sixty thousand men of to-day would be requisite

LAMARTINE'S THOUGHTS ON POETRY. merely to lift up that stone-yet the platforms of

THE DESTINIES OF POETRY.

BY ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

Translated from the French by Park Benjamin.

the temples of Balbeck shew stones still more collossal, elevated twenty-five or thirty feet from the ground, to support colonnades proportionate to such bases!

We pursued our route between the desert on the left and the undulations of Anti-Libanus on the right, along certain little fields cultivated by Arab shepherds, and the bed of a large torrent that wound among the ruins, on the borders of which grew some beautiful walnut trees. The Acropolis or artificial mount that bore the grand monuments of Heliopolis, appeared to us here and there among the branches, and above the tops of the large trees. At last we saw it wholly revealed; and all the caravan stopped as if by electrical instinct. Nei

(Concluded from our last number.) Another day, two months later, I had crossed the summits of the Sannin, covered with eternal snows, and I had come down once more from Lebanon, crowned with his diadem of cedars, into the naked and sterile deserts of Heliopolis. At the conclusion of a long and painful journey, I descried, in the horizon far distant before us, across the last descent of the black mountains of Anti-Libanus, an immense group of yellow ruins, gilded by the set-ther pen nor pencil can depict the impression which ting sun, detaching themselves from the shadow of this single look conveyed to the eye and the soulthe mountains and shedding back the radiance of on our feet, as we were, in the bed of a torrent, in evening. Our guides pointed them out to us, and the midst of fields, around us on all sides trunks of exclaimed," Balbeck! Balbeck!" It was intrees, immense blocks of red or gray granite, blooddeed that marvel of the desert-the fabulous Bal-colored porphyry, white marble, yellow stone as beck, which rose all shining from its obscure sepul- dazzling as that of Paros, fragments of columns, chre to speak to us of ages, whose remembrance is chiselled capitals, architraves, volutes, cornices, lost to history. We advanced very slowly on our entablatures, pedestals, scattered members that fatigued horses, with our eyes fixed on those gigan- seemed palpitating, fallen statues with their faces tic walls, those dazzling and colossal columns, on the ground, and all of them confused, grouped which seemed to extend, to grow vaster and higher in piles, spread about in a thousand pieces, and as we drew nearer. A profound silence reigned trembling from all quarters like the lava of a volthrough all our caravan; each seemed to fear los-cano, which vomits forth the ruins of an empire! ing the impression of the scene, if he communica- Hardly was there a path to glide across these ted his thoughts; the Arabs even were dumb and remnants of the arts strewn over all the scene. appeared also to be strongly and seriously moved The iron shoes of our steeds slipped over and splinwith the sight, which equalized all our reflections. tered the polished acanthus of the cornices or the At length we reached the first blocks of marble, snow-white bosom of a woman's bust; only the the first trunks of columns, which the earthquakes water of the river of Balbeck gleamed into light had overthrown with a thousand more monuments among these beds of fragments and laved with its like dry leaves tossed and driven far away from the murmuring foam the fissures of the marble, which tree after a hurricane. Deep and large quarries, obstructed our course. which rove asunder like the gorges of valleys, the Beyond these white ruins, forming a marble deblack sides of Anti-Libanus, already opened their sert, rose the hill of Balbeck, a platform of a thousabysses under our horses' feet; vast basins of and paces in length and seven hundred feet in stone, whose walls still preserved deep traces of breadth, all builded by the hands of man in hewn the chisel, which had hewn from them hills of their stones, some of which were from fifty to sixty feet solid material, still showed some gigantic blocks long and twenty or twenty-five feet high, though scarcely detached from their beds, and others en- for the most part from fifteen to thirty,-that grantirely chiselled on their four faces, that only await-ite hill first presented itself to us by its eastern ed the cars or arms of generations of giants to re-extremity; with its deep foundations and immeasmove them. One alone of these masses of Bal-urable casings, (whose three pieces of granite beck was sixty-two feet long, twenty-four feet wide were a hundred and twenty-four feet in solid measand sixteen feet thick. One of our Arabs, alight-urement and nearly four thousand feet superficial,) ing from his horse, slid down into the quarry, and clambering up that stone by seizing hold of the projections made by the chisel and the moss which had there taken root, stood upon its top as on a pedestal and ran here and there over the platform, uttering wild cries. But the pedestal crushes by its magnitude the man of our times; man disappeared before his work. The united strength of * How much of this is fancy-Tr.

