Letters to Dead Authors [44]
foot your altar, and exclaims And wreathes his laurels on the golden urns Where Coleridge's and Shelley's ashes lie, Deaf to the din and heedless of the cry.
For Byron (Swinburne shouts) has never woven One honest thread of life within his song; As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven So Byron is to Shelley (THIS is strong!), And on Parnassus' peak, divinely cloven, He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; For Byron's rank (the examiner has reckoned) Is in the third class or a feeble second.
"A Bernesque poet" at the very most, And "never earnest save in politics," The Pegasus that he was wont to boast A blundering, floundering hackney, full of tricks, A beast that must be driven to the post By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and sticks, A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute, That any judge of Pegasi would shoot;
In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. And Byron's style is "jolter-headed jargon;" His verse is "only bearable in prose." So living poets write of those that ARE gone, And o'er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows; And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began, By owning you "a very clever man."
Or rather does not end: he still must utter A quantity of the unkindest things. Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter O'er such a foe the tempest of your wings? 'Tis "rant and cant and glare and splash and splutter" That rend the modest air when Byron sings. There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery. Animis caelestibus tantaene irae?
But whether he or Arnold in the right is, Long is the argument, the quarrel long; Non nobis est to settle tantas lites; No poet I, to judge of right or wrong: But of all things I always think a fight is The MOST unpleasant in the lists of song; When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo Set an example which we need not follow.
The fashion changes! Maidens do not wear, As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron's hair; "Don Juan" is not always in our pockets - Nay, a New Writer's readers do not care Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its Manners and morals. Ay, and most young ladies To yours prefer the "Epic" called "of Hades"!
I do not blame them; I'm inclined to think That with the reigning taste 'tis vain to quarrel, And Burns might teach his votaries to drink, And Byron never meant to make them moral. You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink From lauding you and giving you the laurel; The Germans too, those men of blood and iron, Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron.
Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods! Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit, Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds, Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit; Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies' rods, Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit; Beholding whom, men think how fairer far Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! {9}
LETTER--To Omar Khayyam
Wise Omar, do the Southern Breezes fling Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring, The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose, The wild white Roses you were wont to sing?
Far in the South I know a Land divine, {10} And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine, And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine.
You were a Saint of unbelieving Days, Liking your Life and happy in Men's Praise; Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough, Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways.
Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or Hell, Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell, Content to know not all thou knowest now, What's Death? Doth any Pitcher dread the Well?
The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill, Shall He torment them if they chance to spill? Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast Forth and forgotten,--and what will be will!
So still were we, before the Months began That rounded us and shaped us into Man. So still we SHALL be, surely, at the last, Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban!
Ah, strange it seems that this thy common Thought - How
For Byron (Swinburne shouts) has never woven One honest thread of life within his song; As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven So Byron is to Shelley (THIS is strong!), And on Parnassus' peak, divinely cloven, He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; For Byron's rank (the examiner has reckoned) Is in the third class or a feeble second.
"A Bernesque poet" at the very most, And "never earnest save in politics," The Pegasus that he was wont to boast A blundering, floundering hackney, full of tricks, A beast that must be driven to the post By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and sticks, A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute, That any judge of Pegasi would shoot;
In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. And Byron's style is "jolter-headed jargon;" His verse is "only bearable in prose." So living poets write of those that ARE gone, And o'er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows; And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began, By owning you "a very clever man."
Or rather does not end: he still must utter A quantity of the unkindest things. Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter O'er such a foe the tempest of your wings? 'Tis "rant and cant and glare and splash and splutter" That rend the modest air when Byron sings. There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery. Animis caelestibus tantaene irae?
But whether he or Arnold in the right is, Long is the argument, the quarrel long; Non nobis est to settle tantas lites; No poet I, to judge of right or wrong: But of all things I always think a fight is The MOST unpleasant in the lists of song; When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo Set an example which we need not follow.
The fashion changes! Maidens do not wear, As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron's hair; "Don Juan" is not always in our pockets - Nay, a New Writer's readers do not care Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its Manners and morals. Ay, and most young ladies To yours prefer the "Epic" called "of Hades"!
I do not blame them; I'm inclined to think That with the reigning taste 'tis vain to quarrel, And Burns might teach his votaries to drink, And Byron never meant to make them moral. You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink From lauding you and giving you the laurel; The Germans too, those men of blood and iron, Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron.
Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods! Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit, Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds, Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit; Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies' rods, Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit; Beholding whom, men think how fairer far Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! {9}
LETTER--To Omar Khayyam
Wise Omar, do the Southern Breezes fling Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring, The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose, The wild white Roses you were wont to sing?
Far in the South I know a Land divine, {10} And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine, And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine.
You were a Saint of unbelieving Days, Liking your Life and happy in Men's Praise; Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough, Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways.
Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or Hell, Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell, Content to know not all thou knowest now, What's Death? Doth any Pitcher dread the Well?
The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill, Shall He torment them if they chance to spill? Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast Forth and forgotten,--and what will be will!
So still were we, before the Months began That rounded us and shaped us into Man. So still we SHALL be, surely, at the last, Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban!
Ah, strange it seems that this thy common Thought - How