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XVII.

Her eye is on the Moon ;—one moment cast

To Heaven, but it soon return'd to Earth;

And then she watch'd the light cloud as it pass'd,

And then deep thoughts in her young breast had birth, And images too beautiful to last

Flash'd o'er her recollection,-first the mirth

Of childhood, then the voice of falling waters,

And all those joys which Greece had lavish'd on her daughters.

XVIII.

And then she thought of Love;-one moment only,
Oh! blessed moment!-Is the maiden gone?

She stood beside him, statue-like and lonely,
One instant since, and now he sleeps alone.
She stood beside him, statue-like and lonely,

As the pale poet that out-wakes the Moon;
Her eye was on his features, and the full
Orb of the night shone forth, and made them beautiful.

XIX.

And is the maiden gone? Oh, phantasy!

She is not gone-she has return'd again :Is there not wildness in that flashing eye?

Is there not thought upon that brow? her brain Almost to madness whirls ;-unceasingly

It throbs, but more of ecstasy than pain.

She kneels beside him, and upon the wall,

With her keen glance observes where the plain shadows fall.

XX.

Then with her pencil, delicately fine,

She traced his features, by young beauty guided; Thence Painting sprang to birth, of all the nine

The sweetest Muse:-though they should be divided,

And on his face no more her glad eyes shine

Like atom stars, twin-born, whose brightness glided Into his bosom,—yet his features fair

Would shine into her soul, and still find beauty there.

XXI.

What is Existence? Madness and deep Love;
And thence the soul hath power to revive
Flown images of thought, that rise above
The ken of human foresight ;-if we live,
'Tis not of our own purpose,-to remove

The charnel weight of passion, and to give
Language to fancy:-Life hath its own pain,
And death would be release, did we not live again.

XXII.

For life has been to me no ecstasy ;—

My brain has scorch'd with the deep-heated madness That was not of the world;-the azure sky

Looked from its realm of beauty;-there was gladness In Nature, and the earth made melody;

My heart was as an orphan girl in sadness Kissing her father's lips, with vain endeavour To re-illume the spark that is extinct for ever.

W.

66

POETRY, ITS NATURE AND EFFECTS.

Poetry is to philosophy, what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week."
J. C. HARE.

We intend giving a series of papers upon the British Poets of the present age; and it will not be away from our purpose previously to examine into the nature of Poetry itself, and the end to which it is directed, in order that we may possess a standard by which to test the merits of each composition that passes under review.

men.

What then is Poetry? Evidently not merely verse; for then should we dignify with the most august title literature has to bestow, that shoal of scribblers, who deck their brows with the faded garlands they either beg or steal from the true children of the Muse. Verse is a casualty not at all affecting the poetry of a composition; this consists in the ideas, in the language, and may be couched in one arrangement of syllables as well as another. There is more true poetry in the prophecies of Isaiah than in half the verses that were ever palmed upon the world: in fact, we are frequently obliged to lessen the poetry of a subject, in order to arrange it rythmically. Take, as an instance, David's lament over Saul; what verse would not take from its exquisite beauty and pathos? We must seek for an answer to our question then, not in the outward form, but the inward soul of literature; we must anatomize its frame to detect its subtle essence, its principle of life, and unfold the powers of mind predominantly active in its construction. It is not philosophy, or eloquence, or pathos, or passion, though it may, and often must, involve each or all of these. These are not the qualities which distinctively mark the Poet, and separate his office from that of other We apprehend that this distinctive mark will be found to consist in the superior activity of the two faculties of Imagination and Fancy, the power of originating conceptions, and the power of detecting analogies. Imagination is that complex exertion of mental energy, by which we combine the scattered materials of thought, feeling, and observation; and fusing them together, bring them out by a process almost amounting to creation in new and unheard-of forms. This faculty may be brought to bear on language, description, character; but wherever its agency is felt, the result is a novel combination of elementary ideas—a combination existing in the mind of the writer, not in literal fact. We will give instances of imagination exercised, first, on language: Milton terms Beelzebub a pillar of state," in which expression the poet has joined to the simple idea of his supporting the state by his counsels and bravery, others evoked by the potent wand of imagination. The state is compared in the writer's mind to a magnificent fabric supported on columns; to one of these is the rising archangel likened, and thus an additional idea of his gigantic stature and "Atlantean shoulders" is gained; while, by fusing the whole together, an image rises from the process to which we bow in wonderment and admiMarch 1839.-VOL. I.—NO. I.

