The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art

He exhorts man to be “in utrumque paratus.” If the world be the materialized thought of one all-pure, let him, “by lonely pureness,” seek his way through the colored dream of life up again to that all-pure fount:—

“But, if the wild unfathered mass no birthIn divine seats hath known;In the blank echoing solitude, if earth,Rocking her obscure body to and fro,Ceases not from all time to heave and groan,Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe,Forms what she forms, alone:”

then man, the only self-conscious being, “seeming sole to awake,” must, recognizing his brotherhood with this world which stirs at his feet unknown, confess that he too but seems.

Thus far for the scheme and the creed of the author. Concerning these we leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Before proceeding to a more minute notice of the various poems, we would observe that a predilection is apparent throughout for antiquity and classical association; not that strong love which made Shelley, as it were, the heir of Plato; not that vital grasp of conception which enabled Keats without, and enables Landor with, the most intimate knowledge of form and detail, to return to and renew the old thoughts and beliefs of Greece; still less the mere superficial acquaintance with names and hackneyed attributes which was once poetry. Of this conventionalism, however, we have detected two instances; the first, an allusion to “shy Dian's horn” in “breathless glades” of the days we live, peculiarly inappropriate in a sonnet addressed “To George Cruikshank on his Picture of ‘The Bottle;’” the second a grave call to Memory to bring her tablets, occurring in, and forming the burden of, a poem strictly personal, and written for a particular occasion. But the author's partiality is shown, exclusively of such poems as “Mycerinus” and “The Strayed Reveller,” where the subjects are taken from antiquity, rather in the framing than in the ground work, as in the titles “A Modern Sappho,” “The New Sirens,” “Stagyrus,” and “In utrumque paratus.” It is Homer and Epictetus and Sophocles who “prop his mind;” the immortal air which the poet breathes is “Where Orpheus and where Homer are;” and he addresses “Fausta” and “Critias.”

There are four narrative poems in the volume:—“Mycerinus,” “The Strayed Reveller,” “The Sick King in Bokhara,” and “The Forsaken Merman.” The first of these, the only one altogether narrative in form, founded on a passage in the 2nd Book of Herodotus, is the story of the six years of life portioned to a King of Egypt succeeding a father “who had loved injustice, and lived long;” and tells how he who had “loved the good” revels out his “six drops of time.” He takes leave of his people with bitter words, and goes out

“To the cool regions of the groves he loved........Here came the king holding high feast at morn,Rose-crowned; and ever, when the sun went down,A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom,From tree to tree, all thro' the twinkling grove,Revealing all the tumult of the feast,Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine;While the deep-burnished foliage overheadSplintered the silver arrows of the moon.”—p. 7.

(a daring image, verging towards a conceit, though not absolutely such, and the only one of that character that has struck us in the volume.)

“So six long years he revelled, night and day:And, when the mirth waxed loudest, with dull soundSometimes from the grove's centre echoes came,To tell his wondering people of their king;In the still night, across the steaming flats,Mixed with the murmur of the moving Nile.”—pp. 8, 9.

Here a Tennysonian influence is very perceptible, more especially in the last quotation; and traces of the same will be found in “The Forsaken Merman.”

In this poem the story is conveyed by allusions and reminiscences whilst the Merman makes his children call after her who had returned to her own earth, hearing the Easter bells over the bay, and who is not yet come back for all the voices calling “Margaret! Margaret!” The piece is scarcely long enough or sufficiently distinct otherwise than as a whole to allow of extract; but we cannot but express regret that a poem far from common-place either in ubject or treatment should conclude with such sing-song as

—–“There dwells a loved one,But cruel is she;She left lonely for everThe kings of the sea.”

