Poetry and names.
We are told that, in early youth, Virgil conceived the idea of celebrating the wars of the Romans in immortal verse. But the intended epic was crushed in the bud by a difficulty which did not strike the poet on the first conception. The names of the ancient Italians were so rugged, and so barbarous, that his muse would not consent to hitch them into verse; and as a poet uninspired by the muse is no poet at all, he was compelled to forego his design, and the world lost forever the great work that might possibly have resulted from it. We have often thought what a difficulty a poet would have to encounter, who should make an epic in this region. We say nothing of the patronymics — the Smiths, Thompsons, Johnsons and Joneses, that it would be necessary to hitch into rhyme. But how could a poet immortalize our streams and our mountains? Homer made Scamander and Simois illustrious. Virgil made the Tiber classical, the four rivers of Paradise, and ‘"Abanar and Pharphar, lucid streams"’ shine more beautifully in the pages of Milton, than they did in their proper person. Of late arirs ‘"Auld Ayr"’ and the banks of bonny Doune, are familiar to our ears as strains of oft-repeated music, through the song of Burns. The rivers and lakes of Scootland murmur and flash through the pages of Scott. Byron makes us familiar with the Tagus and the Rhine, as with our own bed chambers.--But what bard is so strong in verse that he can make James River and Gillie's Creek, and Shockoe, and Westham, and Falling Creeks — all proper streams enough, and wanting nothing but immortal song to make them immortal — anything but vulgar? Suppose we take a hero, Smith, famous for killing Indians, as Achilles was famed for killing Trojans, and place him in a similar predicament with Achilles, when Simois and Xanthus joined streams to overwhelm him — suppose we put him in the falls of James River near Haxall's mills — what muse will condescend, upon our invitation, to sing the horrors of the ‘"Diving Rock,"’ or the dark mystery that closes around ‘"Little Hell?"’ What divinity shall we invoke to out the knot of the difficulty when we shall have once gotten him in the water? And our mountains; noble mountains they are, beyond a doubt. Ida was not more worthy to be the favorite resort of Jupiter, than some of them. Olym?us certainly did not better deserve to be the home of all the Gods; the place where Vulcan constructed palaces for them all, from the thundering majesty of Jove, down to the insinuating grace of Mercury. And mountains are favorites in the eyes of the poets. Not a bard but has something to say about them, from Homer to Tennyson.--The Soottish poets especially have made us familiar with every spur and cliff of their highlands. The old pocts tell us not only of Ida and Olympus, but of Parnassus, Pelion, Ossa, Atlas, and a thousand others. In Byron's poems, the crags of Susitania, and the cliffs of Abania, shine like their own snowy tops, when the rays of the setting sun fall upon them. And beautiful as they are, they are not more beautiful than our own deep blue mountains. But how shall we put Rockfish Gap, or the Peaks of Otter, or the Sugar Loaf, or the Warm Spring Mountain into rhyme; or, if you insist on it, into blank verse? It seems to us very difficult to be done. Let us try our hand: ‘ Sweet to the man who loves a nap,Is the cool breath of Rockfish Gap;
And sweeter still, though somewhat hotter,
The everlasting Peaks of Otter.
Sweetest of all, the Sugar Loaf,
(Whose stubborn name rhymes but to oaf,)
I name not here the Warm Spring mountain.
(Which rhymes to nothing else but fountain;)
For there, unless you keep awake,
Some bloody-minded rattlesnake,
Upon your rest is apt to creep,
And ‘"give you Jesse"’ while you sleep.
Sweet Rockfish Gap where o'er the mountain.
Charles Ellet. backed by Colonel Fontaine.
A zig-zag railroad ones constructed,
Which safely o'er the top conducted--
Though once the cars ran down the hill,
And came near crippling Mr. Gill.
Rockfish, from whence the eye looks down
On fifty farms, and not a town;
Through whose huge sides a tunneled way
Was bored by Colonel Claudr Crozet;
Or Claudius, if you will have Latin,
Although just now it comes not pat in,
Upon thy top, our blushing muse
Stands in new patent-leather shoes,
And celebrates a hero with
The quite uncommon name of Smith--
Not the same Smith whose name has long
Cut such a figure in the song.
Our Smith was not a Captain bold,
As was that wicked man of old.
He never lived in country quarters;
He never had a use for garters.
No man on earth our Smith can tax
With having lived at Halifax.
He drank his ratifia, 'tis true,
And took it with a relish, too;
But then I've heard him swear quite gally,
He never heard of poor Miss Bailry.
That will do for a beginning.
’
