NOTES
Reading edition
THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.
The subject of this elegy was born at Boston in 1819, and educated at the Boston Latin School. While yet a young man he visited England and Italy, with which latter country and its literature his life was to be so largely occupied. From early youth he was a devoted student of Dante, to the translation of whose "Divine Comedy" he chiefly applied his scholarship and poetic genius. In 1854 he published a volume of original poems, among which were the famous verses, "On a Bust of Dante," which found their way at once into all the anthologies. Several other volumes were privately printed, and in 1892 he published "Circum Præcordia," which contained, besides a versification of the collects of the Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, about a dozen original poems of a religious nature. The translation of the first ten cantos of the "Inferno" was published in 1843, and the complete "Inferno" in 1867. The opening cantos of the "Purgatorio" were issued in 1876, and the remaining cantos were afterward completed and are now in process of publication. In 1870 Mr. Parsons was made a Corresponding Fellow of the Reale Accademia de' Fisiocritici in Siena. He died at Scituate, Mass., September 3, 1892.
"Dr. Parsons holds a place of his own. He is one of those rare poets whose infrequent work is so beautiful as to make us wish for more. In quality, at least, it is of a kind with Landor's; his touch is sure, and has at command the choicer modes of lyrical art—those which, although fashion may overslaugh them, return again, and enable a true poet to be quite as original as when hunting devices previously unessayed. His independence on the other hand, is exhibited in his free renderings of Dante....
"Parsons's briefer poems often are models, but occasionally show a trace of that stiffness which too little employment gives even the hand of daintier sense. 'Lines on a Bust of Dante,' in structure, diction, loftiness of thought, is the peer of any modern lyric in our tongue. Inversion, the vice of stilted poets, becomes with him an excellence, and old forms and accents are rehandled and charged with life anew. It is to be regretted that Dr. Parsons has not used his gift more freely. He has been a poet for poets, rather than for the people; but many types are required to fill out the hemicycle of a nation's literature."
—Stedman's Poets of America.
"The study of a great man is an education. Dr. Parsons has been an unwearied student of Dante for thirty years [1869], and has reaped commensurate benefits from the familiarity. His lines to the immortal Florentine, by common consent, are ranked with the very noblest efforts of the American Muse. Among the other traits in the matchless style of Dante, are his unique conciseness and precision. His descriptions are coined rather than painted; his metaphors are not pictures, but medallions. This artistic horror of slovenly work, this conscientious finish of severe simplicity and force, the apt pupil shares with the great master."
—W. R. Alger.
"He occupies some such place in American poetry as Gray or Collins does in English poetry, not having written much, but extremely well. The poet is not living in the country who could have written a stronger, grander poem than that on the 'Bust of Dante,' beginning:
'See, from this counterfeit of him Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of lineament, how grim, The father was of Tuscan song.'"
—Wm. Hayes Ward.
STANZA I.
"In Nova Scotia's woods."
This poem was written in Windsor, Nova Scotia, at Kingscroft, the residence of Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts, where the author was staying when the news of the poet's death reached him. Kingscroft is situated on the edge of a beautiful wood of great fir-trees on an elevation overlooking the Avon River and the Basin of Minas.
STANZA III.
"Far off where Scituate lapses to the sea."
Scituate, where the poet died, is a village lying midway between Boston and Plymouth on that part of the coast of Massachusetts which is known as the South Shore. The country is of a gently undulating character, and the view seaward is across salt marshes broken here and there with low hillocks of a sandy formation.
STANZA XIV.
"A double loss."
The poet Whittier died but a few days after the death of Parsons.
STANZA XV.
... "save one whose smile Is gentler for its memories,"
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
"The poet Friend of Poets,"
Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Whittier, in dedicating one of his volumes to Stedman, called him "Poet, and Friend of Poets."
"And the lone voice of Arizonian song,"
Joaquin Miller.
STANZA XVI.
