Page 151 of 172 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE - Complete Poetical Works

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles "June." I quote only a portion of it:

There, through the long, long summer hours,

The golden light should lie,

And thick young herbs and groups of flowers

Stand in their beauty by.

The oriole should build and tell

His love-tale, close beside my cell;

The idle butterfly

Should rest him there, and there be heard

The housewife-bee and humming bird.

And what, if cheerful shouts at noon,

Come, from the village sent,

Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,

With fairy laughter blent?

And what if, in the evening light,

Betrothed lovers walk in sight

Of my low monument?

I would the lovely scene around

Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know, I know I should not see

The season's glorious show,

Nor would its brightness shine for me;

Nor its wild music flow;

But if, around my place of sleep,

The friends I love should come to weep,

They might not haste to go.

Soft airs and song, and light and bloom,

Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

These to their soften'd hearts should bear

The thought of what has been,

And speak of one who cannot share

The gladness of the scene;

Whose part in all the pomp that fills

The circuit of the summer hills,

Is--that his grave is green;

And deeply would their hearts rejoice

To hear again his living voice.

The rhythmical flow here is even voluptuous--nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul--while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. It is, nevertheless,

A feeling of sadness and longing

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as "The Health" of Edward Coote Pinkney:

I fill this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone,

A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon;

To whom the better elements

And kindly stars have given

A form so fair, that like the air,

'Tis less of earth than heaven.

		The individual's ability to perceive a problem is inversely proportional to his responsibility for the fix. Desconocido