The Germ Part 16

With silken raiment, store of rice, And, for this drought, all kinds of fruits, Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,

"'With cherries served in drifts of snow.'

In vain hath a king power to build Houses, arcades, enamelled mosques, And to make orchard-closes filled

"With curious fruit trees brought from far, With cisterns for the winter rain; And, in the desert, s.p.a.cious inns In divers places;--if that pain

"Is not more lightened which he feels, If his will be not satisfied: And that it be not from all time The law is planted, to abide."--pp. 47-8.

The author applies this basis of fixity in nature generally to the rules of man's nature, and avow himself a Quietist. Yet he would not despond, but contents himself, and waits. In no poem of the volume is this character more clearly defined and developed than in the sonnets "To a Republican Friend," the first of which expresses concurrence in certain broad progressive principles of humanity: to the second we would call the reader's attention, as to an example of the author's more firm and serious writing:--

"Yet when I muse on what life is, I seem Rather to patience prompted than that proud Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud; France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme:-- Seeing this vale, this earth whereon we dream, Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high Uno'erleaped mountains of necessity, Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.

Nor will that day dawn at a human nod, When, bursting thro' the net-work superposed By selfish occupation--plot and plan, l.u.s.t, avarice, envy,--liberated man, All difference with his fellow-man composed, Shall be left standing face to face with G.o.d."--p. 57.

In the adjuration ent.i.tled "Stagyrus," already mentioned, he prays to be set free

"From doubt, where all is double, Where Faiths are built on dust;"

and there seems continually recurring to him a haunting presage of the unprofitableness of the life, after which men have not "any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun." Where he speaks of resignation, after showing how the less impetuous and self-concentred natures can acquiesce in the order of this life, even were it to bring them back with an end unattained to the place whence they set forth; after showing how it is the poet's office to live rather than to act in and thro' the whole life round about him, he concludes thus:

"The world in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love.....

Nay, and since death, which wipes out man, Finds him with many an unsolved plan,....

Still gazing on the ever full Eternal mundane spectacle, This world in which we draw our breath In some sense, Fausta, outlasts death.....

Enough, we live:--and, if a life With large results so little rife, Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth, Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream that falls incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice.

And, even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce fate's impenetrable ear, Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot, In actions's dizzying eddy whirled, The something that infects the world."--pp. 125-8.--_Resignation._

"Shall we," he asks, "go hence and find that our vain dreams are not dead? Shall we follow our vague joys, and the old dead faces, and the dead hopes?"

He exhorts man to be "_in utrumque paratus_." If the world be the materialized thought of one all-pure, let him, "by lonely pureness,"

seek his way through the colored dream of life up again to that all-pure fount:--

"But, if the wild unfathered ma.s.s no birth In divine seats hath known; In the blank echoing solitude, if earth, Rocking her obscure body to and fro, Ceases not from all time to heave and groan, Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe, Forms what she forms, alone:"

then man, the only self-conscious being, "seeming sole to awake,"

must, recognizing his brotherhood with this world which stirs at his feet unknown, confess that he too but seems.

Thus far for the scheme and the creed of the author. Concerning these we leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Before proceeding to a more minute notice of the various poems, we would observe that a predilection is apparent throughout for antiquity and cla.s.sical a.s.sociation; not that strong love which made Sh.e.l.ley, as it were, the heir of Plato; not that vital grasp of conception which enabled Keats without, and enables Landor with, the most intimate knowledge of form and detail, to return to and renew the old thoughts and beliefs of Greece; still less the mere superficial acquaintance with names and hackneyed attributes which was once poetry. Of this conventionalism, however, we have detected two instances; the first, an allusion to "shy Dian's horn" in "breathless glades" of the days we live, peculiarly inappropriate in a sonnet addressed "To George Cruikshank on his Picture of 'The Bottle;'" the second a grave call to Memory to bring her tablets, occurring in, and forming the burden of, a poem strictly personal, and written for a particular occasion. But the author's partiality is shown, exclusively of such poems as "Mycerinus" and "The Strayed Reveller," where the subjects are taken from antiquity, rather in the framing than in the ground work, as in the t.i.tles "A Modern Sappho,"

"The New Sirens," "Stagyrus," and "_In utrumque paratus_." It is Homer and Epictetus and Sophocles who "prop his mind;" the immortal air which the poet breathes is "Where Orpheus and where Homer are;"

and he addresses "Fausta" and "Critias."

There are four narrative poems in the volume:--"Mycerinus," "The Strayed Reveller," "The Sick King in Bokhara," and "The Forsaken Merman." The first of these, the only one altogether narrative in form, founded on a pa.s.sage in the 2nd Book of Herodotus, is the story of the six years of life portioned to a King of Egypt succeeding a father "who had loved injustice, and lived long;" and tells how he who had "loved the good" revels out his "six drops of time." He takes leave of his people with bitter words, and goes out

"To the cool regions of the groves he loved........

Here came the king holding high feast at morn, Rose-crowned; and ever, when the sun went down, A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom, From tree to tree, all thro' the twinkling grove, Revealing all the tumult of the feast, Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine; While the deep-burnished foliage overhead Splintered the silver arrows of the moon."--p. 7.

(a daring image, verging towards a conceit, though not absolutely such, and the only one of that character that has struck us in the volume.)

