| MAZELLI, AND OTHER POEMS By George W. Sands CONTENTS PREFACE Dedication. MAZELLI Canto II. Canto III. Notes To Mazelli THE MISANTHROPE RECLAIMED ACT I. ACT II. ACT III. ACT IV. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ISABEL THE LOCK OF HAIR. THE DESERTED. AFTER WITNESSING A DEATH-SCENE. LOVE AND FANCY. LINES WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S ALBUM TO A LADY. THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY. ACLE AT THE GRAVE OF NERO. THE VENETIAN GIRL'S EVENING SONG. TO ISABEL. A LEGEND OF THE HARTZ. PREFACE Under this head, I desire to say a few words upon three subjects, —my friends, my book, and myself. My friends, though not legion in number, have been, in their efforts in my behalf, disinterested, sincere, and energetic. My book: I lay it, as my first offering, at the shrine of my country's fame. "Would it were worthier." While our soldiers are first in every field where they meet our enemies, and while the wisdom of our legislators is justified before all the world, in the perfection of our beloved institutions, our literature languishes. This should not be so; for literature, with its kindred arts, makes the true glory of a nation. We bow in spirit when Greece is named, not alone because she was the mother of heroes and lawgivers, but because her hand rocked the cradle of a literature as enduring as it is beautiful and brilliant, and cherished in their infancy those arts which eventually repaid her nursing care in a rich harvest of immortal renown. For myself I have little to say. I have not written for fame, and if my life had been a happy one I should never have written at all. As it was, I early came to drink of the bitter cup; and sorrow, whilst it cuts us off from the outer, drives us back upon the inner world;—and then the unquiet demon of ceaseless thought is roused, and the brain becomes "a whirling gulf of phantasy and flame," and we rave and—write! Yes, write! And men read and talk about genius, and, God help them! Often envy its unhappy possessors the fatal gift which lies upon heart and brain like molten lead! Of all who have gained eminence among men as poets, how few are there of whom it may not be justly said, "They have come up through much tribulation." G. W. S. Dedication. Frederick City, September 7th, 1849. Dear Sir,— In humble testimony of my gratitude for your services as a friend, and my admiration and respect for your character and worth as an author and a man, permit me to dedicate to you the poem of "Mazelli." Your obedient servant, George W. Sands. To Samuel Tyler, Esq., Of the Maryland Bar. MAZELLI Canto II. Canto III. Notes To Mazelli Note 1. "The passage of the Potomac, through the Blue Ridge, is perhaps, one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, seeking a vent also. In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea. "The first glance at this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that this earth has been created in time; that the mountains were formed first; that the rivers began to flow afterwards; that, in this place particularly, they have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge Mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. "The piles of reckon each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to this picture, is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as Placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. "For, the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to the eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate of the calm below."—Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. Note 2. That the Indian mind and language are not devoid of poetry, the names they have given to this bird (the whip-poor-will) sufficiently evidence. Some call it the "Muckawis," others the "Wish-ton-wish," signifying "the voice of a sigh," and "the plaint for the lost." Those, who in its native glens at twilight, have listened to its indescribably melancholy song, will know how beautifully appropriate these names are. Note 3. It has been advanced by some writers, that the almost miraculous fortitude often displayed by Indians, under the most intense suffering, is to be accounted for by their insensibility to pain, resulting, they allege, from a defective nervous organization. From the absence of a display of gallantry and tenderness between the sexes, they argue also, in them, the nonexistence of love, and its kindred passions. This we think unjust, as it robs them of the honours of a system of education, which is life-long, and whose sole object is to attain the mastery of all feeling, physical or mental. The view taken of this subject by Robertson, in his History of America, to us, seems most accordant with truth. He says: "The amazing steadiness with which the Americans endure the most exquisite torments, has induced some authors to suppose that, from the peculiar feebleness of their frame, their sensibility is not so acute as that of other people; as women, and persons of a relaxed habit, are observed to be robust men, whose nerves are more firmly braced. But the constitution of the Americans is not so different in its texture, from that of the rest of the human species, as to account for this diversity in their behaviour. It flows from a principle