A LYRIC conception - my friend, the Poet, said - hits me like a bullet in the forehead.I have often had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death.
Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine, -then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, - then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the head, - then a long sigh, - and the poem is written.
It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly, -I replied.
No, - said he, - far from it.I said written, but I did not say COPIED.Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for.The soul of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul.It comes to him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words, - words that have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have never been wedded until now.Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain;but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale with it.It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of association.No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external.[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] Goddess, - Muse, - divine afflatus, -something outside always.I never wrote any verses worth reading.
I can't.I am too stupid.If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I was only a medium.
[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand, -telling them what this poet told me.The company listened rather attentively, I thought, considering the literary character of the remarks.]
The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy, - his mother taught him to say many little pieces, - he remembered one beautiful hymn; - and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for his years, -"The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens," -He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek.As I looked round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum, - the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it.The old man's sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone.Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment.She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk, - the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall.Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested, -motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set the plate down while the old gentleman was speaking!
He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on his cheek.Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there still!
By and by we got talking again.- Does a poet love the verses written through him, do you think, Sir? - said the divinity-student.
So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal heat about them, I KNOW he loves them, - I answered.When they have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.
A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, - said the young fellow whom they call John.
The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized female in black bombazine.- Buckwheat is skerce and high, - she remarked.[Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady, -pays nothing, - so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel boarders.]
I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again.- Idon't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.
- You don't know what I mean by the GREEN STATE? Well, then, Iwill tell you.Certain things are good for nothing until they have been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they have been long kept and USED.Of the first, wine is the illustrious and immortal example.Of those which must be kept and used I will name three, - meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems.
The meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities.It comes to us without complexion or flavor, - born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as PALLIDA MORS herself.The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores.First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface.Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see, - as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina!