No More Learning



## p. 14495 (#57) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14495
The king adored her, but his jealousies
Equaled the fervors of his love; the smart
At length of sharp suspicion by degrees
Gained such ascendance in his troubled heart,
That from all men in closest bowers apart
He mewed her, where e'en heaven's chaste eyes, the bright
Stars, were but half allowed their looks to dart:
Whilst she, meek, wise, and pure as virgin light,
Made her unkind lord's will her rule and chief delight.
Hung was her room with storied imageries
Of martyrs and of saints: a virgin here,
On whose fair cheeks the rose's sweetest dyes
Glowed, was depicted in distress; and near,
A monstrous dragon, which with poignant spear
An errant knight transfixing, prostrate laid:
The gentle lady oft with many a tear
Before this painting meek confession made
Of secret faults, and mourned, and heaven's forgiveness prayed.
Pregnant meanwhile, she bore (and thou wert she)
A daughter white as snow: th' unusual hue,
With wonder, fear, and strange perplexity
Disturbed her, as though something monstrous too;
But as by sad experience well she knew
His jealous temper and suspicious haste,
She cast to hide thee from thy father's view;
For in his mind (perversion most misplaced! )
Thy snowy chasteness else had argued her unchaste.
And in thy cradle to his sight exposed
A negro's new-born infant for her own;
And as the tower wherein she lived inclosed
Was kept by me and by her maids alone,-
To me whose firm fidelity was known,
Who loved and served her with a soul sincere,-
She gave thee, beauteous as a rose unblown,
Yet unbaptized; for there, it would appear,
Baptized thou couldst not be in that thy natal year.
Weeping she placed thee in my arms, to bear
To some far spot: what tongue can tell the rest!
The plaints she used; and with what wild despair
She clasped thee to her fond maternal breast;
How many times 'twixt sighs, 'twixt tears caressed;


## p. 14496 (#58) ###########################################

14496
TORQUATO TASSO
How oft, how very oft, her vain adieu
Sealed on thy cheek; with what sweet passion pressed
Thy little lips! At length a glance she threw
To heaven, and cried:-"Great God, that look'st all spirits
through!
"If both my heart and members are unstained,
And naught did e'er my nuptial bed defile,
(I pray not for myself; I stand arraigned
Of thousand sins, and in thy sight am vile,)
Preserve this guiltless infant, to whose smile
The tenderest mother must refuse her breast,
And from her eyes their sweetest bliss exile!
May she with chastity like mine be blessed;
But stars of happier rule have influence o'er the rest!
"And thou, blest knight, that from the cruel teeth
Of the grim dragon freed'st that holy maid,
Lit by my hands if ever odorous wreath
Rose from thy altars; if I e'er have laid
Thereon gold, cinnamon, or myrrh, and prayed
For help, through every chance of life display,
In guardianship of her, thy powerful aid! "
Convulsions choked her words; she swooned away,
And the pale hues of death on her chill temples lay.
With tears I took thee in a little ark
So hid by flowers and leaves that none could guess
The secret; brought thee forth 'twixt light and dark,
And unsuspected, in a Moorish dress,
Passed the town walls. As through a wilderness
Of forests horrid with brown glooms I took
My pensive way, I saw, to my distress,
A tigress issuing from a bosky nook,
Rage in her scowling brows, and lightning in her look.
Wild with affright, I on the flowery ground
Cast thee, and instant climbed a tree close by:
The savage brute came up, and glancing round
In haughty menace, saw where thou didst lie;
And softening to a mild humanity
Her stern regard, with placid gestures meek,
As by thy beauty smit, came courteous nigh;
In amorous pastime fawning licked thy cheek;
And thou on her didst smile, and stroke her mantle sleek.


## p. 14497 (#59) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14497
With her fierce muzzle and her cruel front
Thy little hands did innocently play;
She offered thee her teats, as is the wont
With nurses, and adapted them, as they,
To thy young lips; nor didst thou turn away:
She suckled thee! a prodigy so new
Filled me with fresh confusion and dismay.
She, when she saw thee satisfied, withdrew
Into the shady wood, and vanished from my view.
Again I took thee, and pursued my way
Through woods, and vales, and wildernesses dun:
Till in a little village making stay,
I gave thee secretly in charge to one
Who fondly nursed thee till the circling sun,
With sixteen months of equatorial heat,
Had tinged thy face; till thou too hadst begun
To prattle of thy joys in murmurs sweet,
And print her cottage floor with indecisive feet.
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
TANCRED IN IGNORANCE SLAYS CLORINDA
S EGEAN'S seas, when storms be calmed again
A
That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blast
Do yet of tempests past some show retain,
And here and there their swelling billows cast:
So though their strength were gone, and might were vain,
Of their first fierceness still the fury lasts;
Wherewith sustained, they to their tackling stood,
And heaped wound on wound, and blood on blood.
But now, alas! the fatal hour arrives
That her sweet life must leave that tender hold:
His sword into her bosom deep he drives,
And bathed in lukewarm blood his iron cold;
Between her breasts the cruel weapon rives
Her curious square embost with swelling gold;
Her knees grow weak, the pains of death she feels,
And like a fallen cedar, bends and reels.
The prince his hand upon her shield doth stretch,
And low on earth the wounded damsel laith;
And while she fell, with weak and woeful speech
Her prayers last and last complaints she saith:
XXV-907


## p. 14498 (#60) ###########################################

14498
TORQUATO TASSO
A spirit new did her those prayers teach,
Spirit of hope, of charity, and faith;
And though her life to Christ rebellious were,
Yet dièd she his child and handmaid dear.
"Friend, thou hast won; I pardon thee: nor save
This body, that all torments can endure,
But save my soul; baptism I dying crave,—
Come, wash away my sins with waters pure. "
His heart relenting nigh in sunder rave,
With woeful speech of that sweet creature;
So that his rage, his wrath, and anger died,
And on his cheek salt tears for ruth down slide.
With murmur loud down from the mountain's side
A little runnel tumbled near the place:
Thither he ran and filled his helmet wide,
And quick returned to do that work of grace:
With trembling hands her beaver he untied,
Which done, he saw, and seeing knew her face,
And lost therewith his speech and moving quite,
Of woeful knowledge! Ah, unhappy sight!
He died not, but all his strength unites,
And to his virtues gave his heart in guard;
Bridling his grief, with water he requites
The life that he bereft with iron hard:
And while the sacred words the knight recites,
The nymph to heaven with joy herself prepared;
And as her life decays, her joys increase:
She smiled and said, "Farewell! I die in peace. "
As violets blue 'mongst lilies pure men throw,
So paleness 'midst her native white begun.
Her looks to heaven she cast; their eyes, I trow,
Downward for pity bent both heaven and sun.
Her naked hand she gave the knight, in show
Of love and peace; her speech, alas! was done.
And thus the virgin fell on endless sleep:
Love, Beauty, Virtue, for your darling weep.
Translation of Edward Fairfax.


