Such as of old the rural poets sung, Poured forth at large the sweetly tortured heart; Or, sighing tender passion, swelled the gale, And taught charmed echo to resound their smart; While flocks, woods, streams around, repose and peace impart. Those pleased the most, where, by a cunning hand, What time Dan Abram left the Chaldee land, And pastured on from verdant stage to stage, Where fields and fountains fresh could best engage. Toil was not then; of nothing took they heed, But with wild beasts the sylvan war to wage, And o'er vast plains their herds and flocks to feed: Blest sons of Nature they! true golden age indeed! Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls, Bade the gay bloom of vernal landscapes rise, And now rude mountains frown amid the skies: Each sound, too, here to languishment inclined, At distance rising oft, by small degrees, A certain music, never known before, Here lulled the pensive, melancholy mind; But sidelong, to the gently waving wind, Beyond each mortal touch the most refined, The god of winds drew sounds of deep delight: Whence, with just cause, the harp of Æolus it hight. Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine? Who up the lofty diapason roll Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine, Then let them down again into the soul: Now rising love they fanned; now pleasing dole They breathed in tender musings through the heart; And now a graver sacred strain they stole, As when seraphic hands a hymn impart : Wild warbling nature all, above the reach of art! Such the gay splendor, the luxurious state, Of Caliphs old, who on the Tygris's shore, In mighty Bagdat, populous and great, Held their bright court, where was of ladies store; And verse, love, music, still the garland wore: When sleep was coy, the bard, in waiting there, Cheered the lone midnight with the Muse's lore; Composing music bade his dreams be fair, And music lent new gladness to the morning air. JAMES THOMSON (1834-1882) HE strange sombre genius of the second James Thomson found its ultimate and most perfect utterance in that remarkable poem The City of Dreadful Night,' likely to remain long the litany of pessimism in English verse. It is a work of gloomy but splendid imagination, with a rhythmical mastery and sonorous beauty of diction which declare its author plainly a man of rare poetic gift. The City of Dreadful Night' stands as one of the unique productions of nineteenth-century poetry. It is Thomson's letter of credit on posterity. His other poems shrink into insignifibeside it; yet they too, while lacking the technical perfection and sustained power of his masterpiece, have touches of the same high quality. Thomson's life was that of a roving bohemian journalist and literary hack. He was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, on November 24th, 1834; was educated in the Caledonian Orphan Asylum, and entered the British army as regimental schoolmaster. His acquaintance there with Charles Bradlaugh, whose agnostic views were acceptable to him, led to his becoming a contributor to the National Reformer, when the former established it in 1860. After leaving the military service, Thomson gave himself up to literature, writing much for radical papers. His earliest work appeared in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, and his best poems in Bradlaugh's periodical,-'To Our Ladies of Death' in 1863, and The City of Dreadful Night' in 1874. came He to America in 1872 on a mining speculation of unsuccessful issue; and while in this country, was commissioned by the New York World to go to Spain as special correspondent. In this newspaper work he used the pen-name Bysshe Vanolis, which he shortened to B. V., the one name indicating his passion for Shelley, the other being an anagram on the German romantic poet Novalis. When Thomson was a young man in the Army, stationed in Ireland, he won the love of a girl whose premature death affected him deeply, -intensifying what seems to have been a natal tendency towards hypochondria. Irregular habits in later life developed this; and he became a victim of alcohol and opium in the desire to escape insomnia and drown melancholy. He died miserably before his time, in the London University Hospital, June 3d, 1882, aged 48. His poems were published in collected form in 1880. There is a biography of him by Salt. XXV-930 Thomson's spirit brooded on the night side of things, and there is a weird, mystic quality to his imaginings. He is, in his greatest poem, a master of the gloomy, the phantasmal, and the irremediably sad, expressed in statuesque form and stately, mournful music. He is of the school of Poe in the command of the awful; metrically, he suggests comparison with Swinburne; and his creed is that of the Italian poet-pessimist Leopardi, to whom his book of verse is dedicated. But his note is entirely distinctive: there is nothing imitative about The City of Dreadful Night.' It stands like a colossal image hewn out of black marble, to be admired as wonderful art in the same breath that it is deplored as the morbid outcome of genius. Of its decided merit there can be no question. Negation and despair have seldom found a sincerer, a more poignant, and a more majestic utterance. FROM THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT' O, THUS, as prostrate, "In the dust I write L My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears." Yet why evoke the spectres of black night Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles, False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth; Because it gives some sense of power and passion In helpless impotence to try to fashion Our woe in living words howe'er uncouth. Surely I write not for the hopeful young, Or those who deem their happiness of worth, Or such as pasture and grow fat among The shows of life and feel nor doubt nor dearth, To sanctify and glorify and love them, Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth. For none of these I write, and none of these So may they flourish, in their due degrees, On our sweet earth and in their unplaced sky. If any cares for the weak words here written, It must be some one desolate, fate-smitten, Whose faith and hope are dead, and who would die. Yes, here and there some weary wanderer I suffer mute and lonely, yet another Travels the same wild paths, though out of sight. O sad Fraternity, do I unfold Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore? Nay, be assured: no secret can be told To any who divined it not before; None uninitiate by many a presage Will comprehend the language of the message, THE City is of Night: perchance of Death, For it dissolveth in the daylight fair. Dissolveth like a dream of night away; Though present in distempered gloom of thought And deadly weariness of heart all day. But when a dream night after night is brought Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many Recur each year for several years, can any Discern that dream from real life in aught? A river girds the city west and south, The main north channel of a broad lagoon, Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth; Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon |