Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PRESS, by JOHN GODFREY SAXE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PRESS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A worthy parson, once upon a time
Last Line: On freedom's shores a weak and venal press.
Subject(s): Art & Artists; Books; Freedom; History; Libraries & Librarians; Literature; Newspapers; Poetry & Poets; Reading; Liberty; Historians; Journalism; Journalists


A WORTHY parson, once upon a time,
Weary of list'ning to the sober rhyme
That, of a winter's evening, chanced to fall
From a young poet in a lecture hall,
His disappointment openly confessed,
And thus his censure to a friend confessed: —
"The poem, Sir, is well enough no doubt,
But so much preaching one could do without;
A little wit had pleased me more by half;
I did n't come to learn, I came to laugh!"

So goes the world; his very soul to save
They will not let poor Harlequin be grave;
But vote him weaker than a vestry-mouse,
Unless, like Samson, he brings down the house!
Alas! to-day, if such a rule prevail,
My sober muse were surely doomed to fail;
Her subject grave demands a serious song,
And trivial treatment were ignobly wrong.
Yet let me hope that e'er my song be done,
When. satire comes to punish with a pun,
Some pleasant fancy may your hearts beguile,
And win the favor of an answering smile.

I sing the Press; O sweet Enchantress, bring
Fit inspiration for the theme I sing,
The Art of Arts, whose earliest, freshest fame,
With fierce debate, three rival cities claim;
The glorious art, that, scorning humbler birth,
Came at a bound upon the wondering earth,1
Full-armed and strong her instant might to prove,
A new Minerva from the brain of Jove!

I marvel not that rival towns dispute
Where first the goddess set her radiant foot;
That blest Mayence, with honest pride, should boast
The wondrous Bible of her wizard Faust;
That Haarlem, jealous of her proper fame,
Erects a statue to her Coster's name;
While Strasburg's cits contemning all beside,
Vaunt their own hero with an equal pride.

How shall the poet venture to explain
Where plodding History labors still in vain
To solve the mystery — the vexing doubt
That only deepens with the deepening shout
Of angry partisans? The Muse essays
The dangerous task, and thus awards the bays:—
Where counter claims the highest merit hide,
If large the gift, 't is fairest to divide.
Honor to all who shared a noble part
To find, to cherish, or adorn the art;
Honor to him who, with enraptured eye,
First saw the nymph descending from the sky;
Honor to him, whate'er his name or land,
The first to kneel, and kiss her royal hand;
Thrice honored he who, piercing the disguise
That barred her beauty from obtuser eyes,
First gave her shelter, when the dusky maid
Knocked at his door in homely garb arrayed,
And found at length, beyond his hopes or prayers,
He'd wooed and won an angel unawares!

I sing the Press; alas, 't were much the same
As though the Muse essayed the trump of fame;
Though something harsh and grating in its tone,
She keeps a mightier trumpet of her own, —
The which, while Freedom's banner is unfurled,
Shall swell her paeans through the wondering world!

Strange is the sound when first the notes begin
Where human voices blend with Vulcan's din;
The click, the clank, the clangor, and the sound
Of rattling rollers in their rapid round;
The whizzing belt, the sharp metallic jar,
Like clashing spears in fierce chivalric war;
The whispering birth of myriad flying leaves,
Gathered, anon, in countless motley sheaves,
Then scattered far, as on the wingéd wind,
The mortal nurture of th' immortal mind!

I'm fond of books; 't is pleasant to behold
In various apparel, new and old,
The quaint array of well-adjusted tomes
That grace the mantels of our rural homes;
The Bible, Bunyan, Baxter, and a score
Of colder lights, from Hume to Hannah More;
Ripe with great thoughts and histories, or full
Of pious homilies, devout and dull.
Nor do I scorn those half-forgotten books
That lie neglected in obscurer nooks
Where poets mould, and critic-spiders spin
Their flimsy lines to mock the lines within!
For here the curious questioner may find
The pregnant hint that in some ampler mind
Grew to a thought, and honors now the page
That beams the brightest on the present age.

I love vast libraries; revere the fame
Of all the Ptolemies; and each other name,
Æmilius, Augustus, Crassus Cæsar, all
The old collectors, whether great or small,
Who helped the cause of learning to advance,—
Trajan and Bodley, Charles the Wise of France,
Kings, nobles, knights, who, anxious of renown
Beyond the fame of garter, spur, or crown,
And wisely provident against decay,
(Since parchment lives while marble melts away,)
Reared to their honor literary domes,
And grew immortal in immortal tomes!

