radiance of an eternal and unextinguishable fire. To speak of the poetry of one particular thing, is consequently like expatiating upon the sweetness of a single note of music. It is the combination and variety of these notes that charm the ear; just as it is the spirit of poetry pervading the natural world, extracting sweetness, and diffusing beauty, with the rapidity of thought, the power of intelligence, and the energy of truth, which constitutes the poetry of life. THE POETRY OF LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE, as the medium of communication, has the same relation to the ear and the mind, as painting has to the mind and the eye. The poetry of language, like that of painting, consists in producing upon the organs of sense such impressions as are most intimately connected with refined and intellectual ideas; and it is to language that we appeal for the most forcible and obvious proofs that all our poetic feelings owe their existence to association. The great principle therefore to be kept in view by the juvenile poet is the scale (or the tone, as the popular phrase now is) of his associations; and this is of importance not only as regards his subjects, but his words: for let the theme of his muse be the highest which the human mind is capable of conceiving, and the general style of his versification tender, graceful, or sublime, the occasional occurrence of an ill-chosen word may so arrest the interest of the reader, by the sudden intervention of a different and inferior set of associations as entirely to destroy the charm of the whole. Without noticing words individually, we are scarcely aware how much of their sense is derived from the relative ideas which custom has attached to them. Take for exam ple the word chariot, and supply its place in any poetical passage with a one-horse chaise, or even a coach and six; and the hero who had been followed by the acclamations of a wondering people, immediately descends to the level of a common man, even while he travels more commodiously. Dean Swift has a treatise on the "art of sinking in poetry," to which curious additions might be made by striking out any appropriate expression from a fine passage, and, without materially altering the sense, supplying its place with some vulgar, familiar, or otherwise ill-chosen word. For example, "Come forth, sweet spirit, from thy cloudy cave." Come out, &c. "But hark! through the fast flashing lightning of war, "What steed of the desert flies frantic afar." What steed of the desert now gallops afar. "We shall hold in the air a communion divine." We shall hold in the air conversation divine. "Around my ivy'd porch shall spring "Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew." Each fragrant flower that sups the dew. "To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care Her faded form: she bow'd to taste the wave, "And died." She stoop'd to sip the wave. "We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed, "And smooth'd down his lonely pillow, "That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, "And we far away on the billow." "We thought as we hollowed his little bed, "And dug out his lonely pillow, "That the foe and the stranger would walk o'er his head, &c. "Be strong as the ocean that stems "A thousand wild waves on the shore." Nine hundred wild waves on the shore. "This life is all chequered with pleasures and woes." This life is all dappled, &c. There can scarcely be a more beautiful and appropriate arrangement of words, than in the following stanza from Childe Harold. "The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew, "As glad to waft him from his native home; "And fast the white rocks faded from his view, "And soon were lost in circumambient foam: "And then, it may be of his wish to roam "Repented he, but in his bosom slept "The silent thought, nor from his lips did come "One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, "And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept." Without committing a crime so heinous as that of entirely spoiling this verse, it is easy to alter it so as to bring it down to the level of ordinary composition; and thus we may illustrate the essential difference between poetry and mere versification. The sails were trimm'd and fair the light winds blew, And then, per chance, of his fond wish to roam The wish, nor from his silent lips did come It is impossible not to be struck with the harmony of the original words as they are placed in this stanza. The very sound is graceful, as well as musical; like the motion of the winds and waves, blended with the majestic movement of a gallant ship. "The sails were filled" conveys no association with the work of man; but substitute the word trimmed, and you see the busy sailors at once. The word "waft" follows in perfect unison with the whole of the preceding line, and maintains the invisible agency of the "light winds;" while the word "glad" before it, gives an idea of their power as an unseen intelligence. Fading" is also a happy expression, to denote the gradual obscurity and disappearing of the "white rocks;" but the "circumambient foam" is perhaps the most poetical expression of the whole, and such as could scarcely have proceeded from a low or ordinary mind. It is unnecessary however to prolong this minute examination of particular words. It may be more amusing to the reader to see how a poet, and that of no mean order, can undesignedly murder his own