AMELIA WELBY.
MRS.
AMELIA
WELBY has nearly all the imagination of Maria
del
Occidente, with a more refined taste; and nearly all the passion of
Mrs.
Norton, with a nicer ear, and (what is surprising) equal art. Very few
American poets are at all comparable with her in the true poetic
qualities.
As for our poetesses (an absurd but necessary word), few of
them
approach her.
With some
modifications, this little poem would do
honor to any one living or dead:
The moon within our casement
beams,
Our blue-eyed babe
hath dropped to
sleep,
And I have left it to its dreams
Amid the shadows deep,
To muse beside the silver tide
Whose waves are rippling at thy side.
It is a still and lovely spot
Where they have laid
thee down to
rest;
The white-rose and forget-me-not
Bloom sweetly on thy
breast,
And birds and streams with liquid lull
Have made the stillness beautiful.
And softly thro' the forest bars
Light lovely shapes,
on glossy plumes,
Float ever in, like winged stars,
Amid the purpling
glooms:
Their sweet songs, borne from tree to
tree,
Thrill the light leaves with melody.
Alas! the very path I trace,
In happier hours thy
footsteps made;
This spot was once thy resting-place;
Within the silent shade
Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough
That drops its blossoms o'er me
now. [page 204:]
'Twas here at eve we used to rove;
'Twas here I breathed
my whispered
vows,
And sealed them on thy lips, my love,
Beneath the
apple-boughs.
Our hearts had melted into one,
But Death undid what Love had done.
Alas! too deep a weight of thought
Had fill'd thy heart
in youth's sweet
hour;
It seem 'd with love and bliss
o'erfraught;
As fleeting
passion-flower
Unfolding 'neath a southern sky,
To blossom soon and soon to die.
Yet in these calm and blooming bowers,
I seem to see thee
still,
Thy breath seems floating o'er the
flowers,
Thy whisper on the
hill;
The clear faint star-light and the sea
Are whispering to my heart of thee.
No more thy smiles my heart rejoice —
Yet still I start to
meet thine eye,
And call upon the low sweet voice
That gives me no reply
—
And list within my silent door
For the light feet that come no more.
|
In a critical mood I would speak of these stanzas
thus: —
The subject has nothing of originality: — A widower muses by
the
grave of his wife. Here then is a great demerit; for originality of
theme,
if not absolutely first sought, should be sought among the first.
Nothing
is more clear than this proposition — although denied by the chlorine
critics
(the grass-green). The desire of the new is an element of the soul. The
most exquisite pleasures grow dull in repetition. A strain of music
enchants.
Heard a second time it pleases. Heard a tenth, it does not displease.
We
hear it a twentieth, and ask ourselves why we admired. At the fiftieth
it induces ennui — at the hundredth, disgust.
Mrs. Welby's theme
is, therefore, radically faulty
so far as originality is concerned; — but of common themes, it is one
of
the very best among the class passionate. True passion is
prosaic
— homely. Any strong mental emotion stimulates all the mental
faculties;
thus grief the imagination: — but in proportion as the effect is
strengthened,
the cause surceases. The excited fancy triumphs — the grief is subdued
— chastened — is no longer grief. In this mood we are poetic, and it is
clear that a poem now written will be poetic in the exact ratio of its
dispassion. A passionate poem [page 205:] is a
contradiction
in terms. When I say, then, that Mrs. Welby's stanzas are good among
the
class passionate (using the term commonly and falsely
applied),
I mean that her tone is properly subdued, and is not so much the tone
of
passion, as of a gentle and melancholy regret, interwoven with a
pleasant
sense of the natural loveliness surrounding the lost in the tomb, and a
memory of her human beauty while alive. — Elegiac poems should either
assume
this character, or dwell purely on the beauty (moral or physical) of
the
departed — or, better still, utter the notes of triumph. I have
endeavored
to carry out this latter idea in some verses which I have called
"Lenore."
