Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in The Amulet, 1832/Corinne at the Cape of Misena
CORINNE
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CORINNE AT THE CAPE OF MISENA.
BY L. E. L.
How much of mind is in this little scroll,
Whereon the artist's skill has bodied forth
The shapes which genius dreamed!—The quiet sea
Sleeps in the distance, with that happy sleep
Which, in the human world, but childhood knows—
Childhood, whose hope is present! Pale with light,
For colour has departed with the sun,
The moon has risen in the faint grey sky,
Bearing a clear young beauty on her brow,
Which has been turned to earth too short a while
To wear its shadow. With a darker hue
Than when the sun is on their shining leaves
The myrtles spread their branches to the night,
Whose dews are falling. By the moonlight touched
With silvery softness and with gentle shade,
The fairy city seems as if repose
And sleep alone were in its quiet walls.
Silence was made for such a night, or song,
And song has just been floating o'er the waves;
The lute is yet within its mistress' hand,
Though now the music from its chords is gone
To wander o'er the waters, and to perish:
Ay, perished long the music of those chords,
They had but life from sweetness, so they died.
Not so the words!—for, even as the wind,
That wafts the seeds which afterwards spring up
In a perpetual growth, and then subsides,
The song was only minister to words
Which have the immortality of pain.
A lady leans upon that silent lute,
With large dark eyes, like the eternal night,
So spiritual and so melancholy—
The exquisite Corinne!
There is a power
Given to some minds to fashion and create,
Until the being present on the page
Is actual as our life's vitality!
Such was Corinne—and such the mind that gave
Its own existence to its work. Corinne
Is but another name for her who wrote,
Who felt, and poured her spirit on her lay.
What are the feelings but her own? The hope
Which in the bleak world finds no resting-place,
And, like the dove, returns unsatisfied,
But bringing no green leaf, it seeks its ark
With wearied wing, and plumes whose gloss is gone.
Here, too, is traced that love which hath too much
Of heaven in its fine nature for the earth—
Where love pines for a home and finds a grave;
The eagerness which turns to lassitude;
The thirst of praise which ends in bitterness;
Those high aspirings which but rise to find
What weight is on their wings; and that keen sense
Of the wide difference between ourselves
And those who are our fellows; and which marks
A withered ring around all confidence:
We cannot soothe the pain we do not know.
The heart is sacrificed upon the shrine
Of mental power—at least its happiness.
A whole life's bitterness is in the song
Whose words, too truly, are the singer's own.
Fragment of Corinne's Song at Naples.
"Thus, shrinking from the desert spread around,
Doth Genius wander through the world, and finds
No likeness to himself—no echo given
By Nature: and the common crowd but hold
As madness that desire of the rapt soul
Which finds not in this world enough of air,
Of high enthusiasm, or of hope!
For Destiny compels exalted minds;
The poet whose imagination draws
Its power from loving and from suffering,
They are the banished of another sphere:
For the Almighty goodness might not frame
All for a few—th' elect or the proscribed.
Why spoke the ancients with such awe of Fate?
What had this terrible Fate to do with them,
The common and the quiet, who pursue
The seasons, and do follow timidly
The beaten track of ordinary life?
But she, the priestess of the oracle,
Shook with the presence of a cruel power.
I know not what the involuntary force
That plunges Genius into misery.
Genius doth catch that music of the spheres
Which mortal ear was never meant to know;
Genius can penetrate the mysteries
Of feeling all unknown to other hearts;–
A Power hath entered in his inmost soul,
Whose presence he may not contain."*
[1]
Such were the words of one who felt those words
With all the truth of sorrow. In this world,
Grief and life go together; 'neath the tent,
The palace, and the cottage, woe is heard,
Speaking with suffering's universal voice.
But of the many who at night are glad
To lay their common burden down and rest,
Surely the mind endowed with gifts from heaven
Must be most glad, for it foresees its home,
And saith, in its rejoicing orison,
Thank God, thank God, there is a grave; and hope
That looks beyond to heaven!
- ↑ * The part marked as quotation is translated literally from Corinne's song. Its only merit is its exactness, for I have scarcely permitted myself to alter a word. This brief passage is chosen as having less reference to the story than other parts equally beautiful. There occurs, soon afterwards, one of those almost startling remarks which give such peculiarity of thoughtfulness to Madame de Stael's writings. Corinne says, "Perhaps it is what we shall do to-morrow that will decide our fate; perhaps even yesterday have we said some word that nothing can recal." I know not what may be the effect on others, but I could never read this short, but true, remark without a feeling of terror.L. E. L.