"1. Why stand'st thou thus at Gaze
In the faint Tapersrays,
With strained Eyeballs fixed upon that Bed?
Has he then flown away,
Lost, like a Star in Day,
Or like a Pearl in Depths unfathomed?
Alas! thou hast done very ill,
Thus with thine Eyes the Vision of thy Soul to kill!
"2. Thought'st thou that earthly Light
Could then assist thy Sight,
Or that the Limits of Reality
Could grasp Things fairer than
Imagination's Span,
Who communes with the Angels of the Sky,
Thou graspest at the Rainbow, and
Wouldst make it as the Zone with which thy Waist is spanned.
"3. And what find'st thou in his Stead?
Only the empty Bed!
* * * * *
Thou sought'st the Earthly and therefore
The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar!
"4. For the bright World of
Pure and boundless Love
What hast thou found? alas! a narrow room!
Put out that Light,
Restore thy Soul its Sight,
For better 'tis to dwell in outward Gloom,
Than thus, by the vile Body's eye,
To rob the Soul of its Infinity!
"5. Love, Love has Wings, and he
Soon out of Sight will flee,
Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye,
But the Soul's Vision true
Can track him, yea, up to
The Presence and the Throne of the Most High:
For thence he is, and tho' he dwell below,
To the Soul only he his genuine Form will show!"
Mr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he wrote this. That, with so
much command of expression and of measure, he should run waste and
formless and even void, as he does in other parts of his volumes, is
very mysterious and very distressing.
* * * * *
How we became possessed of the poetical Epistle from "E. V. K. to his
Friend in Town," is more easily asked than answered. We avow ourselves
in the matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon's maxim--"_La
propriete c'est le vol._" We merely say, in our defence, that it is a
shame in "E. V. K.," be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin,
or keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as
he that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and
well-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have
genius and judgment to begin with--a part of the poetical stock in trade
with which many of our living writers are not largely furnished. The
Epistle is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the off-hand of a
master, both as to material and workmanship. He is of the good old
manly, classical school. His thoughts have settled and cleared
themselves before forming into the mould of verse. They are in the style
of Stewart Rose's _vers de societe_, but have more of the graphic force
and deep feeling and fine humor of Crabbe and Cowper in their substance,
with a something of their own which is to us quite as delightful. But
our readers may judge. After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain
faithless town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus describes
his residence:--
"Though its charms be few,
The place will please you, and may profit too;--
My house, upon the hillside built, looks down
On a neat harbor and a lively town.
Apart, 'mid screen of trees, it stands, just where
We see the popular bustle, but not share.
Full in our front is spread a varied scene--
A royal ruin, gray, or clothed with green,
Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees,
Back'd by green fields, which mount by due degrees
Into brown uplands, stretching high away
To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray.
Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea
Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay,
Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar,
And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar."
Then follows a long passage of great eloquence, truth, and wit, directed
against the feverish, affected, unwholesome life in town, before which
he fears
"Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew,
Surrounded by blue women and pale men,"
has fallen a victim; and then concludes with these lines, which it would
not be easy to match for everything that constitutes good poetry. As he
writes he chides himself for suspecting his friend; and at that moment
(it seems to have been written on Christmas day) he hears the song of a
thrush, and forthwith he "bursts into a song," as full-voiced, as
native, as sweet and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered
friend.
"But, hark that sound! the mavis! can it be?
Once more! It is. High perched on yon bare tree,
He starts the wondering winter with his trill;
Or by that sweet sun westering o'er the hill
Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth
Due to the holy season of Christ's birth.--
And hark! as his clear fluting fills the air,
Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear
From other emulous birds, the brakes among;
Fain would they also burst into a song;
But winter warns, and muffling up their throats,
They liquid--for the spring--preserve their notes.
O sweet preluding! having heard that strain,
How dare I lift my dissonant voice again?
Let me be still, let me enjoy the time,
Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme."
This author must not be allowed to "muffle up _his_ throat," and keep
his notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse
of the mavis. He must give us more of his own "clear fluting." Let him,
with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as
Cowper did, upon the restless, noisy world he has left, seeing the
popular bustle, not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses as
these what his understanding and his affections think and feel and his
imagination informs, and we shall have something in verse not unlike the
letters from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be immortalized
over the cherished bins of our wine-fanciers, where repose their
"Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape."
What is good makes us think of what is better, as well, and it is to be
hoped more, than of what is worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as
that of a large and deep nature; there is no knowledge so good, so
strengthening as that of a great mind, which is forever filling itself
afresh. "Out of the eater comes forth meat; out of the strong comes
forth sweetness." Here is one of such "_dulcedines verae_"--the sweetness
of a strong man:--
"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glow'd the firmament
With living saphirs; Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."
Were we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and be thankful--giving
ourselves up to its gentleness, informing ourselves with its quietness
and beauty,--we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the
quietness of its language, the "sober livery" in which its thoughts are
clad. In the first thirty-eight words, twenty-nine are monosyllables.
Then there is the gradual way in which the crowning fantasy is
introduced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not wholly unexpected; it
"sweetly creeps" into our "study of imagination;" it lives and moves,
but it is a moving that is "delicate;" it flows in upon us _incredibili
lenitate_. "Evening" is a matter of fact, and its stillness too--a time
of the day; and "twilight" is little more. We feel the first touch of
spiritual life in "_her_ sober livery," and bolder and deeper in "all
things _clad_." Still we are not deep, the real is not yet transfigured
and transformed, and we are brought back into it after being told that
"Silence accompanied," by the explanatory "for," and the bit of sweet
natural history of the beasts and birds. The mind dilates and is moved,
its eye detained over the picture; and then comes that rich, "thick
warbled note"--"_all but the wakeful nightingale_;" this fills and
informs the ear, making it also "of apprehension more quick," and we are
prepared now for the great idea coming "into the eye and prospect of our
soul"--SILENCE WAS PLEASED! There is nothing in all poetry above this.
Still evening and twilight gray are now Beings, coming on, and walking
over the earth like queens, "with Silence,"
"Admiration's speaking'st tongue,"
as their pleased companion. All is "calm and free," and "full of life,"
it is a "Holy Time." What a picture!--what simplicity of means! what
largeness and perfectness of effect!--what knowledge and love of
nature! what supreme art!--what modesty and submission! what
self-possession!--what plainness, what selectness of speech! "As is the
height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and
equal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law. As the independence,
so must be the seeing and the service, and the submission to the
Supreme Will. As the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the
resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the intercommunion with
Nature."--_Coleridge's Posthumous Tract "The Idea of Life."_
* * * * *
Since writing the above, our friend "E. V. K." has shown himself
curiously unaffected by "that last infirmity of noble minds,"--his
"clear spirit" heeds all too little its urgent "spur." The following
sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the stealing:--