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| 5 | . . . ROOM in your heart for him, O Mother Earth, Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair, And sang your praise in verses manifold And delicate, with here and there a line From end to end in blossom like a bough |
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| 10 | The May breathes on, so rich it was. Some thought The workmanship more costly than the thing Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments Found at Mycęne. And yet Nature's self Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass, |
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| 15 | Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush, Lavishing endless patience. He was born Artist, not artisan, which some few saw And many dreamed not. As he wrote no odes When Crœsus wedded or Męcenas died, |
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| 20 | [28] And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows, He missed the glare that gilds more facile men – A twilight poet, groping quite alone, Belated, in a sphere where every nest Is emptied of its music and its wings. |
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| 25 | Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare Even his slight perfection in an age Of limping triolets and tame rondeaux. He had at least ideals, though unreached, And heard, far off, immortal harmonies, |
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| 30 | Such as fall coldly on our ear to-day. The mighty Zolaistic Movement now Engrosses us – a miasmatic breath Blown from the slums. We paint life as it is, The hideous side of it, with careful pains, |
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| 35 | Making a god of the dull Commonplace. For have we not the old gods overthrown And set up strangest idols? We would clip Imagination's wing and kill delight, Our sole art being to leave nothing out |
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| 40 | [29] That renders art offensive. Not for us Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains |
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| 45 | Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air And make all life unlovely. Will it last? Beauty alone endures from age to age, From age to age endures, handmaid of God. Poets who walk with her on earth go hence |
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| 50 | Bearing a talisman. You bury one, With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field; The snows and rains blot out his very name, As he from life seems blotted: through Time's glass Slip the invisible and magic sands |
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| 55 | That mark the century, then falls a day The world is suddenly conscious of a flower, Imperishable, ever to be prized, Sprung from the mould of a forgotten grave. 'T is said the seeds wrapt up among the balms |
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| 60 | [30] And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings Hold strange vitality, and, planted, grow After the lapse of thrice a thousand years. Some day, perchance, some unregarded note Of our poor friend here – some sweet minor chord |
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| 65 | That failed to lure our more accustomed ear – May witch the fancy of an unborn age. Who knows, since seeds have such tenacity? Meanwhile he's dead, with scantiest laurel won And little of our Ninteenth Century gold. |
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| So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part, With that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute To flower and leaf in thine unending Springs! |
Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
Thomas Bailey Aldrich: The Sister's Tragedy.
With Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic.
Boston u. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company 1891, S. 27-30.
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxdhhb
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924022058360
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
Literatur
The Vault at Pfaff's.
An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York.
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Editor, Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer.
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Hrsg. von Janine Hauthal u.a.
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Columbus, Ohio 2004.
Renker, Elizabeth: The 'Twilight of the Poets' in the Era of American Realism, 1875-1900.
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Hrsg. von Kerry Larson.
Cambridge 2011, S. 135-153.
Renker, Elizabeth: The "Genteel Tradition" and Its Discontents.
In: The Cambridge History of American Poetry.
Hrsg. von Alfred Bendixen u.a.
Cambridge 2015, S. 403-424.
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Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer