Outlines of English and American Literature Part 26

THE POETRY OF BYRON. There is one little song of Byron which serves well as the measure of his poetic talent. It is found in _Don Juan_, and it begins as follows:

'T is sweet to hear At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep The song and oar of Adria's gondolier, By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep; 'T is sweet to see the evening star appear; 'T is sweet to listen, as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come; 'T is sweet to be awaken'd by the lark, Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

That is not great poetry, and may not be compared with a sonnet of Wordsworth; but it is good, honest sentiment expressed in such a melodious way that we like to read it, and feel better after the reading. In the next stanza, however, Byron grows commonplace and ends with:

Sweet is revenge, especially to women, Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

And that is bad sentiment and worse rime, without any resemblance to poetry. The remaining stanzas are mere drivel, unworthy of the poet's talent or of the reader's patience.

It is so with a large part of Byron's work; it often begins well, and usually has some vivid description of nature, or some gallant pa.s.sage in swinging verse, which stirs us like martial music; then the poem falls to earth like a stone, and presently appears some wretched pun or jest or scurrility. Our present remedy lies in a book of selections, in which we can enjoy the poetry without being unpleasantly reminded of the author's besetting sins of flippancy and bad taste.

[Sidenote: MANFRED]

Of the longer poems of Byron, which took all Europe by storm, only three or four are memorable. _Manfred_ (1817) is a dramatic poem, in which the author's pride, his theatric posing, his talent for rhythmic expression, are all seen at their worst or best. The mysterious hero of the poem lives in a gloomy castle under the high Alps, but he is seldom found under roof.

Instead he wanders amidst storms and glaciers, holding communion with powers of darkness, forever voicing his rebellion, his boundless pride, his bottomless remorse. n.o.body knows what the rebellion and the remorse are all about. Some readers may tire of the shadowy hero's egoism, but few will fail to be impressed by the vigor of the verse, or by the splendid reflection of picturesque scenes. And here and there is a lyric that seems to set itself to music.

Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains, They crowned him long ago On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, With a diadem of snow

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY AND BYRON OAK]

_Cain_ (1821) is another dramatic poem, reflecting the rebellion of another hero, or rather the same hero, who appears this time as the elder son of Adam. After murdering his brother, the hero takes guidance of Lucifer and explores h.e.l.l; where, instead of repentance, he finds occasion to hate almost everything that is dear to G.o.d or man. The drama is a kind of gloomy parody of Milton's _Paradise Lost_, as _Manfred_ is a parody of Goethe's _Faust_. Both dramas are interesting, aside from their poetic pa.s.sages, as examples of the so-called t.i.tan literature, to which we shall presently refer in our study of Sh.e.l.ley's _Prometheus_.

[Sidenote: CHILDE HAROLD]

The most readable work of Byron is _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, a brilliant narrative poem, which reflects the impressions of another misanthropic hero in presence of the romantic scenery of the Continent. It was the publication of the first two cantos of this poem in 1812, that made Byron the leading figure in English poetry, and these cantos are still widely read as a kind of poetic guidebook. To many readers, however, the third and fourth cantos are more sincere and more pleasurable. The most memorable parts of _Childe Harold_ are the "Farewell" in the first canto, "Waterloo" in the third, and "Lake Leman," "Venice," "Rome," "The Coliseum", "The Dying Gladiator" and "The Ocean" in the fourth. When one has read these magnificent pa.s.sages he has the best of which Byron was capable. We have called _Childe Harold_ the most readable of Byron's works, but those who like a story will probably be more interested in _Mazeppa_ and _The Prisoner of Chillon_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CASTLE OF CHILLON]

[Sidenote: THE BYRONIC HERO]

One significant quality of these long poems is that they are intensely personal, voicing one man's remorse or rebellion, and perpetually repeating his "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" They are concerned with the same hero (who is Byron under various disguises) and they picture him as a proud, mysterious stranger, carelessly generous, fiendishly wicked, profoundly melancholy, irresistibly fascinating to women. Byron is credited with the invention of this hero, ever since called Byronic; but in truth the melodramatic outcast was a popular character in fiction long before Byron adopted him, gave him a new dress and called him Manfred or Don Juan.

A score of romances (such as Mrs. Radcliffe's _The Italian_ in England, and Charles Brockden Brown's _Wieland_ in America) had used the same hero to add horror to a grotesque tale; Scott modified him somewhat, as the Templar in _Ivanhoe_, for example; and Byron made him more real by giving him the revolutionary spirit, by employing him to voice the rebellion against social customs which many young enthusiasts felt so strongly in the early part of the nineteenth century.

[Sidenote: TWO VIEWS OF BYRON]

The vigor of this stage hero, his rebellious spirit, his picturesque adventures, the gaudy tinsel (mistaken for gold) in which he was dressed,--all this made a tremendous impression in that romantic age.

