University of Virginia Library

Why should I strive to comprehend the charm
Of savage nature, or to fill my mind
With thoughts of desolation, meanly filched
From those rude rocks, and chasms, and cataracts?
Why, none but fools affect to seek them now
For the mere sense of grandeur. To a painter,
Yon crag might seem magnificent indeed,
With its bold outline. A geologist
Would but regard it as a pillar left
To mark some age that was pre-Adamite,
And, with his hammer, excavate the bones
Of brutes that revelled in the oozy slime,
Ere yet a bud had burst in Eden's bower.
Here is a terrace on the mountain side,
As stately as the ever-watched approach
Unto the palace of the greatest king.
Your man of science cares not for its sweep,
Nor aught around that might attract the eye;—
He calls it a sea-margin, and exhumes
The withered fragment of a cockle-shell,
In proof of his averment, with more pride
Than if he stumbled on a costly gem.
O, there is room for infinite debate
In a stray boulder; and the jagged streak
Upon the surface of a harmless stone,
May be the Helen to some future host
Of glacier-theorists!

Such men are wise.
They overlook the outward face of things;
Seek no sensation from the rude design
Of outward beauty; but fulfil their task
Like moles, who loathe the gust of upper air,
And burrow underneath!

Three days have I
Been wandering in this desert wilderness
In search of inspiration. Horrid thoughts,
Phantasms, chimæras, tortures, inward spasms,
Disordered spawn of dreams, distracting visions,
Air-shrieks and haunting terrors were my aim—
Yet nothing comes to fright me! How is this?
Grant that my former efforts were in vain;
At least the death of yon poor Haverillo
Might be a millstone tied around my neck,
And sink me to despair! It is not so.
I rather feel triumphant in the deed,
And draw fresh courage from the thought of it.
Were all my creditors disposed like him,
Methinks the sunshine would be warmer still!
Hold—Let me reckon closely with myself!
Could my weak hand put back the clock of time
To the same point whereon its index lay
When first the thought of murder crossed my soul—
Could I undo, even by a single word,
All my past actings, and recall to life
The three companions of my earlier years—
The nameless crowd that perished in the church—
The guileless poetaster—and the rest
Who indirectly owe their deaths to me—
Would I exert the power? Most surely not.
Above the pool that lies before my foot
A thousand gnats are hovering—an hour hence
They'll drop into the mud! Should I lament
That things so sportive, and so full of glee,
So soon must pass away? In faith, not I!
They all will perish ere the sun goes down,
And yet to-morrow night that self-same pool
Will swarm with thousands more. What's done, is done;
I'll look on it no further.

But my work—
That grand conception of my intellect,
Whereby I thought to take the world by storm—
That firstling of my soul—my tragedy—
What shall become of it?

Alas! I fear
I have mista'en my bent! What's Cain to me,
Or I to Cain? I cannot realise
His wild sensations—it were madness, then,
For me to persevere. Some other bard
With weaker nerves and fainter heart than mine
Must gird him to the task. 'Tis not for me
To shrine that page of history in song,
And utter such tremendous cadences,
That the mere babe who hears them at the breast,
Sans comprehension, or the power of thought,
Shall be an idiot to its dying hour!
I deemed my verse would make pale Hecate's orb
Grow wan and dark; and into ashes change
The radiant star-dust of the milky-way.
I deemed that pestilence, disease, and death,
Would follow every strophe—for the power
Of a true poet, prophet as he is,
Should rack creation!

Get thee gone, my dream—
My long-sustaining friend of many days!
Henceforth my brain shall be divorced from thee,
Nor keep more memory of the wanton past
Than one who makes a harem of his mind,
And dallies with his thoughts like concubines!

Yet something must be done. 'Twere vile for me
To sink into inaction, or remain
Like a great harp wherein the music lies
Unwakened by the hand. What if I chose
A theme of magic? That might take the ear;
For men who scarce have eyesight to discern
What daily passes underneath their nose,
Still peer about for the invisible.
'Twere easy now to weave a subtile tale
Of ghosts and goblins, mermaids, succubi,
Mooncalves and monsters—of enchanted halls,
Wide-waving tapestry, haunted corridors—
Of churchyards shadowed by mysterious yews,
Wherein white women walk and wring their hands—
Of awful caverns underneath the sea,
Lit by the glimmer of a demon's eyes—
Of skeletons in armour, phantom knights
Who ride in fairy rings—and so revive
The faded memories of our childish years
With richer colour. Bah!—the time is past
When such-like tales found audience. Children now
Are greatly wiser than their fathers were,
And prattle science in the nursery.
Raw-head-and-bloody-bones no longer scares
The inmate of the cradle into rest;
And that tremendous spectre of the North,
The chimney-haunting Boo-man, comes no more,
With hideous answer, to the nurse's call.
Yet something do I know of magic too,
And might have further sounded in its deep,
But for the terror that o'ermastered me
In my first essay. Scarcely had I read
Ten lines of incantation, when a light,
Like that of glow-worms pastured upon graves,
Glared from the sockets of a fleshless skull,
And antic shapes ran howling round the ring,
And scared me to distraction. With the fiend
I'll have no further traffic; for I dread
Both him, and that which is opposed to him,
The ruthless Inquisition. I'll no more
Of magic or its spells!

