Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

While the humane, the hospitable care
Of Agis, gently by her lover's corse

On one sad bier the pallid beauties laid
Of Ariena. He from bondage freed

Four eastern captives, whom his generous arm
That day had spared in battle; then began
This solemn charge. 'You, Persians, whom my sword
Acquired in war, unransomed, shall depart.
To you I render freedom which you sought
To wrest from me. One recompense I ask,
And one alone. Transport to Asia's camp
This bleeding princess. Bid the Persian king
Weep o'er this flow'r, untimely cut in bloom.
Then say, th' all-judging pow'rs have thus ordained.
Thou, whose ambition o'er the groaning earth
Leads desolation; o'er the nations spreads
Calamity and tears; thou first shalt mourn,

And through thy house destruction first shalt range'

BALLAD OF ADMIRAL HOSIER'S GHOST.

As near Porto-Bello lying

On the gently-swelling flood,

At midnight with streamers flying

Our triumphant navy rode;

There while Vernon sat all-glorious
From the Spaniards' late defeat ;
And his crews, with shouts victorious,
Drank success to England's fleet;

On sudden, shrilly sounding,
Hideous yells and shrieks were heard;
Then each heart with fear confounding,
A sad troop of ghosts appeared;
All in dreary ham nocks shrouded,
Which for winding sheets they wore,
And with looks by sorrow clouded
Frowning on that hostile shore.

On them gleamed the moon's wan lustre,
When the shade of Hosier brave

His pale bands was seen to muster,
Rising from their watery grave:

O'er the glimmering wave he hied him,
Where the Burford reared her sail,
With three thousand ghosts beside him,
And in groans did Vernon hail.

'Heed, O heed, our fatal story,
I am Hosier's injured ghost,

You, who now have purchased glory
At this place where I was lost;
Though in Porto-Bello's ruin

You now triumph free from fears,
When you think on our undoing,
You will mix your joy with tears.

'See these mournful spectres sweeping
Ghastly o'er this hated wave,

Whose wan cheeks are stained with weeping

These were English captains brave :
Mark those numbers pale and horrid,
Those were once my sailors bold,
Lo, each hangs his drooping forehead,
While his dismal tale is told.

'I, by twenty sail attended,
Did this Spanish town affright;
Nothing then its wealth defended
But my orders not to fight:
O! that in this rolling ocean
I had cast them with disdain,

And obeyed my heart's warm motion,
To have quelled the pride of Spain;

'For resistance I could fear none,
But with twenty ships had done
What thou, brave and happy Vernon
Hast achieved with six alone.

R?

Then the Bastimentos never
Had our foul dishonour seen,
Nor the sea the sad receiver

Of this gallant train had been.

'Thus, like thee, proud Spain dismaying,
And her galleons leading home,
Though condemned for disobeying,
I had met a traitor's doom.

To have fallen, my country crying
"He has played an English part,'
Had been better far than dying
Of a grieved and broken heart.

'Unrepining at thy glory,
Thy successful arms we hail;
But remember our sad story,
And let Hosier's wrongs prevail.
Sent in this foul clime to languish,
Think what thousands fell in vain,
Wasted with disease and anguish,
Not in glorious battle slain.

'Hence with all my train attending,
From their oozy tombs below,
Through the hoary foam ascending,
Here I feed my constant woe;
Here the Bastimentos viewing,
We recall our shameful doom,
And, our plaintive cries renewing,
Wander through the midnight gloom,

'O'er these waves for ever mourning
Shall we roam deprived of rest,
If to Britain's shores returning
You neglect my just request;
After this proud foe subduing,
When your patriot friends you see,
Think on vengeance for my ruin,
And for England shamed in me!'

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

[SAMUEL JOHNSON was born at Lichfield on the 18th of Sept. 1709. The first of his noteworthy poems, London, was published in 1738, at a period of his life when he was in great poverty, and for the copyright of the poem he only obtained ten guineas. It appeared on the same morning as Pope's Satire. 1738,' and surpassed the latter in popularity. In 1747 he wrote his celebrated Prologue for the opening of Drury Lane Theatre. At this theatre was exhibited in 1749 his tragedy of Irene, which, though acted or thirteen nights, failed to secure the public favour. The Vanity of Human Wishes was published earlier in the same year with a view to excite an interest in the author of the play. These were his last important poetical works. He wrote however three Prologues: one to Comus in 1750, when that play was acted for the benefit of Milton's granddaughter; another to Goldsmith's Good-natured Man in 1769; and a third to the revived Word to the Wise in 1777. He died on the 13th of Dec. 1784.]

Johnson may be said to occupy the central place in that highly characteristic school of didactic poetry which was originated by Pope and completed by Goldsmith. The essence of Pope's didactic compositions is personal satire. It is true that he specially prides himself on being the champion of virtue and the great promoter of moral truth. But the virtue which he had invariably before his imagination was his own, and throughout his Imitations of Horace morality is always exalted in the person of the poet, and always seems to be endangered by the wicked virulence of his private enemies. In consequence of their intense personality, Pope's didactic poems fail in point of poetical design. In the Essay on Man the subject-matter is Bolingbroke's rather than Pope's, and the conduct of the argument is extraordinarily confused; while in the Moral Essays and Satires, what really pleases is the beauty of detail, the terse epigrams, the brilliant images, and above all the matchless portraiture of particular characters. The great beauty of Goldsmith's poems, on the other

hand, lies in the justness of their design, the relation of the means to the end, and of the parts to the whole. He relics hardly at all on personal interest for his effects; but he is perhaps the most persuasive of all didactic poets, from the extraordinary art which he possesses of enlisting simple and universal feelings in behalf of the moral principle which he seeks to establish.

Johnson unites in his own style many of the opposite excellences exhibited by his predecessor and his friend. It was impossible that the bias of his strong character should be altogether concealed in his verse, and London in particular appears to have been largely inspired by personal motives like those which suggested to Pope his Imitations of Horace. But the different genius of the two poets is seen in the selection of their respective originals. Pope was struck by the many superficial points of resemblance between himself and the lively egotistical Horace, and seized eagerly on the opportunity of presenting his own virtues, friendships, and enmities to the public under a transparent veil of imitation. Johnson, on the contrary, who, as an unknown writer, could not hope to interest the public in his personal concerns, chose a general theme, and imitated the satirist whose denunciations of Roman vice offered, in many respects, an apt parallel to the manners of his own age. London is marked by genuine public spirit; at the same time we see quite as much of the man as of the moralist in the poet's characteristic allusions to the penalties of poverty, his antipathy to the Whigs, and his dislike of foreigners. The story that 'Thales' was meant for Savage, and that the occasion of the poem was the departure of the latter from London after his trial, is confuted by dates, but we may be sure that the poem gives us a real representation of Johnson's feelings as a struggling author and a political partisan.

The Vanity of Human Wishes marks a calmer and more prosperous epoch in the poet's life, and its philosophical generalising spirit is an anticipation of Goldsmith's Traveller. Johnson was now relieved from the immediate pressure of want; and in his second Imitation he takes a wider survey of mankind; he sup presses all personal satire, and fetches the illustrations of his argument from distant times. The style of this poem is also completely different from that of London: in the latter he is ardent, animated, and colloquial, while in the Vanity of Human Wishes he speaks with the gravity of a moralist, making his periods swelling and sonorous, balancing his verses against each

« AnteriorContinuar »