Goethe called Byron "the prince of modern poetry, the most talented and impressive figure which the literary world has ever produced"; and this unbalanced judgment was shared by other critics on the Continent, where Byron is still regarded as one of the greatest of English poets.

Swinburne, on the other hand, can hardly find words strong enough to express his contempt for the "blare and bra.s.siness" of Byron; but that also is an exaggeration. Though Byron is no longer a popular hero, and though his work is more rhetorical than poetical, we may still gladly acknowledge the swinging rhythm, the martial dash and vigor of his best verse. Also, remembering the Revolution, we may understand the dazzling impression which he made upon the poets of his day. When the news came from Greece that his meteoric career was ended, the young Tennyson wept pa.s.sionately and went out to carve on a stone, "Byron is dead," as if poetry had perished with him. Even the coldly critical Matthew Arnold was deeply moved to write:

When Byron's eyes were closed in death We bowed our head, and held our breath.

He taught us little, but our soul Had _felt_ him like the thunder roll.

LIFE OF Sh.e.l.lEY. The career of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley (1792-1822) is, in comparison with that of Byron, as a will-o'-the-wisp to a meteor. Byron was of the earth earthy; he fed upon coa.r.s.e food, shady adventures, scandal, the limelight; but Sh.e.l.ley

Seemed nourished upon starbeams, and the stuff Of rainbows and the tempest and the foam.

He was a delicate child, shy, sensitive, elflike, who wandered through the woods near his home, in Suss.e.x, on the lookout for sprites and hobgoblins. His reading was of the wildest kind; and when he began the study of chemistry he was forever putting together things that made horrible smells or explosions, in expectation that the genii of the _Arabian Nights_ would rise from the smoke of his test tube.

[Sidenote: A YOUNG REBEL]

At Eton the boy promptly rebelled against the brutal f.a.gging system, then tolerated in all English schools. He was presently in hot water, and the name "Mad Sh.e.l.ley," which the boys gave him, followed him through life. He had been in the university (Oxford) hardly two years when his head was turned by some book of shallow philosophy, and he printed a rattle-brained tract called "The Necessity of Atheism." This got him into such trouble with the Dons that he was expelled for insubordination.

[Sidenote: THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND]

Forthwith Sh.e.l.ley published more tracts of a more rebellious kind.

His sister Helen put them into the hands of her girl friend, Harriet Westbrook, who showed her belief in revolutionary theories by running away from school and parental discipline and coming to Sh.e.l.ley for "protection." These two social rebels, both in the green-apple stage (their combined age was thirty-five), were presently married; not that either of them believed in marriage, but because they were compelled by "Anarch Custom."

After some two years of a wandering, will-o'-the-wisp life, Sh.e.l.ley and his wife were estranged and separated. The young poet then met a certain William G.o.dwin, known at that time as a novelist and evolutionary philosopher, and showed his appreciation of G.o.dwin's radical teaching by running away with his daughter Mary, aged seventeen. The first wife, tired of liberalism, drowned herself, and Sh.e.l.ley was plunged into remorse at the tragedy. The right to care for his children was denied him, as an improper person, and he was practically driven out of England by force of that public opinion which he had so frequently outraged or defied.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY]

Life is a good teacher, though stern in its reckoning, and in Italy life taught Sh.e.l.ley that the rights and beliefs of other men were no less sacred than his own. He was a strange combination of hot head and kind heart, the one filled with wild social theories, the other with compa.s.sion for humanity. He was immensely generous with his friends, and tender to the point of tears at the thought of suffering men,--not real men, such as he met in the streets (even the beggars in Italy are cheerful), but idealized men, with mysterious sorrows, whom he met in the clouds. While in England his weak head had its foolish way, and his early poems, such as _Queen Mab_, are violent declamations. In Italy his heart had its day, and his later poems, such as _Adonais_ and _Prometheus Unbound_, are rhapsodies enn.o.bled by Sh.e.l.ley's love of beauty and by his unquenchable hope that a bright day of justice must soon dawn upon the world. He was drowned (1822) while sailing his boat off the Italian coast, before he had reached the age of thirty years.

THE POETRY OF Sh.e.l.lEY. In the longer poems of Sh.e.l.ley there are two prominent elements, and two others less conspicuous but more important. The first element is revolt. The poet was violently opposed to the existing order of society, and lost no opportunity to express his hatred of Tyranny, which was Sh.e.l.ley's name for what sober men called law and order. Feeding his spirit of revolution were numerous anarchistic theories, called the new philosophy, which had this curious quality: that they hotly denied the old faith, law, morality, as other men formulated such matters, and fervently believed any quack who appeared with a new nostrum warranted to cure all social disorders.

The second obvious element in Sh.e.l.ley's poetry is his love of beauty, not the common beauty of nature or humanity which Wordsworth celebrated, but a strange "supernal" beauty with no "earthly" quality or reality. His best lines leave a vague impression of something beautiful and lovely, but we know not what it is.

Less conspicuous in Sh.e.l.ley's poems are the sense of personal loss or grief which pervades them, and the exquisite melody of certain words which he used for their emotional effect rather than to convey any definite meaning.

Like Byron he sang chiefly of his own feelings, his rage or despair, his sorrow or loneliness. He reflected his idea of the origin and motive of lyric poesy in the lines:

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song,--

an idea which Poe adopted in its entirety, and which Heine expressed in a sentimental lyric, telling how from his great grief he made his little songs:

Aus meinen groszen Schmerzen Mach' ich die kleinen Lieder.

Hardly another English poet uses words so musically as Sh.e.l.ley (witness "The Cloud" and "The Skylark"), and here again his idea of verbal melody was carried to an extreme by Poe, in whose poetry words are used not so much to express ideas as to awaken vague emotions.

[Sidenote: ALASTOR]

All the above-named qualities appear in _Alastor_ (the Spirit of Solitude), which is less interesting as a poem than as a study of Sh.e.l.ley.

In this poem we may skip the revolt, which is of no consequence, and follow the poet in his search for a supernally lovely maiden who shall satisfy his love for ideal beauty. To find her he goes, not among human habitations, but to gloomy forests, dizzy cliffs, raging torrents, tempest-blown seash.o.r.e,--to every place where a maiden in her senses would not be. Such places, terrible or picturesque, are but symbols of the poet's soul in its suffering and loneliness. He does not find his maiden (and herein we read the poet's first confession that he has failed in life, that the world is too strong for him); but he sees the setting moon, and somehow that pale comforter brings him peace with death.

[Sidenote: PROMETHEUS]

In _Prometheus Unbound_ Sh.e.l.ley uses the old myth of the t.i.tan who rebelled against the tyranny of the G.o.ds, and who was punished by being chained to a rock. [Footnote: The original tragedy of _Prometheus Bound_ was written by aeschylus, a famous old Greek dramatist. The same poet wrote also _Prometheus Unbound_, but the latter drama has been lost. Sh.e.l.ley borrowed the idea of his poem from this lost drama.] In this poem Prometheus (man) is represented as being tortured by Jove (law or custom) until he is released by Demogorgon (progress or necessity); whereupon he marries Asia (love or goodness), and stars and moon break out into a happy song of redemption.

Obviously there is no reality or human interest in such a fantasy. The only pleasurable parts of the poem are its detached pa.s.sages of great melody or beauty; and the chief value of the work is as a modern example of t.i.tan literature. Many poets have at various times represented mankind in the person of a t.i.tan, that is, a man written large, colossal in his courage or power or suffering: aeschylus in _Prometheus_, Marlowe in _Tamburlaine_, Milton in Lucifer, of _Paradise Lost_, Goethe in _Faust_, Byron in _Manfred_, Sh.e.l.ley in _Prometheus Unbound_. The Greek t.i.tan is resigned, uncomplaining, knowing himself to be a victim of Fate, which may not be opposed; Marlowe's t.i.tan is bombastic and violent; Milton's is ambitious, proud, revengeful; Goethe's is cultured and philosophical; Byron's is gloomy, rebellious, theatrical. So all these poets portray each his own bent of mind, and something also of the temper of the age, in the character of his t.i.tan. The significance of Sh.e.l.ley's poem is in this: that his t.i.tan is patient and hopeful, trusting in the spirit of Love to redeem mankind from all evil. Herein Sh.e.l.ley is far removed from the caviling temper of his fellow rebel Byron. He celebrates a golden age not of the past but of the future, when the dream of justice inspired by the French Revolution shall have become a glorious reality.

[Sidenote: HIS BEST POEMS]

These longer poems of Sh.e.l.ley are read by the few; they are too vague, with too little meaning or message, for ordinary readers who like to understand as well as to enjoy poetry. To such readers the only interesting works of Sh.e.l.ley are a few shorter poems: "The Cloud," "To a Skylark," "Ode to the West Wind," "Indian Serenade," "A Lament," "When the Lamp is Lighted" and some parts of _Adonais_ (a beautiful elegy in memory of Keats), such as the pa.s.sage beginning, "Go thou to Rome." For splendor of imagination and for melody of expression these poems have few peers and no superiors in English literature. To read them is to discover that Sh.e.l.ley was at times so sensitive, so responsive to every harmony of nature, that he seemed like the poet of Alastor,

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of Heaven did wander.