Grand are the pyramids, although the stones
Are but the graves of rotten human bones
That bear, alas, nor name, nor crest, nor date
To show the world their former regal state.
Compared with these how noble and sublime
The garnered excellence of every clime
Reared in vast Pantheons, and finely wrought
From sill to cap — stone of immortal thought!

Here, e'en the sturdy democrat may find,
Nor scorn their rank, the nobles of the mind;
While kings may learn, nor blush at being shown,
How Learning's patents abrogate their own.
A goodly company and fair to see;
Royal plebeians; earls of low degree;
Beggars whose wealth enriches every clime;
Princes who scarce can boast a mental dime;
Crowd here together like the quaint array
Of jostling neighbors on a market day.
Homer and Milton — can we call them blind? —
Of godlike sight, the vision of the mind;
Shakespeare, who calmly looked creation through,
"Exhausted worlds and then imagined new;"
Plato the sage, so thoughtful and serene,
He seems a prophet by his heavenly mien;
Shrewd Socrates, whose philosophic power
Xantippe proved in many a trying hour;
And Aristophanes, whose humor run
In vain endeavor to be-"cloud" the sun;^2
Majestic Æschylus, whose glowing page
Holds half the grandeur of the Athenian stage;
Pindar, whose odes, replete with heavenly fire,
Proclaim the master of the Grecian lyre;
Anacreon, famed for many a luscious line
Devote to Venus and the god of wine.

I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt
If one be better with them or without, —
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read;
At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 't is a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'T is well to borrow from the good and great;
'T is wise to learn; 't is godlike to create!

There is a story which my purpose suits;
'T is told by Richter of the author Wuzd—
A poor lone scholar who, in urgent need
(Or so he thought) of learned books to read,
Wept o'er his poverty, lamenting sore,
(The while a catalogue he pondered o'er,)
Of all the charming works that met his eye,
Not one, alas! his meagre purse could buy.
While musing thus, his racked invention brought
To weeping Wuz for once a lucky thought:
"Eureka!" cried the scholar, with a roar,—
As Archimedes shouted once before, —
"I have it! — True, my purse is rather scant,
But then this catalogue shows what I want,
And so who cares for poverty or pelf? —
I'll take my pen and write the books myself!"
Where be our authors now? The noble band
Dwindles apace from off the famished land.
Scarce a round dozen, at the best, remain
Of all who once, among the author-train,
Wrote books like scholars; — nor esteemed it hard,
Genius like Virtue was its own reward.

O gentle Irving! — thou whom every grace
Of wit and learning gave the highest place
In the proud synod of the old régime,
In all thy dreaming, didst thou ever dream
To see thy craft a mere mechanic art,
The servile minion of the bookish mart? —
When authorship should be the merest trade,
And men make books as hats and boots are made?
Didst ever dream to see the wondrous day
When the vexed press should spawn the vast array
Of trashy tomes that on the public burst,
So fast, they print the "Tenth Edition" first?
Thou hast not read them. God forbid! It racks
One's brains enough to see their brazen backs.
Yet thou wilt smile, I know, when thou art told
That with each book the buyer too is "sold";
That soon the puffing art shall all be vain,
And sense and reason rule the town again.

Sweet to the traveller is the urchin's chimes,
Proclaiming, "'Ere's your 'Erald, Tribune, Times!"
Those lively records of the passing day,
That catch the echo, ere it dies away,
Of battle, bravery, sudden death, and all
That human minds can startle or appall;
Marriage and murder; things of different name,
Alas! that oft the two should be the same!
Letters describing merry rural scenes;
Ship-news, and, often, news for the Marines;
Fortune's bright favors, and Misfortune's shocks;
The fall of Hungary and the fall of stocks;
The important page that tells the thrilling tale
How Empires rise, and "Red Republics" fail;
How England's lion, loitering in his lair,
Essays in vain to fright the Russian bear;
How France, bemoaning the expensive war,
Would give her "Louis," to save her louis-d'or;
While the poor Turk, whom hapless luck attends,
Cries, "Gracious Allah! save me from my friends!"
I have a neighbor, of eccentric views,
Who has a mortal horror of the news;
As lessons are to boys, when long and hard;
Spiders, to ladies; censure, to a bard;
To losers, bets; to holders, railway stock;
Lectures to husbands, after ten o'clock;
Bacon to Hebrews, or to Quakers, war;
Squalls to a sailor, or a bachelor;
To Satan prayer-books, or to Islam, wine,
So are "the papers" to this friend of mine.
You've but to ask him, in the common way,
The usual question, and to your dismay,
He'll pour, remorseless, on your tingling ear,
Such streams of satire as you'll quake to hear.
"The News? — Thank Heaven! — I'm not the man to know,
I do not take the papers; you can go,
If you possess the patience and the pelf,
And read the lying journals for yourself;
I hate, despise, detest, abhor them all,
Hebdomadal, diurnal, great, and small.
The News, indeed! — pray do you call it news
When shallow noddles publish shallow views?
Pray, is it news that turnips should be bred
As large and hollow as the owner's head?
News, that a clerk should rob his master's hoard,
Whose meagre salary scarcely pays his board?
News, that two knaves, their spurious friendship o'er,
Should tell the truths which they concealed before?
News, that a maniac, weary of his life,
Should end his sorrows with a rope or knife?
News, that a wife should violate the vows
That bind her, loveless, to a tyrant spouse?
News, that a daughter cheats paternal rule,
And weds a scoundrel to escape a fool? —
The news, indeed! — Such matters are as old
As sin and folly, rust and must and mould;
Nor fit to publish even when, in sooth,
By merest chance the papers tell the truth!"