VOL. XIV-84

with the wide openings of its subterranean vaults, where the river engulphed itself at a bound, and where the wind meeting with the water gave vent to sounds like the distant peals of the great bells of our cathedrals. Upon that immense platform, the extremities of the great temples were display

ants.

ed to us, separated from the azure and roseate inner court, paved with bits of sculpture, with morhorizon, in hues of gold. Certain of these wild sels of mosaic, and antique vases, and delivering monuments seemed as if intact and come but yes-up to us his whole house-that is to say, two small terday from the hands of the artisan; others pre- lower chambers, without furniture or doors, he sented only remnants still erect, isolated columns, withdrew and left us, according to the oriental custhe sides of leaning walls, dismantled pedestals. tom, masters of his habitation. While some of The eye lost itself among avenues, gleaming with our Arabs were employed in thrusting into the the colonnades of various temples, but the too ele- ground, about this abode, iron pegs to which to vated horizon either limited the vision or shut in fasten by rings the legs of our horses, and others all of the marble multitude. The seven gigantic were lighting a fire in the court to prepare our columns of the temple, still majestically supporting pilace and cook our barley-cakes, we sallied forth their rich and colossal entablature, crowned all the to cast a second look on the monuments that enviscene and towered into the blue heaven of the de- roned us. The grand temples rose before us like sert, like an air-built altar for the sacrifices of gi- statues on their pedestals; the sun touched them with its last ray that glided slowly from column to We stopped only a few minutes to examine what column, like the flickering of a lamp, which a priest we had come to visit through so many perils and is carrying into the depth of the sanctuary. The from so great a distance; and, sure after all of pos- thousand shadows of the porticos, pillars, colonsessing to-morrow the spectacle which even dreams nades, altars, fell in moving masses over this vast could not restore, we resumed our march. The forest of stone, and, by degrees, replaced the glanday declined, and it became necessary that we cing lustre of marble and polished stone. Father should find an asylum, where, under our tent or off in the plain, there was a sea of rains bounded some vault of the ruins, we might pass the night only by the horizon, seeming waves of marble, and repose after a journey of forty hours. Going broken-up rocks, and covering a vast shore with from the mountain of ruins on our left, and a vast their whiteness and their foam. Nothing rose shore all white with fragments, and crossing some above this fragmentary ocean, and night, which pastures browsed by goats and camels, we directed fell from the gray heights of a chain of mountains, our steps towards a smoke, that ascended at a hun-wrapped it in gradual gloom. We remained for dred paces distance, from a group of ruins, inter- some minutes seated, silent and thoughtful, before spersed with Arab houses. The ground was un- this impressive scene and then reentered with slow even and hilly, and resounded under the hoofs of steps the bishop's little court, lighted by the fire our horses, as if the caverns, upon which we were of the Arabs. treading, were about to yawn open under our feet. Seated upon some fragments of cornices and capWe arrived at the entrance of a cabin low and half itals that were used for benches in the court-yard, hidden by sunken walls of marble, the door and we rapidly partook of the sober repast of a travelnarrow windows of which, without glass or shut-ler in the desert, and then remained for some time, ters, were made of pieces of marble and porphyry, before retiring to rest, conversing on the subject badly joined together with a little cement. A small that filled our minds. The fire went out, but the turret of stone rose one or two feet above the plat-moon rose full and brilliant in the limpid sky, and, form, that served as a roof to this mansion and a passing above the edges of a great wall of white little bell, like that which is represented on the stones and the broken top of a window in arabesque, grotto of a hermit, there swung to the gusts of the she illumined the enclosure with a lustre, which wind. It was the Episcopal palace of the Arabian was reflected back from every marble ruin. Silence bishop of Balbeck, who, in this wilderness, watched and revery possessed our souls. The subject of over twelve or fifteen families of the Greek com- our thoughts at that time, in that place, so far from munion, lost in the midst of the deserts and the the living, in that dead world, in the presence of so ferocious nation of the independent Arabs of the many mute witnesses, of a past unknown, but setBekah. Till then we had seen no living thing ex-ting at naught our little theories of history and of cept the jackalls that ran between the columns of the philosopy of humanity; what agitated our minds the great temple and the little swallows about the and hearts in relation to our systems and our ideas, cornices of the platform. The bishop, warned of alas! perhaps even our memories and individual the approach of our caravan by the noise we made, sentiments, God alone knows and our tongues did soon arrived, and, bowing at his door, offered me not attempt to tell; they feared to profane the sohospitality. He was a fine old man with hair and lemnity of that hour, of that star, of those thoughts beard of silver, a sweet and serious countenance, even we were silent. All of a sudden, something a noble address, softly modulated, in all respects like a sweet and tender complaint, a murmur serilike one's idea of a priest in a poem or a romance, ous and full of emotion, arose from the ruins beand worthy of showing his visage of peace, resig-hind the great wall, pierced with arabesque winnation and charity in this solemn scene of ruin and dows, the roof of which seemed ready to fall incontemplation. He caused us to enter into a little ward; this murmur, at first vague and confused,

