GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVII. Sept, 1850. No. 3.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Poetry, Music and Fashion

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVII. PHILADELPHIA, September, 1850. No. 3.

SHAKSPEARE.

ANALYSIS OF MACBETH.

———

BY HENRY C. MOORHEAD.

———

The reader who has not considered the subject in Ulrici’s point of view, will, perhaps, scarcely be prepared, at first sight, to believe that the two plays of Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice, have the same “ground-idea;” that both are, throughout, imbued with the same sentiment, yet he will readily perceive the similarity of the leading incidents of these plays. Shylock insists on the literal terms of his bond, and “stands for judgment,” according to the strict law of Venice. He is entitled to a pound of flesh; “the law allows it, and the court awards it;” but his bond gives him no drop of blood, and neither more nor less than just a pound. Thus the letter of the law, on which he has so sternly insisted, serves in the end to defeat him. In like manner Macbeth relies with fatal confidence on the predictions of the weird sisters, that “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth;” and that he “shall never vanquished be till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane.” The predictions are more literally fulfilled than he anticipated, and that very strictness of interpretation makes them worthless.

Now it is from these incidents—both of the same import—that the respective themes of these plays are drawn; hence those themes are substantially the same, and may be thus expressed:

The relation of form to substance—of the letter to the spirit—of the real to the ideal. But the different aspects in which this idea is presented are multiform; as empty, superfluous words; ambiguities, equivocations, irony, riddles, formality, prescription, superstition; witches, ghosts, dreams, omens, etc., etc.

The reason and the propriety of the introduction of the witches in Macbeth, has often been a subject of speculation. It may be remarked in general, that Shakspeare always follows very closely the original story on which his plot is founded. The question as to any given circumstance, therefore, generally is rather why he has retained than why he has introduced it. In the history of Macbeth, as he read it in the old chronicles, he found the weird sisters, and also their equivocal predictions; and it was upon these predictions as a “ground-idea,” (as has already been observed,) that he constructed the play. The witches, therefore, were not introduced for the sake of the play, but it might rather be said the play was written for the sake of the witches.

——

ACT I.

The prevailing modification of the theme, in the early part of the play, is “the ambiguity of appearances.” The 1st scene merely introduces the witches, who are themselves ambiguous, and so is their language; “fair is foul, and foul is fair.” They appear amidst thunder and lightning, and a hurly-burly of empty words.

In the 2d Scene a bleeding soldier enters, and gives an account of the battle, and of the achievements of Macbeth and Banquo. Mark how he dwells on the doubtful aspect of the fight:

“Doubtfully it stood;

As two spent swimmers that do cling together,

And choke their art.”

He represents fortune as smiling at first on Macdonwald’s cause; but brave Macbeth, “disdaining fortune,” soon turned the tide of victory. But another revulsion follows, “and from the spring whence comfort seemed to come, discomfort flows.” The Norweyan lord suddenly renews the assault, but victory at last falls on Macbeth and Banquo. Ross now enters and describes the fight, dwelling in like manner on the uncertainty which attended it; and Duncan, declaring that the Thane of Cawdor shall no more deceive him, orders his execution. It is worthy of remark also, that the view here presented of Macbeth’s character is purely formal or sensual. Physical strength and bull-dog courage are alone spoken of. Swords “smoking with bloody execution,” “reeking wounds,” and “heads fixed on battlements,” compose the staple of his eulogy.

Scene 3d—Enter the three witches. There is an idle repetition of words. The offense of the sailor’s wife is visited upon her husband, who is, however, to encounter only the appearance, not the reality of destruction. A certain combination of numbers completes the charm.

Macbeth and Banquo now encounter the weird sisters on the heath. Macbeth’s exclamations relate chiefly to the ambiguity of their appearance. He says, they “look not like the inhabitants of the earth, and yet are on it.” They “seem to understand me.”

They should be women,

And yet their beards forbid me to interpret

That they are so.

The witches then salute Macbeth in terms which are to him incomprehensible. They call him Thane of Cawdor, which he is, but does not know it. They also salute Banquo in ambiguous language: “Lesser than Macbeth and greater.” “Not so happy, yet much happier,” etc., etc.

The witches now “melt into the wind;” upon which Banquo says,

The earth hath bubbles as the water has,

And these are of them.

Ross and Angus now enter and salute Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor, who, finding the prediction of the witches verified in this particular, asks Banquo whether he does not hope his children shall be kings. Banquo’s answer points to the ambiguity of appearances,

That trysted home,

Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,

Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But ’tis strange;

And oftentimes to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths;

Win us with honest trifles to betray us

In deepest consequence.

Macbeth falls into meditation on the subject; thinks this “supernatural soliciting” cannot be ill, because it has already given him earnest of success; cannot be good, because it breeds horrid suggestions in his mind. The appearances are ambiguous and bewilder him. Banquo, observing his abstraction, remarks that new honors come upon him like “strange garments,” wanting the formality of use to make them sit easy.

The next Scene, (the 4th) though a short one, contains several very pointed references to the central idea. Malcolm reports to Duncan that Cawdor, when led to execution, had frankly confessed his treasons; whereupon Duncan says,

There’s no art

To find the mind’s construction in the face;

He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust.

This reflection is commonplace enough in itself, but is rendered eminently striking by his cordial reception of Macbeth the next moment; he hails as his deliverer, and enthrones in his heart, the man who is already meditating his destruction, and that very night murders him in his sleep. Thus precept and example concur in teaching the uncertainty of appearances. Again Duncan says:

My plenteous joys,

Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves

In drops of sorrow.

He then declares his intention to confer appropriate honors on all deservers, and renews his expressions of confidence in Macbeth.

The subject is now presented in a slightly different aspect. Whereas the ambiguity of form or appearance has heretofore been insisted on, the leading idea is now the agreement of form with substance; the correspondence of appearances with the reality.

Macbeth writes to his wife, informing her of what has happened, that she may not “lose the dues of rejoicing,” but be able to conform to their new circumstances. Her reflections on the occasion abound with illustrations of the theme. She fears his nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness to “catch the nearest way.” He cannot rid himself of what she considers mere ceremonious scruples; “what he would highly that he would holily;” whilst she thinks only of the end they aim at, she apprehends that he will stand upon the manner of reaching it. An attendant now informs her of Duncan’s unexpected approach; and she falls into a soliloquy which is singularly adapted to the theme. The “hoarse raven;” the invocation to night; her wish to be unsexed, and that her milk might be turned to gall, etc., etc. When Macbeth arrives, she says to him:

Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men

May read strange matters; To beguile the time,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under it.

In the next scene she practices that dissimulation which she has reproached Macbeth for wanting. Her reception of Duncan is full of ceremony and professions of duty.

The 7th Scene opens with the great soliloquy of Macbeth, “If it were done, when ’tis done,” etc. He dwells on the incongruity of his killing Duncan, who is there in double trust; “First as I am his kinsman and his subject; then as his host.” Duncan, too, “has borne his faculties so meek;” has been “so clear in his great office;” “he has honored me of late;” and “I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.” He resolves at last that he will proceed no further in the business. Lady Macbeth now enters to “chastise him with the valor of her tongue.” In the course of the argument that ensues, Macbeth shows his regard for appearances by saying:

I dare do all that may become a man,

Who dares do more is none.

whilst she shows her respect for the strictness of the letter by declaring that had she so sworn as he has done to this, she would, whilst her babe was smiling in her face, have “plucked her nipple from his boneless gums,” and dashed his brains out. She then proposes to drench the attendants with wine, and smear them with Duncan’s blood, so that suspicion may fall on them; also, “we will make our griefs and clamor roar upon his death.” And here the first act ends with these words:

Away and mock the time with fairest show;

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

——

ACT II.

