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.A.P. PREFACE


      These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their
      redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected
      while going at random the “rounds of the press.” I am naturally anxious
      that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate
      at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me
      to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or
      very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me
      from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier
      circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has
      been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in
      reverence: they must not-they can not at will be excited, with an eye to
      the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of man-kind. E. A. P.
   1845




POEMS OF LATER LIFE




THE RAVEN. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
 Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
 While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
                          Only this, and nothing more.”
 Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
 And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.