"She whose swift verse," etc.,
Amelie Rives Chanler.
STANZA XVII.
"Far-stretching Indiana's melodist,"
James Whitcomb Riley.
"The Greek revealer of Canadian skies,"
Charles G. D. Roberts.
STANZA XVIII.
... "in fireside bonds Near to the dead,"
Thomas Buford Meteyard, the painter, a relation of Dr. Parsons.
STANZA XXXII.
"The mild historian of the Sudbury Inn,"
Longfellow. The old tavern at Sudbury was the scene of "The Tales of a Wayside Inn." Parsons was the original of the Poet in that volume, and his brother-in-law, Luigi Monti, of the Sicilian, to whom allusion is also made in this stanza.
STANZA XXXIV.
... "as once at Cedarcroft."
The home of Bayard Taylor, between whom and Lanier an intimate bond of friendship existed.
STANZA XXXV.
"But who is this, that from the mightier shades Emerges,"
Dante.
... "now, of lineament Not stern but strenuous still,"
refers to Parsons's lines;
"How stern of lineament, how grim The father was of Tuscan song."
STANZA XXXVIII.
"Time, like a wind, blows through the lyric leaves Above his head, and from the shaken boughs Æonian music falls;"
ἀμφὶ δὲ ψῦχρον κελάδει δι' ὔσδων μαλίνων, αἰθυσσομένων δὲ φύλλων κῶμα καταρρεῖ.
Sappho.
STANZA XLV.
... "the demon-haunted cliff."
The Cape of Good Hope, originally called the Cape of Tempests. It is here that the spectral ship of Vanderdecken is supposed to be seen in stormy weather, still battling against the insuperable wind. Vanderdecken, the "Flying Dutchman," tried to double the cape in spite of a heavy gale. Baffled again and again, he swore that he would carry out his purpose in spite of God or the Devil, though he had to sail till the Day of Judgment. For this blasphemy he was doomed to be taken at his word, and became a sort of Ahasuerus of the sea. This cape is also the scene of that tremendous passage in the "Lusiad," where the giant, Adamastor, appears in cloud and storm to the adventurous Portuguese sailors, and warns them back from their enterprise:
"Não acabava, quando uma figura Se nos mostra no ar, robusta e válida, De disforme e grandissima estatura, O rosto carregado, a barba esquálida: Os olhos encovados, e a postura Medonha e má, e a côr terrena e pállida; Cheios de terra, e crespos os cabellos, A bocca negra, os dentes amarellos. "Tam grande era de membros, que bem posso Certificar-te, que este era o segundo De Rhodes estranhissimo colosso, Que um dos sete milagres foi do mundo: C' um tom de voz nos falla horrendo e grosso, Que pareceu sair do mar profundo: Arripiam-se as carnes, e o cabello A mi, e a todos, so de ouvil-o, e vello. "Mais ía per diante o monstro horrendo Dizendo nossos fados, quando alçado Lhe disse eu: 'Quem es tu? que esse estupendo Corpo, certo me tem maravilhado." A bocca, e os olhos negros retorcendo, E dando um espantoso e grande brado, Me respondeu com voz pesada e amara, Como quem da pergunta lhe pezara: "'Eu son aquelle occulto e grande cabo, A quem chamais vós outros Tormentorio; Que nunca a Tolomeu, Pomponio, Estrabo, Plinio, e quantos passaram, fui notorio: Aqui toda a africana costa acabo N' este meu nunca visto promontorio, Que pera o pólo antárctico se estende, A quem vossa ousadia tanto offende. "Fui dos filhos aspérrimos da terra, Qual Encélado, Egeu, e o Centimano; Chamei-me Adamastor; e fui na guerra Contra o que vibra os raios de Vulcano: Não que puzesse serra sòbra serra; Mas conquistando as ondas do Oceano, Fui capitão do mar, per onde andava A armada de Neptuno, que eu buscava.'"
—Camoens.