soon spread around, prolonged and elevated louder, were so steep, that even the roes of the mountain and higher, and we distinguished the sound of many could not find a path on them, and our Arabs were voices in chorus, singing a monotonous, melancho-obliged to lie flat on the ground and peer over into ly and tender strain, which alternately rose, fell, the abyss to discover the bottom of the valley. died away, revived again and responded to itself. The sun was setting; we had marched for many It was the evening prayer, which the bishop with hours, and many more must elapse before we could his little flock offered up in that ruined precinct of recover our lost path and regain Eden. We alight- ' what had been his church, a pile of fragments re-ed from our horses and committing ourselves to cently heaped together by a tribe of idolatrous one of our guides, who knew, not far from thence, Arabs. We were entirely unprepared for that music of the soul, each note of which was a sentiment or a sigh of the human heart, in that solitude, in the depth of the desert, soaring thus from the mute stones, accumulated by earthquakes, barbarians and time. We were vividly moved, and accompanied with transported thoughts, sincere prayers and deep-felt emotion, these accents of divine poetry, until the chanted litanies had ended their monoto nous refrain, and the last sigh of those pious voices was absorbed in the customary silence of the old ruins.

This, exclaimed we, as we arose, will doubtless be the poetry of the latter ages,—a sigh and a prayer over tombs a plaintive aspiration towards a world, which knows neither decay nor death.

But I saw a inost striking image of this, some months afterwards, in a journey to Lebanon; and 1 ask leave to paint that also.

a staircase cut in the live rock long before by the Maronite monks-immemorial inhabitants of that valley, we followed for some time the border of the precipice and descended at last by those slippery steps to a platform detached from the rock which commanded all the horizon.

