Halleck's New English Literature Part 51

"...they could not be Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring, Before one charm or hope had taken wing."

As she lightly slept--

"...her face so fair Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air; Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind Walks o'er it."

General Characteristics.--The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge shows the revolutionary reaction against cla.s.sicism in literature and tyranny in government; but their verse raises no cry of revolt against the proprieties and moral restrictions of the time. Byron was so saturated with the revolutionary spirit that he rebelled against these also; and for this reason England would not allow him to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

As Byron frequently wrote in the white heat of pa.s.sionate revolt, his verse shows the effects of lack of restraint. Unfortunately he did not afterwards take the trouble to improve his subject matter, or the mold in which it was cast. Swinburne says, "His verse stumbles and jingles, stammers and halts, where is most need for a swift and even pace of musical sound."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BYRON'S HOME AT PISA.]

The great power of Byron's poetry consists in its wealth of expression, its vigor, its rush and volume of sound, its variety, and its pa.s.sion. Lines like the following show the vigorous flow of the verse, the love for lonely scenery, and a wealth of figurative expression:--

"Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains, They crowned him long ago On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds With a diadem of snow."[19]

Scattered through his works we find rare gems, such as the following--

"...when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell."[20]

We may also frequently note the working of an acute intellect, as, for instance, in the lines in which he calls his own gloomy type of mind--

"...the telescope of truth, Which strips the distance of its phantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real!"[21]

The answers to two questions which are frequently asked, will throw more light on Byron's characteristics:--

I. Why has his poetic fame in England decreased so much from the estimate of his contemporaries, by whom he seemed worthy of a place beside Goethe? The answer is to be sought in the fact that Byron reflected so powerfully the mood of that special time. That reactionary period in history has pa.s.sed and with it much of Byron's influence and fame. He was, unlike Shakespeare, specially fitted to minister to a certain age. Again, much of Byron's verse is rhetorical, and that kind of poetry does not wear well. On the other hand, we might reread Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, Milton's _Lycidas_, and Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_ every month for a lifetime, and discover some new beauty and truth at every reading.

II. Why does the continent of Europe cla.s.s Byron among the very greatest English poets, next even to Shakespeare? It is because Europe was yearning for more liberty, and Byron's words and blows for freedom aroused her at an opportune moment. Historians of continental literature find his powerful impress on the thought of that time.

Georg Brandes, a noted European critic, says:--

"In the intellectual life of Russia and Poland, of Spain and Italy, of France and Germany, the seeds which he had sown, fructified...

The Slavonic nations ...seized on his poetry with avidity... The Spanish and Italian exile poets took his war cry... Heine's best poetry is a continuation of Byron's work. French Romanticism and German Liberalism are both direct descendants of Byron's Naturalism."

Swinburne gives as another reason for Byron's European popularity the fact that he actually gains by translation into a foreign tongue. His faulty meters and careless expressions are improved, while his vigorous way of stating things and his rolling rhetoric are easily comprehended. On the other hand, the delicate shades of thought in Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ cannot be translated into some European tongues without distinct loss.

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY, 1792-1822

[Ill.u.s.tration: PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY. _From the portrait by Amelia Curran, National Portrait Gallery_.]

Life.--Another fiery spirit of the Revolution was Sh.e.l.ley, born in 1792, in a home of wealth, at Field Place, near Horsham, Suss.e.x. He was one of the most ardent, independent, and reckless English poets inspired by the French Revolution. He was a man who could face infamy and defy the conventionalities of the world, and, at the same moment, extend a helpful hand of sympathy to a friend or sit for sixty hours beside the sick bed of his dying child. Tender, pitying, fearless, full of a desire to reform the world, and of hatred for any form of tyranny, Sh.e.l.ley failed to adjust himself to the customs and laws of his actual surroundings. He was calumniated and despised by the public at large, and almost idolized by his intimate friends.

At Eton he denounced the tyranny of the larger boys. At Oxford he decried the tyranny of the church over freedom of thought, and was promptly expelled for his pamphlet, _The Necessity of Atheism_. This act so increased his hatred for despotic authority that he almost immediately married Harriet Westbrook, a beautiful school girl of sixteen, to relieve her from the tyranny of her father who wanted her to return to school. Sh.e.l.ley was then only nineteen and very changeable. He would make such a sudden departure from a place where he had vowed "to live forever," that specially invited guests sometimes came to find him gone. He soon fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft G.o.dwin, the brilliant woman who later wrote the weird romance _Frankenstein_, and he married her after Harriet Sh.e.l.ley had drowned herself. These acts alienated his family and forced him to forfeit his right to Field Place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sh.e.l.lEY'S BIRTHPLACE, FIELD PLACE.]

His repeatedly avowed ideas upon religion, government, and marriage brought him into conflict with public opinion. Unpopular at home, he left England in 1818, never to return. Like Byron, he was practically an exile.

