In song, where Fame as yet hath left no sign
Beyond the sound, whose charm is half divine;
Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye,
But yields young History all to harmony,
A boy Achilles, with the Centaur's lyre
In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.
For one long cherished ballad's simple stave,
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,
Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,
Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,
Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;
Invites, when Hieroglyphics are a theme
For sages' labours or the student's dream;
Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil,—
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.
Such was this rude rhyme-rhyme is of the rude-
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquered; such, wherever rise
Lands which no foes destroy or civilize,
Exist: and what can our accomplished art
Of verse do more than reach the awakened heart?
And sweetly now those untaught melodies
Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,
The sweet siesta of a summer day,
The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,
When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,
And the first breath began to stir the palm,
The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave
All gently to refresh the thirsty cave,
Where sat the songstress with the stranger boy,
Who taught her passion's desolating joy,
Too powerful over every heart, but most
O'er those who know not how it may be lost;
O'er those who, burning in the new-born fire,
Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstasy,
That life knows no such rapture as to die:`
And die they do; for earthly life has nought
Matched with that burst of nature, even in thought:
And all our dreams of better life above
But close in one eternal gush of love.
There sate the gentle savage of the wild,
In growth a woman, though in years a child,
As childhood dates within our colder clime,
Where nought is ripened rapidly save crime;
The infant of an infant world, as pure
From Nature-lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like Night, but Night with all her stars,
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that wore a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell;
With all her loves around her on the deep,
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;
Yet full of life-for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak;
The sun-born blood suffus'd her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darkened wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the Southern Seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,
To bear the bark of others' happiness,
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:
Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their bues:
She feared no ill, because she knew it not,
Or what she knew was soon-too soon-forgot;
Her smiles and tears had passed, as light winds pass
O'er lakes, to ruffle, not destroy their glass,
Whose depths unsearch'd, and fountains from the hill,
Restore their surface, in itself so still,
Until the earthquake tear the Naiad's cave,
Root up the spring, and trample on the wave,
And crush the living waters to a mass,
The amphibious desert of the dank morass!
And must their fate be hers? The eternal change
But grasps humanity with quicker range;
And they who fall, but fall as worlds will fall,
To rise, if just, a spirit o'er them all.
And who is he? the blue-eyed northern child
Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild;
The fair-haired offspring of the Hebrides,
Where roars the Pentland with its whirling seas;
Rocked in his cradle by the roaring wind,
The tempest-born in body and in mind,
His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam,
Had from that moment deemed the deep his home,
The giant comrade of his pensive moods,
The sharer of his craggy solitudes,
The only mentor of his youth, where'er
His bark was borne; the sport of wave and air,
A careless thing, who placed his choice in chance,
Nurst by the legends of his land's romance;
Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear,
Acquainted with all feelings save despair.
Placed in the Arab's clime, he would have been
As bold a rover as the sands have seen,
And braved their thirst with as enduring lip
As Ishmael, wafted on his desert-ship;*
Fixed upon Chili's shore, a proud Cacique,
On Hellas' mountains, a rebellious Greek;
Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane;
Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to reign.
For the same soul that rends its path to sway,
If reared to such, can find no further prey
Beyond itself, and must retrace its way,t
Plunging for pleasure into pain; the same
Spirit which made a Nero, Rome's worst shame,
A humbler state and discipline of heart
Had formed his glorious namesake's counterpart:‡
But grant his vices, grant them all his own,
How small their theatre without a throne!
Thou smilest, these comparisons seem high
To those who scan all things with dazzled eye;
Linked with the unknown name of one whose doom
Has nought to do with glory or with Rome,
*The "ship of the desert" is the Oriental figure for the camel or dromedary; and they deserve the metaphor well, the former for his endurance, the latter for his swiftness.
"Lucullus, when frugality could charm,
Had wasted turnips in his Sabine farm."-Pope.
The Consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal, and defeated Asdrubal; thereby accomplishing an achievement almost unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to Hannibal, was the sight of Asdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed with a sigh, that "Rome would now be the mistress of the world." And yet to this victory of Nero's it might be owing that his imperial namesake reigned at all! But the infamy of the one has eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of "Nero" is heard, who thinks of the Consul? But such are human things.
With Chili, Hellas, or with Araby,
Thou smilest?-Smile; 'tis better thus than sigh;
Yet such he might have been; he was a man,
A soaring spirit ever in the van,
A patriot hero or despotic chief,
To form a nation's glory or its grief,
Born under auspices which makes us more
Or less than we delight to ponder o'er.
But these are visions; say, what was he here?
A blooming boy, a truant mutineer,
The fair-haired Torquil, free as Ocean's spray,
The husband of the bride of Toobonai.
By Neuha's side he sate, and watched the waters,
Neuha, the sun-flower of the Island daughters,
Highborn (a birth at which the herald smiles,
Without a scutcheon for these secret isles)
Of a long race, the valiant and the free,
The naked knights of savage chivalry,
Whose grassy cairns ascend along the shore,
And thine,-I've seen,-Achilles! do no more.
She, when the thunder-bearing strangers came
In vast canoes begirt with bolts of flame,
Topped with tall trees, which loftier than the palm,
Seemed rooted in the deep amidst its calm;
But when the winds awaken'd, shot forth wings
Broad as the cloud along the horizon flings,
And swayed the waves, like cities of the sea,
Making the very billows look less free;-
She, with her paddling oar and dancing prow,
Shot through the surf, like rein-deer through the snow,
Swift-gliding o'er the breaker's whitening edge,
Light as a Nereid in her ocean sledge,
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