_THE WORLD'S_
_BEST POETRY_
[Illustration]
_I Home: Friendship_ _VI Fancy: Sentiment_
_II Love_ _VII Descriptive: Narrative_
_III Sorrow and Consolation_ _VIII National Spirit_
_IV The Higher Life_ _IX Tragedy: Humor_
_V Nature_ _X Poetical Quotations_
_THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY_
_IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED_
_Editor-in-Chief BLISS CARMAN_
_Associate Editors_
_John Vance Cheney Charles G. D. Roberts_
_Charles F. Richardson Francis H. Stoddard_
_Managing Editor: John R. Howard_
[Illustration]
_JOHN D. MORRIS AND COMPANY PHILADELPHIA_
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY JOHN D. MORRIS & COMPANY
[Illustration: JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.
_Photogravure after portrait by Stieler._]
_The World's Best Poetry_
_Vol. IX_
_Of TRAGEDY:_
_of HUMOR_
_THE OLD CASE OF_
_POETRY_
_IN A NEW COURT_
_By_
_FRANCIS A. GUMMERE_
[Illustration]
_JOHN D. MORRIS AND COMPANY_
_PHILADELPHIA_
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
John D. Morris & Company
NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS.
I.
American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright
are used by the courteous permission of the owners,--either the
publishers named in the following list or the authors or their
representatives in the subsequent one,--who reserve all their rights. So
far as practicable, permission has been secured, also for poems out of
copyright.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY.
1904.
The BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, Indianapolis.--F. L. STANTON:
"Plantation Ditty."
The CENTURY CO., New York.--_I. Russell_: "De Fust Banjo,"
"Nebuchadnezzar."
Messrs. HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.--_W. A. Butler_:
"Nothing to Wear;" _Will Carleton_: "The New Church Organ."
Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston.--_W. H. Brownell_:
"Lawyer's Invocation to Spring;" _J. T. Fields_: "The
Nantucket Skipper;" _Bret Harte_: "Dow's Flat," "Jim,"
"Plain Language from Truthful James," "To the Pliocene
Skull," "Ramon," "The Society upon the Stanislaus;" _J.
Hay_: "Banty Tim," "Jim Bludso," "Little Breeches;" _O. W.
Holmes_: "Ode for a Social Meeting," "One-Horse Shay,"
"Rudolph the Headsman;" _H. W. Longfellow_: "The Wreck of
the Hesperus;" _J. R. Lowell_: "America," "The Grave-Yard,"
"What Mr. Robinson Thinks;" _J. J. Roche_: "The V-A-S-E;" C.
Scollard: "Khamsin."
The J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Philadelphia.--_G. H. Boker_:
"Countess Laura."
Mr. DAVID MACKAY, Philadelphia.--_C. G. Leland_: "Hans
Breitmann's Party," "Ritter Hugo."
Messrs. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York.--_R. Bridges
(Droch)_: "For a Novel of Hall Caine's."
Messrs. SMALL, MAYNARD & CO., Boston.--_Charlotte Perkins
Gilman_: "A Conservative."
II.
American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below
are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives
named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission,
which for the present work has been courteously granted.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY.
1904.
_C. F. Adams_; _C. T. Brooks_ (Mrs. Harriet Lyman Brooks);
_F. G. Burgess_; _R. W. Chambers_;
_N. H. Dole_; _S. W. Foss_;
_I. Wallace_; _J. W. Riley_.
[Transcriber Note:
The oe ligature has been replaced with the simple "oe" in
this version. ]
THE OLD CASE OF POETRY IN A NEW COURT.
BY FRANCIS BARTON GUMMERE.
Although hailed as queen of the arts and hedged about by a kind of
divinity, Poetry seems to sit on an always tottering throne. In nearly
every age known to human records, some one has chronicled his
forebodings that the days of Poetry were numbered; and again the critic,
or the Poet himself, has plucked up his courage and uttered a fairly
hopeful defence. Yet even this hope has been absent from periods which
now seem poetic in the highest degree. Michael Drayton could find scant
consolation for his art, dedicating certain poems to gentlemen who "in
these declining times.... love and cherish neglected poesy." The enemies
of poetry are always alert, and often come disguised as friends. When,
at the end of the Middle Ages, moralists ceased to attack the poets,
there appeared the man of science, a far more formidable person; and,
under cover of the dust and smoke in strong battle waged between these
open foes, poetry has been spoiled of one cherished possession after
another at the hands of a professedly ardent ally. Horace Walpole's
alternative neatly implied the whole question under debate: "Poetry,"
he complained, "is gone to bed, or into our prose,"--an odd speech for
one who helped to ring the romantic rising-bell. Bulwer, writing
ponderously "On Certain Principles of Art in Works of the Imagination,"
was sure that Prose had come to be the only medium of artistic
narrative. Malicious people point even now to a language which never had
any prose, and yet has lost its splendid heritage of verse: barring
Grillparzer, silent long before his death, Germany has not seen a poet
for the last fifty years. But, answers the optimist, who knows what
_ambulando_ argument for poetry is not now preparing somewhere in the
fatherland? And as for Bulwer, his ink was hardly dry when Tennyson
began those charming and miscalled Idylls of the King. If epic poetry
seems dead just now, it seemed quite as dead four hundred years ago in
France. So this harmless war is waged. What comes of it all? What has
been done? What progress? Other causes come up, find a hearing on the
evidence, get a verdict more or less in agreement with facts, and go
upon record; this case lies hopeless in chancery. Why must it wait
there, along with all the old metaphysical questions, for a decision
that never can be handed down? If one may do nothing else, one may at
least take the case to a different court, demand fresh evidence, and
appeal to another code of laws.
