Poetry for a Septuagenarian (Me)

One of my English professors once wrote in an essay on Samuel Johnson that the older he got, the less he enjoyed the Romantic poets and the more he enjoyed poems such as Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” — that is, poetry of solid resounding statement, provided that it is informed by genuine experience of life.

For a long time I found it hard to understand the distinction that he was drawing between poets such as Johnson and poets such as Wordsworth. Wasn’t Wordsworth a poet of human life, at least as it is lived by the poor? Isn’t “Resolution and Independence” a resounding statement about their lives?

I still cannot fully understand the distinction, but I am experiencing it. Today, at aged 73, I find it difficult to wander lonely as a cloud, but am moved by “The Vanity of Human Wishes”, from which the following is an extract:

On what foundation stands the warrior’s pride,
How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide;
A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
No dangers fright him, and no labours tire;
O’er love, o’er fear, extends his wide domain,
Unconquer’d lord of pleasure and of pain;
No joys to him pacific scepters yield,
War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field;
Behold surrounding kings their power combine,
And one capitulate, and one resign;
Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain;
“Think nothing gain’d,” he cries, “till nought remain,
“On Muscow’s walls till Gothic standards fly,
“And all be mine beneath the polar sky.”
The march begins in military state,
And nations on his eye suspended wait;
Stern famine guards the solitary coast,
And winter barricades the realms of frost;
He comes, nor want nor cold his course delay;
Hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa’s day:
The vanquish’d hero leaves his broken bands,
And shews his miseries in distant lands;
Condemn’d a needy supplicant to wait,
While ladies interpose, and slaves debate.
But did not chance at length her error mend?
Did no subverted empire mark his end?
Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound?
Or hostile millions press him to the ground?
His fall was destin’d to a barren strand,
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

The magnificent fullness of statement in this passages affects me more than cries from the heart.

But my favorite poem by Johnson is “On the Death of Dr. Robert Leveret”:

Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine, 
As on we toil from day to day, 
By sudden blasts, or slow decline, 
Our social comforts drop away. 

Well tried through many a varying year, 
See Levet to the grave descend; 
Officious, innocent, sincere, 
Of every friendless name the friend. 

Yet still he fills Affection’s eye, 
Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; 
Nor, lettered Arrogance, deny 
Thy praise to merit unrefined. 

When fainting Nature called for aid, 
And hovering Death prepared the blow, 
His vigorous remedy displayed 
The power of art without the show. 

In Misery’s darkest cavern known, 
His useful care was ever nigh, 
Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan, 
And lonely Want retired to die. 

No summons mocked by chill delay, 
No petty gain disdained by pride, 
The modest wants of every day 
The toil of every day supplied. 

His virtues walked their narrow round, 
Nor made a pause, nor left a void; 
And sure the Eternal Master found 
The single talent well employed. 

The busy day, the peaceful night, 
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by; 
His frame was firm, his powers were bright, 
Though now his eightieth year was nigh. 

Then with no throbbing fiery pain, 
No cold gradations of decay, 
Death broke at once the vital chain, 
And freed his soul the nearest way.

Leveret was one of the odd marginal types who gravitated toward Johnson’s extended household and became members of it. Johnson held him in high regard and honored him in death with this poem, which seems to me now more to be prized than a niche in Westminster Abbey.