Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Read online

  This mysteriousness renders the story of Joan of Arc peculiarly fit for poetry. The aid of angels and devils is not necessary to raise her above mankind; she has no gods to lackey her, and inspire her with courage, and heal her wounds: the Maid of Orleans acts wholly from the workings of her own mind, from the deep feeling of inspiration. The palpable agency of superior powers would destroy the obscurity of her character, and sink her to the mere heroine of a fairy tale.

  The alterations which I have made in the history are few and trifling. The death of Salisbury is placed later, and of the Talbots earlier than they occurred. As the battle of Patay is the concluding action of the Poem, I have given it all the previous solemnity of a settled engagement. Whatever appears miraculous is asserted in history, and my authorities will be found in the notes.

  It is the common fault of Epic Poems, that we feel little interest for the heroes they celebrate. The national vanity of a Greek or a Roman might have been gratified by the renown of Achilles or Æneas; but to engage the unprejudiced, there must be more of human feelings than is generally to be found in the character of a warrior. From this objection, the Odyssey alone may be excepted; Ulysses appears as the father and the husband, and the affections are enlisted on his side. The judgement must applaud the well-digested plan and splendid execution of the Iliad, but the heart always bears testimony to the merit of the Odyssey: it is the poem of nature, and its personages inspire love rather than command admiration. The good herdsman Eumæus is worth a thousand heroes. Homer is, indeed, the best of poets, for he is at once dignified and simple; but Pope has disguised him in fop-finery, and Cowper has stripped him naked.

  There are few readers who do not prefer Turnus to Æneas; a fugitive, suspected of treason, who negligently left his wife, seduced Dido, deserted her, and then forcibly took Lavinia from her betrothed husband. What avails a man’s piety to the gods, if in all his dealings with men he prove himself a villain? If we represent Deity as commanding a bad action, this is not exculpating the man, but criminating the God.

  The ill chosen subjects of Lucan and Statius have prevented them from acquiring the popularity they would otherwise have merited; yet in detached parts, the former of these is perhaps unequalled, certainly unexcelled. I do not scruple to prefer Statius to Virgil; with inferior taste, he appears to me to possess a richer and more powerful imagination; his images are strongly conceived, and clearly painted, and the force of his language, while it makes the reader feel, proves that the author felt himself.

  The power of story is strikingly exemplified in the Italian heroic poets. They please universally, even in translations, when little but the story remains. In proportioning his characters, Tasso has erred; Godfrey is the hero of the poem, Rinaldo of the poet, and Tancred of the reader. Secondary characters should not be introduced, like Gyas and Cloanthus, merely to fill a procession; neither should they be so prominent as to throw the principal into shade.

  The lawless magic of Ariosto, and the singular theme as well as the singular excellence of Milton, render it impossible to deduce any rules of epic poetry from these authors. So likewise with Spenser, the favourite of my childhood, from whose frequent perusal I have always found increased delight.

  Against the machinery of Camoens, a heavier charge must be brought than that of profaneness or incongruity. His floating island is but a floating brothel, and no beauty can make atonement for licentiousness. From this accusation, none but a translator would attempt to justify him; but Camoens had the most able of translators. The Lusiad, though excellent in parts, is uninteresting as a whole: it is read with little emotion, and remembered with little pleasure. But it was composed in the anguish of disappointed hopes, in the fatigues of war, and in a country far from all he loved; and we should not forget, that as the Poet of Portugal was among the most unfortunate of men, so he should be ranked among the most respectable. Neither his own country or Spain has yet produced his equal: his heart was broken by calamity, but the spirit of integrity and independence never forsook Camoens.

  I have endeavoured to avoid what appears to me the common fault of epic poems, and to render the Maid of Orleans interesting. With this intent I have given her, not the passion of love, but the remembrance of subdued affection, a lingering of human feelings not inconsistent with the enthusiasm and holiness of her character.

  The multitude of obscure epic writers copy with the most gross servility their ancient models. If a tempest occurs, some envious spirit procures it from the God of the winds or the God of the sea. Is there a town besieged? the eyes of the hero are opened, and he beholds the powers of Heaven assisting in the attack; an angel is at hand to heal his wounds, and the leader of the enemy in his last combat is seized with the sudden cowardice of Hector. Even Tasso is too often an imitator. But notwithstanding the censure of a satirist, the name of Tasso will still be ranked among the best heroic poets. Perhaps Boileau only condemned him for the sake of an antithesis; it is with such writers, as with those who affect point in their conversation, they will always sacrifice truth to the gratification of their vanity.

  I have avoided what seems useless and wearying in other poems, and my readers will find no descriptions of armour, no muster-rolls, no geographical catalogues, lion, tiger, bull, bear, and boar similes, Phoebuses or Auroras. And where in battle I have particularized the death of an individual, it is not, I hope, like the common lists of killed and wounded.

  It has been established as a necessary rule for the epic, that the subject should be national. To this rule I have acted in direct opposition, and chosen for the subject of my poem the defeat of the English. If there be any readers who can wish success to an unjust cause, because their country was engaged in it, I desire not their approbation.

  In Millin’s National Antiquities of France, I find that M. Laverdy was, in 1791, occupied in collecting whatever has been written concerning the Maid of Orleans. I have anxiously looked for his work, but it is probable, considering the tumults of the intervening period, that it has not been accomplished. Of the various productions to the memory of Joan of Arc, I have only collected a few titles, and, if report may be trusted, need not fear a heavier condemnation than to be deemed equally bad. A regular canon of St. Euverte has written what is said to be a very bad poem, entitled the Modern Amazon. There is a prose tragedy called La Pucelle d Orleans, variously attributed to Benserade, to Boyer, and to Menardiere. The abbé Daubignac published a prose tragedy with the same title in 1642. There is one under the name of Jean Baruel of 1581, and another printed anonymously at Rouen 1606. Among the manuscripts of the queen of Sweden in the Vatican, is a dramatic piece in verse called Le Mystere du Siege d’ Orleans. In these modern times, says Millin, all Paris has run to the theatre of Nicolet to see a pantomime entitled Le Fameux Siege de la Pucelle d’Orleans. I may add, that, after the publication of this poem, a pantomime upon the same subject was brought forward at Covent-Garden Theatre, in which the heroine, like Don Juan, was carried off by devils and precipitated alive into hell. I mention it, because the feelings of the audience revolted at such a catastrophe, and, after a few nights, an angel was introduced to rescue her.

  But among the number of worthless poems upon this subject, there are two which are unfortunately notorious, — the Pucelles of Chapelain and Voltaire. I have had patience to peruse the first, and never have been guilty of looking into the second; it is well said by George Herbert,

  Make not thy sport abuses, for the fly

  That feeds on dung, is coloured thereby.

  On the eighth of May, the anniversary of its deliverance, an annual fête is held at Orleans; and monuments have been erected there and at Rouen to the memory of the Maid. Her family was ennobled by Charles; but it should not be forgotten in the history of this monarch, that in the hour of misfortune he abandoned to her fate the woman who had saved his kingdom.

  Bristol, November, 1795.

  The poem thus crudely conceived, rashly prefaced, and prematurely hurried into the world, was nevert
heless favourably received, owing chiefly to adventitious circumstances. A work of the same class, with as much power and fewer faults, if it were published now, would attract little or no attention. One thing which contributed to bring it into immediate notice was, that no poem of equal pretension had appeared for many years, except Glover’s Athenaid, which, notwithstanding the reputation of his Leonidas, had been utterly neglected. But the chief cause of its favourable reception was, that it was written in a republican spirit, such as may easily be accounted for in a youth whose notions of liberty were taken from the Greek and Roman writers, and who was ignorant enough of history and of human nature to believe, that a happier order of things had commenced with the independence of the United States, and would be accelerated by the French Revolution. Such opinions were then as unpopular in England as they deserved to be; but they were cherished by most of the critical journals, and conciliated for me the good-will of some of the most influential writers who were at that time engaged in periodical literature, though I was personally unknown to them. They bestowed upon the poem abundant praise, passed over most of its manifold faults, and noticed others with indulgence. Miss Seward wrote some verses upon it in a strain of the highest eulogy and the bitterest invective; they were sent to the Morning Chronicle, and the editor (Mr. Perry) accompanied their insertion with a vindication of the opinions which she had so vehemently denounced. Miss Seward was then in high reputation; the sincerity of her praise was proved by the severity of her censure, and nothing could have been more serviceable to a young author than her notice thus indignantly but also thus generously bestowed. The approbation of the reviewers served as a passport for the poem to America, and it was reprinted there while I was revising it for a second edition.

  A work, in which the author and the bookseller had engaged with equal imprudence, thus proved beneficial to both. It made me so advantageously known as a poet, that no subsequent hostility on the part of the reviews could pull down the reputation which had been raised by their good offices. Before that hostility took its determined character, the charge of being a hasty and careless writer was frequently brought against me. Yet to have been six months correcting what was written in six weeks, was some indication of patient industry; and of this the second edition gave farther evidence. Taking for a second motto the words of Erasmus, Ut homines ita libros, indies seipsis meliores fieri oportet, I spared no pains to render the poem less faulty both in its construction and composition; I wrote a new beginning, threw out much of what had remained of the original draught, altered more, and endeavoured from all the materials which I had means of consulting, to make myself better acquainted with the manners and circumstances of the fifteenth century. Thus the second edition differed almost as much from the first, as that from the copy which was originally intended for publication. Less extensive alterations were made in two subsequent editions; the fifth was only a reprint of the fourth; by that time I had become fully sensible of its great and numerous faults, and requested the reader to remember, as the only apology which could be offered for them, that the poem was written at the age of nineteen, and published at one-and-twenty. My intention then was, to take no farther pains in correcting a work of which the inherent defects were incorrigible, and I did not look into it again for many years.

