46 Original Poetry. [VOL. 4 POETRY. From the New Monthly Magazine, August 1818. BY LORD BYRON. ND wilt First save us from the blue fiend's realm, and busy A Sweet thou weep when I am low? That far in searchhoughts How'rs Yet, if they grieve thee, say not so; Wilt sigh above my place of rest. To know that heart hath felt for mine! It falls for one who cannot weep; I would not give thy bosom pain! Have stray'd from safe domestic bow'rs; Alas! thus Folly's venturers roan Spirit of Hope! at thy command From the Literary Gazette, July, 1818. V. From Körner.---Written when Germany was under the French yoke, 1811. VENING begins---Day's voices all are EVEN still-- Yet ruddier looks the Sun's departing Here underneath these sinuous boughs I sit, You are the same that former ages knew, Now glimmering through your wreaths of The sinking evening reddens into death. In 1406, the seventeenth bishop of a colony settled at East Greenland was prevented from reaching them by a prodigious barrier of ice, and their fatehas never been ascertained. As if neglectful of your fate alone, You seem to say from every waving twig, You have resisted long !---mid all around, Beneath your arms the weary traveller And when in Autumn your brown leaves For you they droop, for you alone they fade, To call a progeny successive forth, In spring to clothe you with delightful shade. Fine image of Germania's ancient worth, As once to past, and better days 'twas known, When her brave sons, supporting well her cause, Died to uphold their monarch and bis throne! -- Ah! what avails it to recall my grief, That grief is known throughout my native land! -- My country! once superior to the world, But hark! while I thus musing stand, A whispered voice of hope and joy--- 47 A happier age of joys unfold. And yet the emblem teach in vain ? Thou low art fallen---yet thy green oaks Is this the bound of Power Divine, stand. August, 1818. C. R---g. To animate an insect frame ? the birth of THE BUTTERFLY. Ge, and the joyful truth relate, From La Belle Assemblee. WEhe offspring of enraptured blay, WHEN, bursting forth to life and light, The butterfly, on pinions bright, Launched in full splendor on the day. Unconscious of a mother's care, No infant wretchedness it knew ; But, as she felt the vernal air, At once to full perfection grew. Her slender form, etherial light, Her velvet textured wings unfold, With all the rainbow's colours bright, And dropt with spots of burnish'd gold. Trembling awhile with joy she stood, And felt the sun's enlivening ray, Drank from the skies the vital flood, And wondered at her plumage gay. And floats along the rising gale. Go sip the rose's fragrant dew-- The lily's honied cup explore--From flower to flower the search renew, And rifle all the woodbine's store. And let me trace thy vagrant flight, Thy moments, too, of short repose: And mark thee when, with fresh delight, Thy golden pinions ope and close. Fail child of earth, bright heir of heaven! [Taylor's Anec. of Insects] gone. And such wild sportings as he can he tries, Then rolls away as loose as the sea-wave; Must be outdone, and he's as lithe and curl'd, sheathed In mail, that hath for plates the mother pearl, But rings it with a collar of rich gems, In silence and in shade. TRISSINO. [VOL. 4 For Memory's prism loves to strew In manhood's sterner sorrows melt away; Childhood's light griefs soon vanish from the mind. But all its sun-bright hours remain behind ! From the New Monthly Magazine, August 1818. THE MOSSY SEAT. still rushes on the sparkling river; HE landscape hath not lost its look; Nor hath the gloominess forsook Still hangs around the shadowy wood, The raven's plaint, the linnet's song, And clouds above, and hills below, It is not meet, it is not fit, Though Fortune all our hopes hath thwarted, Whilst on the very stone I sit, Where first we met and last we parted, Each happy hour that we have proved, Whilst love's delicious converse blended; As 'neath the twilight star we roved, Unconscious where our progress tended, What soothing recollections throng, Presenting many a mournful token, That heart's remembrance to prolong, Which then was blest---but now is broken! I cannot---Oh! hast thou forgot Our early loves ?---this hallowed spot? I almost think I see thee stand: I almost dream I hear thee speaking; Thy living glance in fondness seeking. Though beauty bless the landscape still--- Which long ago thy presence gave it : Mirth---music---friendship have no tone Like that which with thy voice hath flown! And memory only now remains To whisper things that once delighted: To seek this sacred haunt benighted, IT ON POETRY. From the Literary Panorama, August, 1818. T cannot be denied that the habit assemblages, we shall act with cruelty which living Poets cultivate, of deal- towards poetical inspiration. We ing only in those impressions which therefore think Mr. Coleridge should have affected them most strongly as be allowed to introduce his owls, and individuals, contributes much to the mastiff, in his old Christabel without warmth, intensity and enthusiasm of molestation. their compositions. A Poet, in the Since the reign of Lord Byron comabstract sense of the term, is a person menced, sentiment has become the staple who seeks for imposing and interesting article. Creativeness of imagination, conceptions wherever they are to be which is quite a different thing, seems found, and who has no preference for at present to be more rare, and indeed one set of ideas more than another, ex- is very rare at all times, since we do not cept in so far as they are calculated to