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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Die Leiden des jungen Werther Buch 2"

the December 31, 2001. - "The Red Badge of Courage"

William Dobein James. - "A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion"

William Shakespeare - "Twelfth Night; or, What You Will"

Oldport Days

T >> Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> Oldport Days




"What did she want to be a lady for?" asked Madam Delia,
indignantly.

"Said she wanted to have a parlor and dress tight. I don't want
to be one of her old ladies. I want to stay with you, Delia, and
learn the clog-dance." And she threw her arms round the
show-woman's neck and cried herself to sleep.

Never did the energetic proprietress of a Museum and Variety
Combination feel a greater exultation than did Madam Delia that
night. The child's offence was all forgotten in the delight of
the discovery to which it led. If there had been expectations of
social glories to accrue to the house of De Marsan through
Gerty's social promotion, they melted away; and the more
substantial delight of still having someone to love and to be
proud of,--some object of tenderness warmer than snakes and
within nearer reach than a Chinese giant,--this came in its
stead. The show, too, was in a manner on its feet again. De
Marsan said that he would rather have Gerty than a hundred-dollar
bill. Madam Delia looked forward and saw herself sinking into the
vale of years without a sigh,--reaching a period when a serpent
fifteen feet long would cease to charm, or she to charm it,--and
still having a source of pride and prosperity in this triumphant
girl.

The tent was in its glory on the day of Gerty's return; to be
sure, nothing in particular had been washed except the face of
Old Bill, but that alone was a marvel compared with which all
"Election Day" was feeble, and when you add a paper collar, words
can say no more. Monsieur Comstock also had that "ten times
barbered" look which Shakespeare ascribes to Mark Antony, and
which has belonged to that hero's successors in the histrionic
profession ever since. His chin was unnaturally smooth, his
mustache obtrusively perfumed, and nothing but the unchanged
dirtiness of his hands still linked him, like Antaeus, with the
earth. De Marsan had intended some personal preparation, but had
been, as usual, in no hurry, and the appointed moment found him,
as usual, in his shirt-sleeves. Madam Delia, however, wore a new
breastpin and gave Gerty another. And the great new attraction,
the Chinese giant, had put on a black broadcloth coat across his
bony shoulders, in her honor, and made a vigorous effort to sit
up straight, and appear at his ease when off duty. He habitually
stooped a good deal in private life, as if there were no object
in being eight feet high, except before spectators.

Anne, the placid and imperturbable, was promoted to take the
place that Gerty had rejected, in the gentle home of the good
sisters. The secret of her birth, whatever it was, never came to
light but, she took kindly, as Madam Delia had predicted,to
"living genteel," and grew up into a well-behaved mediocrity,
unregretful of the show-tent. Yet probably no one reared within
the smell of sawdust ever quite outgrew all taste for "the
profession," and Anne, even when promoted to good society, never
missed seeing a performance when her wandering friends came by.
If I told you under what name Gerty became a star in the
low-comedy line, after her marriage, you would all recognize it;
and if you had seen her in "Queen Pippin" or the "Shooting-Star"
pantomime, you would wish to see her again. Her first child was
named after Madam Delia, and proved to be a placid little thing,
demure enough to have been born in a Quaker family, and
exhibiting no contortions or gymnastics but those common to its
years. And you may be sure that the retired show-woman found in
the duties of brevet-grand-mother a glory that quite surpassed
her expectations.



SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH.

Near my summer home there is a little cove or landing by the bay,
where nothing larger than a boat can ever anchor. I sit above it
now, upon the steep bank, knee-deep in buttercups, and amid grass
so lush and green that it seems to ripple and flow instead of
waving. Below lies a tiny beach, strewn with a few bits of
drift-wood and some purple shells, and so sheltered by projecting
walls that its wavelets plash but lightly. A little farther out
the sea breaks more roughly over submerged rocks, and the waves
lift themselves, before breaking, in an indescribable way, as if
each gave a glimpse through a translucent window, beyond which
all ocean's depths might be clearly seen, could one but hit the
proper angle of vision. On the right side of my retreat a high
wall limits the view, while close upon the left the crumbling
parapet of Fort Greene stands out into the foreground, its
verdant scarp so relieved against the blue water that each
inward-bound schooner seems to sail into a cave of grass. In the
middle distance is a white lighthouse, and beyond lie the round
tower of old Fort Louis and the soft low hills of Conanicut.

