Another, on the rainbow, was in blank verse and impressively didactic in its tone. Then, when he was nine years old, he broke out with yet another effusion, called ‘Eudosia;’ and when only eleven he began the composition of an elaborate ‘poetical’ description of his various journeyings, under the title of ‘Iteriad.’
It is easy to understand how this fondness for the rhythmical was fostered by the aforesaid parental admiration, and how it was still further increased by the boy’s admiration, successively, for Scott and Byron. Certain early friendships held out to the young versifier the prospect of publication, and thus it is that we find him, in his sixteenth year, figuring as a contributor to ‘Friendship’s Offering and Winter’s Wreath: a Christmas and New Year’s Present’ for 1835. This was the era of the old-fashioned ‘annuals,’ and ‘Friendship’s Offering’ was one of the most notable of its kind. In the issue for the year named we note Barry Cornwall, John Clare, William Howitt, and H. F. Chorley among the writers of whom the youthful Ruskin was one. Here, by the side of really excellent steel-engravings, portraying languishing ladies in corkscrew curls, and illustrating literary matter not always unworthy of the embellishment given to it, we discover Mr. Ruskin’s first published verses—‘Salzburg’ and some ‘Fragments’ of a poetical journal, kept on tour. In the former we seem to detect the influence of Rogers, rather than that of Scott or Byron. It opens thus:
‘On Salza’s quiet tide the westering sun
Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun,
Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof,
Begin to weave fair twilight’s mystic woof;
Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil,
Wraps the proud city, in her beauty pale.’
A little further on we read:
‘Sweet is the twilight hour by Salza’s strand,
Though no Arcadian visions grace the land;
Wakes not a sound that floats not sweetly by,
While day’s last beams upon the landscape die;
Low chants the fisher where the waters pour,
And murmuring voices melt along the shore;
The plash of waves comes softly from the side
Of passing barge slow gliding o’er the tide;
And there are sounds from city, field, and hill,
Shore, forest, flood; yet mellow all, and still.’
Herein, it will be seen, is something of the power of description which the writer was afterwards to exhibit so much more effectively in prose.
Four years later Mr. Ruskin’s initials were to be seen appended to a couple of pieces in verse contributed to ‘The Amaranth,’ an annual of much more imposing presence than the ‘Offering’—edited by T. K. Hervey, admirably illustrated, and happy in the practical support of such literary lights as Horace Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Sheridan Knowles, Thomas Hood, Praed, and Mrs. Browning. One of the two pieces in question is ‘The Wreck,’ in which Mr. Ruskin’s poetic capability, such as it is, is visible in one of its most attractive moods. The last verse runs:
‘The voices of the night are mute
Beneath the moon’s eclipse;
The silence of the fitful flute
Is in the dying lips!
The silence of my lonely heart
Is kept for ever more
In the lull
Of the waves
Of a low lee shore.’
To the same year belong contributions to the London Monthly Miscellany and the prize poem (‘Salsette and Elephanta’) before-mentioned. In the Miscellany appeared some lines which, in certain respects, are a species of anticipation of the Swinburnian manner; as, for example:
‘We care not what skies are the clearest,
What scenes are the fairest of all;
The skies and the scenes that are dearest
For ever, are those that recall
To the thoughts of the hopelessly-hearted
The light of the dreams that deride,
With the form of the dear and departed,
Their loneliness, weary and wide.’