After Dr.Watts's hymns the first poetry I took great delight in greeted me upon the pages of the "American First Class Book,"handed down from older pupils in the little private school which my sisters and I attended when Aunt Hannah had done all she could for us.That book was a collection of excellent literary extracts,made by one who was himself an author and a poet.It deserved to be called "first-class"in another sense than that which was understood by its title.I cannot think that modern reading books have improved upon it much.It contained poems from Wordsworth,passages from Shakespeare's plays,among them the pathetic dialogue between Hubert and little Prince Arthur,whose appeal to have his eyes spared,brought many a tear to my own.
Bryant's "Waterfowl"and "Thanatopsis"were there also;and Neal's,--"There's a fierce gray bird with a bending beak,"that the boys loved so dearly to "declaim;"and another poem by this last author,which we all liked to read,partly from a childish love of the tragic,and partly for its graphic description of an avalanche's movement:--"Slowly it came in its mountain wrath,And the forests vanished before its path;And the rude cliffs bowed;and the waters fled,--And the valley of life was the tomb of the dead."In reading this,"Swiss Minstrel's Lament over the Ruins of Goldau,"I first felt my imagination thrilled with the terrible beauty of the mountains--a terror and a sublimity which attracted my thoughts far more than it awed them.But the poem in which they burst upon me as real presences,unseen,yet known in their remote splendor as kingly friends before whom I could bow,yet with whom I could aspire,--for something like this I think mountains must always be to those who truly love them,--was Coleridge's "Mont Blanc before Sunrise,"in this same "First Class Book."I believe that poetry really first took possession of me in that poem,so that afterwards I could not easily mistake the genuineness of its ring,though my ear might not be sufficiently trained to catch its subtler harmonies.This great mountain poem struck some hidden key-note in my nature,and Iknew thenceforth something of what it was to live in poetry,and to have it live in me.Of course I did not consider my own foolish little versifying poetry.The child of eight or nine years regarded her rhymes as only one among her many games and pastimes.
But with this ideal picture of mountain scenery there came to me a revelation of poetry as the one unattainable something which Imust reach out after,because I could not live without it.The thought of it was to me like the thought of God and of truth.To leave out poetry would be to lose the real meaning of life.Ifelt this very blindly and vaguely,no doubt;but the feeling was deep.It was as if Mont Blanc stood visibly before me,while Imurmured to myself in lonely places --"Motionless torrents!silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon?Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows?Who with lovely flowers Of living blue spread garlands at your feet?"And then the "Pine groves with their soft and soul-like sound"gave glorious answer,with the streams and torrents,and my child-heart in its trance echoed the poet's invocation,--"Rise,like a cloud of incense from the earth!