offspring. THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO. "Our boat is asleep on the Serchio's stream, A vulgar proverb tells us that "seeing is believing;" and it is quite necessary to see, in order to believe, that the same poet who wrote that exquisite line, "Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream." should go on to tell us in the language of poetry, that Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast," "And livest thou still, mother earth? "Thou wert warming thy fingers old "O'er the embers covered and cold "Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled." It is an ungracious task to busy one's fingers in turning over the pages of our best writers, for the purpose of finding out their faults, or rather detecting instances of their forgetfulness; yet if any thing of this kind can assist the young poet in his pursuit of excellence, it ought not to be withheld; especially as it can in no way affect the decided merits of those who have so few flaws in their title to our admiration. "What behold I now? (says Young,) "A wilderness of wonders burning round; "Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres; "Perhaps the villas of descending Gods. "Nor halt I here; my toil is but begun; "Tis but the threshold of the Deity." The idea of "descending gods" requiring "villas," or half-way houses to halt at, is wholly unworthy of the dignity of the author of "Night Thoughts." It is remarkable that Milton, whose choice of subjects would have rendered an inferior poet peculiarly liable to such errors, has a few, and but a very few, instances of the same kind. "A stream of nectareous humour issuing flowed "Sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed." This, and the minute description of the process by which the wound is healed, have little connexion with our ideas of the essential attributes of gods, Nor is there much dignity in the allusion made by Adam to his own situation after the fall, compared with that of Eve. "On me the curse aslope "Glanced on the ground; with labour I must earn "My bread." But above all, in describing the building of the tower of Babel, our immortal poet seems wholly to have forgotten the necessary difference between the inhabitants of Earth, and those of Heaven. "Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud It is into such incongruities as these, that young poets and enthusiasts, whether young or old, are most apt to fall: young poets, because they are not so well acquainted with the world, and with the tastes and feelings of mankind in general, as to know what particular associations are most uniformly attached to certain words; and enthusiasts, because their own thoughts are too vivid, and the tide of their own feelings Through the whole of the works of this too violent and impetuous, to admit of intermaster mind, the passage which describes ruption from a single word, or even a whole the combat between Satan and the Arch-sentence; and forgetting the fact that their "And now went forth the moon, "Such as in highest heaven, arrayed with gold "Empyreal; from before her vanished night, "Shot through with orient beams." books will be read with cool discrimination elevated sentiments, which sets all imitation rather than with enthusiasm like their own, they dash forth in loose and anomalous expressions, which destroy the harmony, and weaken the force of their language. The introduction of unpoetical images may however be pardoned on the score of inadvertency, but it is possible for such images to be introduced in a manner which almost insults the feelings of the reader, by the doggrel or burlesque style which obtains favour with a certain class of readers, chiefly such as are incapable of appreciating what is beautiful or sublime. One specimen of this kind will be sufficient. It occurs in a volume of American poetry. "There's music in the dash of waves "When the swift bark cleaves the foam; "And there is music once a week What could induce the poet to spoil his otherwise pretty verses in this manner, it is difficult to imagine; but as this is by no means a solitary instance of the kind, we are led to suppose that the minds in which such incongruities originate, must be influenced by the popular notion of imitating Lord Byron, in the wild vagaries which even his genius could scarcely render endurable. What his genius might have failed to reconcile to the taste of the public, was however sufficiently effected, by the proofs we find throughout his writings, of the agony of a distorted mind, of that worst and deepest of all maladies, which hides its internal convulsions under the mask of humour, and throws around, in lurid flashes of wit and drollery, the burning ebullitions of a frenzied brain. There is a depth of experience, and bitterness of feeling, in the playful starts of familiar commonplace with which he forcibly arrests the tide of his own tenderness, or "turns to burlesque" his own at defiance; and might, if properly felt and fully understood, serve as a warning to those who aspire to be poets in the style of Byron, that to imitate his eccentricities without the power of his genius and the pathos of his soul, is as obviously at variance with good taste, natural feeling, and common sense, as to attempt to interest by aping the frolic of the madman, without the deep-seated and burning passions that have overthrown his reason. Another prevailing fault in poetry, as intimately connected with association as