Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 112

4 The school-boy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts thy curious voice to hear, And imitates the lay.

5 What time the pea puts on the bloom, Thou fli'st thy vocal vale, An annual guest in other lands, Another spring to hail.

6 Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.

7 Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!

We'd make with joyful wing Our annual visit o'er the globe, Attendants on the spring.

ELEGY, WRITTEN IN SPRING.

1 'Tis past: the North has spent his rage; Stern Winter now resigns the lengthening day; The stormy howlings of the winds a.s.suage, And warm o'er ether western breezes play.

2 Of genial heat and cheerful light the source, From southern climes, beneath another sky, The sun, returning, wheels his golden course: Before his beams all noxious vapours fly.

3 Far to the North grim Winter draws his train, To his own clime, to Zembla's frozen sh.o.r.e; Where, throned on ice, he holds eternal reign, Where whirlwinds madden, and where tempests roar.

4 Loosed from the bonds of frost, the verdant ground Again puts on her robe of cheerful green, Again puts forth her flowers, and all around, Smiling, the cheerful face of Spring is seen.

5 Behold! the trees new-deck their withered boughs; Their ample leaves, the hospitable plane, The taper elm, and lofty ash disclose; The blooming hawthorn variegates the scene.

6 The lily of the vale, of flowers the queen, Puts on the robe she neither sewed nor spun: The birds on ground, or on the branches green, Hop to and fro, and glitter in the sun.

7 Soon as o'er eastern hills the morning peers, From her low nest the tufted lark upsprings; And cheerful singing, up the air she steers; Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she sings.

8 On the green furze, clothed o'er with golden blooms That fill the air with fragrance all around, The linnet sits, and tricks his glossy plumes, While o'er the wild his broken notes resound.

9 While the sun journeys down the western sky, Along the green sward, marked with Roman mound, Beneath the blithesome shepherd's watchful eye, The cheerful lambkins dance and frisk around.

10 Now is the time for those who wisdom love, Who love to walk in Virtue's flowery road, Along the lovely paths of Spring to rove, And follow Nature up to Nature's G.o.d.

11 Thus Zoroaster studied Nature's laws; Thus Socrates, the wisest of mankind; Thus heaven-taught Plato traced the Almighty cause, And left the wondering mult.i.tude behind.

12 Thus Ashley gathered academic bays; Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll, Taught them to sing the great Creator's praise, And bear their poet's name from pole to pole.

13 Thus have I walked along the dewy lawn; My frequent foot the blooming wild hath worn: Before the lark I've sung the beauteous dawn, And gathered health from all the gales of morn.

14 And even when Winter chilled the aged year, I wandered lonely o'er the h.o.a.ry plain: Though frosty Boreas warned me to forbear, Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain.

15 Then sleep my nights, and quiet blessed my days; I feared no loss, my mind was all my store; No anxious wishes e'er disturbed my ease; Heaven gave content and health--I asked no more.

16 Now Spring returns: but not to me returns The vernal joy my better years have known; Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns, And all the joys of life with health are flown.

17 Starting and s.h.i.+vering in the inconstant wind, Meagre and pale, the ghost of what I was, Beneath some blasted tree I lie reclined, And count the silent moments as they pa.s.s:

18 The winged moments, whose unstaying speed No art can stop, or in their course arrest; Whose flight shall shortly count me with the dead, And lay me down at peace with them at rest.

19 Oft morning-dreams presage approaching fate; And morning-dreams, as poets tell, are true.

Led by pale ghosts, I enter Death's dark gate, And bid the realms of light and life adieu.

20 I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe; I see the muddy wave, the dreary sh.o.r.e, The sluggish streams that slowly creep below, Which mortals visit, and return no more.

21 Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains!

Enough for me the churchyard's lonely mound, Where Melancholy with still Silence reigns, And the rank gra.s.s waves o'er the cheerless ground.

22 There let me wander at the shut of eve, When sleep sits dewy on the labourer's eyes: The world and all its busy follies leave, And talk of wisdom where my Daphnis lies.

23 There let me sleep forgotten in the clay, When death shall shut these weary, aching eyes; Rest in the hopes of an eternal day, Till the long night is gone, and the last morn arise.

CHRISTOPHER SMART.

We hear of 'Single-speech Hamilton.' We have now to say something of 'Single-poem Smart,' the author of one of the grandest bursts of devotional and poetical feeling in the English language--the 'Song to David.' This poor unfortunate was born at s.h.i.+pbourne, Kent, in 1722.

