We will ride to the wolf hunt together,
Where thousands must yield up their breath,
By the night, by the light—in all weather!
Then hurrah, for the wild hunt of death!
Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle,
Over mountain and valley we come,
While the death-fife now screams like an eagle
To the roll
and the roll
and the roll
and the roll of the drum.
Fatherland!—how the wild beasts are yelling!
Blood drips from each ravenous mouth;
Blood of brothers, each torn from his dwelling
By the wild, hungry wolves of the South.
Chorus—Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle, &c.
Let them rave! for our rifles are ready;
Let them howl! for our sabres are keen;
And the nerve of the hunter is steady
When the track of the wére-wolf is seen.
Chorus—Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle, &c.
Yes, the foul wolves have been o'er the border,
But the fields were piled high with their slain,
Till we drove them, in frantic disorder,
To their dark home of hunger again.
Chorus—Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle, &c.
So we'll ride to the wolf hunt together,
Where the bullet stops many a breath,
By the night, by the light—in all weather,
To the wild Northern wolf hunt of death.
Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle,
Over mountain and valley we come;
While the death-fife now screams like an eagle
To the roll
and the roll
and the roll
and the roll of the drum.
THE POETRY OF NATURE.
Among the many marvellous myths of antiquity, I know of none more directly applicable to Man and Art than that of the great struggle between Antæus the Earth-born and Hercules.
Lifted on high by brute force, Antæus is stifled; but falling and touching Earth, he revives. Man, borne by the irresistible force of circumstance, may become false, frivolous, and weak: his Art may dwindle to mere imitation, his Poetry turn to wailing and convulsions: but let him once fall back to Nature—to the all-cherishing Earth, the Mother of Beauty—and all his Works and Songs become as seas, rivers, green leaves, and the music of birds.
We have too long needed the touch of fresh and holy Earth. Too long has our love of picture and poem, and of all that the glorious impulse to create in beauty achieves, been fickle as the wind; based on discordant fancies and distorted tradition. Symbolism in art, at present means only an arbitrary and puerile substitution of one object or caprice for another. The most successful poetic simile is often as thoroughly conventional, and consequently as perishable, as possible. In short, we are not in an age when there is one poetry alike for all men; when the artist and bard are truly great and honored, and their works regarded as the Best that man can do. The few who comprehend this in all its sad significance look from their towers tearfully forth into the dark night, and wail, 'Great Pan is dead!'
But he is not dead, nor sleepeth. He will yet return in that awful dawn of the day which will know no end. Already faint gleams of its glory gild the steep hills, the high places, and the groves sacred of old to the Starry Queen, and a reviving breath sweeps from the blue sea, calling up in ruined fane, and on the green turf where once stood temples in the olden time, fresh ideals of those forms of ineffable beauty, faun and fay, born of the primeval myth. There is already a quivering in the ancient graves, and strange lights flicker over the mighty stones consecrated by tradition to incantations, not of morbid fears, but of the strong and beautiful in nature. For in the Utilitarianism, in the steam and machinery of 'this age without faith,' I see the first necessary step of a return to real needs, solid facts, and natural laws. It is the first part of the doing away with rococo sentimentalisms, mediæval tatters, and all wretched and ragged remainders and reminders of states of society which have nothing in common with our present needs. And it will be a revival, not of the ancient adoration of Nature as a mythology and a superstition, but as a heartfelt love of all that is beautiful, and joyous, and healthy in itself. Then the gods will indeed return and live again among us; not as literal beings, however, but as blessings in all that is best for man. Nor will 'Romance' be wanting—that influence which the age, without defining, still declares is essential to poetry. In Science, in Humanity, and in perfecting human ties and interests by the influence of love, there exists a romance which is exquisitely fascinating, and which lends itself to tenderer and more graceful dreams than Trouveur or Minnesinger of any age ever knew—dreams the more delightful because they will not fade away with the mists of morning, but be fulfilled in clear sunlight, line by line, before man.
It is not difficult to prove what I have here asserted of this tendency toward the Real in modern literature and art. Within twenty, nay, within ten years, men of genius have abandoned the Supernatural and the Gothic as affording fit themes for creative efforts. That unfortunate creature the Ghost—especially the Ghost in Armor—as well as the Historical or Sensational personages who live only in the superlative—are at present in general demand only by that harmless class who read 'for entertainment,' and even they are beginning to ungratefully mock their old friends. It is not difficult to foresee that the Romance so dear to the last generation will soon become the exclusive heritage of the vulgar. Meanwhile, genial sketches of fresh, unaffected Nature, draughts from real life, are beginning to be loved with keen zest. What novels are so successful as those in which the writer has truthfully mirrored the heart or the home? What pictures are so loved as those which set before us the Real, or, rather, the Ideal in its true meaning—that of the perfected essence of the Real?
When this tendency shall have fairly placed man on the right road—when we shall have learned to follow and set forth Nature as she is, in spirit and in truth, the great cherishing mother, ever young, ever joyous, of all beauty and all pleasure, then we may anticipate the last and greatest era of human culture. Then we may hope for a more than Greek art—an art freed from every strain of oppression and injustice. To effect this we must, however, do what the earliest founders of poetry find mythology did: search Nature closely, bear constantly in mind her one great principle of potent Being, continually displaying itself in all things as life and death, mutually creating each other, and acting in all organic life by the mystery of Love, Then, while establishing those affinities and correspondences between natural objects which constitute Poetry, let it be ever present to the mind that each is, so to speak, always polarized with its positive end of activity, creation or birth, and its negative of cessation, decay and death. It is by the constant realization of this solemn and beautiful truth in all things that Nature eventually appears so strengthening and cheerful. The flower and the fruit, the delight of anticipation and the luxury of realization, are the delightful culmination of every natural existence; and it is to perfect these that all action tends. Decay, disease, pain, and death, are only kindly agencies acting more effectually and rapidly, to sweep away that which is fading, and hasten it into new forms of beauty and pleasure.
'Nature within her placid breast receives
All her creation; and the body pays
Itself the due of nature, and its end
Is self-consummated.'[A]