The valley at first sank down by wide and gentle declivities from the foot of the snows and cedars, which formed a strange contrast with one another; then it expanded itself into swards of tender verdure, like those on the high brows of the Jura or the Alps, and a multitude of threads of foaming water, departing here and there from the melting snow, furrowed these grassy slopes and went on to be reunited in a single mass of flood and foam at the base of the first flight of rocks. There the valley went down suddenly for four or five hundred feet and the torrent precipitated itself in company, and, expending over a broad surface, sometimes covered the rocks as with a liquid and translucent veil, sometimes detached itself in cascades, and, tumbling at length over huge and sharp blocks riven from the summit, broke itself into dashing masses and resounded like perpetual thunder. The wind of its fall reached us where we stood, wafting along like light wreaths the foam of the

I had once more descended from the last summits of those Alps; I was the guest of the sheik of Eden, a maronite Arab village, suspended under the sharpest tooth of the mountains, on the very limits of vegetation, inhabited only in summer. The noble old man, attended by his sons and some of his servants, had come to look after me even to the environs of Tripoli of Syria, and had welcom-water, tinted with shifting hues, scattering it here ed me in his chateau of Eden, with a dignity, heart- and there over the valley or suspending it like rofelt courtesy, and elegance of manners, which we ses to the branches of the trees or the proclivities imagine to have distinguished the old lords of the of the rock. As it extended toward the North, court of Louis XIV. Entire trees were burning the Valley of the Saints sank deeper and deeper, on the large hearth; sheep, kids, deer were heaped and widened more and more, and then, at about up in the vast halls, and old leathern bottles of two miles from our point of view, two naked and Lebanon wine, borne from the cellar by servants, shadow-wrapped mountains were seen approximaflowed for us and for our escort. After having ting, and leaning toward one another, leaving scarcepassed some days in studying these fine Homeric ly an interval of a few fathoms between their exmanners, poetical as the places we were visiting, tremities, when the valley ended and was lost with the sheik gave me his son and a certain number its grassy plots, its lofty vines, its poplars, its cyof Arabian horsemen to conduct me to the cedars presses and its milk-white torrent. High between of Lebanon, famous trees, which yet consecrate these mountains, which thus narrowed together, the highest peak of Lebanon, having been vene- was descried the horizon, like a lake of blue darker rated for centuries as the last witnesses of the glo- than the sky. It was a portion of the sea of Syria, ry of Solomon. I will not describe them here. framed by a fantastic gulf of the other hills of LebOn the return of that day, memorable for a travel- anou. This gulf was twenty leagues distant from ler, we wandered among the sinuosities of the us; but the transparency of the atmosphere made rocks and in the numerous, deep vallies into which it appear as if at our very feet, and we even disthe group of Lebanon is torn on all sides, and we tinguished two ships under sail, which, suspended found ourselves suddenly on the edge of a perpen-between the blue of the sky and that of the sea, dicular and immense wall of rocks, some thousands and diminished by the distance, resembled two of feet from top to base, which shuts in the Valley swans floating in our horizon. This spectacle so of the Saints. The sides of this granite rampart impressed us at first as to detract our gaze from

but poetry even to the end of time, when, all the sentiments of the human heart being extinct and absorbed in one, Poetry here below will be only an

But we have not yet reached that period. The world is young, for the mind still surveys an immeasurable interval between the actual condition of humanity and the end which it can attain. Poe

