Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 51

Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to _my_ fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, For 'tis dotted as thick as a peac.o.c.k's with I's.) _Apropos_ of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through a trifling digression on bores, For, though not wearing ear-rings _in more majorum_, Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore 'em.

There was one feudal custom worth keeping, at least, Roasted bores made a part of each well-ordered feast, And of all quiet pleasures the very _ne plus_ Was in hunting wild bores as the tame ones hunt us.

Archaeologians, I know, who have personal fears Of this wise application of hounds and of spears, Have tried to make out, with a zeal more than wonted, 'Twas a kind of wild swine that our ancestors hunted; But I'll never believe that the age which has strewn Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown That it knew what was what, could by chance not have known, (Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt,) Which beast 'twould improve the world most to thin out.

I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles;-- There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much vary In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry.

The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find; You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip Down a steep slated roof where there's nothing to grip, You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases, You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces, You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, And finally drop off and light upon--nothing.

The screw-bore has twists in him, faint predilections For going just wrong in the tritest directions; When he's wrong he is flat, when he's right he can't show it, He'll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,[D]

Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Princess; He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his Birth in perusing, on each art and science, Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, And though _nemo_, we're told, _horis omnibus sapit_, The rule will not fit him, however you shape it, For he has a perennial foison of sappiness; He has just enough force to spoil half your day's happiness, And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with, But just not enough to dispute or agree with.

[Footnote D: (If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks That he's morally certain you're jealous of Snooks.)]

These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) From two honest fellows who made me a visit, And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle, I shall not now go into the subject more deeply, For I notice that some of my readers look sleep'ly, I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized nations, There's none that displays more exemplary patience Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, From all sorts of desperate persons, than ours.

Not to speak of our papers, our State legislatures, And other such trials for sensitive natures, Just look for a moment at Congress,--appalled, My fancy shrinks back from the phantom it called; Why, there's scarcely a member unworthy to frown 'Neath what Fourier nicknames, the Boreal crown; Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do If applied with a utilitarian view; Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care To Sahara's great desert and let it bore there, If they held one short session and did nothing else, They'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells.

But 'tis time now with pen phonographic to follow Through some more of his sketches our laughing Apollo:--

"There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; One half of him contradicts t'other, his wont Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender, And a _sortie_ he'll make when he means to surrender; He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest; He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer, Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her, Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, And though not a poet, yet all must admire In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar.

"There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common-sense d.a.m.n metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, Who--but hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Poe, You mustn't fling mud-b.a.l.l.s at Longfellow so, Does it make a man worse that his character's such As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much?

Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive More willing than he that his fellows should thrive, While you are abusing him thus, even now He would help either one of you out of a slough; You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoa.r.s.e, But remember that elegance also is force; After polishing granite as much as you will, The heart keeps its tough old persistency still; Deduct all you can that still keeps you at bay,-- Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray.

I'm not over-fond of Greek metres in English, To me rhyme's a gain, so it be not too jinglish, And your modern hexameter verses are no more Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer; As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is, So, compared to your moderns, sounds old Melesigenes; I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o'tis That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, And my ear with that music impregnate may be, Like the poor exiled sh.e.l.l with the soul of the sea, Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven; But, set that aside, and 'tis truth that I speak, Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.

That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife As quiet and chaste as the author's own life.

