第58章 CHAPTER X(16)

The ocean sighs it back--and with the murmur Rustle the happy leaves. All nature breathes Aloud--aloft--to the Great Parent's ear, The blessing of the mother on her child."

NORMAN.

"I dream of love, enduring faith, a heart Mingled with mine--a deathless heritage, Which I can take unsullied to the STARS, When the Great Father calls his children home."

NORMAN.

"The blue air, breathless in the STARRY peace, After long silence hushed as heaven, but filled With happy thoughts as heaven with ANGELS."

NORMAN.

"Till one calm night, when over earth and wave Heaven looked its love from all its numberless STARS."

NORMAN.

"Those eyes, the guiding STARS by which I steered."

NORMAN.

"That great mother (The only parent I have known), whose face Is bright with gazing ever on the STARS--The mother-sea."

NORMAN.

"My bark shall be our home;The STARS that light the ANGEL palaces Of air, our lamps."

NORMAN.

"A name that glitters, like a STAR, amidst The galaxy of England's loftiest born."

LADY ARUNDEL.

"And see him princeliest of the lion tribe, Whose swords and coronals gleam around the throne, The guardian STARS of the imperial isle."

The fust spissymen has been going the round of all the papers, as real, reglar poatry. Those wickid critix! they must have been laffing in their sleafs when they quoted it. Malody, suckling round and uppards from the bows, like a happy soul released, hangs in the air, and from invizable plumes shakes sweetness down.

Mighty fine, truly! but let mortial man tell the meannink of the passidge. Is it MUSICKLE sweetniss that Malody shakes down from its plumes--its wings, that is, or tail--or some pekewliar scent that proceeds from happy souls released, and which they shake down from the trees when they are suckling round and uppards? IS this poatry, Barnet? Lay your hand on your busm, and speak out boldly:

Is it poatry, or sheer windy humbugg, that sounds a little melojous, and won't bear the commanest test of comman sence?

In passidge number 2, the same bisniss is going on, though in a more comprehensable way: the air, the leaves, the otion, are fild with emocean at Capting Norman's happiness. Pore Nature is dragged in to partisapate in his joys, just as she has been befor. Once in a poem, this universle simfithy is very well; but once is enuff, my dear Barnet: and that once should be in some great suckmstans, surely,--such as the meeting of Adam and Eve, in "Paradice Lost," or Jewpeter and Jewno, in Hoamer, where there seems, as it were, a reasn for it. But sea-captings should not be eternly spowting and invoking gods, hevns, starrs, angels, and other silestial influences. We can all do it, Barnet; nothing in life is esier. I can compare my livry buttons to the stars, or the clouds of my backopipe to the dark vollums that ishew from Mount Hetna; or I can say that angels are looking down from them, and the tobacco silf, like a happy sole released, is circling round and upwards, and shaking sweetness down. All this is as esy as drink; but it's not poatry, Barnet, nor natural. People, when their mothers reckonize them, don't howl about the suckumambient air, and paws to think of the happy leaves a-rustling--at least, one mistrusts them if they do. Take another instans out of your own play. Capting Norman (with his eternil SLACK-JAW!) meets the gal of his art:--"Look up, look up, my Violet--weeping? fie!

And trembling too--yet leaning on my breast.

In truth, thou art too soft for such rude shelter.

Look up! I come to woo thee to the seas, My sailor's bride! Hast thou no voice but blushes?

Nay--From those roses let me, like the bee, Drag forth the secret sweetness!

VIOLET.

"Oh what thoughts Were kept for SPEECH when we once more should meet, Now blotted from the PAGE; and all I feel Is--THOU art with me!"

Very right, Miss Violet--the scentiment is natral, affeckshnit, pleasing, simple (it might have been in more grammaticle languidge, and no harm done); but never mind, the feeling is pritty; and I can fancy, my dear Barnet, a pritty, smiling, weeping lass, looking up in a man's face and saying it. But the capting!--oh, this capting!--this windy, spouting captain, with his prittinesses, and conseated apollogies for the hardness of his busm, and his old, stale, vapid simalies, and his wishes to be a bee! Pish! Men don't make love in this finniking way. It's the part of a sentymentle, poeticle taylor, not a galliant gentleman, in command of one of her Madjisty's vessels of war.

Look at the remaining extrac, honored Barnet, and acknollidge that Capting Norman is eturnly repeating himself, with his endless jabber about stars and angels. Look at the neat grammaticle twist of Lady Arundel's spitch, too, who, in the corse of three lines, has made her son a prince, a lion, with a sword and coronal, and a star. Why jumble and sheak up metafors in this way? Barnet, one simily is quite enuff in the best of sentenses (and I preshume I kneedn't tell you that it's as well to have it LIKE, when you are about it). Take my advise, honrabble sir--listen to a humble footmin: it's genrally best in poatry to understand puffickly what you mean yourself, and to ingspress your meaning clearly afterwoods--in the simpler words the better, praps. You may, for instans, call a coronet a coronal (an "ancestral coronal," p. 74) if you like, as you might call a hat a "swart sombrero," "a glossy four-and-nine," "a silken helm, to storm impermeable, and lightsome as the breezy gossamer;" but, in the long run, it's as well to call it a hat. It IS a hat; and that name is quite as poetticle as another. I think it's Playto, or els Harrystottle, who observes that what we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Confess, now, dear Barnet, don't you long to call it a Polyanthus?