No More Learning

De Beranger has wrought innumerable
things, pungent and spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too
imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public attention, and
thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be
whistled down the wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing
a poem, in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the
following exquisite little Serenade--

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me--who knows how? --
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark the silent stream--
The champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on shine,
O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O, press it close to shine again,
Where it will break at last.

Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines--yet no less a poet
than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal
imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by
him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in
the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

One of the finest poems by Willis--the very best in my opinion which
he has ever written--has no doubt, through this same defect of undue
brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the

The shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight-tide--
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,
Walk'd spirits at her side.

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,
And Honor charm'd the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair--
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true--
For heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to won,
But honor'd well her charms to sell.
If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair--
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail--
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn,
And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow
From this world's peace to pray
For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way! --
But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven
By man is cursed alway!

In this composition we find it difficult to recognize the Willis who has
written so many mere "verses of society. " The lines are not only richly
ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an evident
sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain throughout all the
other works of this author.

While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity
is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of
the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded
by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which,
in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have
accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all
its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of _The Didactic. _It
has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that
the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said,
should inculcate a morals and by this moral is the poetical merit of the
work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have patronized this happy
idea, and we Bostonians very especially have developed it in full. We
have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's
sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to
confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and
force:--but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to
look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under
the sun there neither exists nor _can _exist any work more thoroughly
dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem _per se,
_this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely
for the poem's sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of man,
I would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation.
I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by dissipation.