Washington Allston

“ And gaz'd as the eyes of the statue so blind
Reflected the beams of his own.
Twas the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion of old;
Fair Ellen remember'd, and sigh'd;
"Ah, could'st thou but lift from that marble so cold,
Thine eyes too imploring, thy arms should enfold,
And press me this day as thy bride."
She said: when, behold, from the canvass arose
The youth, and he stepp'd from the frame:
With a furious transport his arms did enclose
The love-plighted Ellen: and, clasping, he froze
The blood of the maid with his flame!
She turn'd and beheld on each shoulder a wing. ”

“ Seven days seven nights, with the shrieks of despair,
Did Ellen in torment convulse the dun air,
All covered with oil to the chin.
On the morn of the eighth on a huge sable stone
Then Ellen, all reeking, he laid;
With a rock for his muller he crush'd every bone,
But, though ground to jelly, still, still did she groan;
For life had forsook not the maid.
Now reaching his palette, with masterly care
Each tint on its surface he spread;
The blue of her eyes, and the brown of her hair,
And the pearl and the white of her forehead so fair,
And her lips' and her cheeks' rosy red. ”

“ Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and clear,
Yet doom'd, like the moon, with no being to cheer
The bright barren waste of her mind.
But rather than sit like a statue so still
When the rain made her mansion a pound,
Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill,
And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill,
From the tiles of the roof to the ground.
One morn, as the maid from her casement inclin'd,
Pass'd a youth, with a frame in his hand.
The casement she clos'd--not the eye of her mind ”

“ Sonnet On a Falling Group in the Last Judgement of Michael Angelo, in the Cappella Sistina.
How vast, how dread, overwhelming is the thought
Of Space interminable! to the soul
A circling weight that crushes into nought
Her mighty faculties! a wond'rous whole,
Without or parts, beginning, or an end!
How fearful then on desp'rate wings to send
The fancy e'en amid the waste profound!
Yet, born as if all daring to astound,
Thy giant hand, oh Angelo, hath hurl'd
E'en human forms, with all their mortal weight,
Down the dread void--fall endless as their fate! ”

“ A name or fortune lost his tongue inspire:
From house to house where'er misfortunes press,
Like Fate, he roams, and revels in distress;
In every ear with dismal boding moans--
walking register of sighs and groans!
High tow'ring next, as he'd eclipse the moon,
With pride upblown, behold yon live balloon.
All trades above, all sciences and arts,
To fame he climbs through very scorn of parts;
With solemn emptiness distends his state,
And, great in nothing, soars above the great ”

“ Her spear now a thunder-bolt flash'd in the air,
And sulphur the vault fill'd around:
She smote the grim monster; and now by the hair
High-lifting, she hurl'd him in speechless despair
Down the depths of the chasm profound.
Then over the picture thrice waving her spear,
"Come forth!" said the good Geraldine;
When, behold, from the canvass descending, appear
Fair Ellen, in person more lovely than e'er,
With grace more than ever divine!
Myrtilla. Addressed to a Lady, who lamented that she had never been in love. ”

“ From men's slow justice, shall employ the tongue
Of yon Supernal Court, from whom may flow
Or bliss eternal or eternal wo.
And since in all this hope exalting lives,
Let virtuous toil improve what Nature gives:
Each in his sphere some glorious palm may gain,
For Heaven all-wise created nought in vain.
Oh, task sublime, to till the human soil
Where fruits immortal crown the lab'ror's toil!
Where deathless flowers, in everlasting bloom,
May gales from Heaven with odorous sweets perfume ”

“ She cast her eyes of ether blue;
Her wat'ry eyes look'd up to view
Their lovelier parent's beam.
And ever as the sad lament
Would thus her lips divide,
Her lips, like sister roses bent
By passing gales, elastick sent
Their blushes from the tide.
While mournful o'er her pictur'd face
Did then her glances steal,
She seem'd she thought a marble Grace,
T' enslave with love the human race,
But ne'er that love to feel.
"Ah, what avail those eyes replete
With charms without a name! ”

“ E'en so, thou strangest of all beings strange!
E'en so thy visionary scenes I hail;
That like the ramblings of an idiot's speech,
No image giving of a thing on earth.
Nor thought significant in Reason's reach,
Yet in their random shadowings give birth
To thoughts and things from other worlds that come,
And fill the soul, and strike the reason dumb.
Sonnet On the Luxembourg Gallery.
There is a Charm no vulgar mind can reach.
No critick thwart, no mighty master teach ”