H

ration. As an instance of imagination exercised upon description, take (Par. Lost, v. 50-75) the same author's picture of Satan awaking from his nine days' stupor, and surveying his dismal prisonhouse; and no finer display of imagination in character has ever been given the world than the delineation of Satan himself throughout the whole work. We have said that Imagination may be exercised upon various classes of objects; it may also be exercised variously upon the same object. It has as many different tones as the human heart has different moods and shades of feeling. It is, in fact, a power which we can exert as we please, and upon what we please. It is as conspicuous in the delicate and graceful Ariel, as in the grotesque and unshapely Caliban; in the groves and lawns and shady walks of Paradise, as in the golden streets of heaven, or the fiery concave of hell; in Shakspeare's "sleeping moonlight,' as in Milton's "thunder winged with rage." We must bear this constantly in mind, that it is not the matter on which, but the manner in which, the power is exercised, that criticism has to do with. There is as much artistical skill in Gerard Douw's Old Schoolmaster, as in Correggio's School of Love, aye, and as much imagination too; and if the aim of the one has not been so high as that of the other, this is no business of the critic's, supposing each to have succeeded equally well in attaining their self-proposed standard.

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Fancy (to quote the words of an eloquent writer in the Edinburgh Review) leaves the original thought untouched, and merely surrounds it with things which ornament without either changing or hiding it. Imagination indeed is, as it were, a condensation of the fancy, acting directly on the idea, and investing it with the qualities to which it is the business of Fancy to compare it." The most beautiful displays of Fancy are to be found in Shakspeare

"That strain again! it had a dying fall—

Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet South,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."

Or those still more touching lines—

"She never told her love,

But let concealment, like the worm i the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief."

Here the whole passage is a fine instance of a pathetic conception of the imagination, while almost every line furnishes us with exquisite touches by Fancy's lighter pencil. In a word, Imagination creates, Fancy adorns; Imagination penetrates its subject and animates it with real life; Fancy only plays round it and gilds it, making it seem to live as when the bright beam of day falls upon the pale cold features of a corpse, These two combined are the foundation prinples, without which, whatever else a composition may be, whether better or worse, it can never be poetry.

We have asserted that these are the distinctive qualities of a Poet;

but as a definition is necessarily compressed into the smallest possible compass capable of distinguishing one thing from another, we shall not be deemed paradoxical in saying, that though a distinctive, they are a very small part of the ingredients that go to make up his character. He must be rich in all the gifts that elevate and adorn human nature; he must have an eye to perceive and a heart to feel beauty, whether physical or moral; he must be endowed with warm and lively sympathies; he must possess a deep knowledge of the workings of the human heart, and the springs of human emotion; above all, he must be one who habitually elevates the things of time by connecting them with those of eternity,-who dwells in humble adoration on the idea of a Creator and ever-present Guardian of the Universe, and who necessarily strives to attain that moral elevation of character, which will render him approved in his sight.

The man who in union with Fancy and Imagination possesses these qualities, either some or all of them, in a greater or less degree, will be a better or worse poet; but without Fancy and Imagination, I repeat it, he can be no poet at all, however effective his compositions may be, either as displaying powers of reasoning and observation, or deep stores of feeling and affection.

In truth, no poem of any length contains poetry in anything like the proportion in which it contains other ingredients. We should be nauseated with sweetness, or choked with burning spirit, if the pure Castalian were not considerably diluted. We could not look upon the unveiled radiance of the Muse, and live; we should be overpowered, dazzled, blinded by her unearthly splendour. Like Attar of roses, or any other powerful perfume, a small infusion of poetry is sufficient to scent a vast quantity of neutral matter with ambrosial odours. We must further remember, that Fancy and Imagination are merely powers, not materials. These must be gathered from thought, reflection, feeling, passion, observation, study; for a poet of any pretension in his art must be a man whose mind is stored with knowledge of the most valuable kind; knowledge of the sympathies of his fellow-creatures, of the longings, the loves, and the hatreds of man's heart; of what will console and what will afflict him, of what will raise and what will lower, of what is merely the transient feeling of a capricious society, and what the eternal, indestructible elements of human passion. He must likewise be well acquainted with the appearances of nature, the storehouse of similitudes. Upon this mass of scattered material he must bring to bear the agencies of many powers of mind, but principally Fancy and Imagination; though these no more constitute the poetry, than a saw constitutes a table, or a hammer a ship: they are connected not as parts of the same construction, but as instrument and effect. This necessity for the union of all these qualities is most observable in Dramatic Poetry, whose object is to exhibit men and women on the stage, acting and suffering on human principles and with human feelings, for which purpose an accurate acquaintance with the complex operations of the mind and heart is absolutely essential; so that the Dramatic Poet must be a finished Mental Philosopher, with this difference, which exists in every case between the poet and the man of science

that the former presents you with the results of his studies in collected groups and finished pictures, the latter with the details and steps of his calculation; the one appealing to an intuitive perception of truth, the other to the slow and gradual conviction effected by the reasoning power. He must not only be a Mental Philosopher, but must be so conversant with all classes and all situations in life, as to be able to adapt his dialogue exactly to the age, rank, and circumstances of the speaker. He must frequently be a consummate orator, and a subtle casuist; witness Antony's speech over the dead body of Cæsar, in which, till the very close where he talks of "putting a tongue in every wound of Cæsar's," there is no fancy or imagination, but the most wondrous skill and knowledge of what was likely to move the passions of the populace.

Shakspeare, doubtless, was a very great poet; but this alone would never have made him a great dramatist, had not his observant eye and sympathetic heart gathered such a rich store of information as never fell to the lot of mortal man before. It was this, and not simply his poetic faculty, which made Coleridge term him "a myriad-minded man;" it is this that has induced another to style him emphatically the poet "from whom philosophers may learn wisdom, and courtiers politeness." Not that even his most prosaic passages-and we use the word in no invidious sense-are not irradiated and exalted by the bright fancy and vivid imagination that planned the whole conception of the character; the master's hand is as conspicuous in every minute touch, as in the grand and finished whole; and this agrees with what we said above, that other faculties of the mind must gather the materials, but that Fancy and Imagination were the most active in moulding and transforming them. Perhaps we should give the justest idea of their operation in poetry, by calling them the directing powers, which, though they do not lay every brick and carve every moulding themselves, superintend the workmen they employ to do the coarser parts, which are as necessary to the building as the capitals of the columns and the cornice of the roof; themselves reserving for their own workmanship the more delicate and ornamental portion, yet giving by their presence and direction the impress of their own spirit to the whole magnificent structure: or they may, in many instances, be compared to the architect, who draws his plan, and leaves to the mason and the carpenter to embody his ideas in stone.

We shall now be prepared better to admit a distinction, most important in its bearing upon literary criticism, between fine writers in verse and true poets. Dr. Johnson might have written Rasselas in verse, and a very beautiful didactic work it would have been, rich in moral warning and generous emotion, and conveyed in language whose alternate rise and fall comes upon the ear like the modulations of some full-toned organ; but fine poetry it never would or could have become in his hands, except so far as the original conception of the whole was imaginative. There are in the work all the necessary materials for fine didactic poetry-sentiments, characters, dialogues, scenes, adventures; but they ask the wand of Imagination to infuse the poetic blood into their veins, and the hand of Fancy

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