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III.

177. THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY.

E believe that poëtry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousnèss of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity (krist yăn'ĩ ti),—that is, to spiritualize our nature.

2. True, poëtry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness and misăn'thropy, she can not wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with what is good in our nature, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good.

It

3. Poëtry has a natural alliance with our best affections. delights in the beauty and sublimity of outward nature and of the soul. It indeed portrays with terrible energy the excesses of the passions; but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion.

4. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interèst in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life.

5. We are aware that it is objected to poëtry that it gives wrong views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom against which poetry wars the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life-we do not deny; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders to mankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earth-born prudence.

6. But, passing over this topic, we would observe that the complaint against poëtry, as abounding in illusion and deception, is, in the main, groundlèss. In many poems there is more of truth than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. In poetry, when the letter is falsehood, the spirit is often profoundest wisdom.

7. And if truth thus dwells in the boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be expected in his delineations of life; for the present life, which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the highest office of the bard to detect this divine element among the grösser pleasures and labors of our earthly being. The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds in the poetic.

8. The affections which spread beyond ourselves, and stretch far into futurity; the workings of mighty passions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy; the innocent and irrepressible joy of infancy; the bloom, and buoyancy, and dazzling hopes of youth; the throbbings of the heart when it first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fullness of feeling, and depth of affection, and her blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire, these are all poetical.

9. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its mōre refined but ĕvanes'cent joys; and in this he does well; for it is

good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being.

10. This power of poëtry to refine our views of life and happinèss is more and more needed as society advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless and artificial manners, which makes civilization so tame and unin'teresting. It is needed to counteract the tendency of physical science, which-being now sought, not, as formerly, for intellectual gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts-requires a new development of imagination, taste, and poetry, to preserve men from sinking into an earthly, material, ep'icure'an' life. CHANNING.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D. D., an eminent American divine, was born at Newport, R. I., April 7th, 1780. At the age of twelve he was sent to New London, Conn., to prepare for college under his uncle, the Rev. Henry Channing. His father, an able and hospitable lawyer, soon afterward died, to which, in connection with a revival which then swept over New England, he attributed the commencement of his decidedly religious life. He entered the freshman class of Harvard College in 1794, where he graduated with the highest honors. He became pastor of the Federal Street Church, Boston, in 1803. The society rapidly increased under his charge, and his reputation and influence became marked and extensive. He married, in 1814; visited Europe for his health, in 1822; and died at Bennington, Vt., October 2, 1842. He published many admirable addresses and letters. His nephew, William E. Channing, col lected and published six volumes of his writings in 1848. A selection of his writings, entitled "Beauties of Channing," has been published in London; and many of his essays, at various times, have been translated into German. Among the best of his general writings are his "Remarks on the Character and Writings of Milton;" on "Bonaparte;" on "Fenelon ;" and on "Self-Culture."

IV.

178. TO THE POET.

HOU, who wouldst wear the name

TH

Of poët mid thy brethren of mankind,

And clothe in words of flame

Thoughts that shall live within the general mind,-
Deem not the framing of a deathless lay

The pastime of a drowsy summer day.

1 Ep`i cu rē' an, pertaining to Epicurus, a celebrated Greek philosopher, whose theory was based

upon the opinion that pleasure constitutes the highest human happiness; hence, given to luxury.

2. But gather all thy powers,

And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave, And in thy lonely hours,

At silent morning or at wakeful eve,

While the warm current tingles through thy veins,
Set forth the burning words in fluent strains.

3. No smooth array of phrase,

Artfully sought and ordered though it be,
Which the cold rhymer lays

Upon his page with languid in'dustry,
Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed,
Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read.
4. The secret wouldst thou know

To touch the heart or fire the blood at will?
Let thine own eyes o'erflow;

Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill;
Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past,
And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

5. Then, should thy verse appear

Halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought,
Touch the crude line with fear,

Save in the moment of impassioned thought;
Then summon back the original glow, and mend
The strain with rapture that with fire was penned.

6. Yět let no empty gust

Of passion find an utterance in thy lay,

A blast that whirls the dust

Along the howling street and dies away;
But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,

Like currents journeying through the windless deep.

7. Seek'st thou, in living lays,

To limn the beauty of the earth and sky? Before thine inner gaze

Let all that beauty in clear vision lie; Look on it with exceeding love, and write The words inspired by wonder and delight.

8. Of tempests wouldst thou sing,

Or tell of battles-make thyself a part

Of the great tumult; cling

To the tossed wreck with terror in thy heart;

Scale, with the assaulting host, the rampart's height,
And strike and struggle in the thickest fight.

9. So shalt thou frame a lay

That haply may endure from age to age,

And they who read shall say:

What witchery hangs upon this poet's page!

What art is his the written spells to find

That sway from mood to mood the willing mind! BRYANT.

SECTION XXXV.

H

I.

179. THE BELLS.

EAR the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells-

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic ' rhyme,

2

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
2. Hear the mellow wedding-bells,

Golden bells!

What a world' of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!

1 Runic (ronik), an epithet applied to the language and letters of the ancient Goths.

2 Tin`tin năb`u la' tion, a tink ling sound, as of a bell or bells. 'World, (world).

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