Poets are ever fond of describing natural objects. From these they seem to draw their inspiration, and upon these they have exhausted all that is rich in the language of Poetry and beautiful in its conception. It is all natural that it should be so. There is a fullness in nature which freely responds to the development of Fancy, and perhaps we have no better way of testing the poet's "gift" than by an examination of his natural scenery. Morning and Evening are the most common, and indeed the most wonderful natural phenomena to which poets have sung. The former therefore commends itself to our immediate notice; the latter will be the theme of future com ment. No wonder the bards have made a song for the morning and chanted a requiem for the setting sun. Indeed, they are wonderful-emblems of a Beginning and an End-of Birth and of Death-there is nothing in the Universe of Creation laden with richer blessings to man's physical, or fraught with a deeper meaning to his spiritual nature than these. Let us go back through the shadowy Past some three thousand years, and contemplate with a Grecian heart the Morning. It is a goddess rising from the eastern hill. With a torch in her hand, and her saffron-colored robe floating gracefully behind her, she issues from the gates of Day and mounts her golden car. Her flowing veil she gaily tosses back dispersing the Night. A star is above her head, and as she shakes her torch with one hand, with the other she scatters flowers tearful with crystal dew. Such was the morning when it rose on the pleasant isles of the Ægean and lighted up some Grecian heart thirty centuries ago. Homer came and "Aurora goddess climbed up high Olympus announcing morn to Jove and the other Immortals." We do not call the morning a goddess, but still we often personify it in Poetry, and it is a remarkable proof of the influence of Grecian fable that even now it has always the gender of the goddess, while the Sun is masculine from the god Apollo. Poets of comparatively modern times have been exuberant in their imagery of the morning. We remember Chaucer, parent of English Song, when "Lucifer the dayis messanger Gan for to rise, and out his bemis throwe." Dante sad and sorrowful, in his terrible wanderings through Purgatory, bears record "Aurora's white and vermeil tinctured cheek and perhaps it was a sadder tone which said "Now the fair consort of Tithonus old, Looked palely o'er the eastern cliff.” Indeed, there was a plaintive sorrow in the heart-"his of the gifted Pen and Sword"-else would not the morning have so "looked palely." It is interesting to notice another feature of the influence of classic fable. Thus Dante has artfully interwoven the myth of Tithonus with the creation of his own rich fancy. Camoens too, no less a true and classic poet than that other "child of Visions," wrought much of his imagery on the same antique structure. In the following example however it is somewhat disguised by its modern drapery. "Aurora now with dewy lustre bright, Milton, too, teems with a classic richness, and in several instances has recognized two distinct conceptions of ancient fiction. Apollo and his fiery chariot figure in one which we here insert: "The gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay The beautiful fancy of the "Hours" is shadowed forth in the other: "Morn Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand Indeed, it has always been supposed that an Epic poem must be loaded with ancient machinery; why not then grace its numbers with classic thought? At all events, it seems to prevail there more than in ordinary poetry. But Milton has imagery of his own getting up; if he borrows he creates also. That was a queer thought of his :- "Ere the blabbing eastern scout, And there is Shakespeare too, "bland and mild," equal to the best of them in true poetic conception: one element of whose uncontested superiority we find in his giving us the simple idea stripped of the labored exuberance of language. Such descriptions in their native beauty come to us like an unmixed goblet, after we have been half drowned in a concoction of artificial sweets. Hear the words of "Fancy's child." "The morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Chaste, natural, artless conception! How grateful midst the artificial blaze of lesser poets! The star which twinkles through night's jeweled drapery, shines fainter than the tawdry moon, yet nobler; for it creates, not borrows light. The star sends out its limitless vibrations from its own mysterious fountain. But the cold black moon decks its surface with borrowed finery, and even of that, has scarcely half enough to cover it. Thus Shakespeare, and those inferior poets whose showy imagery but ill-conceals their barrenness of thought and like jewelry of frost-work half dazzles and half freezes. Milton has well characterized Shakespeare who "Warbles his native woodnotes wild." Who has not heard of "O RARE BEN JONSON?" Well, this strange personage, this "wonder of a learned age," this observer and por trayer of "the Humors" once described the morning. Perhaps he did it often, but this once-we have often laughed over it, and seriously shook our sides at its quaint humor: Morn riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weight of sleep and death hung at it ; She is not rosy-fingered, but swollen black, And her sick head is bound about with clouds As if she threatened night ere noon." For all the world, that "sick head bound about with clouds" was always a poser to our gravity. It is so lifelike. The apparition of a kerchief tied hard around the swollen temples, and the look "black as thunder" of some poor wretch just rising from bed with a beautiful headache, too vividly dances before our mental vision not to give a zest to this sorry picture of the morning. With the description we are much pleased. Not highly wrought but true to nature, it has a vein of quiet native humor which no one better than Ben Jonson could have woven into it. Our own Willis tells us "The fingers of the dawn Drew the night's curtain." and the same figure is even more neatly employed by an anonymous newspaper rhymer who affirms that the sun "Rolled up the curtains of the misty morn." Here, in addition to the 'rolling up' of the curtains bring more picturesque than 'drawing' them, we have also the "misty morn ;" and there is true sublimity in the gray mist-wreaths of the morning rolled up from the eartern sky by the rising sun. Longfellow with his wonted sweetness charms while "Morn, on the mountain, like a summer bird nor are we otherwise than pleased with his metaphor "When the fast ushering star of morning comes A lady gives us her description. There is a feminine tenderness and grace about it which attracts, nor can the connoisseur detect that it is not all true poetry. |