: Suonion kootut runoelmat ja kertoelmat by Krohn Julius - Finnish poetry

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GEORGE CRABBE.

When a youth, with a voracious appetite for books, an old lady, who kindly supplied me with many, put one day into my hands Crabbe's Borough. It was my first acquaintance with him, and it occasioned me the most singular sensations imaginable. Intensely fond of poetry, I had read the great bulk of our older writers, and was enthusiastic in my admiration of the new ones who had appeared. The Pleasures of Hope, of Campbell, the West Indies and World before the Flood, of Montgomery, the first Metrical Romances of Scott, all had their due appreciation. The calm dignity of Wordsworth and the blaze of Byron had not yet fully appeared. Every thing, however, old or new, in poetry, had a certain elevation of subject and style which seemed absolutely necessary to give it the title of poetry. But here was a poem by a country parson; the description of a sea-port town, so full of real life, yet so homely and often prosaic, that its effect on me was confounding. Why, it is not poetry, and yet how clever! Why, there is certainly a resemblance to the style of Pope, yet what subjects, what characters, what ordinary phraseology! The country parson, certainly, is a great reader of Pope, but how unlike Pope's is the music of the rhythm--if music there be! What an opening for a poem in four-and-twenty Books!

"Describe the Borough--though our idle tribe May love description, can we so describe, That you shall fairly streets and buildings trace, And all that gives distinction to the place? This can not be; yet moved by your request, A part I paint--let fancy form the rest. Cities and towns, the various haunts of men, Require the pencil; they defy the pen. Could he, who sung so well the Grecian Fleet, So well have sung of Alley, Lane, or Street? Can measured lines these various buildings show, The Town-Hall Turning, or the Prospect Row? Can I the seats of wealth and want explore, And lengthen out my lays from door to door?"

No, good parson! how should you? I exclaimed to myself. You see the absurdity of your subject, and yet you rush into it. He who sung of the Greek Fleet certainly would never have thought of singing of Alley, Lane, or Street! What a difference from

"Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!"

"The man for wisdom's various arts renowned, Long exercised in woes, O Muse, resound!"

What a difference from--

"Arms and the man I sing, who forced by fate, And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate!"

Or from the grandeur of that exordium:--

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly Muse! that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth Rose out of chaos; or, if Sion-hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flowed Fast by the Oracle of God, I thence Invoke thine aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit! that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou knowest: Thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant; what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men."

With this glorious sound in my ears, like the opening hymn of an archangel--language in which more music and more dignity were united than in any composition of mere mortal man, and which heralded in the universe, God and man, perdition and salvation, creation and the great sum total of the human destinies,--what a fall was there to those astounding words--

"Describe the Borough!"

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