New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1876-03-26


Seventh Remenlbrance-Continu
I finished. The poem had been to m
like draught of fresh spring water, sue
as had often so lately caught and quaffed
ripping from the spring in the cup Of
large green leaf.
Then 1 heard her sweet voice, like tn
the first note Of an organ, that awake
us from our dreaming prayers, saying
sThat is the way want you to love. me
and the way the old Hofrath loves me
and thus in one way or another we should
all love each other and believe one an
other. But the world, although I hardly
know it, seems not to understand thil
love and this faith and people have made
sorrowful existence of this earth, where
We might live SO happily.
Formerly it must have been otherwise
else how could Homer have created the
lovely, healthful, tender figure of Nausicaa
Nausicaa loved Ulysses at first sight. She
tells it to her friends at once:
Oh heaven. in my connubial hour decree
This man my spouse, or such spouse as he.
''She is ashamed, however, to appear
with him in the town and tells him to his
face, that if she should take such hand.
some, stately stranger home with her, the
people would say she had caught hus-
band. How simple and natural all that is.
But when she learns that he wished to go
to his home, to his wife and child, no
complaint escapes her, she disappears
from our sight, but We feel that she will
long carry in her breast in silent joyful
admiration the image of the handsome,
stately stranger. Why do not our poets
know this love-this joyful confession,
this quiet parting? A modern poet would
have made feminine Werther of Nausi-
caa, and that is, because love is for US
nothing but q prelude to the comedy or
tragedy of matrimony. Is there, then, no
other love? Is the spring of this pure
happiness quite exhausted? Do men now
only know the intoxicating drink-no
longer the refreshing spring of love?"
At these words remembered the words
Of the English poet: ....
From heaven, if this belief be sent,
If such he natures holy plan
Have not reason to lament
What man has made of man,
"How happy poets are!" said she. "Their
words call into existence the deepest feel
iDgs of thousands of dumb souls. How
often have their songs become confessions
Of the sweetest secrets Their heart beats
in the breast of the poor and of the rich.
The happy sing, the sorrowful weep with
them. But there is no poet that feel so
much my own as Wordsworth. I know
many of my friends do not like him; they
say he is no poet; but exactly what like
about him is that he avoids all hackneyed
poet-phrases, all exaggerations, and every
thing that one understands by flights of
Pegasus. But he is true-and how much
lies in this one word !! He open, our eyes
to the beautiful, that, like daisy in the
meadow, lies at our feet; he calls every
thing by its true name-he does not wish
to surprise, to disappoint or to blind any
one: he does not desire admiration for
himself; he only seeks to show how beau
tiful everything is that mans hand has not |
bent or broken. Is not dewdrop upon
blade Of grass more beautiful than q |
pearl set in gold? Is not spring ripping
toward US We know not whence, more
wonderful than the fountains of Versailles?
Is not his Highland Girl more lovely, q |
truer expression of real beauty, than |
Goethe's Helena and Byron's Haidee?
And then the home likeness of his Ian
guage, the purity Of his thoughts! What |
a pity that We never had such q poet |
Schiller might have been our Wordsworth |
had he had more faith in himself than in |
the old Greeks and Romans. Next to him
would have come our Ruckert, had not he,
too, sought comfort and home away from |
his simple fatherland among eastern roses.
Few poets have the courage to be what
they arc. Wordsworth had it; and as we
like to listen to great men even at times
when they are not great, but like other
mortals quietly nursing their thoughts,
awaiting with patience the moment when
clear glance opens to them new views
into the infinite, SO 1 like Wordsworth
even in the poems that contain nothing
more than any one else could have said.
Great poets indulge in rest. In Homer
We often read hundred verses without
finding single beauty, and the same in
Dante; while Pindar, whom all of Won so
admire. drives me to desperation with his
,cstacies. What would not give to be
bile to sp end . summer on the Lakes, to
Wit with Wordsworth all the places to
III