New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-01-21

career like the coursers of PhTthon in flame
across the sky. We could not easily part
with the heritage of thought and beauty which
Byron, and Wordsworth, and many another
have transmitted to u.s. even though the thought,
limp now and then in it's restraining letters
of verse, and the beauty be pinioned in the
cObweb meshes of rhyme. There be those too
in our own day who have sung for us songs
more precious than bushels of wheat, or
measures of barley or ores dug out OF mines,
or any other fruits of the various phases
of endeavOr which Mr.. Carlyle exalts above
sOng-making. We would part with all our
prospective West India possessions, with Alaska
thrown in), rather than with the lyrics of our
Quaker poet, and would let go a score OF our
biggest brigadiers rather than lose Mrs.
Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic. France
glories more in her Beranger, compact OF
"honey and fire." than in the procession of her
besotted kings, and Hugo's strOphes are
greater than Haussmann's sculptured facades.
The Trappists believed that because it was
good to serve God, it was blasphemous to do
anything else-sO they spent their lives In
gloomy and pious silence and intermittent
prostraton Mr.. Carlyle seems to think that
because certain hard, rugged forms of en-
dcayOr are fruitful and salutary In anchor
ating the condition of mankind, no other sort
of effort should be tolerated under the sun.
He is virtuous and he derdes cakes and ale.
He fights in the forefront OF the worlds bat
file armed in complete steel, and he has little
love for the meditative star-gazer, who afar
watches from his quiet tent door the process
sion of the consultations, or for the minstrel
who strikes his harp and intOnes his chant
amid the vineyards, making holiday OF Sum-
mer mirth for those who toll therein. He
would rail at the myrtle because it was not
an oak and did not stand up and breast the
tempest But it is the faith of most other men,
that in our wide drama of life there Is room
not only for the warrior but for the seer and
the singer likewise, and that the myrtle hath
its place upon the hill-slope as well as the
rugged and thunder-scarred oak upon its crest.
Nearly all that is left to us of very interest
ing and extensive periods of human history is
few fragments of poetry. The Pyramids
stand vet, but, "doting with age, have forgot
"ten the names of their founders" single
p0rch and some mutated friezes and statues
are all the visible and material fragments left
to lis of the cities and temples, and shrlnes OF
Greece. But the poetry of the Hebrews, CO.
eya with Memphis and Luxor, remains to us
in tolerable state of preservation so do the
Greek tragedies, and the songs of Pindar, and
the rhapsodes of SapphO. Time has gnawed
at them in vain, while granite and marble
have crumbed and their forgotten dust wei
tered along the winds which mOurned amid
arches of desolation and broken temples from
which the builders and they that knelt there
in in worship or ruled in revelry had gone
many a year and age ago. We have the songs
Where are the temples and the generations
They live only in the verses which Mr.. CarlylN
so grimly despises The time will come,
doubtless, when our own civilization shall have
but IA similar fragmentary memorial. Perhaps
some of the poets whom Mr.. Carlyle beseeches
not to write except in prose may embalm IN
time defying strophes his own craggy and ma
jestic memory, accomplishing through the
magic of rhyme what his own very striking
prose failed to accomplish, and transmitting
his name, we hope with all honor, to the re-
hottest generations of mankind.