Before all things, it behooves both parties to this argument to come at
the facts in the case.
Barring a threat or so of historical treatment, as in Macaulay's famous
essay on Milton, writers who handle this matter of the decline of poetry
invariably pass either into critical discussion of more or less value in
itself, or else into amiable hysterics. To speak brutal truth, hysterics
are preferred, and little else is recognized. It is all very well to say
that the study of poetry has been put on a scientific basis; the mass of
readers who are interested in poetry, the mass of reviewers,--and one
finds this true in quite unexpected quarters,--care for no scientific
basis at all. In other words, they exclude from their study of poetry a
good half of the facts of poetry.
In any living science one begins by finding and grouping all the facts,
high and low alike; and one then proceeds to establish the relations of
these facts on lines of record and comparison. The facts of poetry
should be conterminous with the whole range of poetic material; and when
one faces this material, one has to do with an element in human life,
although the ordinary writer seems to think that he degrades his subject
by taking such an attitude. He searches for the cause and fact of poetry
in a sphere outside of human life, removed from ordinary human
conditions, and touching only an infinitesimal part of the sum of poetic
material. True, there is nothing nobler than the effort to reckon with
great poetry, and competent critics who succeed in this must always hold
a conspicuous place in letters; but great poetry and the great critic
are not all. Poetry, high or low, as product of a human impulse and as
a constant element in the life of man, belongs to that history which has
been defined of late as "concrete sociology"--the study of human society
itself; and it is on this ground, and not in criticism, that the
question of the decline of poetry must be asked and answered.
The task of poetics, as yet almost untried, is to make clear the
relations between higher and lower forms. Like war, marriage, worship,
magic, personal adornment, and a dozen other institutions of this sort,
poetry is an element in human life which seems to go back to the
beginnings of society. Trustworthy writers even say it was one of the
more conspicuous factors in the making of society; and when one is asked
whether poetry, that is, emotional rhythmic utterances, must be regarded
as a decreasing factor in contemporary social progress, one faces a
question of sociological as well as of literary interest, and one must
answer it on broader ground than biographical criticism, in clearer
terms than can be furnished by those old hysterics about genius. To
treat the question as it is almost invariably treated, to make it an
ingenious speculation whether any more great poets can arise under our
modern conditions, whether Goethe, if he were born now, would not be
simply a great naturalist, and whether Robert Browning or Huxley better
solved the riddle of the painful earth,--all this is to keep up an
unwholesome separation of poetics from vital and moving sciences, and to
make the discussion itself mere chatter.
The advantage in this sociological study of poetry is that it can keep
abreast of other sciences. The oars dip into actual water, the boat
moves, whether with the current of opinion or against it, and the
landscape changes for one's pains; anything is better than the old
rowing-machines, or rather than the theatrical imitation of a boat, with
the sliding scenery and the spectators that pay to be fooled. Moreover,
it is wide scientific work, not laboratory methods, so called, like
countings of words, curves of expression, and all such pleasant devices
that rarely mount above the mechanical in method and the wholly external
in results; in sociological poetics one is dealing with the life of the
race and with the heart of man. F. Schlegel's famous word about art in
general holds firm here; the science of poetry is the history of poetry,
history in its widest and deepest sense. The futile character of poetic
studies springs from that fatal ease with which a powerful thinker sets
down thoughts about poetry, and from the reluctance to under-take such
hard work as confronts even our powerful thinker when he is minded to
know the facts. To get the wide outlook, one must climb; to get the deep
insight, one must analyze and order and compare. Now the pity of it is
that this outlook and this insight, this appreciation of a masterpiece
and this knowledge of the vast material of which it is part, are not
only rarely achieved in themselves, but are seldom if ever united. The
great poems are studied apart; and as a group, more or less stable, they
form what is known as poetry. Detached from the mass of verse, and so
from the social medium where all poetry begins and grows, they are
referred to those conditions of genius which can tell at best but half
the tale; while that very mass of verse which one concedes to the social
group, that unregarded rhythmic utterance of field and festival in which
communal emotion--the agitating joys and sorrows of the common
people--found and still finds vent, is left as a fad of ethnologists and
folk-lore societies. But the material thus divided belongs together;
each half should explain the other half; and such an unscientific
rejection of material must take poetics hopelessly out of the running.