Behind me an oriole chirrups in triumph amid the birch-trees
which wave around the house of the haunted window; before me a
kingfisher pauses and waits, and a darting blackbird shows the
scarlet on his wings. Sloops and schooners constantly come and
go, careening in the wind, their white sails taking, if remote
enough, a vague blue mantle from the delicate air. Sail-boats
glide in the distance,--each a mere white wing of canvas,--or
coming nearer, and glancing suddenly into the cove, are put as
suddenly on the other tack, and almost in an instant seem far
away. There is to-day such a live sparkle on the water, such a
luminous freshness on the grass, that it seems, as is so often
the case in early June, as if all history were a dream, and the
whole earth were but the creation of a summer's day.

If Petrarch still knows and feels the consummate beauty of these
earthly things, it may seem to him some repayment for the sorrows
of a life-time that one reader, after all this lapse of years,
should choose his sonnets to match this grass, these blossoms,
and the soft lapse of these blue waves. Yet any longer or more
continuous poem would be out of place to-day. I fancy that this
narrow cove prescribes the proper limits of a sonnet; and when I
count the lines of ripple within yonder projecting wall, there
proves to be room for just fourteen. Nature meets our whims with
such little fitnesses. The words which build these delicate
structures of Petrarch's are as soft and fine and close-textured
as the sands upon this tiny beach, and their monotone, if such it
be, is the monotone of the neighboring ocean. Is it not possible,
by bringing such a book into the open air, to separate it from
the grimness of commentators, and bring it back to life and light
and Italy?

The beautiful earth is the same as when this poetry and passion
were new; there is the same sunlight, the same blue water and
green grass; yonder pleasure-boat might bear, for aught we know,
the friends and lovers of five centuries ago; Petrarch and Laura
might be there, with Boccaccio and Fiammetta as comrades, and
with Chaucer as their stranger guest. It bears, at any rate, if I
know its voyagers, eyes as lustrous, voices as sweet. With the
world thus young, beauty eternal, fancy free, why should these
delicious Italian pages exist but to be tortured into grammatical
examples? Is there no reward to be imagined for a delightful book
that can match Browning's fantastic burial of a tedious one? When
it has sufficiently basked in sunshine, and been cooled in pure
salt air, when it has bathed in heaped clover, and been scented,
page by page, with melilot, cannot its beauty once more blossom,
and its buried loves revive?

Emboldened by such influences, at least let me translate a
sonnet, and see if anything is left after the sweet Italian
syllables are gone. Before this continent was discovered, before
English literature existed, when Chaucer was a child, these words
were written. Yet they are to-day as fresh and perfect as these
laburnum-blossoms that droop above my head. And as the variable
and uncertain air comes freighted with clover-scent from yonder
field, so floats through these long centuries a breath of
fragrance, the memory of Laura.
SONNET 129.
"Lieti fiori e felici."
O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers!
'Mid which my queen her gracious footstep sets;
O plain, that keep'st her words for amulets
And hold'st her memory in thy leafy bowers!
O trees, with earliest green of spring-time hours,
And spring-time's pale and tender violets!
O grove, so dark the proud sun only lets
His blithe rays gild the outskirts of your towers!
O pleasant country-side! O purest stream,
That mirrorest her sweet face, her eyes so clear,
And of their living light can catch the beam!
I envy you her haunts so close and dear.
There is no rock so senseless but I deem
It burns with passion that to mine is near.

Goethe compared translators to carriers, who convey good wine to
market, though it gets unaccountably watered by the way. The more
one praises a poem, the more absurd becomes one's position,
perhaps, in trying to translate it. If it is so admirable--is the
natural inquiry,--why not let it alone? It is a doubtful blessing
to the human race, that the instinct of translation still
prevails, stronger than reason; and after one has once yielded to
it, then each untranslated favorite is like the trees round a
backwoodsman's clearing, each of which stands, a silent defiance,
until he has cut it down. Let us try the axe again. This is to
Laura singing.
SONNET 134.
"Quando Amor i begli occhi a terra inchina."
When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline,
And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh
Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy
Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,
He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine,
And to my thoughts brings transformation high,
So that I say, "My time has come to die,
If fate so blest a death for me design."
But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound
Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven,
It holds my spirit back to earth as well.
And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound
The thread of life which unto me was given
By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.

