網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

characterizing the faults and the merits of Macaulay's historical work, this was so striking as to cause the otherwise undemonstrative Mr. Downing to exclaim, repeatedly, "Excellent! delightful!"

Mr. Downing was interested by Bergfalk in a high degree, and invited him to spend the night there; but he had already engaged rooms in the town. We accompanied him to his inn; and I gave him Lowell's and Emerson's works to bear him company.

To-day, Sunday the 21st, as I continue my letter, Bergfalk is again here, and with him a Swedish doctor, Uddenberg, living at Barthelemi, and who came to pay his respects to me. The morning has been intellectually rich to me in a conversation on Lowell's poem of "Prometheus," and the manner in which an American poet has treated this primeval subject of all ages and all poets. Bergfalk again distinguished himself by his power of discriminating the characteristics of the subjects; and nothing like this is ever thrown away upon Mr. Downing. At my request, he read that fine portion of Prometheus's defiance of the old tyrants, in which the poet of the New World properly stands forth in opposition to those of the Old World, because it is not, as in the Prometheus of Eschylus, the joy of hatred and revenge, in the consciousness that the power of the tyrant will one day come to an end; nor as in Shelley, merely the spirit of defiance, which will not yield, which knows itself to be mightier than Zeus in the strength of suffering and of will-no: it is not a selfish joy which gives power to the newly-created Prometheus; it is the certainty which defies the tyrant, and by his strength has prepared freedom and happiness for the human race. That threat with which he arms himself against his executioner, that defiance by which he feels that he can crush him, is prophetic of the ideal future of the New World of America; for much suffering has rendered keen his inner vision, and made of him a seer. and he beholds

"A sceptre and a throne;
The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills,
Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee;
The songs of maidens pressing with white feet
The vintage, on thine altars poured no more;
The murmurous bliss of lovers underneath
Dim grapevine bowers, whose rosy branches press
Not half so close as their warm cheeks untouched
By thoughts of thy brute lust; the hive-like hum
Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburn'd toil
Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own
By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns
To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts
Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea-
Even the spirit of free love and peace,
Duty's own recompense through life and death;
These are such harvests as all master-spirits
Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less

Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs;
These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal
They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge.

For their best part of life on earth is when
Long after death, prisoned and pent no more,

Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become
Part of the necessary air men breathe;

When, like the moon herself behind a cloud,
They shed down light before us on life's sea,
That cheers us to steer onward, still in hope;
Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er
Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea,
In tempest, or wide calm, repeats their thoughts,
The lightning and the thunder, all free things
Have legends of them for the ears of men.

All other glories are as falling stars,

But universal nature watches theirs :

Such strength is won by love of human kind."

After this came Caroline Downing, with her favorite bard Bryant, the poet of nature. But Bryant's song also is warm with patriotism, with faith in the future of America, and in her sublime mission. Thus, in that beautiful epic poem, "The Prairies," in which he paints, as words can seldom paint, the illimitable Western fields, in their sunbright, solitary beauty and grandeur, billowy masses of verdure and flowers waving in the wind; above these

[ocr errors]

the vagrant clouds; and, higher still, the sunshine, gleam-
ing above the vast scene, paradisaic, splendid, and rich,
but silent and desolate as the desert. The silence, how-
ever, is broken. The poet hears a low humming. What
is it? It is a bee, which flies forth over the flowery plain
and sucks the honey of the flowers. The busy bee be-
comes a prophet to the poet; and in its humming flight
and its quiet activity he hears the advancing industry of
the human race, which will extend itself over the prairies,
transform them into a new Paradise, and cause new and
yet more beautiful flowers to spring up:
"From the ground

Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn
Of Sabbath worshipers. The low of herds
Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain
Over the dark-brown furrows."

Last of all, I come to the poems of Emerson, small in dimensions, but great in their spirit and tone; and read aloud a little dithyrambic poem, which is characteristic of the individuality of the poet. Other American poets speak to society; Emerson always merely to the individual; but they all are to me as a breeze from the life of the New World, in a certain illimitable vastness of life, in expectation, in demand, in faith, and hope-a something which makes me draw a deeper breath, and, as it were, in a larger, freer world. Thus says Emerson's poem:

"GIVE ALL TO LOVE.

"Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good fame;

"Plans, credit, and the muse,

Nothing refuse.

For it is a god,

Knows its own path,

And the outlets of the sky.

""Tis not for the mean;

It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such 'twill reward,
They shall return

More than they were,
And ever ascending.

"Yet hear me, yet

One word more thy heart behooved
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.

"Cling with life to the maid ;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

"Though thou loved her as thyself,

As a self of purer clay,

Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,

Heartily know,

When half gods go

The gods arrive."

This is noble stoicism. Among Emerson's poems are some which bear witness to a less noble spirit-to a selfconsciousness which rejoices in its contempt of the world ; that knows itself to have enough, while the world perishes of hunger; a something which reminds one of the answer of the ant to the grasshopper, in La Fontaine's fable. But this shadow passes away, as do all clouds, from the clear heaven of the poet, having not there their abiding home. One strongly prominent feature in him is his love of the strong and the great. Thus he speaks in his poem, "The World-Soul :"

"Thanks to the morning light,

Thanks to the seething sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,

To the green-haired forest free;
Thanks to each man of courage,

To the maids of holy mind,

To the boy with his games undaunted

Who never looks behind."

But nobler even than this is the song of our Geijer:

"I greet with love each field and grove,
And thou, blue billowy sea, I love;
Life-giving light in depth and height,
Thou heavenly sun, art my delight!
But more than all earth's fair array,
More than the blue waves' dancing play,
Love I

The dawning light of heavenly rest
Within a trembling human breast!"

Emerson has,

Of this light Emerson knows nothing. in other respects, many points of resemblance with Geijer, but he stands as much below him as heathenism stands below Christianity.

I can not, perhaps, do full justice to Emerson's poems by my translation; I never was very clever at translation; and I fancy it almost impossible to render the poetic element of Emerson into another tongue, because it is of so peculiar a kind, and has, like the character of the poet, its own extraordinary rhythm and spirit.

Longfellow, the author of "Evangeline," is perhaps the best read and the most popular of the poets of America; but this is owing to qualities which are common alike to the elder poets of all countries, rather than to any peculiar characteristics of the New World's poets. Those sentiments, whether happy or sorrowful, which exist in the breast of every superior human being, are peculiarly his domain, and here he exercises his sway, and in particular in his delineation of the more delicate changes of feeling. In "Evangeline" alone has he dealt with an American subject, and described American scenery.

« 上一頁繼續 »