the foregoing, is the introduction of words or passages, in which the ideas connected with them are too numerous, or too remote from common feeling and common observation, for the attention to travel with the same rapidity as the eye. Under such circumstances the mind must either pause and examine for itself, or pass over the expression as an absolute blank; in either of which cases, the chain of interest and intelligence is broken, and the reader is either wearied, or uninformed as to the meaning of the writer. The same poet who has afforded us so many instances of his own faults, will serve our purpose again. "the whirl and the splash "As of some hideous engine, whose brazen teeth smash "The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams "And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean streams, "Each sound like a centipede." Descriptions such as this, are beyond the power of the most vivid imagination to convert into an ideal scene: all is confusion, because the mind no sooner forms one picture, than other objects, differently coloured, are forced upon it, and consequently the whole is indefinite and obscure. Again, in the Song of a Spirit "And as a veil in which I walk through heaven, "I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, "And lastly, light, whose interfusion dawns "In the dark space of interstellar air.” Milton is by no means free from this fault. Witness his frequent crowding together of appellations, which even the most learned readers must pause before they can properly apply, as well as passages like the following, with which his works abound. "There let him victor sway, But of all our poets, Young is perhaps the most liberal in bestowing upon his readers examples of this kind. His ideas are absolutely ponderous. His associations crowd upon us in such stupendous masses, that we are often burdened and fatigued, instead of being refreshed and delighted with his otherwise sublime, and always imaginative style. The poetry of language consists, therefore, not only of words which are musical, harmonious, and agreeable in themselves, but of appropriate words, so arranged as that their relative ideas shall flow into the mind, without more exertion of its own, than results from a gentle and natural stimulus. That quality in poetry which is most essentially conducive to this effect, is simplicity; and perhaps, from the humble ideas we attach to the word, simplicity is too much despised by those who are unacquainted with its real power and value. Yet is there nothing more obvious, upon reflection, than the simplicity of the language of some of our best poets. We feel that it is only from not having been the first to think of it, that we have not used precisely the same language ourselves. It contains nothing apparently beyond our own reach and compass. The words which terminate the lines seem to have fallen naturally and without design into their proper places; and the metre flows in like the consequence of an impulse, rather than an effort. Simplicity in poetry, when the subject is well chosen and skilfully managed, like order in architecture, where the materials and workmanship are good, establishes a complete whole, which never fails to please, not only the scientific observer, but even those who are least acquainted with the principles from which their gratification arises. Our business thus far has been to point out what is not poetical in language; and so far as it serves to establish the fact, that the poetry of language, as well as that of feeling, arises from association, the task can scarcely be altogether uninteresting: but that which now lies before us is one of a much more grateful character. We are told by Blair, that it is an essential part of the harmony (and consequently of the poetry) of language, that a particular resemblance should be maintained between the object described, and the sounds employed in describing it; and of this we give practical illustrations in our common conversation, when we speak of the whistling of winds, the buzz and hum of insects, the hiss of serpents, the crash of falling timber, and many other instances, where the word has been plainly framed upon the sound it represents. Pope also tells us, in his Poetical Essay on Criticism, ""Tis not enough no harshness gives offence; "The sound must seem an echo to the sense. "Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, "And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; "But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, "The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar." And faithful to his own maxims, he thus describes the felling of trees in a forest: "Loud sounds the air, redoubling stroke on strokes, "On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks "Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown, "Then rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down." The words alone, gone, no more, are pecu liarly adapted by their sound to the lengthened and inelancholy cadence with which they are generally uttered; and quick, lively, frolic, fun, are equally expressive of what they describe. Of the same character are the following examples:—whirring of the partridge-booming of the bittern, &c. "Scarce "The bittern knows his time, with bill ingulft "To shake the sounding marsh." THE HORSE DRINKING IN SUMMER. "He takes the river at redoubled draughts, "And with wide nostrils, snorting, skims the wave." STORM IN SUMMER. |