of the ruin suffered by him there is an apparition, a vestige, a shadow, a vanishing display, namely— "When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths, with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd and unknown." He plunges, and all is over. "The "bubbling groan" is the momentarily remaining notice of his extinction. Now this first equivocation has an immediate moral consequence-namely, a reaction upon the feelings of the poet. "Remain," as an "extending in space," acts upon the imagination expansively here, if it were suffered to act—and if room were given it to act upon the imagination-inasmuch as "nor doth remain," as a word of extending in space, marks or helps to mark out the two great regions into which his lordship divides the terraqueous globe-ravaged land and unravaged water. But remain," as an "extending in time," acts here contractively; and nor remain" means now "does not outlive the moment!" and in this manner an entirely new direction or tenor is given to thought and feeling-for the zeal of diminishing seizes on the imagination of the writer. He is led to making man insignificant by the momentariness of his perishing! He has contracted, by power of scorn, and by the trick of a word, the seventy years of man into an instant. That is one diminution, and another follows upon it. The Fleets, wrecked whenever they fight against the water, vanish from his fancy, as in the shifting of a dream; and he sees, amidst the troubled world of waters-one man perishing! One mode of insignificancy admitted, induces another. With the shrinking of time to a moment goes along the shrinking of multitude to one! The same double-dealing takes place with the word "Man." Man signifies the individual human being -or the race. "Of man's first disobedience"-mankind's. "Man marks the earth with ruin"-mankind does So. "Nor doth remain a shadow of man's ravage"-of mankind's ravage. "When for a moment, like a drop of rain, he sinks into thy waves"-that is now the single sailor, whom a roll of the ship has hurled from the topmast into the waters; or, when the ship has gone down, some strong swimmer who has fought in vain upon the waters, and, spent in limb and heart, sinks. And thus the reader, after stumbling for two or three steps in darkness and perplexity, within a moment of having left mankind in the annihilating embrace of Ocean, upon a sudden finds himself set face to face with one man, we shall suppose "The last man," drowning! In the Stanza now commented on, there was a struggle depicted, a question proposed between Man and the Ocean - which shall be the Wrecker? The Ocean prevails; Man is wrecked. In the succeeding Stanza there is, it would seem, another question moved between the same disputants. No, it is the same. Let us examine well. A moment before, Man appeared as treading the earth as a Destroyer, his proud step stayed at high water-mark. Now he appears upon the earth as a traveller and a reaper-by implication or allusionby the figure of "not." "His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields Are not a spoil for him." He walks and reaps the earth; he does not walk and reap the ocean. This is plainly the process of the "worthy cogitation; "and unquestionably the assertion is true-true to the letter, but only to the letter. For, standing on Mount Albano, or on the Land's End, or here sitting beneath the porch of our Marine Villa fronting the Firth of Forth, we are poets every one of us, and we will venture beyond the letter; "His steps are not upon thy paths!" reply-chaunter of Man's Hope, and of England's Power,— "Thy march is o'er the mountain wave, Thy home is on the deep." There is a dash of sea-craft for you; and, "cheered by the grateful sound, for many a league old ocean smiles." And for the sickle! What! must the net and the harpoon go for nothing? No harvests on the barren flood! What else are pearl-fisheries, herring-fisheries, cod-fisheries, and whale-fisheries? "The sea! The deep, deep sea!" Why, the sea cannot keep its own; cannot defend the least or the mightiest of its nurselings from the hand of the gigantic plunderer Man. -"thy fields, Are not a spoil for him." For he The fields of earth are not. ploughed and sowed ere he reaped, and earned back his own. But on thy fields, no ploughing, no sowingall reaping! Sheer spoil. Poor, helpless, tributary, rifled, ravaged Ocean! Then follows a very eminent instance of the fault which has been urged as radical in these Stanzasforced, unnatural, wilful, or false sequence of thought; a deliberate intention in the mind of the writer, taking the place of the spontaneous free suggestion proper to poetry. We have had man trying to produce ruin on the ocean, and wrecked, swallowed up. Now, man tries to walk and reap the ocean. The poet has outraged mother earth, and her vengeance is upon him. He has wrongfully and wilfully brought in the Earth, for its old alliance with man to hear hard words; and he suffers the penalty. Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer, for you are out of breath. Mere mouthing is not command of words; the sound we hear now is but the echo of the last stanza, and the angry Childe is unwittingly repeating himself, And howling, to his gods, where haply lies Here is again the contest, again the ruining upon earth,-nay, he destroys the earth itself-again the wrecking of the ship. Surely there is great awkwardness in stepping on from the proof of man's impotence in the sinking of his ship, to the proof of man's impotence in the sinking of his ship. "Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies" may be a vigorous verse, though we doubt it; 66 but if the ship outlive the storm, which many a ship has done many a thousand times, it can be turned against the ocean, who has done his worst in vain. What is man's "petty hope?" and what means again to earth?" Is it again from the skies-or back to the earth from which he embarked? Not one expression is precise; and so, with some scorn of man's old ally, who now so roughly receives him," there let him lay!" There is something very horrible indeed in insulting a dead man in the Cockney dialect. In all this there is no dignity, no grandeur; Byron does not well to be angry-it is seldom that any man or poet does for, though anger is a "short madness," it is not a "fine frenzy." Such Te Deum true Poetry never yet sang, for true Poetry never yet was blasphemous never yet derided Man's Dread or Man's Hope, when sinking in multitudes in the sea, which God holds in the hollow of his hand. Go on to the next Stanza"The armaments which thunderstrike the walls," &c. Why, here is another shipwreck — only now a fleet of war - before, one merchant ship perhaps. The Earth, too, is again implicated, and we have the same scornful antithesis of Earth and Ocean. Earth with her towery diadem-Earth, the nurse of nations, trembles at the approach of armaments, which the ocean devours like melting snow. There has been, then, a certain progression in the three stanzas. A drowning mana merchant-ship tossed and strandedan armada scattered and lost. Three striking subjects of poetical delineation, each strikingly shown with some true touches, mixed with much false writing. One may understand that in consequence from out the whirlwind and chaos of the composition, resembling the tumult of the sea, there will remain to the reader who does not sift the writing an impression of power--of some great thing done-of Man and his Earth humbled, and the Ocean exalted. In the mean time, the way of the thoughts, the course of the mind, by which this ascent or climax is obtained, is extremely hard to trace, if traceable. The critic may extricate such an order from the disorder: but observe, that the ascent or climax can be attained only by neglecting certain strong indications that go another way. Thus, in the first stanza "Upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed," includes all that is or can be said more of ship or fleet. Again, in the next stanza "Thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For carth's destruction thou dost all despise" Here is again said all that is possible to be said. "Thou dost arise and shake him from thee" being perhaps the strongest expression obtained at all; and the "vile strength" being precisely the Armadas described immediately afterwards with so much pomp and pride. Thus there is really confusion and oscillation of thought -mixed with a progress a standing still-and this characteristic of much of Byron's poetry comes prominently out-Uncertainty. Impulses and leaps of a powerful spirit are here; but self-knowing Power, a mind master of its purposes, disciplined genius, Art accomplished by studies profound and severe, lawful Emulation of the great names that shine in the authentic rolls of immortal Fame, the sanctioned inspiration which the pleased Muses deign to their devout followers, are not here. The strength of Man, proved in contest with Ocean and found weakness, is disposed of. The Earth, as bound up with Man and his destinies, came in for a share of rough usage. Now she takes her own turn-in connexion with Man, but now principal. Here the pride of the words is great-the meaning sometimes almost or quite inextricable. Recite the Stanza, beginning Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thec," "Thy were afar in the Atlantic. shores are empires." The shores of the World's Ocean are Empires. There are, or have been, the British Empire, the German Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Empire of the Great Mogul-the Chinese