"So six long years he revelled, night and day: And, when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull sound Sometimes from the grove's centre echoes came, To tell his wondering people of their king; In the still night, across the steaming flats, Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile."--pp. 8, 9.

Here a Tennysonian influence is very perceptible, more especially in the last quotation; and traces of the same will be found in "The Forsaken Merman."

In this poem the story is conveyed by allusions and reminiscences whilst the Merman makes his children call after her who had returned to her own earth, hearing the Easter bells over the bay, and who is not yet come back for all the voices calling "Margaret! Margaret!"

The piece is scarcely long enough or sufficiently distinct otherwise than as a whole to allow of extract; but we cannot but express regret that a poem far from common-place either in ubject or treatment should conclude with such sing-song as

------"There dwells a loved one, But cruel is she; She left lonely for ever The kings of the sea."

"The Strayed Reveller" is written without rhyme--(not being blank verse, however,)--and not unfrequently, it must be admitted, without rhythm. Witness the following lines:

"Down the dark valley--I saw."-- "Trembling, I entered; beheld"-- "Thro' the islands some divine bard."--

Nor are these by any means the only ones that might be cited in proof; and, indeed, even where there is nothing precisely contrary to rhythm, the verse might, generally speaking, almost be read as prose.

Seldom indeed, as it appears to us, is the attempt to write without some fixed laws of metrical construction attended with success; never, perhaps, can it be considered as the most appropriate embodiment of thought. The fashion has obtained of late years; but it is a fashion, and will die out. But few persons will doubt the superiority of the established blank verse, after reading the following pa.s.sage, or will hesitate in p.r.o.nouncing that it ought to be the rule, instead of the exception, in this poem:

"They see the merchants On the Oxus stream:--but care _Must visit first them too, and make them pale:_ Whether, thro' whirling sand, _A cloud of desert robber-horse has burst_ _Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,_ _In the walled cities the way pa.s.ses thro',_ Crushed them with tolls; or fever airs On some great river's marge Mown them down, far from home."--p. 25.

The Reveller, going to join the train of Bacchus in his temple, has strayed into the house of Circe and has drunk of her cup: he believes that, while poets can see and know only through partic.i.p.ation in endurance, he shares the power belonging to the G.o.ds of seeing "without pain, without labour;" and has looked over the valley all day long at the Moenads and Fauns, and Bacchus, "sometimes, for a moment, pa.s.sing through the dark stems." Apart from the inherent defects of the metre, there is great beauty of pictorial description in some pa.s.sages of the poem, from which the following (where he is speaking of the G.o.ds) may be taken as a specimen:--

"They see the Indian Drifting, knife in hand, His frail boat moored to A floating isle, thick-matted With large-leaved low-creeping melon plants, And the dark cuc.u.mber.

He reaps and stows them, Drifting--drifting:--round him, Round his green harvest-plot, Flow the cool lake-waves: The mountains ring them."--p. 20.

From "the Sick King in Bokhara," we have already quoted at some length. It is one of the most considerable, and perhaps, as being the most simple and life-like, the best of the narrative poems. A vizier is receiving the dues from the cloth merchants, when he is summoned to the presence of the king, who is ill at ease, by Hussein: "a teller of sweet tales." Arrived, Hussein is desired to relate the cause of the king's sickness; and he tells how, three days since, a certain Moollah came before the king's path, calling for justice on himself, whom, deemed a fool or a drunkard, the guards p.r.i.c.ked off with their spears, while the king pa.s.sed on into the mosque: and how the man came on the morrow with yesterday's blood-spots on him, and cried out for right. What follows is told with great singleness and truth: "Thou knowest," the man says,

"'How fierce In these last day the sun hath burned; That the green water in the tanks Is to a putrid puddle turned; And the ca.n.a.l that from the stream Of Samarcand is brought this way Wastes and runs thinner every day.

"'Now I at nightfall had gone forth Alone; and, in a darksome place Under some mulberry-trees, I found A little pool; and, in brief s.p.a.ce, With all the water that was there I filled my pitcher, and stole home Unseen; and, having drink to spare, I hid the can behind the door, And went up on the roof to sleep.

"'But, in the night, which was with wind And burning dust, again I creep Down, having fever, for a drink.

"'Now, meanwhile, had my brethren found The water-pitcher, where it stood Behind the door upon the ground, And called my mother: and they all, As they were thirsty and the night Most sultry, drained the pitcher there; That they sat with it in my sight, Their lips still wet, when I came down.

"'Now mark: I, being fevered, sick, (Most unblessed also,) at that sight Brake forth and cursed them. Dost thou hear?

One was my mother. Now, do right.'

"But my lord mused a s.p.a.ce, and said, 'Send him away, sirs, and make on.

It is some madman,' the king said.

As the king said, so was it done.

"The morrow at the self-same hour, In the king's path, behold, the man, Not kneeling, sternly fixed. He stood Right opposite, and thus began,

"Frowning grim down: 'Thou wicked king, Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear; What? Must I howl in the next world, Because thou wilt not listen here?

"'What, wilt thou pray and get thee grace, And all grace shall to me be grudged?

Nay but, I swear, from this thy path I will not stir till I be judged.'

"Then they who stood about the king Drew close together and conferred; Till that the king stood forth and said: 'Before the priests thou shalt be heard.'

"But, when the Ulema were met And the thing heard, they doubted not; But sentenced him, as the law is, To die by stoning on the spot.