As it ought to have been? Yea, verily. Had he not taken the pledge? To drink but of the purest spring of inspiration—the Fount of Love. And may he, without reproach, break it when he chooses, and we not dare to condemn? Of all promises, the promise made by poet of world-wide fame before the wide world, in his soul's best mood, and in nature's noblest inspiration, is the most sacred—to break it is a sin, and a sin that brings its appropriate punishment along with it,—loss or abeyance of the faculty divine. Byron had sworn to love man and nature, and to glorify their works, on the very instant he seeks to degrade and vilify. We listen to a religious overture—to the Devil's March. We are invited to enter with him a temple of worship—and praise and prayer become imprecations and curses. It is as if a hermit, telling his beads at the door of his cell, retired into its interior to hold converse with a blaspheming spirit. Fear not to call it by its right name—this is Hypocrisy.
So much as to the fitness of the mood; now as to the truth of the matter.
What is, justly considered, the relation of man to the sea? Is it here truly spoken? Certainly not. The Facts and the Songs of the world are all the other way. In history, the ocean is the giant slave of the magician Man—with some difficulty brought under thraldom—humorous, and not always manageable—mischievous when he gets his own way. But compare statistically the service and the detriment, for Clio must instruct Calliope and Erato. Passion that cannot sustain itself but by hiding that which has been, and accrediting that which has not been, is personal, not poetical—is mad, not inspired. The truth is, that the Ship is the glory of man's inventive art and inventive daring—the most splendid triumph of heroical art. And—for the history of man—the service of the sea to his ship has been the civilising of the earth. The wrecks are occasional—so much so that, in our ordinary estimate, they are forgotten. It would be as good poetry to say that all the inhabitants of the land live by wrecking.
In this first movement or strain, then, two great relations upheld by man are put in question,—his relation to the land, and his relation to the sea. The Basis of Song to the true and great poet is the truth of things—the truth as the historian and the philosopher know them. Over this he throws his own affection and creates a truth of his own—a poetical truth. But the truth, as held in man's actual knowledge, is recognisable through the transparent veil. Here it is distorted, not veiled. The two relations are alike falsified. For in order to bring man into conflict with the sea, where he and not the sea is to be worsted, he must first be made the foe of the earth! "Man marks the earth with ruin." Is this the history of man on the earth? Man has vanquished the Earth, but for its benefit as well as his own. He has displaced the forest and the swamp, the wild beast and the serpent. He has adorned the earth like a bride; as if he had made captive a wild Amazon, charmed her with Orphean arts, wedded and made her a happy mother of many children. Whatever impressive effect such verses may have on the inconsiderate mind, it has been illegitimately attained by a preposterous and utterly unprovoked movement of tempestuous passion, and by two utterly false contemplations of man's posture upon the globe, which two embrace about his whole mortal existence. Eloquence might condescend to this—poetry never.
Note well, O Neophyte! that the calm, contemplative, loving first line,
"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean! roll!"
precludes all comparison with such sudden bursts as "Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!" &c., and "Quousque tandem abutêre, Catilina," &c.; but it does not preclude, it invites the killing comparison with
"O Thou that with surpassing glory crown'd
Look'st from thy sole dominion, like the God
Of this new world,—at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminish'd heads, to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell—how glorious once above thy sphere!" &c.
Where the speaker is fraught with personal, not as a poet with impersonal affection—where he comes charged with hate, not with love; and yet how slowly, how sedately, through how many thoughts, how much admiration, and how many verses, he reaches his hate at last, which is his object! But on that soliloquy, dear Neophyte, we must discourse another day.
We must go a little—not very much—into particulars; for otherwise, O Neophyte! believe thou, whatever wiseacres say, there can be no true criticism of poetry. Let us—and that which might have been expected will appear,—a detail of moral and intellectual disorder. The stanza of which we have been speaking begins well—as we have seen and said. Thenceforth all is stamped with incongruity, and shows an effect like power, by violently bringing together, in a most remarkable manner, things that cannot consist—by the transition from the Universal to the Individual, when for