Whether it was through the impulse of the discoverer’s words, or, as is more likely, through his own nature, he was able to suggest with some power the world that does without men, the “sterile wilderness” not neglected by the dew, the Paradise without man and without death, where
Bliss had newly Alighted, and shut close his rainbow wings, To rest at ease, nor dread intruding ill.
I think he was enchanted by those tropical
Airy aisles and living colonnades, Where nations might have worshipp’d God in peace.
For, with an energy which a tree would call religious, he describes their flourishing, and how the Indian fig was multiplied:--
From year to year their fruits ungather’d fall; Not lost, but quickening where they lay, they struck Root downward, and brake forth on every hand, Till the strong saplings, rank and file, stood up, A mighty army, which o’erran the isle, And changed the wilderness into a forest.
His love of things that are not men, that are happy and without conscience, is more instinctive than his desire for men in his solitude. They, though “kindred spirits,” never moved him to a picture like the flamingoes flying,
Till, on some lonely coast alighting, Again their gorgeous cohort took the field.
I was not surprised, then, at the seventh canto, to find him saying, in Wordsworthian strain, that we only begin to live
From that fine point, Which memory dwells on, with the morning star, The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing, Or the first daisy that we ever pluck’d, When thoughts themselves were stars, and birds, and flowers, Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.
My copy of the book was printed in 1827. It had the date 1856 under the old owner’s name; and I suppose that not many editions have been published since 1827, or any since 1856. Yet this individual character of the writer, original as much in degree as in kind, had kept the book alive. The energy of his ecstasy gave his blank verse a gushing flow that may cause sleep, but seldom impatience, and never contempt. The overflowing of so many lines into an extra unaccented syllable seemed a natural effect of his possession by his subject, and not a device or a mere habit. At its best it had the eloquence of an improvisation.