## p. 14499 (#61) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14499
ARMIDA ENSNARES RINALDO
AR
RMIDA hunted him through wood and plain,
Till on Orontes's flowery bank he stayed;
There, where the stream did part and meet again,
And in the midst a gentle island made,
A pillar fair was pight beside the main,
Near which a little frigate floating laid;
The marble white the prince did long behold,
And this inscription read there writ in gold:-
1
"Whoso thou art whom will or chance doth bring
With happy steps to flood Orontes's sides,
Know that the world hath not so strange a thing
'Twixt east and west as this small island hides;
Then pass and see without more tarrying. "
The hasty youth to pass the stream provides;
And, for the cog was narrow, small, and strait,
Alone he rowed, and bade his squires there wait.
Landed, he stalks about, yet naught he sees
But verdant groves, sweet shades, and mossy rocks,
With caves and fountains, flowers, herbs, and trees;
So that the words he read he takes for mocks:
But that green isle was sweet at all degrees,
Wherewith, enticed, down sits he and unlocks
His closed helm, and bares his visage fair,
To take sweet breath from cool and gentle air.
A rumbling sound amid the waters deep
Meanwhile he heard, and thither turned his sight,
And tumbling in the troubled stream took keep
How the strong waves together rush and fight;
Whence first he saw, with golden tresses, peep
The rising visage of a virgin bright,
And then her neck, her breasts, and all as low
As he for shame could see or she could show.
So in the twilight doth sometimes appear
A nymph, a goddess, or a fairy queen:
And though no syren but a sprite this were,
Yet by her beauty seemed it she had been
One of those sisters false which haunted near
The Tyrrhene shores, and kept those waters sheen;
Like theirs her face, her voice was, and her sound:
And thus she sung, and pleased both skies and ground:-
-


## p. 14500 (#62) ###########################################

14500
TORQUATO TASSO
"Ye happy youths, whom April fresh and May
Attire in flowering green of lusty age,
For glory vain or virtue's idle ray
Do not your tender limbs to toil engage:
In calm streams fishes, birds in sunshine play;
Who followeth pleasure he is only sage,
So nature saith,- yet 'gainst her sacred will
Why still rebel you, and why strive you still?
"O fools, who youth possess yet scorn the same,
A precious but a short-abiding treasure,-
Virtue itself is but an idle name,
Prized by the world 'bove reason all and measure;
And honor, glory, praise, renown, and fame,
That men's proud hearts bewitch with tickling pleasure,
An echo is, a shade, a dream, a flower,
With each wind blasted, spoiled with every shower.
"But let your happy souls in joy possess
The ivory castles of your bodies fair;
Your passed harms salve with forgetfulness;
Haste not your coming ills with thought and care;
Regard no blazing star with burning tress,
Nor storm, nor threatening sky, nor thundering air:
This wisdom is, good life, and worldly bliss;
Kind teacheth us, nature commands us this. "
Thus sung the spirit false, and stealing sleep
(To which her tunes enticed his heavy eyes)
By step and step did on his senses creep,
Till every limb therein unmovèd lies;
Not thunders loud could from this slumber deep
(Of quiet death true image) make him rise;
Then from her ambush forth Armida start,
Swearing revenge, and threatening torments smart:
But when she looked on his face awhile,
And saw how sweet he breathed, how still he lay,
How his fair eyes though closed seem to smile,
At first she stayed, astound with great dismay;
Then sat her down (so love can art beguile),
And as she sat and looked, fled fast away
Her wrath. Thus on his forehead gazed the maid,
As in his spring Narcissus tooting laid.


## p. 14501 (#63) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14501
And with a veil she wipèd now and then
From his fair cheek the globes of silver sweat
And cool air gathered with a trembling fan
To mitigate the rage of melting heat:
Thus (who would think it? ) his hot eye-glance can
Of that cold frost dissolve the hardness great
Which late congealed the heart of that fair dame,
Who, late a foe, a lover now became.
Of woodbines, lilies, and of roses sweet,
Which proudly flowered through that wanton plain,
All platted fast, well knit, and joinèd meet,
She framed a soft but surely holding chain,
Wherewith she bound his neck, his hands, and feet.
Thus bound, thus taken, did the prince remain,
And in a coach, which two old dragons drew,
She laid the sleeping knight, and thence she flew.
Nor turned she to Damascus's kingdom large,
Nor to the fort built in Asphalte's lake,
But jealous of her dear and precious charge,
And of her love ashamed, the way did take
To the wide ocean, whither skiff or barge
From us both seld or never voyage make,
And there, to frolic with her love awhile,
She chose a waste, a sole and desert isle;
An isle that with her fellows bears the name
Of Fortunate, for temperate air and mold:
There on a mountain high alight the dame,
A hill obscured with shades of forests old,
Upon whose sides the witch by art did frame
Continual snow, sharp frost, and winter cold;
But on the top, fresh, pleasant, sweet, and green,
Beside a lake a palace built this queen:
There in perpetual, sweet, and flowering spring,
She lives at ease, and 'joys her lord at will.
Translation of Edward Fairfax.


## p. 14502 (#64) ###########################################

14502
TORQUATO TASSO
THE TWO KNIGHTS IN SEARCH FOR RINALDO REACH THE FORTUNATE
ISLAND, AND DISCOVER THE FOUNTAIN OF LAUGHTER
>>
"SEE
EE here the stream of laughter, see the spring »
(Quoth they) "of danger and of deadly pain:
Here fond desire must by fair governing
Be ruled, our lust bridled with wisdom's rein;
Our ears be stopped while these syrens sing,
Their notes enticing man to pleasure vain. "
Thus past they forward where the stream did make
An ample pond, a large and spacious lake.
There on the table was all dainty food
That sea, that earth, or liquid air could give:
And in the crystal of the laughing flood
They saw two naked virgins bathe and dive,
That sometimes toying, sometimes wrestling stood,
Sometimes for speed and skill in swimming strive:
Now underneath they dived, now rose above,
And 'ticing baits laid forth of lust and love.
These naked wantons, tender, fair, and white,
Moved so far the warriors' stubborn hearts,
That on their shapes they gazèd with delight;
The nymphs applied their sweet alluring arts,
And one of them above the waters quite
Lift up her head, her breasts, and higher parts,
And all that might weak eyes subdue and take;
Her lower beauties veiled the gentle lake.
As when the morning star, escaped and fled
From greedy waves, with dewy beams upflies,
Or as the queen of love, new born and bred
Of th' ocean's fruitful froth, did first arise;
So vented she, her golden locks forth shed
Round pearls and crystal moist therein which lies.
But when her eyes upon the knights she cast,
She start, and feigned her of their sight aghast:
And her fair locks, that on a knot were tied
High on her crown, she 'gan at large unfold;
Which falling long and thick, and spreading wide,
The ivory soft and white mantled in gold:
Thus her fair skin the dame would clothe and hide,
And that which hid it no less fair was hold;


## p. 14503 (#65) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14503
Thus clad in waves and locks, her eyes divine
From them ashamèd did she turn and twine:
Withal she smilèd, and she blushed withal,
Her blush her smiling, smiles her blushing graced;
Over her face her amber tresses fall,
Whereunder love himself in ambush placed:
At last she warbled forth a treble small,
And with sweet looks her sweet songs interlaced:
"O happy men! that have the grace" (quoth she)
"This bliss, this heaven, this paradise to see.
"This is the place wherein you may assuage
Your sorrows past; here is that joy and bliss
That flourished in the antique Golden Age;
Here needs no law, here none doth aught amiss.
Put off those arms, and fear not Mars his rage,
Your sword, your shield, your helmet needless is;
Then consecrate them here to endless rest,-
You shall love's champions be and soldiers blest. "
Translation of Edward Fairfax.
ERMINIA CURES TANCRED; AND IS SUPPOSED TO BECOME HIS BRIDE
[Tancred, in a second single combat in a secluded spot, slays Argantes;
but from exhaustion, falls himself in a death-like swoon beside the body of
his foe. Erminia, having been discovered by Vafrino, a spy from the army
of the Christians, is returning under his escort. He stumbles upon the bodies,
and recognizes the hero. She laments over him thus. ]
"THO
HOUGH gone, though dead, I love thee still; behold
Death wounds but kills not love: yet if thou live,
Sweet soul, still in his breast, my follies bold
Ah pardon, love's desires and stealth forgive:
Grant me from his pale mouth some kisses cold,
Since death doth love of just reward deprive,
And of thy spoils, sad death, afford me this,—
Let me his mouth, pale, cold, and bloodless, kiss.
"O gentle mouth! with speeches kind and sweet
Thou didst relieve my grief, my woe, and pain;
Ere my weak soul from this frail body fleet,
Ah, comfort me with one dear kiss or twain;


## p. 14504 (#66) ###########################################

14504
TORQUATO TASSO
Perchance, if we alive had happed to meet,
They had been given which now are stolen: oh vain,
O feeble life, betwixt his lips out fly!
Oh, let me kiss thee first, then let me die!
"Receive my yielded spirit, and with thine
Guide it to heaven, where all true love hath place. ”
This said, she sighed and tore her tresses fine,
And from her eyes two streams poured on his face.
The man, revived with those showers divine,
Awaked, and openèd his lips a space;
His lips were opened, but fast shut his eyes,
And with her sighs one sigh from him upflies.
The dame perceived that Tancred breathed and sight,
Which calmed her griefs some deal and eased her fears:
"Unclose thine eyes" (she says), "my lord and knight,
See my last services, my plaints, and tears;
See her that dies to see thy woeful plight,
That of thy pain her part and portion bears;
Once look on me: small is the gift I crave. -
The last which thou canst give, or I can have. "
-
Tancred looked up, and closed his eyes again,
Heavy and dim; and she renewed her woe.
Quoth Vafrine, "Cure him first and then complain:
Medicine is life's chief friend, plaint her worst foe. "
They plucked his armor off, and she each vein,
Each joint, and sinew felt and handled so,
And searched so well each thrust, each cut, and wound,
That hope of life her love and skill soon found.
From weariness and loss of blood she spied
His greatest pains and anguish most proceed.
Naught but her veil amid those deserts wide
She had to bind his wounds in so great need:
But love could other bands (though strange) provide,
And pity wept for joy to see that deed;
For with her amber locks, cut off, each wound
She tied-O happy man, so cured, so bound!
For why? her veil was short and thin, those deep
And cruel hurts to fasten, roll, and bind:
Nor salve nor simple had she; yet to keep
Her knight alive, strong charms of wondrous kind


## p. 14505 (#67) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14505
She said, and from him drove that deadly sleep,
That now his eyes he lifted, turned, and twined,
And saw his squire, and saw that courteous dame
In habits strange, and wondered whence she came.
He said, "O Vafrine, tell me whence com'st thou,
And who this gentle surgeon is, disclose. "
She smiled, she sighed, she looked she wist not how,
She wept, rejoiced, she blushed as red as rose:
"You shall know all» (she says); "your surgeon now
Commands your silence, rest, and soft repose;
You shall be sound, prepare my guerdon meet. ”
His head then laid she in her bosom sweet.
Translation of Edward Fairfax.
THE RECONCILIATION OF RINALDO AND ARMIDA
[The two knights, having safely passed the terrors and the seductions of
the Enchanted Gardens, discover Rinaldo in the Bower of Bliss in the arms
of Armida. Stung by shame and remorse, he returns with them to the camp,
notwithstanding the entreaties, reproaches, and incantations of Armida; and
takes a glorious part in the final struggles. Armida, mortified and enraged
against him, offers her kingdom, her treasures, and herself to any knight who
will kill him, and joins the Egyptian army and does great execution upon the
Crusaders. But the field being lost, in terror of gracing the Conqueror's tri-
umphal car she decides on suicide. At the moment when she is plunging one
of her own darts into her breast, Rinaldo arrests the stroke and throws his
arm around her waist; and while she struggles to escape, and bursts into tears
(it is uncertain whether from anger or affection), he pleads with her with the
following result. ]
UT if you trust no speech, no word,
Yet in mine eyes my zeal, my truth behold:
For to that throne whereof thy sire was lord,
"B
I will restore thee, crown thee with that gold;
And if high Heaven would so much grace afford
As from thy heart this cloud, this veil unfold
Of Paganism, in all the East no dame
Should equalize thy fortune, state, and fame. "
Thus plaineth he, thus prays, and his desire
Endears with sighs that fly and tears that fall;
That as against the warmth of Titan's fire
Snowdrifts consume on tops of mountains tall,


