NORTH.
Jemmy was overmuch given to mouthing in the Seasons; and in this description—matchless though it be—he sometimes out-mouths the big-mouthed thunder at his own bombast. Perhaps that is inevitable—you must, in confabulating with that Meteor, either imitate him, to keep him and yourself in countenance, or be, if not mute as a mouse, as thin-piped as a fly. In youth I used to go sounding to myself among the mountains the concluding lines of the Retreat.
"Amid Carnarvon's mountains rages loud
The repercussive roar; with mighty crush,
Into the flashing deep, from the rude rocks
Of Penmanmaur heap'd hideous to the sky,
Tumble the smitten cliffs, and Snowdon's peak,
Dissolving, instant yields his wintry load:
Far seen, the heights of heathy Cheviot blaze,
And Thule bellows through her utmost isles."
Are they good—or are they bad? I fear—not good. But I am dubious. The previous picture has been of one locality—a wide one—but within the visible horizon—enlarged somewhat by the imagination, which, as the schoolmen said, inflows into every act of the senses—and powerfully, no doubt, into the senses engaged in witnessing a thunder-storm. Many of the effects so faithfully, and some of them so tenderly painted, interest us by their picturesque particularity.
"Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look
They wore alive, and ruminating still
In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull,
And ox half-raised."
We are here in a confined world—close to us and near; and our sympathies with its inhabitants—human or brute—comprehend the very attitudes or postures in which the lightning found and left them; but the final verses waft us away from all that terror and pity—the geographical takes place of the pathetic—a visionary panorama of material objects supersedes the heart-throbbing region of the spiritual—for a mournful song instinct with the humanities, an ambitious bravura displaying the power and pride of the musician, now thinking not at all of us, and following the thunder only as affording him an opportunity for the display of his own art.
BULLER.
Are they good—or are they bad? I am dubious.
NORTH.
Thunder-storms travel fast and far—but here they seem simultaneous; Thule is more vociferous than the whole of Wales together—yet perhaps the sound itself of the verses is the loudest of all—and we cease to hear the thunder in the din that describes it.