“The Strayed Reveller” is written without rhyme—(not being blank verse, however,)—and not unfrequently, it must be admitted, without rhythm. Witness the following lines:

“Down the dark valley—I saw.”—“Trembling, I entered; beheld”—“Thro' the islands some divine bard.”—

Nor are these by any means the only ones that might be cited in proof; and, indeed, even where there is nothing precisely contrary to rhythm, the verse might, generally speaking, almost be read as prose. Seldom indeed, as it appears to us, is the attempt to write without some fixed laws of metrical construction attended with success; never, perhaps, can it be considered as the most appropriate embodiment of thought. The fashion has obtained of late years; but it is a fashion, and will die out. But few persons will doubt the superiority of the established blank verse, after reading the following passage, or will hesitate in pronouncing that it ought to be the rule, instead of the exception, in this poem:

“They see the merchantsOn the Oxus stream:—but careMust visit first them too, and make them pale:Whether, thro' whirling sand,A cloud of desert robber-horse has burstUpon their caravan; or greedy kings,In the walled cities the way passes thro',Crushed them with tolls; or fever airsOn some great river's margeMown them down, far from home.”—p. 25.

The Reveller, going to join the train of Bacchus in his temple, has strayed into the house of Circe and has drunk of her cup: he believes that, while poets can see and know only through participation in endurance, he shares the power belonging to the gods of seeing “without pain, without labour;” and has looked over the valley all day long at the Mœnads and Fauns, and Bacchus, “sometimes, for a moment, passing through the dark stems.” Apart from the inherent defects of the metre, there is great beauty of pictorial description in some passages of the poem, from which the following (where he is speaking of the gods) may be taken as a specimen:—

“They see the IndianDrifting, knife in hand,His frail boat moored toA floating isle, thick-mattedWith large-leaved low-creeping melon plants,And the dark cucumber.He reaps and stows them,Drifting—drifting:—round him,Round his green harvest-plot,Flow the cool lake-waves:The mountains ring them.”—p. 20.

From “the Sick King in Bokhara,” we have already quoted at some length. It is one of the most considerable, and perhaps, as being the most simple and life-like, the best of the narrative poems. A vizier is receiving the dues from the cloth merchants, when he is summoned to the presence of the king, who is ill at ease, by Hussein: “a teller of sweet tales.” Arrived, Hussein is desired to relate the cause of the king's sickness; and he tells how, three days since, a certain Moollah came before the king's path, calling for justice on himself, whom, deemed a fool or a drunkard, the guards pricked off with their spears, while the king passed on into the mosque: and how the man came on the morrow with yesterday's blood-spots on him, and cried out for right. What follows is told with great singleness and truth: “Thou knowest,” the man says,

“‘How fierceIn these last day the sun hath burned;That the green water in the tanksIs to a putrid puddle turned;And the canal that from the streamOf Samarcand is brought this wayWastes and runs thinner every day.“‘Now I at nightfall had gone forthAlone; and, in a darksome placeUnder some mulberry-trees, I foundA little pool; and, in brief space,With all the water that was thereI filled my pitcher, and stole homeUnseen; and, having drink to spare,I hid the can behind the door,And went up on the roof to sleep.“‘But, in the night, which was with windAnd burning dust, again I creepDown, having fever, for a drink.“‘Now, meanwhile, had my brethren foundThe water-pitcher, where it stoodBehind the door upon the ground,And called my mother: and they all,As they were thirsty and the nightMost sultry, drained the pitcher there;That they sat with it in my sight,Their lips still wet, when I came down.“‘Now mark: I, being fevered, sick,(Most unblessed also,) at that sightBrake forth and cursed them. Dost thou hear?One was my mother. Now, do right.’“But my lord mused a space, and said,‘Send him away, sirs, and make on.It is some madman,’ the king said.As the king said, so was it done.“The morrow at the self-same hour,In the king's path, behold, the man,Not kneeling, sternly fixed. He stoodRight opposite, and thus began,“Frowning grim down: ‘Thou wicked king,Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear;What? Must I howl in the next world,Because thou wilt not listen here?“‘What, wilt thou pray and get thee grace,And all grace shall to me be grudged?Nay but, I swear, from this thy pathI will not stir till I be judged.’“Then they who stood about the kingDrew close together and conferred;Till that the king stood forth and said:‘Before the priests thou shalt be heard.’“But, when the Ulema were metAnd the thing heard, they doubted not;But sentenced him, as the law is,To die by stoning on the spot.“Now the king charged us secretly:‘Stoned must he be: the law stands so:Yet, if he seek to fly, give way;Forbid him not, but let him go.’“So saying, the king took a stone,And cast it softly: but the man,With a great joy upon his face,Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.“So they whose lot it was cast stones,That they flew thick and bruised him sore:But he praised Allah with loud voice,And remained kneeling as before.“My lord had covered up his face:But, when one told him, ‘He is dead;’Turning him quickly to go in,‘Bring thou to me his corpse,’ he said.“And truly, while I speak, oh king,I hear the bearers on the stair.Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?—Ho! enter ye who tarry there.”—pp. 39-43.

