Part 24 (1/2)

Bret Harte, one would think, must have been a romantic and imaginative lover, and yet in his poetry there is little, if anything, to indicate that he was ever deeply in love. Of romantic devotion to a woman, as to a superior being, we find no trace either in his stories or in his poetry.

How far removed from Bret Harte is that mingled feeling of love and veneration which, originating in the Middle Ages, has lasted, in poetry at least, almost down to our own time, as in these lines from a writer who was contemporary with Bret Harte:--

When thy cheek is dewed with tears On some dark day when friends depart, When life before thee seems all fears And all remembrance one long smart,

Then in the secret sacred cell Thy soul keeps for her hour of prayer, Breathe but my name, that I may dwell Part of thy wors.h.i.+p alway there.

Bret Harte was cast in a different mould. No doubts or fears distracted him. So far as we know, he asked no questions about the universe, and troubled himself very little about the destiny of mankind. He was essentially unreligious, unphilosophic, true to his own instincts, but indifferent to all matters that lay beyond them. And yet within that range he had a depth and sincerity of feeling which issued in real poetry. Bret Harte, with all the refinement, love of elegance, reserve and self-restraint which characterized him, was a very natural man. He possessed in full degree what one philosopher has called the primeval instincts of pity, of pride, of pugnacity. He loved his fellow-man, he loved his country, he loved nature, and these pa.s.sions, curbed by that unerring sense of artistic form and clothed in that beauty of style which belonged to him, were expressed in a few poems that seem likely to last forever. It was not often that he felt the necessary stimulus, but when he did feel it, the response was sure. Of these immortal poems, if we may make bold to call them such, probably the best known is that on the death of d.i.c.kens. This is the last stanza:--

And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreaths entwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, This spray of Western pine![108]

Still better is the poem on the death of Starr King. It is very short; let us have it before us.

RELIEVING GUARD

THOMAS STARR KING. OBIIT MARCH 4, 1864.

Came the relief. ”What, sentry, ho!

How pa.s.sed the night through thy long waking?”

”Cold, cheerless, dark,--as may befit The hour before the dawn is breaking.”

”No sight? no sound?” ”No; nothing save The plover from the marshes calling, And in yon western sky, about An hour ago, a star was falling.”

”A star? There's nothing strange in that.”

”No, nothing; but above the thicket, Somehow it seemed to me that G.o.d Somewhere had just relieved a picket.”

What impresses the reader most, or at least first, in this poem is its extreme conciseness and simplicity. The words are so few, and the weight of suggestion which they have to carry so heavy, that the misuse of a single word,--a single word not in perfect taste, would have spoiled the beauty of the whole. Long years ago the ”Sat.u.r.day Review”--the good old, ferocious Sat.u.r.day--sagely remarked: ”It is not given to every one to be simple”; and only genius could have achieved the simplicity of this short poem. ”The relief came” would have been prose. ”Came the relief” is poetry, not merely because the arrangement of the words is unusual, but because this short inverted sentence strikes a note of abruptness and intensity which prepares the reader for what is to come, and which is maintained throughout the poem;--had it not so been maintained, an anti-climax would have resulted.

Moreover, short and simple as this poem is, it seems to contain three distinct strands of feeling. There is, first, the personal feeling for Thomas Starr King; and although he was a minister and not a soldier, there is a suitability in connecting him with the picket, for, as we have seen, it was owing to him, more than to any other man, that California was saved to the Union in the Civil War. Secondly, there is the National patriotic feeling which forms the strong under-current of the poem, nowhere expressed, but unmistakably implied, and present in the minds of both poet and reader. Possibly, we may even find in ”the hour before the dawn” an allusion to the period when Mr. King died and the poem was written; for that was the final desperate period of the war, darkened by a terrible expenditure of human life and suffering, and lightened only by a prospect of the end then slowly but surely coming into view. Thirdly, there is the feeling for nature which the poem exhibits in its firm though scanty etching of the sombre night, the lonely marshes, and the distant sky. The poem is a blending of these three feelings, each one enhancing the other;--and even this does not complete the tale, for there is the final suggestion that the death of a man may be of as much consequence in the mind of the Creator, and as nicely calculated, as the falling of a star.

The truth is that Bret Harte's national poems, with which this tribute to Starr King may properly be cla.s.sed, have a depth of personal feeling not often found elsewhere in his poetry. In common with all men of primitive impulses, he was genuinely patriotic. ”America was always 'my country'

with him,” writes one who knew him in England; ”and I remember how he flushed with almost boyish pleasure when, in driving through some casual rural festivities, his quick eye noted a stray American flag among the display of bunting.”

This patriotic feeling gave to his national poems the true lyrical note.

Among the best of these is that stirring song of the drum, called _The Reveille_, which was read at a crowded meeting held in the San Francisco Opera House immediately after President Lincoln had called for one hundred thousand volunteers. In this poem the student of American history, and especially the foreign student, will find an expression of that National feeling which animated the Northern people, and which sanctified the horrors of the Civil War,--one of the few wars recorded in history that was waged for a pure ideal,--the ideal of the Union.

With these poems may be cla.s.sed some stanzas from _Cadet Grey_ describing the life of the West Point cadet, and this one in particular:--

Within the camp they lie, the young, the brave, Half knight, half schoolboy, acolytes of fame, Pledged to one altar, and perchance one grave; Bred to fear nothing but reproach and blame, Ascetic dandies o'er whom vestals rave, Clean-limbed young Spartans, disciplined young elves, Taught to destroy, that they may live to save, Students embattled, soldiers at their shelves, Heroes whose conquests are at first themselves.

It has been said that one function of literature, and especially of poetry, is to enable a nation to understand and appreciate, and thus more completely to realize, the ideals which it has instinctively formed; and in the lines just quoted Bret Harte has done this for West Point.

The poem on San Francisco glows with patriotic and civic feeling, and it expressed a sentiment which, at the time when it was written, hardly anybody in the city, except the poet himself, entertained. San Francisco in 1870 was dominated by that cold, hard, self-satisfied, commercial spirit which Bret Harte especially hated, and which furnished one reason, perhaps the main reason, for his departure from the State.

Drop down, O fleecy Fog, and hide Her sceptic sneer and all her pride!