1856.] Poems, by Edward Capern. 489 The confusion when the loss is discovered is amusingly related; and the search for the missing ring proving ineffectual, the cardinal's curse follows: The cardinal rose with a dignified look, He called for his candle, his bell, and his book, In holy anger and pious grief, He solemnly cursed that rascally thief. The curse is a very caustic one, and its potency immediately declared by pathological results. The sacristan saw, On crumpled claw, Come limping along a poor little jack-daw; It was well for him, however, that he came as a penitent! When the lame jack-daw The sacristan saw, He feebly gave vent to the ghost of a caw, And turned his bald head, as much as to say, Oh! pray be so kind as to walk this way. The bewildered official, yielding to his imploring looks, follows, While slower and slower he limped before, Till they came to the back of the belfry door; When the first thing they saw 'Midst the sticks and the straw, Was the ring, in the nest of that little jack-daw. Then follow two miracles, one physiological, the other psychological, both worthy of the Church to which the cardinal belongs : Then the great Lord Cardinal called for his book, And off that terrible curse he took; The mute expression Served in lieu of confession, And being thus coupled with full restitution, The jack-daw got plenary absolution. When this was heard That poor little bird Was changed in a moment; 'twas really absurd He grew sleek and fat; In addition to that, A fresh crop of feathers came thick as a mat; His tail waggled more E'en than before, He hopped now about With a gait quite devout, At matins and vespers he never was out; He was now always telling the confessor's beads! C. D. B. POEMS, BY EDWARD CAPERN.* READERS of the North Devon Journal have observed during the last few years that small pieces of poetry have appeared in that paper, of unusual character, by a Mr. Edward Capern. We often see in the newspapers tolerable copies' of verses; most educated men who have read Shakspeare, Wordsworth, and Byron, can string lines together, and imitate the true English poets at least as well as Eton boys can imitate Virgil. But in the pieces of which we speak there seemed to be something different in kind from those made-up compositions-they were expressions at first hand of real experience, of real feeling. Persons who were curious to know more of Poems, by Edward Capern, Rural Postman of Bideford, Devon. London: David Bogue, 86, Fleet-street. VOL. LIII. NO. CCCXVI. 1856. I I the author, found on inquiry that he was a letter-carrier at Bideford, a sober, industrious man, who had been obliged by a failing eyesight to take an employment on the wages of which it was barely possible for him to live, yet who supported himself honourably by what he earned, and had never been known to do a wrong thing. Looking further, they discovered also, that if unknown to the world, Mr. Capern was famous in his own sphere and in his own neighbourhood. He was the welcome guest at the farm-house weddings and autumn merrymakings; the harvesters sung his songs in the fields, the village girls hummed his airs in the summer evenings about the lanes; and fathers and mothers were ever best pleased when, at christenings or birthdays, Edward Capern could be persuaded to write a poem for the occasion, and recite it with his own musical voice. Among the country people in the north of Devonshire, the forms and habits of old English life still partially survive, and a maker of rhymes, when so rare a being is born among them, fills the same place and finds the same respect which the minstrels found in the feudal castles, and later poets in the halls of kings. Whether these farmhouse audiences have in the present instance proved themselves good judges, will be presently seen. Local reputations are proverbially treacherous, and many a hope has been roughly blighted which has trusted to them. It may be said, however, that when songs, and still more when poems, take possession of the minds of simple and uneducated people, it is a proof that there is something in them. They may not be in good taste; they may be coarse, vulgar, perhaps violent; but they will be no mere sounds. The words must express in some way real popular feeling, or they will be forgotten, and fall barren to the ground. In the instance of Capern, it seems that the popularity of his poems does credit alike to himself and to those whose favourite he has made himself. The published specimens by degrees have attracted a wider attention; and at length, by the exertion of his friends, a sufficient subscription has been raised, and he has been prevailed upon to allow a small volume to be given to the world, with the modest purpose, as the preface says, 'of raising a little sum to assist in the education of his rising family, and to commence a provision for the future.' We believe that the publication will do this, and something more than this. The list of subscribers is a guarantee that real merit can be still appreciated in high quarters; and the Prime Minister, if he can find time to read what he has assisted to appear with his name, will scarcely think that ten shillings a week is an adequate provision for a man whose writings will be like a gleam of summer