This plea for a more comprehensive range of material holds good not only
in the discussion of poetry in general, its origins, history, future,
but in the study of the great poem itself. Take something that every one
reads, and even Macaulay's schoolboy studies--the Lycidas of Milton.
Reader, critic, biographer, have long since come to terms with the poem;
it stirs heart and mind, it belongs to the masterpieces, it voices the
genius of Milton, it echoes Puritan England. Here one usually stops; but
here one should not stop. Lycidas, as a poem, is the outcome of human
emotion in long reaches of social progress; it is primarily a poem of
grief for the dead, a link in that chain of evolution in rhythmic
utterance which leads from wild gestures and inarticulate cries up to
the stately march of Milton's verse and the higher mood of his thought.
So far from degrading one's conception of great poetry, the comparison
of rough communal verse should throw into strongest relief the dignity
and the majesty of a poet's art. One has taken this poet from his
parochial limits, and set him strongly lighted, at the front of a great
stage, with its dim background full of half-seen, strangely moving
figures; his song is now detached from a vast chorus of human
lamentation, and now sinks back into it as into its source. In certain
great elegies, as also in the hymeneal, this chorus actually lingers as
a refrain. True, the individuals of the chorus are seldom interesting in
themselves. The black fellow of Australia shall not soothe our grief
with his howlings for his dead, nor even the Corsican widow with her
_vocero_. But the chorus as chorus is impressive enough; it is a part of
the piece; heard or unheard, it belongs with the triumphs of individual
art. Somewhere in every great poem lurks this legacy of communal song.
It may better be called the silent partner, without whose capital, at
the least, no poet can now trade in Parnassian ware; and as for lyric
verse, there the partner is not even silent. All amorous lyric, whether
of German Walther or of Roman Catullus, holds an echo of festal throngs
singing and dancing at the May. The troubadours come down to us with
proud names, yet they are only spokesmen of an aristocratic guild; and
this again was but a sifting and a refinement of the throngs which
danced about their _regine Avrillouse_ a thousand years ago. It was once
lad and lass in the crowd; it comes to be lover and high-born dame at
daybreak, with a warning from the watcher on the castle walls; then that
vogue passes, with all its songs that seem to sing themselves; the
situation has grown deplorably unconventional, and the note is false.
Amorous lyric waxes mere grave, taking on a new privacy of utterance,
and a new individuality of tone. It is now the subtle turn of thought,
and not the cadence of festal passion, which sets off Lovelace's one
perfect song from all its kind; yet, without that throb of passion, that
rhythm as of harmonious steps, one of them a piece of human nature, and
the other a legacy from the throng, Lovelace had never made his verses
and there would be no lyric in the world.
Poetry is thus a genesis in the throng, then an exodus with the solitary
poet, then--though this is too often forgotten--a return to the throng.
At least it is so with the great poets. Not the poet, but the
verse-smith, the poetaster, is anxious to deny his parentage in communal
song, and to set for his excellent differences. He will daze the editor
and force his way into the magazine by tricks of expression, a new
adjective, a shock of strange collocations. In a steamboat on the Baltic
I once met a confidential soul who told me of his baffled designs upon
the vogue of modern fiction. He had written, it seemed, a novel without
a woman in it; and he had printed this novel in red ink. "And I am not
famous yet," he sighed. So with one kind of minor poet. He works through
eccentricities and red ink. He is like Jean Paul's army chaplain
Schmelzle, who, when a boy in church, was so often tempted to rise and
cry aloud, "Here am I, too, Mr. Parson!" It is not so with the great
poets, not so even with those poets whom one may not call great, but
who know how to touch the popular heart. All the masters, Homer,
Shakespeare, Goethe, even Dante, win their greatest triumphs by coming
back to simplicity in form and diction as to the source of all poetic
expression. Or, to put it more scientifically, in any masterpiece one
will find the union of individual genius with that harmony of voices and
sympathy of hearts achieved by long ages of poetic evolution working in
the social mass.
If such a range of poetic material is needed even in criticism, how
strictly must it be demanded in any question about the art as a whole!
One may turn from history to prophecy; but poetry must still be studied
even more rigidly in its full range and with regard to all human
elements in the case. Because the communal elements, once so plain and
insistent, now elude all but the most searching gaze, that is no reason
for leaving them out of the account. Hennequin saw that simply for
critical purposes one must reckon not only with the maker of poetry, but
with the consumer as well; and the student of poetry at large must go
still farther. It is after all only a remnant who choose and enjoy great
poetry, just as it is only a remnant who follow righteousness in private
life and probity in civic standards.
