THE STRETCHES OF POETIC LICENSE
In descriptive poems which are written to embalm the story of actual occurrences, our poets sometimes draw upon their fertile fancies for the materials they employ, accepting flying rumors of incidents or experiences, the verification or contradiction of which is within easy reach. Take, for instance, such as relate to our recent sectional conflict. Whittier says, in “Barbara Frietchie,” in speaking of the flag,—
“In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.”
And farther on he says,—
“She leaned far out on the window sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.”
That there is no semblance of truth in these statements is proved by numerous witnesses. One of them, a near relative of Dame Barbara, testifies thus: “As to the waving of the Federal flag in the face of the rebels by Dame Barbara on the occasion of Stonewall Jackson’s march through Frederick, truth requires me to say that Stonewall Jackson, with his troops, did not pass Barbara Frietchie’s residence at all, but passed up what is popularly called ‘the Mill Alley,’ about three hundred yards above her residence, then passed due west toward Antietam, and thus out of the city.” “Again,” continues the witness, “the poem by Whittier represents the venerable lady (then ninety-six years of age) as nimbly ascending to her attic window and waving her small Federal flag defiantly in the face of Stonewall Jackson’s troops. Now what is the fact? At the period referred to, Dame Barbara was bedridden and helpless, and had lost the power of locomotion. She could only move as she was moved, by the help of her attendants.”
So much for one of the best of poets as a chronicler. Mr. T. B. Read, in describing Sheridan’s ride from Winchester to Cedar Creek, on the gigantic black horse whose neck, in the language of Job, was clothed with thunder, and the glory of whose nostrils was terrible, says,—
“——Striking his spurs with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line ’mid a storm of huzzas;
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.”
It is a matter of acceptation among military men that the retreat had been checked, the lines re-formed, and the tide of battle turned by General Wright before Sheridan’s arrival on the scene of action. All he had to do was to encourage with cheering words, and to infuse into the shattered ranks his own sanguine spirit.
Bret Harte undertook to make a hero of John Burns of Gettysburg, who “stood there heedless of jeer and scoff, calmly picking the rebels off.” Gettysburg people, who know whereof they speak, say that so far from Burns playing the hero in the manner indicated, he was driving his cows, and unwittingly got within the Confederate lines. Realizing his unpleasant position, he scampered homeward in such haste that he scratched his face and tore his clothes in the brambles—the nearest approach to bullet marks of which he could boast.
Even when our poets turn back to earlier periods for inspiration, their little discrepancies are not beyond danger of exposure. In Mr. Longfellow’s beautiful “Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem, at the Consecration of Pulaski’s Banner,” he says,—
“When the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
Faint light on the cowled head;
And the censer burning swung
Where, before the altar, hung
The blood-red banner, that with prayer
Had been consecrated there.
And the nuns’ sweet hymn was heard the while,
Sung low in the dim, mysterious aisle.”
After this introduction follows the hymn:
“Take thy banner! May it wave,” etc.,
and after the hymn, the couplet:
“The warrior took that banner proud,
And it was his martial cloak and shroud!”
There was no sisterhood, properly speaking, at Bethlehem during the Revolution. The inmates of the Sisters’ House were under the care of a Mother Superior, but they were bound by no vows, and were free to leave if they wished. They abounded in good works, were full of the spirit of devotion, and had morning and evening prayers in the chapel. But there was no cowled head in that little chapel, no swinging censer, no altar; these were not in accord with the Moravian mode of worship. Famous needlewomen were those good sisters, and they excelled in embroidery. Pulaski, during a visit to Bethlehem, admired their work, and ordered for his legion a cavalry guidon of crimson silk. When finished, he paid for it; it was a commonplace business transaction, with no thought, on either side, of presentation or consecration. The noble Pole was mortally wounded at the siege of Savannah and was buried in the Savannah River. Whether the guidon, miscalled a banner, was used as his shroud, those who have seen it in the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, can testify.
Even the novelists claim indulgence in this sort of license. In that fanciful story of Bulwer-Lytton, “The Last Days of Pompeii,” for example, he says (Book v. ch. vi.),—
“The air was now still for a few minutes; the lamp from the gate streamed out far and clear; the fugitives hurried on—they gained the gate—they passed by the Roman sentry; the lightning hashed over his livid face and polished helmet, but his stern features were composed even in their awe! He remained erect and motionless at his post. That hour itself had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of Rome into the reasoning and self-acting man. There he stood amid the crashing elements; he had not received the permission to desert his station and escape.”
In a foot-note the novelist adds,—
“The skeletons of more than one sentry were found at their posts.”
Very pretty. As Mrs. Browning says, “Beautiful indeed, and worthy of acceptation.” What a pity that we have to fall back upon the mistrustful “Se non è vero è ben trovato.” Not that we question the likelihood of such stern and unflinching obedience of orders in any age of the world, but we want trustworthy evidence. In the case of the boy “who stood on the burning deck,” commemorated by Mrs. Hemans, we have such evidence. It is a feature of British naval history that Casabianca, the young son of the admiral of the Orient, at the battle of the Nile, stood at his post, and perished when the flames of the burning ship reached the magazine.
Moore says in his “Irish Melodies”:
“The sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.”
Very pretty as a poetic fancy, but as a matter of fact the sunflower does not turn either to the rising or the setting sun. It receives its name solely because it resembles a picture sun. It is not a heliotrope or turnsun.
Female birds in general do not sing, but as poets are not naturalists, they fall into a common error, as the following quotations show:
“And in the violet-embroidered vale
Where the love-lorn Nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.”
—Milton, “Comus.”
“And Philomel her song with tears doth steep.”
—Spencer, “Shepherd’s Calendar.”
“But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her instrumental throat, that it might make mankind think miracles had not ceased.”—Walton, “Angler.”
“Abandoned to despair she sings
Her sorrows through the night; and on the bough
Sole sitting, still at every dying fall,
Takes up again her lamentable strain.”
—Thomson, “Seasons.”