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OLDPOETS. BY
Poetry and ample, from
any
WALT
WHITMAN.
(I am clear) is eligible our lands and pending utterance
old
or
new.
of something far more lipened days, than it has yet produced Modern
or
new
poetry,
too,
or challenging it with severe criticism,) is largely a void (viewing or even suspicion of that void, and the very cognizance, ?while the need of filling it, proves a certainty of the hidden and wait to speak for other lands and languages Leaving ing supply. themselves, we can abruptly but deeply suggest it best from our and standing on them. first to oversea illustrations, own?going of Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Think (even first-raters, "the as William O'Connor calls brothers of the radiant summit," as their and done precursory work, only 'prentice having them,) un and all their best and real poems being left yet unwrought, Is it difficult to imagine ahead of us and them, evolved touched. from them, poesy completer far than any they themselves fulfilled ? some very large, very old, entirely One has in his eye and mind or tree vital and sound vine, like certain hardy, ever-fruitful and Canada, or down in Mexico, in California (and specimens records?illustra indeed in all lands) beyond the chronological and exploitation, tions of growth, continuity, power, amplitude outside almost beyond statement, but proving fact and possibility, of
argument.
indeed, the rarest and most blessed quality of trans Perhaps, of law, and of the profoundest wisdom cendent noble poetry?as from sane, completed, and sestheticism?is, suggest,) (I would The final proof of song or personality is a vital, capable old age. sort
of
matured,
accreted,
superb,
evoluted,
almost
divine,
im
or invisible magnetism, dis and atmosphere palpable diffuseness not and of achievement and all, any special embracing solving
OLD POETS.
611
form, epigram, plot, thought, or what is passion, pride, metrical The bud of the rose or the half-blown flower is called beauty. of course, but only the perfected bloom or apple or fin beautiful, like ished wheat-head is beyond the rest. fruitage Completed this comes (in my opinion) to a grand age, in man or woman, and psycho sound continuated physiology through an essentially and is the culminating logy (both important) glorious aureole of Like the tree or vine just mentioned, all and several preceding. of its own, it stands at last in a beauty, power and productiveness all criticisms, above all others, and of a sort and style uniting and
proofs
adherences.
some of the Let us diversify the matter a little by portraying our own of view. from American poets point reminiscent, polished, elegant, with the air of finest Longfellow, or parlor, with ladies and conventional library, picture-gallery and ground-glass in and and them, rosewood, plush gentlemen a silver inkstand and and and furniture, ebony mahogany lamps, and scented satin paper to write on. stands for morality Whittier (not in any all-accepting philo a Puritanical or sense, but) filtered through sophic or Hegelian a as valuable filter?is Quaker incalculably genuine utterance, (and and genre bits?all hued the finest,)?with many local and Yankee with
anti-slavery
genre
coloring?(the
and
anti-slavery
contribu
tions all precious?all help). Whit tier's is rather a grand figure, but and lean Greek?not universal and composite ascetic?no pretty to be) for ideal Americanism. wish enough (don't try?don't Ideal Americanism would take the Greek spirit and law, and dem and (thence) them for ocratize and scientize truly Christianize the whole, all ranks and all history, the globe, lands, all facts, all good and bad. (Ah this bad?this nineteen-twentieths it remains for poets and of us all ! What a stumbling-block metaphysicians?what
a
chance
(the
strange,
clear-as-ever
in
scription on the old dug-up tablet) it offers yet for being trans can be its purpose in the God-scheme of this uni lated?what verse and all ?) Then William Cullen Bryant?meditative, serious, from first to last tending to threnodies?his read lyrical?when genius mainly more or ones his who could ask for ing pieces expect magnificent than such as ?The Battle-Field," and "A Forest Hymm"? Bryant,
unrolling,
prairie-like,
nothwithstanding
his mountains
612
THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW.
