Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/112

96 OT WAY CURRY. [1S30-10. land of song ; to see, to enjoy what the idle, the worldly, and the profane cannot ; this was not merely his pastime, but his living. A luxurious melancholy chastened his spirit and mellowed the light which it reflected. There is an intimate connection between beauty and goodness — the latter is to the former what the soul is to the body ; the beauty that beams upon us from the face of nature is but the expression of Divine goodness — the smile by which God would at- tract us to his arms. If so, he who is truly enamored of beauty must aspire after God, and as goodness is necessary to bring us into communion with him, he must pant after that. Nothing but depravity can prevent this natural result. The love of beauty is usually associated with the capacity to reproduce it ; that is taste, this is art. Mr. Curry's art was not proportionate to his taste ; it manifested itself in the sweet music of his flute and the sweeter strains of his verse ; the former is lost in the empty air, the latter will float down the river of time. His poetry will not be relished by the mass ; it has no pteans of battle, no provocatives of mirth, no mockery of misery, no strokes of malice. It is the song of a religious soul ; faith is the bond which links its stanzas, a faith that brings heaven near to earth and man into fellowship with angels. Like wine it will be pronounced better as it grows older, not because it will improve, but because the world's taste will. What he uttered we may suppose was little compared with what he bore away with him into heaven, where he will take up the harj) that he laid down too early on earth. The crowning art of our poet was his life. That he had the infirmities of man we do not deny ; that he sinned and wept ; that he wandered and grieved ; that ofttimes when he would do good evil was present with him ; that he saw, in retrospeeting his life, many lost opportunities of usefulness ; many wounds in kind hearts long stilled in death that he would gladly heal ; many cold ears into which he would fain pour the prayer of foi-giveness ; many acts over which he would fain weep tears of blood, and many emotions toward the Giver of all good, under the pressure of which he would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven without a mediator. But in this world of sin, amid this incessant conflict with error, how few have passed so pure a life or breathed so modest, so gentle a spirit ! Herein is art ! the best man is the higliest artist. It is inspiring to see goodness, meekness, long-suffering, even amid occasional petulances and wrongs, beaming from the face of man, just as it is to see Divine wis- dom, and power, and goodness, though amid storms and earthquakes, shadowed from the face of the universe. It were grand to stand in some venerable temple, all unim- paired by time, reflecting the light from its diaphanous walls, and presenting on all sides the memorials of ancient faith ; but gx'ander, far, to survey the divine temple of a good life, hung round with trophies won from earth and hell, hallowed all over with the blood of Christ, and focal with songs echoed from the upper world. Mr. Curry taught the lesson of dying well no less than of living well. INIay Ave not hope that he closed his eyes on earth in full view of heaven and its angels ! On the seventeenth of February, 1855, he was laid in a humble grave, which, perhaps, may be sought for after the monuments raised to our heroes shall have been forgotten.