## p. 14506 (#68) ###########################################

14506
TORQUATO TASSO
So melts her wrath, but love remains entire:
"Behold" (she says) "your handmaid and your thrall:
My life, my crown, my wealth, use at your pleasure. "
Thus death her life became, loss proved her treasure.
Translation of Edward Fairfax.
THE AMINTA
[The young hero, Amintas, tells his love for the beautiful Sylvia: how they
played together as children; and then as boy and girl together fished, snared
birds together, hunted,—and how, while they chased the deer, the mightier
hunter Love made Amintas his prey. He drank a strange joy from Sylvia's
eyes, which yet left a bitter taste behind; he sighed and knew not why; he
loved before he knew what love meant. When Sylvia cured her young friend
Phyllis of a bee's sting on her lip, by putting her mouth close to hers and
murmuring a charm, Amintas straightway felt a desire for the same delight-
ful experience, and secured it by pretending that he had received a like
wound. At length the fire grew too great to be hidden. At a game in which
each whispered a secret to his neighbor, Amintas murmured in Sylvia's ear,
"I burn for thee; I shall die unless thou aid me. ” But Sylvia blushed with
shame and wrath, not with love; made him no answer; and has been, as he
sorrowfully says, his enemy from that day forward. Thrice since then has the
reaper bent to his toil, thrice has winter shaken the green leaves from the
trees; but though Amintas has tried every method of appeasing Sylvia's
anger, it seems all in vain, and no hope remains for him but death. This
despair makes him disclose his long-hidden sorrows. ]
AM content,
"Thyris, to tell thee what the woods and hills
And rivers know, but men as yet know not.
For I am now so near unto my death,
That fit 'tis I should give one leave to rehearse
That death's occasion, and to grave my story
Upon some beech-tree's bark, near to the place
Where my dead body shall have found a tomb;
So that the cruel maiden passing by
May with proud foot rejoice to trample on
My wretched bones, and say within herself,
'This is my trophy,' and exult to see
Her victory known to every single shepherd,
Home-bred, or foreign guided here by chance:
Haply, too (ah! too much to hope), one day
It may be that she, moved by tardy pity,
May weep him dead whom she when living slew,
And say, 'Would he were here, and he were mine! >»
Translation of E. J. Hasell.


## p. 14507 (#69) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14507
[The young shepherd's boyish despair is touching in its mournful resigna-
tion, but it fails to move Sylvia's heart. Vainly does he rescue her from the
ruthless hands of a satyr who had already bound her to a tree. Released by
Amintas, she flees without giving him a word of thanks. But while the youth's
friends are with difficulty restraining him from killing himself at this fresh
and seemingly final blow, bad news comes from the forest. Sylvia's useless
dart is brought back from thence, with her white veil covered with blood: she
has to all appearance been devoured by the fierce wolves she so intrepidly
pursued. "Why was I not allowed to die before I could hear such tidings? »
cries Amintas. "Give me that veil, the one only wretched thing left me of
my Sylvia, to be my companion in the short journey that lies before me. "
And grasping it, he goes and casts himself headlong down a precipice.
Shortly after his departure, Sylvia, not dead, not even wounded, reappears
on the scene, and calmly explains how the mistaken report of her death had
arisen. "Ah! " says Daphne, the friend who all along had blamed her cold-
ness, "you live, but Amintas is dead. " Her words are confirmed by the
messenger who comes in, after the way of the classic drama, to narrate the
catastrophe. Sylvia's heart is melted; she regrets her severity, and says that
if a hater's falsely reported death has killed Amintas, it is only fit that she
should herself be slain by the true tidings of the death of so true a lover. ]
"Let me
First bury him, then die upon his grave.
Farewell, ye shepherds! plains, woods, streams, farewell! "
[Elpino, the favorite of the Muses, enters in the last act to explain how
Amintas, stunned, not killed, by his fall, was brought to life by the tears of
Sylvia, whose aged father has been sent for to bless their happy union.
The lyrics of the Chorus are very melodious. Most celebrated of all is its
song at the end of the first act. ]
THE GOLDEN AGE
"O bella età dell' oro »
LOVELY age of gold!
Not that the rivers rolled
O
With milk, or that the woods wept honey-dew;
Not that the ready ground
Produced without a wound,
Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;
Not that a cloudless blue
For ever was in sight,
Or that the heaven, which burns
And now is cold by turns,


## p. 14508 (#70) ###########################################

14508
TORQUATO TASSO
Looked out in glad and everlasting light;
No, not that even the insolent ships from far
Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse than war:
But solely that that vain
And breath-invented pain,
That idol of mistake, that worshiped cheat,
That Honor,- since so called
By vulgar minds appalled,-
Played not the tyrant with our nature yet.
It had not come to fret
The sweet and happy fold
Of gentle human-kind;
Nor did its hard law bind
Souls nursed in freedom; but that law of gold,
That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
Which Nature's own hand wrote: What pleases is permitted.
Then among streams and flowers
The little wingèd powers
Went singing carols without torch or bow;
The nymphs and shepherds sat
Mingling with innocent chat
Sports and low whispers; and with whispers low,
Kisses that would not go.
The maiden, budding o'er,
Kept not her bloom un-eyed,
Which now a veil must hide,
Nor the crisp apples which her bosom bore;
And oftentimes, in river or in lake,
The lover and his love their merry bath would take.
'Twas thou, thou, Honor, first
That didst deny our thirst
Its drink, and on the fount thy covering set;
Thou bad'st kind eyes withdraw
Into constrainèd awe,
And keep the secret for their tears to wet;
Thou gather'dst in a net
The tresses from the air,
And mad'st the sports and plays
Turn all to sullen ways,
And putt'st on speech a rein, in steps a care.
Thy work it is,- thou shade, that will not move,-
That what was once the gift is now the theft of love.


## p. 14509 (#71) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14509
Our sorrows and our pains,
These are thy noble gains.
But, O thou Love's and Nature's masterer,
Thou conqueror of the crowned,
What dost thou on this ground,
Too small a circle for thy mighty sphere ?
Go, and make slumber dear
To the renowned and high:
We here, a lowly race,
Can live without thy grace,
After the use of mild antiquity.
Go, let us love; since years
No truce allow, and life soon disappears.
Go, let us love: the daylight dies, is born;
But unto us the light
Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night.
Translation of Leigh Hunt.
ODE TO THE RIVER METAURO
(A fragment written at the age of forty, and left unfinished. )
HILD of great Apennine!
CH
River, if small yet far renowned,
More glorious than by waters, through thy name,-
I these thy banks benign
A flying pilgrim seek: their courteous fame
Make good; let rest and safety here be found.
And may that oak which thou dost bathe, whose frame
Fed well by thy sweet waters, stretches wide
Its branches, seas and mountains shadowing,
O'er me its safe shade fling!
Thou sacred shade, which hast to none denied
'Neath thy cool leaves a hospitable seat,
Now 'mid thy thickest boughs receive and fold me;
Lest that blind, cruel goddess should behold me,
Who spies me out, though blind, in each retreat,
Albeit I crouch to hide in mount or vale,
And lit by moonbeams pale,
At midnight ply on lonely track my feet;
Yet with sure aim her darts still wound, and show
Her eyes as arrows keen to work my woe.


