human
Can you write me a poem about magpie in the style of Mrs. (Anna) Jameson?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about magpie in the style of Mrs. (Anna) Jameson:
  (_Originally published by Macmillan and Co._)
Reprinted from a copy in the collections of
Believe me always,
Yours most sincerely,
Non satis est pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto.
exceptionally superior sort.
I have a boy of five years old;
His face is fair and fresh to see;
His limbs are cast in beauty's mould,
And dearly he loves me.
One morn we strolled on our dry walk,
Our quiet home all full in view,
And held such intermitted talk
As we are wont to do.
My thoughts on former pleasures ran;
I thought of Kilve's delightful shore,
Our pleasant home when spring began,
A long, long year before.
A day it was when I could bear
Some fond regrets to entertain;
With so much happiness to spare,
I could not feel a pain.
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses.
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound.
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the Sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors
The Hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
I was a traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the Hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ;
My old remembrances went from me wholly,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.
'Twas Summer, and the Sun had mounted high:
Southward the landscape indistinctly glared
Through a pale steam; but all the northern downs,
In clearest air ascending, showed far off
A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung
From brooding clouds; shadows that lay in spots
Determined and unmoved, with steady beams
Of bright and pleasant sunshine interposed;
Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss
Extends his careless limbs along the front
Of some huge cave, whose rocky ceiling casts
A twilight of its own, an ample shade,
Where the Wren warbles.
It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.
It could not be allowed that any of these, considered separately,
A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side.
Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time;
The rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed,
All ready to her silver coche to clyme;
And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed.
Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies
And carroll of loves praise.
The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft;
The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes;
The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;
So goodly all agree, with sweet consent,
To this dayes meriment,
Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long,
When meeter were that ye should now awake,
T' awayt the comming of your joyous make,
And hearken to the birds love-learned song,
The deawy leaves among?
For they of joy and pleasance to you sing
That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring.
All over-canopied with lush woodbine,
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,
Under the shade of melancholy boughs,
are illustrations of what I am pointing out.
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer,
... Immutably survive,
For our support, the measures and the forms
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
Whose kingdom is where time and space are not.
_F._ You're strangely proud ...
_P._ Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of _me_
The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism,
We [actors on the stage] are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play.
The great stumbling-block of literary criticism, alike for the
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares,
The Poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
Reason in her most exalted mood.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
AEolian charms and Dorian lyrick odes,
And his who gave them breath but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own;
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd,
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing.
Now the highest literature--and Poetry is confessedly the highest
A lovely lady rode him fair beside,
Upon a lowly ass more white than snow;
Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide
Under a veil that wimpled was full low,
And over all a black stole did she throw;
As one that inly mourned, so was she sad,
And heavy sate upon her palfrey slow.
Seemed at heart some hidden care she had.
And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she lad.
So pure and innocent as that same lamb
She was, in life and every virtuous lore.
She by descent from royal lineage came.
Her name, as doubtless you well know, was Una, and, when by foul
Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness
Did recover more dear compassion of the mind
Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness
Through envy's snare, or fortune's freaks unkind.
I, whether lately through her brightness blind,
Or through allegiance, and fast fealty
Which I do owe unto all womankind,
Feel my heart prest with so great agony,
When such I see, that all for pity I could die.
Instead thereof he kissed her weary feet,
And licked her lily hands with fawning tongue,
As he her wronged innocence did weet.
O how can beauty master the most strong.
And thus he goes on:
The lion would not leave her desolate,
But with her went along, as a strong guard
Of her chaste person, and a faithful mate
Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:
Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward,
And when she waked, he waited diligent
With humble service to her will prepared.
Upon a great adventure he was bound,
subordinated to the second."
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her ev'ning care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Pow'r,
And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er gave,
Await alike th' inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tombs no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn, or animated bust,
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath hath made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Goldsmith's themes in _The Deserted Village_ are avowedly:
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.
Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose,
There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below.
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young,
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school.
O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
he exclaims--
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man.
More placidly but still in the same spirit, he exclaims:
Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steaming column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
Farther on, he describes how--
'Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat
To peep at such a world, to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.
Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
To some secure and more than mortal height,
That liberates and exempts me from them all.
Again, invoking evening, he says:
Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm
Or make me so. Composure is thy gift:
And whether I devote the gentle hours of evening
To books, to music, or the poet's toil,
To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit,
Or turning silken threads round ivory reels,
When they command whom man was born to please.
For I, contented with a humble theme,
Have poured my stream of panegyric down
The vale of nature where it creeps and winds
Among her lovely works, with a secure
And unambitious ease reflecting clear
If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes.
And I am recompensed, and deem the toils
Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine
May stand between an animal and woe,
And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.
O that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last
Thy nightly visits to my chamber made
That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid,
Thy fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed
By thy own hand, till fresh they were and glowed,
All this, and more endearing still than all,
Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall,
Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks
That humour interposed too often makes;
All this still legible in memory's page,
And still to be so to my latest age,
Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honour to thee as my numbers may,
Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,
Not scorned in Heaven, though little noticed here.
Cherubic trumpets blowing martial sound
The cottage leaves the palace far behind.
All his sympathies are with cottages and cottagers, whether he be
Joint-stools were then created, on three legs,
Upborne they stood: three legs upholding firm
A mossy slab, in fashion square or round.
At length a generation more refined
Improved the simple plan, made three legs four,
Gave them a twisted form vermicular
And o'er the seat with plenteous wadding stuffed
Induced a splendid cover, green and blue,
Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought,
And woven close, or needlework sublime.
And he is lean and he is sick;
His body, dwindled and awry,
Rests upon ankles swoln and thick;
His legs are thin and dry.
One prop he has, and only one,
His Wife, an aged woman,
Lives with him, near the waterfall,
Upon the village Common.
Oft, working by her husband's side,
Ruth does what Simon cannot do;
For she, with scanty cause for pride,
Is stouter of the two.
And though you with your utmost skill
From labour could not wean them,
Alas! 'tis very little--all
Which they can do between them.
O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.
What more I have to say is short,
And you must kindly take it:
It is no tale; but, should you _think_,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
So sweetly to reposing bands
Of Travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened till I had my fill,
And when I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
For love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence.
Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
--and ending with:
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!
The westlin wind blaws loud an' shrill;
The night's baith mirk and rainy, O;
But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal,
An' owre the hills to Nannie, O.
Her face is fair, her heart is true,
As spotless as she's bonnie, O:
The op'ning gowan, wat wi' dew,
Nae purer is than Nannie, O.
That is one amatory, one feminine note in Burns. Here is another:
There's nought but care on every han',
In every hour that passes, O;
What signifies the life o' man,
An' 'twere na for the lasses, O.
Auld Nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O.
handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and
What though no rule of courtly grace
To measured mood had trained her pace,
A foot more light, a step more true
Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the dew.
Ev'n the light harebell raised its head,
Elastic from her airy tread.
What though upon her speech there hung
The accents of the mountain tongue?
Those solemn sounds, so soft, so clear,
The listener held his breath to hear.
The fisherman forsook the strand,
The swarthy smith took dirk and brand;
With changed cheer the mower blythe
Left in the half-cut swathe the scythe.
The herds without a keeper strayed,
The plough was in mid-furrow stayed.
The falconer tossed his hawk away,
The hunter left the stag at bay.
Prompt at the signal of alarms,
Each son of Albion rushed to arms.
So swept the tumult and affray
Along the margin of Achray.
Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
"She shall be sportive as the Fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
"The floating Clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
"The Stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where Rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
"And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
Here in this happy Dell."
Thus Nature spake--The work was done--
How soon my Lucy's race was run!
She died, and left to me
This heath, this calm and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and light
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear, their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon
Than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon.
My author and disposer, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey, so God ordains.
God is thy law, thou mine--
Out, out, hyaena! these are thy wonted arts,
God's universal law
Gave to the man despotic power
Over his female in due awe,
Nor from that right to part, an hour,
Smiles she or lour.
Amor e cor gentil son' una cosa,
O Beatrice! dolce guida e cara.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And, by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sages sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying;
There, on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,
Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonnair.
