We love to think in
winter, as we walk over the snowy pastures, of those happy
dreamers that lie under the sod, of dormice and all that race of
dormant creatures, which have such a superfluity of life
enveloped in thick folds of fur, impervious to cold. Alas, the
poet too is, in one sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter
quarters of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surrounding
circumstances; his words are the relation of his oldest and
finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the remotest experience.
Other men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks, that
would fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now
and then.
There are already essays and poems, the growth of this land,
which are not in vain, all which, however, we could conveniently
have stowed in the till of our chest. If the gods permitted
their own inspiration to be breathed in vain, these might be
overlooked in the crowd, but the accents of truth are as sure to
be heard at last on earth as in heaven. They already seem
ancient, and in some measure have lost the traces of their modern
birth. Here are they who
"ask for that which is our whole life's light,
For the perpetual, true and clear insight."
I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in its
native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not as
if spread over a sandy embankment; answering to the poet's
prayer,
"Let us set so just
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust
The poet's sentence, and not still aver
Each art is to itself a flatterer."
But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent the
peaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new era will be dated
to New England, as from the games of Greece. For if Herodotus
carried his history to Olympia to read, after the cestus and the
race, have we not heard such histories recited there, which since
our countrymen have read, as made Greece sometimes to be
forgotten? - Philosophy, too, has there her grove and portico, not
wholly unfrequented in these days.
Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won another
palm, contending with
"Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so."
What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove,
is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off
Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid
Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a
Nile flow back and hide his head!
That Phaeton of our day,
Who'd make another milky way,
And burn the world up with his ray;
By us an undisputed seer, -
Who'd drive his flaming car so near
Unto our shuddering mortal sphere,
Disgracing all our slender worth,
And scorching up the living earth,
To prove his heavenly birth.
The silver spokes, the golden tire,
Are glowing with unwonted fire,
And ever nigher roll and nigher;
The pins and axle melted are,
The silver radii fly afar,
Ah, he will spoil his Father's car!
Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer?
Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year;
And we shall Ethiops all appear.
From _his_
"lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle."
And yet, sometimes,
We should not mind if on our ear there fell
Some less of cunning, more of oracle.
It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contemporary, let us
have far-off heats. Give us the subtler, the heavenlier though
fleeting beauty, which passes through and through, and dwells not
in the verse; even pure water, which but reflects those tints
which wine wears in its grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, and
cease this waltz of inspirations. Let us oftener feel even the
gentle southwest wind upon our cheeks blowing from the Indian's
heaven. What though we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if
skyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulae remain?
What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the oracle, if
we may have instead some natural acres of Ionian earth?
Though we know well,
"That't is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise
A spirit for verse that is not born thereto,
Nor are they born in every prince's days";
yet spite of all they sang in praise of their "Eliza's reign," we
have evidence that poets may be born and sing in _our_ day, in
the presidency of James K. Polk,
"And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,"
_Were not_ "within _her_ peaceful reign confined."
The prophecy of the poet Daniel is already how much more than
fulfilled!
"And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in th' yet unformed occident,
May come refined with the accents that are ours."
Enough has been said in these days of the charm of fluent
writing. We hear it complained of some works of genius, that
they have fine thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. But
even the mountain peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of
science, parts of one range. We should consider that the flow of
thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and is the
result of a celestial influence, not of any declivity in its
channel. The river flows because it runs down hill, and flows
the faster the faster it descends. The reader who expects to
float down stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of
nauseating swells and choppings of the sea when his frail
shore-craft gets amidst the billows of the ocean stream, which
flows as much to sun and moon as lesser streams to it.