## p. 14510 (#72) ###########################################

14510
TORQUATO TASSO
Ah me! from that first day
That I drew breath, and opened first
Mine eyes to this, to me still troubled light,
I was the mark, the play
Of evil, lawless Fate; whose hand accursed
Gave wounds that longer years have scarce set right.
This knows that glorious Siren bright,
Beside whose tomb me the soft cradle pressed:
Ah! would that at that first envenomed wound
I there a grave had found!
Me cruel Fortune from my mother's breast
Tore, yet a child: ah! those fond kisses
Bathed by the tears that sheds her anguish,
I here, with sighs remembering, languish,
And her warm prayers—prayers that the wind dismisses;
For not again might I lay face to face,
Clasped in that close embrace
By arms the treasury of my infant blisses:
Thenceforth, like Trojan boy or Volscian maid,
My weak steps followed where my father strayed.
I 'mid those wanderings grew,
In exile bitter and hard poverty,
And sense untimely of my sorrows gained;
For ripeness, ere 'twas due,
Mischance and suffering brought to me,
Sad wisdom learning while my heart was pained.
My sire's weak age despoiled, his wrongs sustained,
Must I narrate? Does not my proper woe
Make me so rich, that no more store I need
Whereon my grief to feed?
Whose case, save mine, should bid my tears to flow?
My sighs are all too few for my desire;
Nor can my tears, though in abundance given,
Equal my pain. Thou, who dost view from heaven,—
Father, good father, unto God now nigher,-
I wept thee sick and dead, this know'st thou well;
With groans my hot tears fell
Thy bed, thy tomb upon: but now, raised higher
To endless joys, I honor thee, not mourn;
My whole grief pouring on my state forlorn.
Translation of E. J. Hasell.


## p. 14511 (#73) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14511
CONGEDO AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE RINALDO›
WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN
Dedicated to Cardinal Luigi d'Esté
THUS
HUS have I sung, in battle-field and bower,
Rinaldo's cares, and prattled through my page,
Whilst other studies claimed the irksome hour,
In the fourth lustre of my verdant age;
Studies from which I hoped to have the power
The wrongs of adverse fortune to assuage;
Ungrateful studies, whence I pine away
Unknown to others, to myself a prey.
Yet oh! if Heaven should e'er my wishes crown
With ease, released from law's discordant maze,
To spend on the green turf, in forests brown,
With bland Apollo whole harmonious days,
Then might I spread, Luigi, thy renown,
Where'er the sun darts forth resplendent rays;
Thyself the genial spirit should infuse,
And to thy virtues wake a worthier Muse.
Be thou, first fruit of fancy and of toil,
Child of few hours and those most fugitive!
Dear little book, born on the sunny soil
By Brenta's wave! may all kind planets give
To thee the spring no winter shall despoil,
Life to go forth when I have ceased to live;
Gathering rich fame beyond our country's bounds,
And mixed with songs with which the world resounds.
Yet ere I bid thy truant leaves adieu,
Ere yet thou seek'st the prince whose name, impressed
Deep in my heart, upon thy front we view,—
Too poor a portal for so great a guest! —
Go, find out him from whom my birth I drew,
Life of my life! and whose the rich bequest
Has been, if aught of beautiful or strong
Adorns my life and animates my song.
He, with that keen and searching glance which knows
To pierce beyond the veil of dim disguise,
Shall see the faults that lie concealed so close
To the short vision of my feeble eyes,


## p. 14512 (#74) ###########################################

14512
TORQUATO TASSO
And with that pen which joins the truth of prose
To tuneful fable, shall the verse chastise
(Far as its youth the trial can endure),
And grace thy page with beauties more mature.
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
TO THE PRINCESS LEONORA
WHEN FORBIDDEN BY HER PHYSICIANS TO SING
Ahi! ben è reo destin, che invidia e toglie
H! 'TIS a merciless decree,
That to the envied world denies
The sound of that sweet voice which we
So much admire, so dearly prize!
OH!
The noble thought and dulcet lay,
Breathing of passions so refined
By Honor's breath, would drive away
Sharp sorrow from the gloomiest mind.
Yet 'tis enough for our deserts,
That eyes and smiles so calm and coy
Diffuse through our enchanted hearts
A holy and celestial joy.
There would be no more blessed place
Than this, our spirits to rejoice,
If, as we view thy heavenly face,
We also heard thy heavenly voice!
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
WRITTEN SOON AFTER THE POET'S ARRIVAL AT FERRARA
Amor l'alma m' allaccia
L
OVE binds my soul in chains of bliss
Firm, rigorous, strict, and strong;
I am not sorrowful for this,
But why I quarrel with him is,
He quite ties up my tongue.
When I my lady should salute,
I can on no pretense;


## p. 14513 (#75) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14513
XXV-908
But timid and confused stand mute,
Or, wandering in my reason, suit
My speech but ill with sense.
Loose, gentle love, my tongue, and if
Thou'lt not give up one part
Of thy great power, respect my grief,
Take off this chain in kind relief,
And add it to my heart!
TO LEONORA OF ESTÉ
Al nobil colle, ove in antichi marmi
[Written when the Princess was on a visit to her uncle, the Cardinal Ippo-
lito II. d'Esté, at his villa at Tivoli, considered the most beautiful in Italy. ]
O THE romantic hills, where free
To thine enchanted eyes,
Works of Greek taste in statuary
Of antique marble rise,
My thought, fair Leonora, roves,
And with it to their gloom of groves
Fast bears me as it flies;
For far from thee, in crowds unblest,
My fluttering heart but ill can rest.
T
There to the rock, cascade, and grove,
On mosses dropt with dew,
Like one who thinks and sighs of love
The livelong summer through,
Oft would I dictate glorious things,
Of heroes, to the Tuscan strings
Of my sweet lyre anew;
And to the brooks and trees around,
Ippolito's high name resound.
But now what longer keeps me here?
And who, dear lady, say,
O'er Alpine rocks and marshes drear,
A weary length of way,
Guide me to thee? so that, enwreathed
With leaves by Poesy bequeathed
From Daphne's hallowed bay,
I trifle thus in song? - Adieu!
Let the soft zephyr whisper who.
Translation of J. H. Wiffen,