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free.
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Towers and battlements ...
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget
Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather, thou celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.
If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it.
No comparison of Dante with Milton would be complete that omitted
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms;
Dante writes:
Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira,
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle,
Facevan un tumulto, il qual s'aggira
Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta,
Come l'arena quando il turbo spira.
Minerva spira e conducemi Apollo.
Whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which
Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium; or
Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians: and if we are to get
Wordsworth recognised by the public and by the world, we must
recommend him not in the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of
An Orpheus! an Orpheus!--yes, Faith may grow bold,
And take to herself all the wonders of old;--
Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same
In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.
His station is there;--and he works on the crowd,
He sways them with harmony merry and loud;
He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim--
Was aught ever heard like his Fiddle and him?
What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!
The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss;
The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest;
And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest.
Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream;
Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream:
They are deaf to your murmurs, they care not for you,
Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue.
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.
'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.
She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.
When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her father took another mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.
There came a Youth from Georgia's shore--
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;
The feathers nodded in the breeze,
And made a gallant crest.
"Beloved Ruth!" No more he said.
The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed
A solitary tear:
She thought again--and did agree
With him to sail across the sea,
And drive the flying deer.
"And now, as fitting is and right,
We in the Church our faith will plight,
A husband and a wife."
Even so they did; and I may say
That to sweet Ruth that happy day
Was more than human life.
Few months of life has he in store,
As he to you will tell,
For still, the more he works, the more
Do his weak ankles swell.
My gentle Reader, I perceive
How patiently you've waited,
And now I fear that you'll expect
Some tale will be related.
O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.
What more I have to say is short,
And you must kindly take it:
It is no tale; but, should you _think_,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.
I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.
lamentation, mourning, and woe."
But hear a wonder for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,
This Dog, had been through three months' space
A dweller in that savage place.
Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;
Small difference lies between thy creed and mine:
This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine.
The Being, that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.
The Pleasure-house is dust:--behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.
She leaves these objects to a slow decay,
That what we are, and have been, may be known;
But, at the coming of the milder day,
These monuments shall all be overgrown!
One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals;
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Wordsworth's poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is
If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
We are aware that _The Brothers_ is a favourite composition with
He left his house: two wretched days had past,
And on the third, as wistfully she raised
Her head from off her pillow, to look forth,
Like one in trouble, for returning light,
Within her chamber-casement she espied
A folded paper, lying as if placed
To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly
She opened--found no writing, but beheld
Pieces of money carefully enclosed,
Silver and gold. "I shuddered at the sight,"
Said Margaret, "for I knew it was his hand
Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended,
That long and anxious day! I learned from one
Sent hither by my husband to impart
The heavy news,--that he had joined a Troop
Of soldiers, going to a distant land.
He left me thus--he could not gather heart
To take a farewell of me; for he feared
That I should follow with my Babes, and sink
Beneath the misery of that wandering life."
At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind
And never lifted up a single stone.
And to that hollow dell from time to time
Did he repair, to build the Fold of which
His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet
The pity which was then in every heart
For the Old Man--and 'tis believed by all
That many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone.
The simplicity of Wordsworth's subjects and manner too often
degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into
What, then, is the "ample body of powerful work" that is left of
Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer:
We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human
thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of
understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed
But in the longer and more detailed passage quoted above, is not
maintaining that there exists no other so fine.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
So sweetly to reposing bands
Of Travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened till I had my fill,
And when I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
freshness," establish Wordsworth's superiority.
O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you will find
A tale in everything.
What more I have to say is short,
And you must kindly take it:
It is no tale; but, should you think,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.
The moving accident is not my trade;
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts!
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood?
Life, death, eternity! momentous themes
Are they--and might demand a seraph's tongue,
Were they not equal to their own support;
And therefore no incompetence of mine
Could do them wrong....
Ye wished for art and circumstance, that make
The individual known and understood;
And such as my best judgment could select
From what the place afforded, could be given.
Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope,
And melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolation, in distress,
Of moral strength and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread,
Life, death, eternity! momentous themes,
But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken,
From half of human fate.
