A rough but powerful translation, by Mrs. OGILVIE, of a Russian ballad. It is full of poetry, but it wants music.
Stony-brow'd Dwina, thy face is as flint,
Horsemen and waggons cross, scoring no dint,
Cossacks patrol thee and leave thee as hard,
Camp-fires but blacken and spot thee like pard,
For the dead silent river lies rigid and still.
Down on thy sedgy banks picquet the troops,
Scaring the night-wolves with carols and whoops,
Crackle their faggots of drift-wood and hay,
And the steam of their pots fills the nostril of day,
But the dead silent river lies rigid and still.
Sledges pass sliding from hamlet to town,
Lovers and comrades, and none doth he drown,
Harness-bells tinkling in musical glee,
For to none comes the sorrow that came unto me,
And the dead silent river lies rigid and still.
go to the Dwina, I stand on his wave,
Where Ivan, my dead, has no grass on his
Stronger than granite that coffins a Czar,
Solid as pavement, and polish'd as spar,
Where the dead silent river lies rigid and still.
Stronger than granite? nay, falser than sand!
Fatal the clasp of thy slippery hand,
Cruel as vulture's the clutch of thy claws,
Who shall redeem from the merciless jaws,
Of the dead silent river so rigid and still?
Crisp lay the new-fallen snow on thy breast,
Trembled the white moon through haze in the west,
Far in the thicket the wolf-cub was howling,
Down by the sheep-cotes the wolf-dam was prowling,
And the dead silent river lay rigid and still.
When Ivan my lover, my husband, my lord,
Lightly and cheerily stepp'd on the sward,
Light with his hopes of the morrow and me,
That the reeds on the margin lean'd after to see,
But the dead silent river lay rigid and still.
O'er the fresh snow-fall, the winter-long frost,
O'er the broad Dwina the forester crost,
Snares at his girdle, and gun at his side,
Gamebag weigh'd heavy with gifts for his bride,
And the dead silent river lay rigid and still.
Rigid and silent, and crouching for prey,
Crouching for him who went singing his way,
Oxen were stabled, and sheep were in fold,
But Ivan was struggling in torrents ice-cold,
'Neath the dead silent river so rigid and still.
Home he came never, we search'd by the ford,
Small was the fissure that swallow'd my lord,
Glassy ice-sheetings had frozen above
A crystalline cover to seal up my love
In the dead silent river so rigid and still.
Still by the Dwina my home-torches burn,
Faithful I watch for my bridegroom's return:
When the moon sparkles on hoarfrost and tree
I see my love crossing the Dwina to me,
O'er the dead silent river so rigid and still.
Always approaching, he never arrives,
Howls the north-east wind, the dusty snow drives;
Snapping like touchwood I hear the ice crack,
And my lover is drown'd in the water-hole black,
'Neath the dead silent river so rigid and still.
A brilliant passage in POPE's Essay on Criticism.
Or all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls we find
What wants in blood and spirits, fill'd with wind:
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but, your defects to know,
Make use of every friend, and every foe.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold, with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last :
But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
The increasing prospect tires our wondering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ:
Survey the whole, nor seek some faults to find,
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight,
The generous pleasure to be charm'd with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep,
We cannot blame indeed-but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not the exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force, and full result of all.
Thus when we view some well-proportion'd
(The world's just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!) No single parts unequally surprise;
All comes united to the admiring eyes;
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;
The whole at once is bold and regular.
Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glittering thoughts struck out at every line;
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit,
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets like painters, thus unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit:
For works may have more wit than does them good.
As bodies perish through excess of blood.
Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men for dress;
Their praise is still-" the style is excellent :"
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;
But true expression, like the unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable.
A vile conceit in pompous words express'd,
Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd;
For different styles with different subjects sort,
As several garbs with country, town, and court.
But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ;
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join ;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line;
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still-expected rhymes.
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,”
In the next line it "whispers through the trees;"
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep :"
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,
Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest, who have learned to dance :
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
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