Yours in the bonds,
G.W.C.
PROVIDENCE, September 1, 1843.
My dear Friend,—Your letter did not reach
my hands until last evening, when I returned from
Newport, where I have passed the last eight days, how
pleasantly I need not tell you. After the quiet
beauty of our farm home, there was a striking grandeur
in the sea that I never beheld so plainly before.
There is something sublimely cheerful about the ocean,
altho’ it is so stored with woe, and so constantly
suggestive it is of that ocean, life, whereon we all
float.
It was pleasant to me that Nature confirmed my judgment
of Tennyson. The little poem that closes one
of the volumes, “Break, break, break,”
etc., is so exquisitely human and tender, with
all its vague and dim beauty, that the waves dashed
to its music, and silently the whole sea sung the
song. Just so the jottings down of poets, the
few words that must be said, tho’ the Nature
which they sing is so limitless, and inexpressible
are the blossoms of poetry and all literature.
Will not the little song of Shakespeare’s, “Take,
oh! take those lips away,” be as immortal as
Hamlet? Not because chance may print them together,
but because it is as universal and more delicate an
expression. That charm pervades our favorite,
Tennyson. There is no rough-marked outline, all
fades away upon earnest contemplation into the tones
of his songs, into the colors of the sky. So
in the landscape, tint fades gently into tint, and
the beauty that attracts spreads from leaf to hill,
from hill to horizon, till the whole is bathed in
sunlight. Is not this fact also recognized in
other arts? In painting, the great picture is
without marked outline; in music, the truest and deepest
is undefined. Beethoven is greater than Haydn.
The precision which offends in manner is as disagreeable
everywhere else. Is it not because when named
as Precision, the depth which necessarily means a
graceful form is absent? As when we say a woman
has beautiful eyes we indirectly acknowledge her want
of universal beauty. Certainly a man of elegant
manners is admired not for himself, but what he represents.
Indeed, all society is only thus endurable. Nature,
and to me particularly the ocean, makes no such partial
impression; and therefore the poet who sits nearest
to the great heart sings rather the sense of vague
beauty and aspiration, of tender remembrance and gentle
hope, than a bald description of the sight. The
ocean is not fathomless water nor the woods green trees
to him, but a presence, and a key that unlocks the
chambers of his soul where the diamonds are.
Therefore, when I have been into nearer conversation
with Nature I have little to say, but my life is deepened.
The poet is he who with deepened life chants also a
flowing hymn which utters the music of that life.
You will understand why the little poem seems to me
so fine, therefore. This water I also see; but
not in me lies the power of the due expression of
its influence.
