Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863

Some words are the very essence of poetry; redolent with all beauteous phantasies; odoriferous as flowers in spring, or discoursing an awful organ-melody, like to the re-bellowing of the hoarse-sounding sea. For instance, those two noble old Saxon words 'main' and 'deep,' that we apply to the ocean – what a music is there about them! The 'main' is the maegen– the strength, the strong one; the great 'deep' is precisely what the name imports. Our employment of 'deep' reminds of the Latin altum, which, properly signifying high or lofty, is, by a familiar species of metonymy, put for its opposite.

By the way, how exceedingly timid are our poets and poetasters generally of the open sea —la pleine mer. They linger around the shores thereof, in a vain attempt to sit snugly there à leur aise, while they 'call spirits from the vasty deep' – that never did and never would come on such conditions, though they grew hoarse over it. We all remember how Sandy Smith labors with making abortive grabs at its amber tails, main, etc. (rather slippery articles on the whole) – but he is not

'A shepherd in the Hebrid Isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main!'

Hail shade of Thomson! But hear how the exile sings it:

'La mer! partout la mer! des flots, des flots encor!
L'oiseau fatigue en vain son inégal essor.
Ici les flots, là-bas les ondes.
Toujours des flots sans fin par des flots repoussés;
L'œil ne voit que des flots dans l'abime entassés
Rouler sous les vaques profondes.'[2 - 'Les Orientals,' par Victor Hugo. Le Feu du ciel.]

This we, for our part, would pronounce one of the very best open-sea sketches we have ever met with; and if the reader will take even our unequal rendering, he may think so too.

'The sea! all round, the sea! flood, flood o'er billow surges!
In vain the bird fatigued its faltering wing here urges.
Billows beneath, waves, waves around;
Ever the floods (no end!) by urging floods repulsed;
The eye sees but the waves, in an abyss engulphed,
Roll 'neath their lairs profound.'

'Aurora' comes to us as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the 'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and 'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is levant, raising himself up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from orior; while 'occident' is, of course, the opposite in signification, namely, the declining, the 'setting' place.

'Lethe' is another classic myth. It is ὁ τἡς λἡθης ροταμὁς – the river of forgetfulness, 'the oblivious pool.' Perhaps is it that all of us, as well as the son of Thetis, had a dip therein.

There exists not a more poetic expression than 'Hyperborean,' i. e. υπερβὁρεος —beyond Boreas; or, as a modern poet finely and faithfully expands it:

'Beyond those regions cold
Where dwells the Spirit of the North-Wind,
Boreas old.'

Homer never manifested himself to be more of a poet than in the creation of this word. By the way, the Hyperboreans were regarded by the ancients as an extremely happy and pious people.

How few of those who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial' know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' (ἁμβροτος, immortal), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant; and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance Milton's 'ambrosial flowers.' It was, like the 'nectar' (νἑκταρ, an elixir vitæ), considered a veritable elixir of immortality, and consequently denied to men.

The Immortals, in their golden halls of 'many-topped Olympus,' seem to have led a merry-enough life of it over their nectar and ambrosia, their laughter and intrigues.

But not half as jolly were they as were Odin and the Iotun – dead drunk in Valhalla over their mead and ale, from

'the ale-cellars of the Iotun,
Which is called Brimir.'

The daisy (Saxon Daeges ege) has often been cited as fragrant with poesy. It is the Day's Eye: we remember Chaucer's affectionate lines:

'Of all the floures in the mede
Than love I most those floures of white and rede,
Such that men called daisies in our toun,
To them I have so great affection.'

Nor is he alone in his love for the

'Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flouer.'

An odoriferous-enough (etymologic) bouquet could we cull from the names of Flora's children. What a beauty is there in the 'primrose,' which is just the prime-rose; in the 'Beauty of the Night' and the 'Morning Glory,' except when a pompous scientific terminology, would convert it into a convolvulus! So, too, the 'Anemone' (ἁνεμος, the wind-flower), into which it is fabled Venus changed her Adonis. What a story of maiden's love does the 'Sweet William' tell; and how many charming associations cluster around the 'Forget-me-not!' Again, is there not poetry in calling a certain family of minute crustacea, whose two eyes meet and form a single round spot in the centre of the head, 'Cyclops' – (κὑκλοψ, circular-eyed)?

And if any one thinketh that there cannot be poetry even in the dry technicalities of science, let him take such an expression as 'coral,' which, in the original Greek, κορἁλιον, signifies a sea damsel; or the chemical 'cobalt,' 'which,' remarks Webster, 'is said to be the German Kobold, a goblin, the demon of the mines; so called by miners, because cobalt was troublesome to miners, and at first its value was not known.' Ah! but these terms were created before Science, in its rigidity, had taught us the truth in regard to these matters. Yes! and fortunate is it for us that we still have words, and ideas clustering around these words, that have not yet been chilled and exanimated by the frigid touch of an empirical knowledge. For

'Still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.'

And may benign heaven deliver us from those buckram individuals who imagine that Nature is as narrow and rigid as their own contracted selves, and who would seek to array her in their own exquisite bottle-green bifurcations and a gilet à la mode! These characters always put us in mind of the statues of Louis XIV, in which he is represented as Jupiter or Hercules, nude, with the exception of the lion's hide thrown round him —and the long, flowing peruke of the times! O Jupiter tonans! let us have either the lion or the ass – only let it be veracious!

To proceed: 'Auburn' is probably connected with brennan, and means sun-burned, analogous, indeed, to 'Ethiopian' (Ἁθἱοψ), one whom the sun has looked upon.

How seldom do we think, in uttering 'adieu,' that we verily say, I commend you à Dieu– to God; that the lightly-spoken good-by means God be wi' you,[3 - The 'by' may, however, have the force of going or passing, equivalent to 'fare' in 'farewell,' or 'welfare,' i. e., may you have a good passage or journey.] or that the (if possible) still more frequent and unthinking 'thank you,' in reality assures the person addressed —I will think often of you.

'Eld' is a word that has the poetic aroma about it, and is an example (of which we might adduce additional cases from the domain of 'poetic diction') of a word set aside from a prose use and devoted exclusively to poetry. It is, as we know, Saxon, signifying old or old age, and was formerly in constant use in this sense; as, for instance, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ, we find thus:

'At laste no drede ne might overcame tho muses, that thei ne weren fellowes, and foloweden my waie, that is to saie, when I was exiled, thei that weren of my youth whilom welfull and grene, comforten now sorrowfull weirdes of me olde man: for elde is comen unwarely upon me, hasted by the harmes that I have, and sorowe hath commaunded his age to be in me.'

So in the Knightes Tale:

'As sooth in said elde hath gret avantage;
In elde is both wisdom and usage:
Men may the old out-renne but not out-rede.'

Oh! what an overflowing fulness of truth and beauty is there wrapped up in the core of these articulations that we so heedlessly utter, would we but make use of the wizard's wand wherewith to evoke them! What an exhaustless wealth does there lie in even the humblest fruitage and flowerage of language, and what a fecundity have even dry 'roots'!

'Thinkest thou there were no poets till Dan Chaucer?' asks our great Thomas; 'no heart burning with a thought, which it could not hold, and had no word for; and needed to shape and coin a word for – what thou callest a metaphor, trope, or the like? For every word we have, there was such a man and poet. The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor, and bold questionable originality. 'Thy very ATTENTION, does it not mean an attentio, a STRETCHING-TO?' Fancy that act of the mind which all were conscious of, which none had yet named – when this new 'poet' first felt bound and driven to name it! His questionable originality and new glowing metaphor was found adoptible, intelligible; and remains our name for it to this day.'[4 - 'Past and Present,' pp. 128, 129.]

This seems to be a pet etymology of Carlyle, as he makes Professor Teufelsdröckh give it to us also.

Nor less of a poet was that Grecian man who first named this beauteous world – with its boundless unity in variety – the κὁσμος,[5 - Compare with this the Latin mundus, which is exactly analogous in signification.] the order, the adornment. But

'Alas, for the rarity
Of Christian charity,'

and

'Ah! the inanity
Of frail humanity,'

that first induced some luckless mortal to give to certain mysterious compounds the appellation of cosmetics! But here is an atonement; for even in our unmythical, unbelieving days, the god 'Terminus' is made to stand guard over every railway station! Again, how finely did the Roman call his heroism his 'virtus' – his virtue – his manliness. With the Italians, however, it became quite a different thing; for his 'virtu' is none other than his love of the fine arts (these being to him the only subject of manly occupation), a mere objet de vertu; and his virtuoso has no more virtuousness or manliness about him than what appertains to being skilled in these same fine arts. With us, our 'virtue' is … well, as soon as we can find out, we will tell you.

By the way, in what a bathos of mystery are most of our terms expressing the moral relations plunged! Some philosophers have declared that truth lies at the bottom of a well; – the well in which the truth in regard to these matters lies would seem to stretch far enough down – reaching, in fact, almost to the kingdom of the Inane. The beautiful simplicity of Bible truths has often become so perverted – so overloaded by the vain works (and words) of man's device – as barely to escape total extinction. Witness 'repentance'; in what a farrago of endless absurdities and palpable contradictions has this word (and, more unfortunately still, the thing itself along with it) been enveloped! According to the 'divines,' what does it not signify? Its composition, we very well know, gives us pœnitentia, from pœnitere, to be sorry, to regret– and such is its true and only meaning. 'This design' (that of the analysis of language in its elementary forms), says Wilkins, 'will likewise contribute much to the clearing of some of our modern differences in religion; by unmasking many wild errors, that shelter themselves under the disguise of affected phrases; which being philosophically unfolded, and rendered according to the genuine and natural importance of words, will appear to be inconsistencies and absurdities.' Nor would he have gone very far astray had he put philosophy and politics under the same category. Strip the gaudy dress and trappings from an expression, and it will have a most marked result. Analysis is a terrible humiliation to your mysticism and your grandiloquence – and an awful bore to those who depend for effect on either. We have something to say hereafter on those astonishingly profound oracles whose only depth is in the terminology they employ. In the mean time, expect not too much of words. Never, in all our philologic researches, must we lose sight of the fact that words are but the daughters of earth, while things are the sons of heaven. This expecting too much of words has been the fruitful source of innumerable errors. To resume: