The Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Boston : Ticknor and Fields.
THE things which please in these poems are so obvious, that we feel it all but idle to point them out; for who loves not graceful form, bright color, and delicate perfume ? Of our younger singers, Mr. Aldrich is one of the best known and the best liked, for he has been wise as well as poetical in his generation. The simple theme, the easy measure, have been his choice ; while he is a very Porphyro in the profusion with which he heaps his board with delicates : —
“ Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd ;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon ;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
Front silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.”
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon ;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
Front silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.”
And the feast is well lighted, and the guest has not to thrid his way through knotty sentences, past perilous punctuation-points, to reach the table, nor to grope in the dark for the dainties when he has found it. We imagine that it is this charm of perfect clearness and accessibility which attracts popular liking to Mr. Aldrich’s poetry ; afterwards, its other qualities easily hold the favor won. He is endowed with a singular richness of fancy, and he has well chosen most of his themes from among those which allow the exercise of his best gifts. He has seldom, therefore, attempted to poetize any feature or incident of our national life ; for this might have demanded a realistic treatment foreign to his genius. But it is poetry, the result, which we want, and we do not care from what material it is produced. The honey is the same, whether the bee stores it from the meadow-clover and the wildflower of our own fields, or, loitering over city wharves, gathers it from ships laden with tropic oranges and orient dates.
If Mr. Aldrich needed any defence for the poems in which he gives rein to his love for the East and the South, he would have it in the fact that they are very beautiful, and distinctively his own, while they breathe full east in their sumptousness of diction, and are genuinely southern in their summer - warmth of feeling. We doubt if any poet of Persia could have told more exquisitely than he what takes place
“ WHEN THE SULTAN GOES TO ISPAHAN.
" When the Sultan Shah-Zaman
Goes to the city Ispahan,
Even before he gets so far
As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,
At the last of the thirty palace-gates,
The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,
Orders a feast in his favorite room,—
Glittering squares of colored ice,
Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,
Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,
Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,
Limes, and citrons, and apricots,
And wines that are known to Eastern princes ;
And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots
Of spiced meats and costliest fish,
And all that the curious palate could wish,
Pass in and out of the cedarn doors :
Scattered over mosaic floors
Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,
And a musical fountain throws its jets
Of a hundred colors into the air.
The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,
And stains with the henna-plant the tips
Of her pearly nails, and bites her lips
Till they bloom again, — but, alas ! that rose
Not for the Sultan buds and blows ;
Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman,
When he goes to the city Ispahan,
Goes to the city Ispahan,
Even before he gets so far
As the place where the clustered palm-trees are,
At the last of the thirty palace-gates,
The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom,
Orders a feast in his favorite room,—
Glittering squares of colored ice,
Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,
Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,
Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,
Limes, and citrons, and apricots,
And wines that are known to Eastern princes ;
And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots
Of spiced meats and costliest fish,
And all that the curious palate could wish,
Pass in and out of the cedarn doors :
Scattered over mosaic floors
Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,
And a musical fountain throws its jets
Of a hundred colors into the air.
The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,
And stains with the henna-plant the tips
Of her pearly nails, and bites her lips
Till they bloom again, — but, alas ! that rose
Not for the Sultan buds and blows ;
Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman,
When he goes to the city Ispahan,
“ Then, at a wave of her sunny hand,
The dancing girls of Samarcand
Float in like mists from Fairy-land !
And to the low voluptuous swoons
Of music rise and fail the moons
Of their full, brown bosoms. Orient blood
Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes:
And there, in this Eastern Paradise,
Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood,
And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,
Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan,
Sipping the wines of Astrakhan ;
And her Arab lover sits with her.
That 's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman
Goes to the city Ispahan.
The dancing girls of Samarcand
Float in like mists from Fairy-land !
And to the low voluptuous swoons
Of music rise and fail the moons
Of their full, brown bosoms. Orient blood
Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes:
And there, in this Eastern Paradise,
Filled with the fumes of sandal-wood,
And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,
Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan,
Sipping the wines of Astrakhan ;
And her Arab lover sits with her.
That 's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman
Goes to the city Ispahan.
“ Now, when I see an extra light,
Flaming, flickering on the night
From my neighbor s casement opposite,
I know as well as I know to pray,
I know as well as a tongue can say,
That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman
Has gone to the city Ispahan."
Flaming, flickering on the night
From my neighbor s casement opposite,
I know as well as I know to pray,
I know as well as a tongue can say,
That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman
Has gone to the city Ispahan."
As subtilely beautiful as this, and even richer in color and flavor than this, is the complete little poem which Mr. Aldrich calls a fragment: —
“DRESSING THE BRIDE.
“ So, after bath, the slave-girls brought
The broidered raiment for her wear,
The misty izar from Mosul,
The pearls and opals for her hair,
The slippers for her supple feet,
(Two radiant crescent moons they were,)
And lavender, and spikenard sweet,
And attars, nedd, and richest musk.
When they had finished dressing her,
(The eye of morn, the heart's desire !)
Like one pale star against the dusk,
A single diamond on her brow
Trembled with its imprisoned fire ! ”
The broidered raiment for her wear,
The misty izar from Mosul,
The pearls and opals for her hair,
The slippers for her supple feet,
(Two radiant crescent moons they were,)
And lavender, and spikenard sweet,
And attars, nedd, and richest musk.
When they had finished dressing her,
(The eye of morn, the heart's desire !)
