Look on this spot—a nation’s sepulchre!
Abode of gods whose shrines no longer burn.
Even gods must yield—religions take their turn:
’Twas Jove’s, ’tis Mahomet’s—and other creeds
Will rise with other years, till man shall learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds:
Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds.”
“Poor child of doubt and death” we will then term thee, Byron; we will grieve over thy sorrows and thy wrongs, pitying thee: we will melt over thy gushing tenderness which, ever and anon, pleads with so soft a feeling, so sweet a melody, that every warm heart feels drawn toward thee in sympathy: we will mourn with thy desponding; and over thy wavering and despair we will drop a tear; and so pass thee on to the mysterious judgments of thy God, where thou art gone!
I cannot dismiss this subject without a word in regard to the influence of Lord Byron’s writings on the minds of readers. To the reader whose principles and faith are fixed, defined, there are few dangers; for there is scarcely any attempt in all Byron’s works, at either philosophy or sophistry: but to one whose tone of sentiment and feeling is to be moulded, or can, to any extent, be moulded, there is most pernicious danger, ruin. There is an irresistible charm and brilliancy that enchant; for, all veneration Byron cast aside, and he touches, handles the most sublime with an audacious boldness that dazzles him who does not tremble. This infatuating allurement seems to me to consist principally in the contrastive. The poetry of harmony and law had little affinity with Byron’s wayward fancy; and there is more of that eclat in the contrasts of nature physical and metaphysical, which astonishes, which raises emotions in us with infinitely less labor to ourselves, than through the process of analysis or progressive contemplation. As a jeu de mot sparkles and delights by the approximation, through mere fancy, of things essentially opposite—and the more diametrically opposite, the greater the pleasurable surprise—so is it in poetry: the poetry of harmony raises and refines by softening, expanding the mind, whilst the poetry of contrast but dazzles without leaving an impress; it runs together colors before unassociated, that play and flash, like fire-works, around each other with the centripetal force of fancied homogeneousness, and the centrifugal power of real dissimilitude, astonishing with novelty; or, through the same power of fancy, heap together heterogeneous ideas in fantastic association, that surprise us by their fictitious harmony. One poetry is that of truth, the other that of fancy. The poetry of truth and real affinity is God’s own beauty: through the poetic harmony and relationship that reigns throughout the universe, can we arrive at the knowledge of God; through that do we see him in his works, and through that do we gradually rise to the homage of veneration: whilst the poetry of only fancy prompts us to create our own beauty, despising the guidance of veneration; to overlook the divine intellect in its works, and to accustom ourselves to the neglect of religion and principle, in our contemplations. Whoever has read Byron cannot but remember how often he has been dazzled by the boldness of the poet’s flights of contrast; and upon reflection, will confess that he has seen in them, most apparently, the giddy raving of utter moral recklessness. He will confess that he perceives the intellectual epicure delivered, in self-abandonment, a prey to his fevered imagination; his accursed appetite ever on edge, at the scent of strife, and blood, and tumult, and black passion, and pride, and soft voluptuousness. He will confess that when the poor, sated mortal yearned for rest, it was not the rest of peace; but retirement in a far-off nook, apart from the society of men, wherein he could pass his hours in greater unreserve, to chew the cud of gorged passion, or hide his childish tears of self-earned melancholy. Let no one then pour his sentiment into the mould of Lord Byron’s recklessness; for that would be destruction; and in this, it seems to me, lies the only danger. Yet there is a pervading, seductive beauty that might thrill an angel’s bosom, in a moment of forgetfulness; and there are few conceptions, no matter from what inspired source they may spring, which, in their decided earthly limitation, the powers of darkness could not with malignant meaning consistently encore.