In the 2d Act the same idea of correspondence is pursued, and the propensity of the imagination to embody ideas which press upon the mind is dwelt upon.

In the first scene Banquo, when ordering the light to be removed, says: “Night’s candles are all out; there’s husbandry in Heaven.” This imagery, no doubt, very naturally suggests itself; but herein lies the peculiar art of these plays; there is seldom any thing forced or strained in the narrative or sentiment, the events and reflections fall in naturally and gracefully; and yet the same general idea is always kept in the foreground.

Macbeth tells Banquo if he will co-operate with him it shall be to his honor; the latter intimates his fear of losing the substance by grasping at the shadow; “So I lose none in seeking to augment it,” etc. Then comes the fearful soliloquy of Macbeth on the air-drawn dagger. So intensely does the bloody business “inform to his mind,” that his very thoughts cast a shadow, and the object of his meditation stands pictured before him. All the imagery of the speech also embodies the central idea.

The next scene (the 2d) is full of horrible imaginings. So fearful are the workings of Macbeth’s conscience, that, in spite of his guilt, we pity as much as we abhor him; and all these exclamations of remorse and horror allude so plainly to the theme that I need not dwell on them. Lady Macbeth is seldom troubled with scruples, but takes “the nearest way” to her purpose. Thus she says,

The sleeping and the dead,

Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil.

Yet even her stern nature, which bore down all real obstacles, yielded to the merely formal circumstance that Duncan resembled her father as he slept. This is, perhaps, the only amiable sentiment she utters, and it is of a superstitious character, however commendable.

The 3d Scene opens with the humorous soliloquy of the Porter, who imagines himself porter of hell-gate, and gives each new comer an appropriate reception, but soon finds that the place is too cold for the purpose. His remarks on the effects of drink will not bear quotation, but are as much to the main purpose as any other passage of the play. When the murder of Duncan is announced, Lady Macbeth continues her formal part by fainting. This scene and the next are much occupied with accounts of omens and prodigies in connection with the murder of Duncan. In a superstitious age men were prone to believe and to imagine such things; and the relation of these events to the theme depends on that literal, unspiritual tendency of mind which has led mankind under different circumstances to the making of graven images, to the worship of stocks and stones, to the belief in dreams and omens, and to every form of superstition.

——

ACT III.

In the first scene of this act Macbeth dwells on the worthlessness of the mere title which he has won, “To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus.” Then, too, the succession was promised to the issue of Banquo, leaving a barren sceptre in the hands of Macbeth. He resolves to have the substantial prize for which he had “filed his mind,” and therefore plans the destruction of Banquo and Fleance. In the conversation with the murderers whom he engages for that purpose, the theme is curiously illustrated. In reply to Macbeth’s question as to their readiness to revenge an injury, they say, “We are men, my lord.”

Macbeth. Ay, in the catalogue, you go for men

As hounds, and grey-hounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clep’d

All by the name of dogs; the valued file

Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,

The house-keeper, the hunter, every one

According to the gift which bounteous nature

Hath in him closed.

The ambiguity of the general name is remedied by the specific description. The name is formal, the description substantial.

In the next Scene (the 2d) both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth continue their reflections on the insecurity of their usurped honors: “We have scotched the snake, not killed it.” She exhorts him to “sleek o’er his rugged look;” and he refuses to explain his purposes as to Banquo, bidding her be innocent of the knowledge till she can applaud the deed; thus sparing her conscience the formal guilt of the murder. His invocation to night and darkness, at the end of this scene, is very similar to that of Lady Macbeth, on a similar occasion, before referred to.

In the 3d Scene the murderers, whilst waiting the approach of Banquo, justify to themselves the deed they are about to commit, by pleading the orders of Macbeth. The deed is his; they are the mere instruments of his will. The allusion to the fading light; “the west yet glimmers with some streaks of day,” seems to refer to the near approach of Banquo’s end; as the extinguishment of the light does to the simultaneous extinguishment of his life, immediately afterward.

