Or wade with me through snows
Drifted in loose fantastic curves aside,
From humble doors where Love and Faith abide,
And no rough winter blows,
Chilling the beauty of affections fair,
Cabined securely there.
Where round their fingers winding the white slips
That crown his forehead, on the grandsire's knees,
Sit merry children, teasing about ships
Lost in the perilous seas;
Or listening with a troublous joy, yet deep,
To stories about battles, or of storms,
Till weary grown, and drowsing into sleep,
Slide they from out his arms.
Where, by the log-heap fire,
As the pane rattles and the cricket sings,
I with the gray-haired sire
May talk of vanished summer-times and springs,
And harmlessly and cheerfully beguile
The long, long hours—
The happier for the snows that drift the while
About the flowers.
Winter, wilt keep the love I offer thee?
No mesh of flowers is bound about my brow;
From life's fair summer I am hastening now,
And as I sink my knee,
Dimpling the beauty of thy bed of snow—
Dowerless, I can but say—
O, cast me not away!
CARLYLE ON THE OPERA.
The London Keepsake, for 1852, contains an article by Carlyle. He has not sent something that was at hand, or thrown off any thing on the spur of the moment, but set himself to write down to his company, and do his best in that way. The paper is written in the character of a travelling and philosophical American, who pours forth his thoughts on the opera; the topics being the deterioration of music as an art, the small beneficial result that follows so much outlay and such a combination of artistical skill, the amount of training bestowed on the singers and dancers, greater than that which produces great men, and the company before the curtain, together with reflections thereanent. It is a piece of forcible description, and of thoughtful though perhaps rather one-sided reflection. As we heard it remarked a few days ago by a shrewd critic, Carlyle is never so much himself as when he appears in the character of another—for examples, in that of the strolling lecturer, who left with his unpaid lodging-house keeper a denunciation of modern philanthropists, or in that of the correspondent whose letters he quotes in the Life of Sterling. In the disguise of a Yankee philosopher he thus breaks out, after some serious and highly-wrought prefatory phrases on the glories of true music, while yet true music partook of the divine:
"Of the account of the Haymarket Opera my account, in fine, is this: Lustres, candelabras, painting, gilding at discretion: a hall as of the Caliph Alraschid, or him that commanded the slaves of the Lamp; a hall as if fitted up by the genies, regardless of expense. Upholstery and the outlay of human capital, could do no more. Artists, too, as they are called, have been got together from the ends of the world, regardless likewise of expense, to do dancing and singing, some of them even geniuses in their craft. One singer in particular, called Coletti, or some such name, seemed to me, by the cast of his face, by the tones of his voice, by his general bearing, so far as I could read it, to be a man of deep and ardent sensibilities, of delicate intuitions, just sympathies; originally an almost poetic soul, or man of genius, as we term it; stamped by Nature as capable of far other work than squalling here, like a blind Samson to make the Philistines sport! Nay, all of them had aptitudes, perhaps of a distinguished kind; and must, by their own and other people's labor, have got a training equal or superior in toilsomeness, earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings' grandees, or the like show-figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The very ballet girls, with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous; whirling and spinning there in strange mad vortexes, and then suddenly fixing themselves motionless, each upon her left or right great-toe, with the other leg stretched out at an angle of ninety degrees;—as if you had suddenly pricked into the floor, by one of their points, a pair, or rather a multitudinous cohort, of mad restlessly jumping and clipping scissors, and so bidden them rest, with opened blades, and stand still, in the Devil's name! A truly notable motion; marvellous, almost miraculous, were not the people there so used to it. Motion peculiar to the Opera; perhaps the ugliest, and surely one of the most difficult, ever taught a female creature in this world. Nature abhors it; but Art does at least admit it to border on the impossible. One little Cerito, or Taglioni the Second, that night when I was there, went bounding from the floor as if she had been made of Indian-rubber, or filled with hydrogen gas, and inclined by positive levity to bolt through the ceiling; perhaps neither Semiramis nor Catherine the Second had bred herself so carefully. Such talent, and such martyrdom of training, gathered from the four winds, was now here, to do its feat, and be paid for it. Regardless of expense, indeed! The purse of Fortunatus seemed to have opened itself, and the divine art of Musical Sound and Rhythmic Motion was welcomed with an explosion of all the magnificences which the other arts, fine and coarse, could achieve. For you are to think of some Rossini or Bellini in the rear of it, too; to say nothing of the Stanfields, and hosts of scene-painters, machinists, engineers, enterprisers—fit to have taken Gibraltar, written the History of England, or reduced Ireland into Industrial Regiments, had they so set their minds to it!
"Alas, and of all these notable or noticeable human talents, and excellent perseverances and energies, backed by mountains of wealth, and led by the divine art of Music and Rhythm vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to be the issue here this evening? An hour's amusement, not amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to a high-dizened select populace of male and female persons, who seemed to me not worth much amusing! Could any one have pealed into their hearts once, one true thought, and glimse of Self-vision: 'High-dizened most expensive persons, Aristocracy so called, or Best of the World, beware, beware what proofs you give of betterness and bestness!' and then the salutary pang of conscience in reply: 'A select Populace, with money in its purse, and drilled a little by the posture-maker: good Heavens! if that were what, here and every where in God's Creation, I am? And a world all dying because I am, and show myself to be, and to have long been, even that? John, the carriage, the carriage; swift! Let me go home in silence, to reflection, perhaps to sackcloth and ashes!' This, and not amusement, would have profited those high-dizened persons.
"Amusement, at any rate, they did not get from Euterpe and Melpomene. These two Muses, sent for, regardless of expense, I could see, were but the vehicle of a kind of service which I judged to be Paphian rather. Young beauties of both sexes used their opera-glasses, you could notice, not entirely for looking at the stage. And it must be owned the light, in this explosion of all the upholsteries, and the human fine arts and coarse, was magical; and made your fair one an Armida,—if you liked her better so. Nay, certain old Improper-Females (of quality), in their rouge and jewels, even these looked some reminiscence of enchantment; and I saw this and the other lean domestic Dandy, with icy smile on his old worn face; this and the other Marquis Singedelomme, Prince Mahogany, or the like foreign Dignitary, tripping into the boxes of said females, grinning there awhile with dyed moustachios and macassar-oil graciosity, and then tripping out again;—and, in fact, I perceived that Colletti and Cerito and the Rhythmic Arts were a mere accompaniment here.