"POETRY IS ITSELF A THING OF GOD; HE MADE HIS PROPHETS, AND THE MORE
A SOUL EXALTED ABOVE EARTH; A MIND
Were the sole lore I recked of: the great bards
Of Greece, of Rome, and mine own master land,
And they who in the Holy Book are deathless:
Men who have vulgarized sublimity,
And bought up truth for the nations; parted it,
As soldiers lotted once the garb of God:
Men who have forged gods-uttered-made them pass;
In whose words, to be read with many a heaving
Of the heart, is a power, like wind in rain—
Sons of the sons of God, who, in olden days,
Did leave their passionless heaven for earth and woman,
Brought an immortal to a mortal breast,
And, like a rainbow clasping the sweet earth,
And melting in the covenant of love,
Left here a bright precipitate of soul,
Which lives for ever through the minds of men,
Flashing by fits, like fire from an enemy's front;
Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms,
'Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light;
Who make their very follies like their souls;
And like the young moon with a ragged edge,
Still, in their imperfection, beautiful;
Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths,
Like the white nebulous matter between stars,
Which, if not light, at least is likest light:
Men whom we build our love round like an arch
Of triumph, as they pass us on their way
To glory and to immortality:
Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion,
Through every limb and the whole heart; whose words
Haunt us as eagles haunt the mountain air;
Thoughts which command all coming times and minds,
As from a tower a warden; fix themselves
Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth,
SKILLED IN THE CHARACTERS THAT FORM MANKIND."-COWPER.
WE FEEL OF POESY DO WE BECOME LIKE GOD IN LOVE AND POWER."-P. J. BAILEY.
"A DRAINLESS SHOWER OF LIGHT IS POESY; 'TIS THE SUPREME OF POWER,
'TIS MIGHT HALF SLUMBERING ON ITS OWN RIGHT ARM."-JOHN KEATS.
["As eagles haunt the mountain air."]
Dropped from some higher sphere; the words of gods,
And fragments of the undeemed tongues of heaven :
Men who walk up to fame as to a friend,
Or their own house, which from the rightful heir
They have wrested, from the world's hard hand and gripe:
Men who, like Death, all bone but all unarmed,
Have ta'en the giant world by the throat and thrown him,
And made him swear to maintain their name and fame.
At peril of his life; who shed great thoughts
As easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves
In a kindly largesse to the soil it grew on;
Whose rich dark ivy thoughts, sunned o'er with love,
Flourish around the deathless stems of their names;
Whose names are ever on the world's broad tongue,
Like sound upon the falling of a force;
Whose words, if wingèd, are with angels' wings;
Who play upon the heart as on a harp,
And make our eyes bright as we speak of them;
Whose hearts have a look southward, and are open
To the whole noon of nature: these have I waked
ARE OF IMAGINATION ALL COMPACT." -SHAKSPEARE.
"THE POET'S PEN'S THE TRUE DIVINING ROD WHICH TREMBLES TOWARDS THE INNER FOUNTS OF FEELING;
IN COMMON THINGS THAT ROUND US LIE
And wept o'er night by night; oft pondering thus:
Homer is gone; and where is Jove and where
The rival cities seven? His song outlives
Time, tower, and god-all that then was, save heaven.
[From "Festus: a Poem," 9th edit.]
BRINGING TO LIGHT AND USE, ELSE HID FROM ALL, THE MANY SWEET CLEAR SOURCES WHICH WE HAVE."-BAILEY.
[JOANNA BAILLIE was the daughter of the minister of Bothwell, in
Lanarkshire, where she was born in 1762. Bred in a quiet country village,
and living always in great seclusion, one cannot but marvel at the direction
taken by her poetical genius, and the success she achieved in so difficult a
branch of literature as the drama. Her first work, published in 1798, and
entitled "A Series of Plays: in which it is attempted to Delineate the
Stronger Passions of the Mind, each Passion being the Subject of a Tra-
gedy and a Comedy," exhibited all the excellencies, as well as all the
defects, of her style and method of treatment, and immediately obtained a
very favourable recognition. With the exception of three "Metrical
Legends," and some Scotch ballads and miscellaneous pieces, collected
under the title of "Fugitive Verses," all this clever lady's writings were
dramatic. All exhibit a strong, shrewd, and penetrating intellect; but all,
let us add, are deficient in true dramatic interest, owing to the erroneous
principles on which they are constructed. The two best are "De Mont-
fort"-which was acted with some success-and "Count Basil."
Baillie died at Hampstead in 1851.