The remaining four years of Sh.e.l.ley's life were pa.s.sed in comparative tranquillity in the "Paradise of exiles," as he called Italy. He lived chiefly at Pisa, the last eighteen months of his life. Byron rented the famous Lanfranchi Palace in Pisa and became Sh.e.l.ley's neighbor, often entertaining him and a group of English friends, among whom were Edward Trelawny, the Boswell of Sh.e.l.ley's last days, and Leigh Hunt, biographer and essayist.

On July 7, 1822, Sh.e.l.ley said: "If I die to-morrow, I have lived to be older than my father. I am ninety years of age." The young poet was right in claiming that it is not length of years that measures life.

He had lived longer than most people who reach ninety. The next day he started in company with two others to sail across the Bay of Spezzia to his summer home. Friends watching from the sh.o.r.e saw a sudden tempest strike his boat. When the cloud pa.s.sed, the craft could not be seen. Not many months before, he had written the last stanza of _Adonais_:--

"...my spirit's bark is driven Far from the sh.o.r.e, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The ma.s.sy earth and sphered skies are riven!

I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

Sh.e.l.ley's body was washed ash.o.r.e, July 18, and it was burned near the spot, in accordance with Italian law; but the ashes and the unconsumed heart were interred in the beautiful Protestant cemetery at Rome, not far from where Keats was buried the previous year.

Few poets have been loved more than Sh.e.l.ley. Twentieth century visitors to his grave often find it covered with fresh flowers. The direction which he wrote for finding the tomb of Keats is more applicable to Sh.e.l.ly's own resting place:--

"Pa.s.s, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the gra.s.s is spread."[22]

Works.--_Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude_ (1816) is a magnificent expression of Sh.e.l.ley's own restless, tameless spirit, wandering among the grand solitudes of nature in search of the ineffably lovely dream maiden, who was his ideal of beauty. He travels through primeval forests, stands upon dizzy abysses, plies through roaring whirlpools, all of which are symbolic of the soul's wayfaring, until at last,--

"When on the threshold of the green recess,"

his dying glance rests upon the setting moon and the sufferer finds eternal peace. The general tone of this poem is painfully despairing, but this is relieved by the grandeur of the natural scenes and by many imaginative flights.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAVE OF Sh.e.l.lEY, PROTESTANT CEMETERY, ROME.]

The year 1819 saw the publication of a work unique among Sh.e.l.ley's productions, _The Cenci_. This is a drama based upon the tragic story of Beatrice Cenci. The poem deals with human beings, human pa.s.sions, real acts, and the natural world, whereas Sh.e.l.ley usually preferred to treat of metaphysical theories, personified abstractions, and the world of fancy. This strong drama was the most popular of his works during his lifetime.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF STANZA FROM "TO A SKYLARK".]

He returned to the ideal sphere again in one of his great poems, the lyrical drama _Prometheus Unbound_ (1820). This poem is the apotheosis of the French Revolution. Prometheus, the friend of mankind, lies tortured and chained to the mountain side. As the hour redemption approaches, his beloved Asia, the symbol of nature, arouses the soul of Revolution, represented by Demogorgon. He rises, hurls down the enemies of progress and freedom, releases Prometheus, and spreads liberty and happiness through all the world. Then the Moon, the Earth, and the Voices of the Air break forth into a magnificent chant of praise. The most delicate fancies, the most gorgeous imagery, and the most fiery, exultant emotions are combined in this poem with something of the stateliness of its Greek prototype. The swelling cadences of the blank verse and the tripping rhythm of the lyrics are the product of a nature rich in rare and wonderful melodies.

_The Witch of Atlas_ (1820), _Epipsychidion_ (1821), _Adonais_ (1821), and the exquisite lyrics, _The Cloud, To a Skylark_ and _Ode to the West Wind_ are the most beautiful of the remaining works. The first two mentioned are the most elusive of Sh.e.l.ley's poems. With scarcely an echo in his soul of the shadows and discords of earth, the poet paints, in these works, lands--

"...'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;"

where all is--

"Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise."[23]

_Adonais_ is a lament for the early death of Keats, and it stands second in the language among elegiac poems, ranking next to Milton's _Lycidas_. Sh.e.l.ley referred to _Adonais as "perhaps the least imperfect of my compositions." His biographer, Edward Dowden, calls it "the costliest monument ever erected to the memory of an English singer," who

"...bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal."

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley put some of her most sacred mementos of the poet between the leaves of _Adonais_, which spoke to her of his own immortality and omnipresence:--

"Naught we know dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?

He is a portion of the loveliness, Which once he made more lovely."

Although some of Sh.e.l.ley's shorter poems are more popular, nothing that he ever wrote surpa.s.ses _Adonais_ in completeness, poetic thought, and perfection of artistic finish.

Treatment of Nature.--Sh.e.l.ley was not interested in things themselves, but in their elusive, animating spirit. In the lyric poem, _To Night_, he does not address himself to mere darkness, but to the active, dream-weaving "Spirit of Night." The very spirit of the autumnal wind seems to him to breathe on the leaves and turn them--

"Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken mult.i.tudes."[24]