“ When every clown with microscopick eyes
The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?--
'Good sir, your pardon: In her naked state,
Her withered form we cannot chuse but hate;
But fashion's art the waste of time repairs,
Each wrinkle fills, and dies her silver hairs;
Thus wrought anew, our gentle bosoms low;
We cannot chuse but love what's comme il fauts.'
Alas, poor Cowper! ”

“ Sonnet On the Group of the Three Angels before the Tent of Abraham, by Raffaelle, in the Vatican.
Oh, now I feel as though another sense
From Heaven descending had informed my soul;
I feel the pleasurable, full control
Of Grace, harmonious, boundless, and intense.
In thee, celestial Group, embodied lives
The subtle mystery; that speaking gives
Itself resolv'd: the essences combin'd
Of Motion ceaseless, Unity complete. ”

“ Shall captive hold the struggling Gazer's will,
'Till vanquish'd reason own its full control.
And such, oh Rubens, thy mysterious art,
The charm that vexes, yet enslaves the heart!
Thy lawless style, from timid systems free,
Impetuous rolling like a troubled sea,
High o'er the rocks of reason's lofty verge
Impending hangs; yet, ere the foaming surge
Breaks o'er the bound, the refluent ebb of taste
Back from the shore impels the wat'ry waste.
Sonnet To my venerable Friend, the President of the Royal Academy. ”

“ When, wak'd as if to second birth,
Thy soul through every pore look'd forth,
And gaz'd upon the beauteous Earth
With myriad eyes of joy:
That made thy heart, like HIS above,
To flow with universal love
For every living thing. ”

“ E'en such, vain Power, thy limited control,
E'en such thou art, to mans mysterious soul!
Presumptuous man! would'st thou aspiring reach
True wisdom's height, let conscious weakness teach
Thy feeble soul her poor dependant state,
Nor madly war with Nature to be great.
Come then, Humility, thou surest guide!
On earth again with frenzied men reside;
Tear the dark film of vanity and lies,
And inward turn their renovated eyes ”

“ Obtrude the thought of death, e'en then we seem,
As in the revelation of a dream,
To hear a voice, more audible than speech,
Warn of a part which death can never reach.
Survey the tribes of savage men that roam
Like wand'ring herds, each wilderness their home;--
Nay, even there th' immortal spirit stands
Firm on the verge of death, and looks to brighter lands. ”

“ The wiles of envy, or the sordid train
Of selfishness, has been the manly race
Of one who felt the purifying grace
Of honest fame; nor found the effort vain
E'en far itself to love thy soul-ennobling art. ”

“ Nay, madly deem'd, if such their wond'rous skill,
The phantom of a God 'twas theirs to will.
But granting that he is, he bids you show
By what you prove it, or by what you know.
Oh, reas'ning worm! who questions thus of Him
That lives in all, and moves in every limb,
Must with himself in very strangeness dwell,
Has never heard the voice of Conscience tell
Of right and wrong, and speak in louder tone
Than tropick thunder of that Holy One,
Whose pure, eternal, justice shall requite
The deed of wrong, and justify the right. ”

“ Through too much honesty a seeming knave;
At all things grasping, though on nothing bent,
And ease pursuing e'en with discontent;
Through Nature, Arts, and Sciences he flies,
And gathers truth to manufacture lies. ”

“ Began to rub their stony eyes:
Such pleasant lounge, they all averr'd,
None saw since he had been interr'd;
And thus, like connoisseurs on Earth,
Began to weigh the pictures' worth:
But first (as deem'd of higher kind)
Examin'd they the works of Mind. [4]
Pray what is this? demanded one.--
That, sir, is Phoebus, alias, Sun:
A classick work you can't deny;
The car and horses in the sky,
The clouds on which they hold their way,
Proclaim him all the God of Day.
Nay, learned sir, his dirty plight
More fit beseems the God of Night. ”

