University of Virginia Library

Hurrah! at length the ancient lie is dead—
The bloated blear'd bombastic bigotry
Of soul, that swept inflated Genius up
Like a thin bubble dancing in hot air
Fantastic measures to the varied breaths
Of praise and humour gushing from below;
That prison'd in a cage of woven flowers—
Sacred to self and faint with labour'd scents
Of musk and almond, cassia, and of rose—
The unresisting Bard, alas! himself
Nor blind nor innocent; and like a ghost
Stood up between him and his proper aims.

“He is a god, the Poet—he was born
To wanton at his will, and glorify
In song the frail conventions of his age,
And float sweet transformation o'er the face
Of worthless themes, caressing without care
His vain imaginings, and making glad
All pleasant follies with the shadows warm
And flashes of his momentary wings.
'Tis his to speak of Nature unto us—
Nature, not horrid and unkempt in wild
Barbaric lawlessness, but sleek and smooth
And train'd to regular beauty like the neat
Trim gardens of the Tudors: how divine
His purling streamlets and his verdant meads!
How bright the lacquer'd lustre of his woods!
How rich his varnish'd sunsets—and how fair
The oil'd effulgence of his summer seas!—
Yes, she is lovely, Nature, when we know,
Creation's Lords, to wield our high behest
And teach her how to bloom.

‘And it is his
To haunt the cedar'd chambers of the great,—
To suck nutritious moisture from the skirts
Of their long robes, and cool his joyous lips
Among the happy dust wherein they tread:
Ah, well he knows the birthright of the Muse—
He leads her deftly thro' congenial paths
That she was born to move in;—is it not
Her truest home, to roost beneath the wings
Of some great Patron, huddling soft and warm
In that high nest, nor need to taste again
Degrading commerce with the men of toil,
Their vulgar sympathies, their clownish ways,—
But hymn with odes and heartfelt heartfelt lays
Of adoration and deep gratitude
The man that made her famous?

And 'tis he
Who paints with truth the manners of the age;
When courtly damsels, sick of routs awhile,
Long for the cooler legends of the fields,
'Tis he who sketches with familiar hand
The peasant life of England,—gathering up
In ruddy groups the people as they are
With all their simple feelings and pure loves;
Smoothing alone whate'er unseemly crust
Their rustic speech may wear. He bids us learn
How tender Strephon in the northern dales
Follows his sheep at morn, in modest garb
Of Arcady, and moans a lovesick soul
Unto his lute thro' all the languid day;
How Phillis, loveliest born of rural maids,
Lithe-limb'd and slender, rich with native grace,
Moves with white fingers stainless all and pure
Among the household toils, or wanders forth
With crook in hand, to tell to the kind grove
Of cruel Damon's harsh delays, and all
The moist abundance of her tender woes.
Still, still, I hear the soft pathetic tale!
How should we learn the customs of the poor
Without a bard like him?

And chiefly his,
Delightful task! to chronicle and mark
For praise, the precious doings of the fair:
Who knows not this the grand imperial aim
Of Poesy—to celebrate and sing
Not Woman, but the fair? Haply the eye
Of sportive Lust may melt its fever'd light
On some poor maid, whereon impulsively
Her humble life is lifted into song;
But 'tis the nobler woman,—moulded out
By Art and Fashion, rich enchantingly
In most angelic falsities and cheats,
And wean'd and widow'd from heart-fellowship
With man, that she may perfect her sweet soul
Untainted and in peace,—'tis only her
Whose scented bosom the melodious winds
Seek to for ever, savouring themselves
Therein with odours: her, whose charms afford,
And all the varied outline of her life,
Full many a shelter to the drifting Muse
From God and Nature; her, whose soft intrigues,
Whose luscious languid loveliness of form,
Whose gait, whose mien, whose vapid speech, and all
Her round of fruitless ways, and every gem
Of grace and splendour that exalts her state,
Are rich materials for the soaring bard,
To make his verse divine.