of honour, instilled early and cultivated with such care, as to inspire him in his rudest state with a heroic magnanimity, to which philosophy hath endeavoured in vain to form him, when more highly improved and polished. This invincible constancy he has been taught to consider as the chief distinction of a man, and the highest attainment of a warrior. The ideas which influence his conduct, and the passions which take possession of his heart, are few. They operate of course with more decisive effect, than when the mind is crowded with a multiplicity of objects, or distracted by the variety of its pursuits; and when every motive that acts with any force in forming the sentiments of a savage, prompts him to suffer with dignity, he will bear what might seem impossible for human patience to sustain. But whenever the fortitude of the Americans is not roused to exertion by their ideas of honour, their feelings of pain are the same with those of the rest of mankind." Note 4. The slightest wound from an arrow dipped in the juice of the Manchenille, causes certain and speedy death. "If they only pierce the skin, the blood fixes and congeals in a moment, and the strongest animal falls motionless to the ground."—Robertson's America. S. L. Sawtelle. Dear Sir: To you, who have given me friendship in adversity, counsel in perplexity, and hope in despondency, permit me, as an expression of my deep and lasting gratitude, to inscribe the "Misanthrope." With sentiments of the highest respect, Your obt. servt., George W. Sands. Frederick City, September 1849. THE MISANTHROPE RECLAIMED A Dramatic Poem ACT I. ACT II. ACT III. ACT IV. Note to the Misanthrope "Then seek we, for the maiden's pillow, Far beyond the Atlantic's billow, Love's apple,—and when we have found it, Draw the magic circles round it." Considering the Mandrake, many fabulous notions were entertained by the ancients; and they never attempted to extract it from the earth, without the previous performance of such ceremonies as they considered efficacious in preventing the numerous accidents, dangers, and diseases, to which they believed the person exposed who was daring enough to undertake its extraction. The usual manner of obtaining it was this:—When found, three times a circle was drawn around it with the point of a naked sword, and a dog was then attached to it and beaten, until by his struggles it was disengaged from the earth. It was supposed to be useful in producing dreams, philters, charms &c.; and also to possess the faculties of exciting love, and increasing population. The Emperor Adrian, in a letter to Calexines, writes that he is drinking the juice of the Mandrake to render him amorous: hence it was called Love-apple. It grows in Italy, Spain, and the Levant. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS TO ISABEL THE LOCK OF HAIR. THE DESERTED. AFTER WITNESSING A DEATH-SCENE. * The most touchingly beautiful epitaph I have ever read, was written in that one word, "Peace." It seemed like the last sigh of a departing spirit, over the clay which it was about to abandon for ever. LOVE AND FANCY. LINES WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S ALBUM TO A LADY. THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY. ACLE AT THE GRAVE OF NERO. It is a circumstance connected with the history of Nero, that every spring and summer, for many years after his death, fresh and beautiful flowers were nightly scattered upon his grave by some unknown hand. Tradition relates that it was done by a young maiden of Corinth, named Acle, whom Nero had brought to Rome from her native city, whither he had gone in the disguise of an artist, to contend in the Nemean, Isthinian, and Floral games, celebrated there; and whence he returned conqueror in the Palaestra, the chariot race, and the song; bearing with him, like Jason of old, a second Medea, divine in form and feature as the first, and who like her had left father, friends, and country, to follow a stranger. Even the worse than savage barbarity of this sanguinary tyrant, had not cut him off from all human affection; and those flowers were doubtless the tribute of that young girl's holy and enduring love! THE VENETIAN GIRL'S EVENING SONG. Written in the National Gallery, at the city of Washington, on looking at a Mummy, supposed to have belonged to a race extinct before the occupation of the Western Continent by the people in whose possession the Europeans found it. TO ISABEL. These lines are inscribed to the memory of John Q. Carlin, killed at Buena Vista. A LEGEND OF THE HARTZ. 1. Bohdo. This hero, as his character is drawn in the original legend, or tradition, from which the material of these verses was taken (a tradition which gives the popular account of the formation of an immense mark or cavity in a rock, called the "Rosstrappe" or "Horse's footstep,") is worthy of being enrolled among Odin's Berserker. 2. Nimrod. "A mighty hunter before the Lord." He built Babylon and founded that royal line which terminated with the death of Sardanapalus; whose gentleness and aversion to blood spilling, together with his passion for his "Ionian Myrrha," cost him an empire, and gained him an immortality. 3. "It was named," says the tradition, "The Devil's dancing-place, from the triumph there of the spirits of hell." |