Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/90

78 but to sing the old songs of his poetical Zion in a strange land. "How is it," asks an eloquent critic, "that America's children, who wear the new costume of their condition with an ostentation so preposterous, put on the old threadbare garments of the past whenever they sit down to the lyre? While the prosaic American is acting poetry without knowing it, building up new cities in a night, as the poet in the old time reared his fabrics, the bard his brother is haunting the ruins of the European past. The transatlantic muse is an exile, as much as in the days of the pilgrim fathers. Her aspect is that of an emigrant, who has found no settlement; her talk that of one who 'fain would be hame to her ain countree.' In a word, all things that creep on the face of the earth have gone up with the American to his new ark of refuge, and naturalised themselves there; but again and again the dove is sent forth to bring in the olive-branch of song from a strange land." This indictment is confirmed by America herself. Says one of her shrewdest sons to his loving brethren,

Emerson, again, utters his aspirations for a day when his country's long apprenticeship to the literature of other lands shall draw to a close; when the millions who are there rushing into life shall find they can no longer feed on the sere remains of foreign harvests; when poetry shall revive and lead in a new age. And so with almost every literary "power" among his countrymen. Nowhere is the charge, such as it is, ignored—by grand or petty jury.

Now, imitation in poetry is ipso facto excommunication from the inner circle of the ecclesia of song. It strips the imitator of his priestly vestments. It cuts off the candidate from first-class honours. The world declines to recognise a revised edition of Homer's "Achilles," or a modernised version of Shakspeare's "Hamlet," or a corrected proof of Milton's "Satan." Imitation in such cases implies either the feebleness of self-distrust, or the boldness of piracy, and, either way, pronounces its own doom.

Has America, then, no poets? We are not sophistic enough to set about proving a negation of that sort. But if it be asked, "Has she any great poets?" then we, who love America much, but truth more,—who like to read Bryant and Longfellow, but not in forgetfulness of Shakspeare and Milton,—then we venture to answer, "Surely not." Here again we are not called upon to prove a negative. Let the New York Dante appear; let the Boston Chaucer arise; let the Charlestown Wordsworth come forth—each in the spirit and power, not merely in the mantle, of the respective bards—and forthwith the oracles of criticism are dumb, only to find new speech wherein to welcome the new comers. Understand what you may by the perhaps indefinite expression "great