But what of the cakes and ale? What of the uncritical folk? What stands
now, since people have come indoors, for the old ring of dancers, the
old songs of May and Harvest Home? Does the lapse of these mean a lapse
in poetry at large? Or what has taken their place? How shall one
dispose of the room over a village store, the hot stove, the folk in
Sunday dress, and the young woman who draws tears down the very grocer's
cheek as she "renders" Curfew Shall Not Ring To-Night? What of the
never-ending crop of songs in street and concert-hall, and on the
football field, verses that still time the movements of labor and the
steps of a marching crowd? What of homely, comfortable poetry, too,
commonplace perhaps, but dear to declaiming youth? Only a staff cut from
Sophoclean timber will support your lonely dreamer as he makes his way
over the marl; but the common citizen, who does most of the world's
work, and who has more to do with the future of poetry than a critic
will concede, finds his account in certain smooth, didactic, and mainly
cheerful verses which appear in the syndicate newspapers, and will never
attain a magazine or an anthology. If singing throngs keep rhythm alive,
it is this sort of poets that must both make and mend the paths of
genius. Commonplace is a poor word. Horace gives one nothing else; but a
legion of critics shall not keep us from Horace, and even Matthew
Arnold, critic as he was, fell back for his favorite poem on that
seventh ode of the fourth book,--as arrant commonplace as Gray's Elegy
itself. Members of a Browning society have been known to descend
earthward by reading Longfellow. If minor poets and obvious, popular
poems ever disappear, and if crowds ever go dumb, then better and best
poetry itself will be dead as King Pandion. No "Absent-Minded Beggar,"
no "Recessional."
Whoever, then, will tell the truth about poetry's part in the world of
to-day and to-morrow must not only know the course of all poetry through
all the yesterdays, but must keep all its present manifestations, all
its elements, sources, and allies at his command. Not only the lords of
verse are to advise him; he shall take counsel with scullions and
potboys. It is that poet in every man, about whom Sainte-Beuve
discoursed, who can best tell of the future of poetry. The enormous heed
paid to the great and solitary poets, as if there could be a poet
without audience or reader, has distorted our vision until we think of
poetry as a quite solitary performance, a refuge from the world. Is not
poetry really a flight from self and solitude to at least a
conventional, imaginative society? Poetry by its very form is a
convention, an echo of social consent; with its aid one may forget
personal debit and credit in the great account of humanity. Now, as in
the beginning, poetry is essentially social; its future is largely a
social problem. How far, then, has man ceased to sing in crowds, and
taken to thinking by himself? What is the shrinkage, quality as well as
quantity, in the proportion of verse to prose since the invention of
printing? Is the loss of so much communal song in daily toil, in daily
merriment, like the cutting away of those forests which hold the rains
and supply the great rivers?
Waiting for complete and trustworthy studies of humanity which shall
answer some of those queries, one may venture an opinion on the general
case. Just as one feels that forests may vanish, and yet in some way
the mighty watercourses must be fed, so with poetry. Nothing has yet
been found to take the place of rhythm as sign of social consent, the
union of steps and voices in common action; and whatever intellectual or
spiritual consolation may reach the lonely thinker, emotion still drives
him back upon the sympathy of man with man.
Human sympathy is thus at the heart of every poetic utterance, whether
humble or great; rhythm is its outward and visible, once audible sign;
and poetry, from this point of view, would therefore seem to be an
enduring element in our life.
F. B. Gummere.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:
"THE OLD CASE OF POETRY IN A NEW COURT." PAGE
By _Francis Barton Gummere_ ix
POEMS OF TRAGEDY:
GREECE AND ROME 3
THE ORIENT 26
GERMANY 44
ITALY: SPAIN 55
SWITZERLAND: RUSSIA 88
SCOTLAND: IRELAND: ENGLAND 120
AMERICA 172
THE SEA 181
HUMOROUS POEMS:
WOMAN 197
MISCELLANEOUS 239
PARODIES: IMITATIONS 396
INGENUITIES: ODDITIES 426
INDEX: AUTHORS AND TITLES 461
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. _Frontispiece_
_Photogravure after a photograph from a portrait
by Stieler._
PAGE
FRANCESCA DA RIMINI 1
_Dante's tale of the unhappy lovers whom he saw
in the realm of shades will live in poetry and
art. This color-plate, from the painting by
A. Cabanel, shows their tragic death at the
hand of the enraged brother._
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 8
_From an engraving after the portrait by C. L. Elliott._
THE DIVER 44
"Hark! a shriek from the crowd rang aloud from the shore,
And behold! he is whirled in the grasp of the main."