sunshine in every household which they enter. Our readers, however, must judge for themselves whether we have over-estimated Capern's poems. When an English working man becomes conscious of genius, the effect of it is usually to throw him into fierce hostility with the social system which depresses him, and, like Ebenezer Elliot or Gerald Massey, he boils over in fierce and stormy fury. We are not to complain of such men. Their anger often is but too keenly deserved, and they are Nature's instruments to avenge the world's injustice. Yet there is something higher, nobler, better, in rising superior to evils of which we cannot see a practicable remedy. It is a sign of a loftier nature, instead of repining at what Providence has refused, to catch with open hand the fair gifts which it offers to all alike,-the enjoyment of the beauty of nature, the indulgence of the rich emotions of humanity, which are the choicest treasures that God has bestowed upon our being. The rich and the educated are too apt to suppose that they have the monopoly of heart and mind, as well as of those good things which they now call 'wealth.' Let them see how a poor labouring man, himself a labourer's child, can feel in looking back to his dead mother: I hear the loud and merry ring 1856.] The Sea-Gull-The Cuckoo. 'Tis strange I cannot welcome them I hear a dirge in every hymn, The yule log burns as brightly now, I tread upon each crumpled leaf, Should yield so soon to death. The lane, the hill, the murmuring The stile she called her own, Join ye who can the festive scene, I'll hang my walls with cypress And sit alone and mourn. Mr. Capern has learnt little from books; when young he had no opportunity of study, and in later years the weakness of his eyes has not permitted him to expose them to any severe trial. Yet it would be difficult to say that these lines have lost anything, either in form or sentiment, from the absence of learned culture. A pure and beautiful feeling is expressed with an unaffected grace which scarcely admits of improvement. Notwithstanding, however, his want of general knowledge, there is no sameness and no want of variety in his mind. He has spent his life in constant intercourse with nature and with his fellow-creatures. He has been a diligent and active observer of the changes of the seasons, of which his out-door occupations have made him keenly sensible; of the habits of birds and animals, of hedgerow flowers, and all the common forms of natural beauty. His poems are never the mere outpouring of subjective emotion, but the wide variety of simple objects with which in his daily walks he has made himself familiar, have become at once the language of his feelings, and occasions in themselves of true imaginative interest. Here, for instance, is a piece upon 'The SeaGull,' in which the description of the habits of the bird is as true to nature as the sentiment is genuine and fresh : Bird of the ocean, Graceful in motion, 491 Swift in thy passage from inland to sea, Over thy dwelling place, Dear to thy nestlings and precious to me. Raptured I've seen thee swerve lea. Oft when the billows foam Far from thy native home, Sheltered by woodland near meadow and brook, Over a rugged stile Thoughtful I've leaned awhile, Watching thee play with some black-amoor rook. And on the shore I've stood, Dive 'neath the silver wave searching Then to the surface rise- Bird of the ocean, Had I the pinions of genius to soar, I'd on her wings of light Here, again, is an 'Address to the Cuckoo' (or the first stanza of it, for it is too long to quote entire), which may be fairly compared with Wordsworth's beautiful poem on the same subject: Cuckoo, cuckoo, singing mellow, Now an echo, who knows where? The sixth line is awkward, and might be improved; but with this one exception, there is nothing better of the kind in all our modern poetry. Several of the smaller pieces are described as written to musie, and the editor in his preface tells us that Mr. Capern sings his own We sup songs to his own tunes.' pose, therefore, that the music for these pieces is the poet's composition, and we could wish in some instances that we knew what it was, as the words of some of the most finished among them are intended evidently to be sung, and not to read; and printed as poems they scarcely do themselves justice. The Old Gray Thrush,' however, seems not open to this objection, and is redolent of the free air and sunshine, and all the fragrance of the bursting spring: 6 Of all the birds of tuneful note That warble o'er field and flood, O give me the thrush with the speckled throat, The king of the ringing wood. Or laugh more loud than he. So the thrush, the thrush, the old grey thrush, A merry, blithe old boy is he, Ere spring, arrayed in robes of green, When, piping to the morn, So the thrush, the thrush, the old gray thrush, A merry, blithe old boy is he ; To come with the balmy breath of spring, He haunteth the green-roofed wood. O the thrush, the thrush, the old gray thrush, A merry, blithe old boy is he, You may hear him on the roadside bush, Or the topmost twig of the mountain tree. Self-meditation is said often to be the vice of modern poets; a habit of dwelling upon and fondling their mental diseases, and of making the infirmities which they