ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY Mortality, behold and fear, What a change of flesh is here! Sleep within these heaps of stones; Here they lie, had realms and lands, Who now want strength to stir their hands, With the richest royallest seed Here the bones of birth have cried "Though gods they were, as men they died!" Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings: Buried in dust, once dead by fate. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) Tennyson strove in The Idylls of the King to do for the obscure dawn of his country what Vergil had done for Rome. His selection by the Mantuans as the nineteenth centenary poet was consequently exceedingly happy, and his response justified the choice. This excellent occasional poem is written in trochaic nonameter catalectic, a very unusual form. TO VIRGIL (WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH) Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; Landscape-lover, lord of language, more than he that sang the "Works and Days," All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea; Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind; Light among the vanish'd ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore; Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more; Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar's dome Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen holds her place, I, from out the Northern Island sunder'd once from all the human race, I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) The next three poems are alike in their reflection of the spirit of America, and alike in the use of iambic tetrameter-a line as characteristic of the English lyric as iambic pentameter is of longer poems. An excellent composition may be very short. "The Ballot" is by a nearly forgotten poet of the early national period of American literature and history. A THE BALLOT weapon that comes down as still But executes a freeman's will, As lightning does the will of God. John Pierpont (1785-1866) "Westward Ho!" commemorates an epic phase of American civilization, a phase neglected by the New England poets. Its author was a native Westerner whose name is often associated with that of Bret Harte. WESTWARD HO! What strength! what strife! what rude unrest! With all its steely sinews set Against the living forests. Hear O bearded, stalwart, westmost men, Your blood's inheritance . . . Your heirs ... Know not your tombs: the great plowshares White, starry-hearted May-time blooms She stops, she leans, she wonders why Yea, Time, the grand old harvester, The rush and rumble of the car Comes back in answer. Deep and wide His ghost is moving down the trees, Of bluff, bold men who dared and died In foremost battle, quite aside. Cincinnatus Heine ("Joaquin") Miller (1841-1913) Though less imaginative than "Westward Ho!", "Unmanifest Destiny" is more vigorous, and its phrasing harmonizes more effectively with its metrical structure. Hovey-poet, translator, collaborator with Bliss Carman -belongs with Miller, Aldrich, Cawein, and a few others in a rather distinguished group of American poets whose careers fell in the fallow period about the close of the last century. UNMANIFEST DESTINY To what new fates, my country, far Compelled to what unchosen end, Across the sea that knows no beach The guns that spoke at Lexington The trumpet word of Jefferson To bugle forth the rights of men. |