_From photogravure after a drawing by A. Michaelis._
ROBERT BROWNING 102
_After a life-photograph by Elliott and Fry, London._
THE FATAL COAST-TIDE 145
"The old sea-wall (he cried) is down!
The rising tide comes on apace."
_From photogravure by Braun, Clement & Co.,
after a painting by G. Haquette._
THE BATTLE OF THE NILE 184
"There came a burst of thunder-sound;
The boy--Oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea."
_From engraving after the painting by George Arnald, A. R. A._
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 192
_After a life-photograph by Sarony, New York._
THE PRESS-GANG 271
"But as they fetched a walk one day,
They met a press-gang crew;
And Sally she did faint away,
Whilst Ben he was brought to."
_From engraving after a painting by Alexander Johnston._
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 345
_After a photogravure from life-photograph by Notman, Boston._
BRET HARTE 374
_From a photogravure after the original portrait by J. Pettie._
[Illustration: FRANCESCA DA RIMINI.]
The tale of the fated lovers, Francesca and Paolo, whose fleeting
spirits Dante saw in his visit to the realms of the dead, will always
live in poetry and in art. His brief story of their approach in mutual
sympathy, over the reading of a book, is given in our second volume: the
scene of their tragic death at the hand of her enraged husband is the
subject of this painting by ALEXANDRE CABANEL, the French artist.
[Illustration]
POEMS OF TRAGEDY.
POEMS OF TRAGEDY.
IPHIGENEIA AND AGAMEMNON.
Iphigeneia, when she heard her doom
At Aulis, and when all beside the king
Had gone away, took his right hand, and said:
"O father! I am young and very happy.
I do not think the pious Calchas heard
Distinctly what the goddess spake; old age
Obscures the senses. If my nurse, who knew
My voice so well, sometimes misunderstood,
While I was resting on her knee both arms,
And hitting it to make her mind my words,
And looking in her face, and she in mine,
Might not he, also, hear one word amiss,
Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?"
The father placed his cheek upon her head,
And tears dropt down it; but the king of men
Replied not. Then the maiden spake once more:
"O father! sayest thou nothing? Hearest thou not
Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour,
Listened to fondly, and awakened me
To hear my voice amid the voice of birds,
When it was inarticulate as theirs,
And the down deadened it within the nest?"
He moved her gently from him, silent still;
And this, and this alone, brought tears from her,
Although she saw fate nearer. Then with sighs:
"I thought to have laid down my hair before
Benignant Artemis, and not dimmed
Her polished altar with my virgin blood;
I thought to have selected the white flowers
To please the nymphs, and to have asked of each
By name, and with no sorrowful regret,
Whether, since both my parents willed the change,
I might at Hymen's feet bend my clipt brow;
And (after these who mind us girls the most)
Adore our own Athene, that she would
Regard me mildly with her azure eyes,--
But, father, to see you no more, and see
Your love, O father! go ere I am gone!"
Gently he moved her off, and drew her back,
Bending his lofty head far over hers;
And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst.
He turned away,--not far, but silent still.
She now first shuddered; for in him, so nigh,
So long a silence seemed the approach of death,
And like it. Once again she raised her voice:
"O father! if the ships are now detained,
And all your vows move not the gods above,
When the knife strikes me there will be one prayer
The less to them; and purer can there be
Any, or more fervent, than the daughter's prayer
For her dear father's safety and success?"
A groan that shook him shook not his resolve.
An aged man now entered, and without
One word stepped slowly on, and took the wrist
Of the pale maiden. She looked up, and saw
The fillet of the priest and calm, cold eyes.
Then turned she where her parent stood, and cried:
"O father! grieve no more; the ships can sail."
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA.
FROM "HECUBA."
[It had been determined by the victorious Greeks to
sacrifice Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, King of Ilium,
and his wife Hecuba, on the tomb of the slain Achilleus.
Odysseus, sent by the Greeks to fetch the maiden, turned a
deaf ear to the entreaties of the mother, and Polyxena
herself addresses the Greek:]
"I see thee, how beneath thy robe, O King,
Thy hand is hidden, thy face turned from mine,
Lest I should touch thee by the beard and pray:
Fear not: thou hast escaped the god of prayers
For my part. I will rise and follow thee,
Driven by strong need; yea, and not loth to die.
Lo! if I should not seek death, I were found
A cowardly, life-loving, selfish soul!
For why should I live? Was my sire not King
Of all broad Phrygia? Thus my life began;
Then I was nurtured on fair bloom of hope
To be the bride of kings; no small the suit,
I ween, of lovers seeking me: thus I
Was once--ah, woe is me! of Idan dames
Mistress and queen, 'mid maidens like a star
Conspicuous, peer of gods, except for death;
And now I am a slave: this name alone
Makes me in love with death--so strange it is."
