MARCO BOZZARIS In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, 239 90 95 The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babe's first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, 100 105 Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's: One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die. New York Review, 1823. 110 A JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE (1795-1820) The life of Joseph Rodman Drake has often been compared with that of the English poet Keats. Both were city born in the year 1795, both were poor and were self-educated; both studied medicine; and both, after a trip abroad in pursuit of health, died of consumption within a few months of the same date. Further than this, however, the comparison may not be pressed. The work of Drake is small and indistinctive when compared with the rich product of the English poet; though the ratio is not more disproportionate perhaps than is that between the literary London and the literary New York of the period. Drake was a young man of buoyant spirit, impetuous, sentimental, fanciful. He had read as richly even as Keats, but without Keats's brooding, sensuous soul. Like Irving and the Salmagundi group, he would plunge headlong into literature as if it were an exhilarating sport. He turned off verses with ease, never pausing to finish them, and he suffered from overpraise, as did Halleck. Instead of the sensuous beauty of the Greek that Keats put into his work, he put too often, as in his American Flag.' the spread-eagleism, and declamatory fervor of the new American nation. The Culprit Fay.' however, is in a different key. It is delicately fanciful, an unlooked-for exotic in the somber field of American poetry,- and it has a certain daintiness and beauty that within its limited field have been, even to the present day, rarely excelled, but it lacks the human interest and the imaginative power that a poem must have if it is to be rated with the great classics. - THE CULPRIT FAY I 'Tis the middle watch of a summer night — Naught is seen in the vault on high less sky, 10 And the flood which rolls its milky hue, 5 II 65 They come not now to print the lea, To the elfin court must haste away: VI The throne was reared upon the grass, 70 75 80 85 And his peers were ranged around the throne. He waved his scepter in the air, 90 He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke: Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity 100 105 Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment Tied to hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettle's stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede. Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim. Your jailer a spider huge and grim, 115 Amid the carrion bodies to lie, To the heaven's blue canopy; And when thou see'st a shooting-star, Follow it fast, and follow it far, The last faint spark of its burning train 145 X The goblin marked his monarch well; And turned him round in act to go. His soiled wing has lost its power, Over the grass and through the brake, And now he thrids the bramble-bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the brier, 165 He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, For rugged and dim was his onward track, 170 XIV Fearlessly he skims along, 215 His hope is high, and his limbs are strong, He spreads his arms like the swallow's wing, And throws his feet with a frog-like fling; His locks of gold on the waters shine, 225 At his breast the tiny foam-beads rise, 220 His back gleams bright above the brine, And the wake-line foam behind him lies, But the water-sprites are gathering near To check his course along the tide; Their warriors come in swift career And hem him round on every side; On his thigh the leach has fixed his hold, The quarl's long arms are round him rolled, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, 230 The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw, He howls with rage, and he shrieks with pain. He strikes around, but his blows are vain; Hopeless is the unequal fight, 235 Fairy! naught is left but flight. |
