Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant Part 52

This personification of the pa.s.sion of Love, by Peyre Vidal, has been referred to as a proof of how little the Provencal poets were indebted to the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery of their poems.

Page 149.

THE LOVE OF G.o.d.--(FROM THE PROVENcAL OF BERNARD RASCAS.)

The original of these lines is thus given by John of Nostradamus, in his Lives of the Troubadours, in a barbarous Frenchified orthography:

"Touta kausa mortala una fes perira, Fors que l'amour de Dieu, que touiours durara.

Tous nostres cors vendran essuchs, come fa l'eska, Lous Aubres leyssaran lour verdour tendra e fresca, Lous Ausselets del bosc perdran lour kant subtyeu, E non s'auzira plus lou Rossignol gentyeu.

Lous Buols al Pastourgage, e las blankas fedettas Sent'ran lous agulhons de las mortals Sagettas, Lous crestas d'Aries fiers, Renards, e Loups espars Kabrols, Cervys, Chamous, Senglars de toutes pars, Lous Ours hardys e forts, seran poudra, e Arena.

Lou Daulphin en la Mar, lou Ton, e la Balena, Monstres impetuous, Ryaumes, e Comtas, Lous Princes, e lous Reys, seran per mort domtas.

E nota ben eysso kascun: la Terra granda, (Ou l'Escritura ment) lou fermament que branda, Prendra autra figura. Enfin tout perira, Fors que l'Amour de Dieu, que touiours durara."

Page 150.

FROM THE SPANISH OF PEDRO DE CASTRO Y AnAYA.

_Las Auroras de Diana_, in which the original of these lines is contained, is, notwithstanding it was praised by Lope de Vega, one of the worst of the old Spanish Romances, being a tissue of riddles and affectations, with now and then a little poem of considerable beauty.

Page 160.

EARTH.

The author began this poem in rhyme. The following is the first draught of it as far as he proceeded, in a stanza which he found it convenient to abandon:

A midnight black with clouds is on the sky; A shadow like the first original night Folds in, and seems to press me as I lie; No image meets the vainly wandering sight, And shot through rolling mists no starlight gleam Glances on gla.s.sy pool or rippling stream.

No ruddy blaze, from dwellings bright within, Tinges the flowering summits of the gra.s.s; No sound of life is heard, no village din, Wings rustling overhead or steps that pa.s.s, While, on the breast of Earth at random thrown, I listen to her mighty voice alone.

A voice of many tones: deep murmurs sent From waters that in darkness glide away, From woods unseen by sweeping breezes bent, From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day, And hollows of the invisible hills around, Blent in one ceaseless, melancholy sound.

O Earth! dost thou, too, sorrow for the past?

Mourn'st thou thy childhood's unreturning hours, Thy springs, that briefly bloomed and faded fast, The gentle generations of thy flowers, Thy forests of the elder time, decayed And gone with all the tribes that loved their shade?

Mourn'st thou that first fair time so early lost, The golden age that lives in poets' strains, Ere hail or lightning, whirlwind, flood, or frost Scathed thy green breast, or earthquakes whelmed thy plains, Ere blood upon the shuddering ground was spilt, Or night was haunted by disease and guilt?

Or haply dost thou grieve for those who die?

For living things that trod a while thy face, The love of thee and heaven, and now they lie Mixed with the shapeless dust the wild winds chase?

I, too, must grieve, for never on thy sphere Shall those bright forms and faces reappear.

Ha! with a deeper and more thrilling tone, Rises that voice around me: 'tis the cry Of Earth for guilt and wrong, the eternal moan Sent to the listening and long-suffering sky, I hear and tremble, and my heart grows faint, As midst the night goes up that great complaint.

Page 174.

_Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run_ _Through the dark woods like frighted deer._

Close to the city of Munich, in Bavaria, lies the s.p.a.cious and beautiful pleasure-ground, called the English Garden, in which these lines were written, originally projected and laid out by our countryman, Count Rumford, under the auspices of one of the sovereigns of the country.

Winding walks, of great extent, pa.s.s through close thickets and groves interspersed with lawns; and streams, diverted from the river Isar, traverse the grounds swiftly in various directions, the water of which, stained with the clay of the soil it has corroded in its descent from the upper country, is frequently of a turbid-white color.

Page 178.

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS.

This song refers to the expedition of the Vermonters, commanded by Ethan Allen, by whom the British fort of Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, was surprised and taken, in May, 1775.

Page 180.

THE CHILD'S FUNERAL.

The incident on which this poem is founded was related to the author while in Europe, in a letter from an English lady. A child died in the south of Italy, and when they went to bury it they found it revived and playing with the flowers which, after the manner of that country, had been brought to grace his funeral.

Page 184.

_'Tis said, when Schiller's death drew nigh, The wish possessed his mighty mind, To wander forth wherever lie The homes and haunts of humankind._

Shortly before the death of Schiller, he was seized with a strong desire to travel in foreign countries, as if his spirit had a presentiment of its approaching enlargement, and already longed to expatiate in a wider and more varied sphere of existence.

Page 185.

_The flower Of sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem The red drops fell like blood._

The _Sanguinaria Canadensis_, or blood-root, as it is commonly called, bears a delicate white flower of a musky scent, the stem of which breaks easily, and distils a juice of a bright-red color.

Page 191.

_The shad-bush, white with flowers, Brightened the glens._

The small tree, named by the botanists _Aronia Botyrapium_, is called, in some parts of our country, the shad-bush, from the circ.u.mstance that it flowers about the time that the shad ascend the rivers in early spring. Its delicate sprays, covered with white blossoms before the trees are yet in leaf, have a singularly beautiful appearance in the woods.

Page 192.

_"There hast thou," said my friend, "a fitting type Of human life."_

I remember hearing an aged man, in the country, compare the slow movement of time in early life, and its swift flight as it approaches old age, to the drumming of a partridge or ruffed grouse in the woods--the strokes falling slow and distinct at first, and following each other more and more rapidly, till they end at last in a whirring sound.

Page 194.

AN EVENING REVERY.--FROM AN UNFINISHED POEM.