FROM "LOWELL'S CONVERSATIONS." The earliest poetry of all countries is sacred poetry, or that in which the idea of God predominates and is developed. The first effort at speech which man's nature makes in all tongues is, to pronounce the word "Father." Reverence is the foundation of all poetry. From Reverence the spirit climbs on to love, and thence beholds all things. No matter in what Scythian fashion these first recognitions of something above and beyond the soul are uttered, they contain the germs of psalms and prophecies. Whether, for a while, the immortal guest rests satisfied with a Fetish or an Apollo, it has already grasped the clew which leads unerringly to the very highest idea. For reverence is the most keen-eyed and exacting of all the faculties, and, if there be the least flaw in its idol, it will kneel no longer. From wood it rises to gold and ivory; from these, to the yet simpler and more majestic marble; and, planting its foot upon that, it leaps upward to the infinite and invisible. When I assume reverence, then, as the very primal essence and life of poetry, I claim for it a nobler stirp than it has been the fashion to allow it. Beyond Adam runs back its illustrious genealogy. It stood with Uriel in the sun, and looked down over the battlements of heaven with the angelic guards. In short, it is no other than the religious sentiment itself. That is poetry which makes sorrow lovely, and joy solemn to us, and reveals to us the holiness of things. Faith casts herself upon her neck as upon a sister's. She shows us what glimpses we get of life's spiritual face. What she looks on becomes miraculous, though it be but the dust of the way-side; and miracles become but as dust for their simpleness. There is nothing noble without her; with her there can be nothing mean. What songs the Druids sang within the sacred circuit of Stonehenge we can barely conjecture; but those forlorn stones doubtless echoed with appeals to a higher something; and are not even now without their sanctity, since they chronicle a nation's desire after God. Whether those forestpriests worshipped the strangely beautiful element of fire, or if the pilgrim Belief pitched her tent and rested for a night in some ruder and bleaker creed, there we may yet trace the light footprints of Poesy, as she led her sister onward to fairer fields, and streams flowing nearer to the oracle of God. depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get the easier the sinking. As for the kindness which Milton and Burns felt for the Devil, I am sure that God thinks of him with pity a thousand times to their once, and the good Origin believ ed him not incapable of salvation. These simplest thoughts, feelings and experiences, that lie upon the very surface of life, are overlooked by all but uncommon eyes. Most look upon them as mere weeds. Yet a weed, to him that loves it, is a flower; and there are times when we would not part with a sprig of chickweed for a whole continent of lilies. No man thinks his own nature miraculous, while to his neighbour it may give a surfeit of wonder. Let him go where he will, he can find no heart so worth a study as his own. The prime fault of modern poets is, that they are resolved to be peculiar. They are not content that it should come of itself, but they must dig and bore for it, sinking their wells usually through the grave of some buried originality, so that if any water rises it is tainted. Read most volumes of poems, and you are reminded of a French bill of fare, where every thing is á la something else. Even a potato au naturel is a godsend. When will poets learn that a grass-blade of their own raising is worth a barrow-load of flowers from their neighbour's garden? Ah, if we would but pledge ourselves to truth as heartily as we do to a real or imaginary mistress, and think life too short only because it abridged our time of service, what a new world we should have! Most men pay their vows to her in youth, and go up into the bustle of life, with her kiss warm upon their lips, and her blessing lying upon their hearts like dew; but the world has lips less chary. and cheaper benedictions, and if the broken trothplight with their humble village.mistress comes over them sometimes with a pang, she knows how to blandish away remorse, and persuades them, ere old age, that their young enthusiasm was a folly and an in discretion. We I agree with you that the body is treated with quite too much ceremony and respect. Even religion has vailed its politic hat to it, till, like Christopher Sly, it is metamorphosed, in its own estimation, from a tinker to a duke. Men, who would, without compunction, kick a living beggar, will yet Byron might have made a great poet. As it is, stand in awe of his poor carcass, after all that renhis poetry is the record of a struggle between his dered it truly venerable has fled out of it. good and his baser nature, in which the latter wins. agree with the old barbarian epitaph which affirmed The fall is great in proportion to the height from that the handfull of dust had been Ninus; as if that which one is hurled. An originally beautiful spirit which convicts us of mortality and weakness could becomes the most degraded when perverted. It at the same time endow us with our high prerogawould fain revenge itself upon that purity from tive of kingship over them. South, in one of his which it is an unhappy and restless exile, and drowns sermons, tells us of certain men whose souls are of its remorse in the drunkenness and vain bluster of no worth, but as salt to keep their bodies from pudefiance. There is a law of neutralization of forces, trifying. I fear that the soul is too often regarded which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain in this sutler fashion. Why should men ever be fruitful ear. Even under our thin crust of fashion and frivolity throb the undying fires of the great