So raves my friend, — a worthy man enough,
But in his utterance rather rude and rough;
Fond of extremes, and so exceeding strong,
E'en in the right he's often in the wrong.
One of those people whom you may have seen,
(You know them always by their nervous mien,)
Who when they go a-fishing in the well
Where Truth, the angel, is supposed to dwell,
So very roughly knock the nymph about,
She kicks the bucket ere she's fairly out! —
Yet, if they would, the noble lords of print,
E'en from my friend, might take a wholesome hint.

O for a pen with Hogarth's genius rife
To paint the scenes of Editorial life.
The tale, I know, is rather trite and old,
And yet, perchance, it may be freshly told,
As some plain dish, a simple roast or stew,
Takes a new flavor in a French ragout.

SCENE — a third story in a dismal* court,
Where weary printers just at eight resort;
A dingy door that with a rattle shuts;
Heaps of "Exchanges," much adorned with "cuts;"
Pens, paste, and paper on the table strewed;
Books, to be read when they have been reviewed;
Pamphlets and tracts so very dull indeed
That only they who wrote them e'er will read;
Nine letters, touching themes of every sort,
And one with money —just a shilling short —
Lie scattered round upon a common level.
PERSONS — the Editor; enter, now, the Devil:—
"Please, Sir, since this 'ere article was wrote,
There's later news perhaps you'd like to quote: —
"The allies storming with prodigious force,
Se-bas-to-pol is down!" "Set it up, of course."
"And Sir, that murder's done — there's only left
One larceny." "Pray don't omit the theft."
"And Sir, about the mob — the matter's fat" —
"The mob? — that's wrong — pray just distribute that."
"And here's an article has come to hand,
A reg'lar, 'rig'nal package" — "Let that stand!"
Exit the imp of Faust, and enter now
A fierce subscriber with a scowling brow; —
"Sir, curse your paper! — send the thing to"— Well,
The place he names were impolite to tell;
Enough to know the hero of the Press
Cries, "Thomas, change the gentleman's address!
We'll send the paper, if the post will let it,
Where the subscriber will be sure to get it!"
Who would not be an Editor?—To write
The magic "we" of such enormous might;
To be so great beyond the common span
It takes the plural to express the man;
And yet, alas, it happens oftentimes
A unit serves to number all his dimes!

But don't despise him; there may chance to be
An earthquake lurking in his simple "we!"
In the close precincts of a dusty room
That owes few losses to the lazy broom,
There sits the man; you do not know his name,
Brown, Jones, or Johnson — it is all the same—
Scribbling away at what perchance may seem
An idler's musing, or a dreamer's dream;
His pen runs rambling, like a straying steed;
The "we" he writes seems very "wee" indeed;
But mark the change; behold the wondrous power
Wrought by the Press in one eventful hour;
To-night, 't is harmless as a maiden's rhymes;
To-morrow, thunder in the London Times!
The ministry dissolves that held for years;
Her Grace, the Duchess, is dissolved in tears;
The Rothschilds quail; the church, the army, quakes;
The very kingdom to its centre shakes;
The Corn Laws fall; the price of bread comes down —
Thanks to the "we" of Johnson, Jones, or Brown!

Firm in the right, the daily Press should be
The tyrant's foe, the champion of the free;
Faithful and constant to its sacred trust;
Calm in its utterance; in its judgments, just;
Wise in its teaching; uncorrupt, and strong
To speed the right, and to denounce the wrong.
Long may it be ere candor must confess
On Freedom's shores a weak and venal Press.




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