Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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The Mary Baldwin Seminary. 3 star, God ' s hrilliatit caiulle, the noble creature. Here font- times successively they employ the same thou.t ht, and each time under a new aspect. But it is when speaking of God that their verses attain to the highest degree of grandeur and sublimity. They think of God in a series of short, accumu- lated passionate images, like a succession of lightning flashes. So it is in Judith. Whenever the poet speaks of the Lord it is with a profusion of poetic names : The Guardian of the Heavens, the Shepherd of Majesty, the Bestower of Glory, the All-powerful Judge, and many more. Every time he thinks of God he sees him with his mind, like a quick, luminous vision, and each time under a new aspect. Someone has said that the first and most .sincere hymn was the one brief word, ' ' O. Theirs were hardly longer. They only repeated time after time, some deep, passionate word, with monotonous vehemency, and, in reading the poem, we find no less than twenty-five of these deep, passion- ate words, each one, as we have seen a warm, fervent hymn in praise of the Creator, and each one giving evidence of the heartfelt love and adoration, with which their strong, barba- rian hearts w ere filled. Nannie W. McFarland. THE INFLUENCE OF BYRON ' S LIFE UPON HIS WORKS. It has been said that perhaps the work of no poet has been so greatty influenced by his life as that of Byron; and when we are familiar with his character and with the vicissitudes of his life we can readily appreciate this assertion. The Byron family was an old and honorable one, the no- bility dating from the time of Charles I., who had held a cer- tain Bj-ron in high favor, and who had created him Baron, not only for his faithful services to his country and his king, but for the merit of his personal character. However, long before they were a titled family there are meritorious records of many Byrons showing that they were always not only good men but

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2 The Anmial of It fills their whole heart with love and admiration. They are incapable of explaining or restraining their passion, which breaks forth in raptures at the vision of the Almighty. All this enthusiasm and vehemence breaths forth in every line of Judith. None but one of those old Anglo-Saxon bar- barians could have set forth in so strong a light, excesses, tumult, murder, and combat. Take, for example, those vig- orous lines in the latter part of the poem, in which the poet exults over the tragic fate of the tyrant, Holofernes : ' ' Backward his spirit turned, under the abyss, and there was plunged below, with sulphur fastened, forever afterwards to be wounded by worms. Bound in torments, entwined with serpents, hard imprisoned in hell fire he burns, after his death. Nor need he hope, with darkness overwhelmed, that he may escape from that mansion of worms, but there he shall remain forever and ever, without end, in that dark house, free from the joys of hope. Has any one ever heard a more triumphant expression of perfectly satisfied hate ? Then glance down a few lines, and see how their old war- like enthusiasm bursts into flame, when the glory of the He- brew war is recounted : The force approached the Hebrew people, they fought furiousl} ' with their hard weapons, they avenged fiercely, with their bloody swords, their old quarrel, their ancient grudge. The glory of the Assyrians was destroyed on that day, their pride abased. As for their love of the Creator, it breathes forth in every line of the poem. The poet has shown with all of a barba- rian ' s vigor, the grandeur and intensit} of feeling with which the men of his time entered into their new religion. The language of these old poets is always vigorous and sublime. In no poems in any language can there be found more matchless imagery than in these old Anglo-Saxon relics. In their verses, arrows are not simply arrows, but serpents of hell, shot from bows of horn. Ships a ' ' e great sea-steeds. The sea is a chalice of waves, the helmet is the castle of the head. The poets have not satisfied their inner emotion if it is only expressed by a single word. Time after time they return to and repeat their idea, ' ' The sun on high, the great

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4 The Annual of brave men. Later on we have records of seven Byron brothers all on the field at one time fighting for their country. However. Byron ' s immediate inheritance was far from being honorable, The grand-uncle, from whom he had received his title, was an erratic, misanthropic old man with a blackened record, hav- ing been brought up before the House of Lords for the murder of a cousin. His father was a drunken, reckless, scape-grace, who squandered his wife ' s fortune and then left her. His moth- er, a woman of small intellect, had a violent temper and was subject to frequent outbreaks which amounted almost to insani- t} ' . Though Byron had ancestors from whom he inherited the best of traits, he was compelled to feel the effe ct of his bad blood. His m.other ' s influence over him was indeed harmful; her treatment was capricious and contradictory. At one moment she would lavish upon him passionate caresses and praise the beauty of his eyes, and at the next moment she would cast him from her as a lame brat. It was she who could arouse most frequently and to the highest degree, all that was bad in him. His temper in childhood was sullen, stubborn and revolt- ing. He would fall into silent rages, and upon one occasion when his nurse reproved him for soiling his frock, he seized the frock, tore it from top to bottom and then stood defiant. This was due to the example of his mother who, it is said, would often give vent to her rage by tearing up pocket-handker- chiefs. ■ However, we have proof of how susceptible he was to kind and gentle treatment. His nurse, who was a very good woman and to whom he was devoted, tell us that Byron when kindly treated exhibited sweetness and docility of spirit, his manners, she adds, were winning and attractive. From the earliest period he had shown an intense and passionately affec- tionate nature, his heart responding readily to any display of affection, and he tells us that he was really desperately in love when eight years old. When he grew older he felt his moth- er ' s short comings very severely, and upon one occasion, when a quarrel between them had been unusually violent, some one said to him. Byron, j-our mother is a fool. He replied bit- terly, I know it. Though he led a very wild and dissipated life while at school, he was a great favorite among his school-