this writer, I shall content myself with quoting two poems, in two very different tones of feeling, and which, I think, contain all the characteristics of which I have been speaking.
When maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavour.
A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.
A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate,
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flush'd her spirit.
I know not by what name beside
I shall it call ;—if 't was not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.
Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool,
But she was train'd in Nature's school,
Nature had bless'd her.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, hard to bind;
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.
My sprightly neighbour, gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
Some summer morning
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet forewarning?
May the Babylonish curse
Straight confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind,
(Still the phrase is wide or scant)
To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!
Or in any terms relate
Half my love, or half my hate:
For I hate, yet love, thee so,
That, whichever thing I show,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrain'd hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed,
Sooty retainer to the vine,
Bacchus' black servant, negro fine;
Sorcerer, that makest us dote upon
Thy begrimed complexion,
And, for thy pernicious sake,
More and greater oaths to break
Than reclaimed lovers take
'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay
Much too in the female way,
While thou suck'st the labouring breath
Faster than kisses, or than death.
Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us ;
While each man, through thy height'ning steam,
Does like a smoking Ætna seem,
And all about us does express
(Fancy and Wit in richest dress)
A Sicilian fruitfulness.
Thou through such a mist dost show us,
That our best friends do not know us,
And, for those allowed features
Due to reasonable creatures,
Liken'st us to fell Chimeras,
Monsters that, who see us, fear us.
Worse than Cerberus or Geryon,
Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.
Bacchus we know, and we allow
His tipsy rites. But what art thou,
That but by reflex canst show
What his deity can do,
As the false Egyptian spell
Aped the true Hebrew miracle?
Some few vapours thou may'st raise,
The weak brain may serve to amaze,
But to the reins and nobler heart
Canst nor life nor heat impart.
Brother of Bacchus, later born,
The old world was sure forlorn,
Wanting thee, that aidest more
The God's victories than before
All his panthers, and the brawls
Of his piping Bacchanals.
These, as stale, we disallow,
Or judge of thee meant: only thou
His true Indian conquest art;
And, for ivy round his dart,
The reformed god now weaves
A fine thyrsis of thy leaves.
Scent to match thy rich perfume
Chemic art did ne'er presume,
Through her quaint alembic strain,
None so sov'reign to the brain.
Nature, that did in thee excel,
Framed again no second smell,
Roses, violets, but toys
For the smaller sort of boys,
Or for greener damsels meant ;
Thou art the only manly scent.
Stinking'st of the stinking kind,
Filth of the mouth, and fog of the mind,
Africa, that brags her foyson,
Breeds no such prodigious poison
Henbane, nightshade, both together,
Hemlock, aconite.-
Plant divine, of rarest virtue ;
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.
'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee;
None e'er prosper'd who defamed thee
Irony all, and feign'd abuse,
Such as perplex'd lovers use,
At a need, when, in despair,
To paint forth their fairest fair,
Or in part but to express
That exceeding comeliness
Which their fancies doth so strike,
They borrow language of dislike;
And, instead of Dearest Miss,
Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss,
And those forms of old admiring,
Call her Cockatrice and Siren;
Basilisk, and all that's evil,
Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil,
Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor,
Monkey, Ape, and twenty more;
Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,-
Not that she is truly so;
But no other way I know
A contentment to express,
Borders so upon excess,
That they do not rightly wot
Whether it be pain or not.
Or, as men, constrain'd to part
With what's nearest to their heart,
While their sorrow's at the height,
Lose discrimination quite,
And their hasty wrath let fall,
To appease their frantic gall,
On the darling thing whatever,
Whence they feel it death to sever;
Though it be, as they, perforce,
Guiltless of the sad divorce.
For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee.
For thy sake, Tobacco, I
Would do any thing but die,
And but seek to extend my days
Long enough to sing thy praise.
But, as she, who once hath been
A King's consort, is a queen
Ever after, nor will bate
Any title of her state,
Though a widow or divorced,
So I, from thy converse forced,
The old name and style retain,
A right Katherine of Spain;
And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys
Of the bless'd Tobacco boys;
Where, though I, by sour physician,
Am debarr'd the full fruition
Of thy favours, I may catch
Some collateral sweets, and snatch
Sidelong odours, that give life
Like glances from a neighbour's wife;
And still live in the by-places
And the suburbs of thy graces ;
And in thy borders take delight,
An unconquer'd Canaanite.
I would not have quoted to such a length, if I had known how to have broken the preceding poem into parts. But it is so perfectly continuous and one throughout, that such anatomy was impossible. I do not remember any thing so near the swing and flow of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, as the lines printed in italics. The same fusion of ideas, couched in the same long drawn out melody, is conspicuous in both poets; I question if the diction only be very much superior in Milton: every thing else is out of the comparison entirely.
It is foreign to the purpose of these letters to consider the prose works of the authors whose poetical merits I have alone taken upon me to discuss; yet so small is the
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