As I look across the bay, there is seen resting over all the
hills, and even upon every distant sail, an enchanted veil of
palest blue, that seems woven out of the very souls of happy
days,--a bridal veil, with which the sunshine weds this soft
landscape in summer. Such and so indescribable is the atmospheric
film that hangs over these poems of Petrarch's; there is a
delicate haze about the words, that vanishes when you touch them,
and reappears as you recede. How it clings, for instance, around
this sonnet!
SONNET 191.
"Aura che quelle chiome."
Sweet air, that circlest round those radiant tresses,
And floatest, mingled with them, fold on fold,
Deliciously, and scatterest that fine gold,
Then twinest it again, my heart's dear jesses,
Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses
Stings in my heart that all its life exhaust,
Till I go wandering round my treasure lost,
Like some scared creature whom the night distresses.
I seem to find her now, and now perceive
How far away she is; now rise, now fall;
Now what I wish, now what is true, believe.
O happy air! since joys enrich thee all,
Rest thee; and thou, O stream too bright to grieve!
Why can I not float with thee at thy call?

The airiest and most fugitive among Petrarch's love-poems, so far
as I know,--showing least of that air of earnestness which he has
contrived to impart to almost all,--is this little ode or
madrigal. It is interesting to see, from this, that he could be
almost conventional and courtly in moments when he held Laura
farthest aloof; and when it is compared with the depths of solemn
emotion in his later sonnets, it seems like the soft glistening
of young birch-leaves against a background of pines.
CANZONE XXIII.
"Nova angeletta sovra l' ale accorta."
A new-born angel, with her wings extended,
Came floating from the skies to this fair shore,
Where, fate-controlled, I wandered with my sorrows.
She saw me there, alone and unbefriended,
She wove a silken net, and threw it o'er
The turf, whose greenness all the pathway borrows,
Then was I captured; nor could fears arise,
Such sweet seduction glimmered from her eyes.

Turn from these light compliments to the pure and reverential
tenderness of a sonnet like this:-
SONNET 223.

"Qual donna attende a gloriosa fama."
Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame
Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy? Gaze in the eyes of that
sweet enemy
Whom all the world doth as my lady name!
How honor grows, and pure devotion's flame,
How truth is joined with graceful dignity,
There thou mayst learn, and what the path may be
To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim;
There learn soft speech, beyond all poet's skill,
And softer silence, and those holy ways
Unutterable, untold by human heart.
But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill,
This none can copy! since its lovely rays
Are given by God's pure grace, and not by art.

The following, on the other hand, seems to me one of the
Shakespearian sonnets; the successive phrases set sail, one by
one, like a yacht squadron; each spreads its graceful wings and
glides away. It is hard to handle this white canvas without
soiling. Macgregor, in the only version of this sonnet which I
have seen, abandons all attempt at rhyme; but to follow the
strict order of the original in this respect is a part of the
pleasant problem which one cannot bear to forego. And there seems
a kind of deity who presides over this union of languages, and
who sometimes silently lays the words in order, after all one's
own poor attempts have failed.

SONNET 128.

"O passi sparsi; o pensier vaghi e pronti"
O wandering steps! O vague and busy dreams!
O changeless memory! O fierce desire!
O passion strong! heart weak with its own fire;
O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams;
O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems
The sole reward that glory's deeds require;
O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire,
That all my days from slothful rest redeems;
O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well
His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move
At his least will; nor can it find relief.
O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell
Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of Love!
Linger, and see my passion and my grief.

Yonder flies a kingfisher, and pauses, fluttering like a
butterfly in the air, then dives toward a fish, and, failing,
perches on the projecting wall. Doves from neighboring dove-cotes
alight on the parapet of the fort, fearless of the quiet cattle
who find there a breezy pasture. These doves, in taking flight,
do not rise from the ground at once, but, edging themselves
closer to the brink, with a caution almost ludicrous in such airy
things, trust themselves upon the breeze with a shy little hop,
and at the next moment are securely on the wing.

