No More Learning

There are long passages now
before us of the most despicable trash, with no merit whatever
beyond that of their antiquity. . The criticisms of the editor do not
particularly please us. His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not
to be false. His opinion, for example, of Sir Henry Wotton's "Verses on
the Queen of Bohemia"-that "there are few finer things in our language,"
is untenable and absurd.

In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of
Poesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all
time. Here every thing is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. No
prepossession for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine no
other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of
poetry, a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments,
stitched, apparently, together, without fancy, without plausibility, and
without even an attempt at adaptation.

In common with all the world, we have been much delighted with "The
Shepherd's Hunting" by Withers--a poem partaking, in a remarkable
degree, of the peculiarities of "Il Penseroso. " Speaking of Poesy the
author says:

"By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least boughs rustleling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed,
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Something that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness--
The dull loneness, the black shade,
That these hanging vaults have made
The strange music of the waves
Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss,
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect

Walled about with disrespect;
From all these and this dull air
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight. "

But these lines, however good, do not bear with them much of the general
character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found
in Corbet's "Farewell to the Fairies! " We copy a portion of Marvell's
"Maiden lamenting for her Fawn," which we prefer-not only as a specimen
of the elder poets, but in itself as a beautiful poem, abounding in
pathos, exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness-to anything of
its species:

"It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet,
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race,
And when't had left me far away
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;
And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft where it should lie,
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes.
For in the flaxen lilies' shade
It like a bank of lilies laid;
Upon the roses it would feed
Until its lips even seemed to bleed,
And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip,
But all its chief delight was still
With roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within. "

How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable!
It pervades all. . It comes over the sweet melody of the words-over the
gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself-even
over the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the
beauties and good qualities of her favorite-like the cool shadow of a
summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, "and all sweet flowers. "
The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line is
an idea conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the
artlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or her
grief, or the fragrance and warmth and _appropriateness _of the little
nest-like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay upon
them, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy
little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on
her face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought
in the few lines we have quoted the _wonder _of the little maiden at the
fleetness of her favorite-the "little silver feet"--the fawn challenging
his mistress to a race with "a pretty skipping grace," running on
before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her approach only to
fly from it again-can we not distinctly perceive all these things? How
exceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,

"And trod as if on the four winds! "

A vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of
the speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Then
consider the garden of "my own," so overgrown, entangled with roses and
lilies, as to be "a little wilderness"--the fawn loving to be there,
and there "only"--the maiden seeking it "where it _should _lie"--and
not being able to distinguish it from the flowers until "itself would
rise"--the lying among the lilies "like a bank of lilies"--the loving to
"fill itself with roses,"

"And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,"

and these things being its "chief" delights-and then the pre-eminent
beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole
only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence,
the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more
passionate admiration of the bereaved child--

"Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within. "

* "Book of Gems," Edited by S. C. Hall




POEMS

TO

THE NOBLEST OF HER SEX

THE AUTHOR OF

"THE DRAMA OF EXILE"--

TO

MISS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

OF ENGLAND

_I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME_

WITH THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC ADMIRATION AND WITH

THE MOST SINCERE ESTEEM

1845 E.