“A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work
of science by having, for its immediate object,
pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having, for its
object, an indefinite instead of a definite
pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object
is attained; romance presenting perceptible images
with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations,
to which end music is an essential, since the
comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite
conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable
idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply
music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from
its very definitiveness.
“What was meant by the invective against him
who had no music in his soul?
“To sum up this long rigmarole, I have, dear
B——, what you, no doubt, perceive,
for the metaphysical poets as poets, the most sovereign
contempt. That they have followers proves nothing:
“’No Indian prince has to
his palace
More followers than a thief to the gallows.’”
* * * *
*
SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou
art!
Who alterest all things with
thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s
heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull
realities
How should he love thee? or how deem thee
wise,
Who wouldst not leave him
in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted
wing!
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from
the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad
from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from
me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind
tree?
1829.
* * * *
*
Private reasons—some of which have reference
to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of
Tennyson’s first poems [1]—have induced
me, after some hesitation, to republish these, the
crude compositions of my earliest boyhood. They
are printed ’verbatim’—without
alteration from the original edition—the
date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged.—E.
A. P. (1845).
[Footnote 1: This refers to the accusation brought
against Edgar Poe that he was a copyist of Tennyson.—Ed.]
* * * *
*
O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s
eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy—
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill—
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
O! nothing of the dross of ours—
Yet all the beauty—all the
flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
Adorn yon world afar, afar—
The wandering star.
