"I offer here my victor spear, my proud and gallant
The horse and lance, how dearly proved! that served my sorest need;
Yes, Mary Mother! unto thee such gifts of right
For the race it is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
"What most I prize, I proffer thee; accept the tribute
My sword, my shield, my spear, my steed, all prostrate at thy feet;
There let them lie before thy shrine, that all the world
We know who nerved the conqueror's arm, and gave the victory!"
WHAT is the poet's power? Is it alone
To make thought, passion, fancy, feeling known
In tuneful numbers; heightening with the breath
Of song, each bloom beyond the chill of death?
Is it not, too, all nature to invest
With hues of an ideal interest;
To pour o'er living and inanimate,
The phantasy of a superior fate?
Matter to gild with mind, and mind to aid
With forms in the material mass displayed;
To paint (though truth and Shakspeare may forbid
The lily, yet) the rose with livelier red;
To give the clouds, the waves, the stars, the winds,
An interest all unknown to vulgar minds;-
A voice by uninitiated ears
Inaudible as the eternal spheres ?
To throw a grace o'er all that Memory brings,
A glory o'er young Hope's aspiring wings?
In every season, every scene, to taste—
Gloomy or gay, a garden or a waste—
In all conditions, high or lowly placed,
The life-spring-silent, or to music wrought—
Of beautiful and beautifying thought?
Not in things mighty solely, but in mean
And trivial too, the immortal power is seen :
Nor in things moral solely, but in low
And sensual-which to higher import grow.
Breathed o'er and half-idealized by mind,
In thought's associating flame refined.
Here the true moral alchemy behold!
Born with the mind whose touch turns dross to gold.
Think you that, when at classic Abbotsford
The small-limbed mutton cheers the social board,
He who old Gifford's "wealth of winter cheer,"-
The sea fowl dried and savoury haunch of deer,
Solands and gammons of the tusky boar—
Sang, feels than clown or epicure no more?
His thought, perhaps, is of the distant hill,
On whose long slopes, at freedom's vagrant will,
By many a mountain stream and broomy dell,
Known to youth's sports and truant fancy well,
Roam the black-visaged tribes- heirs of the blossomed
* See Marmion, cant. iii.
Nor foams the old English ale without a ray
Of fancy glittering o'er its nut-brown spray ;
Nor unillumed by fancy-sparkling gushes
The nectarous rill, that tempts the lip with blushes;
Or waves-like some fair lady of high ton
In brilliant paleness:-then to Loire, Garonne,
Suzon, or Rhine* his fancy wings her flight,
While towns, isles, vineyards flit before his sight:
Or to thy wild romantic stream, Douro!
Which cuts two kingdoms† with thy conquering flow, And gav'st a chaplet for our hero's brow.
So when with him who Memory's garland wears,
The closet-supper kindred friendship shares,
"While blushing fruits through scattered leaves invite,
Still clad in bloom, and veiled in azure light;
With wine, as rich in years as Horace sings,
With water clear as his own fountain flings;"
Calls not the poet up to eye and soul,
Thoughts-forms-o'er which dim centuries vainly roll,
Those evenings worthy of the Gods!-that flew
When the famed Sabine farm its master knew,
And Castalie's o'ermatched Bandusia's dew!
But in the passions!-lo, the mightier dower—
Gales of the mind, that wake each slumbering power.
Lo, the proud Genii of the excited mood,
Lords of the soul, o'ermastering brain and blood:
* Rivers celebrated for their vineyards
The river Douro, or Duero, rises in Old Castile, and falls into the Atlantic Ocean at Porto-Port.
These in the poet's breast sublimer burn,
Breath of his life, and incense from his urn.-
Say, does he love?-Oh love! romance of all,
Which can each heart of humblest bust enthrall,
Making earth Paradise despite the Fall;-
Say, does he love? To him, to him is given,
To make this earthly Paradise a Heaven—
To heighten every hue on beauty's cheek,
Bid the rose deepen and the violet speak,-
To breathe new lustre o'er the angelic mould,
From faery thoughts and influences untold.
'Tis not alone the luxury to express,
In melting terms of soul-born tenderness;
'Tis not the tale of passion to rehearse
In the melodious witcheries of verse:
It is the power-the privilege to feel
With purer ardour, and a loftier zeal,—
To consecrate with spells of magic tone
Each simplest thing to love's enchantment known.
Yes! e'en each thing most transient, substanceless,
Born of love's light in fancy's sweet recess,
Finds in the poet's thought a name and place,
A shadowy semblance, an ideal grace :—
Not the mere reliques, though love-sainted all,
Of moonlight walk, quaint masque, or glittering ball, "A glove, a shoe-tye, or a flower let fall:"*
* See Rogers' exquisite "Epistle to a Friend."
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