When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with our
pen, intent only on worms, calling our mates around us, like the
cock, and delighting in the dust we make, but do not detect where
the jewel lies, which, perhaps, we have in the mean time cast to
a distance, or quite covered up again.
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes
tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a
divine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of
inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet,
but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to
sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must
be that by which he lives.
Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect more than
great verse, since it implies a more permanent and level height,
a life more pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet
often only makes an irruption, like a Parthian, and is off again,
shooting while he retreats; but the prose writer has conquered
like a Roman, and settled colonies.
The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always
a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of
this, stereotyped in the poet's life. It is _what he has become
through his work_. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on
canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained
form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work
will not stand in any prince's gallery.
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.
THE POET'S DELAY.
In vain I see the morning rise,
In vain observe the western blaze,
Who idly look to other skies,
Expecting life by other ways.
Amidst such boundless wealth without,
I only still am poor within,
The birds have sung their summer out,
But still my spring does not begin.
Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
Compelled to seek a milder day,
And leave no curious nest behind,
No woods still echoing to my lay?
This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of the oaks and pines on
shore, reminded us of more northern climes than Greece, and more
wintry seas than the Aegean.
The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear
his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects,
of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity
of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era we hear of no
other priest than he. It will not avail to call him a heathen,
because he personifies the sun and addresses it; and what if his
heroes did "worship the ghosts of their fathers," their thin,
airy, and unsubstantial forms? we worship but the ghosts of our
fathers in more substantial forms. We cannot but respect the
vigorous faith of those heathen, who sternly believed somewhat,
and are inclined to say to the critics, who are offended by their
superstitious rites, - Don't interrupt these men's prayers. As if
we knew more about human life and a God, than the heathen and
ancients. Does English theology contain the recent discoveries!
Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, of Homer,
Pindar, Isaiah, and the American Indian. In his poetry, as in
Homer's, only the simplest and most enduring features of humanity
are seen, such essential parts of a man as Stonehenge exhibits of
a temple; we see the circles of stone, and the upright shaft
alone. The phenomena of life acquire almost an unreal and
gigantic size seen through his mists. Like all older and grander
poetry, it is distinguished by the few elements in the lives of
its heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars and the
earth, shrunk to the bones and sinews. The earth is a boundless
plain for their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and
everlasting life, as hardly needs depart with the flesh, but is
transmitted entire from age to age. There are but few objects to
distract their sight, and their life is as unencumbered as the
course of the stars they gaze at.
"The wrathful kings, on cairns apart,
Look forward from behind their shields,
And mark the wandering stars,
That brilliant westward move."
It does not cost much for these heroes to live; they do not want
much furniture. They are such forms of men only as can be seen
afar through the mist, and have no costume nor dialect, but for
language there is the tongue itself, and for costume there are
always the skins of beasts and the bark of trees to be had. They
live out their years by the vigor of their constitutions. They
survive storms and the spears of their foes, and perform a few
heroic deeds, and then
"Mounds will answer questions of them,
For many future years."
Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their days listening
to the lays of the bards, and feeling the weapons which laid
their enemies low, and when at length they die, by a convulsion
of nature, the bard allows us a short and misty glance into
futurity, yet as clear, perchance, as their lives had been. When
Mac-Roine was slain,
"His soul departed to his warlike sires,
To follow misty forms of boars,
In tempestuous islands bleak."
The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief
significant strain, which will suffice for epitaph and biography.