How the abundant sunlight inundates everything! The great clumps
of grass and clover are imbedded in it to the roots; it flows in
among their stalks, like water; the lilac-bushes bask in it
eagerly; the topmost leaves of the birches are burnished. A
vessel sails by with plash and roar, and all the white spray
along her side is sparkling with sunlight. Yet there is sorrow in
the world, and it reached Petrarch even before Laura died,--when
it reached her. This exquisite sonnet shows it:-
SONNET 123.
"I' vidi in terra angelici costumi."
I once beheld on earth celestial graces,
And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,
Whose memory lends nor joy nor grief alone,
But all things else bewilders and effaces.
I saw how tears had left their weary traces
Within those eyes that once like sunbeams shone,
I heard those lips breathe low and plaintive moan,
Whose spell might once have taught the hills their places.
Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth,
Made ill their mourning strains more high and dear
Than ever wove sweet sounds for mortal ear;
And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth The very
leaves upon the boughs to soothe,
Such passionate sweetness filled the atmosphere.

These sonnets are in Petrarch's earlier manner; but the death of
Laura brought a change. Look at yonder schooner coming down the
bay, straight toward us; she is hauled close to the wind, her jib
is white in the sunlight, her larger sails are touched with the
same snowy lustre, and all the swelling canvas is rounded into
such lines of beauty as scarcely anything else in the
world--hardly even the perfect outlines of the human form--can
give. Now she comes up into the wind, and goes about with a
strong flapping of the sails, smiting on the ear at a half-mile's
distance; then she glides off on the other tack, showing the
shadowed side of her sails, until she reaches the distant zone of
haze. So change the sonnets after Laura's death, growing shadowy
as they recede, until the very last seems to merge itself in the
blue distance.
SONNET 251.
"Gli occhi di ch' io parlai."
Those eyes, 'neath which my passionate rapture rose,
The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile
Could my own soul from its own self beguile, And in a separate
world of dreams enclose,
The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glows,
And the soft lightning of the angelic smile
That changed this earth to some celestial isle,
Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.
And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,
Left dark without the light I loved in vain,
Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;
Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,
Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,
And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.

"And yet I live!" What a pause is implied before these words! the
drawing of a long breath, immeasurably long; like that vast
interval of heart-beats that precedes Shakespeare's "Since
Cleopatra died." I can think of no other passage in literature
that has in it the same wide spaces of emotion.

The following sonnet seems to me the most stately and
concentrated in the whole volume. It is the sublimity of a
despair not to be relieved by utterance.
SONNET 253.
"Soleasi nel mio cor."
She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,
A noble lady in a humble home, And now her time for heavenly
bliss has come,
'T is I am mortal proved, and she divine.
The soul that all its blessings must resign,
And love whose light no more on earth finds room
Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,
Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;
They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf
Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,
And naught remains to me save mournful breath.
Assuredly but dust and shade we are,
Assuredly desire is blind and brief,
Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

In a later strain he rises to that dream which is more than
earth's realities.
SONNET 261.
"Levommi il mio pensiero."
Dreams bore my fancy to that region where
She dwells whom here I seek, but cannot see.
'Mid those who in the loftiest heaven be
I looked on her, less haughty and more fair.
She touched my hand, she said, "Within this sphere,
If hope deceive not, thou shalt dwell with me:
I filled thy life with war's wild agony;
Mine own day closed ere evening could appear.
My bliss no human brain can understand;
I wait for thee alone, and that fair veil
Of beauty thou dost love shall wear again."
Why was she silent then, why dropped my hand
Ere those delicious tones could quite avail
To bid my mortal soul in heaven remain?