Those who object to
the proposition — that poetry
and passion are discordant — would cite Mrs. Welby's poem as an
instance of a passionate one. It is precisely similar to the hundred
others
which have been cited for like purpose. But it is not passionate;
and for this reason (with others having regard to her fine genius) it is
poetical. The critics upon this topic display an amusing ignoratio
elenchi.
Dismissing
originality and tone, I pass to the general
handling, than which nothing could be more pure, more natural, or more
judicious. The perfect keeping of the various points is admirable — and
the result is entire unity of impression, or effect. The time, a
moonlight
night; the locality of the grave; the passing thither from the cottage,
and the conclusion of the theme with the return to "the silent door;"
the
babe left, meanwhile, "to its dreams;" the "white rose and
forget-me-not"
upon the breast of the entombed; the "birds and streams, with liquid
lull,
that make the stillness beautiful;" the birds whose songs "thrill the
light
leaves with melody;" — all these are appropriate and lovely
conceptions:
— only quite unoriginal; — and (be it observed), the higher order of
genius
should, and will combine the original with that which is natural — not
in the vulgar sense, (ordinary) — but in the
artistic sense, which
has reference to the general intention of Nature. — We have
this
combination well effected in the lines:
And softly through the forest
bars
Light lovely shapes,
on glossy plumes,
Float ever in, like winged stars,
Amid the purpling
glooms —
|
which are, unquestionably, the finest
in the poem. [page 206:]
The reflections
suggested by the scene — commencing:
| Alas! the very path I trace,
|
are, also, something more than merely
natural, and are richly ideal;
especially
the cause assigned for the early death; and "the fragrant bough"
That drops its blossoms o'er me
now.
|
The two concluding stanzas are remarkable examples
of
common fancies rejuvenated, and etherealized by grace of expression,
and
melody of rhythm.
The "light lovely
shapes" in the third stanza (however
beautiful in themselves), are defective, when viewed in reference to
the
"birds" of the stanza preceding. The topic "birds" is dismissed in the
one paragraph, to be resumed in the other.
"Drops," in the last
line of the fourth stanza, is
improperly used in an active sense. To drop is a neuter verb.
An
apple drops; we let the apple fall.
The repetition
("seemed," "seem," "seems,") in the
sixth and seventh stanzas, is ungraceful; so also that of "heart," in
the
last line of the seventh, and the first of the eighth. The words
"breathed"
and "whispered," in the second line of the fifth stanza, have a force
too nearly identical. "Neath,"just below, is an awkward
contraction. All contractions are awkward. It is no paradox,
that the
more prosaic the
construction of verse, the better. Inversions should be
dismissed.
The most forcible lines are the most direct. Mrs. Welby owes
three-fourths
of her power (so far as style is concerned), to her freedom from these
vulgar, and particularly English errors — elision and inversion. O'er
is, however, too often used by her in place of over, and 'twas
for it was. We see instances here. The only
inversions,
strictly speaking,
are
| The moon within our casement beams,
|
and — "Amid the shadows deep."
The versification
throughout, is unusually good.
Nothing can excel
And birds and streams with
liquid lull
Have made the stillness beautiful . . . .
And sealed them on thy lips, my
love,
Beneath the apple-boughs . . . . [page
207:] |
or the whole of the concluding stanza,
if we leave out of view the
unpleasant
repetition of "And," at the commencement of the third and
fifth
lines. "Thy white hand trained" (see stanza the fourth)
involves
four consonants, that unite with difficulty — ndtr — and the
harshness
is rendered more apparent, by the employment of the spondee, "hand
trained," in
place of an iambus. "Melody," is a feeble termination of the
third
stanza's last line. The syllable dy is not full enough to
sustain
the rhyme. All these endings, liberty, property, happily,
and the like,
however justified by authority, are grossly objectionable. Upon the
whole,
there are some poets in America (Bryant and Sprague, for example), who
equal Mrs. Welby in the negative merits of that limited versification
which
they chiefly affect — the iambic pentameter — but none equal her in the
richer and positive merits of rhythmical variety, conception —
invention.
They, in the old routine, rarely err. She often surprises, and always
delights,
by novel, rich and accurate combination of the ancient musical
expressions.