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,
In the loved presence of the cottage-fire.
And listen to the flapping of the flame,
Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.
And thus from day to day my little boat
Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.
Now turn to Byron:
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home.
These are our realms, no limit to their sway!
Wordsworth seems to Mr. Arnold to have the qualities of poetic
As compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less
dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness.
Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate.
But we must end; and we submit that we have established our case.
quella fonte
Che spande di parlar si largo fiume,
Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore,
Che m'han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
si dolcemente,
Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona--
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.
curtailment or by mere translation:
Io vidi uno di lor trarresi avante
Per abbracciarmi con si grande affetto,
Che mosse me a far lo somigliante.
O ombre vane, fuor che nell' aspetto!
Tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,
E tante mi tornai con esse al petto.
Among them was there one who forward pressed,
So keen to fold me to his heart, that I
Instinctively was moved to do the like.
O shades intangible, save in your seeming!
Toward him did I thrice outstretch my arms,
And thrice they fell back empty to my side.
Ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum,
Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago.
Se nuova legge non ti toglie
Memoria o uso all' amoroso canto,
Che mi solea quetar tutte mie voglie,
Di cio ti piaccia consolare alquanto
L'anima mia, che con la sua persona
Venendo qui, e affannata tanto.
If by new dispensation not deprived
Of the remembrance of beloved song
Wherewith you used to soothe my restlessness,
I pray you now a little while assuage
My spirit, which, since burdened with the body
In journeying here, is wearied utterly.
Quickly comes the melodious response:
"Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,"
Comincio egli allor si dolcemente,
Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.
Lo mio Maestro, ed io, e quella gente
Ch'eran con lui, parevan si contenti,
Com'a nessun toccasse altro la mente.
"Love that holds high discourse within mind,"
With such sweet tenderness he thus began
That still the sweetness lingers in my ear.
Virgil, and I, and that uncarnal group
That with him were, so captivated seemed,
That in our hearts was room for naught beside.
Come quando, cogliendo biada o loglio,
Gli colombi adunati alla pastura,
Queti, senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio,
Se cosa appare ond' elli abbian paura,
Subitamente lasciano star l'esca,
Perche assaliti son da maggior cura;
Cosi vid'io quella masnada fresca
Lasciar il canto, e fuggir ver la costa,
Com'uom che va, ne sa dove riesca.
As when a flight of doves, in quest of food,
Have settled on a field of wheat or tares,
And there still feed in silent quietude,
If by some apparition that they dread
A sudden scared, forthway desert the meal,
Since by more strong anxiety assailed,
So saw I that new-landed company
Forsake the song and seek the mountain side,
Like one who flees, but flies he knows not whither.
Now, if we consider this episode in its integrity, do we not find
Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani,
Si che remo non vuol, ne altro velo
Che l'ale sue, tra liti si lontani
Trattando l'aere con l'eterne penne--
Amor che nella mente mi ragiona.
Love that holds high discourse within my mind.
Allor si mosse, ed io gli tenni dietro,
Then moved he on, and I paced after him.
tempestuous sea, battered and buffeted by jarring winds, finally
designated
La bufera infernal, che mai non resta.
The infernal hurricane that ceases never.
Nulla speranza li conforta mai,
Non che di posa, ma di minor pena.
They have no hope of consolation ever,
Or even mitigation of their woe.
Siede la terra, dove nata fui,
Sulla marina dove il Po discende,
Per aver pace co' seguaci sui.
The land where I was born sits by the sea,
Unto whose shore a restless river rolls,
To be at peace with all its followers.
Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
Io venni men cosi com'io morisse:
E caddi, come corpo morto cade.
While the one told to us this dolorous tale,
The other wept so bitterly, that I
Out of sheer pity felt as like to die;
And down I fell, even as a dead body falls.
Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.
Love that compels all who are loved to love,
Entangled both in such abiding charm,
That, as you see, he still deserts me not.