  But now, when about to perform what at my age may almost be called the testamentary task of revising, in all likelihood for the last time, those works by which it was my youthful ambition “to be for ever known,” and part whereof I dare believe has been “so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die,” it appeared proper that this poem, through which the author had been first made known to the public, two-and-forty years ago, should lead the way; and the thought that it was once more to pass through the press under my own inspection, induced a feeling in some respects resembling that with which it had been first delivered to the printer,.. and yet how different! For not in hope and ardour, nor with the impossible intention of rendering it what it might have been had it been planned and executed in middle life, did I resolve to correct it once more throughout; but for the purpose of making it more consistent with itself in diction, and less inconsistent in other things with the well-weighed opinions of my maturer years. The faults of effort, which may generally be regarded as hopeful indications in a juvenile writer, have been mostly left as they were. The faults of language which remained from the first edition have been removed, so that in this respect the whole is sufficiently in keeping. And for those which expressed the political prejudices of a young man who had too little knowledge to suspect his own ignorance, they have either been expunged, or altered, or such substitutions have been made for them as harmonize with the pervading spirit of the poem, and are nevertheless in accord with those opinions which the author has maintained for thirty years through good and evil report, in the maturity of his judgement as well as in the sincerity of his heart.

  Keswick, August 30, 1837.

  TO EDITH SOUTHEY.

  EDITH! I brought thee late a humble gift, The songs of earlier youth; it was a wreath With many an unripe blossom garlanded And many a weed, yet mingled with some flower3 Which will not wither. Dearest! now I bring A worthier offering; thou wilt prize it well, For well thou know’st amid what painful cares My solace was in this: and though to me There is no music in the hollowness Of common praise, yet well content am! Now to look back upon my youth’s green prime, Nor idly, nor unprofitably past, Imping in such adventurous essay The wing, and strengthening it for steadier flight.

  Burton, near Christ Church, 1797.

  JOAN OF ARC. THE FIRST BOOK.

  THERE was high feasting held at Vaucouleur,

  For old Sir Robert had a famous guest,

  The Bastard Orleans; and the festive hours,

  Cheer’d with the Trobador’s sweet minstrelsy,

  Pass’d gaily at his hospitable board. 5

  But not to share the hospitable board

  And hear sweet minstrelsy, Dunois had sought

  Sir Robert’s hall; he came to rouse Lorraine,

  And glean what force the wasting war had left

  For one last effort. Little had the war 10

  Left in Lorraine, but age, and youth unripe

  For slaughter yet, and widows, and young maids

  Of widow’d loves. And now with his great guest

  The Lord of Vaucouleur sat communing

  On what might profit France, and found no hope,

  Despairing of their country, when he heard 16

  An old man and a maid awaited him

  In the castle-hall. He knew the old man well,

  His vassal Claude; and at his bidding Claude

  Approach’d, and after meet obeisance made, 20

  Bespake Sir Robert.

  “Good my Lord, I come

  With a strange tale; I pray you pardon me

  If it should seem impertinent, and like

  An old man’s weakness. But, in truth, this Maid

  Hath with such boding thoughts impress’d my heart,

  I think I could not longer sleep in peace 26

  Gainsaying what she sought. She saith that God

  Bids her go drive the Englishmen from France!

  Her parents mock at her and call her crazed,

  And father Regnier says she is possess’d;.. 30

  But I, who know that never thought of ill

  Found entrance in her heart,.. for, good my Lord,

  From her first birth-day she hath been to me

  As mine own child,.. and I am an old man,

  Who have seen many moon-struck in my time, 35

  And some who were by evil Spirits vex’d,..

  I, Sirs, do think that there is more in this.

  And who can tell but, in these perilous times,

  It may please God,... but hear the Maid yourselves,

  For if, as I believe, this is of Heaven, 40

  My silly speech doth wrong it.”

  While he spake,


  Curious they mark’d the Damsel. She appear’d

  Of eighteen years; there was no bloom of youth

  Upon her cheek, yet had the loveliest hues

  Of health with lesser fascination fix’d 45

  The gazer’s eye; for wan the Maiden was,

  Of saintly paleness, and there seem’d to dwell

  In the strong beauties of her countenance

  Something that was not earthly.

  “I have heard

  Of this your niece’s malady,” replied 50

  The Lord of Vaucouleur, “that she frequents

  The loneliest haunts and deepest solitude,

  Estranged from human kind and human cares

  With loathing like to madness. It were best

  To place her with some pious sisterhood, 55

  Who duly morn and eve for her soul’s health

  Soliciting Heaven, may likeliest remedy

  The stricken mind, or frenzied or possess’d.”

  So as Sir Robert ceased, the Maiden cried,

  “I am not mad. Possess’d indeed I am! 60

  The hand of GOD is strong upon my soul,

  And I have wrestled vainly with the LORD,

  And stubbornly, I fear me. I can save

  This country, Sir! I can deliver France! 64

  Yea.. I must save the country!.. GOD is in me;

  I speak not, think not, feel not of myself.

  HE knew and sanctified me ere my birth;

  HE to the nations hath ordained me;

  And whither HE shall send me, I must go;

  And whatso HE commands, that I must speak; 70

  And whatso is HIS will, that I must do;