The New Portfolio

TWO “OCCASIONAL" POEMS, WITH AN INTRODUCTION.

THE reader will find two poems at this opening which were written on two different recent occasions. In offering them to a wider circle than that to which they were addressed I cannot help remembering how much of this kind of literary labor I have performed. It is almost sixty years since I delivered at a college “ exhibition ” a poem of the prescribed length of five minutes, entitled “ Forgotten Ages.” That this poem is not familiarly known to my fellow countrymen, — nay, that hardly a couplet of it remains in my own memory, — is not to be wondered at or grieved over. The literature of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, has been to a large extent the prey of oblivion, as I probably told my audience in measured heroics; and if my poem has shared the fate of so many great works, if it has gone to those dark archives which hold the lost odes of Pindar and the missing books of Livy, it would be unseemly to mourn over its disappearance.

Since that time almost every year has had some tribute of this sort from my pen, and in some years such tributes have been numerous. Those which I am about to take from the New Portfolio are the last of the long series; like many which preceded them, they were written to be read by the writer. Each of them was recited at the dinner table, at the period when the banquet had passed the realistic, and was just warming into the idealistic and sentimental stage of a festal meeting.

Not much, perhaps, is to be anticipated from an after-dinner poem. Its office is very nearly the same as that of the bouquets and garlands which adorn a festival. These are expected to look bright and smell sweet for a few hours, and then to drop to pieces and be swept away with the other litter of the banquet. A great deal of very cheap and trivial verse is produced for such occasions, and has done its duty well enough if it has made its ten or fifteen minutes pass pleasantly. Sometimes it will bear showing up in the newspaper of the next morning, but if it is to be read in cold blood it must have something workmanlike in its construction. A few easily taken puns, new or old, a few local allusions, a patriotic sentiment, a little judicious flattery of the company, will do well enough, if put together with a very moderate amount of skill, to keep in good humor an audience already in the tranquil stage of digestion and the amiably receptive condition which goes with it.

But there is no reason why one should not write the verses which are to be recited or sung after a feast, or for any other occasional object, just as well as if they were suggested by a daisy, or a mouse, or a bed of daffodils, or the reading of Chapman’s Homer, or stumbling over a broken statue, as Burns, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, have done. The accidental cause is not the main thing ; it is the imaginative, or fanciful, or witty treatment of it which we care for.

I recollect that when I was fifteen years old a copy of Byron’s “ English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” fell into my hands, and that I read it with a good deal of interest, though I was not too well acquainted with many of the authors satirized by the poet. Some of my readers may remember the lines with which the satire opens : —

When Byron wrote these lines he was smarting under the sharp criticism of his “ Hours of Idleness ” in the Edinburgh Review. I have a fellow-feeling for poor Fitzgerald, who got the first taste of the noble poet’s gall. A friend would probably enough have put a different aspect on the matter. “‘Hoarse’? Yes; not like Falstaff, it is true, with ‘ halloing and singing of anthems,’ but by overstraining his fine voice, so as to be heard by the multitudes who thronged the vast hall of a public edifice, captivated by the charms of his verse and his impassioned recitation ! If Mr. Fitzgerald’s lines had not been better than much of the verse in this young lord’s recent volume of poems, he would not have had great audiences to ‘ bawl ’ himself hoarse in addressing.” So might Mr. Fitzgerald’s advocate have spoken.

An “ occasional ” poem may be good or bad, trivial or significant, like any other. What are Spenser’s Prothalamium and Epithalamium, what are Lycidas and In Memoriam, what are Burns’s convivial poems, what are the Odes of Dryden and Pope for Saint Cecilia’s day, but occasional poems ? I suppose that Mr. Fitzgerald’s productions were occasional, that they were written for recitation, and we know that the poet recited them himself; and in fighting his battle I am maintaining the dignity of all who have done the same kind of literary work, myself included.

Shall a poet read his own verse without leze-majesty against his high calling ?

If old legends may be trusted, the practice has the sanction of the highest antiquity. If one had found himself in Smyrna some ten or twelve centuries before the date of the birth of Christ, he might have seen a street gathering and joined the crowd to learn what was going on. This is what meets his eyes : an old man, sightless, for he is led by a youth ; poor, for he depends on the voluntary offerings of those who cluster round him in the street, and his garments are saved from ridicule only by his majestic presence, — this poor blind old man is led to a marble bench, where he seats himself, and waits until the youth tells him that the circle around him is well filled. Then the street storyteller begins:—

and the audience listens to the ringing hexameters as if it had never heard one of them before. It is the old, old story of the wrath of Achilles and all the woes that followed from it. Four hundred years have passed since Troy was wrapped in flames, and the palace of Priam and the temples of the gods fell in ruins, to lie there undisturbed for thirty centuries, but the story never tires, for the narrator is

it is HOMER, and the story is the Iliad, which he recites as a ballad-minstrel gives forth his ditties, in the streets of a city which will by and by be proud to head the list of the seven that claim to have been the birthplace of the divine singer.

We must take a long stride to come down to the next illustration, which I prefer to give in the old-fashioned type of Jacob Tonson’s edition of Dryden’s Virgil. It is from the Life of Virgil prefixed to that work.

“ And this Poem [the Georgics], being now in great forwardness, Cœsar, who in imitation of his Predecessor Julius, never intermitted his Studies in the Camp, and much less in other places, refreshing himself by a short stay in a pleasant Village of Campania, would needs be entertained with the rehearsal of some part of it. Virgil recited with a marvellous Grace, and sweet Accent of Voice, but his Lungs failing him, Mecœnas himself supplied his place for what remained. Such a piece of condescension wou’d now be very surprising, but it was no more than customary amongst Friends when Learning pass’d for Quality.”

The next anecdote of Virgil is more familiar, but is told so agreeably in the old Life that it would be a pity to shorten it: —

“ Not one Book [of the Æneid] has his finishing Strokes : the sixth seems one of the most perfect, the which, after long entreaty and sometimes threats of Augustus, he was at last prevailed upon to recite. T his fell out about four Years before his own Death : that of Marcettus, whom Ccssar designed for his Successor, happen’d a little before this Recital : Virgil therefore, with his usual dexterity, inserted his Funeral Panegyrick in those admirable Lines beginning. —

His Mother, the excellent Octavia, the best Wife of the worst Husband that ever was, to divert her Grief, would be of the Auditory. The Poet artificially deferred the naming Marcellus ’till their passions were raised to the highest; but the mention of it put both Her and Augustus into such a Passion of weeping, that they commanded him to proceed no further. Virgil answered that he had already ended that Passage. Some relate that Octavia fainted away, but afterwards she presented the Poet with two Thousand one Hundred Pounds, odd Money ; a round Sum for Twenty Seven Verses, but they were Virgil’s.'’

These precedents have set my conscience at ease. There is the best possible authority to justify any poet in writing for a special occasion. The most illustrious poets have read their own verses before a circle of listeners, and after them no poet need feel his art dishonored by putting it on a level with that of the orator, whose greatest efforts are called forth by special occasions, and who adds all that voice and action can do to produce an immediate effect on his audience.

Can a poet read his own verses as well as a trained speaker can deliver them ?

No doubt he thinks that he can. There never was anything to surpass the delight that poets take in their own verses. They caress all their pretty phrases as young fathers dandle their first-born babes. The poet who has filled his tank at the Castalian spring is never so happy as when it is on tap and running a full stream. Consequently, he is the most dangerous of intimates. I believe I have put in print somewhere my new version of cave canem, — beware of the dog, — but everybody does not remember everything one has written. That is a good precaution, — dogs are dangerous, whether hydrophobia can be cured by M. Pasteur or not. But cave canentem — beware of the poet, the man who sings his thoughts in verse — is a maxim quite as well justified by experience. Pope, who seems to have suffered as much from “ virgin tragedies ” and “ orphan muses ” as any victim of more modern date, knew but too well the terrors of the man who reads his own poems. He compares his friends and his enemies, and dreads the first as much as, or probably more than, the last : —

Dangerous as he is when he has his manuscript in one hand and a finger of the other in your button-hole, nobody can read a poet’s verses so well — or so badly — as himself. So well, when the poem reads itself just as it wrote itself, through him, with all the fire that ran in his blood, with all the passion that tingled in his nerves, — as if he were possessed, in a word, by that dæmon, that familiar spirit, which uses his bodily organs as its medium of expression. So ill, when he is so carried away that he falls into rhythmical sing-song, that he screams at one moment and becomes inaudible to all but himself in the next; reading to himself, in fact, and not to his audience, as poets are apt to do, thinking their listeners can follow them through all their ups and downs.

After all, if a poem has anything worth listening to in it, it is a pleasure to hear it from the author. Many persons sharply criticised Dickens’s readings from his own stories. I confess, for one, that when, in his reading of the trial scene, Bardell vs. Pickwick, he, as Sergeant Buzfuz, gave out the order, “ Call Samuel Weller ! ” and that character answered to his name, the feeling that this was really Samuel Weller who was before me, and Sergeant Buzfuz, and Mr. Pickwick, and each personage of the story in succession,— this feeling came over me with a thrill of delight, such as the best reading of the greatest actor could not have given me.

I hope I have made out a good case for the writers of “ occasional ” poems, and for the orators who address their audiences in verse. Whether I have or not, I can claim at least as much experience in this kind of literary work as any of my rhyming brethren with whom I am acquainted. I may feel authorized, therefore, to give some advice to my younger friends, who think it worth their while to add to the pleasures of a social meeting or the dignity of a graver gathering by their poetical contributions.

