Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

Thy rivers; deep enough thy chains have worn
Their links into thy flesh; the sacrifice

Of thy pure maidens, and thy innocent babes,
And reverend priests, has expatiated all
Thy crimes of old. In yonder mingling lights
There is an omen of good days for thee.
Thou shalt arise from 'midst the dust and sit
Again among the nations. Thine own arm

Shall yet redeem thee. Not in wars like thine
The world takes part. Be it a strife of kings,—
Despot with despot battling for a throne,—
And Europe shall be stirred throughout her realms,
Nations shall put on harness, and shall fall
Upon each other, and in all their bounds
The wailing of the childless shall not cease.
Thine is a war for liberty, and thou
Must fight it single-handed. The old world.
Looks coldly on the murderers of thy race,
And leaves thee to the struggle; and the new,-
I fear me thou could'st tell a shameful tale
Of fraud and lust of gain;-thy treasury drained,
And Missolonghi fallen. Yet thy wrongs

Shall put new strength into thy heart and hand,
And God and thy good sword shall yet work out,
For thee, a terrible deliverance.

PREVALENCE OF POETRY.

THE world is full of Poetry—the air
Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkle in its brightness-Earth is veil'd,
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls,
That close the universe, with crystal, in,
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,
In harmonies, too perfect, and too high,.
For aught, but beings of celestial mould,
And speak to man, in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.
The year leads round the seasons, in a choir
Forever charming, and forever new,

[ocr errors]

Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay, The mournful, and the tender, in one strain, Which steals into the heart, like sounds, that rise Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore Of the wide ocean resting after storms; Or tones, that wind around the vaulted roof, And pointed arches, and retiring aisles Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand, Skilful, and mov'd with passionate love of art, Plays o'er the higher keys; and bears aloft The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls, By mellow touches, from the softer tubes, Voices of melting tenderness, that blend With pure and gentle musings, till the soul, Commingling with the melody, is borne, Rapt, and dissolv'd in ecstacy, to heaven. "Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move In measur'd file, and metrical array; 'Tis not the union of returning sounds, Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme, And quantity, and accent, that can give This all-pervading spirit to the ear, Or blend it with the movings of the soul. Tis a mysterious feeling, which combines Man with the world around him, in a chain Woven of flowers, and dipp'd in sweetness, till He taste the high communion of his thoughts, With all existences, in earth and heaven, That meet him in the charm of grace and power. 'Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays, In studied phrase and ornate epithet, And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts, Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments, That overload their littleness-Its words Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fir'd The holy prophet, when his lips were coals, His language wing'd with terror, as when bolts Leap from the brooding tempest, arm'd with wrath, Commission'd to affright us, and destroy.

Passion, when deep, is still-the glaring eye,

That reads its enemy with glance of fire,
The lip, that curls and writhes in bitterness,
That brow contracted, till its wrinkles hide
The keen, fix'd orbs, that burn and flash below,
The hand firm-clench'd and quivering, and the foot
Planted in attitude to spring, and dart

Its vengeance, are the language, it employs.
So the poetic feeling needs no words
To give it utterance; but it swells, and glows,
And revels in the ecstacies of soul,
And sits at banquet with celestial forms,
The beings of its own creation, fair,
And lovely, as e'er haunted wood and wave,
When earth was peopled in its solitudes,
With nymph and naiad: mighty, as the gods,
Whose palace was Olympus, and the clouds,
That hung, in gold and flame, around its brow;
Who bore, upon their features, all that grand,
And awful dignity of front, which bows
The eye that gazes on the marble Jove,
Who hurls, in wrath, his thunder, and the god,
The image of a beauty, so divine,

So masculine, so artless, that we seem
To share in his intensity of joy,

When, sure as fate, the bounding arrow sped,
And darted to the scaly monster's heart.