The Vizier counsels the king that each man's private grief suffices him, and that he should not seek increase of it in the griefs of other men. But he answers him, (this passage we have before quoted,) that the king's lot and the poor man's is the same, for that neither has his will; and he takes order that the dead man be buried in his own royal tomb.

We know few poems the style of which is more unaffectedly without labor, and to the purpose, than this. The metre, however, of the earlier part is not always quite so uniform and intelligible as might be desired; and we must protest against the use, for the sake of rhyme, of broke in lieu of broken, as also of stole for stolen in “the New Sirens.” While on the subject of style, we may instance, from the “Fragment of an Antigone,” the following uncouth stanza, which, at the first reading, hardly appears to be correctly put together:

“But hush! Hœmon, whom Antigone,Robbing herself of life in burying,Against Creon's laws, Polynices,Robs of a loved bride, pale, imploring,Waiting her passage,Forth from the palace hitherward comes.”—p. 30.

Perhaps the most perfect and elevated in tone of all these poems is “The New Sirens.” The author addresses, in imagination, a company of fair women, one of whose train he had been at morning; but in the evening he has dreamed under the cedar shade, and seen the same forms “on shores and sea-washed places,” “With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands.”

He thinks how at sunrise he had beheld those ladies playing between the vines; but now their warm locks have fallen down over their arms. He prays them to speak and shame away his sadness; but there comes only a broken gleaming from their windows, which “Reels and shivers on the ruffled gloom.” He asks them whether they have seen the end of all this, the load of passion and the emptiness of reaction, whether they dare look at life's latter days,

“When a dreary light is wadingThro' this waste of sunless greens,When the flashing lights are fadingOn the peerless cheek of queens,When the mean shall no more sorrow,And the proudest no more smile;While the dawning of the morrowWidens slowly westward all that while?”

And he implores them to “let fall one tear, and set him free.” The past was no mere pretence; it was true while it lasted; but it is gone now, and the East is white with day. Shall they meet again, only that he may ask whose blank face that is?

“Pluck, pluck cypress, oh pale maidens;Dusk the hall with yew.”

This poem must be read as a whole; for not only would it be difficult to select particular passages for extraction, but such extracts, if made, would fail in producing any adequate impression.

We have already quoted so larely from the concluding piece, “Resignation,” that it may here be necessary to say only that it is in the form of speech held with “Fausta” in retracing, after a lapse of ten years, the same way they had once trod with a joyful company. The tone is calm and sustained, not without touches of familiar truth.

The minor poems comprise eleven sonnets, among which, those “To the Duke of Wellington, on hearing him mispraised,” and on “Religious Isolation,” deserve mention; and it is with pleasure we find one, in the tenor of strong appreciation, written on reading the Essays of the great American, Emerson. The sonnet for “Butler's Sermons” is more indistinct, and, as such, less to be approved, in imagery than is usual with this poet. That “To an Independent Preacher who preached that we should be in harmony with nature,” seems to call for some remark. The sonnet ends with these words:

“Man must begin, know this, where nature ends;Nature and man can never be fast friends;Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave.”

Now, as far as this sonnet shows of the discourse which occasioned it, we cannot see anything so absurd in that discourse; and where the author confutes the Independent preacher by arguing that

“Nature is cruel; man is sick of blood:Nature is stubborn; man would fain adore:Nature is fickle; man hath need of rest:”

we cannot but think that, by attributing to nature a certain human degree of qualities, which will not suffice for man, he loses sight of the point really raised: for is not man's nature only a part of nature? and, if a part, necessary to the completeness of the whole? and should not the individual, avoiding a factitious life, order himself in conformity with his own rule of being? And, indeed, the author himself would converse with the self-sufficing progress of nature, with its rest in action, as distinguished from the troublous vexation of man's toiling:—

“Two lessons, Nature, let me learn of thee,Two lessons that in every wind are blown;Two blending duties harmonised in one,Tho' the loud world proclaim their enmity.”—p. 1.

