TO THE MUSES
(1874)
Come to my aid, Muses love-laden, lyrical:
Come to my aid, Comic, Tragic, Satirical.
Come and breathe into me
Strains such as swept from Keats' heaven-strung lyre,
Strains such as Shelley's, which never can tire.
Come then, and sing to me,
Sing me an ode such as Byron would sing,
Passionate, love-stirring, quick to begin.
Why come you not to me?
Then must I write lyrics after vile rules
Made by some idiot, used by worse fools—
Then the deuce take you all!
(Ætat. 14.)
I have to thank Mr. Edmund Gosse for inspiring this attempt. I hope he will forgive even if he does not forget. I had made a shopping expedition into Bristol, and went to tea or luncheon at Clifton Hill House where lived my mother's brother, John Addington Symonds. It happened that Mr. Gosse was a visitor at the house on the day in question, and that to my great delight we all talked poetry. I saw my chance, and proceeded to propound to these two authorities the following question: "Why is it that nobody has ever written an English poem in pure dactyls?" Greatly to my surprise and joy, Mr. Gosse informed me that it had been done. Thereupon he quoted the first four lines of what has ever since been a favourite poem of mine, Waller's lines to Hylas:
Hylas, O Hylas! why sit we mute,
Now that each bird saluteth the spring?
Tie up the slackened strings of thy lute,
Never may'st thou want matter to sing.
I hope I am not quoting incorrectly, but it is nearly fifty years since I saw the poem and at the moment I have not got a Waller handy. With the exactitude of youth I verified Mr. Gosse's quotation the moment I got home. I took my poetry very seriously in those days. I rushed to the Great Parlour, and though then quite indifferent to such a material thing as fine printing, I actually found the poem in one of Baskerville's exquisite productions.
The poem next to my dactylic Introduction was a dramatic lyric, partly blank verse and partly rhymed choruses, in the Swinburne manner. In my poem the virtuous and "misunderstood" Byron is pursued and persecuted by the spirits of Evil, Hypocrisy, Fraud, and Tyranny, but is finally redeemed by the Spirit of Good, whose function it is to introduce the triumphant poet to Shelley.
There follows another dramatic lyric on Shelley's death, which takes the form of the death-bed confession to his priest of an old sailor at Spezzia. The old man, according to a story published in 1875, was one of the crew of a small ship which ran down the boat containing Shelley and Williams, under the mistaken impression that the rich "milord Byron" was on board, with lots of money. Here the style is more that of Browning than of Swinburne. A few lines are quite sufficient to show the sort of progress I was making in blank verse.
What noise of feet is that? Ah, 'tis the priest.
Here, priest, I have a sin hangs heavy. See
There by the fishing-nets that lovely youth,
I killed him—oh, 'twas fifty years ago,
Only, tonight he will not let me rest,
But looks with loving eyes, making me fear.
Oh, Father, 'twas not him I meant to kill,
'Twas the rich lord I coveted to rob,
He with the bright wild eyes and haughty mien.