The Bard of Pompeii. Campania's Queen is wrapt in sleep, A midnight silence wreathes her brow, The night birds, lonely vigils keep, Upon yon holm-tree's leafy bough. With sandaled feet of crusted age, A harp he bears whose magic power To herald forth the dreaded hour, When nations living cease to be. The pale moon shudders at the sound The poplar shakes his aspen leaves, The breezes, startled, whisper low, The rippling streamlet murmering grieves, The clouds drop tears of silent wo. Still Pompeii in silence sleeps, While mourning Nature round her weeps. VOL. XXVI. And Heaven with Earth's confusion blend His solemn footsteps faintly fall, Till round them distance throws her pall. The drowsy night-hawks silent are, Dispels the last, lone, lingering star; But hark! What means that muttered roar, The wakened city startled hears The fate those echoing thunders tell, The dark cloud lifts its sable folds, And slowly trails them through the sky, Until their inky gloom unrolls And overhangs fair Pompeii; Then gathered in the whirlwind's grasp, Volcanic rivers upward stream And paint the air with hideous glow, The struggling mountain groans and reels, And at the thunder's sullen peals Dumb Nature shrinks with silent awe. 7 Confusion sole domain has won, But hark! That final, fatal crash! The shores of that ill-fated land. A stream of flaming liquid flows Down through that 'fair but fated vale;' At eve shall tell a 'mournful tale.' And ages distant long shall sigh "Entombed lies ancient Pompeii." C. F. B. Gerald Massey. Poems. By GERALD MASSEY. A new Edition-Revised, and greatly enlarged. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1860. pp. 423. THE name-Gerald Massey-first attracted my attention. I met it at a store down town, while looking at a row of volumes in "Blue and Gold." It seemed to me an old name, and I liked it. So I took down the book, and opened upon some singularly beautiful stanzas. Then I bought it, and began to look around for information about the author. But I could find no more than what the volume itself contained. No critic had honored him with contemptuous notice. So far as I could learn, no biographies of him had been written. Consequently, we must make Gerald Massey's acquaintance through his works, and the short sketch which accompanies them. Down to the time of Burns, poets came almost entirely from the better, or educated classes. Few, if any, laboring men wrote poetry. Burns first proved that the Muse would come to the hut of the mechanic or the shepherd, at the close of their daily work, and inspire them with strains so natural, pure, and touching, that all would do them honor. Burns first taught the poor man that he could, if he would, carry to his work a pure and cultivated mind, and yet not renounce his class or station. And who can boast of a nobler array of followers? Elliot, Nicoll, the Bethunes, Clare, Massey, and others, all have taken up the strain, verses. "A man's a man for a' that." True, some of them have ranted, but the same intensity of feeling which enabled the ranting, has caused them to write most excellent Some may claim that this verse-making has been injurious to the working classes-that it has made them more discontented and less fitted to meet their trials. Undoubtedly, Solomon was correct when he said, "In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." But it is no less true, that these working-class poets have elevated both themselves and their fellowlaborers. They have been enabled to give vent to those feelings of discontent which otherwise would be carefully fostered, and would give rise to "dogged melancholy and fierce fanaticism." So, we can well afford to pass lightly over their ravings, and solace ourselves with their passionately touching songs. Of this class of poets, Gerald Massey is the last, and, all things considered, the most praiseworthy. He was born in 1828, and therefore is about thirty-two years of age. His father could not writecould scarcely read, aad regarded the ale-pot as the dispenser of his best blessings. But Massey's mother was a different kind of person, and from her he derived his sanguine enthusiasm, his love of liberty, and his pride of honest poverty. The father earned but ten shillings a week; so the children, when old enough to work, were sent to the silk-mill. Imagine, then, Gerald Massey, a little fellow eight years of age, tramping to the factory, through the mud and snow, at five o'clock in the morning, and staying there until half past six in the evening. But soon the mill was burned, and for twelve hours the boy stood in the storm exulting in his freedom. Then he went at the still more unwholesome business of straw-plaiting. Working in a damp marshy place, he, with others of the family, caught the ague, and it clung to him for three years. At one time, four of the family, besides the mother, lay ill together; all crying with thirst; with no one to give them drink, and each too weak to help the other. Can you find much poetry in such a life? Will one heart in a thousand retain its inborn freshness? Let Massey himself give testimony. "My experience," he says, "tells me that poverty is inimical to the development of Humanity's noblest attributes. Poverty is the neverceasing struggle for the means of living, and it makes one hard and selfish. * When Christ said, 'Blessed are they who suffer,' he did not speak of those who suffer from want and hunger, and who always see the Bastile looming up and blotting out the sky of their future. Such suffering brutalizes. True natures ripen and strengthen in suffering; but it is that suffering which chastens and ennobles, that which clears the spiritual sight,-not the anxiety lest work should fail, and the want of daily bread. The beauty of suffering is not to be read in the face of hunger. Above all, poverty is a cold place to write poetry in. It is not attractive to poetical influences. The Muses do not like entertainment which is not fit for man or beast. Nor do the best fruits of poetry ripen in the rain, and shade, and wind alone they want sunshine, warmth, and the open sky." And again he says "I had no childhood. Ever since I can remember, I have had the aching fear of want throbbing in heart and brow. The child comes into the world like a new coin, with the stamp of God upon it, and in like manner as the Jews sweat down sovereigns by hustling them in a bag to get gold out of them, so is the poor man's child hustled and sweated down in this bag of society, to get wealth out of it; and even as the image of the Queen is effaced by the Jewish process, so is the image of God worn from heart and brow, and day by day the child recedes devilward." The man who can go through such trials and come forth unscathed, must have in him the ring of true metal. Judge from the following lines whether his heart was soured. "There's no dearth of kindness In this world of ours; Only in our blindness We gather thorns for flowers! As the wild rose bloweth, As runs the happy river, In the heart forever. Ever for golden dust, Well, in such scenes as I have described, the boy grew up. His mother had sent him to the penny school, and there a desire to read |