Empire, the Empire of Morocco, those of Peru and Mexico, the Four Great Empires of Antiquity, the French Empire, and some others. The Poet does not intend names and things in this very strict way, however, and he will take in all great Monarchies, nor will whole Earth laid out in imperial dohe grudge us the imagining the minions. Well then-we again, dear Neophyte, bid you try to understand the Stanza, and tell us what it means. What rational thought is there here? With what propriety do we consider the whole Earth as the shores of the Ocean-when shore is exactly the interlimitation of land and sea? Is this a lawful way of celebrating the Ocean, to throw in the whole of the lately despised Earth as its brilliant appendage? The question rises, how far from the shore does the shore extend and whether inwards or outwards? But there is a meaning and a good one in a way. Apioтou per vdwp. The water civilises the land. 'Tis an old remark-but how? By ships. Here, then, are the tables turned. Lately the sea did nothing with ships but destroy them. Now it patiently wafts them, and by commerce and colonies the Sea civilises the Globe! Surely this is poetical injustice. The first glory of the Sea was, that Man could not sail upon its bosom. The second glory of the Sea is, that, by offering its bosom to be furrowed by Man's daring and indefatigable keels, it-ministerially then-civilises the World. The Sea is the civiliser of the Land-Man is-the Destroyer merely. Pray, what is the meaning of saying that the Roman and the Assyrian Empires are shores of the Sea and and when the sonorous roll has sub- changed, excepting that the same sided, try to understand it. You will waters wash the same strands? The find some difficulty, if we mistake not, deep inland Empires recede too much in knowing who or what is the apos- from the sea-shore to allow any hold trophised subject. Unquestionably to the relation proposed in the words, the World's Ocean, and not the Me-" changed in all save thee." diterranean. The very last verse we know the Sea as their limit-an acci We dent, rather than as a part of their being. The meeting of sea and land being the limit of an empire, the limit remains whilst the Imperial State has withered from the land. Does the immobility of the limit belong more to one element than to the other? And is the Roman Empire, O Neophyte, more unchanged in the Mediterranean and Atlantic than it is in the Apennines, and Alps, and Pyrenees, and Helvellyn? Every clause that regards Earth is, in one way or in another, intolerable -small or tortured. "Thy waters wasted them while they were free," means either "swallowed up their ships, or-ate away their edges Alas! that most unhappy meaning is the true one-and what a cogitation to come into a man's-an inspired Poet's head!"Thy waters fretted away the maritime littoral edges of the Assyrian, the Grecian, the Roman, the Carthaginian Empires, whilst those Empires flourished!' And this interesting piece of geographical, and geological, and hydrographical meditation makes part in a burst of indignant spleen which is to go near to annihilating Man from the face of the Globe! Was it possible to express more significantly the imbecility of Old Ocean? And has he not been fretting ever since? And are not the limits the same, as we were told a minute ago? Old Ocean must be in his dotage if he can do no more than that --and we must elect him perpetual President of the Fogie Club. Such wretched writing shows, with serious warning, how a false temper, admitted into poetry, overrules the sound intellect into gravely and weightily entertaining combinations of thought which, looked at either with common sense or with poetical feeling, cannot be sustained for a moment. How many of Lord Byron's admirers believe-and, in spite of Christopher, will continue to believe that in these almost senseless stanzas he has said something strong, poignant, cutting, of good edge, and "full of force driven home!" the Personification is a fine one. Nevertheless it does not entirely satisfy the imagination. And why? Because the thought of the azure brow, on which time writes no wrinkles, suggests for a moment the thought of the white brow-the brow of man or woman-the human brow, on which Time does write wrinkles along with the engraver, Sorrow. For a moment! but that is not the intended pathos-and it fades away. The intended pathos here belongs to the wrinkles Time writes on the brow of the Earthwhile it spares that of the Sea. But Time deals not so with our gracious Mother Earth. Time keeps perpetually beautifying her brow, while it leaves the brow of Ocean the same as it was at Creation's Dawn. How far more beautiful has the Dædal Earth been growing, from century to century, over Continent and Isle, under the love of her grateful