Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps ;- -or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought 171
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and
majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
'My name is Legion !"-that majestic tongue,
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;-thou wert then to me
As is a nurse---when inarticulately
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the ætherial
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin,-greater none than he Though fallen-and fallen on evil times-to
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of to-come
The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and
You will see Coleridge-he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind
Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
Flags wearily through darkness and despair-
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls.
You will see Hunt- -one of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without
This world would smell like what it is-a
Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,'
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
The gifts of the most learn'd among some
dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say,
I'm poor!
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness.-
You will see Hogg, and I cannot express
His virtues, though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit;-of his wit
1 Robert Shout, statuary, of 18 High Holborn, from whom, presumably, Hunt purchased his plaster casts. -ED.
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. 230
He is a pearl within an oyster-shell,
One of the richest of the deep;—and there
Is English Peacock with his mountain fair
Turned into a Flamingo ;-that shy bird
That gleams i' the Indian air-have you not
heard,
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him?-but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope 239
Matched with this cameleopard :—his fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learnèd for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots, let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
Fold itself up for the serener clime
years to come, and find its recompense In that just expectation.-Wit and sense, Virtue and human knowledge, all that might Make this dull world a business of delight, 249 Are all combined in Horace Smith.-And these, With some exceptions, which I need not tease Your patience by descanting on,—are all You and I know in London.
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
Fills the void, hollow, universal air:
What see you?-unpavilioned heaven is fair
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep;
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, 261
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:
All this is beautiful in every land.————
But what see you beside?- a shabby stand
Of Hackney coaches-a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the
scrawl
Of our unhappy politics;—or worse-—
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade,
You must accept in place of serenade;-
Or yellow-haired Pollonia, murmuring
To Henry some unutterable thing.
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root
Of the living stems that feed them-in whose
bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and, borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, 280
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine; but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way;-
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance-and a bird
Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;-and then all is still-
Now Italy or London, which you will!
Next winter you must pass with me; I'll
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are;
Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock and Smith were there,
With every thing belonging to them fair!
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father as I'm unlike mine,
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast,
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,-
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's
wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk ;-what shall we talk
about? Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout Of thought-entangled descant;-as to nerves— With cones and parallelograms and curves I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare To bother me when you are with me there. And they shall never more sip laudanum, From Helicon or Himeros;'-well, come; And, in despite of God and of the devil, We'll make our friendly philosophic revel Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew ;-
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
1 "luscos, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonym of Love.
|