[Later in the drama follows the account of the heroic death
of Polyxena, described to the unhappy Hecuba by the herald
Talthybius.]
"The whole vast concourse of the Achaian host
Stood round the tomb to see your daughter die.
Achilleus' son, taking her by the hand,
Placed her upon the mound, and I stayed near;
And youths, the flower of Greece, a chosen few,
With hands to check thy heifer, should she bound,
Attended. From a cup of carven gold,
Raised full of wine, Archilleus' son poured forth
Libation to his sire, and bade me sound
Silence throughout the whole Achaian host.
I, standing there, cried in the midst these words:--
'Silence, Achaians! let the host be still!
Hush, hold your voices!' Breathless stayed the crowd;
But he:--'O son of Peleus, father mine,
Take these libations pleasant to thy soul,
Draughts that allure the dead: come, drink the black
Pure maiden's blood wherewith the host and I
Sue thee: be kindly to us; loose our prows,
And let our barks go free; give safe return
Homeward from Troy to all, and happy voyage,'
Such words he spake, and the crowd prayed assent.
Then from the scabbard, by its golden hilt,
He drew the sword, and to the chosen youths
Signalled that they should bring the maid; but she,
Knowing her hour was come, spake thus, and said:
'O men of Argos, who have sacked my town,
Lo, of free will I die! Let no man touch
My body: boldly will I stretch my throat.
Nay, but I pray you set me free, then slay;
That free I thus may perish: 'mong the dead,
Being a queen, I blush to be called slave.'
The people shouted, and King Agamemnon
Bade the youths loose the maid, and set her free;
She, when she heard the order of the chiefs,
Seizing her mantle, from the shoulder down
To the soft centre of her snowy waist
Tore it, and showed her breasts and bosom fair
As in a statue. Bending then with knee
On earth, she spake a speech most piteous:--
'See you this breast, O youth? If breast you will,
Strike it; take heart: or if beneath my neck,
Lo! here my throat is ready for your sword!'
He, willing not, yet willing,--pity-stirred
In sorrow for the maiden,--with his blade
Severed the channels of her breath: blood flowed;
And she, though dying, still had thought to fall
In seemly wise, hiding what eyes should see not.
But when she breathed her life out from the blow,
Then was the Argive host in divers way
Of service parted; for some, bringing leaves,
Strewed them upon the corpse; some piled a pyre,
Dragging pine trunks and boughs; and he who bore none,
Heard from the bearers many a bitter word:--
'Standest thou, villain? hast thou then no robe,
No funeral honors for the maid to bring?
Wilt thou not go and get for her who died
Most nobly, bravest-souled, some gift?' Thus they
Spake of thy child in death:--O thou most blessed
Of women in thy daughter, most undone!"
From the Greek of EURIPIDES.
Translation of JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
PARRHASIUS.
There stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from the place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung,
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.
He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,
And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on; and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,
The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, summoned back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.
'T was evening, and the half-descended sun
Tipped with a golden fire the many domes
Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street
Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up
With a stout heart that long and weary day,
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs,
But now he was alone, and from his nerves
[Illustration: NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.
_From an engraving of the portrait by C. L. Elliott._]
The needless strength departed, and he leaned
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts
Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him
Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,
Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek
Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye
The moving picture. The abandoned limbs,
Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fulness; the gray hair,
Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes;
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.
The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere
Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armor, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away
Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And like a veil of filmy mellowness,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.
Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus--
The vulture at his vitals, and the links
Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip
Were like the winged god's breathing from his flight.
"Bring me the captive now!
My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow
Upon the bended heavens--around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.
"Ha! bind him on his back!
Look--as Prometheus in my picture here!
Quick--or he faints!--stand with the cordial near!
Now--bend him to the rack!
Press down the poisoned links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!
"So--let him writhe! How long
Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!
How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!
"'Pity' thee! So I do!
I pity the dumb victim at the altar--
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee though I knew
A thousand lives were perishing in thine--
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?
"'Hereafter!' Ay--hereafter!
A whip to keep a coward to his track!
What gave Death ever from his kingdom back
To check the sceptic's laughter?
Come from the grave to-morrow with that story,
And I may take some softer path to glory.
"No, no, old man! we die
Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, even as they!
Strain well thy fainting eye--
For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee more.
"Yet there's a deathless name!
A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn;
And though its crown of flame
Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars! I'd bind it on!--
"Ay--though it bid me rifle
My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst--
Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first--
Though it should bid me stifle
The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild--
"All--I would do it all--
Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot,
Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!
Oh heaven!--but I appall
Your heart, old man! forgive--ha! on your lives
Let him not faint!--rack him till he revives!
"Vain--vain--give o'er! His eye
Glazes apace. He does not feel you now--
Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow!
Gods! if he do not die
But for one moment--one--till I eclipse
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!