Oh, how he joys
To crouch beside the arras, in that warm
Luxurious chamber where the secret gnomes
Of Art are moulding Celia for the ball!
How gleams weird inspiration in his eyes
The while profusest ministering aids—
Patches, rich unguents, scents, cosmetics rare,
Thick lustrous oils, exotic washes, wreaths
Not of coarse Nature's flowers, convolving groups
Of sympathetic ribbons, kerchiefs too—
Transparent films of gossamer, that prove
Celia no mortal,—while such charms as these
Ferment and fuse about the anxious fair
Till from the chaos of her changing self
New worlds of beauty rise!—Who would not strive
To set such noble story to the voice
Of fair Harmonia's daughters, when they sang
By smooth Cephisus in the silent noons?

A theme! a theme! Her practised orbs are closed,
And ducal Chloe sinks into the grave!
See, Tomkins wakes the lyre—See, pensive Jones
Floods the swoln gullet of a raptured age
With elegiacs.—Once again, behold
The sire of song, impassion'd Hymen, comes!
Tomkins, arise! With classic touch dispel
The Christian manners of a modern muse—
Forget the Church, forget the solemn words
And meek responses of the man and wife—
Let the white-cinctured pastor be to thee
A priest of Venus—and, for those still aisles
And sombre groined arches of the Past,
Raze them, O Tomkins! Let the plaster'd frieze,
The stunted column and the thin volute,—
Poor shivering exiles, beautiful and just
In that far country and that native time,
Doing forced service to a foreign faith
Here in a foreign land,—let fanes like these,
Their smoke, their victims, deck thy nuptial lay.

Thou too, great Jones, for thousand ears prepare
The terse trim sonnet and vivacious ode!
Doth not Miranda in fair deshabille
Dance the fat babies on her joyous knee?
Doth not e'en now full many a sprouting tooth
Blanch young Alonzo's gums?—Behold, 'tis thine
To mould a glowing casket of rich thoughts
For Delia's brooch; and hover on starr'd wings
Of delicate fancy round Olivia's fan;
With eager grasp to gather as they fall
The precious shreds of her luxuriant hair,
And make them famous: thine the blessed task
To canonize canaries, drone the dirge
Of sainted pet-lambs, and lament in song
O'er truant monkeys and departed dogs;
Weaving as thus, perchance, the cypress-leaves—
‘From crystal fountains where thy sisters use
To hide their charms at eve, immortal Muse!
Descend, and teach my labouring soul to sing
The worth and beauties of the lapdog Spring!’”

So rang the chorus, in that vanish'd age,
Of worshippers; such foul defiling jets
Of inspiration and bad influence
Drench'd every lesser bard, nor spared to stain
The garments of the greater.

After this
There came a day of change, a transit time,
When the weak Muse with steps of gradual health
Moved thro' an eastern gorge but thick with mists
Of morn, and all beset with serried rain.

Then rose that royal spirit, in whom a crowd
Of untamed natures strove for mastery,
Each like a god's: of whose large soul the gloom
And tempest was more beautiful to men
Than clearest noon of others'. Like a cloud
He hung in the mid vast, too high to trust
Men's little measurement of things divine,
Or feed his yearnings with the scant beliefs
That sate their easy souls: but right above
The shadow of the solid throne of God
Fell on him—so his grand erratic soul
Sway'd through thick darkness, while the light of Heaven
Sloped off to fall diffusely on meek eyes
Far down from his: Poised thus upon the wing
Proudly alone, his hot and pitiless
Imagination, as with tongues of fire,
Lick'd his scorch'd frame to madness: also he,
As with a morbid relish of fierce pain,
Hugged his great tortures, and upon the keen
Excruciating barb of his own thoughts
Impaled himself; nor this as hermits might,
In silence,—but invoked all heaven and earth
To hear him howl, and bared his agonies
And writhings to a sympathetic world.
Wildly, and deaf to wisdom, he explored
The mountainous creations of his mind
Without a guide, till o'er the sheeny edge
Of some ice-chasm whose chill transparent blue
Grows dusk and thickens down the awful slope
To unimagin'd night, he slipp'd and fell
Into the dread Unknown; but left behind
His voice—a beacon and a monument
Of aimless grandeur, and how terrible
Is that great tyranny of Intellect
Apart from God, and how unclean a thing
And pitiful is Genius with her eyes
Soak'd in foul scums of an unholy life.