soul of man, the fountain and centre of all poetry, and which will one day burst forth to wither like grass-blades the vain temples and palaces which forms and conventionalities have heaped smotheringly upon it. Behind the blank faces of the weak and thoughtless, I see, sometimes with a kind of dread, this awful and mysterious presence, as I have afraid to die, but that they regard the spirit as secon- | word spoken for her ever fail of some willing and dary to that which is but its mere appendage and conveniency, its symbol, its word, its means of visibility? If the soul lose this poor mansion of hers by the sudden conflagration of disease, or by the slow decay of age, is she therefore houseless and shelterless? If she cast away this soiled and tattered garment, is she therefore naked? A child looks forward to his new suit, and dons it joyfully; we cling to our rags and foulness. We should welcome Death as one who brings us tidings of the find-seen one of Allston's paintings in a ball-room overing of long-lost titles to a large family estate, and set out gladly to take possession, though, it may be, not without a natural tear for the humbler home we are leaving. Death always means us a kindness, though he has often a gruff way of offering it. Even if the soul never returned from that chartless and unmapped country, which I do not believe, I would take Sir John Davies's reason as a good one: looking with its serene and steadfast eyes the butterfly throng beneath, and seeming to gaze, from these narrow battlements of time, far out into the infinite promise of the future, beholding there the free, erect, and perfected soul. No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; for that is a capacity in which he is by nature unfitted to shine. It "But, as Noah's pigeon, which returned no more, may, and must, rouse opposition; but that philanDid show she footing found, for all the flood; thropy has surely a flaw in it, which cannot sympaSo, when good souls, departed through death's door, Come not again, it shows their dwelling good." thize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressThe realm of Death seems an enemy's country ed. It is the high and glorious vocation of Poesy to most men, on whose shores they are loathly driven as well to make our own daily life and toil more by stress of weather; to the wise man it is the de- beautiful and holy to us by the divine ministerings sired port where he moors his bark gladly, as in of love, as to render us swift to convey the same Poesy is love's chosen some quiet haven of the Fortunate Isles; it is the blessing to our brother. golden west into which his sun sinks, and, sinking, apostle, and the very almoner of God. She is the casts back a glory upon the leaden cloud-rack which the home of the outcast, and the wealth of the needy. had darkly besieged his day. For her the hut becomes a palace, whose halls are guarded by the gods of Phidias, and kept peaceful by the maid-mothers of Raphael. She loves better the poor wanderer whose bare feet know by heart all the freezing stones of the pavement, than the delicate maiden for whose dainty soles Brussels and Turkey have been over-careful; and I doubt not but some remembered scrap of childish song hath After all, the body is a more expert dialectician than the soul, and buffets it, even to bewilderment, with the empty bladders of logic; but the soul can retire, from the dust and turmoil of such conflict, to the high tower of instinctive faith, and there, in hushed serenity, take comfort of the sympathizing stars. We look at death through the cheap glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him for the monster which the flawed and crooked glass presents him. You say truly that we have wasted time in trying to coax the body into a faith in what, by its very nature, it is incapable of comprehending. Hence, a plethoric, short-winded kind of belief, that can walk at an easy pace over the smooth plain, but loses breath at the first sharp uphill of life. How idle is it to set a sensual bill of fare before the soul, acting over again the old story of the Crane and the Fox! I know not when we shall hear pure spiritualism preached by the authorized expounders of doctrine. These have suffered the grain to mildew, while they have been wrangling about the husks of form; and the people have stood by, hungry and half-starved, too intent on the issue of the quarrel to be conscious that they were trampling the forgotten and scattered bread of life in the mire. Thank Heaven, they may still pluck ripe ears, of God's own planting and watering, in the fields! often been a truer alms than all the benevolent soci eties could give. She is the best missionary, know- "There sits not on the wilderness's edge, In the dusk lodges of the wintry North, You The love of the beautiful and truo, like the dewdrop in the heart of the crystal, remains forever True poetry is never out of place, nor will a good clear and liquid in the inmost shrine of man's being, VOICES OF THE TRUE-HEARTED. undrunk. though all the rest be turned to stone by sorrow and ing its wings to seek some fairer height. This is If any have aught worth hearing to say, let them say it, be they men or women. We have more than enough prating by those who have nothing to tell us. I never heard that the Quaker women were the worse for preaching, or the men for listening to them. If we pardon such exhibitions as those of the dancing-females on the stage, surely our prudery need not bristle in such a hedgehog fashion because a woman in the chaste garb of the Friends dares to plead in public for the downtrodden cause of justice and freedom. Or perhaps it is more modest and maidenly for a woman to expose her body in public than her soul? If we listen and applaud, while, as Coleridge says, "Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast must we esteem it derogatory