"A band of officers
Then stationed in the city were among the chief
Of my associates."
We had marked many other fine passages of "Saul" for quotation, but must
be content with a few of those which are most readily separated from the
context.
"Ha! ha! the foe,
Having taken from us our warlike tools, yet leave us
The little scarlet tongue to scratch and sting with."
"Here's lad's-love, and the flower which even death
Cannot unscent, the all-transcending rose."
"The loud bugle,
And the hard-rolling drum, and clashing cymbals,
Now reign the lords o' the air. These crises, David,
Bring with them their own music, as do storms
Their thunders."
"Ere the morn
Shall tint the orient with the soldier's color,
We must be at the camp."
"But come, I'll disappoint thee; for, remember,
Samuel will not be roused for thee, although
I knock with thunder at his resting-place."
The lyrical portions, of the work--introduced in connection with the
demoniac characters--are inferior to the rest. They have occasionally a
quaint, antique flavor, suggesting the diction of the Elizabethan
lyrists, but without their delicate, elusive richness of melody. Here
most we perceive the absence of that highest, ripest intellectual
culture which can be acquired only through contact and conflict with
other minds. It is not good for a poet to be alone. Even where the
constructive faculty is absent, its place may be supplied through the
development of that artistic sense which files, weighs, and
adjusts,--which reconciles the utmost freedom and force of thought with
the mechanical symmetries of language,--and which, first a fetter to the
impatient mind, becomes at length a pinion, holding it serenely poised
in the highest ether. Only the rudiment of the sense is born with the
poet, and few literary lives are fortunate enough, or of sufficiently
varied experience, to mature it.
Nevertheless, before closing the volume, we must quote what we consider
to be the author's best lyrical passage. Zaph, one of the attendants of
Malzah, the "evil spirit from the Lord," sings as follows to one of his
fellows:--
"Zepho, the sun's descended beam
Hath laid his rod on th' ocean stream,
And this o'erhanging wood-top nods
Like golden helms of drowsy gods.
Methinks that now I'll stretch for rest,
With eyelids sloping toward the west;
That, through their half transparencies,
The rosy radiance passed and strained,
Of mote and vapor duly drained,
I may believe, in hollow bliss,
My rest in the empyrean is.
Watch thou; and when up comes the moon,
Atowards her turn me; and then, boon,
Thyself compose, 'neath wavering leaves
That hang these branched, majestic eaves:
That so, with self-imposed deceit,
Both, in this halcyon retreat,
By trance possessed, imagine may
We couch in Heaven's night-argent ray."
In 1860 Mr. Heavysege published by subscription a drama entitled "Count
Filippo; or, the Unequal Marriage." This work, of which we have seen
but one critical notice, added nothing to his reputation. His genius, as
we have already remarked, is not dramatic; and there is, moreover,
internal evidence that "Count Philippo" did not grow, like "Saul," from
an idea which took forcible possession of the author's mind. The plot is
not original, the action languid, and the very names of the _dramatis
personæ_ convey an impression of unreality. Though we know there never
was a Duke of Pereza in Italy, this annoys us less than that he should
bear such a fantastic name as "Tremohla"; nor does the feminine "Volina"
inspire us with much respect for the heroine. The characters are
intellectual abstractions, rather than creatures of flesh and blood; and
their love, sorrow, and remorse fail to stir our sympathies. They have
an incorrigible habit of speaking in conceits. As "Saul" is pervaded
with the spirit of the Elizabethan writers, so "Count Filippo" suggests
the artificial manner of the rivals of Dryden. It is the work of a poet,
but of a poet working from a mechanical impulse. There are very fine
single passages, but the general effect is marred by the constant
recurrence of such forced metaphors as these:--
"Now shall the he-goat, black Adultery,
With the roused ram, Retaliation, twine
Their horns in one to butt at Filippo."
"As the salamander, cast in fire,
Exudes preserving mucus, so my mind,
Cased in thick satisfaction of success,
Shall be uninjured."
The work, nevertheless, appears to have had some share in improving its
author's fortunes. From that time, he has received at least a partial
recognition in Canada. Soon after its publication, he succeeded in
procuring employment on the daily newspaper press of Montreal, which
enabled him to give up his uncongenial labor at the work-bench. The
Montreal Literary Club elected him one of its Fellows, and the
short-lived literary periodicals of the Province no longer ignored his
existence. In spite of a change of circumstances which must have given
him greater leisure as well as better opportunities of culture, he has
published but two poems in the last five years,--an Ode for the
ter-centenary anniversary of Shakspeare's birth, and the sacred idyl of
"Jephthah's Daughter." The former is a production the spirit of which is
worthy of its occasion, although, in execution, it is weakened, by an
overplus of imagery and epithet. It contains between seven and eight
hundred lines. The grand, ever-changing music of the Ode will not bear
to be prolonged beyond a certain point, as all the great Masters of Song
have discovered: the ear must not be allowed to become _quite_
accustomed to the surprises of the varying rhythm, before the closing
Alexandrine.
