"In lonely loveliness she grew A shape all music, light, and love, Her brow-fit home for daintiest dreams- The trees, like burden'd prophets, yearn'd, Hear this exquisite picture of a lover's heart, in the dark, rising to the image of his mistress :— "Heart will plead, Eyes cannot see her. They are blind with tears of pain,' And it climbeth up and straineth for dear life to look and hark While I call her once again; but there cometh no refrain, And it droppeth down and dieth in the dark." "I heard faith's low sweet singing in the night, And groping through the darkness touch'd God's hand." "Some bird in sudden sparkles of fine sound "No star goes down, but climbs in other skies. To burst again from out the heart of dawn; "The sweetest swallow-dip of a tender smile "A spirit-feel is in the solemn air." The dark of death doth blossom into stars." "'Tis the old story! ever the blind world Knows not its angels of deliverance, Till they stand glorified 'twixt earth and heaven." "Ye sometimes lead my feet to walk the angel side of life." "Come, worship beauty in the forest temple, dim and hush, Where stands magnificence dreaming! and God burneth in the bush." "The murkiest midnight that frowns from the skies "The kingliest kings are crown'd with thorn." "When will the world quicken for liberty's birth, Which she waiteth, with eager wings beating the dawn." "Oh, but 'twill be a merry day, the world shall set apart, When strife's last brand is broken in the last crown'd tyrant's heart!" "The herald of our coming Christ leaps in the womb of time; The poor's grand army treads the Age's march with step sublime." "Yet she weeteth not I love her; Never dare I tell the sweet Tale, but to the stars above her, And the flowers that kiss her feet." "And the maiden-meek voice of the womanly wife Still bringeth the heavens nigher, For it rings like the voice of God o'er my life, Aye bidding me climb up higher." 66 Merry as laughter 'mong the hills, "Where life hath climaxt like a wave We might long persist at this pleasant task of plucking wildflowers. But we hasten to speak of some of the more prominent merits and defects of this remarkable volume. One main merit of Massey is his intense earnestness, which reminds you almost of Ebenezer Elliot, with his red-hot poker pen. Like him, he has "put his heart"-his big, burning heart-into his poems. Mr. Lewes, of the "Leader," opines that Massey wants the power of transmuting experience into poetic forms, and that nowhere does the real soul of the man utter itself: two most unfortunate assertions-for the evident effort, and often successful attainment, of this author, more than with most writers, are, to set his own life to music, and to express in verse all the poetry with which it has teemed. He has been a sore struggler-with poverty, with a narrow sphere, with doubts and darkness; and you have this struggle echoed in his rugged and fiery song. He has been a giant under Etna; and his voice is a suspirium de profundis. Although still a very young man, he has undergone ages of experience; and, although we had not known all this from his preface and notes we might have confidently concluded it from his poetry. In his earlier poems, we find his fire of earnestness burning in fierce, exaggerated, and volcanic forms. The poet appears an incarnation of the Evil Genius of poverty, and reminds you of Robert Burns in his wilder mood. He sets Chartism to music. He sings, with strange variations, "A man's a man for a' that." But this springs from circumstances, not from the poet himself; and you are certain that progress and change of situation will elicit a finer and healthier frame of spiritand so it has proved. Although his poems are not arranged in chronological order, internal evidence convinces us that those in which he is at once simplest and most subdued have been written last. A change of the most benignant kind has come o'er the spirit of his dream, and has been, we beg leave to think, greatly owing to female influence. He has found his better angel in that amiable wife, whose virtues he has so often celebrated in his song, and in whom he sees a tenth muse. The homage done by him to the domestic affections, his ardent worship of his own hearth, is one of the most pleasing characteristics of Gerald Massey's poetry, and has been noticed by more than one of his critics. It comes out, not for the sake of ostentation, or artistic effect, but spontaneously and irresistibly in many parts of his poems. We have great pleasure in transcribing words addressed to him by an eminent writer of the day, in which we cordially concur : "One everlasting subject of people's poetry is love, and you are at the age at which a man is bound to sing it. The devil has had power over love-poems too long, because the tastes of the people were too gross to relish anything but indecency, because the married men left the love-singing to the unmarried ones. Now, love before marriage is the tragedy of Hamlet' with the part of Hamlet left out! Therefore the bachelor love-poets, being forced to make their subject complete, to go beyond mere sentiment, were driven into illicit love. I say that is a shame. I say that the highest joys of love are married joys, and that the married man ought to be the true love-poet.Now God has given you, as I hear, in his great love and mercy, a charming wife and child. There is your school. There are your treasured ideas. Sing about them, and the people will hear you, because you will be loving, and real, and honest, and practical, speaking from your heart straight to theirs. But write simply what you do feel and see, not what you think you ought to feel and see. The very simplest lovepoet goes deepest. Get to yourself, I beseech you, all that you can of English and Scotch ballads, and consider them as what they are-models. ReadAuld Robin Gray' twenty times over. Study it word for word." The poem entitled the "Bridal" is hardly so simple as this writer would wish; but, as a rich marriage-dress, it challenges all admiration. |