Like one pale star against the dusk,
A single diamond on her brow
Trembled with its imprisoned fire ! ”
Too long for quotation here, but by no means too long to be read many times over, is “ Pampinea,” an idyl in which the poet’s fancy plays lightly and gracefully with the romance of life in Boccaccio’s Florentine garden, and returns again to the beauty which inspired his dream of Italy, as he lay musing beside our northern sea. The thread of thought running through the poem is slight as the plot of dreams, — breaks, perhaps, if you take it up too abruptly ; but how beautiful are the hues and the artificing of the jewels strung upon it !
“ And knowing how in other times
Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
Of love and wine and dance, I spread
My mantle by an almond-tree,
‘And here, beneath the rose,’ I said,
‘I ’ll hear thy Tuscan melody.’
I heard a tale that was not told
In those ten dreamy days of old,
When Heaven, for some divine offence,
Smote Florence with the pestilence ;
And in that garden’s odorous shade,
The dames of the Decameron,
With each a loyal lover, strayed,
To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
To lie in the lilies in the sun
With glint of plume and silver brede !
And while she whispered in my ear,
The pleasant Arno murmured near,
The dewy, slim chameleons run
Through twenty colors in the sun :
The breezes broke the fountain’s glass,
And woke æolian melodies,
And shook from out the scented trees
The lemon-blossoms on the grass.
The tale ? I have forgot the tale, —
A Lady all for love forlorn,
A rose-bud, and a nightingale
That bruised his bosom on the thorn :
A pot of rubies buried deep,
A glen, a corpse, a child asleep,
A Monk, that was no monk at all,
In the moonlight by a castle wall.
Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
Of love and wine and dance, I spread
My mantle by an almond-tree,
‘And here, beneath the rose,’ I said,
‘I ’ll hear thy Tuscan melody.’
I heard a tale that was not told
In those ten dreamy days of old,
When Heaven, for some divine offence,
Smote Florence with the pestilence ;
And in that garden’s odorous shade,
The dames of the Decameron,
With each a loyal lover, strayed,
To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
To lie in the lilies in the sun
With glint of plume and silver brede !
And while she whispered in my ear,
The pleasant Arno murmured near,
The dewy, slim chameleons run
Through twenty colors in the sun :
The breezes broke the fountain’s glass,
And woke æolian melodies,
And shook from out the scented trees
The lemon-blossoms on the grass.
The tale ? I have forgot the tale, —
A Lady all for love forlorn,
A rose-bud, and a nightingale
That bruised his bosom on the thorn :
A pot of rubies buried deep,
A glen, a corpse, a child asleep,
A Monk, that was no monk at all,
In the moonlight by a castle wall.
As to “Babie Bell,” that ballad has passed too deeply into the popular heart to be affected for good or ill by criticism,— and we have only to express our love of it. Simple, pathetic, and real, it early made the poet a reputation and friends in every home visited by the newspapers, in which it has been printed over and over again. It is but one of various poems by Mr. Aldrich which enjoy a sort of perennial fame, and for which we have come to look in the papers, as we do for certain flowers in the fields, at their proper season. In the middle of June, when the beauty of earth and sky drives one to despair, we know that it is time to find the delicately sensuous and pensive little poem “ Nameless Pain ” in all our exchanges ; and later, when the summer is subject to sudden thunderstorms, we look out for “ Before the Rain,” and "After the Rain.” It is very high praise of these charming lyrics, that they have thus associated themselves with a common feeling for certain aspects of nature, and we confess that we recur to them with greater pleasure than we find in some of our poet’s more ambitious efforts. Indeed, we think Mr. Aldrich’s fame destined to gain very little from his recent poems, “ Judith,” “ Garnaut Hall,” and “ Pythagoras ” ; for when it comes to be decided what is his and what is his period’s, these poems cannot be justly awarded to him. To borrow a figure from the polygamic usages of our Mormon brethren, they are sealed to Mr. Aldrich for time and to Mr. Tennyson for eternity. They contain many fine and original passages: the “Judith” contains some very grand ones, but they must bear the penalty of the error common to all our younger poets, — the error of an imitation more or less unconscious. It is to the example of the dangerous poet named that Mr. Aldrich evidently owes, among other minor blemishes, a mouse which does some mischief in his verses. It is a wainscot mouse, and a blood-relation, we believe, to the very mouse that shrieked behind the mouldering wainscot in the lonely moated grange. This mouse of Mr. Aldrich’s appears twice in a brief lyric called “ December ” ; in “ Garnaut Hall,” she makes
" A lodging for her glossy young
In dead Sir Egbert’s empty coat of mail,”
In dead Sir Egbert’s empty coat of mail,”
and immediately afterwards drags the poet over the precipice of anti-climax : —
" 'T was a haunted spot.
A legend killed it for a kindly home, —
A legend killed it for a kindly home, —
A grim estate, which every heir in turn
Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,
The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse.”
Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,
The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse.”
A little of Costar’s well-known exterminator would rid Mr. Aldrich of this rascal rodent. Perhaps, when the mouse is disposed of, the poet will use some other word than torso to describe a headless, but not limbless body, and will relieve Agnes Vail of either her shield or her buckler, since she can hardly need both.
We have always thought Mr. Aldrich’s “ Palabras Carihosas ” among the most delicious and winning that he has spoken, and nearly all of his earlier poems please us; but on the whole it seems to us that his finest is his latest poem, "Friar Jerome’s Beautiful Book ”; for it is original in conception and expression, and noble and elevated in feeling, with all our poet’s wonted artistic grace and felicity of diction. We think it also a visible growth from what was strong and individual in his style, before he allowed himself to be so deeply influenced by study of one whose flower indeed becomes a weed in the garden of another.