The short lyric poem, “To Fausta” has a Shelleian spirit and grace in it. & “The Hayswater Boat” seems a little got up, and is scarcely positive enough. This remark applies also, and in a stonger degree, to the “Stanzas on a Gipsy Child,” which, and the “Modern Sappho,” previously mentioned, are the pieces least to our taste in the volume. There is a something about them of drawing-room sentimentality; and they might almost, without losing much save in size, be compressed into poems of the class commonly set to music. It is rather the basis of thought than the writing of the “Gipsy Child,” which affords cause for objection; nevertheless, there is a passage in which a comparison is started between this child and a “Seraph in an alien planet born,”—an idea not new, and never, as we think, worth much; for it might require some subtlety to show how a planet capable of producing a Seraph should be alien from that Seraph.

We may here notice a few cases of looseness, either of thought or of expression, to be met with in these pages; a point of style to be particularly looked to when the occurrence or the absence of such forms one very sensible difference between the first-rate and the second-rate poets of the present times.

Thus, in the sonnet “Shakspear,” the conclusion says,

“All pains the immortal spirit must endure,All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,Find their sole voice in that victorious brow;”

whereas a brow's voice remains to be uttered: nor, till the nature of the victory gained by the brow shall have been pointed out, are we able to hazard an opinion of the precise value of the epithet.

In the address to George Cruikshank, we find: “Artist, whose hand with horror winged;” where a similar question arises; and, returning to the “Gipsy Child,” we are struck with the unmeaningness of the line: “Who massed round that slight brow these clouds of doom?”

Nor does the following, from the first of the sonnets, “To a Republican Friend,” appear reconcileable with any ideas of appropriateness:

——“While before me flowThe armies of the homeless and unfed.”

It is but right to state that the only instance of the kind we remember throughout the volume have now been mentioned.

To conclude. Our extracts will enable the reader to judge of this Poet's style: it is clear and comprehensive, and eschews flowery adornment. No particular model has been followed, though that general influence which Tennyson exercises over so many writers of this generation may be traced here as elsewhere. It may be said that the author has little, if anything, to unlearn. Care and consistent arrangement, and the necessary subordination of the parts to the whole, are evident throughout; the reflective, which appears the more essential form of his thought, does not absorb the due observation or presentment of the outward facts of nature; and a well-poised and serious mind shows itself in every page.

Published Monthly, price 1s.

This Periodical will consist of original Poems, Stories to develope thought and principle, Essays concerning Art and other subjects, and analytic Reviews of current Literature—particularly of Poetry. Each number will also contain an Etching; the subject to be taken from the opening article of the month.

An attempt will be made, both intrinsically and by review, to claim for Poetry that place to which its present development in the literature of this country so emphatically entitles it.

The endeavour held in view throughout the writings on Art will be to encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the simplicity of nature; and also to direct attention, as an auxiliary medium, to the comparatively few works which Art has yet produced in this spirit. It need scarcely be added that the chief object of the etched designs will be to illustrate this aim practically, as far as the method of execution will permit; in which purpose they will be produced with the utmost care and completeness.

Art and Poetry: Being Thoughts towards Nature Conducted principally by Artists.

No. 3. March, 1850

With an Etching by F. Madox BrownWhen whoso merely hath a little thoughtWill plainly think the thought which is in him,—Not imaging another's bright or dim,Not mangling with new words what others taught;When whoso speaks, from having either soughtOr only found,—will speak, not just to skimA shallow surface with words made and trim,But in that very speech the matter brought:Be not too keen to cry—“So this is all!—A thing I might myself have thought as well,But would not say it, for it was not worth!”Ask: “Is this truth?” For is it still to tellThat, be the theme a point or the whole earth,Truth is a circle, perfect, great or small?

