146' 



POETEY AND POETS. 



storm. She called to him repeat- 

 edly, but he did not seem to hear : 

 at length he returned into the house, 

 and told his mother that if she 

 would give him a pencil, he would 

 tell her why he looked at the sky. 

 She acceded to his request, and in 

 a few minutes he laid on her lap 

 the following lines : 



" Loud o'er my head what awful thun- 

 ders roll ! 



What vivid lightnings flash from pole 

 to pole ! 



It is thy voice, O God, that bids them 



fly; 



Thy voice directs them through the 



vaulted sky ; 



. Then let the good thy mighty power 

 revere ; 



Let hardened sinners thy just judg- 

 ments fear." 



BURNS. 



Burns, in his autobiography, in- 

 forms us that a life of Hannibal, 

 which he read when a boy, raised 

 the first stirrings of his enthusiasm ; 

 and he adds, with his own fervid 

 expression, that "the Life of Sir 

 William Wallace poured a tide of 

 Scottish prejudices into his veins, 

 which would boil along them till 

 the floodgates of life were shut in 

 eternal rest." He adds, speaking 

 of his retired life in early youth, 

 "This kind of life, the cheerless 

 gloom of a hermit, and the toil of a 

 galley slave, brought me to my six- 

 teenth year, when love made me a 

 poet." 



BYRON. 



Moore relates, in his Life of Lord 

 JSyron, that on a certain occasion, 

 ' he found him occupied with the 

 History of Agathon, a romance, by 

 Wieland ; and, from some remarks 

 made at the time, he seemed to be 

 of opinion that Byron was reading 

 the work in question as a means of 

 furnishing suggestions to, and of 

 quickening, his own imaginative 

 powers. He then adds, " I am in- 

 clined to think it was his practice, 

 when engaged in the composition 



of any work, to excite his vein by 

 the perusal of others on the same- 

 subject or plan, from which the- 

 slightest hint caught by imagina- 

 tion, as he read, was sufficient to 

 kindle there such a train of thought 

 as but for that spark had never- 

 been awakened." 



The singular facility with which- 

 Goethe's poems were produced, re- 

 sembling improvisation or inspira- 

 tion rather than composition, has 

 contributed in some cases, no doubt, 

 to enhance their peculiar charm. 

 " I had come," says he, " to regard 

 the poetic talent dwelling in me 

 entirely as nature ; the rather that 

 I was directed to look upon exter- 

 nal nature as its proper subject. 

 The exercise of this poetic gift 

 might be stimulated and determined 

 by occasion, but it flowed forth most 

 joyfully, most richly, when it came 

 involuntarily, or even against my 

 will. 



" I was so accustomed to say over 

 a song to myself without being able 

 to collect it again, that I sometimes 

 rushed to the desk, and, without 

 taking time to adjust a sheet that 

 was lying crosswise, wrote the poem 

 diagonally from beginning to end, 

 without stirring from the spot. 

 For the same reason I preferred to 

 use a pencil, which gives the charac- 

 ters more willingly ; for it had some- 

 times happened that the scratching 

 and spattering of the pen would 

 wake me from my somnambulistic 

 poetizing, distract my attention, 

 and stifle some small product in the 

 birth. For such poetry I had a 

 special reverence. My relation to 

 it was something like a hen to the 

 chickens, which, being fully hatched, 

 she sees chirping about her. My 

 former desire to communicate these 

 things only by reading them aloud 

 renewed itself again. To barter 

 them for money seemed to me de- 

 testable." 