What other theme
Lies ready to my hand? what impulse stirs
My being to its depths, and conjures up
(As the young nymphs from sacred fountains rose)
The best and fairest shapes of poetry?
Why—love, love, love!—the master of the world—
The blind impetuous boy, whose tiny dart
Is surer than the Parthian javelin—
Love, whose strong hest all living things obey—
Love, the lord-paramount and prince of all
The heroes of the whirling universe!
Was it not love that vanquished Hercules,
What time he writhed in Dejanira's gown?
Was it not love that set old Troy on flame,
Withdrew Achilles from the Grecian camp,
And kept Ulysses bound in Circe's bower?
Was it not love that held great Samson firm
Whilst coy Delilah sheared his lusty locks,
And gave him powerless to the Philistine?
Was it not love that made Mark Antony
Yield up his kingdoms for one fervid kiss
From Egypt's ripest Queen? What better theme
Could be proposed than this? A graduate I,
And an expert one too, in Cupid's lore—
What hinders me to raise a richer song
Than ever yet was heard in praise of love?
Let the cold moralists say what they will,
I'll set their practice boldly 'gainst my verse,
And so convict them of hypocrisy.
What text-books read their children at the schools?
Derive they Latin from a hymnal source,
Or from the works of rigid anchorites?
Not so! That hog of Epicurus' sty,
The sensuous Horace, ushers them along
To rancid Ovid. He prepares the way
For loose Catullus, whose voluptuous strain
Is soon dismissed for coarser Juvenal.
Take we the other language—Is there much
Of moral fervour or devout respect
That can be gleaned from old Anacreon's lays,
Or Sappho's burning starts? What pious lore
Can the alembic of the sage extract
From the rank filth of Aristophanes?
Is Lucian holy reading? And, if not,
Why, in the name of the old garden-god,
Persist they in their system? Pure indeed
Must be the minds of those compelled to wade
Through all the dunghills of antiquity,
If they escape without some lasting stain.
What do our moralists? To make things clear
Which otherwise might 'scape the youthful sense,
They write Pantheons—wherein you may read,
In most exact and undisguised detail,
The loves of Jove with all his relatives,
Besides some less conspicuous amours
With Danaë, Europa, and the like.
What merrier jests can move the schoolboy's spleen,
Than the rich tale of Vulcan and of Mars;
Or of Apollo, when, in hot pursuit
Of Daphne, 'stead of tresses in his hand,
He found a garland of the laurel leaves?
Well-thumbed, be sure, the precious pages are
That tell of Venus and of Mercury!
And shall the men, who do not shrink to teach
Such saving doctrine to their tender sons,
Accuse me if I shrine the same in verse,
And with most sweet seductive harmony,
Proclaim the reign of Love o'er all the world?

Henceforward then, avaunt, ye direful thoughts
That have oppressed the caverns of my brain!
I am discharged from guilt, and free from blood
Which was but shed through misconceived desire!
How glorious is the lightness of the soul
That gleams within me now! Iam like one
Who, after hours of horrid darkness passed
Within the umbrage of a thunder-cloud,
Beholds once more the liquid light of day
Streaming above him, when the splendid sun
Calls up the vapours to his own domain,
And the great heap moves slowly down the vale,
Muttering, in anger, for its victim lost!
Now could I roll, as gaily as a child,
On the fresh carpet of the unsown flowers—
Now could I raise my voice in innocent glee,
And shout from cataract unto cataract—
But that a single thought disturbs me yet;
My vow to Mariana—Will she bear
That frank communion which I must achieve
Ere yet my song is perfect? She is proud,
And somewhat overbearing in her walk,
Yet there's no woman past the power to tame.
A Count of Stolberg once,—a wedded man,
Whose restless disposition drove him on
To wear the cross, and fight in Palestine—
Was taken captive by an Emir there,
And 'scaped from prison solely by the aid
Of the one daughter of his enemy.
'Tis said that, when he brought the damsel home,
The Christian matron no remonstrance made,
But took her, like a sister, to her heart,
And the blest three lived on in unison.
Why should I not revive the earlier days?
Why should the stately Mariana look
More coldly upon Lilian, or that flower
That I have gathered from the Afric plains,
Than Rachel on her handmaid? I can quote
Sufficient texts to still her first harangue,
If she be angry. Will she so endure?
Kind Cupid, aid! In this, I must be sure!