find a remarkable instance of it once in stir, excite, and gratify the human mind. a century. Poetical sentiment is merely This would be the character of one the strength of the moral affections who estimated the value of poetical sublimed by enthusiasm. Repeated materials philosophically. But it has instances have proved that it is comgenerally been found, that Poetry can- patible with a very limited range of not be composed by setting so coolly ideas, nay, that it is even an exclusive to work; and that, when the reasoning principle, and likes a limited range, faculties are too watchful, there is gen- because varied ideas are apt to disturb erally a dispersion of those fine feelings it—but imagination is an universal love which serve as a sort of key-note for of conceptions, images, and pictures of calling together poetical thoughts. all kinds, for their own sake, and reJudgment is quite unable to detect the joices in producing them ad infinitum, relations which bind ideas together into for the sole pleasure of viewing the Poetry. Feeling alone can do it; but pageant. Darwin is an example of a feeling is so much modified by circum- vivid imagination existing quite sepastances and associations, that we seldom rately from poetical sentiment or moral find it operating in any individual with enthusiasm. abstract propriety; and if we turn loose For strength of stimulus, the Poetry our metaphysical judgment upon its of sentiment is certainly preferable to G ATHENEUM. Vol. 4. 50 On Poetry. [VOL. 4 tions, where like Crabbe, he takes them with such compounds as occur in real life, without attempting to abstract them into the sublime. that composed of mere pictures and the novelist and the satirist, and even to images like Darwin's, or that of ob- the painter of moral energies and affecservation and reflection like Pope's. But as the understanding of the reader is entirely passive in perusing Poetry of sentiment, the means of excitement are soon expended. Poetry, consisting partly of reflection and observation, like that of Pope's, awakens the mind into a state of pleasing activity, which may be sustained for almost any length of time, without any feeling of weariness or monotony, since the interest of it is derived from the contrasts and comparisons of dissimilar and distant ideas, collected from a wide field, and not from the aggregation of a great many homogeneous ideas brought to bear on one point. The range of human thoughts is not unlimited, and a considerable part of it has already been exhausted. In so far as Poetry consists in selecting the ideal beauties, either of human nature or of the external world, or in describing situations of imaginary felicity, we can hardly now expect Poets to discover any unanticipated conceptions on these subjects. Virtue and perfection are not susceptible of many different aspects, because their real elements must always be the same. David Hume observes, that truth is one thing, Sir So completely does the ideal beautiful appear to be exhausted, that Poets, for some years back, have been obliged to represent their heroes as villanous and immoral, retaining, of course, the staple article of strength of mind. There is no doubt a charm about the idea of great mental energy; but moral amiableness would still have been retained as an ingredient in the picture, if it had not become trite and threadbare. The case is the same on the stage. Giles Overreach, Bertram, and Richard the Third, proclaim aloud their wickedness to an applauding audience, and are answered from the closet by Conrad, Lara, Bertram, the Buccaneer, Childe Harold, and Meg Merilees, whose respective confessions make the hair of ordinary Christians stand on end. Manfred retorts again from the Alps, and is like to have the Bible thrown in his face by John Balfour of Burley, for pretending to be worse than himself; while Mokanna, with his silver veil, hopes to transcend the whole, by adding ugliness to a bad heart. while falsehood is unlimited in its varie- Since mankind must be furnished ties. The same thing may be said of with something to stir their sluggish the ideal beauties, both of mind and bosoms, it is very fair that Poets should matter. It is probable that the ancients employ whatever means are left for prowould perceive a cloying similarity in ducing the effect wanted. The public, the lineaments and proportions of their for its own sake, must sometimes overbest statues because no artist could look the oddness of the expedients used; diverge very far from a certain standard and if modern Poetry does not exhibit without forsaking his object. The so extensive a range of ideas as could contention and emulation of sculptors be wished, it is rather to be ascribed to would draw them closer and closer to the love of intense effect, than to the a centre. The conceptions of a Phidias want of invention. Observation is the are circumscribed within a certain nat- source from whence every thing like ural boundary; but there is no boun- real opulence of conceptions must be dary to the variety of the conceptions of derived, since imagination only reproa Hogarth, because he does not aim at duces what has been observed in a drawing perfection, but at characterising form fit for poetry: and the great fault peculiarity and imperfection, which are of modern Poets seems to be, that they infinite. In the same manner,although have exerted themselves too little to heroic Poetry may be considered as furnish their minds with materials nearly exhausted, the world will for whereupon to operate. ever continue to supply materials to |