## p. 14514 (#76) ###########################################

14514
TORQUATO TASSO
TO THE PRINCESS LUCRETIA
WHILE SOJOURNING WITH HER AND HER HUSBAND AT CASTELDURANTE
Negli anni acerbi
HOU, lady, in thine early days
Of life didst seem a purple rose,
That dreads the suitor sun's warm rays,
Nor dares its virgin breast disclose;
But coy, and crimsoning to be seen,
Lies folded yet in leaves of green.
THO
Or rather (for no earthly thing
Was like thee then), thou didst appear
Divine Aurora, when her wing
On every blossom shakes a tear,
And spangled o'er with dewdrops cold,
The mountain summits tints with gold.
Those days are past; yet from thy face
No charm the speeding years have snatched,
But left it ripening every grace,
In perfect loveliness, unmatched.
By what thou wert, when, young and shy,
Thy timid graces shunned the eye.
More lovely looks the flower matured,
When full its fragrant leaves it spreads;
More rich the sun, when, unobscured,
At noon a brighter beam it sheds:
Thou, in thy beauty, blendest both
The sun's ascent and rose's growth.
THE
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
TO TARQUINIA MOLZA
A LADY CELEBRATED FOR HER BEAUTY AND HER ITALIAN VERSES
Mostra la verde terra
HE green earth of its wealth displays
White violets, and the lovely sun
Its sparkling crown of rosy rays
O'er shaded vale and mountain dun.
Thou, lady, for thy sign of wealth,
Of genius, beauty, thought sublime,


## p. 14515 (#77) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14515
Fling'st forth in glorious show by stealth
The riches of unfading rhyme.
And whilst thy laurels, charmed from blight,
Thus greenly mock the passing hours,
Thy verses all are rays of light,
Thy living thoughts ambrosial flowers.
TO THE DUKE OF FERRARA
IMPLORING LIBERATION FROM HIS DREADFUL PRISON
O magnanimo figlio
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
O
GLORIOUS prince, magnanimous increase
Of great Alcides, whose paternal worth
Thou dost transcend! to thee who in sweet peace
From troublous exile to thy royal hearth
Received'st me erst,—again, yet once again,
I turn, and faint from my deep cell,
my knee,
Heart, soul, and weeping eyes incline; to thee
My lips, long silent, I unclose in pain,
And unto thee, but not of thee, complain.
-
Turn thy mild eyes, and see where a vile crowd
Throng, where the pauper pines, the sick man moans;
See where, with death on his shrunk cheeks, aloud
Thy once-loved servant groans;
Where, by a thousand sorrows wrung, his eyes
Grown dim and hollow, his weak limbs devoid
Of vital humor, wasting, and annoyed
By dirt and darkness, he ignobly lies,
Envying the sordid lot of those to whom
The pity comes which cheers their painful doom.
Pity is spent, and courtesy to me
Grown a dead sound, if in thy noble breast
They spring not: what illimitable sea
Of evil rushes on my soul distrest!
What joy for Tasso now remains? Alas!
The stars in heaven, the nobles of the earth
Are sworn against my peace; and all that pass
War with the strains to which my harp gives birth:


## p. 14516 (#78) ###########################################

14516
TORQUATO TASSO
Whilst I to all the angry host make plea
In vain for mercy,- most of all to thee!
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
TO THE PRINCESSES OF FERRARA
FOR THEIR INTERCESSION WITH THE DUKE
O figlie di Renanta
D
AUGHTERS of lorn Renée, give ear! to you
I talk, in whom birth, beauty, sense refined,
Virtue, gentility, and glory true
Are in such perfect harmony combined;
To you my sorrows I unfold,— a scroll
Of bitterness,—my wrongs, my griefs, my fears,
Part of my tale; -I cannot tell the whole,
But by rebellious tears!
I will recall you to yourselves, renew
Memory of me, your courtesies, your smile
Of gracious kindness, and (vowed all to you)
My past delightful years:
What then I was, what am: what, woe the while!
I am reduced to beg; from whence; what star
Guided me hither; who with bolt and bar
Confines; and who, when I for freedom grieved,
Promised me hope, yet still that hope deceived!
These I call back to you, O slips divine
Of glorious demigods and kings! and if
My words are weak and few, the tears which grief
Wrings out are eloquent enough: I pine
For my loved lutes, lyres, laurels; for the shine
Of suns; for my dear studies, sports, my late
So elegant delights,- mirth, music, wine;
Piazzas, palaces, where late I sate,
Now the loved servant, now the social friend,-
For health destroyed, for freedom at an end,
The gloom-the solitude- th' eternal grate-
And for the laws the Charities provide,
Oh, agony! to me denied! denied!
From my sweet brotherhood of men, alas,
Who shuts me out!
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.


## p. 14517 (#79) ###########################################

TORQUATO TASSO
14517
TO THE DUKE ALPHONSO
BEGGING FOR A LITTLE WINE TO BE SENT TO HIS CELL
Col giro omai delle stagioni eterno
NOV
ow in the seasons' ceaseless round, the earth
Pours forth its fruits; the elm sustains with pride
The ripe productions of his fruitful bride,
To whom the smiling suns of spring gave birth;
In luxury now, as though disdaining dearth,
Bursts the black grape; its juice ambrosial flows:
Wherefore so tardy to console my woes?
The rich Falernian sparkles in its mirth!
This with its generous juice the generous fills
With joy, and turns my Lord's dark cares to bliss:
Not so with mine; but o'er my various ills
It pours the dews of sweet forgetfulness,
Inducing blest repose: ah, let me find
This slight relief, this Lethe of the mind!
Translation of J. H. Wiffen.
OR CHE L'AURA MIA*
Τ
ILL Laura comes,- who now, alas! elsewhere
Breathes amid fields and forests hard of heart,-
Bereft of joy I stray from crowds apart
In this dark vale, 'mid grief and ire's foul air,
Where there is nothing left of bright or fair.
Since Love has gone a rustic to the plow,
Or feeds his flocks, or in the summer now
Handles the rake, now plies the scythe with care.
Happy the mead and valley, hill and wood,
Where man and beast, and almost tree and stone,
Seem by her look with sense and joy endued!
What is not changed on which her eyes e'er shone?
The country courteous grows, the city rude,
Even from her presence or her loss alone.
--
Translation of Richard Henry Wilde.
*A play on the word "L'Aura» (the breeze) and the name Laura.


## p. 14518 (#80) ###########################################

14518
BAYARD TAYLOR
BAYARD TAYLOR
(1825-1878)
BY ALBERT H. SMYTH
B
AYARD TAYLOR was born in Kennett Square, Chester County,
Pennsylvania, January 11th, 1825. The story of his life is
the history of a struggle. His career began in humble cir-
cumstances, and ended in splendor. The love of letters was awak-
ened in him in childhood; he yielded passionate homage to the great
names of literature. When he was seven years old he grieved over
the death of Goethe and of Scott, and in
the same year (1832) composed his first
poems. His early surroundings tended to
repress his enthusiasms. He inherited two
strains of blood, German and English. By
the first he was related to the Lancaster
Mennonites who had migrated from East
Switzerland, and who spoke the Pennsylva-
nia Dutch dialect; by the other he was kin
to the seventeenth-century Mendenhall fam-
ily of Wiltshire, and the Cheshire Taylors.
He was raised in a Quaker atmosphere
which suppressed imagination and emotion.
When he was nineteen years old, he said he
felt as if he were sitting in an exhausted
receiver, while the air which should nourish his spiritual life could
only be found in distant lands. The courage, restless curiosity, and
push of the country lad found a way to finer air. He published
in 1844 a little volume of poems called 'Ximena, or the Battle of
the Sierra Morena. ' With the small profits of this literary venture,
and a few dollars advanced by Philadelphia editors, Bayard Taylor,
in company with two friends, left New York July 1st, 1844, bound
for Liverpool. For two years he traveled on foot through Europe,
eagerly studying the memorials of art and history, enduring every
hardship and privation, often penniless and hungry, never without
hope and courage, and always welcoming returning joy.
"Born in the New World, ripened in the old," Berthold Auerbach
Isaid of him. This first tramp trip abroad was symbolic of his whole



## p. 14519 (#81) ###########################################

BAYARD TAYLOR
14519
life. It showed splendid energy, and acute sensibility; and it was
really Bayard Taylor's university education, supplying the deficien-
cies of his simple life and country schooling. Although a safe and
at times brilliant literary critic, and although his wide reading quali-
fied him for the professorship of German literature at Cornell Univer-
sity, he was not a scholar. He was never sure of his Latin, and
Greek he did not begin to study until he was fifty. His education
came largely from travel; he picked his knowledge from the living
bush.
It was as a traveler that he was most widely known, though it
was the reputation that he least cared for. . His great success as
a public lecturer was largely due to his fame as a traveler. He
published eleven books of travel, beginning with 'Views Afoot, or
Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff' (1846),—a work so popular
that it went through twenty editions in ten years.
N. P. Willis introduced Bayard Taylor to the literary society of
New York; and before the end of January 1848, Horace Greeley
offered him a situation on the Tribune. In one capacity or another
he continued to serve the Tribune until his death; and he was one
of the most eagerly industrious and prolific writers on the staff. For
the Tribune he visited California in 1849; and his letters from the
gold fields were republished in 'Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path
of Empire. '
Two years of distant travel, in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, pro-
ceeding by the White Nile to the country of the Shillooks, gave him
the materials for 'A Journey to Central Africa,' 'The Lands of the
Saracen,' and 'A Visit to India, China, and Japan. '
Subsequent journeys resulted in Northern Travel,' Travels in
Greece and Russia,' 'At Home and Abroad,' 'Colorado: a Summer
Trip,' and 'Byways of Europe. ' The chief merit of Taylor's books
of travel is reporterial. They tell of adventure, of courage and per-
sistence. They make no pretense to antiquarian knowledge, they at-
tempt no theory or speculation; but simply and vividly they tell the
visible aspects of the countries they describe. Architecture, scenery,
and habits of life, stand in clear outline, and justify the criticism
that has named Bayard Taylor "the best American reporter of scenes
and incidents. "
<
Bayard Taylor's literary triumphs were not made in English lit-
erature alone. His inclinations were toward German life and let-
ters. Goethe was his chief literary passion. Like, him he yearned
after "the unshackled range of all experience. " The calm self-poise
and symmetrical culture of Goethe fascinated him. He craved intel-
lectual novelty, and continually wheeled into new orbits; seeking, as
he wrote to E. C. Stedman, "the establishing of my own Entelecheia


## p. 14520 (#82) ###########################################

14520
BAYARD TAYLOR
the making of all that is possible out of such powers as I may have,
without violently forcing or distorting them. " Astonishing versatility
is the chief note of his life and of his inclusive literary career. He
was famous as a traveler, and successful as a diplomatist in Russia
and in Germany. To his eleven volumes of travels he added four
novels, several short stories, a history of Germany, two volumes of
critical essays and studies in German and English literature, a famous
translation of 'Faust,' and thirteen volumes of poems comprising
almost every variety of verses,— odes, idyls, ballads, lyrics, pastorals,
dramatic romances, and lyrical dramas.
For seven years he worked upon his translation of Faust,'
which he completed in 1870. The immense difficulties of the poem
he attacked with unresting energy, and with a singularly intimate
knowledge of the German language. He undertook to render the
poem in the original metres, and in this respect succeeded beyond
all other translators. The dedication 'An Goethe' which Taylor pub-
lished in his translation is a masterpiece of German verse.
It can
stand side by side with Goethe's own dedication without paling a syl-
lable. Taylor was completely saturated with German literature; and
in his lectures upon Lessing, Klopstock, Schiller, and Goethe, his
illustrative quotations were the genuine droppings from the comb.
He was widely read and appreciated in Germany. When he delivered
in German, at Weimar, his lecture upon American literature, the
whole court was present; and among his auditors were the grand-
children of Carl August, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland. When
he was minister to Berlin, every facility was given him to pursue
those studies in the lives of Goethe and Schiller which would have
resulted in the crowning work of his life, but which were destined
never to be completed.
It was partly with the hope of working a lucrative literary vein
that would take the place of the repugnant lecturing trade, that he
turned his attention to the novel. 'Hannah Thurston' and 'The
Story of Kennett' are attempts to interpret the life of his native
region in Pennsylvania. The beautiful pastoral landscapes of the
Chester valley, and the homely life of its fertile farms, he dwells
affectionately upon; but the curious crotchets and fads of the Quaker
community in which he grew up are ridiculed and rebuked. Spirit-
ualism, vegetarianism, teetotalism, and all the troop of unreasoning
"isms" of the hour, enter into the plot of Hannah Thurston. ' 'John
Godfrey's Fortunes' is constructed out of the author's literary and
social experiences in New York about 1850, and is to a considerable
extent autobiographical.
Bayard Taylor's darling ambition was to be remembered as a
poet. However he might experiment in other fields of literature, and