To the present generation of readers, Professor Wilson's eulogium on this almost forgotten writer will seem absurd, and, undoubtedly, it is excessive :
"Our own Joanna," he says, "has been visited with a still loftier inspiration [than Corinna or Sappho]. She has created tragedies which Sophocles-or Euripides-nay, not even Eschylus himself-might have feared, in competition for the crown (!). She is our Tragic Queen: but she belongs to all places as to all times; and Sir Walter Scott truly said—let them who dare deny it-that he saw her Genius in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon (!). Yet Joanna loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, passed among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of the dark Strathavon muirs."
Dr. Moir is less enthusiastic and more just :-"With much imaginative energy, much observant thought, and great freedom and force of delineation, together with a fine feeling of nature, and an occasional Massingerian softness of diction, it may be claimed for Joanna Baillie that she uniformly
SOME RANDOM TRUTHS HE CAN IMPART."-WORDSWORTH.
"IF IT BE A SIN TO COVET HONOUR, I AM THE MOST OFFENDING SOUL ALIVE."-SHAKSPEARE.
66 FAME IS THE SPUR THAT THE CLEAR SPIRIT DOTH RAISE
keeps apart from the trite and commonplace; yet we cannot help feeling
a deficiency of art, and tact, and taste, alike in the management of her
themes and the structure of her verse. Her tales-as tales-often want
keeping, and their materials are put together by a hand apparently un-
practised. Nor even in her emotional bursts, where she ought to have
certainly succeeded, is she always quite happy, as a dash of the falsetto is,
occasionally at least, not unapparent."]
|H, who shall lightly say that Fame
Is nothing but an empty name !
Whilst in that sound there is a charm
The nerves to brace, the heart to warm,
As, thinking of the mighty dead,
The young from slothful couch will start,
And vow, with lifted hands outspread,
Like them to act a noble part?
Oh, who shall lightly say that Fame
Is nothing but an empty name,
When, but for those, our mighty dead,
All ages past a blank would be,
Sunk in oblivion's murky bed,
A desert bare, a shipless sea?
They are the distant objects seen,—
The lofty marks of what hath been.
Oh, who shall lightly say that Fame
Is nothing but an empty name!
When memory of the mighty dead
To earth-born pilgrim's wistful eye
The brightest rays of cheering shed,
That point to immortality?
[From the "Metrical Legends:-Columbus."]
TO SCORN DELIGHTS AND LIVE LABORIOUS DAYS. -MILTON.
"FAME IS THE HEIGHT TO WHICH GREAT THOUGHTS ASPIRE."-MICHAEL DRAYTON.
"" GLORY TO BE SUNG TO TUNELESS HARPS!-(Beddoes)
Thomas Lovell Beddoes.
[THOMAS LOVell Beddoes was born in 1803. When only nineteen he published "The Bride's Tragedy," a drama intended for the closet rather than the stage,-defective in construction, and with no clearly-marked characters, but full of sparkling poetry. Its author afterwards studied for the medical profession, and practised abroad with some success, but without forgetting altogether his "first love." He died in 1849; and in the following year was published his "Death's Jest-Book; or, The Fool's Tragedy;" followed in 1851 by a collected edition of his "Dramatic and Miscellaneous Poems." That he was a true poet none will doubt who have read his works; but an unfortunate choice of subjects, a wild luxuriance of manner, and rank profusion of fancy, have prevented them from attaining the popularity they justly deserve. There are materials enough in Beddoes' writings to set up half-a-dozen ordinary poets.]
"THESE BODIES ARE THE VILE AND DROSSY SEEDS, WHENCE, PLACED AGAIN WITHIN THEIR KINDRED EARTH,
SPRINGS IMMORTALITY, THE GLORIOUS PLANT BRANCHING ABOVE THE SKIES."-THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.
EAD, is he? What's that further than a word,
Hollow as is the armour of a ghost
Whose chinks the moon he haunts doth penetrate.
Belief in Death is the fell superstition,
That hath appalled mankind and chained it down,
A slave unto the dismal mystery
Which old opinion dreams beneath the tombstone.
Dead is he, and the grave shall wrap him up?
And this you see is he? And all is ended?
Ay this is cold, that was a glance of him
Out of the depth of his immortal self:
This utterance and token of his being
His spirit hath let fall, and now is gone
To fill up Nature and complete her being.
The form, that here is fallen, was the engine,
Which drew a mighty stream of spiritual power
Out of the world's own soul, and made it play
In visible motion, as the lofty tower
A PICTURE, AND A NAME; TO LIVE FOR DEATH."-Beddoes.
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