This spirit is the breath of nature, blown
Over the sleeping forms of clay, who else
Doze on through life in blank stupidity,
Till by its blast, as by a touch of fire,
They rouse to lofty purpose, and send out,
In deeds of energy, the rage within.
Its seat is deeper in the savage breast,
Than in the man of cities; in the child,
Than in maturer bosoms. Art may prune
Its rank and wild luxuriance, and may train
Its strong out-breakings, and its vehement gusts
To soft refinement, and amenity;

But all its energy has vanish'd, all

Its madd'ning, and commanding spirit gone,
And all its tender touches, and its tones
Of soul-dissolving pathos, lost and hid

Among the measured notes, that move as dead
And heartless, as the puppets in a show.
Well I remember, in my boyish days,

How deep the feeling, when my eye look'd forth
On nature, in her loveliness, and storms.

How my heart gladden'd, as the light of spring
Came from the sun with zephyrs, and with showers,
Waking the earth to beauty, and the woods
To music, and the atmosphere to blow,
Sweetly and calmly, with its breath of balm.
O! how I gaz'd upon the dazzling blue
Of summer's heaven of glory, and the waves,
That roll'd, in bending gold, o'er hill and plain;
And on the tempest, when it issued forth,
In folds of blackness, from the northern sky,
And stood above the mountains, silent, dark,
Frowning and terrible; then sent abroad
The lightning, as its herald, and the peal,
That roll'd, in deep, deep volleys, round the hills,
The warning of its coming, and the sound,
That usher'd in its elemental war.

And, O! I stood, in breathless longing fix'd,
Trembling, and yet not fearful, as the clouds,
Heav'd their dark billows on the roaring winds,
That sent, from mountain top, and bending wood,
A long hoarse murmur, like the rush of waves,
That burst, in foam and fury, on the shore.

Nor less the swelling of my heart, when high
Rose the blue arch of autumn, cloudless, pure,
As nature, at her dawning, when she sprang
Fresh from the hand, that wrought her; where the eye
Caught not a speck upon the soft serene,
To stain its deep cerulean, but the cloud,
That floated, like a lonely spirit, there,
White, as the snow of Zembla, or the foam,
That on the mid-sea tosses, cinctur'd round,
In easy undulations, with a belt

Woven of bright Apollo's golden hair.

Nor, when that arch, in winter's clearest night,
Mantled in ebon darkness, strow'd with stars
Its canopy, that seem'd to swell, and swell
The higher, as I gaz'd upon it, till,

Sphere after sphere evolving, on the height
Of heaven, the everlasting throne shone through,
In glory's full effulgence, and a wave,
Intensely bright, roll'd like a fountain, forth,
Beneath its sapphire pedestal, and stream'd
Down the long galaxy, a flood of snow,

Bathing the heavens in light, the spring, that gush'd,
In overflowing richness, from the breast
Of all-maternal nature. These I saw,

And felt to madness; but my full heart gave
No utterance to the ineffable within.

Words were too weak; they were unknown; but still
The feeling was most poignant: it has gone;
And all the deepest flow of sounds, that e'er
Pour'd, in a torrent fulness, from the tongue,
Rich with the wealth of ancient bards, and stor'd
With all, the patriarchs of British song
Hallow'd, and render'd glorious, cannot tell
Those feelings, which have died, to live no more.

VALUE OF CLASSICAL LEARNING.

THE study of the ancient classics is a subject, as we must believe, of no small importance to those who are fond of letters, and interested in the advancement of national education. We take the present opportunity to offer a few remarks concerning it; and in the outset we ask, does classical learning deserve special encouragement, as a branch of instruction in this country? This question we answer without hesitation, in the affirmative, and proceed to give our reasons and express our opinions. Supposing the merits of the question to be known and allowed, so far as the classics are considered of importance in securing an early discipline of the mind, or esteemed as models of style, we shall pass rapidly over these topics on this occasion, and endeavor to show, that there are particular reasons, why the study of them ought to be promoted among us. We are not disposed to attribute benefits to the pursuits of the learned, which are not a consequence of them; nor to magnify the advantages, which they unquestionably confer. Be it, therefore, freely conceded, that in some things they have no very direct practical utility, that they do little towards promoting commerce or manufactures,

« AnteriorContinuar »