第30章

[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for I DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check.On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw.It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen case, - how old it is I do not know, -but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time.If you are curious, you shall see it any day.Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay.I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the CIGAR, so called, of the shops, - which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus.I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for.I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.]

Violins, too, - the sweet old Amati! - the divine Stradivarius!

Played on by ancient MAESTROS until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened.Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair.Passed from his dying hand to the cold VIRTUOSO, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader.Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle DILETTANTE who calmed it down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old MAESTROS.And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled and faded on its strings.

Now I tell you a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin.A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum; - the more porous it is, the better.I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity, - its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves.So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate.

Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's hands? Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin.These pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them thoroughly acquainted.At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere.Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant.

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a violin.The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first.

But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind's muffled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable without the whole world's crying out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric.Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin.Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its hundredth birthday, - (Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,) - the sap is pretty well out of it.And here is the song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated.-"Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno Inter minora sidera, Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum In verba jurabas mea."Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin phrases? Now I tell you that, every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the "Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge of my performances, and that, if made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a while.