Sotto verde manto,
Vestita di color di fiamma viva,
In mantle green, and girt with living light,
Col quale il fantolin corre alla mamma,
Quando ha paura
Conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma,
O how I know, and feel, and recognise
The indications of my youthful love;--
Non pianger anco, non pianger ancora;
Che pianger ti convien per altra spada.
Weep not as yet, Dante, weep not as yet,
Though weep you shortly shall, and for good cause.
Tanta vergogna mi gravo la fronte.
So strong the shame that weighed my forehead down.
Guardami ben: ben son, ben son Beatrice!
Look at me well! Yes, I am Beatrice!
Questi si tolse a me, e diessi altrui.
This man from me withdrew himself, and gave
Himself to others.
L'Amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle.
That lights the sun and makes the planets sing;
Electric love illuminates the world.
says Cacciaguida, calling the city by its original name,
Fiorenza, dentro della cerchia antica,
Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica.
Non avea catenella, non corona,
Non donne contigiate, non cintura,
Che fosse a veder piu che la persona.
Florence, within her ancient boundaries
Was chaste, and sober, and in peace abode.
No golden bracelets and no head-tires then,
Transparent garments, rich embroideries,
That caught the eye more than the wearer's self.
Is there nothing poetic in Byron's description?--
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose hopes are innocent.
Or in Coventry Patmore's?--
So wise in all she ought to know,
So ignorant in all beside.
... She brims the pail,
Straining the udders with her dainty palms,
Sweet as the milk they drain. She skims the cream,
And, with her sleeves rolled up and round white arms,
Makes the churn sing like boulder-baffled stream.
A wimple on her head, and kirtled short,
She hangs the snow-white linen in the wind,
A heavenly earthliness.
glorious Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it, all
Nulla speranza gli conforta mai.
A vizio di lussuria fu si rotta,
Che libito fe lecito in sua legge,
Per torre il biasmo in che era condotta.
Pieta mi vinse, e fu quasi smarrito.
O animal grazioso e benigno!
Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio
Meno costoro al doloroso passo!
... il disiato riso
Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.
Io fui nel mondo vergine sorella,
Our will, O brother mine, is kept at rest
By power of heavenly love, which makes us will,
For nought else thirsting, only things possessed.
If we should crave to be exalted still
More highly, then our will would not agree
With His, who gives to us the place we fill.
For 'tis of our own will the very ground,
That in the will of God we govern ours.
In la sua voluntade e nostra pace.
Our peace is in submission to His will.
Contra suo grado e contra buona usanza,
Non fu dal vel del cuor giammai disciolta.
She wore the vestal's veil within her heart.
Maria_, cantando; e cantando vanio,
She faded from our sight, singing _Ave Maria_,
To some commentators on Dante, the narrative to be read there has
After I had written this sonnet, there appeared to me a wonderful
worthily; and, of a surety, she knows that I study to attain unto
Non la ci tolse qualita di gelo,
Ne di color, siccome l'altro fece,
Ma sola fu sua gran benignitade:
Io son Beatrice, che ti faccio andare:
Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare.
Guardaci ben: ben sem, ben sem Beatrice.
Look on me well! Yes, I am Beatrice.
L'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle.
All moods, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
No survey of the attitude of Poetry towards Pessimism would be
You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied Past,
Vex not thou the Poet's mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet's mind,
For thou canst not fathom it,
But pamper not a hasty time,
Nor feed with vague imaginings
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings
That every sophister can lime.
And so he goes on, through stanzas with which, I am sure, you are
Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed
Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.
It would be difficult to find, in verse, a more terse or accurate
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent.
Where Faction seldom gathers head,
But, by degrees to fulness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, "Ye are equals, equal-born."
Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat.
Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom.
Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
But something akin to despondency, if too permeated with sacred
But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate.
Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, My tears, the world deride,
I come to shed them at your side.
There yet perhaps may dawn an age,
More fortunate alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh haste those years!
But, till they rise, allow our tears.
Hark to the words he puts into the mouth of Empedocles:
And yet what days were those, Parmenides!
Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought
Nor outward things were closed and dead to us;
But we received the shock of mighty thoughts
On simple minds with a pure natural joy.
We had not lost our balance then, nor grown
Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy.
