Here for a sample is the seventh stanza:
76 lines✦
his was no classic temple order'd roundWith massy pillars of the Doric moodBroad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd,Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's broodThat battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued,With golden fillets and rich blazonry,Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rodeWith form divine, a fiery chivalry--Triumph of airy grace and perfect harmony. The second prize-poem, 'A Vision of Mermaids', is datedXmas '62. The autograph of this, which is preserved, isheaded by a very elaborate circular pen-and-ink drawing,6 inches in diameter,--a sunset sea-piece with rocks andformal groups of mermaidens, five or six together, singingas they stand (apparently) half-immersed in the shallowsas described 'But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun,' &c. This poem is in 143 lines of heroics. It betrays the in-fluence of Keats, and when I introduced the author to thepublic in Miles's book, I quoted from it, thinking it usefulto show that his difficult later style was not due to in-ability to excel in established forms. The poem is alto-gether above the standard of school-prizes. I reprint theextract here: Soon--as when Summer of his sister SpringCrushes and tears the rare enjewelling,And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these'Plashes amidst the billowy apple-treesHis lusty hands, in gusts of scented windSwirling out bloom till all the air is blindWith rosy foam and pelting blossom and mistsOf driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists,The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers,A glorious wanton;--all the wrecks in showersCrowd down upon a stream, and jostling thickWith bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stickOn.tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowdOf filmy globes and rosy floating cloud:So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock. * * * * * But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun;And a sweet sadness dwelt on every one;I knew not why,--but know that sadness dwellsOn Mermaids--whether that they ring the knellsOf seamen whelm'd in chasms of the mid-main,As poets sing; or that it is a painTo know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea,The miles profound of solid green, and beWith loath'd cold fishes, far from man--or what;--I know the sadness but the cause know not.Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintivelyA piteous Siren sweetness on the sea,Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell,Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell;Only with utterance of sweet breath they sungAn antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue.Now melting upward through the sloping scaleSwell'd the sweet strain to a melodious wail;Now ringing clarion-clear to whence it roseSlumber'd at last in one sweet, deep, heart-broken close. _1862-1868_ After the relics of his school-poems follow thepoems written when an undergraduate at Oxford, of whichthere are four in this book--Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 52, alldating about 1866. Of this period some ten or twelveautograph poems exist, the most successful being religiousverses worked in Geo. Herbert's manner, and these, I think,have been printed: there are two sonnets in Italian form andShakespearian mood (refused by 'Cornhill Magazine'); therest are attempts at lyrical poems, mostly sentimentalaspects of death: one of them 'Winter with the Gulf-stream'was published in 'Once a Week', and reprinted at least inpart in some magazine: the autograph copy is dated Aug. 1871,but G. M. H. told me that he wrote it when he was at school;whence I guess that he altered it too much to allow of itsearly dating. The following is a specimen of his signatureat this date.
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