Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

ion of mimic thunder; amid the trumpet echoes of gratulation to the new elect, that the "temple was opened," and in the temple "the ark of the mysteries." It was here, perhaps, amidst the baying of dogs, and cries of "Eleu, Eleulu;" amidst "thunders and lightnings, and voices," that an image of the regenerated God, slowly emerged from his symbolic tomb, and a mighty voice, with syllabic intonation, pronounced aloud, "The Lord of all things is come into the world! The great and beneficent King Osiris is born again!"

E. C.

A. Apis was drowned, after a certain time, in the fountain of the priests.-Pliny.

B. None but the priests knew the secret places wherein they entombed Apis.-Pausanias. It is not unlikely that treasures were kept in the same secret receptacle.

C. See Pythagoras's Golden Verses,-Virgil, 6th book.

D. There is extant a representation of an initiation in the mysteries of Osiris, represented by an eye in a circle on a sceptre, to which the candidates are approaching by a flight of fourteen steps. The number fourteen was a mystic number, and particularly devoted to Serapis, it being the number of cubits to which the Nile rose.

E. See the Platonic writers for the "Sidereal Ladder" of the Mythratic caves. The being suspended over a Barathrum, or deep gulf, was one of the most formidable trials of the mysteries. "Stoop not down," says a Chaldean oracle, (Ammianus. Ind. Antic. vol. iv.. p. 271.) "for a precipice lies beneath the earth, drawing through a ladder of seven steps. At the foot of the ladder yawns a deep gulf, down which the soul which could not rise rapidly plunges."

F. Pliny. Strabo.

88

ON NATURE AND ART IN POETRY.

[Although the date of the following letter is two years back, yet we consider its subject as one which is always of strong poetical interest. It was, we are assured, not written for publication,-which can, we think, be traced in the familiar tone of the composition-but we have preferred giving it in its present state, to throwing its matter into a more formal and sustained essay.]

MY DEAR H ་

London, May, 1821.

You ask me for my opinion of Lord Byron's pamphlet. Mr. Bowles' answer has just appeared, and I send it you together with this. The question at issue between the controversialists seems to be simply this"Which is the superior, for the purposes of poetry, Nature or Art ?"-From this, however, both have wandered;-Lord Byron from not caring a jot about the point in question, or about his antagonist, or about any thing else in the world, except writing a brilliant and bitter pamphlet, calculated to display his wit, and to

shew up' a few brother poets;-all of whom, by the way, his Lordship has, at various times and in various manners, abused and ridiculed-and if now and then he have given some of them praise, it has been in such a sort as to render it doubtful whether his abuse be not the more desirable of the two. His caresses, indeed, have always very much the air of those of the bear he used to keep when he was at Cambridge.

Mr. Bowles has strayed from the question in debate from having written evidently in great haste, and with very little connection ;-for, though he has attempted to classify very much in his titles and headings, his arguments are brought forward in no sort of succession or dependence on each other. I shall, therefore, drop Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles, except where their argu

ments bear directly on mine,-and discuss the question on its own merits.

In the first place, then, I hold, that, though the poetical objects in Nature and in Art heighten and assist each other, yet that Nature has few, if any, unpoetical objects, whereas many of those of Art are so ;-and secondlyThat the most poetical objects in Nature are more poetical than the most poetical objects in Art.

With regard to the first of these positions-What object in Nature, unspoiled by man, and still existing as it came from the hand of God, is not highly susceptible of poetry?-I know of none.-There are, indeed, few things left with which man has not meddled. But still there are some ;-some which he has hitherto left untouched, others on which his touch is powerless. "Cette superbe mer, sur laquelle l'homme n'a jamais pu imprimer ses traces" still bears, and ever will bear, its own unchangeable aspect. The mountains which soar into the sky, and lift their heads far beyond the reach of man and his power, reign in the majesty of Nature,

"On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow."

Many parts of the American forests also are yet untrodden, at least unchanged, by man. And are not they poetical? Those vast woods which cover what in our smaller hemisphere would be the space of kingdoms— with all those sights and sounds which embellish and give a charm to forest scenery-fruits and flowers, and leaves of every shade of green, from the shadowy pine to the brilliant acacia-their birds of every conceivable variety of plumage, and modulation of songand those beasts which add to all these things the interest and the dignity of danger—are not, I again ask, forests in this primeval state, in the highest degree

poetical?-And what does Art do here?-the axe resounds and the fire blazes, and the proud trees of the forest become blackened stumps-the beautiful and varied glades are opened into unsightly clearings,—and the picturesque Indian, who pursues his enemy or his game through the almost trackless woods, is replaced by a back-woodsman-the brutal and dissolute savage of civilization, instead of the pure-minded and dignified savage of Nature.

But even the most unpromising things in Nature, such as leafless trees, stagnant pools, and barren heaths, may be adapted with the utmost advantage to the purposes of poetry.

The bleakest rock upon the loneliest heath,
Feels in its barrenness some touch of spring;
And in the April dew or beam of May,
Its moss and lichen freshen and revive *.

Is not this poetry?-and what is its subject?

The bleakest rock upon the loneliest heath.

There are few things in Nature of more wretched appearance than a fen, and yet even this has given rise to writing truly poetical. The passage I allude to is in Crabbe's tale of a Lover's Journey-and it is so powerful and extraordinary, that it is well worth quoting:

On either side

Is level fen, a prospect wild and wide,
With dikes on either hand by Ocean's self supplied:
Far on the right, the distant sea is seen,

And salt the springs that feed the marsh between ;
Beneath an ancient bridge, the straiten'd flood
Rolls through its sloping banks of slimy mud ;
Near it a sunken boat resists the tide,
That frets and hurries to th' opposing side ;
The rushes sharp, that on the borders grow,
Bend their brown flow'rets to the stream below,
Impure in all its course, in all its progress slow..
Here a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom,
Nor wears a rosy blush, nor sheds perfume;

* Beaumont.

The few dull flowers that o'er the place are spread
Partake the nature of their fenny bed;
Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom,
Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume;
Here the dwarf sallows creep, the septfoil harsh,
And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh ;
Low on the ear the distant billows sound,
And just in view appears their stony bound;
No hedge nor tree conceals the glowing sun,
Birds, save a wat'ry tribe, the district shun,

Nor chirp among the reeds where bitter waters run.—

[ocr errors]

-and what is the subject of this powerful poetry ?—a marsh! To this passage is appended a note, which, though of course in prose, is so picturesquely and vigorously written, that I shall copy it, and claim its evidence in my cause, for writing need not be in verse to be poetry. "The ditches of a fen so near the ocean are lined with irregular patches of a coarse and stained lava; a muddy sediment rests on the horse-tail and other perennial herbs, which in part conceal the shallowness of the stream; a fat-leaved pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in the year, and the razor-edged bull-rush in the summer and autumn. The fen itself has a dark and saline herbage; there are rushes and arrow head, and in a few patches the flakes of the cotton-grass are seen, but more commonly the sea-aster, the dullest of that numerous and hardy genus; a thrift, blue in flower, but withering and remaining withered till the winter scatters it; the salt-wort, both simple and shrubby, a few kinds of grass, changed by their soil and atmosphere, and low plants, of two or three denominations, undistinguished in a general view of the scenery ;—such is the vegetation of the fen, when it is at a small distance from the ocean."

I will give another, perhaps still more striking, instance. It is a description in Rob Roy of a barren

« ForrigeFortsæt »