Mr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he wrote this. That, with so much command of expression and of measure, he should run waste and formless and even void, as he does in other parts of his volumes, is very mysterious and very distressing.
How we became possessed of the poetical Epistle from "E. V. K. to his Friend in Town," is more easily asked than answered. We avow ourselves in the matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon"s maxim-"_La propriete c"est le vol._" We merely say, in our defence, that it is a shame in "E. V. K.," be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin, or keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as he that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and well-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have genius and judgment to begin with-a part of the poetical stock in trade with which many of our living writers are not largely furnished. The Epistle is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the off-hand of a master, both as to material and workmanship. He is of the good old manly, cla.s.sical school. His thoughts have settled and cleared themselves before forming into the mould of verse. They are in the style of Stewart Rose"s _vers de societe_, but have more of the graphic force and deep feeling and fine humor of Crabbe and Cowper in their substance, with a something of their own which is to us quite as delightful. But our readers may judge. After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain faithless town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus describes his residence:-
"Though its charms be few, The place will please you, and may profit too;- My house, upon the hillside built, looks down On a neat harbor and a lively town.
Apart, "mid screen of trees, it stands, just where We see the popular bustle, but not share.
Full in our front is spread a varied scene- A royal ruin, gray, or clothed with green, Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees, Back"d by green fields, which mount by due degrees Into brown uplands, stretching high away To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray.
Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay, Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar, And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar."
Then follows a long pa.s.sage of great eloquence, truth, and wit, directed against the feverish, affected, unwholesome life in town, before which he fears
"Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew, Surrounded by blue women and pale men,"
has fallen a victim; and then concludes with these lines, which it would not be easy to match for everything that const.i.tutes good poetry. As he writes he chides himself for suspecting his friend; and at that moment (it seems to have been written on Christmas day) he hears the song of a thrush, and forthwith he "bursts into a song," as full-voiced, as native, as sweet and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered friend.
"But, hark that sound! the mavis! can it be?
Once more! It is. High perched on yon bare tree, He starts the wondering winter with his trill; Or by that sweet sun westering o"er the hill Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth Due to the holy season of Christ"s birth.- And hark! as his clear fluting fills the air, Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear From other emulous birds, the brakes among; Fain would they also burst into a song; But winter warns, and m.u.f.fling up their throats, They liquid-for the spring-preserve their notes.
O sweet preluding! having heard that strain, How dare I lift my dissonant voice again?
Let me be still, let me enjoy the time, Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme."
This author must not be allowed to "m.u.f.fle up _his_ throat," and keep his notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse of the mavis. He must give us more of his own "clear fluting." Let him, with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as Cowper did, upon the restless, noisy world he has left, seeing the popular bustle, not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses as these what his understanding and his affections think and feel and his imagination informs, and we shall have something in verse not unlike the letters from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be immortalized over the cherished bins of our wine-fanciers, where repose their
"Dear prisoned spirits of the impa.s.sioned grape."
What is good makes us think of what is better, as well, and it is to be hoped more, than of what is worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as that of a large and deep nature; there is no knowledge so good, so strengthening as that of a great mind, which is forever filling itself afresh. "Out of the eater comes forth meat; out of the strong comes forth sweetness." Here is one of such "_dulcedines verae_"-the sweetness of a strong man:-
"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompany"d; for beast and bird, They to their gra.s.sy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glow"d the firmament With living saphirs; Hesperus that led The starry host rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil"d her peerless light, And o"er the dark her silver mantle threw."
Were we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and be thankful-giving ourselves up to its gentleness, informing ourselves with its quietness and beauty,-we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the quietness of its language, the "sober livery" in which its thoughts are clad. In the first thirty-eight words, twenty-nine are monosyllables.
Then there is the gradual way in which the crowning fantasy is introduced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not wholly unexpected; it "sweetly creeps" into our "study of imagination;" it lives and moves, but it is a moving that is "delicate;" it flows in upon us _incredibili lenitate_. "Evening" is a matter of fact, and its stillness too-a time of the day; and "twilight" is little more. We feel the first touch of spiritual life in "_her_ sober livery," and bolder and deeper in "all things _clad_." Still we are not deep, the real is not yet transfigured and transformed, and we are brought back into it after being told that "Silence accompanied," by the explanatory "for," and the bit of sweet natural history of the beasts and birds. The mind dilates and is moved, its eye detained over the picture; and then comes that rich, "thick warbled note"-"_all but the wakeful nightingale_;" this fills and informs the ear, making it also "of apprehension more quick," and we are prepared now for the great idea coming "into the eye and prospect of our soul"-SILENCE WAS PLEASED! There is nothing in all poetry above this.