Strange mournful man, who floated like a dark
Gigantic moon athwart the sun of truth,
Eclipsing half his age! Whose majesty
Of spirit, and those melodious utterings
Of rank inhuman hate, and bitter boasts
Of loneliness, and moans of coward grief
And weak unmanly whinings of despair,
Made selfishness divine, and brotherhood
And loving help among the human souls
A thing forgotten, or a word of scorn.

Then did each vilest imitative worm
Writhe in its slough with envy, and in hope
Wrought long to burst its puny chrysalis
A Psyche fair as he: and those unripe
And brainsick younglings, o'er whose yielding souls
The lauded crown'd Apollo of the time
Rides royally and crushes out of them
All free and vigorous manhood—all but prone
Blind rivalry and homage,—such as these,
Who felt a twitch of hunger at their hearts
For fame, or winced with sorrow or neglect,
Went out into the wilderness,—like him
Forsooth! to snarl and gibber at their kind
And belch the reeking torrent of their woes
Into the lap of Nature.

Like as when
Above the silver bosom of the Nile,
Feather'd with ripples, in the porous rocks
Those sainted idlers swarm'd,—so also now
Men blubber'd to the chafed impatient sea,
And bay'd their sorrows to the scared white moon,
And bellow'd in the affronted woods, and pierced
With sentimental shrieks the indignant ears
Of a fair helpless world.

Was it not foul
To clutch the broad unstinted loveliness
Of Nature thus for little ends of self,—
To insult the peaceful Immortalities
Of earth and heaven, cheating them aside
Each from her proper work, wherein they stand,
Most Catholic impartial ministers,
To comfort every sorrowful sweet soul
Still true to love, and solace and arouse
To joy the weary workers, and to woo
All human spirits upward—yea, beyond
These delicate tissues of created charms
Into the world of spirits? As if the vast
Imperial sea, and this warm vigorous earth,
And those serenest meditative stars,
Would stoop and falter from their high behests
Of love, to cloy with special sympathies
And close regards the weak fainthearted groans
And moody murmurs of ungrateful man!

That age is past: and, speaking thus, behold
I am no graceless son, who in the reek
Of drunken folly leads his beardless friends
Down the old pictured corridor, to mock
The faces of his fathers: Is she not
Most precious, Truth? And may not every soul
Who burns to see unclean Convention gripe
The stalwart arms of gods,—who dares believe
(Seeing what nearest neighbours unto heaven
Were those great Nine) in queened Poetry—
Her sacred sovereign mission on the earth—
Her heritage in every soul of man—
Her portion in the morning stars—her due
To own no wild caprice of self, but rule,
Like faithful satraps on their utmost thrones
The staunch vicegerent of a central King;—
Who trusts in this, may smile in his true heart,
And turn with waxing fondness and delight
His lunar eyes from the fair mother's face
Upon the fairer daughter, while she grows
To stand in awe of her great self, and learns
The method and the manners of a queen.

For now no more the cold yet cringing Muse—
Full of rank scorn for all below, and prompt
To spout her slimy scents on those above—
Faints her base life in heated rooms of art
A colourless exotic, nor abides
In cells apart from the unimproving Earth
An isolated saint, nor walks abroad
Hooded and muffled, with such diadems
And coils of jewels round about her ears
That not an odour from the common soil
Nor whisper'd wail of miserable things
May reach her—and all thick with listed shoon,
Lest unawares in some black pulpy mass
Of human bodies steaming in a slough
Of unregarded wretchedness and sin
She tread, or use her high prerogative,
Sowing with fertile foot the thankful waste
With islets of young flowers.

Brother men!
She is our sister, and our sovereign she:
Behold her how she travels even now
Out of those errors, girding up herself
To seek again her old melodious home
And birthplace in the everlasting hills;
How thro' low cots and hamlets of the poor
She ministering moves, and in her clear
And eloquent voice rings out to common men
The truths unthought and folded mysteries
That live in common things; or, having scaled
Her native heights, on slopes and cloudy crags,
The curtain'd doors of Heaven, holds intercourse
With a most present Father; and anon,
Her lucid features melting through the mist,
Scans with cleansed eye the wide subjected world,
And reads the rolls of Nature, and unweaves
The ravell'd voices of the time, and reads
The thoughts of nations, and maps out in song
The thousand lives and doings of her kind.