TO HELEN.
| Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea, The weary wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the beauty of fair Greece, And the grandeur of old Rome. Lo! in that little window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The folded scroll within thy hand— Ah! Psyche from the regions which Are Holy land! |
E. A. P.
ON THE POETRY OF BURNS1
BY JAMES F. OTIS.
1 This paper was written at the request of a literary society of which the author was a member, and the facts are gathered principally from Currie. Some extracts from the poet's own letters, and from an eloquent review of Lockhart's Burns, which appeared a few years since in the Edinburgh Review, are interwoven, and the whole made up as an essay to be "read not printed."
If we take the different definitions of the term "Poetry," that have been given this beautiful and magical art by the various writers upon its nature and properties, as each supported by reason and fact, we shall hardly arrive at any degree of certainty as to its real meaning. It has been called "the art of imitation," or mimickry. Aristotle and Plato characterize it as "the expression of thoughts by fictions;" and there are innumerable other definitions, none of which are more satisfactory to the student than is that of the celebrated "Blair." He says, "it is the language of Passion,—or enlivened Imagination, formed, most commonly, into regular numbers. The primary object of a poet is to please, and to move; and therefore it is to imagination and the passions that he speaks. He may, and he ought to have it in his view to instruct and reform; but it is indirectly, and by pleasing, and moving, that he accomplishes this end. His mind is supposed to be animated by some interesting object which fires his imagination or engages his passions: and which, of course, communicates to his style a peculiar elevation, suited to his ideas, very different from that mode of expression which is natural to the mind in its calm, ordinary state." And this definition will allow of being yet more particularly and minutely understood: it is susceptible of being analyzed still farther, and described as "a language, in which fiction and imagination may, with propriety, be indulged beyond the strict limits of truth and reality."
Who is there that has not felt the power of Poetry? For it is not essential that it be embodied in regular and finely wrought periods, and conveyed to the ear in alternate rhyme, and made to harmonize in nicely-toned successions of sounds. Who is there that has not felt its power? It originated with the very nature of man; and is confined to no nation, age, or situation. This is proved by the well-attested fact, that Poetry ever diminishes in strength of thought, boldness of conception, and power of embodying striking images, in proportion as it becomes polished and cultivated. The uncivilized tenant of our forests is, by nature, a Poet! Whether he would lead his brethren to the field of warfare, or conclude with the white man a treaty of peace and future amity, still his style evinces the same grand characteristic,—the spirit of true Poetry. The barbarous Celt, the benighted Icelander, and the earliest and most unenlightened nations of the world, as described on the page of history, are proofs of the principle we have been considering; and it was not, indeed, until society became settled and civilized, that poetical composition ceased to embrace every impulse of which the human soul is susceptible. It was not till then, that, in the language of a distinguished writer, "Poetry became a separate art, calculated, chiefly, to please; and confined, generally, to such subjects as related to the imagination and the passions." Then was it that there arose, naturally, divisions in the classes or schools of Poetry,—as Lyric, Elegiac, Pastoral, Didactic, Descriptive, and Dramatic. A consideration of each of these classes might furnish us with materiel for an interesting examination of their individual peculiarities: but time will not permit so wide a range.