Letters to Dead Authors

In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone
In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes.
And Byron’s style is “jolter-headed jargon;”
His verse is “only bearable in prose.”
So living poets write of those that are gone,
And o’er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows;
And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began,
By owning you “a very clever man.”

Or rather does not end: he still must utter
A quantity of the unkindest things.
Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter
O’er such a foe the tempest of your wings?
’Tis “rant and cant and glare and splash and splutter”
That rend the modest air when Byron sings.
There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery.
Animis cælestibus tantæne iræ?

But whether he or Arnold in the right is,
Long is the argument, the quarrel long;
Non nobis est to settle tantas lites;
No poet I, to judge of right or wrong:
But of all things I always think a fight is
The most unpleasant in the lists of song;
When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo
Set an example which we need not follow.

The fashion changes!  Maidens do not wear,
As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets
A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron’s hair;
“Don Juan” is not always in our pockets —
Nay, a New Writer’s readers do not care
Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its
Manners and morals.  Ay, and most young ladies
To yours prefer the “Epic” called “of Hades”!

I do not blame them; I’m inclined to think
That with the reigning taste ’tis vain to quarrel,
And Burns might teach his votaries to drink,
And Byron never meant to make them moral.
You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink
From lauding you and giving you the laurel;
The Germans too, those men of blood and iron,
Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron.

Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods!
Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit,
Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds,
Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit;
Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies’ rods,
Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit;
Beholding whom, men think how fairer far
Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! [9 - Mr. Swinburne’s and Mr. Arnold’s diverse views of Byron will be found in the Selections by Mr. Arnold and in the Nineteenth Century.]

XXI.

To Omar Khayyâm

Wise Omar, do the Southern Breezes fling
Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring,
The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose,
The wild white Roses you were wont to sing?

Far in the South I know a Land divine, [10 - The hills above San Remo, where rose-bushes are planted by the shrines. Omar desired that his grave might be where the wind would scatter rose-leaves over it.]
And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine,
And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows
Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine.

You were a Saint of unbelieving Days,
Liking your Life and happy in Men’s Praise;
Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough,
Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways.

Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or Hell,
Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell,
Content to know not all thou knowest now,
What’s Death?  Doth any Pitcher dread the Well?

The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill,
Shall He torment them if they chance to spill?
Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast
Forth and forgotten, – and what will be will!

So still were we, before the Months began
That rounded us and shaped us into Man.
So still we shall be, surely, at the last,
Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban!

Ah, strange it seems that this thy common Thought —
How all Things have been, ay, and shall be nought —
Was ancient Wisdom in thine ancient East,
In those old Days when Senlac Fight was fought,

Which gave our England for a captive Land
To pious Chiefs of a believing Band,
A gift to the Believer from the Priest,
Tossed from the holy to the blood-red Hand! [11 - Omar was contemporary with the battle of Hastings.]

Yea, thou wert singing when that Arrow clave