"Shivering! Hark! he mutters
Brokenly now--that was a difficult breath--
Another? Wilt thou never come, oh Death!
Look! how his temple flutters!
Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!
He shudders--gasps--Jove help him!--so--he's dead."
How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unreigned ambition! Let it once
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip,
We look upon our splendor and forget
The thirst of which we perish! Yet hath life
Many a falser idol. There are hopes
Promising well; and love-touched dreams for some;
And passions, many a wild one; and fair schemes
For gold and pleasure--yet will only this
Balk not the soul--Ambition, only, gives,
Even of bitterness, a beaker full!
Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream,
Troubled at best; Love is a lamp unseen,
Burning to waste, or, if its light is found,
Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken;
Gain is a grovelling care, and Folly tires,
And Quiet is a hunger never fed;
And from Love's very bosom, and from Gain,
Or Folly, or a Friend, or from Repose--
From all but keen Ambition--will the soul
Snatch the first moment of forgetfulness
To wander like a restless child away.
Oh, if there were not better hopes than these--
Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame--
If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart
Must canker in its coffers--if the links
Falsehood hath broken will unite no more--
If the deep yearning love, that hath not found
Its like in the cold world, must waste in tears--
If truth and fervor and devotedness,
Finding no worthy altar, must return
And die of their own fulness--if beyond
The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air
The spirit may find room, and in the love
Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart
May spend itself--what thrice-mocked fools are we!
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.
LUCIUS JUNIUS BRUTUS OVER THE BODY OF LUCRETIA.
FROM "BRUTUS."
Would you know why I summoned you together?
Ask ye what brings me here? Behold this dagger,
Clotted with gore! Behold that frozen corse!
See where the lost Lucretia sleeps in death!
She was the mark and model of the time,
The mould in which each female face was formed,
The very shrine and sacristy of virtue!
Fairer than ever was a form created
By youthful fancy when the blood strays wild,
And never-resting thought is all on fire!
The worthiest of the worthy! Not the nymph
Who met old Numa in his hallowed walks,
And whispered in his ear her strains divine,
Can I conceive beyond her;--the young choir
Of vestal virgins bent to her. 'T is wonderful
Amid the darnel, hemlock, and base weeds,
Which now spring rife from the luxurious compost
Spread o'er the realm, how this sweet lily rose,--
How from the shade of those ill-neighboring plants
Her father sheltered her, that not a leaf
Was blighted, but, arrayed in purest grace,
She bloomed unsullied beauty. Such perfections
Might have called back the torpid breast of age
To long-forgotten rapture; such a mind
Might have abashed the boldest libertine
And turned desire to reverential love
And holiest affection! O my countrymen!
You all can witness when that she went forth
It was a holiday in Rome; old age
Forgot its crutch, labor its task,--all ran,
And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried,
"There, there's Lucretia!" Now look ye where she lies!
That beauteous flower, that innocent sweet rose,
Torn up by ruthless violence,--gone! gone! gone!
Say, would you seek instruction? would ye ask
What ye should do? Ask ye yon conscious walls,
Which saw his poisoned brother,--
Ask yon deserted street, where Tullia drove
O'er her dead father's corse, 't will cry, Revenge!
Ask yonder senate-house, whose stones are purple
With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge!
Go to the tomb where lies his murdered wife,
And the poor queen, who loved him as her son,
Their unappeased ghosts will shriek, Revenge!
The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heavens,
The gods themselves, shall justify the cry,
And swell the general sound, Revenge! Revenge!
And we will be revenged, my countrymen!
Brutus shall lead you on; Brutus, a name
Which will, when you're revenged, be dearer to him
Than all the noblest titles earth can boast.
Brutus your king!--No, fellow-citizens!
If mad ambition in this guilty frame
Had strung one kingly fibre, yea, but one,--
By all the gods, this dagger which I hold
Should rip it out, though it intwined my heart.
Now take the body up. Bear it before us
To Tarquin's palace; there we'll light our torches,
And in the blazing conflagration rear
A pile, for these chaste relics, that shall send
Her soul amongst the stars. On! Brutus leads you!
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.
THE ROMAN FATHER.
FROM "VIRGINIA"
Straightway Virginius led the maid
A little space aside,
To where the reeking shambles stood,
Piled up with horn and hide;
Close to yon low dark archway,
Where, in a crimson flood,
Leaps down to the great sewer
The gurgling stream of blood.
Hard by, a flesher on a block
Had laid his whittle down:
Virginius caught the whittle up,
And hid it in his gown.
And then his eyes grew very dim,
And his throat began to swell,
And in a hoarse, changed voice he spake,
"Farewell, sweet child! Farewell!
"O, how I loved my darling!
Though stern I sometimes be,
To thee, thou know'st, I was not so,--
Who could be so to thee?
