Читать книгу Halloween, a Romaunt; with Lays Meditative and Devotional - A. Cleveland Coxe - Страница 3

PREFACE.

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Halloween has been printed, though never published before. In the winter of 1842 I had a private edition, of fifty copies, struck off for my friends. These have been freely loaned and circulated, till the book has been enquired for by strangers, at my bookseller’s; and at his instance, I now allow it to appear. Though I had not intended this, and for many private reasons rather disliked the idea of making it public; I suppose, on the whole, that it will be better to publish it now, than in after life, and to edit it myself, than to leave it to a survivor.

A curious incident suggested this little poem. It was written when I was but twenty. The same theme would now inspire a very different strain; and I can approve it only as a true exhibition of the manifold emotions at work, in a mind disposed to be religious, at that period of life when the world entices most, and character is yet fervid and unstamped. I am willing to make it public, therefore, if the gentle few, who have heretofore been my public, will vouchsafe to consider it only in reference to its place, between the trifles I have written before and after it. In its proper position I think its effect will be happy; for it is a favorite habit of mine to regard all that an author publishes, as his only complete work; in which, if he be a poet, the several parts will bear but the proportion of a stanza or a canto. I think this is an ennobling view to take of any writer; but a profitable one especially, where authors have written much, and ventured often before the world, while their opinions were in a state of progress and transition. By such a rule, I hope my own friends will judge whatever I have already, or may hereafter, put forth. I should be sorry if Politiano’s experience were not always mine, with regard to all I have yet published:

Dum relego scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno,

Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini.

A. C. C.

St. John’s Rectory, Hartford,

May, 1844.

HALLOWEEN.

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TO A LADY.

I.

If souls, once more, to these their haunts on earth,

Can come, dear Lady, from the Spirit-land,

I ask’d thee—would it spoil thine hour of mirth,

To see some sudden shape before thee stand!

And a cold shudder told me, and thine hand

Press’d dearer to mine own. But then said I,

Oh! if thy friend were dead, and could command

Some midnight hour to visit thee; reply,

Say, would it grieve thee, Love, if love could never die!

II.

I have been roaming in that Spirit-world,

And still my deathless love return’d to thee:

And still thy brow, thy locks in lustre curl’d,

And thy dear eye of beauty shone on me:

And thou, my guardian angel, changelessly,

Though all abandon’d, still wouldst leave me not!

And then I thought, if e’er an hour should be,

When my poor soul might leave that rayless spot,

Thee would my spirit seek, forgetless, unforgot.

III.

Fear not, dear Lady, if my voice to thee,

Sounds then thus sadly, from the Spirit-land;

The dream is o’er that then unhearted me,

And I in living shape before thee stand.

But take my story in thy lily hand,

And in some hour when sadness were not sad,

Let these loose numbers by thine eye be scann’d.

Learn what deep sorrows in my heart I had,

When I was far from thee, and all that’s bright and glad.

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ὰθανάτας ὶδεας ὲπιδώμεθα

τηλεσκόπῳ ὄμματι γαῖαν.

Aristophanes. Clouds. 286.

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