Thomas Bailey Aldrich

 

 

Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur: Aldrich
Literatur: Poetologische Lyrik

 

                    At the Funeral of a Minor Poet

                      [One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]

 

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
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 Mycæne.   And yet Nature's self
Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass,
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 Mæcenas died,
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.
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,
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
  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.

Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck (Editionsrichtlinien).

PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxdhhb
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924022058360

 

 

 

Literatur: Aldrich

The Vault at Pfaff's.
An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey (1836-1907)
Editor, Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer.
URL: https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54112


Newcomb, John T.: Would Poetry Disappear? American Verse and the Crisis of Modernity. Columbus, Ohio 2004.

Renker, Elizabeth: The 'Twilight of the Poets' in the Era of American Realism, 1875-1900. In: The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. 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.

Renker, Elizabeth: Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866-1900. Oxford 2018.

Samuels, Charles E.: Thomas Bailey Aldrich. New York 1965.

 

 

Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer