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fFor tne Southern Field #nd Fireside.l
MORNING DREAMS.
How sweetly rests the fenrld cheek
Upon the dimpled arm;
These purple morning-glories seek
To break her slumber's charm.
They clamber to her casement wide
To watch her in her sleep,
And with the sunlight, side by side.
Into her visions creep.
She smiies! Uow little seems to wake
ller smiles—to me it seems
As if those morning glories shake
Their freshness through her dreams.
L’lkkksve.
—.
[For the Southern Field and Fireside.]
CHARACTERS OF POETRY.
A PRIZE ESSAY.
BY It IS V . B. T. WINKLER.
Poetry is unquestionably the noblest of all
the arts which give pleasure by the means of
imitation. It surpasses music, painting and
sculpture by the precise superiority which lan
guage maintains over inarticulate sound, color
and form. Nay, it appropriates to its own
uses something of the harmony of music, the
picturesqueness of painting, and the classic
precision of sculpture; while it is peculiar in
its power of announcing thoughts and describ
ing a succession of events, and hence tran
scends all its rivals in its exhibitions of truti'.
aud of life. We must, however, protest against
any extravagant notions concerning the ori
gin and the nature of poetry. When such
words as “ creation” and “ inspiration" are ap
plied to it, these terms must submit to a great
limitation of meaning; for the latter is no divine
afflatus, no universal spirit entering into the
soul of gemua, but a pleasureable and passion
ate meditation, whether upon natural scenes, or
real or imaginary events and characters; and
the former is not the making of something from
nothing, but a combination of objects which
have appealed to the senses, of images which
have been treasured in the memory, and of
thoughts aod emotions which have directly af
fected the mind. With such limitations, the
sphere of poetry is sufficiently ample. It*
rank, as the first of the arts, is maintained. It
has a commanding interest, as man’s aboriginal
aud spontaneotiß speech, as a description, as
an association, end, finally, as a symbol of spir
itual states.
1. It seems paradoxical to say that prose
succeeds poetry,* Yet, the remark is true in
respect to literature, and, in a -modified sense,
in respect to language itself. And the reason
of the phenomenon is not so difficult of identi
fication as might at the first blush be suspected;
for poetry is"lhe language of imagination and
sentiment, which reach maturity before pro
saic reason does. The infancy of rational ex
istence, ere it delights in the language of
thought, will first have its fitful tempers
soothed with the melody of cradle songs.—
Homer leads the civilization of Greece. The
Arabian tribes interchanged their congratula
tions, when a new poet appeared among them.
The romance of Antar, in golden letters, was
huug on the Caaba, centuries before Mahomet
gave bis couutrymen, in the Koran, the finished
example of melodious prose. The Scalds were
the literary fathers of the Gauls and other Cel
tic nations. In the dark forests of the Druids
—the first colleges of the North—the measured
aud pleasing sounds of verse recited, supplied
me want of books. Imagination waudered
through the vague obscure of metaphors not
less wild and gigantic than the sacred grove at
Upsal. The rainbow was the bridge of the
gods. The earth was the daughter of night,
decked with hair of herbs and plants, and gird
ed by the sea. The battle was conceived by
the hail of Odin, the shock of bucklers and the
bath of blood. The ocean was the furrowed
field of pirates, aud the ships were horses of
the waves.f Such were the forms of speech
that preceded the more accurate and tamer
language of reason and reflection. The thoughts
of barbarous ages could not be otherwise than
poetic. Minds immersed in nature must form
their conceptions in imagery; in other words,
must reflect nature. They can speak more
easily in measured language, which is, indeed,
like the geometrical forms produced by animal
instinct, or lise the songs of birds —a reminis
cence of nature’s orderly successions. Such,
too, were, naturally, the first methods of instruc
tion. Poetry is the anointed teacher of nations.
The youthful ear is quick to notice the recur
rence of similar sounds and accents. The
youthful, wandering fancy is fixed by the
charm of imaginative wonders and beauties.
Upon this priuciple the parallelism of the Bi
ble was framed. Thought and image follow
each other, like niccessive waves, over the
great deep of revelation. The simple narra
tives of our divine text book are interrupted By
melodious phrases and musical echoes and re
frains. In some of the Psalms the intention of
Bible poetry is distinctly exhibited. They are
acrostics. The successive letters of the alpha
bet appear at the beginnings of the line*.—
They are condescensions to the feeble memory
and wayward attention of men, with respect to
* Son* remarks upon this subjeet may bo found iu
Browu‘» Greek, JJt, p. 172.
tMsllet’s Northern A ntiii., p. 298. Kd. Bohn
THE SOUTHERN FIELD AND FIRESIDE.
spiritual things. They are methods of educa
tion adapted to the youth of tribes. They are
the tones of ineffable tenderness with which
the Great Patriarch spoke to his children amid
the pastoral valleys of Palestine, Poetry, then,
is not an artificial thiDg in its origin. It is, on
the contrary, the spontaneous outbirtb of man's
nature, under its present conditions of exis
tence. It is the necessary mode of communi
cation and instrument of progress. Poetry is
the beginning of civilization.
2. Yet poetry has a higher character: it is
more than a spontaneous utterance. The glow
of feeling, associated with the unconscious har
mony of words, soon submits to the supremacy
of mind. The bard becomes the artist. First,
he is under the control of internal emotions and
outward things. He is, so to speak, possessed
by the sensuous beauty of form and color, and
the majesty of strength and vastness. The
wild onset of storms, the crash of battles, the
broad lights and shades of day, the solemn lus
tre of night, the inspiration of red wine, the ra
diant glance of woman, the grass grown turf
bedewed with elegaic tears, awaken the unto
tored sympathies of his lyre. He lives to ad
mire, to pity, and to love. Wordsworth has
thus celebrated this youthful state:
“ Nature
T» me wub all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock.
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and tlieir forms, were then to me
An appetite—a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unboi rowed from the eye.’
T1 is fine enthusiasm is fleeting; but it can
be recalled. A brooding mind, like fire, causes
invisible marks to reappear. The old feeling
returns. The objects and circumstances that
excited it. are reproduced in order to awaken
a similar emotion in the minds of others.. The
measured numbers swell with the grandeur
of mountains, the br<#dth of wide, extended
plains, the flowing majesty of rivers, the deep,
strong pulse of the sea ; and the mnving shbws
of life, and the various notes of grief and joy,
rise and fall like its waves. These are now
the commonplaces from which genius draws
its materials. These are the magnificent de
vices with which it moves the hearts of men.
It is interesting to observe.how faithful the
poets in their descriptions are to those scenes
with which they have been most conversant,
especially in the most impressible period of
life. The exquisite Paradise of Milton is em
bowered with “high Etrurian shades." The
prototype of his ierraced and woody garden—
with the tree of life “blooming ambrosial fruit
of vegetable gold," with its slopes covered
with flocks, and its grottos overhung with the
purple vine, aDd its watered meads—lay be
neath his eye when, a stripling, be stood upon
the heights above the valley of the Aruo.—
The majestic pines which Sbakspearu saw in
his youth, rise eminent above the pictures lie
has drawn. Scenes, in themselves insignifi
cant, often have a strange charm, when in
corporated into the verse of one who has
lived among them, and who has learned to
love them. ’ Even the fens of Lincolnshire
sparkle with a gem-like brilliancy, as set in the
golden verse of Tennyson:
Some blue peaks in the distance rose.
And white against the cold white sky
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept.
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh:
Above in the wind was the swallow,
ChaatDg itself at its own wild will;
And far through the marsh, green and still.
The tangled watercourses slept,
Shot over with purple and green and yellow.
’Their truth to nature often enables us to de
tect the secret haunts of hards. Thus we know
Homer to be an lonian. He chanted with the
swans of the Cayster. When he speaks of “ the
West wind that blows the waves to the shores,"
we upon which side of the Egan he
dwelt, and what terial impulses swept his
chords. Yea, sometimes, early so
affect a susceptible heart that it can do no
more than repeat them. An unaltered native
fabric constitutes its singing robes. Thus So
phocles ever preserves the spirit with which in
his beautiful and graceful youth, lie danced
cbout the trophy at Salamis, and struck the
lyre of victory. His dramas are refluent of the
balmy airs and delicate harmonies of Coloneus.
Beneath the soft, tragic glooms his voice rings
out like the song of the Diglitingale he de
scribes beneath the ivy shades. His tearful
eye is quick to brighten with pictures of stately
vessels, and steeds guiding the thundering
chariot, and sacred olives*growing upon the
land of Pallas, and altars wreathed with dow
ers, and fields hallowed by the Muses and re
lleuling the golden glory of Vemw, Oueen of
Lovb *
The imagination has also a wider sphere
than that of personal observation aod expe
rience. Not only does the poet reflect the
scenes which lie about him, but those which voy
ages and travels have reported, as the lake re
flects the changeful clouds sailing through the
sky, as well as the stationary shadows of the
mountains that bound its own domain. He has
the freedom of all lands and all ages. The
brows of the Irish minstrel are perfumed with
the precious nard of the East, and pearls rifled
from Oman’s green water bestud his harp.—
Especially admirable is the world-wide and in
tuitive genius which has given Shakspeare a
* Hue the tihorns in Oedip. Colon., 712, of which we
have given an abstract in prose. The eloquent testi
; inony of Hughes to his minute accuracy is quoted by
i Brown, p, 293,
citizenship in climes so various and so remote.
We wonder to ?ee bow familiarly the swan of
Avon haunts Denmark’s frosty cliffs, and the
yellow tide of the Tiber, and the vine-clad hills
of France, and the cliffs of Albion, and the
blue lochs among the Scottish Highlands.—
Often history blends its charms with those of
the outer world. Yirgil needed not to leave
his native land in search of the soft Elysiau
air and shining fields of which he sung; but
Italy seemed transfigured when he reproduced
new landscapes in his verse, and peopled the
vision with the shades of heroes. Scott clothed
the monotonous and barren mountains of his
country with the tartans and plumes and cloud
capt battlements of old romance. The vener
able carpenter who enjoyed the friendship of
an humbler poet, thought that the country had
grown more beautiful since Burns had written
his “ bonnie little sang about it."
We have now to regard poetryas an association
It is evident that scenes,characters and events —
the subjects of poetry—cannot be described in
their entireness. The infinite variety, the num
berless details, in every object, demand that
certain particulars should be grouped together,
while others are wholly neglected. The prin
ciple upon which these selections and combina
tions are made is partly natural and partly
moral. In the first place, even a natural scene
has its own expression. A peculiar spirit
characterizes it In whatever display of a pro
lific nature, in the contemplation of whatever
creative act, some one tpne perpetually recurs
to the admiring and thoughtful observer. Thus
an uncultivated scene repels. The deep soli
tude, disturbed at intervals by strange cries,
the awful, threatening cliffs, and the gnarled,
twisted trees, interlaced with thorny vines, are
the borne of a tutelary genius that bends a
stern regard upon the intruder. A cultivated
scene allures. The airy groves assume grace
ful and pleasing shapes as we approach them.
Verdant fields spread like a carpet. A sound
of cheerful welcome arises from the murmur
ing brooks and the rustling corn. When once
the spirit of the scene has been caught, a natu
ral expression, a graceful outline, a picturesque
group, will form a painting which the canvass
itself cannot equal. In the second place, the
mind has a certain power over its own sensa
tions and conceptions. It unites the images
drawn from nature so ua to form new and beau
tiful combinations, as the prism catches the
colorless rays of the sun, first to decompose
them, and then to blend them into the hues of
the rainbow. It has power to detect and fix a
single aspect of a scene, or to group together
such a selection of particulars and circumstances
as a wilful fancy, a bold imagination, or a taste
ful judgment may approve. Thus poetry at
tains to beauty and sublimity. An eye fond of
minute aud harmonious proportions, a heart
auseoptible to the glowing and feminine charms
of uature are the discoverers, and even to a
certain extent the creators of beauty. Hence
love which awakens this susceptibility has
proved so often, as in the case of Rums, the
magiciqu to compose the turbulent elements of
song. When the jovial poet cried :
“ I 800 her yet, tho sonsie queen
That lighted up my jingle—
Her witching smile, her panky een
That gart my heart-strings tingle,”
he touched upon one of the profound theories
of his art. And hence it was not by accident
that the observant Greek was the worshipper,
the artist, and the philosopher of beauty.—
When Plato, who in so many respects was truly
Hellenic, ascends to the infinite beauty, he is
no longer attended by the genius of his coun
try. He has encroached upon the sublime.—
He submits to the influence of the far East;
aud, yet, his national culture appears in the
discipline which he recommends. He teaches
the inquirer to familiarize his thoughts and
senses .with all natural beauty, and then to
use these experiences as the shining rounds of
the ladder by* which he ascends to the skies.
The Greek idea even of divine beauty is not in
finite : it has no relation to the vast dream of
the philosopher to whom we have referred.
It is perpetuated in the smooth Apollo—a
Greek conception by whatever artist sculptured
that stands not less distinctly in the canto of
“ Child Harold” than in the gallery of the Vati
can:
“ The Lord of the unerring bow
The (iod of life and poesy and light—
The snn in human limbs arrayed and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot—the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance: in his eye
And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might,
And majesty, flash their full iightcnlngsby,
Developing In that one glance the Deity.
[Canto IVvs. l®t.
On the other hand, a comprehensive eye,
gathering into its vision groups, and masses, and
vague outlines —a vigorous imagination, which
scales the fastnesses of nature, and delights to
brave her masculine, commanding and threat
ening moods, is the discover and creator of
the sublime. Here precision is out of place.
The sense of delight and awe which mountains
and oceans awaken may be dissipated by too
minute a scrutiny oferags and waves. It is
for this reason that a stranger on the Alps
realizes such grandeur around him as his guide
has never beheld or imagined. The one con
templates the amazing primeval chaos of the
scenery. The other marks the objects which
particularize it. The one moves, wafted as it
were unconsciously through a “silent sea of
pines”—his eager gaze fixed on the cloudy
robes of the mountain, with the reddening sum
mit far above set in the brow of heaven like a
star, The other epunta the milestones, and
marks the windings of the path. The well
known hymn in the Vale of Chamouni is a
magnificent illustration of this theory. In a
word, to return to the position from which we
set cut, beauty and sublimity exist in nature,
but they appear only when nature is trans
figured by the mind. Their elements are at
once around us and within us; and it is the
office of poetry to combine and perpetuate
them in harmonious numbers. In this respect,
painting and poetry closely approach each
other. In association, the pencil enters into
rivalry with the pen. Cole, the American
painter, combines and expresses with great
felicity. His pictures on the “ March of Em
pire” and the “Voyage, of Life” are poems on
canvass. Yet, poetry has this advantage over
paifiting, that it can represent the emotions ex
cited by nature, as well as nature itself.
4. By a similar, yet higher sort of combina
tion, poetry is also creative. It brings man
not oniy into conscious but into living connex
ion with nature. It discovers the secret har
mony between the outward and the inward
world. It elevates material things to spiritual
states, and thrills them with spiritual feelings.
Some one has finely remarked that “it is im
possible to watch the night and view the break
of day in a fine country without being sensible
that we have feelings in harmony with each
successive change, from the first streak of light,
until the whole landscape is displayed in val
leys, woods and sparkling waters. The changes
on the scene are not more rapid than the tran
sitions of feeling which attend them.”* Or let
us go forth into the solitude of a starry night
and send our thoughts into the still, gray
depths. It is not alone because the heavens
declare the glory of God that emotions of sin
gular majesty possess us. We feel ourselves to
be parts of this immense system, and yet to be
grander natures than its gathering constella
tions. In moments of elevated sentiment, they
seem but as the lamps upon our pathway
through this earthly dark, bat as the charac
ters of our thoughts, but as the sparks of a
funeral pyre from which our enfranchised souls
shall arise. The highest excellence of poetry
consists in the realization of such symbols. In '
Mediaeval art the animal and the vegetable
kingdom were subsidized to the purposes of
religion. The vine represented faith in its in
timacy ; the lion, faith in its strength. The
dog and the twining ivy represented fidelity;
and the rosebud bloomed, and the tender peli
can and turtle nestled in the stony foliage of
capitals, as the perpetual s : gns of mercy and
charity.f Natural objects appear invested with
a similar character in the temple of the Muses.
The highest lesson of art is the harmony be
tween the outward and the inwatd. To dis
cover that harmony is to become a true artist.
To express it in speech, is to utter the noblest
poetic word.
These principles constrain us to assign to
Shakspeare a higher rank than Homer as a
poet. They resemble each other in many re
spects. The blind minstrel with tattered garb
and simple speeeh is brother to the courtly and
cultured prince of English soDg. Both have a
minute acquaintance with objects and with
men. Both are wonderfully accurate in de
scription and in the developemcn't of incidents,
characters, and emotions. Both unvote all the
other elements in their compositions to the dis
play and the aggrandizement of human nature.
The first has embodied in Achilles ar.d Ulyses
the traditions of all heroic times —the military
hero perishing in his young beauty, and the
adventurous hero conducted by discretion
through strange scenes and thrilling dangers.
Nature is ever fresh and young in the Iliad and
and the Odyssev. Yet, not so bright are the
isles of Greece as the figures of gedlike majes
ty that stride over their sounding shores. The
plains of Troy are but as the arena spread for
the swift feet of Hector and his foe: and the
fancies of the bard are but as the glittering
dust that rises from their conflict. The walls
of Troy seem built only to sustain the dainty
steps of Hellen, or to shield the conjugal virtue
of Andromache, and the crags of Ithica rise like
beacons out of the waves for the sake of the
widowed and faithful queen, who
Busied with the loom, and plying last
Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice
Sits chanting there.”i
Shakspeare also is eminent as an observer of
men. He subordinates incident to character
even in those stirring dramas in which be
brings the proud chronicles of his country upon
the stage Ho gives a truthful expression to
every variety of rank, of sex, of age, and of na
tion. He even creates new worlds and taxes
his powers with the description of an imagin
ary humanity. Ghosts in armor glimmer on
the ramparts under the moon. Witches scream
on the blasted heath. Ariel girdles the earth.
Titania, the passionate queen of the fairies,
“ On the bleached margent of the sea.
Dances her ringleta to the whistling wind.’’,
And every description is so true, that did such
beings come into existence, we feel sure that
they would think and act just like their proto
types; and, yet, wa venture to affirm that the
peculiar excellence of Shakspeare did not con
sist either in characters or inventions. It is
rather in the picturesqueness with which he
portrays both. It is in the cunning use of im
agery by which the otherwise imperceptible
progress of feeling is exhibited. It is in his
mastery over the emblems of passion, such as
* Quoted in Man. Primeval, p. 219.
t Comp. Alzog Eccl. Hist, p. 298, A
J Tennyson's Lady of Bbaloit. , w