"Oh, Heart's-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower?
How shall I draw thee thence?--so much I need
The healing aid of thine enshrined power
To veil the past--and bid the time good speed!
"I gather it--it withers on my breast;
The heart's-ease dies when it is laid on mine;
Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess'd,
Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.
"Take from me things gone by--oh! change the past--
Renew the lost--restore me the decay'd,--
Bring back the days whose tide has ebb'd so fast--
Give form again to the fantastic shade!
"My hope, that never grew to certainty,--
My youth, that perish'd in its vain desire,--
My fond ambition, crush'd ere it could be
Aught save a self-consuming, wasted fire:
"Bring these anew, and set me once again
In the delusion of Life's Infancy--
I was not happy, but I knew not then
That happy I was never doom'd to be.
"Till these things are, and powers divine descend--
Love, kindness, joy, and hope, to gild my day,
In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend,
Thy Spirit, Heart's-Ease, is too far away!"
We would fain have given two poems entitled "Bessy" and "Youth and Age."
Everything in this little volume is select and good. Sensibility and
sense in right measure and proportion and keeping, and in pure, strong
classical language; no intemperance of thought or phrase. Why does not
"V." write more?
We do not very well know how to introduce our friend Mr. Ellison, "The
Bornnatural," who addresses his "Madmoments to the Light-headed of
Society at large." We feel as a father, a mother, or other near of kin
would at introducing an ungainly gifted and much loved son or kinsman,
who had the knack of putting his worst foot foremost, and making himself
_imprimis_ ridiculous.
There is something wrong in all awkwardness, a want of nature
_somewhere_, and we feel affronted even still, after we have taken the
Bornnatural[48] to our heart, and admire and love him, at his absurd
gratuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight one farrago of
oddities and offences--coarse foreign paper--bad printing--italics
broad-cast over every page--the words run into each other in a way we
are glad to say is as yet quite original, making such extraordinary
monsters of words as these--beingsriddle--sunbeammotes--gooddeed--midjune--
summerair--selffavor--seraphechoes--puredeedprompter--barkskeel, &c.
Now we like Anglo-Saxon and the polygamous German,[49] but we like
better the well of English undefiled--a well, by the by, much oftener
spoken of than drawn from; but to fashion such words as these words are,
is as monstrous as for a painter to _compose_ an animal not out of the
elements, but out of the entire bodies of several, of an ass, for
instance, a cock and a crocodile, so as to produce an outrageous
individual, with whom even a duck-billed Platypus would think twice
before he fraternized--ornithorynchous and paradoxical though he be,
poor fellow.
[48] In his Preface he explains the title Bornnatural, as meaning
"one who inherits the natural sentiments and tastes to which
he was born, still artunsullied and customfree."
[49] _ex. gr._--_Konstantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifergeselle_.
Here is a word as long as the sea-serpent--but, like it,
having a head and tail, being what lawyers call _unum
quid_--not an up and down series of infatuated _phocae_, as
Professor Owen somewhat insolently asserts. Here is what the
Bornnatural would have made of it--
_A Constantinopolitanbagpiperoutofhisapprenticeship_.
And yet our Bornnatural's two thick and closely small-printed volumes
are as full of poetry as is an "impassioned grape" of its noble liquor.
He is a true poet. But he has not the art of _singling_ his thoughts, an
art as useful in composition as in husbandry, as necessary for young
fancies as young turnips. Those who have seen our turnip fields in early
summer, with the hoers at their work, will understand our reference. If
any one wishes to read these really remarkable volumes, we would advise
them to begin with "Season Changes" and "Emma, a Tale." We give two Odes
on Psyche, which are as nearly perfect as anything out of Milton or
Tennyson.
The story is the well-known one of Psyche and Cupid, told at such
length, and with so much beauty and pathos and picturesqueness by
Apuleius, in his "Golden Ass." Psyche is the human soul--a beautiful
young woman. Cupid is spiritual, heavenly love--a comely youth. They are
married, and live in perfect happiness, but by a strange decree of fate,
he comes and goes unseen, tarrying only for the night; and he has told
her, that if she looks on him with her bodily eye, if she tries to break
through the darkness in which they dwell, then he must leave her, and
forever. Her two sisters--Anger and Desire, tempt Psyche. She yields to
their evil counsel, and thus it fares with her:--