图书图片
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

the road, there is always a more glorious tumult of singing-birds than in any other spot I know. To hear these birds on the one hand, and the gush of the rapid Rotha on the other, when the day is breaking over the waters, is enough to enliven the whole succeeding winter day. The Rotha is here spanned by a bridge, which we must cross if we mean to go round the valley. We leave the highway now, and pass through a gate which makes the winding road half private for the whole time that we are skirting Loughrigg. Under wooded steeps and through copses we go, looking over the flat valley to the green swelling mountains on the other side, whose woods run down the ravines, and hang on the slopes, and peep out where the vales hide between. When I first came, there was a green knoll swelling up out of the meadows, under the opposite hills, with a chapel roof rising behind it, and a row of lowly gray stone cottages near. When I first marked that knoll, I little thought that on it I should build my house, and that it would afford that terrace view which would be the daily delight of my life. But there now stands my graystone old English house, with climbing plants already half covering it, and a terrace wall below, inviting my fruit trees to spread themselves over it.

Our road now skirts the Rotha, a stream too clear to fish in, except after heavy rains. There is no beguiling the trout in water as translucent as the air. We do not now cross the little Millar Bridge, by which I am wont to go almost daily to Fox How; but we walk on to Fox How, through whose birch copse we have to pass. Every one knows that Fox How is the abode so beloved by Dr. Arnold-the house he built, and the garden he laid out to be the retreat of his old age. The trees that he planted spread

41

and flourish, his house is almost covered with roses and climbing plants, his younger children are growing up there, and his friends assemble in his home; but he has long been gone. Perhaps there is not one of us that ever passes through that birch copse without vivid thoughts of him. As for me, I usually take my way through the garden, even if I have not time for more than a word at the window, or even for that. We now see the recess of Fairfield, its whole cul-de-sac, finely, unless mists are filling the basin, and curling about the ridges; and Rydal Forest stretches boldly up to the snow line. Lady Le Fleming's large, staring, yellow mansion is a blemish in the glorious view; but a little way back, we saw near it what puts all great mansions out of our heads,--Wordsworth's cottage, a little way up the lower slope of Nab Scar-the blunt end of the Fairfield horseshoe. Of that cottage we must see more hereafter; it does not lie in our road now. After passing four or five dwellings, more or less prettily set down in their gardens, we come to Pelter Bridge, where we cross the Rotha again, and join the mail road. The river still sweeps beside us, among stones and under bending trees, joined here and there by a beck (brook) which has been making waterfalls in the ravines above. When we part company with it, we pass by more and more dwellings, one of the most striking of which, from its exquisite position on a hill-side, is the large gray house built by the brother of Sir Humphry Davy. That gate is near my own. After passing both, and skirting the wall of Mr. Harrison's grounds, we come to the little town of Ambleside. We had better pause at the foot of the hill leading up to the church; for we have more to say of Ambleside than we have room for here.

THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

BY FRANCES S. OS GOOD.
(See Engraving.)

WHEN silent Noon hung o'er the Syrian land,
The haughty zealot of Cilicia rode
Unto Damascus, with a burning heart,
Exulting in Oppression's evil strength.

"To Heaven be honour," said he--"while I crush
These wretched followers of the Nazarene !"
And to that pure, blue Heaven he raised his eyes,
With a fanatic faith. Then suddenly
"There shone a great light round about his way!"
And from his fiery steed th' affrighted Saul
Was stricken blind to earth;-while a deep voice,
Grand, clear, and sweet-as if all stars in Heaven
In choral music spake,-rang through his soul,
With wo and love and pity in its tones--
"Why persecutest thou me, Saul?" it said-
And while that light his outward vision blinded,
Lo! to his soul, no longer blind, there came

VOL. VI.

A softer glory--warm with Mercy's ray--
The smile of God!--and melted, thrilled, subdued.
Awake to all the madness of the Past,

To all the Future's glorious reparation,-
"Who art thou, Lord?" he cried-and-"I am he,
Whom thou dost persecute,"--once more that voice
With love, melodious, answered.

So he learned;
Serves best the Father, he who most serves man;
And who would wrong humanity wrongs Heaven.
He learned, at last, the lowliest life he crushed
Was dearer to the holy heart of God,
Than he in all his arrogant bigotry!

He learned while he had thought to honour Hoaven,
Each blow he dealt its children in his wrath,
Reaching to Him who came to save all men,
Had wounded the celestial soul of Love!

[blocks in formation]

[* Pwen, and Enna, names of endearment among the Burmans, very commonly applied to children.-ED.]

SHAKESPEARE'S MINOR POEMS.

BY JOHN S. HART.