And how my darling loved me!
How glad she was to hear
My footstep on the threshold
When I came back last year!
"And how she danced with pleasure
To see my civic crown,
And took my sword, and hung it up,
And brought me forth my gown!
Now, all those things are over,--
Yes, all thy pretty ways,
Thy needlework, thy prattle,
Thy snatches of old lays;
"And none will grieve when I go forth,
Or smile when I return,
Or watch beside the old man's bed,
Or weep upon his urn.
The house that was the happiest
Within the Roman walls,
The house that envied not the wealth
Of Capua's marble halls,
"Now, for the brightness of thy smile,
Must have eternal gloom,
And for the music of thy voice,
The silence of the tomb.
The time is come! See how he points
His eager hand this way!
See how his eyes gloat on thy grief,
Like a kite's upon the prey!
"With all his wit, he little deems
That, spurned, betrayed, bereft,
Thy father hath, in his despair,
One fearful refuge left.
He little deems that in this hand
I clutch what still can save
Thy gentle youth from taunts and blows,
The portion of the slave;
"Yea, and from nameless evil,
That passes taunt and blow,--
Foul outrage which thou knowest not,
Which thou shalt never know.
Then clasp me round the neck once more,
And give me one more kiss;
And now, mine own dear little girl,
There is no way but this."
With that he lifted high the steel,
And smote her in the side,
And in her blood she sank to earth,
And with one sob she died.
Then, for a little moment,
All people held their breath;
And through the crowded forum
Was stillness as of death;
And in another moment
Brake forth, from one and all,
A cry as if the Volscians
Were coming o'er the wall.
Some with averted faces
Shrieking fled home amain;
Some ran to call a leech; and some
Ran to lift up the slain.
Some felt her lips and little wrist,
If life might there be found;
And some tore up their garments fast,
And strove to stanch the wound.
In vain they ran, and felt, and stanched;
For never truer blow
That good right arm had dealt in fight
Against a Volscian foe.
When Appius Claudius saw that deed,
He shuddered and sank down,
And hid his face some little space
With the corner of his gown;
Till, with white lips and bloodshot eyes,
Virginius tottered nigh,
And stood before the judgment-seat,
And held the knife on high.
"O dwellers in the nether gloom,
Avengers of the slain,
By this dear blood I cry to you
Do right between us twain;
And even as Appius Claudius
Hath dealt by me and mine,
Deal you by Appius Claudius,
And all the Claudian line!"
So spake the slayer of his child,
And turned and went his way;
But first he cast one haggard glance
To where the body lay,
And writhed, and groaned a fearful groan,
And then, with-steadfast feet,
Strode right across the market-place
Unto the Sacred Street.
Then up sprang Appius Claudius:
"Stop him; alive or dead!
Ten thousand pounds of copper
To the man who brings his head."
He looked upon his clients;
But none would work his will.
He looked upon his lictors;
But they trembled, and stood still.
And as Virginius through the press
His way in silence cleft,
Ever the mighty multitude
Fell back to right and left.
And he hath passed in safety
Onto his woful home,
And there ta'en horse to tell the camp
What deeds are done in Rome.
THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY.
MARK ANTONY, OVER THE BODY OF CÆSAR.
FROM "JULIUS CÆSAR," ACT III. SC. 2.
ANTONY.--O mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?--Fare thee well.--
(_To the people._)
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones;
So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,)
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransom did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once,--not without cause!
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!--Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
* * * * *
But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might
Have stood against the world! now lies he there
And none so poor to do him reverence.
O masters! if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men.
But here 's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar,--
I found it in his closet,--'tis his will.
Let but the commons hear this testament,
(Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,)
And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood:
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy,
Unto their issue.
4 CITIZEN.--We'll hear the will: read it, Mark Antony.
CITIZENS.--The will, the will! we will hear Cæsar's will.
ANTONY.--Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;
And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad:
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs,
For if you should, O, what would come of it!
4 CITIZEN.--Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony;
You shall read us the will,--Cæsar's will.
ANTONY.--Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile?
I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it.
I fear I wrong the honorable men
Whose daggers have stabbed Cæsar; I do fear it.
4 CITIZEN.--They were traitors: honorable men!
CITIZENS.--The will! the testament!
2 CITIZEN.--They were villains, murderers: the will!
read the will!
ANTONY.--You will compel me, then, to read the will!
Then make a ring about the corse of Cæsar,
And let me show you him that made the will.
Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?
CITIZENS.--Come down.
ANTONY.--Nay, press not so upon me; stand far off.
CITIZENS.--Stand back; room; bear back.
ANTONY.--If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Cæsar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent;
That day he overcame the Nervii:--
Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-belovèd Brutus stabbed;
And, as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no;
For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel:
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Cæsar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors.
* * * * *