POEMS AND SONNETS

OUR idolatry of Shakspeare (not to say our admiration) ceases
with his plays. In his other productions, he was a mere author,
though not a common author. It was only by representing
others, that he became himself. He could go out of himself,
and express the soul of Cleopatra; but in his own person, he ap-
peared to be always waiting for the prompter's cue. In express-
ing the thoughts of others, he seemed inspired; in expressing
his own, he was a mechanic. The licence of an assumed cha-
racter was necessary to restore his genius to the privileges of
nature, and to give him courage to break through the tyranny of
fashion, the trammels of custom. In his plays, he was "as
broad and casing as the general air:" in his poems, on the con-
trary, he appears to be "cooped, and cabined in" by all the
technicalities of art, by all the petty intricacies of thought and
language which poetry had learned from the controversial jargon
of the schools, where words had been made a substitute for things.
There was, if we mistake not, something of modesty, and a pain-
ful sense of personal propriety at the bottom of this. Shak-
speare's imagination, by identifying itself with the strongest cha-
racters in the most trying circumstances, grappled at once with
nature, and trampled the littleness of art under his feet: the
rapid changes of situation, the wide range of the universe, gave
him life and spirit, and afforded him full scope to his genius; but
returned into his closet again, and having assumed the badge
of his profession, he could only labor in his vocation, and con-
form himself to existing models. The thoughts, the passions,
the words which the poet's pen,
glancing from heaven to
earth, from earth to heaven," lent to others, shook off the fetters

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of pedantry and affectation; while his own thoughts and feelings, standing by themselves, were seized upon as lawful prey, and tortured to death according to the established rules and practice of the day. In a word, we do not like Shakspeare's poems, because we like his plays: the one, in all their excellences, are just the reverse of the other. It has been the fashion of late to cry up our author's poems as equal to his plays: this is the desperate cant of modern criticism. We would ask, was there the slightest comparison between Shakspeare, and either Chaucer or Spenser, as mere poets? Not any.—The two poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and Lucrece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses. They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. The author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not of his subject,—not of what his characters would feel, but of what he shall say; and as it must happen in all such cases, he always puts into their mouths those things which they would be the last to think of, and which it shows the greatest ingenuity in him to find out. The whole is labored, uphill work. The poet is perpetually singling out the difficulties of the art to make an exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them. He is making perpetual trials of them, as if his mastery over them were doubted. The images, which are often striking, are generally applied to things which they are the least like: so that they do not blend with the poem, but seem stuck upon it, like splendid patch-work, or remain quite distinct from it, like detached substances, painted and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. The speakers are like persons who have both leisure and inclination to make riddles on their own situation, and to twist and turn every object or incident into acrostics and anagrams. Everything is spun out into allegory; and a digres sion is always preferred to the main story. Sentiment is built up upon plays of words; the hero or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, but from the force of dialectics. There is besides a strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry, to make us see their feelings in the faces of the persons; and again, consistently with this, in the description of the picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those circumstances are

chiefly insisted on, which it would be impossible to convey except by words. The invocation to Opportunity in the Tarquin and Lucrece is full of thoughts and images, but at the same time it is over-loaded by them. The concluding stanza expresses all our objections to this kind of poetry :—

"Oh! idle words, servants to shallow fools;
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators:
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate when leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be their mediators:
For me I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past all help of law."

The description of the horse in Venus and Adonis has been particularly admired, and not without reason ;

"Round hoof'd, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eyes, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide,
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back."

Now this inventory of perfections shows great knowledge of the horse; and is good matter-of-fact poetry. Let the reader but compare it with a speech in The Midsummer Night's Dream where Theseus describes his hounds

"And their heads are hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew "

and he will perceive at once what we mean by the difference between Shakspeare's own poetry, and that of his plays. We prefer the Passionate Pilgrim very much to the Lover's Complaint. It has been doubted whether the latter poem is Shakspeare's.

Of the Sonnets we do not well know what to say. The subject of them seems to be somewhat equivocal; but many of them are highly beautiful in themselves, and interesting as they relate to the state of the personal feelings of the author. The following are some of the most striking :

CONSTANCY.

"Let those who are in favor with their stars,
Of public honor and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlook'd for joy in that I honor most.

Great princes' favorites their fair leaves spread,
But as the marigold in the sun's eye;
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honor razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:

Then happy I, that love and am belov'd,
Where I may not remove, nor be remov'd."

LOVE'S CONSOLATION

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my out-cast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate :

For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

NOVELTY.

"My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming :

I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandis'd whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays :
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometimes hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."

LIFE'S DECAY.

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

In all these, as well as in many others, there is a mild tone of sentiment, deep, mellow, and sustained, very different from the crudeness of his earlier poems.

THE END.