The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861. Various
happened? What fiend has followed Mr. Collier through the later years of his life, putting manuscripts under his pillow and folios into his pew, and so luring him on to moral suicide? Alas! there is probably but one man now living that can tell us, and he will not. But this protracted controversy, which has left so much unsettled, has greatly served the cause of literature, in showing that by whomsoever and whensoever these marginal readings, which so took the world by storm nine years ago, were written, they have no pretence to any authority whatever, not even the quasi authority of an antiquity which would bring them within the post-Shakespearian period. All must now see, what a few at first saw, that their claim to consideration rests upon their intrinsic merit only. But what that merit is, we fear will be disputed until the arrival of that ever-receding Shakespearian millenium when the editors shall no longer rage or the commentators imagine a vain thing.
THE BATH
Off, fetters of the falser life,—
Weeds that conceal the statue's form!
This silent world with truth is rife,
This wooing air is warm.
Now fall the thin disguises, planned
For men too weak to walk unblamed;
Naked beside the sea I stand,—
Naked, and not ashamed.
Where yonder dancing billows dip,
Far-off, to ocean's misty verge,
Ploughs Morning, like a full-sailed ship,
The Orient's cloudy surge.
With spray of scarlet fire before
The ruffled gold that round her dies,
She sails above the sleeping shore,
Across the waking skies.
The dewy beach beneath her glows;
A pencilled beam, the light-house burns:
Full-breathed, the fragrant sea-wind blows,—
Life to the world returns!
I stand, a spirit newly born,
White-limbed and pure, and strong, and fair,—
The first-begotten son of Morn,
The nursling of the air!
There, in a heap, the masks of Earth,
The cares, the sins, the griefs, are thrown
Complete, as, through diviner birth,
I walk the sands alone.
With downy hands the winds caress,
With frothy lips the amorous sea,
As welcoming the nakedness
Of vanished gods, in me.
Along the ridged and sloping sand,
Where headlands clasp the crescent cove,
A shining spirit of the land,
A snowy shape, I move:
Or, plunged in hollow-rolling brine,
In emerald cradles rocked and swung,
The sceptre of the sea is mine,
And mine his endless song.
For Earth with primal dew is wet,
Her long-lost child to rebaptize:
Her fresh, immortal Edens yet
Their Adam recognize.
Her ancient freedom is his fee;
Her ancient beauty is his dower:
She bares her ample breasts, that he
May suck the milk of power.
Press on, ye hounds of life, that lurk
So close, to seize your harried prey!
Ye fiends of Custom, Gold, and Work,
I hear your distant bay!
And like the Arab, when he bears
To the insulted camel's path
His garment, which the camel tears,
And straight forgets his wrath;
So, yonder badges of your sway,
Life's paltry husks, to you I give:
Fall on, and in your blindness say,
We hold the fugitive!
But leave to me this brief escape
To simple manhood, pure and free,—
A child of God, in God's own shape,
Between the land and sea!
SACCHARISSA MELLASYS
I. THE HERO
When I state that my name is A. Bratley Chylde, I presume that I am already sufficiently introduced.
My patronymic establishes my fashionable position. Chylde, the distinguished monosyllable, is a card of admission everywhere,– everywhere that is anywhere.
And my matronymic, Bratley, should have established my financial position for life. It should have—allow me a vulgar term—"indorsed" me with the tradesmen who have the honor to supply me with the glove, the boot, the general habiliment, and all the requisites of an elegant appearance upon the carpet or the trottoir.
But, alas! I am not so indorsed—pardon the mercantile aroma of the word—by the name Bratley.
The late Mr. A. Bratley, my grandfather, was indeed one of those rude, laborious, and serviceable persons whose office is to make money—or perhaps I should say to accumulate the means of enjoyment—for the upper classes of society.
But my father, the late Mr. Harold Chylde, had gentlemanly tastes.
How can I blame him? I have the same.
He loved to guide the rapid steed along the avenue.
I also love to guide the rapid steed.
He could not persuade his delicate lungs—pardon my seeming knowledge of anatomy—to tolerate the confined air in offices, counting-houses, banks, or other haunts of persons whose want of refinement of taste impels them to the crude distractions of business-life.
I have the same delicacy of constitution. Indeed, unless the atmosphere I breathe is rendered slightly narcotic by the smoke of Cabañas and slightly stimulating by the savor of heeltaps,—excuse the technical term,—I find myself debilitated to a degree. The open air is extremely offensive to me. I confine myself to clubs and billiard-rooms.
My late father, being a man distinguished for his clear convictions, was accustomed to sustain the statement of those convictions by wagers. The inherent generosity of his nature obliged him often to waive his convictions in behalf of others, and thus to abandon the receipt of considerable sums. He also found the intellectual excitement of games of chance necessary to his mental health.
I cannot blame him for these and similar gentlemanly tastes. My own are the same.
The late Mr. A. Bratley, at that time in his dotage, and recurring to the crude idioms of his homely youth, constantly said to my father,—
"Harold, you are a spendthrift and a rake, and are bringing up your son the same."
I object, of course, to his terms; but since he foresaw that my habits would be expensive, it is to be regretted that he did