"Jephthah's Daughter" contains between thirteen and fourteen hundred
lines. In careful finish, in sustained sweetness and grace, and solemn
dignity of language, it is a marked advance upon any of the author's
previous works. We notice, indeed, the same technical faults as in
"Saul," but they occur less frequently, and may be altogether corrected
in a later revision of the poem. Here, also, the Scriptural narrative is
rigidly followed, and every temptation to adorn its rare simplicity
resisted. Even that lament of the Hebrew girl, behind which there seems
to lurk a romance, and which is so exquisitely paraphrased by Tennyson,
in his "Dream of Fair Women,"--
"And I went, mourning: 'No fair Hebrew boy
Shall smile away my maiden blame among
The Hebrew mothers,'"--
is barely mentioned in the words of the text. The passion of Jephthah,
the horror, the piteous pleading of his wife and daughter, and the final
submission of the latter to her doom, are elaborated with a careful and
tender hand. From the opening to the closing line, the reader is lifted
to the level of the tragic theme, and inspired, as in the Greek tragedy,
with a pity which makes lovely the element of terror. The central
sentiment of the poem, through all its touching and sorrowful changes,
is that of repose. Observe the grave harmony of the opening lines:--
"'Twas in the olden days of Israel,
When from her people rose up mighty men
To judge and to defend her: ere she knew,
Or clamored for, her coming line of kings,
A father, rashly vowing, sacrificed
His daughter on the altar of the Lord;--
'Twas in those ancient days, coeval deemed
With the song-famous and heroic ones,
When Agamemnon, taught divinely, doomed
_His_ daughter to expire at Dian's shrine,--
So doomed, to free the chivalry of Greece,
In Aulis lingering for a favoring wind
To waft them to the fated walls of Troy.
Two songs with but one burden, twin-like tales.
Sad tales! but this the sadder of the twain,--
This song, a wail more desolately wild;
More fraught this story with grim fate fulfilled."
The length to which this article has grown warns us to be sparing of
quotations, but we all the more earnestly recommend those in whom we may
have inspired some interest in the author to procure the poem for
themselves. We have perused it several times, with increasing enjoyment
of its solemn diction, its sad, monotonous music, and with the hope that
the few repairing touches, which alone are wanting to make it a perfect
work of its class, may yet be given. This passage, for example, where
Jephthah prays to be absolved from his vow, would be faultlessly
eloquent, but for the prosaic connection of the first and second
lines:--
"'Choose Tabor for thine altar: I will pile
It with the choice of Bashan's lusty herds,
And flocks of fallings, _and for fuel, thither
Will bring umbrageous Lebanon to burn_.'
* * * * *
"He said, and stood awaiting for the sign,
And heard, above the hoarse, bough-bending wind,
The hill-wolf howling on the neighboring height,
And bittern booming in the pool below.
Some drops of rain fell from the passing cloud
That sudden hides the wanly shining moon,
And from the scabbard instant dropped his sword,
And, with long, living leaps, and rock-struck clang,
From side to side, and slope to sounding slope,
In gleaming whirls swept down the dim ravine."
The finest portion of the poem is the description of that transition of
feeling, through which the maiden, warm with young life and clinging to
life for its own unfulfilled promise, becomes the resigned and composed
victim. No one but a true poet could have so conceived and represented
the situation. The narrative flows in one unbroken current, detached
parts whereof hint but imperfectly of the whole, as do goblets of water
of the stream wherefrom they are dipped. We will only venture to present
two brief passages. The daughter speaks:--
"Let me not need now disobey you, mother,
But give me leave to knock at Death's pale gate,
Whereat indeed I must, by duty drawn,
By Nature shown the sacred way to yield.
Behold, the coasting cloud obeys the breeze;
The slanting smoke, the invisible sweet air;
the towering tree its leafy limbs resigns
To the embraces of the wilful wind:
Shall I, then, wrong, resist the hand of Heaven!
Take me, my father! take, accept me, Heaven!
Slay me or save me, even as you will!"
"Light, light, I leave thee!--yet am I a lamp,
Extinguished now, to be relit forever.
Life dies: but in its stead death lives."
In "Jephthah's Daughter," we think, Mr. Heavysege has found that form of
poetic utterance for which his genius is naturally qualified. It is
difficult to guess the future of a literary life so exceptional
hitherto,--difficult to affirm, without a more intimate knowledge of the
man's nature, whether he is capable of achieving that rhythmical
perfection (in the higher sense wherein sound becomes the symmetrical
garment of thought) which, in poets, marks the line between imperfect
and complete success. What he most needs, of _external_ culture, we have
already indicated: if we might be allowed any further suggestion, he
supplies it himself, in one of his fragmentary poems:--
"Open, my heart, thy ruddy valves,--
It is thy master calls:
Let me go down, and, curious, trace
Thy labyrinthine halls.
Open, O heart! and let me view
The secrets of thy den:
Myself unto myself now show
With introspective ken.
Expose thyself, thou covered nest
Of passions, and be seen:
Stir up thy brood, that in unrest
Are ever piping keen:--
Ah! what a motley multitude,
Magnanimous and mean!"