Still evening and twilight gray are now Beings, coming on, and walking over the earth like queens, "with Silence,"
"Admiration"s speaking"st tongue,"
as their pleased companion. All is "calm and free," and "full of life,"
it is a "Holy Time." What a picture!-what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect!-what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art!-what modesty and submission! what self-possession!-what plainness, what selectness of speech! "As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and equal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law. As the independence, so must be the seeing and the service, and the submission to the Supreme Will. As the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the intercommunion with Nature."-_Coleridge"s Posthumous Tract "The Idea of Life."_
Since writing the above, our friend "E. V. K." has shown himself curiously unaffected by "that last infirmity of n.o.ble minds,"-his "clear spirit" heeds all too little its urgent "spur." The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the stealing:-
AN ARGUMENT IN RHYME.
I.
"Things that now are beget the things to be, As they themselves were gotten by things past; Thou art a sire, who yesterday but wast A child like him now prattling on thy knee; And he in turn ere long shall offspring see.
Effects at first, seem causes at the last, Yet only seem; when off their veil is cast, All speak alike of mightier energy, Received and pa.s.s"d along. The life that flows Through s.p.a.ce and time, bursts in a loftier source.
What"s s.p.a.ced and timed is bounded, therefore shows A power beyond, a timeless, s.p.a.celess force, Templed in that infinitude, before Whose light-veil"d porch men wonder and adore.
II.
"Wonder! but-for we cannot comprehend, Dare not to doubt. Man, know thyself! and know That, being what thou art, it must be so.
We creatures are, and it were to transcend The limits of our being, and ascend Above the Infinite, if we could show All that He is and how things from Him flow.
Things and their laws by Man are grasp"d and kenn"d, But creatures must no more; and Nature"s _must_ Is Reason"s choice; for could we all reveal Of G.o.d and acts creative, doubt were just.
Were these conceivable, they were not real.
Here, ignorance man"s sphere of being suits, "Tis knowledge self, or of her richest fruits.
III.
"Then rest here, brother! and within the veil Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat No sh.o.r.eland sees, but undulates afloat On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail.
Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond, And gains a rest in being unbeyond, Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail; Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find.
Not far but near, about us, yea within, Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind Dwell in the Presence, to themselves akin; And lo! thou sick and health-imploring soul, He stands beside thee-touch, and thou art whole."
_DR. CHALMERS._
"_Fervet immensusque ruit._"-HOR.
"_His memory long will live alone In all our hearts, as mournful light That broods above the fallen sun, And dwells in heaven half the night._"
TENNYSON.
"_He was not one man, he was a thousand men._"-SYDNEY SMITH.
When, towards the close of some long summer day, we come suddenly, and, as we think, before his time, upon the broad sun, "sinking down in his tranquillity" into the unclouded west, we cannot keep our eyes from the great spectacle,-and when he is gone the shadow of him haunts our sight: we see everywhere,-upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant mountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet,-that dim, strange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves, we still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark place, the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set,-and were we to sit down, as we have often done, and try to record by pencil or by pen, our impression of that supreme hour, still would IT be there.
We must have patience with our eye, it will not let the impression go,-that spot on which the radiant disk was impressed, is insensible to all other outward things, for a time: its best relief is, to let the eye wander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself on the mild shadowy distance.
So it is when a great and good and beloved man departs, sets-it may be suddenly-and to us who know not the times and the seasons, _too soon_.
We gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he is gone, never to rise again on our sight, we see his image wherever we go, and in whatsoever we are engaged, and if we try to record by words our wonder, our sorrow, and our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the "idea of his life" is forever coming into our "study of imagination "-into all our thoughts, and we can do little else than let our mind, in a wise pa.s.siveness, hush itself to rest. The sun returns-he knows his rising-
"To-morrow he repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;"
but man lieth down, and riseth not again till the heavens are no more.
Never again will he whose "Meditations" are now before us, lift up the light of his countenance upon us.
We need not say we look upon him, as a great man, as a good man, as a beloved man,-_quis desiderio sit pudor tam cari capitis?_ We cannot now go very curiously to work, to scrutinize the composition of his character,-we cannot take that large, free, genial nature to pieces, and weigh this and measure that, and sum up and p.r.o.nounce; we are too near as yet to him, and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be so handled. "His death," to use the pathetic words of Hartley Coleridge, "is a recent sorrow; his image still lives in eyes that weep for him."
The prevailing feeling is,-He is gone-"_abiit ad plures_-he has gone over to the majority, he has joined the famous nations of the dead."
It is no small loss to the world, when one of its master spirits-one of its great lights-a king among the nations-leaves it. A sun is extinguished; a great attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For though it be a common, it is also a natural thought, to compare a great man to the sun; it is in many respects significant. Like the sun, he rules his day, and he is "for a sign and for seasons, and for days and for years;" he enlightens, quickens, attracts, and leads after him his host-his generation.