Part 8 (1/2)
Dear Gifted,--If you will permit me to use your Christian, and prophetic, name--we improved the occasion lately with the writers of light verse in ancient times. We decided that the ancients were not great in verses of society, because they had, properly speaking, no society to write verses for. Women did not live in the Christian freedom and social equality with men, either in Greece or Rome--at least not ”modest women,” as Mr.
Harry Foker calls them in ”Pendennis.” About the others there is plenty of pretty verse in the Anthology. What you need for verses of society is a period in which the social equality is recognized, and in which people are peaceable enough and comfortable enough to ”play with light loves in the portal” of the Temple of Hymen, without any very definite intentions, on either part, of going inside and getting married.
Perhaps we should not expect _vers de societe_ from the Crusaders, who were not peaceable, and who were very earnest indeed, in love or war. But as soon as you get a Court, and Court life, in France, even though the times were warlike, then ladies are lauded in artful strains, and the lyre is struck _leviore plectro_. Charles d'Orleans, that captive and captivating prince, wrote thousands of _rondeaux_; even before his time a gallant company of gentlemen composed the _Livre des Cent Ballades_, one hundred _ballades_, practically unreadable by modern men. Then came Clement Marot, with his gay and rather empty fluency, and Ronsard, with his mythological compliments, his sonnets, decked with roses, and led like lambs to the altar of Helen or Ca.s.sandra. A few, here and there, of his pieces are lighter, more pleasant, and, in a quiet way, immortal, such as the verses to his ”fair flower of Anjou,” a beauty of fifteen. So they ran on, in France, till Voiture's time, and Sarrazin's with his merry _ballade_ of an elopement, and Corneille's proud and graceful stanzas to Marquise de Gorla.
But verses in the English tongue are more worthy of our attention. Mr.
Locker begins his collection of them, _Lyra Elegantiarum_ (no longer a very rare book in England), as far back as Skelton's age, and as Thomas Wyat's, and Sidney's; but those things, the lighter lyrics of that day, are rather songs than poems, and probably were all meant to be sung to the virginals by our musical ancestors.
”Drink to me only with thine eyes,” says the great Ben Jonson, or sings it rather. The words, that he versified out of the Greek prose of Philostratus, cannot be thought of without the tune. It is the same with Carew's ”He that loves a rosy cheek,” or with ”Roses, their sharp spines being gone.” The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest.
Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in Eisen's vignettes for Dorat's _Baisers_:
”Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love did Heaven prepare These powders to enrich your hair.”
It would be affectation, Gifted, if _you_ rhymed in that fas.h.i.+on for the lady of your love, and presented her, as it were, with cosmical cosmetics, and compliments drawn from the starry s.p.a.ces and deserts, from skies, phoenixes, and angels. But it was a natural and pretty way of writing when Thomas Carew was young. I prefer Herrick the inexhaustible in dainties; Herrick, that parson-pagan, with the soul of a Greek of the Anthology, and a cure of souls (Heaven help them!) in Devons.h.i.+re. His Julia is the least mortal of these ”daughters of dreams and of stories,”
whom poets celebrate; she has a certain opulence of flesh and blood, a cheek like a damask rose, and ”rich eyes,” like Keats's lady; no vaporous Beatrice, she; but a handsome English wench, with
”A cuff neglectful and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note In the tempestuous petticoat.”
Then Suckling strikes up a reckless military air; a warrior he is who has seen many a siege of hearts--hearts that capitulated, or held out like Troy-town, and the impatient a.s.sailant whistles:
”Quit, quit, for shame: this will not move, This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her-- The devil take her.”
So he rides away, curling his moustache, hiding his defeat in a big inimitable swagger. It is a pleasanter piece in which Suckling, after a long leaguer of a lady's heart, finds that Captain honour is governor of the place, and surrender hopeless. So he departs with a salute:
”March, march (quoth I), the word straight give, Let's lose no time but leave her: That giant upon air will live, And hold it out for ever.”
Lovelace is even a better type in his rare good things of the military amorist and poet. What apology of Lauzun's, or Bussy Rabutin's for faithlessness could equal this?--
”Why dost thou say I am forsworn, Since thine I vowed to be?
Lady, it is already morn; It was last night I swore to thee That fond impossibility.”
Has ”In Memoriam” n.o.bler numbers than the poem, from exile, to Lucasta?--
”Our Faith and troth All time and s.p.a.ce controls, Above the highest sphere we meet, Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet.”
How comes it that in the fierce fighting days the soldiers were so tuneful, and such scholars? In the first edition of Lovelace's ”Lucasta”
there is a flock of recommendatory verses, English, Latin, even Greek, by the gallant Colonel's mess-mates and comrades. What guardsman now writes like Lovelace, and how many of his friends could applaud him in Greek?
You, my Gifted, are happily of a pacific disposition, and tune a gentle lyre. Is it not lucky for swains like you that the soldiers have quite forsworn sonneting? When a man was a rake, a poet, a warrior, all in one, what chance had a peaceful minor poet like you or me, Gifted, against his charms? Sedley, when sober, must have been an invincible rival--invincible, above all, when he pretended constancy:
”Why then should I seek further store, And still make love anew?
When change itself can give no more 'Tis easy to be true.”
How infinitely more delightful, musical, and captivating are those Cavalier singers--their numbers flowing fair, like their scented lovelocks--than the prudish society poets of Pope's day. ”The Rape of the Lock” is very witty, but through it all don't you mark the sneer of the contemptuous, unmanly little wit, the crooked dandy? He jibes among his compliments; and I do not wonder that Mistress Arabella Fermor was not conciliated by his long-drawn cleverness and polished lines. I prefer Sackville's verses ”written at sea the night before an engagement”:
”To all you ladies now on land We men at sea indite.”