His father was steward to Lord Barnard, who, after his death, continued his patronage to the son, who was then eleven years of age. The d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, through Lord Barnard's influence, bestowed on Christopher an allowance of 40 a-year. With this he went to Pembroke Hall, Cam- bridge, in 1739; was in 1745 elected a Fellow of Pembroke, and in 1747 took his degree of M.A. At college, Smart began to display that reckless dissipation which led afterwards to such melancholy consequences. He studied hard, however, at intervals; wrote poetry both in Latin and English; produced a comedy called a 'Trip to Cambridge; or, The Grateful Fair,' which was acted in the hall of Pembroke College; and, in spite of his vices and follies, was popular on account of his agreeable manners and amiable dispositions. Having become acquainted with Newberry, the benevolent, red-nosed bookseller commemorated in 'The Vicar of Wakefield,'--for whom he wrote some trifles,--he married his step- daughter, Miss Carnan, in the year 1753. He now removed to London, and became an author to trade. He wrote a clever satire, ent.i.tled 'The Hilliad,' against Sir John Hill, who had attacked him in an underhand manner. He translated the fables of Phaedrus into verse,--Horace into prose ('Smart's Horace' used to be a great favourite, under the rose, with schoolboys); made an indifferent version of the Psalms and Paraphrases, and a good one, at a former period, of Pope's 'Ode on St Cecilia's Day,' with which that poet professed himself highly pleased.

He was employed on a monthly publication called _The Universal Visitor_.

We find Johnson giving the following account of this matter in Boswell's Life:--'Old Gardner, the bookseller, employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly miscellany called _The Universal Visitor_.' There was a formal written contract. They were bound to write nothing else,--they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of the sixpenny pamphlet, and the contract was for ninety-nine years. I wrote for some months in _The Universal Visitor_ for poor Smart, while he was mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write, and thinking I was doing him good. I hoped his wits would soon return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in _The Universal Visitor_ no longer.'

Smart at last was called to pay the penalty of his blended labour and dissipation. In 1763 he was shut up in a madhouse. His derangement had exhibited itself in a religious way: he insisted upon people kneeling down along with him in the street and praying. During his confinement, writing materials were denied him, and he used to write his poetical pieces with a key on the wainscot. Thus, 'scrabbling,' like his own hero, on the wall, he produced his immortal 'Song to David.' He became by and by sane; but, returning to his old habits, got into debt, and died in the King's Bench prison, after a short illness, in 1770.

The 'Song to David' has been well called one of the greatest curiosities of literature. It ranks in this point with the tragedies written by Lee, and the sermons and prayers uttered by Hall in a similar melancholy state of mind. In these cases, as well as in Smart's, the thin part.i.tion between genius and madness was broken down in thunder,--the thunder of a higher poetry than perhaps they were capable of even conceiving in their saner moments. Lee produced in that state--which was, indeed, nearly his normal one--some glorious extravagancies. Hall's sermons, monologised and overheard in the madhouse, are said to have transcended all that he preached in his healthier moods. And, a.s.suredly, the other poems by Smart scarcely furnish a point of comparison with the towering and sustained loftiness of some parts of the 'Song to David.' Nor is it loftiness alone,--although the last three stanzas are absolute inspiration, and you see the waters of Castalia tossed by a heavenly wind to the very summit of Parna.s.sus,--but there are innumerable exquisite beauties and subtleties, dropt as if by the hand of rich haste, in every corner of the poem. Witness his description of David's muse, as a

'Blest light, still gaining on the gloom, The more _than Michal of his bloom_, The _Abis.h.a.g of his age_!

The account of David's object--

'To further knowledge, silence vice, And plant perpetual paradise, When _G.o.d had calmed the world_.'

Of David's Sabbath--

''Twas then his thoughts self-conquest pruned, And heavenly melancholy tuned, To bless and bear the rest.'

One of David's themes--

'The mult.i.tudinous abyss, Where secrecy remains in bliss, And wisdom hides her skill.'

And, not to multiply instances to repletion, this stanza about gems--

'Of gems--their virtue and their price, Which, hid in earth from man's device, Their _darts of l.u.s.tre sheath_; The jasper of the master's stamp, The topaz blazing like a lamp, Among the mines beneath.'

Incoherence and extravagance we find here and there; but it is not the flutter of weakness, it is the fury of power: from the very stumble of the rus.h.i.+ng steed, sparks are kindled. And, even as Baretti, when he read the _Rambler_, in Italy, thought within himself, If such are the lighter productions of the English mind, what must be the grander and sterner efforts of its genius? and formed, consequently, a strong desire to visit that country; so might he have reasoned, If such poems as 'David' issue from England's very madhouses, what must be the writings of its saner and n.o.bler poetic souls? and thus might he, from the parallax of a Smart, have been able to rise toward the ideal alt.i.tudes of a Shakspeare or a Milton. Indeed, there are portions of the 'Song to David,' which a Milton or a Shakspeare has never surpa.s.sed. The blaze of the meteor often eclipses the light of

'The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.'

SONG TO DAVID.