In another poem he declares:
Achilles ponders in his tent:
Silent they are, though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
Our fathers watered with their tears
The sea of time whereon we sail;
Their voices were in all men's ears
Who passed within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute and watch the waves.
Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,
Your social order, too!
Where tarries He, the Power who said,
_See_, I make all things new?
... The past is out of date,
The future not yet born;
And who can be alone elate,
While the world lies forlorn?
I hope no one supposes that I am, even incidentally, intending to
So once it would have been--'tis so no more--
I have submitted to a new control--
A power is gone which nothing can restore,
A deep distress hath humanized my soul!
Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought
... learn in suffering what they teach in song
And though that he was worthy, he was wise.
Singing he was or fluting all the day,
He was as merry as the month of May.
Full jolly Knight he seemed, and fair did sit,
As one for Knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit!
Of his cheer did seem too solemn sad,
And forth they pass, with _pleasure_ forward led.
And again
Led with _delight_, they thus beguile the way.
The noblest mind the best contentment has.
The Sisters Nine, which dwell on Parnass' height,
Do make them music for their more delight!
Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en:
Give me thy hand, come on.
No farther, sir,
replies Gloster in despair,
No farther, sir! A man may rot even here.
What is Edgar's answer?--
What! In ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither,
Ripeness is all: come on!
If, at such a moment, and in the very darkest hour of disaster,
... assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to man.
Then let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below.
In the latest number of one of the ablest of monthly reviews, Mr.
Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh,
A melancholy slave;
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
Mais comment fais-tu donc, vieux maitre
Pour renaitre?
Car tes vers, en depit du temps,
Ont vingt ans.
Si jamais ta tete qui penche
Devient blanche,
Ce sera comme l'amandier,
Ce qui le blanchit n'est pas l'age,
Ni l'orage;
C'est la fraiche rosee en pleurs
Dans les fleurs.
likeness of such words, as words are powerless to praise. Any
Cette promotion me laisse un peu reveur.
appreciation; and come to it I did.
There are whole poems of Mr. Tennyson's first period which are no
monstrous parts of Walt Whitman, which are lineally derived as to
higher degree or cultivated it with more patient and strenuous
industry than Mr. Tennyson. Idler men, or men less qualified, and
Ni cet exces d'honneur ni cette indignite.
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.
I should be as unfair to Mr. Swinburne as Mr. Swinburne is to Mr.
Mes premiers vers sont d'un enfant,
Les seconds, d'un adolescent.
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them birth, _but higher sung_,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called.
High actions and high passions best describing.
considered a specially great master in that kind; but his "little
Ami, tu l'as bien dit: ...
"Il existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des hommes,
Un poete mort jeune a qui l'homme survit,"
Tu l'as bien dit, ami, mais tu l'as trop bien dit.
Tu ne prenais pas garde, en tracant ta pensee
que tu blasphemais ...
... Je te rends a ta Muse offensee,
Et souviens-toi qu'en nous il existe souvent
Un poete endormi toujours jeune et vivant.
contrary, it is 'scarcely other than' Prince Albert" ... who, if
That angel of the world, doth make distinction
Of place 'tween high and low.
the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto
Figliuol d'Anchise, che venne da Troia,
Poiche il superbo Ilion fu combusto.
Ma tu perche ritorni a tanta noia?
Perche non sali il dilettoso monte,
Ch'e principio e cagion di tutta gioia?
mountain, which is the principle and cause of all true happiness?
... Every dove its nest and wings,
Which waft it where the Apennine look down
On Arno, till it perches, it may be,
Within my all inexorable town.
Le donne, i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese, io canto.
... che ridire
Ne sa ne puo qual di lassu discende.
Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory;
Di tal superbia qui si paga il fio:
"Ample knowledge," he replied, "though we are not troubled with
"Yes, and all the more because that indefatigable manager and
"I am afraid," I said, "they are more amusing than instructive."
"Surely it is Edmund Spenser, is it not?"
A little lowly Hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest side.
"It's Byron," I said, "is it not?"
acknowledgment might not unsuitably be reserved for actors and