酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Letters on Literature-Part4_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
With those deep and tender eyes,

Like the stars, so still and saintlike,



Looking downward from the skies."

It is from the skies that they look down, those eyes which once read



the "Voices of the Night" from the same book with us, how long ago!

So long ago that one was half-frightened by the legend of the



"Beleaguered City." I know the ballad brought the scene to me so

vividly that I expected, any frosty night, to see how



"The white pavilions rose and fell

On the alarmed air;"



and it was down the valley of Ettrick, beneath the dark "Three

Brethren's Cairn," that I half-hoped to watch when "the troubled



army fled"--fled with battered banners of mist drifting through the

pines, down to the Tweed and the sea. The "Skeleton in Armour"



comes out once more as terrific as ever, and the "Wreck of the

Hesperus" touches one in the old, simple way after so many, many



days of verse-reading and even verse-writing.

In brief, Longfellow's qualities are so mixed with what the reader



brings, with so many kindliest associations of memory, that one

cannot easily criticize him in cold blood. Even in spite of this



friendliness and affection which Longfellow wins, I can see, of

course, that he does moralize too much. The first part of his



lyrics is always the best; the part where he is dealing directly

with his subject. Then comes the "practical application" as



preachers say, and I feel now that it is sometimes uncalled for,

disenchanting, and even manufactured.



Look at his "Endymion." It is the earlier verses that win you:

"And silver white the river gleams



As if Diana in her dreams

Had dropt her silver bow



Upon the meadows low."

That is as good as Ronsard, and very like him in manner and matter.



But the moral and consolatory application is too long--too much

dwelt on:



"Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,

Love gives itself, but is not bought."



Excellent; but there are four weak, moralizing stanzas at the close,

and not only does the poet "moralize his song," but the moral is



feeble, and fantastic, and untrue. There are, though he denies it,

myriads of persons now of whom it cannot be said that



"Some heart, though unknown,

Responds unto his own."



If it were true, the reflection could only console a school-girl.

A poem like "My Lost Youth" is needed to remind one of what the



author really was, "simple, sensuous, passionate." What a lovely

verse this is, a verse somehow inspired by the breath of



Longfellow's favourite Finnish "Kalevala," "a verse of a Lapland

song," like a wind over pines and salt coasts:



"I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tide, tossing free,



And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and the mystery of the ships,



And the magic of the sea."

Thus Longfellow, though not a very great magician and master of



language--not a Keats by any means--has often, by sheer force of

plain sincerity, struck exactly the right note, and matched his



thought with music that haunts us and will not be forgotten:

"Ye open the eastern windows,



That look towards the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows,



And the brooks of morning run."

There is a picture of Sandro Botticelli's, the Virgin seated with



the Child by a hedge of roses, in a faint blue air, as of dawn in

Paradise. This poem of Longfellow's, "The Children's Hour," seems,



like Botticelli's painting, to open a door into the paradise of

children, where their angels do ever behold that which is hidden



from men--what no man hath seen at any time.

Longfellow is exactly the antithesis of Poe, who, with all his



science of verse and ghostly skill, has no humanity, or puts none of

it into his lines. One is the poet of Life, and everyday life; the



other is the poet of Death, and of bizarre shapes of death, from

which Heaven deliver us!



Neither of them shows any sign of being particularly American,




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号