The next is the Banquet Scene. It opens with formal ceremony. The murderers then inform Macbeth that they have executed his will on Banquo. Macbeth expresses surprise and regret at Banquo’s absence, but in the midst of his hypocritical professions, his excited imagination embodies the description which has just been given him by the murderers, and the ghost of Banquo, “with twenty trenched gashes on its head,” rises and shakes its gory locks at him. The whole scene abounds with illustrations of the theme. Macbeth endeavors to shelter himself under the letter of the law, when he exclaims, “thou canst not say I did it!” He thinks that after a man has been regularly murdered, he should stay in his grave; he declares his readiness to encounter any substantial foe—the rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; it is the “horrible shadow” that blanches his cheek with fear. After the guests have retired, he falls into a superstitious train of reflection, in which he expresses his belief in augurs, etc. He declares his intention to revisit the weird sisters; he is fast becoming as formal and as reckless of consequences as his wife; he speaks of his qualms of conscience as the “initiate fear that wants hard use;” and, as if he now passively allowed himself to be borne onward by the tide of events, says he has strange things in his head, “which must be acted e’er they may be scanned.”

Scene 5th. This is another witch scene. Hecate declares her intention to raise up artificial sprites for the purpose of deluding Macbeth, and drawing him on to his confusion, thus preparing the way for the ambiguous predictions.

In the 6th Scene, the relation between the letter and the spirit is exhibited in the ironical speech of Lennox, and in the King of England’s regard for the “dues of birth.”

Things have been strangely born; the gracious Duncan

Was pitied of Macbeth; marry, he was dead;

And the right valiant Banquo walked too late,

Whom you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed,

For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.

Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous

It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain,

To kill their gracious father? damned fact!

How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight,

In pious rage, the two delinquents tear,

That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?

Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely, too;

For ’twould have angered any heart alive

To hear the men deny it. etc. etc.

——

ACT IV.

Scene 1st. Here we have the witches boiling their cauldron. It is composed of various and contradictory materials;

Black spirits and white,

Red spirits and gray.

And so truth and falsehood are mingled in the promises to Macbeth which immediately follow; and which are kept literally to the ear, but broken fatally to the hope.

In the 2d Scene, the falsehood or ambiguity of appearances is illustrated in Lady Macduff’s complaint of her husband’s desertion, which she attributes to fear and want of love; whilst Ross exhorts her to confide in his fidelity and wisdom, though she may not be able to understand his present conduct:

As for your husband,

He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows

The fits o’ the season.

Of her son, she says, “Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless;” and immediately after tells him that his father’s dead; and, according to her understanding of the matter, so he was; not literally but substantially, as their guardian and protector. The boy denies it, because he does not see the appropriate effect. “If he were dead, you’d weep for him; if you would not, it were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father.” Whatever may be the merit of this dialogue between Lady Macduff and her son, in other respects it serves at least to illustrate the theme. The same idea of ambiguity is now applied to the relation between cause and effect, when a messenger enters, warns her of the near approach of danger, and urges her to fly. Her first exclamation is, “I have done no harm.” But she immediately adds,

I remember now

I am in this earthly world, where to do harm

Is often laudable; to do good sometime

Accounted dangerous folly.

The first part of the next scene (the 3d) is wholly occupied with the idea of ambiguous appearances. Macduff arrives at the court of England, and tenders his services to Malcolm, who, fearing that he is an emissary of Macbeth, mistrusts him. He plays off false appearances upon Macduff by slandering himself, thus bringing out Macduff’s true disposition. A doctor now enters and introduces the idea of causeless effect, telling how the king, with a mere touch, has healed the “evil.” Ross, having just arrived from Scotland, describes the dreadful state of the country, dwelling chiefly on the circumstance that the people have become so used to horrors, that they have almost ceased to note them. He tells Macduff that his wife and children are “well,” purposely using an ambiguous phrase, which Macduff understands literally, though Ross means that they are at peace in their graves. When at length he comes to reveal the truth, he begs Macduff not to confound the relator with the author of the mischief. “Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,” etc. Then tells him that his wife and children have been savagely slaughtered; whereupon Macduff pulls his hat upon his brows, and Malcolm begs him to “give sorrow words”—distinguishing justly between the clamorous show of grief and its silent reality. The substance of Ross’s words have struck Macduff, but in the agony of the moment he cannot comprehend their detail. “My wife killed, too;” “Did you say all?” He has not caught the form of the expression though its spirit has pierced his soul. There are few passages in Shakspeare more affecting than this, or in which the “ground-idea” is more steadily kept in view.

O, I could play the woman with mine eyes,

And braggart with my tongue,

exclaims Macduff; but he refrains from all show of grief, and all profession of courage, and prays Heaven only to bring the fiend of Scotland and himself “front to front.”

——

ACT V.

In the first scene of this act the apparent and the real are inexplicably mingled together. Lady Macbeth “receives, at once, the benefit of sleep, and does the effects of watching,” which the doctor pronounces “a great perturbation in nature.” Her eyes are open, but their sense is shut; and she seems to wash her hands. Though she is now under the dominion of an awakened conscience, the formality of her nature still displays itself. “Fie, my lord, fie!” she exclaims, “a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?” The Doctor, however, is cautious about drawing conclusions even from such appearances, and remarks that he has known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds. The reader will readily perceive other illustrations of the theme in this scene, in which for the first time Lady Macbeth appears stripped of the mask of ceremony. We are permitted to see the workings of her mind, and the beating of her heart, when her conscience is emancipated from the control of her formal habits and her stern will.

The next scene, which is a very short one, contains several allusions to the unsubstantial nature of Macbeth’s power.

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love, etc.

In the 3d Scene Macbeth still relies on the promises of the weird sisters. He interprets the look of the “cream-faced loon” as indicative of alarming news; and then falls into that memorable train of reflection on his “way of life,” and the emptiness of all his honors—which everybody knows by heart and can at once apply to the theme. In his answer to the Doctor, who tells him of Lady Macbeth’s “thick-coming fancies,” the remedies he proposes, are, it will be observed, adapted to the unsubstantial character of the disease; the troubles of the brain are to be “razed out,” and the stuffed bosom cleansed with “some sweet oblivious antidote.” On the other hand, when he asks the Doctor to “scour the English hence,” he suggests the use of rhubarb, or senna, which, indeed, at first sight, strikes one as very appropriate remedies.

In the 4th Scene, the soldiers are made to hew down boughs in Birnam wood, in order to conceal their numbers; thus giving a literal construction to the language of the weird sisters.

Scene 5th. Macbeth now trusts to the strength of his castle, and proclaims his confidence by ordering his banners to be hung on the outward walls. When he hears the cry of women, he comments on the effect of custom.

I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

. . . . . . .

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

Can not once start.

When told of the queen’s death, he says it is unseasonable: “she should have died hereafter;” and his reflections on life have the same relation to the theme as those on his “way of life” in Scene 3d.

It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

He is now told that Birnam wood is coming to Dunsinane; and the rock on which he has heretofore stood so firmly begins to crumble beneath his feet. He begins to pall in resolution, and to “doubt the equivocation of the fiend, that lies like truth.”

Scene 6th contains less than a dozen lines. The soldiers throw away their leafy screens, and show their true strength.

In the next and last scene the remaining promise of the weird sisters is literally kept to the ear, but “broken to the hope”—for it turns out that Macduff was not of woman born. The force of professional habit appears in old Siward’s conduct on hearing of the death of his son. “Had he his hurts before?” he asks; and, being satisfied on that point, ceases to mourn for him. Finally, ceremony is employed by Malcolm in rewarding substantial merit; his thanes and kinsmen are created earls; and all other proper forms observed “in measure, time, and place.”

The reader will readily perceive that different aspects of the theme predominate in the several stages of the play; and if these stages seem somewhat irregular, it must be borne in mind that the present division into acts and scenes was not the work of Shakspeare, but of his editors.

In Macbeth we see a perpetual conflict between the real nature of man, and the assumed character of the usurper. He is “full o’ the milk of human kindness;” loves truth and sincerity; and sets a high value on the good opinions and the sincere friendship of others. But he is also ambitious; he is urged forward by the demoniac spirit of his wife, and entangled in the snare of the weird sisters. Under these influences he endeavors to play the part of a remorseless tyrant; but his kindlier nature is constantly breaking out; and though he strives so hard to maintain his assumed character, that he at length refuses to “scan” his deeds until they have been “acted,” yet we find him in the height of his power mournfully regretting his own blood-guiltiness, and the hollow-heartedness of all around him.

But there is nothing of this spirituality in the character of Lady Macbeth. Her ambition is satisfied with the name of queen, and she cares not whether the obedience of her followers is constrained or voluntary, whether their love is feigned or real. Remorse has no power over her except when she is asleep; and even old Shylock—whose whole character, as has been well said, is a dead letter—might, perhaps, betray similar emotions, if one could see him thus off his guard.

If the reader of this play should ever be tempted to the commission of crime for the sake of ambition, let him remember the air-drawn dagger, and the ghost of Banquo; if in danger of being seduced by the specious appearance of vice, let him remember the equivocation of the fiends; if lured by the hope that success will gild o’er the offense and “trammel up the consequence,” let him think of Macbeth’s withered heart after he had won the crown and sceptre; and finally, if he imagine that he can so school his passions and harden his nature that remorse will have no power over him, let him contemplate Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep. Whereever he turns, he will find, in all the incidents of this play, the same great lesson, that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

ODE.

———

BY R. H. STODDARD.

———

The days are growing chill, the Summer stands

Drooping, like Niobe with clasped hands,

Mute o’er the faded flowers, her children lost,

Slain by the arrows of the early frost!

The clouded Heaven above is pale and gray,

The misty Earth below is wan and drear,

And baying Winds chase all the leaves away,

As cruel hounds pursue the trembling deer,

And in the nipping morns, the ice around,

Lieth like Autumn’s gage defiant on the ground!

My heart is sick within me, I have toiled

In iron poverty and hopeless tears,

Tugging in fetters at the oar for years;

And wrestling in the ring of Life have soiled

My robes with dust, and strained my sinews sore;

I have no strength to struggle any more!

And what if I should perish?—none would miss

So strange a dreamer in a world like this—

Whate’er our beauty, worth, or loving powers,

We live, we strive, we die, and are forgot;

We are no more regarded than the flowers;

And death and darkness is our destined lot!

One bud from off the tree of Earth is naught,

One crude fruit from the ripening bough of Thought,

The hinds will ne’er lament, in harvest-time,

The bud, the fruit that fell and wasted in its prime!

Away with Action! ’tis the ban of Time,

The curse that clung to us from Eden’s gate;

We toil, and strain and tug from youth’s fair prime,

And drag a chain for years, a weary weight!

Away with Action and Laborious Life;

They were not made for man,

In Nature’s plan,

For man is made for quiet, not for strife.

The pearl is shaped serenely in its shell

In the still waters of the ocean deep;

The buried seed begins to pulp and swell

In Earth’s warm bosom in profoundest sleep;

And, sweeter far than all, the bridal rose

Flushes to fullness in a soft repose.

Let others gather honey in the world,

And hoard it in their cells until they die;

I am content in dreaminess to lie,

Sipping, in summer hours,

My wants from fading flowers,

An Epicurean till my wings are furled!