have couraged by their weakness an ex en cuse for quarrelling with the nature that God has given them, and the world in which God has placed them. Mr. Capern seems to live to be happy, and to teach others to be happy with him. He bears his burden like a man. He makes it light by refusing to find it heavy; and if he allows himself at any time to complain, it is with no vague and sickly melancholy, but only when he sees or suffers from a palpable and defined evil, which he knows that he may justly condemn, because it may be lightly removed. For many years he has walked thirteen miles a day, in all weathers and in all seasons. This has been no grievance to him; he has been able to throw a poetical grace over 80 unpromising an occupation, and to idealize, for the benefit of his profession, even the business of a lettercarrier. He is unable to understand, however, why the postman alone, of all the millions who earn their bread by labour, should never know the quiet of a Sunday! and we recommend the following stanzas to the consideration of the 370 members of the House of Commons whose zeal for the observance of the Sabbath forbids the opening of the Museum to the working classes on the only day on which they can enjoy it. If they are consistent, these gentlemen will dispense at once with the luxury of their Sunday letter-bag. As a composition, we are inclined to think this poem the best which Mr. Capern has written : O the postman's is as pleasant a life For day by day he wendeth his way Where a thousand wildlings grow. He marketh the date of the snowdrop's birth, And knows when the time is near For white scented violets to gladden the earth, And sweet primrose groups to appear. He can show you the spot where the hyacinth wild, Hangs out her bell blossoms o' blue; And tell where the celandine's brighteyed child Fills her chalice with honey-dew. The purple-dyed violet, the hawthorn, and sloe, The creepers that trail in the lane; The dragon, the daisy, and clover-rose, too, And buttercups gilding the plain : The foxglove, the violet, the gorse, and the thyme, The heather and broom on the moor, And the sweet honeysuckle that loveth to climb The arch of the cottager's door; He knoweth them all, and he loveth them well, And others not honoured with fame, For they hang round his life like a beautiful spell, And light up his path with their flame. Oh a pleasant life is the postman's life, And a fine cheerful soul is he, For he'll sing and shout like a forest king On the crown of an ancient tree. Heigho! I come and go, Where the Lent-lily, speedwell, and dog-rose blow. Heigho! and merry oh! Where hawkweeds, and trefoils, and wild peas grow, Heigho heigho! As pleasant as May time, and light as a roe. our Two stanzas follow, of equal grace and lightheartedness, which space will not allow us to quote. Then the note changes, and the poem ends thus : Oh the postman's is as blessed a life If leaping the stile, o'er many a mile, If tearing your way through a tangled wood, Or dragging your limbs through a lawn; If wading knee deep through an angry flood, Or a ploughed field newly sown : If sweating big drops 'neath a burning sun, And shiv'ring mid sleet and snow; If toiling away through a weary week- If hearing the bells ring Sabbath-chimes, To church, as in the olden times, Oh the postman's is a blessed life, Heigho! I come and go, Heavy at heart, and weary oh! 493 Does any one pray for the postman? NoNo-no-no-no, Or he would not be robbed of his Sabbath So. If No cultivation of taste is required to appreciate the pathos and beauty of these lines; the feeling and the melody are alike as simple as they are sweet. There is nothing artificial, nothing elaborate. we except perhaps the one technical expression of the trade, where the Sabbath bells are supposed to summon the postman, not to church, but to his delivery,' there is nothing in the poem which is not instantly intelligible to every one but no reader who is capable of receiving pleasure from poetry at all can be unconscious of its charm. Whenever Mr. Capern confines himself to his own experience, he is equally successful because he is equally original. So long as he is contented to describe the reflections or feelings which personal contact with life and nature has suggested to him, his healthy sensibility and his skill in the choice of language ensure a beautiful result. We regret that he has ever allowed himself to transgress these necessary limits, and to versify knowledge which he has acquired only at second hand. It is natural that the Russian war should have affected him, and affected him deeply. He felt like an Englishman for the sufferings and the gallantry of his countrymen; and of course as a poet he desired to express his feelings in words. He ought, however, to have been very careful of the subjects which he chose, and still more careful how he printed what he wrote. The Fall of the Brave,' addressed to a lady whose son was killed at Inkerman, is pretty, but too long and diffuse. The Lion Flag of England' is a fine gallant piece of music, with stanzas in it which remind us of Burns. This is all which it ought to be, and required no knowledge for its composition beyond what was as open to Edward Capern in his cottage in North Devon, as to Lord Raglan |