Earlier Poems (1830-1836) | Page 8

be observed that it deals chiefly with the constructive side of the poet's function. That which makes him a poet is not the power of writing melodious rhymes, it is not the possession of ordinary human sensibilities nor even of both these qualities in connection with each other. I should rather say, if I were now called upon to define it, it is the power of transfiguring the experiences and shows of life into an aspect which comes from his imagination and kindles that of others. Emotion is its stimulus and language furnishes its expression; but these are not all, as some might infer was the doctrine of the poem before the reader.
A common mistake made by young persons who suppose themselves to have the poetical gift is that their own spiritual exaltation finds a true expression in the conventional phrases which are borrowed from the voices of the singers whose inspiration they think they share.
Looking at this poem as an expression of some aspects of the /ars poetica/, with some passages which I can read even at this mature period of life without blushing for them, it may stand as the most serious representation of my early efforts. Intended as it was for public delivery, many of its paragraphs may betray the fact by their somewhat rhetorical and sonorous character.
SCENES of my youth! awake its slumbering fire!?Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!?Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,?Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year;?Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow,?If leaf or blossom still is fresh below!
Long have I wandered; the returning tide?Brought back an exile to his cradle's side;?And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled,?To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold,?So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time,?I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme;?Oh, more than blest, that, all my wanderings through,?My anchor falls where first my pennons flew!
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The morning light, which rains its quivering beams?Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams,?In one broad blaze expands its golden glow?On all that answers to its glance below;?Yet, changed on earth, each far reflected ray?Braids with fresh hues the shining brow of day;?Now, clothed in blushes by the painted flowers,?Tracks on their cheeks the rosy-fingered hours;?Now, lost in shades, whose dark entangled leaves?Drip at the noontide from their pendent eaves,?Fades into gloom, or gleams in light again?From every dew-drop on the jewelled plain.
We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave,?Reflect the light our common nature gave,?But every sunbeam, falling from her throne,?Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own?Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free,?Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea;?Lost, like the lightning in the sullen clod,?Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God;?Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above,?Or quivering roseate on the leaves of Love;?Glaring like noontide, where it glows upon?Ambition's sands,--the desert in the sun,--?Or soft suffusing o'er the varied scene?Life's common coloring,--intellectual green.
Thus Heaven, repeating its material plan,?Arched over all the rainbow mind of man;?But he who, blind to universal laws,?Sees but effects, unconscious of their cause,--?Believes each image in itself is bright,?Not robed in drapery of reflected light,--?Is like the rustic who, amidst his toil,?Has found some crystal in his meagre soil,?And, lost in rapture, thinks for him alone?Earth worked her wonders on the sparkling stone,?Nor dreams that Nature, with as nice a line,?Carved countless angles through the boundless mine.
Thus err the many, who, entranced to find?Unwonted lustre in some clearer mind,?Believe that Genius sets the laws at naught?Which chain the pinions of our wildest thought;?Untaught to measure, with the eye of art,?The wandering fancy or the wayward heart;?Who match the little only with the less,?And gaze in rapture at its slight excess,?Proud of a pebble, as the brightest gem?Whose light might crown an emperor's diadem.
And, most of all, the pure ethereal fire?Which seems to radiate from the poet's lyre?Is to the world a mystery and a charm,?An AEgis wielded on a mortal's arm,?While Reason turns her dazzled eye away,?And bows her sceptre to her subject's sway;?And thus the poet, clothed with godlike state,?Usurped his Maker's title--to create;?He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress,?What others feel more fitly can express,?Sits like the maniac on his fancied throne,?Peeps through the bars, and calls the world his own.
There breathes no being but has some pretence?To that fine instinct called poetic sense?The rudest savage, roaming through the wild;?The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child;?The infant, listening to the warbling bird;?The mother, smiling at its half-formed word;?The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at large;?The girl, turned matron to her babe-like charge;?The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand?The vote that shakes the turret of the land;?The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain,?Dreams of