What happy hours! what happy, happy days

I spent when I was young, a careless boy;

Oblivious of the world—its wo or joy—

I lived for song, and dreamed of budding bays!

I thought when I was dead, if not before—

(I hoped before!)—to have a noble name

To leave my eager foot-prints on the shore

And rear my statue in the halls of Fame!—

I pondered o’er the Poets dead of old,

Their memories living in the minds of men;—

I knew they were but men of mortal mould,

They won their crowns, and I might win again.

I drank delicious vintage from their pages,

Flasks of Parnassian nectar, stored for ages;

My soul was flushed within me, maddened, fired,

I leaped impassioned, like a seer inspired;

I lived, and would have died for Poesy,

In youth’s divine emotion—

A stream that sought its ocean;

A Time that longed to be

Engulfed, and swallowed in a calm Eternity!

Had I a realm in some enchanted zone,

Some fadeless summer-land, I’d dwell alone,

Far from the little world, luxurious, free,

And woo the dainty damsel Poesy!

I’d loll on downy couches all the day,

And dream the heavy-wingéd hours away:

Reading my antique books, or framing songs,

Whose choiceness to an earlier age belongs,

Or else a loving maid, in gentle fear,

Would steal to me, from her pavilion near,

And kneel before me with a cup of wine,

Three centuries old, and I would sip and taste,

With long-delaying lips a draught divine;

And, peering o’er the brim in her blue eyes

Slow-misting, and voluptuous, she would rise,

And stoop to me, and I would clasp her waist,

And kiss her mouth, and shake her hanging curls—

And in her coy despite undo her zone of pearls!

Oh, Poesy! my spirits crownéd queen,

I would that thou couldst in the flesh be seen

The shape of perfect loveliness thou art

Enshrined within the chambers of my heart!

I would build thee a palace, richer far

Than princely Aladeen’s renowned of old;

Its walls and columns of the massiest gold,

And every gem encrusting it a star!

Thy throne should be an Alp, o’ercanopied

With rainbows, and a shielded Moon o’erhead;

Thy coffers should o’erflow, and mock the Ind,

Whose boasted wealth would dwindle into naught

The rich-ored driftings of the streams of Thought

Washed lucidly from cloven peaks of Mind!—

And I would bring to thee the daintiest things

That grow beneath the summer of thy wings;—

Wine from the Grecian vineyards, pressed with care,

Brimming in cups antique, and goblets rare,

And sweeter honey than the singing bees

Of Helios ever gathered on the leas

Olympian, distilled from asphodels,

Whose lucent nectar truckles from their cells!

And luscious fruitage of enchanted trees,

The peerless apples of the Hesperides,

Stolen by Fancy from the guardant Fates,

Served, by a Nubian slave, on golden plates!

And I would hang around thee day and night,

Nor ever heed, or know the night from day;

If Time had wings, I should not see his flight,

Or feel his shadow in my sunny way!

Forgetful of the world, I’d stand apart,

And gaze on thee unseen, and touch my lute,

Sweet-voiced, a type and image of my heart,

Whose trembling chords will never more be mute;

And Joy and Grief would mingle in my theme,

A swan and shadow floating down a stream!

And when thou didst in soft disdain, or mirth,

Descend thy throne and walk the common earth,

I would, in brave array, precede thee round,

With pomp and pageantry and music sweet,

And spread my shining mantle on the ground,

For fear the dust should soil thy golden-sandaled feet!

Away! away! the days are dim and cold,

The withered flowers are crumbling in the mould,

The Heaven is gray and blank, the Earth is drear,

And fallen leaves are heaped on Summer’s bier!

Sweet songs are out of place, however sweet,

When all things else are wrapt in funeral gloom,

True Poets never pipe to dancing feet,

But only elegies around a tomb!

Away with fancy now, the Year demands

A sterner chaplet, and a deeper lay,

A wreath of cypress woven with pious hands,