208

CAMPBELL'S POEMS.

--

Shape not imagin'd horrors in my fate-
Ev'n now my suff'rings are not very great;
And when your grief's first transports shall subside,
I call upon your strength of soul and pride
To pay my memory, if 'tis worth the debt,
Love's glorying tribute not forlorn regret :
I charge my name with power to conjure up
Reflection's balmy, not its bitter cup.

My pard'ning angel, at the gates of Heaven,
Shall look not more regard than you have given
To me and our life's union has been clad

In smiles of bliss as sweet as life e'er had.

Shall gloom be from such bright remembrance cast?
Shall bitterness outflow from sweetness past?

No! imaged in the sanctuary of your breast,
There let me smile, amidst high thoughts at rest;
And let contentment on your spirit shine,
As if its peace were still a part of mine:
For if you war not proudly with your pain,
For you I shall have worse than liv'd in vain.
But I conjure your manliness to bear

My loss with noble spirit-not despair:

I ask you by our love to promise this!

And kiss these words, where I have left a kiss-
The latest from my living lips for yours?''

p. 39-41.

The tone of this tender farewell must remind all our readers of the catastrophe of Gertrude; and certainly exposes the author to the charge of some poverty of invention in the structure of his pathetic narratives — a charge from which we are not at this moment particularly solicitous to defend him.

The minor poems which occupy the rest of the volume are of various character, and of course of unequal merit; though all of them are marked by that exquisite melody of versification, and general felicity of diction, which makes the mere recitation of their words a luxury to readers of taste, even when they pay but little attention to their sense. Most of them, we believe, have already appeared in occasional publications, though it is quite time that they should be collected and engrossed in a less perishable record. If they are less brilliant, on the whole, than the most exquisite productions of the author's earlier days, they are generally marked, we think, by greater solemnity and depth of thought, a vein of deeper reflection, and more intense sympathy with human

TRUE TO THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY.

209

feelings, and, if possible, by a more resolute and entire devotion to the cause of liberty. Mr. Campbell, we rejoice to say, is not among those poets whose hatred of oppression has been chilled by the lapse of years, or allayed by the suggestions of a base self-interest. He has held on his course through good and through bad report, unseduced, unterrified; and is now found in his duty, testifying as fearlessly against the invaders of Spain, in the volume before us, as he did against the spoilers of Poland in the very first of his publications. It is a proud thing indeed for England, for poetry, and for mankind, that all the illustrious poets of the present day -Byron, Moore, Rogers, Campbell - are distinguished by their zeal for freedom, and their scorn for courtly adulation; while those who have deserted that manly and holy cause have, from that hour, felt their inspiration withdrawn, their harp-strings broken, and the fire quenched in their censers! Even the Laureate, since his unhappy Vision of Judgment, has ceased to sing; and fallen into undutiful as well as ignoble silence, even on court festivals. As a specimen of the tone in which an unbought Muse can yet address herself to public themes, we subjoin a few stanzas of a noble ode to the Memory of the Spanish Patriots who died in resisting the late atrocious invasion.

"Brave men who at the Trocadero fell

Beside your cannons conquer'd not, though slain!
There is a victory in dying well

For Freedom and ye have not died in vain ;

For come what may, there shall be hearts in Spain

To honour, ay, embrace your martyr'd lot,

Cursing the Bigot's and the Bourbon's chain,

And looking on your graves, though trophied not,

As holier, hallow'd ground than priests could make the spot!"
"Yet laugh not in your carnival of crime

Too proudly, ye oppressors! - Spain was free:
Her soil has felt the foot-prints, and her clime
Been winnow'd by the wings of Liberty!

And these, even parting, scatter as they flee
Thoughts influences, to live in hearts unborn,
Opinions that shall wrench the prison-key

And tramp her bloated head beneath the foot of scorn. VOL. II.

P

210

66

CAMPBELL · THE RAINBOW.

Glory to them that die in this great cause!
Kings, Bigots, can inflict no brand of shame,

Or shape of death, to shroud them from applause:-
No! manglers of the martyr's earthly frame!
Your hangman fingers cannot touch his fame,
Still in your prostrate land there shall be some
Proud hearts, the shrines of Freedom's vestal flame.

Long trains of ill may pass unheeded, dumb,

But Vengeance is behind, and Justice is to come."— p. 78—81.

Mr. Campbell's muse, however, is by no means habitually political; and the greater part of the pieces in this volume have a purely moral or poetical character. The exquisite stanzas to the Rainbow, we believe, are in every body's hands; but we cannot resist the temptation of transcribing the latter part of them.

"When o'er the green undelug'd earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign?

"And when its yellow lustre smil'd
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God!

"Methinks, thy jubilee to keep,
The first-made anthem rang
On earth deliver'd from the deep,
And the first poet sang.

"Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptur'd greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet's theme!

66

VERSES TO KEMBLE.

For, faithful to its sacred page,

Heaven still rebuilds thy span,

Nor lets the type grow pale with age

That first spoke peace to man.'

211

-p. 52-55. The beautiful verses on Mr. Kemble's retirement from the stage afford a very remarkable illustration of the tendency of Mr. Campbell's genius to raise ordinary themes into occasions of pathetic poetry, and to invest trivial occurrences with the mantle of solemn thought. We add a few of the stanzas.

"His was the spell o'er hearts
Which only acting lends-
The youngest of the sister Arts,
Where all their beauty blends :
For ill can Poetry express,

Full many a tone of thought sublime,
And Painting, mute and motionless,
Steals but a glance of time.
But by the mighty Actor brought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb."

"High were the task-too high
Ye conscious bosoms here!
In words to paint your memory
Of Kemble and of Lear!

But who forgets that white discrowned head,
Those bursts of Reason's half-extinguish'd glare—

Those tears upon Cordelia's bosom shed,

In doubt more touching than despair,

We have great difficulty in resisting the temptation to go on: But in conscience we must stop here.

We

212

CAMPBELL NOT A COPIOUS WRITER,

are ashamed, indeed, to think how considerable a proportion of this little volume we have already transferred into our extracts. Nor have we much to say of the poems we have not extracted. "The Ritter Bann" and "Reullura" are the two longest pieces, after Theodric -but we think not the most successful. Some of the songs are exquisite- and most of the occasional poems too good for occasions.

The volume is very small- and it contains all that the distinguished author has written for many years. We regret this certainly:- but we do not presume to complain of it. The service of the Muses is a free service- and all that we receive from their votaries is a free gift, for which we are bound to them in gratitude not a tribute, for the tardy rendering of which they are to be threatened or distrained. They stand to the public in the relation of benefactors, not of debtors. They shower their largesses on unthankful heads; and disclaim the trammels of any sordid contract. They are not articled clerks, in short, whom we are entitled to scold for their idleness, but the liberal donors of immortal possessions; for which they require only the easy quitrent of our praise. If Mr. Campbell is lazy, therefore, he has a right to enjoy his laziness, unmolested by our importunities. If, as we rather presume is the case, he prefer other employments to the feverish occupation of poetry, he has a right surely to choose his employments -and is more likely to choose well, than the herd of his officious advisers. For our own parts, we are ready at all times to hail his appearances with delight — but we wait for them with respect and patience; and conceive that we have no title to accelerate them by our reproaches.

Before concluding, we would wish also to protect him against another kind of injustice. Comparing the small bulk of his publications with the length of time that elapses between them, people are apt to wonder that so little has been produced after so long an incubation, and that poems are not better which are the work of so many years absurdly supposing that the