Norman.
“Hark! she has blessed her son! I bid ye witness,
Ye listening heavens—thou circumambient air:
The ocean sighs it back—and with the murmur
Rustle the happy leaves. All nature breathes
Aloud—aloft—to the Great Parent’s ear,
The blessing of the mother on her child.”
The fust spissymen has been going the round of all the papers, as real, reglar poatry. Those wicked critix! they must have been laffing in their sleafs when they quoted it. Malody, suckling round and uppards from the bows, like a happy soul released, hangs in the air, and from invizable plumes shakes sweetness down. Mighty fine, truly! but let mortial man tell the meanink of the passidge. Is it musickle sweetniss that Malody shakes down from its plumes—its wings, that is, or tail—or some pekewliar scent that proceeds from happy souls released, and which they shake down from the trees when they are suckling round and uppards? Is this poatry, Barnet? Is it poatry, or sheer windy humbugg, that sounds a little melojous, and won’t bear the commanest test of common sence?
In passidge number 2, the same bisniss is going on, though in a comprehensable way: the air, the leaves, the otion, are fild with emocean at Capting Norman’s happiness. Pore Nature is dragged in to partisapate in his joys, just as she has been before. Once in a poem, this universle simfithy is very well; but once is enuff, my dear Barnet, and that once should be in some great suckumstans, surely—such as the meeting of Adam and Eve, in “Paradice Lost,” or Jewpeter and Jewno, in Hoamer, where there seems, as it were, a reasn for it. But sea-captings should not be eternly spowting and invoking gods, hevns, starrs, angels, and other silestial influences. We can all do it, Barnet; nothing in life is easier. I can compare my livry buttons to the stars, or the clouds of my backopipe to the dark vollums that ishew from Mount Hetna; or I can say that angels are looking down from them, and the tobacco silf, like a happy sole released, is circling round and upwards, and shaking sweetness down. All this is as esy as drink; but it’s not poatry, Barnet, nor natural. People, when their mothers reckonize them, don’t howl about the suckumambint air, and paws to think of the happy leaves a-rustling—at least, one mistrusts them if they do. Take another instans out of your own play. (Capting Norman, with his eternll slack-jaw!) meets the gal of his art:
“Look up, look up, my Violet-weeping? fie!