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AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1831.)

OURS is a poetical age; but has it produced one great poem? Not one. If you think it has, you will perhaps

But

favour us with the name of the author and his work. haply you may first demand of us what we mean by a great poem? If you do, we shan't answer you; for we deal not in reasonings, but in assertions. Reasonings are apt to be tedious and unsatisfactory; assertions are short and if correct-which ours always are-they carry their own demonstrations along with them-neatly folded up-and all that you have to do is to allow them to evolve themselves at their leisure in the light of truth, till they appear before you like "bright consummate flowers," which it is pleasant to gaze on, and profitable to gather. From the commencement of our career we have flourished on assertions, while most of our contemporaries have "faded, languished, grown dim, and died," on demonstrations. We learned this great secret from the observation and meditation of half a century; and applying to literature the philosophy of life, we have become immortal. In vain would you search through nearly twenty decades of Maga for one specimen of an argument above an inch long; whereas in every page the most astounding assertions stare you in the face, till you are out of countenance, and shut your eyes in the sudden and insupportable effulgence of the naked truth-only to open them again with gifted vision on a wider revelation of earth and heaven.

We therefore repeat our assertion-that ours is a poetical age, but that it has not produced one great poem. Just look at them for a moment. There is the Pleasures of

Memory-an elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does one's eyes good to gaze on— one's ears good to listen to one's very fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove paper. Never will the Pleasures of Memory be forgotten till the world is in its dotage. But is it a great poem? About as much so as an ant or a mole-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection-in the shape of a cone-and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a sky-piercer. You take it at a hop-and pursue your journey. Yet it endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs and the sunshine, love the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and delightfully, half a work of art and half a work of nature.

Then, there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not popular. If so, neither is human life. For of all our living poets, he has most skilfully "woven the web and woven the woof" of all his compositions with the materials of human life-homespun indeed-but though often coarse, always strong-and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay-hold up the product of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems to be but of the "hodden gray;" when sunbeam or shadow smites it, and lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the borough-monger ever produce a great poem? You might as well ask if he built St. Paul's.

Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No wonder that his eyes "love all they look on," for they possess the sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past"-is the text we should choose were we about to preach on his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit ever breathe over the still receding past. But time-sanctified are all the shows that arise before his pensive imagination-and the common light of day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if

it had been all dying sunset or moonlight, or the new-born dawn. His human sensibilities are so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his sonnets have been dear to poets-having in them "more than meets the ear"-spiritual breathings that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the "faculty divine," have yet the "vision"-that is, the power of seeing and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, bringing them from afar, out of the dust and dimness of evanishment. But has Bowles written a great poem? If he has, then, as he loves us, let him forthwith publish it in Maga.

What shall we say of the Pleasures of Hope? That the harp from which that music breathed, was an Æolian harp placed in the window of a high hall, to catch airs from heaven, when heaven was glad, as well she might be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a magnificent aurora borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic march-now it swells into a holy hymn-and now it dies away elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, dreamlike, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night—and we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so? As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our own only daughter-filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through those giant woods! As for Lochiel's Warning, there was heard the voice of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the Highland glooms-the Lament wails not

more,

"That man may not hide what God would reveal!"

Never saw we a ship till Campbell indited " Ye mariners of England." Sheer hulks before our eyes were all ships till that strain arose-but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we

say, after that, that Campbell has never written a great poem? Yes in the face even of the Metropolitan.

It was said by the Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in our imagination. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souledand these qualities shine serenely in the Pelican Island. In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it moulder-not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid asleep in immortality-its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly- -a celestial smile. That is a true image; but is the Pelican Island a great poem? We pause not for a reply.

Lyrical poetry, we opine, hath many branches-and one of them, "beautiful exceedingly," with bud, blossom, and fruit of balm and brightness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward, when the air is calm, and ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the sunshine, and gloys wavingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest region of the tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expression, employed at present to signify song-writing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than Thomas Moore. True, that Robert Burns has indited several songs that slip into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect contentOr let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake,

ment.

a laverock in the sky. They sing in the fu'ness of their joy, as nature teaches them—and so did he—and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be in heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources of lyrical poetry-when he was born a Scottish peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and translated -after a fashion-Anacreon. And Moore has lived all his life long in towns and cities-and in that society which will suffer none else to be called good. Some advantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did-but then how many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire ploughman, in the bondage of his poverty, was free! You see all that at a single glance into their poetry. But all in humble life is not high-all in high life is not low-and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in hall-in" auld clay bigging" as in marble palace. Burns too often wrote like a rude unpolished boor-Moore has too often written like a mere man of fashion. But take them both at their best-and both are glorious. Both are national poets-and who shall say that if Moore had been born and bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, and religion. as Scotland is-and surely, without offence, we may say that it never was, and never will be-though we love the Green Island well-that with his fine fancy, warm heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as Burns, while, take him as he is, who can deny that in richness, in riety, in grace, and in almost all the power of art, he is infinitely superior to his illustrious rival? Of Lallah Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, we defy you to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a great poem?

Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of

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