Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, September 1850Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, September 1850
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
It was quite suitable for Byron to talk so in his Cain, but he has not
unsettled the position of the world’s estimate of its first mother, so
firmly established by Milton. He was, at the time, perhaps, thinking of
himself as Cain, and of his own mother as in one of her imprecating
paroxysms. Alas, that he should have gone on in lawless indulgence,
insulting, both in poetry and practice, the sanctity of domestic,
heaven-constituted, earth-blessing ties, until, after an abortive,
ill-directed struggle for poor Greece, he sunk into an early grave, at
36 aet., the very meridian of life! He was never satisfied with his
earthly lot, not even with the rare gifts of his genius, nor with the
achievements it made. He professed to consider a poet, no matter what
his eminence, as quite a secondary character to a great statesman or
warrior. As he had failed in the first character, he resolved to try the
second, and strike for the liberty he had sung. But Fame had no place
for him in this part of her temple. With the rest of the tuneful tribe,
he descends to the judgment of posterity as a Poet; with all men of
genius above the million, as more deeply responsible than they to the
author of all mercies; with all men whatever, as a MORAL AND IMMORTAL
BEING, accountable at the tribunal of God.
The mind would fail in any attempt to estimate the immense influence of
his genius and writings upon the youthful mind and morals of the past
generation—an influence to be augmented in a geometrical ratio in the
future. What is written, is written, constituting a portion of the
active influence circulating in the world—not to be recalled, not to be
extinguished, but to move on to the end of time, and finally to be met
by its originator, where all illusions will vanish, and all truth,
justice and purity be vindicated.
* * * * *
OUTWARD BOUND.
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
Fare ye well, our native valleys,
And our native hills farewell;
Though we part, your blessed memory
Shall be with us like a spell:—
For with you are souls in silence
Breathing for us hopes and prayers,
Loving eyes that weep in secret
Gazing on the vacant chairs.
Tender hearts made dear unto us
By unnumbered sacred ties,
Bend at eve their tearful vision
To the stars that o’er us rise.
There are children, darling children,
In the April of their years,
In their play they cease and call us,
And their laughter melts to tears.
There are maidens overshadowed
With a transient cloud of May,
There are wives who sit in sorrow
Like a rainy summer day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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