"There comes Philothea, her face all a-glow, She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve His want, or his story to hear and believe; No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails, For her ear is the refuge of dest.i.tute tales; She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood, So she'll listen with patience and let you unfold Your bundle of rags as 'twere pure cloth of gold, Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she's touched it, And, (to borrow a phrase from the nursery,) _muched_ it, She has such a musical taste, she will go Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow; She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main And thinks it geometry's fault if she's fain To consider things flat, inasmuch as they're plain; Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would say, They will prove all she wishes them to--either way, And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try, If we're seeking the truth, to find where it don't lie; I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe That for thousands of years had looked spindling and sallow, And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud, Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, Till its owner remarked, (as a sailor, you know, Often will in a calm,) that it never would blow, For he wished to exhibit the plant, and designed That its blowing should help him in raising the wind; At last it was told him that if he should water Its roots with the blood of his unmarried daughter, (Who was born, as her mother, a Calvinist said, With a Baxter's effectual caul on her head,) It would blow as the obstinate breeze did when by a Like decree of her father died Iphigenia; At first he declared he himself would be blowed Ere his conscience with such a foul crime he would load, But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark than before, And he mused, as each creditor knocked at his door, If _this_ were but done they would dun me no more; I told Philothea his struggles and doubts, And how he considered the ins and the outs Of the visions he had, and the dreadful dyspepsy, How he went to the seer that lives at Po'keepsie, How the seer advised him to sleep on it first And to read his big volume in case of the worst, And further advised he should pay him five dollars For writing Dum, Dum , on his wristbands and collars; Three years and ten days these dark words he had studied When the daughter was missed, and the aloe had budded; I told how he watched it grow large and more large, And wondered how much for the show he should charge,-- She had listened with utter indifference to this, till I told how it bloomed, and discharging its pistil With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot The botanical filicide dead on the spot; It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible gains, For it blew with such force as to blow out his brains, And the crime was blown also, because on the wad, Which was paper, was writ 'Visitation of G.o.d,'

As well as a thrilling account of the deed Which the coroner kindly allowed me to read.

"Well, my friend took this story up just, to be sure, As one might a poor foundling that's laid at one's door; She combed it and washed it and clothed it and fed it, And as if 't were her own child most tenderly bred it, Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean,) far away a- -mong the green vales underneath Himalaya.

And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there, Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak, But I found every time there were tears on my cheek.

"The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, And folks with a mission that n.o.body knows, Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose; She can fill up the _carets_ in such, make their scope Converge to some focus of rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can trans.m.u.te into honey,--but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh, say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, Hast thou not found one sh.o.r.e where those tired drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear?

Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day That to reach us unclouded, must pa.s.s, on its way, Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope; Yes, a great soul is hers, one that dares to go in To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin, And to bring into each, or to find there some line Of the never completely out-trampled divine; If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, 'Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen, As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain; What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour Could they be as a Child but for one little hour!

"What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; Nay, don't be embarra.s.sed, nor look so beseeching,-- I shan't run directly against my own preaching, And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,-- To a true poet-heart add the fun of d.i.c.k Steele, Throw in all of Addison, _minus_ the chill, With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will, Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The fine _old_ English Gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain That only the finest and clearest remain, Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee,--just Irving.

"There goes,--but _stet nominis umbra_,--his name You'll be glad enough, some day or other, to claim, And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him If some English hack-critic should chance to review him.

The old _porcos ante ne projiciatis_ Margaritas , for him you have verified gratis; What matters his name? Why, it may be Sylvester, Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor, For aught _I_ know or care; 'tis enough that I look On the author of 'Margaret,' the first Yankee book With the _soul_ of Down East in 't, and things farther East, As far as the threshold of morning, at least, Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true, Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new.

'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field and bleak hill Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till; The Puritan's shown in it, tough to the core, Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston Moor; With an unwilling humor, half-choked by the drouth In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth; With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms About finding a happiness out of the Psalms; Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the dark, Hamadryad-like, under the coa.r.s.e, s.h.a.ggy bark; That sees visions, knows wrestlings of G.o.d with the Will, And has its own Sinais and thunderings still."

Here,--"Forgive me, Apollo," I cried, "while I pour My heart out to my birthplace: O, loved more and more Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, such as runs In the veins of old Graylock,--who is it that dares Call thee peddler, a soul wrapt in bank-books and shares?

It is false! She's a Poet. I see, as I write, Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white, The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear, The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear, Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:-- It is songs such as these that she croons to the din Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees: What tho' those horn hands have as yet found small time For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme?

These will come in due order, the need that prest sorest Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, Making that whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team, To va.s.salize old tyrant Winter, and make Him delve surlily for her on river and lake;-- When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work, The hero-share ever, from Herakles down To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown; Yes, thou dear, n.o.ble Mother! if ever men's praise Could be claimed for creating heroical lays, Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel divine Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine!

Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued; Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite; Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they are set From the same runic type-fount and alphabet With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay,-- They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay.

If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease, Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these, Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art, Toil on with the same old invincible heart; Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, And creating, through labors undaunted and long, The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song!

"But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, She learned from _her_ mother a precept divine About something that b.u.t.ters no parsnips, her _forte_ In another direction lies, work is her sport, (Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will, If you talk about Plymouth and one Bunker's hill.) Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night, Her hearth is swept clean, and her fire burning bright, And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking, Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking, Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving, Whether flour'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's living, She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big, And whether to sell it outright will be best, Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest,-- At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel!

For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel; So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is."

"If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done With his burst of emotion, why, _I_ will go on,"

Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone:--

"There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems 'tis painful sometimes and invites A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, Which p.r.i.c.ks down its little sharp sentences spitefully As if you got more than you'd t.i.tle to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning.

He has perfect sway of what _I_ call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand _Ma.r.s.eillaise_.

You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon;-- Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes.

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'.

"There is Lowell, who's striving Parna.s.sus to climb With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme, He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, But he'd rather by half make a drum of the sh.e.l.l, And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.

"There goes Halleck, whose f.a.n.n.y's a pseudo Don Juan, With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one, He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order, And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder; More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told, And has had his works published in crimson and gold, With something they call 'Ill.u.s.trations,' to wit, Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ,[E]

Which are said to ill.u.s.trate, because, as I view it, Like _lucus a non_, they precisely don't do it; Let a man who can write what himself understands Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands, Who bury the sense, if there's any worth having, And then very honestly call it engraving.

But, to quit _badinage_, which there isn't much wit in, Halleck's better, I doubt not, than all he has written; In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find, If not of a great, of a fortunate mind, Which contrives to be true to its natural loves In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves.

When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks, And kneels in its own private shrine to give thanks, There's a genial manliness in him that earns Our sincerest respect, (read, for instance, his 'Burns,') And we can't but regret (seek excuse where we may) That so much of a man has been peddled away.

[Footnote E: (Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.)]

"But what's that? a ma.s.s-meeting? No, there come in lots The American Disraelis, Bulwers, and Scotts, And in short the American everything-elses, Each charging the others with envies and jealousies;-- By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions Of all kinds of greatness bless free inst.i.tutions, That while the Old World has produced barely eight Of such poets as all men agree to call great, And of other great characters hardly a score, (One might safely say less than that rather than more,) With you every year a whole crop is begotten, They're as much of a staple as corn is, or cotton; Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties That has not brought forth its own Miltons and Dantes; I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Sh.e.l.leys, Two Raphaels, six t.i.tians, (I think) one Apelles, Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens, One (but that one is plenty) American d.i.c.kens, A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons,-- In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons, He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain Will be some very great person over again.

There is one inconvenience in all this which lies In the fact that by contrast we estimate size,[F]

And, where there are none except t.i.tans, great stature Is only a simple proceeding of nature.

What puff the strained sails of your praise shall you furl at, if The calmest degree that you know is superlative?

At Rome, all whom Charon took into his wherry must, As a matter of course, be well _issimus_ed and _errimus_ed, A Greek, too, could feel, while in that famous boat he tost, That his friends would take care he was ?st??(istos-)ed and ?tat??(otatos-)ed, And formerly we, as through graveyards we past, Thought the world went from bad to worse fearfully fast; Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, And note what an average graveyard contains.