Since the reporter has taken the place of the skeleton at the banquet, — and he is a far more terrible guest, — the whole character of such occasions is altered. As he enters the banquet hall, its garlands fade, its lights burn dim, its glasses lose their glitter, its wines are no longer fragrant, its feasters sit with wrinkled brows and anxious expressions, waiting uutil their time shall come. Adieu to all the careless hilarity, to all the unfettered conversation, the unstinted self-revelation, the abandon, the voluptuous repose, of the blissful meetings of other days. The song is no longer “ Begone, dull care ; ” there is no meaning now in “ Away with melancholy.” The reveller is presently to become the speaker. If he drops the wrong word, it will be caught up and mouthed over by thousands of rejoicing enemies, as they read it in the paper of the next morning. If he touches a tender nerve of public sentiment a little carelessly, such a cry will go up as if a thousand Cyclops were having their eyes put out by the burning brand of Ulysses. Let no man think that because he is speaking in the freedom of convivial intercourse, before a limited circle of friends, he is talking under any roof but the sky, or within any walls but those of the boundless horizon.

The first rule, then, for the after-dinner speaker is caution. A single word uttered without premeditation, and caught by a reporter’s pencil, may turn the scale for or against a political party and change the destinies of a continent, to say nothing of ruining the ambitious aspirations of the indiscreet speaker.

The second rule is, Be intelligible, instantly, simultaneously, to every one of the audience. A thoughtful essay is one thing, an eloquent speech or a pleasing poem is another. The speaker’s sentences must not hang fire, so that a bright thought does not go off until the orator or the poet is in the middle of the next sentence or stanza. A damp passage, so to speak, — a damp verse, — in the midst of a fiery address or a flaming ode, spoils the whole illumination. An audience that has lost its hold of the speaker is like a cow that has lost her cud, — the comparison is inelegant, and I will go to the classical dictionary for a more dignified one. The speaker must hold his audience well in hand from beginning to end. If he once lose command of the listeners, the poet who recites his verses must be prepared for the fate of Phaeton. He has undertaken to drive the steeds of Apollo: the bits have slipped out of their mouths, and the passengers — that is to say, the listeners— are thrown out of the chariot.

Poetry is commonly harder to follow than prose. The noun and the verb are often so far apart that they hardly seem to have a speaking acquaintance with each other. The inversions of poetry help to make it puzzling. The noun is frequently found pushing the verb instead of being pushed by it: —

Thus Dryden begins his translation of the Æneid, and this is one of the least liberties that poetry takes with syntax.

Therefore a spoken poem should be in a simple measure. The ten-syllable or heroic line, like the one just cited, is for graver purposes perhaps the best. Written in couplets it tends to be epigrammatic ; if the rhymes are alternate, as in Gray’s Elegy, it gains in force and loses in brilliancy. The older form of the heroic, in which the lines run into each other, as the Elizabethan poets wrote it, as Keats, Leigh Hunt, William Morris, have modernized it, is less easily followed than the same verse as Waller, Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith, wrote it. A measure like the Spenserian is very ill adapted to public delivery. It strains the listener’s attention to follow it through its long extended flight. The octosyllabic verse is glib and trivial. Alternated with the sixsyllable measure, it serves very well for short poems, the two lines running easily together into one of fourteen syllables. The galloping anapest,

“ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold ” is full of life and motion, and lends itself to the gayer emotions as a natural form of expression.

I have given these few hints as the result of long experience both as speaker and listener. I have heard a good many occasional poems drag their slow length along, fatiguing everybody, because the writer had chosen a wrong measure. A dull, long-winded poem is the death of all good fellowship, and the best advice to give a friend who has one burning in his pocket is to sit still and eat his dinner, and let some other bard bestow his tediousness on the company.

After this long prelude, I am almost afraid to print the two poems I have promised my reader. The first of these owes any interest it may have to the fact that it is the last in a series of annual poems which extends through more than a whole generation. Many persons who may not care for the verses may find an interest in noting the changes from year to year, if they happen to look at the series as they are printed together in a volume which contains the poems of a lifetime. How can one help saying the same thing over and over again when he meets the same persons on the same anniversary ?

THE OLD TUNE.

Thirty-Sixth Variation.

1829-1886.

The occasion on which the second poem was read was one of great interest. The subject of the poem is one of the most learned, deep-thinking, thoroughly trained scholars we have among us. He has reached the age of fourscore years with faculties so brilliant that to say they are unimpaired seems too much like an apology. All who heard his noble discourse on Luther, delivered in 1883 without a note before him, without the least fault of memory or diction, must have been astonished at an intellectual feat which would have been a triumph for any scholarly orator in the full force of his age. It was a great pleasure to join in such a tribute, and if my share of it is not all I could wish, it is not the source of inspiration, but the power to do justice to it, which is to blame.

TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE.

AT A DINNER GIVEN HIM ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY.

December 12th, 1885.

With a bronze statuette of John of Bologna’s Mercury, presented by a few friends.