WCP1578

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset. April 29th. 1894.

My dear Myers¹

Thanks for the list of short poems you consider among the finest in our language. It only shows how different are tastes! Yet as to the very finest we almost agree. "Crossing the Bar" is to me the most perfect & exquisitely patheric thing Tennyson wrote — most of the others you name are, to me, mere beautiful fantasies — often umtelligible [sic]. The first four stanzas of the "Ode on the Death of Wellington" seem to me finer, — but Longfellow's verses on same subject finer still, & with his "Arsenal at Springfield" deserve to come in the first rank.

Among the little I have read of Browning, "Saul" seems to me the finest poetry, yet not in the first rank, owing to its monotony, and wordiness, comparatively limited range and weak conclusion. Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality" is a poem as to which there can hardly be two opinions. Of Swinburne I have read hardly anything, being disgusted with his endless torrents of words and rhymes, in which the meaning is often drowned. Of Shelley, I think "The Cloud" and "The Skylark" among his most exquisite gems, while I admire "Men of England," "England in 1819", and parts of his "Ode to Liberty" & "Queen Mab" for their political and moral teachings. But, with the very best of all these I rand the "Farewell to Earth", as at once the most harmonious, philosophical, & emotional poem. When I was 14 or 15 years old I met with some verses — "On the refusal of a Monument to Byron in Westminster Abbey" which so attracted me that I learnt it & have never forgotten it.

It begins — "Away with Epitaph and sculptured bust!"

and concludes thus —...... Dark and Wild

his song at times, his spirit was the child

Of burning passion. yet when he awoke

From his dark hours of bondage; when he broke

His cage & seized his harp, did he not wake

A peal of matchless melody & shake

The very earth with joy. Still thrills the heart

Of man with those sweet notes. Scared despots start²

[2] To curse them from their thrones. They pierce the cell

And cheer the captive in his chains: they tell

Lessons of life to struggling liberty.

Death mars the man but spares his memory

Nor tears one laurel from his wreath of fame.

How many glorious thoughs [sic] of his we claim

Our heritage forever; beacon lights

To guide the bark of freedom through the nights

Of tyrany [sic] and woe, when not a star

Of hope looks down to glad the mariner —

Thoughts which must ever haunt us, like some dream

Of childhood which we ne'er forget, a gleam

Of sunshine flashing o'er life's troubled stream.

———————-

The last three lines seem to me excessively fine. I got the lines from a Birmingham weekly newspaper — "The Constitutional" about 1857-8. They seem rather more applicable to Shelley than to Byron.

The lines you quote as from another poem by Poe, are from "The Kingdom", and are at p.122 of the vol. I sent. It is fine, but not, I think, as fine as the others. Do you know Harris' Poems — The "Lyric of the Goldrn [sic] Age" & others. There is some very fine poetry in them, purpoting [sic] to be from Byron, Pollock and others. You will see I have the bad taste to prefer the old school of simple straight-forward verse to the modern school of involved mazes of words rendering it a puzzle to get at the meaning.

Yours very truly Alfred R. Wallace.