any other feature of the valley; but when the new of the grottoes and precipices sent them onward surprise had passed away and our eyes could pierce in confused and reiterated murmurs, mixed with the melting vapors of the evening and the waters, a the groanings of the torrent, the cedars and the scene of a different nature gradually unrolled itself sonorous falls of fountains and cataracts, with before us. which the mountain-sides are furrowed. Then At each bend of the torrent, where its foam left there intervened a momentary silence and a new a plot of earth, a convent of Maronite monks ap-sound, sweeter, more melancholy and serious, filled peared, built of a reddish stone on the grey of the the valley. It was the chant of psalms, which rirock, its smoke rising in the air between the tops sing simultaneously from each monastery, each of the poplars and cypresses. Around this con-church, each oratory, each rock-hewn cell, met vent, little fields, won from the rock or the tor- and mingled as they ascended toward us like a rent, seemed cultivated, like the best-tended gar- vast murmur and seemed to be the single melodidens of our country-houses, and here and there ous plaint of the whole valley, which had found a were seen the Maronites clad in their dark hoods, soul and a voice. Then a cloud of incense rolled returning from the labor of the field, some with upward from each roof, escaped from each grotto spades upon their shoulders, others conducting small and perfumed an atmosphere that angels might droves of Arab fillies, some holding the handle of have breathed. We remained mute and enchanted ploughs and driving their oxen between the mul- like those celestial spirits, who, winging their way berry trees. Many of these habitations of wor- for the first time over the globe which they deemship and toil were, with their chapels and hermi-ed a desert, heard ascending from these very bortages, suspended upon the advanced caps of two ders the first prayer of man. We then compreimmense chains of mountains, and a certain num-hended that it needed but the voice of man to vivber were even dug, like the caves of wild beasts, ify the deadest nature, and that this voice will be in the rocks, you perceived nothing but the door, (surmounted by a turret containing only a bell,) and some small terraces cut under the very jutting of the rock, where the old and infirm monks re-adoration and a hymn! sorted to breathe the air and catch some glimpses of the sun, wherever the foot of man could ascend. To certain ledges of the precipices the eye could discern no access, but even there were a convent, a cross, a solitude, an oratory, a hermitage and try henceforward will have new and lofty destinies some faces of solitaries, moving among the rocks to accomplish. It will be no longer lyrical, in or the trees, working, reading or praying. One of the sense in which we understand that word; it these convents was an Arab printing-office for the has no more enough of youth, of freshness, of instruction of the Maronite people, and there was spontaniety of impression to sing as at the first seen on the terrace a crowd of monks, going and dream of human thought. It will be no longer coming and spreading out over frames and reels epic; man has lived too long, reflected too much white sheets of wet paper. Nothing, besides the to allow himself to be amused by long-drawn metpencil of an artist, could depict the number and the rical narratives, and experience has destroyed his picturesqueness of these retreats. Each stone faith in those wonders, with which the epic poem seem to have brought forth its cell, each cave its captivated his credulity. It will be no longer drahermit; each spring had its motion and its life, matic, because the scenes of real life, in our days of each tree its solitary and its shade. Wheresoever liberty and political action, possess an interest more the eye fell, it saw the valley, the mountain, the pressing, more real and more intimate than theatprecipices, so to speak, growing alive under its rical representations; because the elevated classes glance, and a scene of life, of prayer, of contem-of society go no more to the theatre to be moved, plation separated itself from those eternal masses, but to criticize; because society has grown critior mingled with but to consecrate them. But very cal after however simple a fashion. It no longer soon the sun set, the labors of the day ceased, and entertains any good faith in the pleasures. The all the dark forms scattered over the valley entered drama is about to fall back to the people; it was into their caves or their monasteries. The bells born from the people and for the people and to from all around sounded the hour of regathering them it must return; only the popular class now and evening worship; some with a voice, powerful carries its heart to the theatre. Besides, the popand vibrating like great winds across the sea; ular drama, destined for the illiterate, has not for others with the light and silvery tones of birds a long time had an expression sufficiently noble, among the golden corn-fields and plaintive and far-elegant and elevated for the lettered class; the let wafted, like sighs through the night and the wilder-tered class therefore abandons the drama; and All the bells responded from the two oppo- whenever the drama shall attempt to lift the comsite walls of the valley and the thousand echoes mon people up to the language of the cultivated,

ness.

that audience will again desert it, and it must con- is poetry which surmounts and scrutinizes society; stantly redescend to the mass to be by the mass and which, displaying to man the vulgarity of his appreciated. Certain men of genius are attempt-labor, calls him incessantly onward, pointing out ing even now to do violence to this destiny of the Utopias, imaginary republics, cities of God, inspidrama. I offer up my prayer for their triumph. ring his heart both with courage to attempt and In any event there will remain glorious monuments hope to attain these objects. of their failure. It is a question of aristocracy and democracy; the drama is the most faithful image of civilization.

P

Next to this philosophical, rational, political, social destiny of future poetry, it has still a new destiny to fulfil. It must follow the bent of instiPoetry will be the song of reason; that will be tutions and of the press. It must be brought its destiny for a long time. It will be philosophi- down to the people and become as popular as relical, religious, political, social, like those epochs gion, reason and philosophy. The press begins to through which the human race will pass; above foresee this work—a work vast and mighty, which all, it will be intimate, personal, meditative and by constantly wafting the thoughts of all to all, grave; no longer a play of the fancy, a melodious will cast down mountains, lift up valleys, level the caprice of light and superficial thoughts, but the inequalities of understandings and will soon leave profound, real, sincere echo of the highest concep- no other power upon the earth than universal reations of the understanding, the most mysterious son, which will increase its force by the force of impressions of the soul. It will be man himself all. Sublime and incalculable associations of all and not his reflex-the sincere and perfect man. mind, whose results cannot be apprehended but by The premonitory signs of this transformation of Him, who has vouchsafed to man the ability to poetry have been visible for more than a century; conceive and realize it. The poetry of our days they multiply themselves in one day. Poetry is has already tried that form, and talents of an elebecoming more and more disrobed of its artificial vated order have demeaned themselves to stretch forms; it has now hardly any shape besides its forth a hand to the people-poetry has fallen with own. All other things become spiritualized in the song, and flown on the wings of a refrain into fields world; it also grows spiritual. It is no longer and cottages; thither it has borne some noble repleased with automata; it invents no more ma-membrances, some generous inspirations, some senchinery; for the first thing that the mind of the timents of social morality; but we must neverthereader now does is to strip the automata, to remove the machinery and to seek for poetry alone in a poetical work-to search also for the soul of the poet under his verses. But will it die first that it may be more true, more sincere, more rea! than it ever was? No, doubtless; it will have more life, more intensity, more action than it yet has, and I appeal to this coming age, which overflows with all that is poetry, with love, religion, liberty, and 1 demand if ever there was in any literary epoch a moment so remarkable for talent already produced, or for promises that will bring forth more? I know better than another-for I have often been the confidant of those thousand mysterious voices which sing in the world and in solitude, and which have not yet an echo in their renown. No, there never were so many poets and so much poetry, as there are in France and Europe, at the instant I am writing these lines, when certain superficial and preoccupied spirits exclaim that poetry has fulfilled its destiny and prophesy the downfall of humanity. I see no signs of the decadence of the There is a morsel of national poetry in Calabria, human understanding, no symptoms of lassitude or which I have often heard sung by the women of senility. I see some ancient institutions crumbling Amalfi in returning from the fountain. I have away, but at the same time young generations, translated it into verse, and it seems to me to apply whom the breath of life impels and urges onward so well to the subject which I am treating, that I every where and who will reconstruct upon un- cannot forbear inserting it here. It is a woman, known plans that infinite work, which God has who is speakinggiven to man to do again and again unceasingly the work of his own destiny. In that work poetry has its place, though Plato wished to banish it. It

less lament that it has yet only popularized passions, dislikes, envyings. To popularize truth also and love and reason and the exalted sentiments of religion and enthusiasm, should these popular poets consecrate their powers to the future. This poetry is to be created. The age demands it; the people thirst for it; the people are more soul-moved than we, for they are nearer to nature; they have need of an interpreter between nature and themselves; we must serve them and explain for them by sentiments rendered in their own language whatever God has implanted of goodness, of nobility, of generosity, of patriotism and of enthusiastic piety in their hearts. All the primitive epochs of humanity have had their poetry or their hymned spiritualism; shall advanced civilization be the only epoch which silences this inner and consoling voice of humanity? No-surely; nothing in the eternal order of things can perish; all is transformed. Poetry is the guardian-angel of humanity in all its ages.

When twelve years old, in th' orchard's corner seated,

Under the lemon or the almond tree,

And airs of Springtime over all things fleeted