To the observer of our literary history one object ever stands proudly eminent an object not unlike the Pyramid of Cheops-which, whether you go up or down the Nile, whether you penetrate its rich valley from the east over the sand-hills of Arabia, or from the west across the trackless desert of Zahara-from whatever quarter you approach-is the first object to strike, the last to recede from the vision. So is it with the object which we have indicated. Whether we approach it travelling backward from the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Byron and Scott, or descend towards the same point from Cædmon, Chaucer, Sidney, and Spenser-whether we cross the current of our literature by a transition from that of France or Germany, the Norseland or the South of Europe-from whatever quarter of the literary horizon we direct our gaze towards the point indicated-one name rises spontaneously on every tongue-the greatest name in all English, in all modern, perhaps I may say absolutely, in all literature. Shakespeare may possibly not be read as much now as he once was. The time will come, I believe, when he will be read still less. But he is studied all the more. His fame is steadily in the ascendant. It is confessedly higher now than it was at the beginning of the present century. It has made a perceptible rise even within the last ten years.

fitting preparation for higher studies, should they hereafter be deemed discreet.

The minor poems of Shakespeare, besides the Sonnets, are the Passionate Pilgrim, the Lover's Complaint, Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece.

The Passionate Pilgrim was first published in 1599. It is not, like the other three that have been named, a connected poem, but a name given to a small collection of Sonnets and Songs on various subjects, but mostly of a passionate character. The publisher had evidently found these pieces circulating in manuscript, and proposed to profit by the rising reputation of the author by collecting them into a small volume for sale. He made however many extraordinary mistakes, such indeed as to prove incontestably the surreptitious character of the publication. Several of the pieces in the collection were ascertained afterwards not to be Shakespeare's, but the work of different authors. Some appear elsewhere as parts of other works of Shakespeare's. Others, that do not appear elsewhere, and that may reasonably be accepted as Shakespeare's, are yet not of a character to entitle them to much consideration. On the whole, therefore, the collection is of little value, and need not be farther noticed.

There is no

The Lover's Complaint was originally published as an appendix to the Sonnets. This In a spirit of affectionate reverence for was the case in the original edition of 1609, the subject, I have in two former papers and in the second edition of 1640. They are offered to the reading public some remarks generally so printed now. This however is suggested by a study of the Sonnets. Before merely an incidental connexion, adopted origiproceeding to a similar study of the Dramas-nally probably for bookselling convenience, without in fact having yet fully settled in my own mind whether I might dare to enter upon ground at once so hallowed and so profanedhallowed, I mean, by the awe-inspiring genius of the author, profaned by the babbling herd of querulous and contending commentators and critics still standing at respectful and unambitious distance from that which after all constitutes the unchanging and eternal pyramid of Shakespeare's fame, let me pause once more for a space to gather some of the lotos-blossoms and lilies from the fertilizing river at its base. The study of the other Minor Poems may, it is hoped, afford pleasing and instructive topics for remark similar to those suggested by the Sonnets, and will form a

and followed since from custom.
connexion in form or subject. The Lover's
Complaint is a continuous narrative poem, in
the seven-line stanza or Rhythm Royal of
Chaucer and the elder poets. This was the
favourite stanza, particularly for romantic
poetry, through the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries. It is a modification of the
Italian ottava rima, and an evident improve-
ment upon it. Chaucer, who first domesticated,
if he did not invent it, has written in this form
the Court of Love, Troilus and Creseida, the
Complaint of the Black Knight, the Flower and
the Leaf, besides four of his Canterbury Tales.
Spenser used it also in the Ruins of Time and
the Hymns of Love and Beauty. The capabi-

lities of this stanza for poetical effect, with all due deference to the craft, have not been sufficiently considered by our living poets. But to

return.

Of incident in the Lover's Complaint there is very little, almost nothing-less even than in Longfellow's Kavanagh of which so many have complained, because forsooth the author was better advised than to make a shilling novel for the newsboys. The poem, in fact, though narrative in its form, is chiefly speculative and intro-versive. The story is of a female, now past the meridian of life, who had been deceived and deserted in youth. She is described as a half-crazed being, with some remains of beauty and of comely apparel still cleaving to her, sitting alone on the margin of a gentle streamlet, bewailing in melancholy tones her sad history.

The story opens with the following scene. The poet represents himself as reclining upon a gentle hill, listening to the echo from a "sistering" vale. The echo thus brought to his ears was a "plaintful" story, which on directing his eyes thither, he found to proceed from the half-crazed person already described.

"From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale:
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.

"Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcase of a beauty spent and done.
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage,
Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.

"Oft did she heave her napkin* to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,†
Laund'ring the silken figures in the brine
That seasoned wo had pelleted? in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears,
As often shricking undistinguished wo,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

"Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tyed
To the orbed earth; sometime they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,
The mind and sight distractedly commixed.

"Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;
For some, untuck'd, descended her sheav'd hat,
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,

*Napkin, handkerchief.

+ Conceited characters, fanciful figures.

Laund'ring, washing.

Pelleted, formed into pellets or small balls. Sheaved, made of straw collected from sheaves.

[blocks in formation]
« 上一页继续 »