## p. 14521 (#83) ###########################################

BAYARD TAYLOR
14521
however enviable the distinctions he might win in statecraft and
in scholarship, nothing could reconcile him to the slightest sense of
failure in his poetic endeavor. He had real lyric genius, as is abund-
antly shown in the 'Poems of the Orient': 'The Bedouin Song'-
paralleled only in Shelley-and The Song of the Camp' are two
lyrics that will last as long as anything in American poetry. The
sadness of Bayard Taylor's life was its frustrated purpose. It was a
full and happy life as a whole, for his work was a joy to him, and
he dwelt always in an atmosphere of generous and noble thoughts;
yet the reward often seemed inadequate to the high endeavor. He
had a generous plan of life, he was ambitious for himself and family.
He acquired a large estate, and built an expensive house, - Cedar-
croft, at Kennett Square, and lived an open, generous, hospitable
life. Involved in heavy domestic expenses, he never knew the value
of freedom. His life became a struggle for the means to live, and he
had neither time nor opportunity to refine his exquisite sense of lyric
harmony.
He planned great poems like 'Prince Deukalion' and 'The Masque
of the Gods,' which insensibly convey the impression of vast move-
ments in human affairs, of the strange stirrings of nations and races,
but which are distinctly poems of the intellect. He had splendid rhet-
oric, and his verse was sonorous, resonant, and at times. as in the
'National Ode'-stately. Had he devoted himself to song, he would
have been a noble poet; but he had a dozen kinds of talent, and he
had restless curiosity and ambition. His health failed under the
stress of labor and the strain of care. In 1878 he was appointed
minister to Germany. At last success seemed to be attained, and the
long struggle was over. But his vital powers were overtaxed. He
took the ovations of his friends with an abandon which left him
physically exhausted long before he sailed. He died in Berlin, Decem-
ber 19th, 1878.
Allesse. Amy to
―


## p. 14522 (#84) ###########################################

14522
BAYARD TAYLOR
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
Address at the dedication of the Halleck Monument at Guilford, Connecticut,
July 8th, 1869. From 'Critical Essays and Literary Notes. ' Copyright
1880, by G. P. Putnam's Sons.
E HAVE been eighty years an organized nation, ninety-three
years an independent people, more than two hundred
years an American race; and to-day, for the first time
in our history, we meet to dedicate publicly, with appropriate
honors, a monument to an American poet. The occasion is thus
lifted above the circle of personal memories which inspired it,
and takes its place as the beginning of a new epoch in the story
of our culture. It carries our thoughts back of the commence-
ment of this individual life, into the elements from which our
literature grew; and forward, far beyond the closing of the tomb
before us, into the possible growth and glory of the future.
The rhythmical expression of emotion, or passion, or thought,
is a need of the human race coeval with speech, universal as
religion, the prophetic forerunner as well as the last-begotten off-
spring of civilization. Poetry belongs equally to the impressible
childhood of a people and to the refined ease of their maturity.
It is both the instinctive effort of nature and the loftiest ideal
of art; receding to farther and farther spheres of spiritual beauty
as men rise to the capacity for its enjoyment. But our race was
transferred, half-grown, from the songs of its early ages and the
inspiring associations of its past, and set here face to face with
stern tasks which left no space for the lighter play of the mind.
The early generations of English bards gradually become for-
eign to us; for their songs, however sweet, were not those of
our home. We profess to claim an equal share in Chaucer
and Spenser and Shakespeare, but it is a hollow pretense. They
belong to our language, but we cannot truly feel that they
belong to us as a people. The destiny that placed us on this
soil robbed us of the magic of tradition, the wealth of romance,
the suggestions of history, the sentiment of inherited homes and
customs, and left us, shorn of our lisping childhood, to create a
poetic literature for ourselves.
It is not singular, therefore, that this continent should have
waited long for its first-born poet. The intellect, the energy of
character, the moral force,-even the occasional taste and refine-
ment,— which were shipped hither from the older shores, found


## p. 14523 (#85) ###########################################

BAYARD TAYLOR
14523
the hard work of history already portioned out for them; and the
Muses discovered no nook of guarded leisure, no haunt of sweet
contemplation, which might tempt them to settle among us.
Labor may be prayer, but it is not poetry. Liberty of conscience
and worship, practical democracy, the union of civil order and
personal independence, are ideas which may warm the hearts and
brains of men; but the soil in which they strike root is too full
of fresh, unsoftened forces to produce the delicate wine of song.
The highest product of ripened intellect cannot be expected in
the nonage of a nation. The poetry of our colonial and revolu-
tionary periods is mostly a spiritless imitation of inferior models
in the parent country. If here and there some timid, uncertain
voice seems to guess the true language, we only hear it once or
twice; like those colonized nightingales which for one brief sum-
mer gave their new song to the Virginian moonlights, and then
disappeared. These early fragments of our poetry are chanted in
the midst of such profound silence and loneliness that they sound
spectrally to our ears. Philip Freneau is almost as much a shade
to us as are his own hunter and deer.
In the same year in which the Constitution of the United
States was completed and adopted, the first poet was born,-
Richard Henry Dana. Less than three years after him Fitz-
Greene Halleck came into the world, the lyrical genius follow-
ing the grave and contemplative Muse of his elder brother. In
Halleck, therefore, we mourn our first loss out of the first gener-
ation of American bards; and a deeper significance is thus given
to the personal honors which we lovingly pay to his memory.
Let us be glad, not only that these honors have been so nobly
deserved, but also that we find in him a fitting representative of
his age!
Let us forget our sorrow for the true man, the stead-
fast friend, and rejoice that the earliest child of song whom we
return to the soil that bore him for us, was the brave, bright,
and beautiful growth of a healthy, masculine race! No morbid
impatience with the restrictions of life, no fruitless lament over
an unattainable ideal, no inherited gloom of temperament, such
as finds delight in what it chooses to call despair, ever muffled
the clear notes of his verse, or touched the sunny cheerfulness
of his history. The cries and protests, the utterances of "world-
pain," with which so many of his contemporaries in Europe filled
the world, awoke no echo in his sound and sturdy nature. His
life offers no enigmas for our solution. No romantic mystery
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14524
BAYARD TAYLOR
floats around his name, to win for him the interest of a shallow
sentimentalism. Clear, frank, simple, and consistent, his song and
his life were woven into one smooth and even thread. We would
willingly pardon in him some expression of dissatisfaction with a
worldly fate which in certain respects seemed inadequate to his
genius; but we find that he never uttered it. The basis of his
nature was a knightly bravery, of such firm and enduring temper
that it kept from him even the ordinary sensitiveness of the
poetic character. From the time of his studies as a boy, in the
propitious kitchen which heard his first callow numbers, to the last
days of a life which had seen no liberal popular recognition of
his deserts, he accepted his fortune with the perfect dignity of a
man who cannot stoop to discontent. During his later visits to
New York, the simplest, the most unobtrusive, yet the cheerful-
est man to be seen among the throngs of Broadway, was Fitz-
Greene Halleck. Yet with all his simplicity, his bearing was
strikingly gallant and fearless; the carriage of his head suggested
the wearing of a helmet.