Cordelia

“The jewels of our father, with washed eyesCordelia leaves you. I know you what you areAnd, like a sister, am most loth to tellYour faults, as they are named. Use well our father:To your professed bosoms I commit him.But yet, alas!—stood I within his grace,I would prefer him to a better place.So farewell to you both.”Cordelia, unabashed and strong,Her voice's quite scarcely lessThan yester-eve, enduring wrongAnd curses of her father's tongue,Departs, a righteous-souled princess;Bidding her sisters cherish him.They turn on her and fix their eyes,But cease not passing inward;—oneSneering with lips still curled to lies,Sinuous of body, serpent-wise;Her footfall creeps, and her looks shunThe very thing on which they dwell.The other, proud, with heavy cheeksAnd massive forehead, where remainsA mark of frowning. If she seeksWith smiles to tame her eyes, or speaks,Her mouth grows wanton: she disdainsThe ground with haughty, measured steps.The silent years had grown betweenFather and daughter. Always sheHad waited on his will, and beenForemost in doing it,—unseenOften: she wished him not to see,But served him for his sake alone.He saw her constant love; and, tho'Occasion surely was not scant,Perhaps had never sought to knowHow she could give it wording. SoHis love, not stumbling at a want,Among the three preferred her first.Her's is the soul not stubborn, yetAsserting self. The heart was rich;But, questioned, she had rather letMen judge her conscious of a debtThan freely giving: thus, her speechIs love according to her bond.In France the queen Cordelia hadHer hours well satisfied with love:She loved her king, too, and was glad:And yet, at times, a something sad,May be, was with her, thinking ofThe manner of his life at home.But this does not usurp her mind.It is but sorrow guessed from farThro' twilight dimly. She must findHer duty elsewhere: not resigned—Because she knows them what they are,Yet scarcely ruffled from her peace.Cordelia—a name well revered;Synonymous with truth and triedAffection; which but needs be heardTo raise one selfsame thought endearedTo men and women far and wide;A name our mothers taught to us.Like placid faces which you knewYears since, but not again shall meet;On a sick bed like wind that blew;An excellent thing, best likened toHer own voice, gentle, soft, and sweet;Shakpere's Cordelia;—better thus.

Macbeth9

The purpose of the following Essay is to demonstrate the existence of a very important error in the hitherto universally adopted interpretation of the character of Macbeth. We shall prove that a design of illegitimately obtaining the crown of Scotland had been conceived by Macbeth, and that it had been communicated by him to his wife, prior to his first meeting with the witches, who are commonly supposed to have suggested that design.

Most persons when they commence the study of the great Shaksperian dramas, already entertain concerning them a set of traditional notions, generally originated by the representations, or misrepresentations, of the theatre, afterwards to become strengthened or confirmed by desultory reading and corroborative criticism. With this class of persons it was our misfortune to rank, when we first entered upon the study of “Macbeth,” fully believing that, in the character of the hero, Shakspere intended to represent a man whose general rectitude of soul is drawn on to ruin by the temptations of supernatural agents; temptations which have the effect of eliciting his latent ambition, and of misdirecting that ambition when it has been thus elicited.

As long as we continued under this idea, the impression produced upon us by “Macbeth” came far short of that sense of complete satisfaction which we were accustomed to receive from every other of the higher works of Shakspere. But, upon deeper study, the view now proposed suggested itself, and seemed to render every thing as it should be. We say that this view suggested itself, because it did not arise directly from any one of the numerous passages which can be quoted in its support; it originated in a general feeling of what seemed to be wanting to the completion of the entire effect; a circumstance which has been stated at length from the persuasion that it is of itself no mean presumption in favour of the opinion which it is the aim of this paper to establish.

Let us proceed to examine the validity of a position, which, if it deserves any attention at all, may certainly claim an investigation more than usually minute. We shall commence by giving an analysis of the first Act, wherein will be considered, successively, every passage which may appear to bear either way upon the point in question.

The inferences which we believe to be deducible from the first scene can be profitably employed only in conjunction with those to be discovered in the third. Our analysis must, therefore, be entered upon by an attempt to ascertain the true character of the impressions which it was the desire of Shakspere to convey by the second.