and lakes?moral and conventional)?a enough (yet worldly aware of books, naturalist, pedestrian, gardener and fruiter?well to the last in cities and society. but mixing I am not sure but his name ought to lead the list of American bards. Years ago I as Emerson to the last preeminent thought (and polish and in cuteness may-be I think so still)?but, tellectual for reasons, I to have been gradually the tending give file-leading plaee for American native poesy to W. C. B. I have already to confirm my already avowed Of Emerson Of opinion regarding his highest bardic and personal attitude. the galaxy of the past?of Poe, Halleck, Mrs. Sigourney, Allston, Willis, Dana, John Pierpont, W. G. Simms, Robert Sands, Drake, Theodore Fay, Margaret Fuller, Epes Sargent, Boker, Hillhouse, Paul Hayne, Lanier, and others, I fitly in essaying such a theme as this, and reverence for their memories, may at least give a on the list of their names. heart-benizon Time and New World humanity having the venerable resem " blances more than anything the same subject else, and being continued," just here in 1890, one gets a curious nourishment and lift (I do) from all those grand old veterans Bancroft, Kos such typical specimens as Sophocles and suth, von Moltke?and of Goethe, genius, health, beauty person, riches, rank, renown and centring in one case. and length of days, all combining Above what could humanity and literature do everything, the mellow, without of last-justifying, averaging, bringing-up many, many years?a great old age amplified ? Every really first-class has likely to pass through the crucial production tests of a generation, several generations. Lord Bacon perhaps first of the work in says any sight really new and first-rate beauty and originality always arouses something disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire termed the Shakespearean works "a huge he Hamlet described dunghill"; (to the Academy, whose members as " the dream of a drunken listened with approbation) savage, a few flashes with of beautiful And not the thoughts." the orthodox of sage alone; Ferney judges and law-givers such as La Harpe, J. L. Geoffroy, and Chateaubriand, France, or went either further. Indeed verdict, joined in Voltaire's the classicists and regulars there still hold to it. The lesson is in all departments. new very significant People resent anything as a personal insult. When umbrellas were first used in England,
OLDPOETS. 613 those who their
that
carried lives
were
them were endangered.
hooted The
and same
pelted rage
so furiously encountered
in theatricals the attempt to perform women's parts by real women which was publicly considered disgusting and outrageous. ahead of Homer and Byron thought Pope's verse incomparably in the days of One of the prevalent Shakespeare. objections, that if a ship Columbus was, the learned men boldly asserted should reach India she would never get back again, because the of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up rotundity which it would be impossible to sail even with the most favorable wind.
"
" poets," says a leading Boston journal, enjoy lon lived be to Wordsworth, gevity. Browning seventy-seven. Bryant, were old men. and Longfellow Whittier, Emerson, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman out by that item on Old still live." Started have Poets and Poetry for chyle to inner American sustenance?I t;hus gossipped about it all, and treated it from my own point of view, taking the privilege of rambling wherever the talk carried me. Modern
and Longfellow have is lately dead ; Bryant, Emerson Browning not long passed away ; and yes, Whittier and Tennyson remain, over eighty years old?the latter having sent out not long since a fresh volume, which the English-speaking Old and New Worlds are yet reading. I have already put on record my notions of T. and his effusions : they are very attractive and flowery to me?but as anything; and by com flowers, too, are at least as profound mon consent T. is settled as the poetic cream-skimmer of our and I in ennui verdict which agree, and age's melody, polish?a even should say that nobody goes deeper in (not Shakespeare) those exquisitely touched and half-hidden hints and indirections in the crevices of his lines. Of Browning left like faint perfumes I don't know enough to say much ; he must be studied deeply I am old out, too, and quite certainly repays the trouble?but and indplent, and cannot study (and never did). Grand as to-day's accumulative fund of poetry is, there is cer not from unborn, yet come forth, different tainly something now or in formulated contributed any verse, anything by the in non-ex waited hitherto for, craved, any land?something past it will be, and how, no one knows. What It will prob pressed. to itself have and itself its readers. One prove by ably thing, it new must run through entire humanity and word (this meaning
THE NORTH AMERICAN
614
REVIEW.
twining all lands like a di Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) or gold, from God and vine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles all the soul, and like God's dynamics and sunshine illustrating and having like a cosmical reference to all. From anything themes and literature's point of view, the entirety of imaginative as we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that results as it is, what is it com has been put in statement, tremendous pared with the vast fields and values and varieties left unreaped ? Of our own country, the splendid races North or South, and es seems of the and Pacific Western pecially regions, it sometimes are all to me their myriad noblest Homeric and Biblic elements oc left as if ashamed of, and only certain very minor untouched, casional delirium in tremens glints studiously sought and put " " or books. print, in short tales, poetry I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for a majority of ardent minds, the comfort of thousands?perhaps women's
and
young
men's?who
stand
in awe
and
despair
before
the immensity of suns and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakespeare there is (is there not ?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them, the songs due our own demo cratic era and surroundings, and the full assertion of ourselves. And in vain (such ismy opinion) will America seek successfully the to tune any superb national of the unless song heart-strings start it own and be returned from their echoed breasts?to people there again. Walt
Whitman.