“ Nay, e'en in dress eccentrick as in thought,
His wardrobe seems by Lapland witches wrought,
Himself by goblins in a whirlwind drest
With rags of clouds from Hecla's stormy crest.
'Has Truth no charms?' When first beheld, I grant,
But, wanting novelty, has every want:
For pleasure's thrill the sickly palate flies,
Save haply pungent with a rare surprise. ”

“ Thus also the evening cloud, exhibiting a fleeting representation of successive objects, is, perhaps, justly appropriated to Autumn, as in that Season the general decay of inanimate nature leads the mind to turn upon itself, and without effort to apply almost every image of sense or vision of the imagination,* to its own transitory state. ”

“ But soon the world, with wonder-teeming eyes,
His manners mark, and goggle with surprise.
"He's wond'rous strange!" exclaims each gaping clod,
"A wond'rous genius, for he's wond'rous odd!"
Where'er he goes, there goes before his fame,
And courts and taverns echo round his name;
'Till, fairly knocked by admiration down,
The petted monster cracks his wond'rous crown.
No longer now to simple Nature true,
He studies only to be oddly new ”

“ That slightest swervings from their nature's plan
Make them a lie, and poison all the man,
'Till black corruption spread the soul throughout,
Whence thick and fierce, like fabled mandrakes, sprout
The seeds of rice with more than tropick force,
Exhausting in the growth their very vital source. ”

“ Its barren sands, like drifted snows,
In ridges o'er the plain."
Thus plain'd the maid; and now her eyes
Slow-lifting from the tide,
Their liquid orbs with sweet surprise
A youth beheld in extacies,
Mute standing by her side. ”

“ Of gales and whirlwinds, hurricanes and storms.
For, lo! obedient to thy bidding, teems
Fierce into shape their stern relentless Lord:
His form of motion ever-restless seems;
Or, if to rest inclin'd his turbid soul,
On Hecla's top to stretch, and give the word
To subject Winds that sweep the desert pole.
Sonnet On Rembrant; occasioned by his Picture of Jacob's Dream.
As in that twilight, superstitious age
When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind
Seem'd fraught with meanings of supernal kind,
When e'en the learned philosophic sage,
Wont with the stars thro' boundless space to range. ”

“ Flash on his heart, and give his tongue the lie.
'Tis passing strange! yet, born as if to show
Man to himself his most malignant foe,
There are (so desperate is the madness grown)
Who'd rather live a lie than live unknown;
Whose very tongues, with force of holy writ,
Their doctrines damn with self-recoiling wit. ”

“ The life of man is long enough:
For did he but the half improve
He would not quarrel thus with Jove.
But most I marvel (if it be
That aught may wond'rous seem to me)
That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art,
Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart,
Refining with ethereal ray
Each gross and selfish thought away,
Should pander turn of paltry pelf,
Imprisoning each within himself ”

“ Mine eyes, impelled as by enchantment sweet,
From part to part with circling motion rove,
Yet seem unconscious of the power to move;
From line to line through endless changes run,
O'er countless shapes, yet seem to gaze on One.
Sonnet On seeing the Picture of Æolus by Peligrino Tibaldi, in the Institute at Bologna.
Full well, Tibaldi, did thy kindred mind
The mighty spell of Bonarroti own.
Like one who, reading magick words, receives
The gift of intercourse with worlds uknnown,
'Twas thine, decyph'ring Nature's mystick leaves,
To hold strange converse with the viewless wind ”

“ The Author, fearing that so singular a coincidence of thought and language might subject him to the charge of plagiarism, thinks it necessary to state that his poem was written long before he had the pleasure of reading Mr. M.'s.
2. The Author would be sorry to have it supposed that he alludes here to any individual; for he can say with truth, that such a character has never fallen under his observation: much less would he be thought to reflect on the Artists, as a class of men to which such baseness may be generally imputed. ”

“ He may be allowed also to disclaim an opinion too generally prevalent; namely, that envy and detraction are the natural offspring of the art. That Artists should possess a portion of these vices, in common with Poets, Musicians, and other candidates for fame, is reasonably to be expected; but that they should exclusively monopolise them, or even hold an undue proportion, 'twere ungenerous to suppose. The Author has known Artists in various countries ”

“ A conscious life that shall, nor cannot die?
E'en at our birth, when first the infant mould
Gives it a mansion and an earthly hold,
Th' exulting Spirit feels the heavenly fire
That lights her tenement will ne'er expire ”