IN SADNESS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. There is not in this life of ours One bliss unmixed with fears; The hope that wakes our deepest powers A face of sadness wears, And the dew that showers our dearest flowers Is the bitter dew of tears. Fame waiteth long, and lingereth Through weary nights and morns, And evermore the shadow Death With mocking finger scorns That underneath the laurel-wreath Should be a wreath of thorns. The laurel-leaves are cool and green, But the thorns are hot and sharp; Lean Hunger grins and stares between The poet and his harp, Though Fame be slow, yet Death is swift, 'Life after life doth change and shift With larger destinies : As on we drift, some wider rift Shows us serener skies. And, though naught falleth to us here Yet all, though ne'er Christ's faith they wear, SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. She was a Phantom of Delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent Though of Love's sunny sheen his woof have been, To be a moment's ornament; Grim Want thrusts in the warp. And if, beyond this darksome clime, That keeps unjarred the blissful chime Of its golden infancy, Where the harvest-time of faith sublime Not always is to be ; Yet would the true soul rather choose Its life's supremest bliss,- The want, the sorrow, and the pain, That makes us fain strong hearts to gain High natures must be thunder scarred With many a searing wrong; From mother Sorrow's breasts the barc Sucks gifts of deepest song; Nor all unmarred with struggles hard Wax the soul's sinews strong. Dear Patience, too, is born of woe, Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; From May-time's brightest, liveliest dawn; I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-liberty; A countenance in which did meet And now I see with eye serene A Traveller between life and death; Who knows that truth is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, no stratagems, no licensings, to make her victorious! Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we injure her to misdoubt her strength! Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter ?-MILTON. VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED. No. 14. THE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR. BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. I saw an aged Beggar in my walk; And he was seated, by the highway side, On a low structure of rude masonry Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they Who lead their horses down the steep rough road May thence remount at ease. The aged Man Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone That overlays the pile; and, from a bag All white with flour, the dole of village dames, He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one; And scanned them with a fixed and serious look Of idle computation. In the sun, Upon the second step of that small pile, Surrounded by those wild unpeopled hills, He sat, and ate his food in solitude: And ever, scattered from his palsied hand, That, still attempting to prevent the waste, Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers Fell on the ground; and the small mountain birds, Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal, Approached within the length of half his staff. His eyes are turned, and as he moves along, Of fields with rural works, of hill and dale, But deem not this man useless.-Statesmen ye Him from my childhood have I known; and then Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate He was so old, he seems not older now; He travels on, a solitary Man, So helpless in appearance, that for him The sauntering Horseman throws not with a slack Shouts to him from behind; and, if thus warned He travels on, a solitary man; His age has no companion. On the ground Your talents, power, or wisdom, deem him not Else unremembered, and so keeps alive The kindly mood in hearts which lapse of years, And that half-wisdom half experience gives, Make slow to feel, and by sure steps resign Among the farms and solitary huts, Some there are, By their good works exalted, lofty minds 'I hat first mild touch of sympathy and thought, Who sits at his own door,-and, like the pear And these inevitable charities, Wherewith to satisfy the human soul? No-man is dear to man; the poorest poor Long for some moments in a weary life -Such pleasure is to one kind Being known, Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven. Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! Of highway side, and with the little birds A very deep meaning lies in that notion, that a man in search of buried treasure must work in utter silence; must speak not a word, whatever appearance, either terrific or delightful, may present itself. And not less significant is the tradition that one who is on an adventurous pilgrimage to some precious When they can know and feel that they have been, talisman, through the most lonesome mountain-path, or dreary desert, must walk onward without stopping, nor look around him, though fearfully menacing, or sweetly enticing voices follow his footsteps, and sound in his ear.-GOETHE. 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 upon them as mere weeds. Yet a weed, to him that 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 re-overlooked by all but uncommon eyes. Most look cognitions 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. 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 seen one of Allston's paintings in a ball-room overlooking 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. 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 finding 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: "But, as Noah's pigeon, which returned no more, 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 may, and must, rouse opposition; but that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it, which cannot sympathize 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 some quiet haven of the Fortunate Isles; it is the blessing to our brother. Poesy is love's chosen 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 often been a truer alms than all the benevolent societies could give. She is the best missionary, knowing when she may knock at the door of the most curmudgeonly hearts, without being turned away unheard. The omnipresence of her spirit is beautifully and touchingly expressed in "The Poet," one of the divisions of a little volume of poems by Cornelius Matthews. Were the whole book as simple in thought and diction as the most of this particular poem, I know few modern volumes that would equal it. Let me read you the passage I alluded to. You will see that the poor slave is not forgotten. 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! "There sits not on the wilderness's edge, 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, |