There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves, There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves, Horizontally there lie upright politicians, Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep faultless physicians, There are slave-drivers quietly whipt underground, There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound, There card-players wait till the last trump be played, There all the choice spirits get finally laid, There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a berth, There men without legs get their six feet of earth, There lawyers repose, each wrapt up in his case, There seekers of office are sure of a place, There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast, There shoemakers quietly stick to the last, There brokers at length become silent as stocks, There stage-drivers sleep without quitting their box, And so forth and so forth and so forth and so on, With this kind of stuff one might endlessly go on; To come to the point, I may safely a.s.sert you Will find in each yard every cardinal virtue;[G]

Each has six truest patriots: four discoverers of ether, Who never had thought on't nor mentioned it either: Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote rhyme: Two hundred and forty first men of their time: One person whose portrait just gave the least hint Its original had a most horrible squint: One critic, most (what do they call it?) reflective, Who never had used the phrase ob- or subjective; Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred Their sons for the rice-swamps, at so much a head, And their daughters for--faugh! thirty mothers of Gracchi: Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual black eye: Eight true friends of their kind, one of whom was a jailer: Four captains almost as astounding as Taylor: Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with crucified smile,[H]

Mount serenely their country's funereal pile: Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebellers 'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and cellars, Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea and all that,-- As long as a copper drops into the hat: Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark From Vaterland's battles just won--in the Park, Who the happy profession of martyrdom take Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak: Sixty-two second Washingtons: two or three Jacksons: And so many everythings else that it racks one's Poor memory too much to continue the list, Especially now they no longer exist;-- I would merely observe that you've taken to giving The puffs that belong to the dead to the living, And that somehow your trump-of-contemporary-doom's tones Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones."--

[Footnote F: That is in most cases we do, but not all, Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small, Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a t.i.ttle, Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little.]

[Footnote G: (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive, That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.)]

[Footnote H: Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the while.]

Here the critic came in and a thistle presented[I]-- From a frown to a smile the G.o.d's features relented, As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with pride, To the G.o.d's asking look, nothing daunted, replied, "You're surprised, I suppose, I was absent so long But your G.o.dship respecting the lilies was wrong; I hunted the garden from one end to t' other, And got no reward but vexation and bother, Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to wither, This one lily I found and made haste to bring hither."

[Footnote I: Turn back now to page--goodness only knows what, And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot.]

"Did he think I had given him a book to review?

I ought to have known what the fellow would do,"

Muttered Phbus aside, "for a thistle will pa.s.s Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an a.s.s; He has chosen in just the same way as he'd choose His specimens out of the books he reviews; And now, as this offers an excellent text, I'll give 'em some brief hints on criticism next."

So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd, And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud:--

"My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews, Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Pre-created the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small, For one natural deity sanctified all; Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of G.o.ds.

'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the line, And shaped for their vision the perfect design, With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue; Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, In the free individual moulded, was Art; Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood--like a beacon unfired, Which, once touch'd with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired-- And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark.

Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve The need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love, Hears these words oft repeated--'beyond and above,'

So these seemed to be but the visible sign Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine; They were ladders the Artist erected to climb O'er the narrow horizon of s.p.a.ce and of time, And we see there the footsteps by which men had gained To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving G.o.d.

"But now, on the poet's dis-privacied moods With _do this_ and _do that_ the pert critic intrudes; While he thinks he's been barely fulfilling his duty To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense of beauty, And has striven, while others sought honor or pelf, To make his kind happy as he was himself, He finds he's been guilty of horrid offences In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and tenses; He's been _ob_ and _sub_jective, what Kettle calls Pot, Precisely, at all events, what he ought not, _You have done this_, says one judge; _done that_, says another; _You should have done this_, grumbles one; _that_, says t' other; Never mind what he touches, one shrieks out _Taboo!_ And while he is wondering what he shall do, Since each suggests opposite topics for song, They all shout together _you're right!_ and _you're wrong!_

"Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can't write, can surely review, Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies; Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his teens, Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines; Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half through, There's nothing on earth he's not competent to; He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles,-- He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles, It matters not whether he blame or commend, If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend; Let an author but write what's above his poor scope, And he'll go to work gravely and twist up a rope, And, inviting the world to see punishment done, Hang himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun; 'Tis delightful to see, when a man comes along Who has anything in him peculiar and strong, Every c.o.c.kboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gundeck at him And make as he pa.s.ses its ludicrous Peck at him,"--

Here Miranda came up and began, "As to that,"-- Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and hat, And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared, I, too, s.n.a.t.c.hed my notes and forthwith disappeared.