Night has halls, and these halls are marble halls; and this marble-hailed Night is unable to stay at home, and must go forth, and accordingly she does go in full dress with her garments trailing with a right gracious sweep. And the bard not only sees the sable skirts which dangle about in fringes made phosphorescent by contact with the celestial walls of such peculiar marble, but he even hears the rustle.... And these halls with accommodating grace are changed into cool, deep cisterns from which accordingly the bard's spirit with due solemnity draws into his spirit's wide-opened mouth a draught of repose.
27. Turn from this "Hymn to Night" of thirty lines to the three lines of Pushkin in his "Reminiscence," which alone he devotes to Night:—
"When noisy day to mortals quiet grows,
And upon the city's silent walls
Night's shadow half-transparent lies."
The marble halls and the trailing garments were ground out from the writer's fingers; the half-transparent shadow of the poet came to the poet....
28. After such examples of wretchedness from real giants such as Byron and Longfellow indisputably are, I do not hesitate to ask the reader for a last example to turn first to Pushkin's "Cloud," and then read Shelley's poem on the same subject:—
"I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams. [Just how are leaves thus laid?]
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about in the sun."
(Oh, good, my Shelley! one dances to and fro; one cannot dance in a uniform, straightforward motion. Thy imagination never saw THAT picture! Spin, whirl, rush,—yes, but dance?)
"That orbèd maiden with white fire laden
Whom mortals call the Moon
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet
Which only the angels hear
May have broken the woof of my tent's roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer."
Who has not been stirred by the sight of the fleece-like, broken clouds on a moonlight night? But who on looking up to that noble arch overhead at such a moment could see it as a floor?...
29. I call this wretched poetry, even though other critics vociferously declare Shelley's "Cloud" to be one of the masterpieces of the English language. De gustibus non disputandum. The Chinese have a liking, it is said, for black teeth, and a bulb of a nose is considered a great beauty in some parts of Africa, and a human leg is considered a great delicacy by some Islanders; but....