Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

[Born 17th of March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masbro', near Rotherham, Yorkshire; wrote in his seventeenth year The Vernal Walk; worked in his father's foundry until 1804; made trials of business in Sheffield, of which the first failed; published his first volume of verse, 1823; Village Patriarch, 1829; Corn Law Rhymer, 1831; retired from business, 1841; died 1st of December, 1849.]

'My feelings have been hammered until they have become coldshort, and are apt to snap and fly off in sarcasms.' The betrayal of sensitiveness, the apology for anger in these words, might lead one to surmise that the writer, Ebenezer Elliott, steel-merchant and poet, was no broad-thewed forger of the weapons of revolution who took to his trade with a will. Had one met him, instead of the burly ironmonger' described by an American visitor, one would have seen a man slender and of middle stature, with narrow forehead, bushy eyebrows under which gleamed the vivid fire of grey-blue eyes, sensitive nostrils, and a mouth apt to express love as much as scorn. It was not the bread-tax that first made him a poet, but the picture of a primrose in Sowerby's English Botany; this sent him to country lanes, the stream-side, and the moor, and he found his friends in the dragon-fly, the kingfisher, the green snake, and the nightingales of Basingthorpe Spring. Sensitiveness was more Elliott's characteristic than strength, and what strength he had was of an ardent, eager kind, less muscular than nervous.

Elliott's imagination was ambitious, and imperfectly trained he accordingly dealt with large and passionate themes, entering into them with complete abandon; and he was hurried on to passages of genuine inspiration; real heights and depths were within his range; heavenly lights alternate with nether darkness. Few of his longer poems, however, possess imaginative ordonnance; from the sublime he could pass to the turgid; from the pathetic to

the pseudo-romantic; and therefore few of these longer poems can be read with satisfaction in each as a whole. Nothing of worth that Elliott wrote was caught out of the air; each poem had its roots in fact; but the colouring in his earlier pieces is sometimes extravagant: as he matured, his imagination gravitated from the romantic to the real. There are not many figures in English poetry drawn from real life worthier of regard than the Ranter, Elliott's pale preacher of reform on Shirecliffe height, and his Village Patriarch, the blind lone father, with wind-blown venerable hair, still unbowed after his hundred years; though seeming coeval with the cliffs around, still a living and heroic pattern of English manhocd. The wild flowers and the free wild streams of Yorkshire never found a more eager and faithful lover than Ebenezer Elliott; but mere sunlight and pure air delight him. The silence or living sounds of the fields or the moor bring healing and refreshment to an ear harassed by the din of machinery; the wide peaceful brightness is a benediction to an eye smarting from blear haze of the myriad-chimneyed city. Animal refreshment riscs, by degrees, to gratitude, exaltation, worship.

But from the wilderness his heart full of passionate tenderness drew him back to the troubled walks of men. not be like

His poetry could

'The child

That gathers daisies from the lap of May,

With prattle sweeter than the bloomy wild.'

The indignation of the workers of England against the injustice of their lot found a voice in the Corn Law Rhymer. His anger is that of a sweet nature perforce turned bitter; this strife, he feels, may for ever mar his better self, yet it cannot be abandoned :

'My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarled

With gloating on the ills I cannot cure;'

:

and still he 'wooes Contention,' for in the end 'her dower is sure.' The sorrows of oppressed toil were sung by Elliott with a sincerity which makes amends for some imaginative crudeness. His pathos is not hard and dry like that of Crabbe; it is not that of a student of human misery, but that of a loving fellow-sufferer. And his ideal of happiness for the working man is simple and refined— some leisure, flowers, a good book, a neat home, a happy wife, and glad innocent children.

EDWARD Dowden.

AN EXCURSION TO THE MOUNTAINS.

[From The Village Patriarch.]

I.

Come, Father of the Hamlet! grasp again

Thy stern ash plant, cut when the woods were young; Come, let us leave the plough-subjected plain,

And rise, with freshened hearts, and nerves restrung,

Into the azure dome, that, haply, hung

O'er thoughtful power, ere suffering had begun.

II.

Flowers peep, trees bud, boughs tremble, rivers run;
The redwing saith, it is a glorious morn.

Blue are thy Heavens, thou Highest! and thy sun
Shines without cloud, all fire. How sweetly, borns
On wings of morning o'er the leafless thorn,
The tiny wren's small twitter warbles near !
How swiftly flashes in the stream the trout!
Woodbine! our father's ever-watchful ear
Knows, by thy rustle, that thy leaves are out.
The trailing bramble hath not yet a sprout;
Yet harshly to the wind the wanton prates,
Not with thy smooth lisp, woodbine of the fields!
Thou future treasure of the bee, that waits
Gladly on thee, spring's harbinger! when yields
All bounteous earth her odorous flowers, and builds
The nightingale, in beauty's fairest land.

III.

Five rivers, like the fingers of a hand,

Flung from black mountains, mingle, and are one
Where sweetest valleys quit the wild and grand,

And eldest forests, o'er the silvan Don,

Bid their immortal brother journey on,

A stately pilgrim, watched by all the hills.

Say, shall we wander where, through warriors' graves,
The infant Yewden, mountain-cradled, trills
Her doric notes? Or, where the Locksley raves
Of broil and battle, and the rocks and caves
Dream yet of ancient days? Or, where the sky
Darkens o'er Rivilin, the clear and cold,

That throws his blue length, like a snake, from high
Or, where deep azure brightens into gold

O'er Sheaf, that mourns in Eden? Or, where rolled
On tawny sands, through regions passion-wild,
And groves of love, in jealous beauty dark,
Complains the Porter, Nature's thwarted child,
Born in the waste, like headlong Wiming? Hark!
The poised hawk calls thee, Village Patriarch!
He calls thee to his mountains! Up, away!
Up, up, to Stanedge! higher still ascend,
Till kindred rivers, from the summit grey,
To distant seas their course in beauty bend,
And, like the lives of human millions, blend
Disparted waves in one immensity!

SONG.

Child, is thy father dead?

Father is gone!

Why did they tax his bread?

God's will be done!
Mother has sold her bed:

Better to die than wed!

Where shall she lay her head?

Home we have none !

Father clammed' thrice a week-

God's will be done!

Long for work did he seek,

Work he found none.

Fasted; was hungry.

Tears on his hollow cheek

Told what no tongue could speak:

Why did his master break?

God's will be done!

Doctor said air was best-
Food we had none;
Father, with panting breast,
Groaned to be gone:
Now he is with the blest-
Mother says death is best!
We have no place of rest-
Yes, we have one!

BATTLE SONG.

Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark;

What then? 'Tis day!

We sleep no more; the cock crows-hark! To arms! away!

They come they come! the knell is rung
Of us or them;

Wide o'er their march the pomp is flung
Of gold and gem.

What collared hound of lawless sway,

To famine dear

What pensioned slave of Attila,

Leads in the rear?

Come they from Scythian wilds afar,

Our blood to spill?

Wear they the livery of the Czar ?

They do his will.

Nor tasselled silk, nor epaulette,

Nor plume, nor torse—

No splendour gilds, all sternly met,

Our foot and horse.

But, dark and still, we inly glow,

Condensed in ire!

Kk a

« PredošláPokračovať »