to our sense of refinement to drink from the fresh brook of a true woman's voice, as it gushes up from a heart throbbing only with tenderness for our neighbour fallen among thieves? Here in Massachusetts we burn Popish nunneries, but we maintain a whole system of Protestant ones. If a woman is to be an Amazon, all the cloisters in the world will not starve or compress her into a Cordelia. There is no sex in noble thoughts, and deeds agreeing with them; and such recruits do equally good service in the army of truth, whether they are brought in by women or men. Out on our Janus-faced virtue, with its one front looking smilingly to the stage, and its other with shame-shut eyes turned frowningly upon the Antislavery Convention! If other reapers be wanting, let women go forth into the harvest-field of God and bind the ripe shocks of grain; the complexion of their souls shall not be tanned or weather-stained, for the sun that shines there only makes the fairer Never was falser doctrine preached than that love's and whiter all that it looks upon. Whatever is in chief delight and satisfaction lies in the pursuit of its place is in the highest place; whatever is right its object, which won, the charm is already flutter-is graceful, noble, expedient; and the universal hiss God's livery is a very plain one; but its wearers have good reason to be content. If it have not so much gold-lace about it as Satan's, it keeps out foul weather better, and is besides a great deal cheaper. of the world shall fall upon it as a benediction, and go up to the ear of God as the most moving prayer in its behalf. If a woman be truly chaste, that chastity shall surround her, in speaking to a public assembly, with a ring of protecting and rebuking light, and make the exposed rostrum as private as an oratory; if immodest, there is that in her which can turn the very house of God into a brothel. STANZA S. BY JOHN G. WHITTIER. "The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the United States-the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of a king, cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monar chy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?"Dr. Follen's Address. "Genius of America!-Spirit of our free institutions !-where art thou? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morning-how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from be. neath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming! The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha!-ART THOU BECOME LIKE UNTO US?"-Speech of Samuel J. May. Our fellow-countrymen in chains! Slaves-in a land of light and law! Where roll'd the storm of Freedom's war! By storied hill and hallow'd grot, By mossy wood and marshy glen, Whence rang of old the rifle-shot, And hurrying shout of Marion's men! The falling lash-the fetter's clank! What! God's own image bought and sold! And barter'd as the brute for gold! Speak! shall their agony of prayer Come thrilling to our hearts in vain? Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong, What shall we send, with lavish breath, Strikes for his freedom, or a grave? For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning, And millions hail with pen and tongue Our light on all her altars burning? Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, The impulse of our cheering call? By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave? And bid his bondmen cast the chain, Proclaim that all around are free, That beetles o'er the Western Sea? And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, When Freedom's fire is dim with us, And round our country's altar clings The damning shade of Slavery's curse? Go-let us ask of Constantine To loose his grasp on Poland's throat! And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line To spare the struggling Suliote— Will not the scorching answer come From turban'd Turk, and fiery Russ : "Go, loose your fetter'd slaves at home, Then turn, and ask the like of us!" Just God! and shall we calmly rest, The Christian's scorn-the Heathen's mirthContent to live the lingering jest And by-word of a mocking Earth? Shall our own glorious land retain That curse which Europe scorns to bear? Up, then, in Freedom's manly part, Scatter the living coals of Truth! The shadow of our fame is growing! Up-while ye pause, our sun may set In blood, around our altars flowing! Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth- Feel ye no earthquake underneath? Up now for Freedom!-not in strife The glory and the guilt of war: Down let the shrine of Moloch sink, Nor longer let its idol drink His daily cup of human blood: But rear another altar there, To Truth and Love and Mercy given, And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer, Shall call an answer down from Heaven! THE CONTRAST. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Thy love thou sentest oft to me, In those who every thing did lack, Pride held his hand before mine eyes, The world with flattery stuffed mine ears; I looked to see a monarch's guise, Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years, Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears. Yet, when I sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertained it royally Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint of sin. Now, every day thy love I meet As o'er the earth it wanders wide, With weary step and bleeding feet, Still knocking at the heart of pride, And offering grace, though still denied. THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, Will mingle with their awful symphonies! I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; The tumult of each sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage; The wail of famine in beleaguered towns; The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace!" Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. |