Classic Poem

ON THE CLASSICK AND ROMANTICK

P HILIP ! I know thee not, thy song I know:
It fell upon my ear among the last
Destined to fall upon it: but while strength
Is left me, I will rise to hail the morn
Of the stout-hearted who begin a work
Wherin I did but idle at odd hours.
The Faeries never tempted me away
From higher fountains and severer shades;
Their rings allured me not from deeper tracks
Left by Olympick wheels on ampler plains,
Yet could I see them and can see them now
With pleasurable warmth, and hold in bonds
Of brotherhood men whom their gamesome wreath
In youth's fresh slumber caught, and still detains.
I wear no cestus; my right-hand is free
To point the road few seem inclined to take.
Admonish thou, with me, the starting youth,
Ready to seize all nature at one grasp,
To mingle earth, sea, sky, woods, cataracts,
And make all nations think and speak alike.
Some see but sunshine, others see but gloom,
Others confound them strangely, furiously;
Most have an eye for colour, few for form.
Imperfect is the glory to create ,
Unless on our creation we can look
And see that all is good; we then may rest.
In every poem train the leading shoot;
Break off the suckers. Thought erases thought,
As numerous sheep erase each other's print
When spungy moss they press or sterile sand.
Blades thickly sown want nutriment and droop,
Altho' the seed be sound, and rich the soil.
Thus healthy-born ideas, bedded close,
By dreaming fondness, perish overlaid.
A rose or sprig of myrtle in the hair
Pleases me better than a far-sought gem.
I chide the flounce that checks the nimble feet,
Abhor the cruel piercer of the ear,
And would strike down the chain that cuts in two
The beauteous column of the marble neck.
Barbarous and false are all such ornaments,
Yet such hath poesy in whim put on.
Classical hath been deem'd each Roman name
Writ on the roll-call of each pedagogue
In the same hand, in the same tone pronounced;
Yet might five scanty pages well contain
All that the Muses in fresh youth would own
Between the grave at Tomos, wet with tears
Rolling amain down Getick beard unshorn,
And that grand priest whose purple shone afar
From his own Venice o'er the Adrian sea.
We talk of schools . . unscholarly; of schools.
Part the romantick from the classical.
The classical like the heroick age
Is past; but Poetry may reassume
That glorious name with Tartar and with Turk,
With Goth or Arab, Sheik or Paladin,
And not with Roman and with Greek alone.
The name is graven on the workmanship.
The trumpet-blast of Marmion never shook
The walls of God-built Ilion; yet what shout
Of the Achaians swells the heart so high?
Nor fainter is the artillery-roar that blooms
From Hohenlinden to the Baltick strand.
Shakespeare with majesty benign call'd up
The obedient classicks from their marble seats,
And led them thro dim glens and sheeny glades,
And over precipices, over seas
Unknown by mariners, to palaces
High-archt, to festival, to dance, to joust,
And gave them golden spurs and vizors barred,
And steeds that Pheidias had turn'd pale to see.
The mighty man who opened Paradise,
Harmonious far above Homerick song,
Or any song that human ears shall hear,
Sometimes was classical and sometimes not.
Rome chain'd him down, the younger Italy
Dissolved, not fatally, his Sampson strength.
I leave behind me those who stood around
The throne of Shakespeare, sturdy, but unclean;
To hurry past the opprobrious courts and lanes
Of the loose pipers at the Belial feasts,
Past mimes obscene and grinders of lampoons . .
Away the petty wheel, the callous hand!
Goldsmith was classical, and Gray almost.
So was poor Collins, heart bound to Romance:
Shelley and Keats, those southern stars, shone higher.
Cowper had more variety, more strength,
Gentlest of bards! stil pitied, stil beloved!
Shrewder in epigram than polity
Was Canning; Frere more graceful; Smith more grand;
A genuine poet was the last alone.
Romantick, classical, the female hand
That chain'd the cruel Ivan down for ever,
And followed up, rapt in his fiery car
The boy of Casabianca to the skies.
Other fair forms breathe round us, which exert
With Paphian softness Amazonian power,
And sweep in bright array the Attick field.
To men turn now, who stand or lately stood
With more than Royalty's gilt bays adorn'd.
Wordsworth, in sonnet, is a classick too,
And on that grass-plot sits at Milton's side;
In the long walk he soon is out of breath
And wheezes heavier than his friends could wish.
Follow his pedlar up the devious rill,
And, if you faint not, you are well repaid.
Large lumps of precious metal lie engulpht
In gravelly beds, whence you must delve them out,
And thirst sometimes and hunger; shudder not
To wield the pickaxe and to shake the sieve.
Well shall the labour be (tho hard) repaid.
Too weak for ode or epick, and his gait
Somewhat too rural for the tragick pall,
Which never was cut out of duffel grey,
He fell, entangled, " on the grunsel-edge"
Flat on his face, " and shamed his worshipers."
Classick in every feature was my friend
The genial Southey: none who ruled around
Held in such order such a wide domain . .
But often too indulgent, too profuse.
The ancients see us under them, and grieve
That we are parted by a rank morass,
Wishing its flowers more delicate and fewer.
Abstemious were the Greeks; they never strove
To look so fierce: their muses were sedate,
Never obstreperous: you heard no breath
Outside the flute; each sound ran clear within.
The Fauns might dance, might clap their hands, might shout,
Might revel and run riotous; the Nymphs
Furtively glanced, and fear'd, or seem'd to fear:
Descended on the lightest of light wings,
The graceful son of Maia mused apart
Graceful, but strong; he listen'd; he drew nigh;
And now with his own lyre and now with voice
Tempered the strain; Apollo calmly smiled.