children! The Curse has become a Blessing. In the sweat of their brow they eat their bread; but Nature's self, made lovelier by their labour of heart and hand, rejoices in their creative happiness, and troubled life prepares rest from its toil in many a pleasant place fair as the bowers of Paradise. We approach the next Stanza reverently, for it has a religious lookan aspect "that threatens the profane." "Thou glorious Mirror, where the Almighty's Form Glasses itself in tempests," &c. Suitably recited! let it be suitably spoken of-fearlessly, in truth. The vituperating spirit has exhausted itself-is dead; and all at once the Poet becomes a worshipper. From cherished exasperation with the Creature-from varying moods of hate and scorn-he turns to contemplation of the Creator. Such transition is suspicious-can such worship be sincere? Fallen, sinful-yet is man God's noblest work. In His own image did IIe create him; and to glorify Him must we vilify the dust into which He breathed a living soul? Let the Poet lament, with thoughts that lie too deep for tears, over what Man has made of Man! And in the multitude of thoughts within him adore We accept the image; let us grant that his Maker-in words. But he who "Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now." 514 despises his kind, and delights in heaping contumely on the race of man throughout all his history on earth and sea-how may he, when wearied with chiding, all at once, as if it had been not hindrance but preparation, dare to speak, in the language of worship, of the Almighty Maker of Heaven and of Earth? or The Stanza, accordingly, is not good -it is laboured, heavy, formal, uninspired by divine afflatus. There is not in it one truly sublime expression. Nothing to our mind can be worse than "where the Almighty's Form glasses itself &c." The one word "Form" is destructive, in its gross materialism, alike of natural Poetry and natural Religion. If it be not, show us we are wrong, and henceforth we shall "In all time, calm be mute for ever. or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm," is poor and prosaic; and " storm," a pitiable platitude after "in tempests. And the conversion of a Mirror into a Throne-of the Mirror too in which the Almighty's "Form glasses itself," into the Throne of the "Invisible"-is a fatal contradiction, proving the utter want of that possession of soul by one awful thought which was here demanded, and without which the whole stanza becomes but a mere collocation and hubbub of "Even from out big-sounding words. thy slime, the monsters of the deep are made," is violently jammed in between lines that have no sort of connexion with it, and introduces a thought which, whether consistent with true Philosophy or abhorrent from it, breaks in upon the whole course of contemplation, such as it is,--to say nothing of the extreme poverty of language shown in the use of such words as "monsters of the deep" made out of the slime of the sea. The strain-such as it is-ceases suddenly with this Stanza; and the Poet having thus got done with it, exclaiming "and I have loved thee, Ocean," proceeds forthwith to a different matter altogether-to the pleasure he was wont to enjoy, when a boy, in swimming among the breakers. The verses are in them selves very spirited; but we must Why, listening Neophyte, recite "Thou glorious Mirror, in which, when black with tempests, Fancy might conceive Omnipotence imaged in visible reflection—Thou Sea, that in all thy seasons, whether smooth or agitated, whether soft or wild wind blow, in all thy regions, icy at the Pole, dark-heaving at the Equator, ever and every where callest forth our acknowledgment that Thou art illimitable, interminable, sublime; that Thou art the symbol of Eternity(like a circle by returning into itself;) that Thou art the visible Throne of the Invisible Deity-Thou whose very dregs turn into enormous life--Thou who, possessing the larger part of every zone, art thus a King in every zone; Thou takest thy course around the Earth,-great by thine awfulness, by thine undiscoverable depth, by thy solitude! "And I, thy Poet, was of old thy Lover! In young years my favourite disport was to lie afloat on thy bosom, carried along by Thee, passive, resigned to Thy power, one of Thy bubbles. A boy, Thy waves were my playmates, or my playthings. If, as the wind freshened, and they swelled, I grew afraid, there was a pleasure even in the palpitation of the fears, for I lived with Thee and loved Thee, even like a child of Thine, and believed that Thy billows would not hurt me, and laid my hand boldly and wantonly on their crests-as at this instant I do, here sitting upon the Alban Mount and making (as they say) a long arm." HA! THE DINNER-GONG! Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. |