;—
In confusion, each doth see
Acme of sublimity;
Each deems smoke, in poet-fires,
Chief perfection;—each aspires
To draw down the age's clapping
By his skill in mummy-wrapping.

Shame!—you say—that this should be—
Burying talents in the earth—
Desecrating God's great blessing;—
By a folly past expressing,

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Mocking its immortal worth!—
Ah! if these your notions be,
If such crotchets haunt you still,
Go, young Poet—have your will—
Follow out your fantasy:—
Sing, as larks sing, no note failing,
Make your lays clear, strong, prevailing—
Let your style flow calm and steady,
As a stream without an eddy;—
Strip your whole thought bare to view,
As the antique singers do;
And you may find, here and there,
Readers, praisers,—don't despair!—
Some poor, good old-fashioned soul,
Now and then, may cheer, console,
With his dusty commendation—
But for public acceptation—
If the aim of your ambition
Be the world's warm recognition,
Then, turn back,—at once turn back,
From that obsolete, stale track,
Do as the rest do—seek your bays
In their orthodox new ways,
And draw down the age's clapping
By your skill in mummy-wrapping.