III. When hearts have once mingled, To endure what it once possessed. Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? IV. Its passions will rock thee, As the storms rock the ravens on high; Like the sun from a wintry sky. Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves fall and cold winds come. TO JANE--THE RECOLLECTION. I. We wandered to the pine-forest That skirts the ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The whispering waves were half asleep, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of heaven lay; It seemed as if the hour were one (1822.) II. We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude And soothed, by every azure breath Now all the tree-tops lay asleep Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean-woods may be. III. How calm it was!-The silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller with her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less To the soft flower beneath our feet, A spirit interfused around, To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature's strife. And still, I felt, the centre of The magic circle there Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere. IV. We paused beside the pools that lie Each seemed as 't were a little sky A firmament of purple light Which in the dark earth lay, In which the lovely forests grew More perfect both in shape and hue There lay the glade, the neighbouring lawn, Sweet views which in our world above Were imaged by the water's love And all was interfused beneath An atmosphere without a breath, Like one beloved, the scene had lent Its every leaf and lineament With more than truth expressed; Until an envious wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought, Which from the mind's too faithful eye Though thou art ever fair and kind, Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind (February 2, 1822.) THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. [THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK was born at Weymouth, October 18, 1785. In 1808 he was made under-secretary to Sir Home Popham, and served at Flushing. In 1820 he married the Welsh lady celebrated by Shelley as 'the Snowdonian Antelope;' he had made the acquaintance of that poet in 1812. He became a clerk to the East India Company in 1819, from which post he retired in 1856. His first novel, Headlong Hall, appeared in 1816; his last, Gryll Grange, in 1861. Peacock died at Halliford, near Shepperton, on January 23, 1866. His poetical publications were Palmyra, 1806; The Genius of the Thames, 1810; Rhododaphne, 1818; Paper Money Lyrics, 1837.] The fame of Peacock as a prose humourist of incomparable vivacity has tended to overshadow and stunt his reputation as a poet. It is time, however, that his claims in verse should be vindicated, and a place demanded for him as an independent figure in the crowded Parnassus of his age,—a place a little below the highest, and somewhat isolated, at the extreme right of the composition. He has certain relations, not wholly accidental, with Shelley, who stands above him, and with such minor figures as Horace Smith and Thomas Haynes Bayly, who stand no less obviously below him; but in the main he is chiefly notable for his isolation. His ironical and caustic songs are unique in our literature, illuminated by too much fancy to be savage, but crackling with a kind of ghastly merriment that inspires quite as much terror as amusement. In parody he has produced at least one specimen, 'There is a fever of the spirit,' which does not possess its equal for combined sympathy and malice. When we pass to his serious and sentimental lyrics, our praise cannot be so unmeasured. Peacock possessed too much literary refinement, too little personal sensibility to write with passion or to risk a fall by flying; yet his consummate purity of style seldom fails to give a subdued charm to the quietest of his songs. The snatches and refrains which are poured over the novel of Maid Marian, like a shower of seed pearl, are full of the very essence of spontaneous song, as opposed to deliberate lyrical writing; while the corresponding chants and ballads in The Misfortunes of Elphin show with equal distinctness Peacock's limitations as a poetical artist. Once or twice he has succeeded in writing a lyric that is almost perfect; 'I dug beneath the cypress shade' would, for instance, be worthy of Landor in Landor's best manner, but for a little stiffness in starting. Twice in mature life Peacock attempted a long flight in poetry, and each time without attracting any serious attention from the public of his own time or from posterity. In one of these cases I hope to show that this neglect has been deeply unjust; for the other I find an excuse in the extreme languor which it has produced on myself to read once more The Genius of the Thames. This poem, written just before the general revival of poetic style, may almost be called the last production of the eighteenth century. It contains all the wintry charms and hypocritical graces of the school of Collins in its last dissolution; it proceeds with mingled pomp and elegance along the conventional path, in the usual genteel manner, until suddenly the reader, familiar with the temperament of Peacock, starts and rubs his eyes to read an invocation of Sun-crowned Science! child of heaven! To wandering man by angels given! Still, nymph divine! on mortal sight from the man to whom the whole spirit of scientific enquiry was entirely hostile. Rhododaphne, which Peacock published eight years later, is a performance of a very different kind. While somewhat indebted to Akenside for matter, to Byron for style, to Shelley for phraseology, the essential part of this poem is as original as it is delicate and fascinating. There is little plot or action in the piece. A youth Anthemion loves a mortal maiden Calliroë, but is courted and subdued by a supernatural being named Rhododaphne, who exercises over him the poisonous spell of the rose-laurel. Calliroë dies and Rhododaphne triumphs, but in the end the doom is reversed, Calliroë returns to life, and the charms of the rose-laurel |