It vindicates the emphatic reality and pesonality of Petrarch's
love, after all, that when from these heights of vision he
surveys and resurveys his life's long dream, it becomes to him
more and more definite, as well as more poetic, and is farther
and farther from a merely vague sentimentalism. In his later
sonnets, Laura grows more distinctly individual to us; her traits
show themselves as more characteristic, her temperament more
intelligible, her precise influence upon Petrarch clearer. What
delicate accuracy of delineation is seen, for instance, in this
sonnet!
SONNET 314.
"Dolci durezze e placide repulse."
Gentle severity, repulses mild,
Full of chaste love and pity sorrowing;
Graceful rebukes, that had the power to bring
Back to itself a heart by dreams beguiled;
A soft-toned voice, whose accents undefiled
Held sweet restraints, all duty honoring;
The bloom of virtue; purity's clear spring
To cleanse away base thoughts and passions wild; Divinest eyes
to make a lover's bliss,
Whether to bridle in the wayward mind
Lest its wild wanderings should the pathway miss,
Or else its griefs to soothe, its wounds to bind;
This sweet completeness of thy life it is
That saved my soul; no other peace I find.

In the following sonnet visions multiply upon visions. Would that
one could transfer into English the delicious way in which the
sweet Italian rhymes recur and surround and seem to embrace each
other, and are woven and unwoven and interwoven, like the
heavenly hosts that gathered around Laura.
SONNET 302.
"Gli angeli eletti."
The holy angels and the spirits blest,
Celestial bands, upon that day serene
When first my love went by in heavenly mien,
Came thronging, wondering at the gracious guest.
"What light is here, in what new beauty drest?"
They said among themselves; "for none has seen
Within this age come wandering such a queen
From darkened earth into immortal rest."
And she, contented with her new-found bliss,
Ranks with the purest in that upper sphere,
Yet ever and anon looks back on this, To watch for me, as if
for me she stayed.
So strive, my thoughts, lest that high path I miss.
I hear her call, and must not be delayed.

These odes and sonnets are all but parts of one symphony, leading
us through a passion strengthened by years and only purified by
death, until at last the graceful lay becomes an anthem and a
Nunc dimittis. In the closing sonnets Petrarch withdraws from the
world, and they seem like voices from a cloister, growing more
and more solemn till the door is closed. This is one of the
last:-
SONNET 309.
"Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio."
Oft by my faithful mirror I am told,
And by my mind outworn and altered brow,
My earthly powers impaired and weakened now,
"Deceive thyself no more, for thou art old!"
Who strives with Nature's laws is over-bold,
And Time to his commandments bids us bow.
Like fire that waves have quenched, I calmly vow
In life's long dream no more my sense to fold.
And while I think, our swift existence flies,
And none can live again earth's brief career,
Then in my deepest heart the voice replies
Of one who now has left this mortal sphere,
But walked alone through earthly destinies,
And of all women is to fame most dear.

How true is this concluding line! Who can wonder that women prize
beauty, and are intoxicated by their own fascinations, when these
fragile gifts are yet strong enough to outlast all the memories
of statesmanship and war? Next to the immortality of genius is
that which genius may confer upon the object of its love. Laura,
while she lived, was simply one of a hundred or a thousand
beautiful and gracious Italian women; she had her loves and
aversions, joys and griefs; she cared dutifully for her
household, and embroidered the veil which Petrarch loved; her
memory appeared as fleeting and unsubstantial as that woven
tissue. After five centuries we find that no armor of that iron
age was so enduring. The kings whom she honored, the popes whom
she revered are dust, and their memory is dust, but literature is
still fragrant with her name. An impression which has endured so
long is ineffaceable; it is an earthly immortality.

"Time is the chariot of all ages to carry men away, and beauty
cannot bribe this charioteer." Thus wrote Petrarch in his Latin
essays; but his love had wealth that proved resistless and for
Laura the chariot stayed.



A SHADOW.

I shall always remember one winter evening, a little before
Christmas-time, when I took a long, solitary walk in the
outskirts of the town. The cold sunset had left a trail of orange
light along the horizon, the dry snow tinkled beneath my feet,
and the early stars had a keen, clear lustre that matched well
with the sharp sound and the frosty sensation. For some time I
had walked toward the gleam of a distant window, and as I
approached, the light showed more and more clearly through the
white curtains of a little cottage by the road. I stopped, on
reaching it, to enjoy the suggestion of domestic cheerfulness in
contrast with the dark outside. I could not see the inmates, nor
they me; but something of human sympathy came from that steadfast
ray.

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