Chapter XXIII: Part VII (8)

"By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm--their beauty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his heart. The spell begins to break. By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain. He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element. The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired and inspirited, and the ship moves on; but not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint...."

"Daemons of earth or middle air" have been told of also by land travellers--by Friar Odoric, for example, in the account of his journey through Cathay during the years 1316-1330:

"Another great and terrible thing I saw. For, as I went through a certain valley which lieth by the River of Delights, I saw therein many dead corpses lying. And I heard also therein sundry kinds of music, but chiefly nakers, which were marvellously played upon. And so great was the noise thereof that very great fear came upon me. Now, this valley is seven or eight miles long; and if any unbeliever enter therein he quitteth it never again, but perisheth incontinently. Yet I hesitated not to go in that I might see once for all what the matter was. And when I had gone in I saw there, as I have said, such numbers of corpses as no one without seeing it could deem credible. And at one side of the valley, in the very rock, I beheld as it were the face of a man very great and terrible, so very terrible indeed that for my exceeding great fear my spirit seemed to die in me. Wherefore I made the sign of the cross, and began continually to repeat VERBUM CARO FACTUM, but I dared not at all to come nigh that face, but kept at seven or eight paces from it. And so I came at length to the other end of the valley, and there I ascended a hill of sand and looked around me. But nothing could I descry, only I still heard those nakers to play which were played so marvellously. And when I got to the top of that hill I found there a great quantity of silver heaped up as it had been fishes' scales, and some of this I put into my bosom. But as I cared nought for it, and was at the same time in fear lest it should be a snare to hinder my escape, I cast it all down again to the ground. And so by God's grace I came forth scathless. Then all the Saracens, when they heard of this, showed me great worship, saying that I was a baptised and holy man. But those who had perished in that valley they said belonged to the devil."

As an Arab journeyeth
Through a sand of Ayaman,
Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue,
Lagging by his side along;
And a rusty wingèd Death
Grating its low flight before,
Casting ribbèd shadows o'er
The blank desert, blank and tan:
He lifts by hap to'rd where the morning's roots are
His weary stare,--
Sees, although they plashless mutes are,
Set in a silver air
Fountains of gelid shoots are,
Making the daylight fairest fair;
Sees the palm and tamarind
Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;--
A sight like innocence when one has sinned
A green and maiden freshness smiling there,
While with unblinking glare
The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her....

_The Mirage_, FRANCIS THOMPSON

Thou to me art such a spring
As the Arab seeks at eve,
Thirsty from the shining sands;
There to bathe his face and hands,
While the sun is taking leave,
And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.

Thou to me art such a dream
As he dreams upon the grass,
While the bubbling coolness near
Makes sweet music in his ear;
And the stars that slowly pass
In solitary grandeur o'er him gleam.

Thou to me art such a dawn
As the dawn whose ruddy kiss
Wakes him to his darling steed;
And again the desert speed,
And again the desert bliss,
Lightens thro' his veins, and he is gone!

GEORGE MEREDITH

399. "HE TOLD OF WAVES." (line 28)

So, too, does the Ship's Captain in yet such another ore-loaden poem of the marvellous, "The Sale of St. Thomas," by Lascelles Abercrombie, telling how the saint in terror of the unknown would turn back from his mission, is rebuked by his Master, and sold by him for twenty pieces of silver to the Captain of a slant-sailed vessel bound for the barbarous Indies. Here is but a fragment of the poem:

"... _A Ship's Captain._ You are my man, my passenger?

_Thomas._ I am.
I go to India with you.

_Captain._ Well, I hope so.
There's threatening in the weather. Have you a mind
To hug your belly to the slanted deck,
Like a louse on a whip-top, when the boat
Spins on an axle in the hissing gales?

_Thomas._ Fear not. 'Tis likely indeed that storms are now
Plotting against our voyage; ay, no doubt
The very bottom of the sea prepares
To stand up mountainous or reach a limb
Out of his night of water and huge shingles,
That he and the waves may break our keel. Fear not;
Like those who manage horses, I've a word
Will fasten up within their evil natures
The meanings of the winds and waves and reefs.

_Captain._ You have a talisman? I have one too;
I know not if the storms think much of it.
I may be shark's meat yet. And would your spell
Be daunting to a cuttle, think you now?
We had a bout with one on our way here;
It had green lidless eyes like lanterns, arms
As many as the branches of a tree,
But limber, and each one of them wise as a snake.
It laid hold of our bulwarks, and with three
Long knowing arms, slimy, and of a flesh
So tough they'ld fool a hatchet, searcht the ship,
And stole out of the midst of us all a man;
Yes, and he the proudest man upon the seas
For the rare powerful talisman he'd got.
And would yours have done better?

_Thomas._ I am one
Not easily frightened. I'm for India...."

400. "PARROTS OF SHRILLY GREEN"

--this gaudy and longevous bird, that seems to contain all the wisdom of Solomon and more than the craft of Cleopatra in his eye, perched first upon England many centuries ago. Skelton speaks of him:

My name is parrot, a bird of Paradise ...
With my becke bent, my little wanton eye,
My fethers fresh, as is the emrawde grene,
About my neck a circulet, lyke the ryche rubye,
My little legges, my fete both nete and cleane....

And so, too, John Maplet, a "naturalist" who in 1567 wrote _A Greene Forest_:

"The Parret hath all hir whole bodie greene, saving that onely about hir necke she hath a Coller or Chaine naturally wrought like to Sinople or Vermelon. Indie hath of this kinde such as will counterfaite redily a mans speach: what wordes they heare, those commonly they pronounce. There have bene found of these that have saluted Emperours...."

But which Emperors, and when and to what end he does not relate. A parrot of price indeed would be she that had held converse with "Ozymandias, king of kings."

402. "THE MARCH OF TIME." (line 2)

Say, is there aught that can convey
An image of its transient stay?
'Tis an hand's breadth; 'tis a tale;
'Tis a vessel under sail:
'Tis a courser's straining steed;
'Tis a shuttle in its speed;
'Tis an eagle in its way,
Darting down upon its prey;
'Tis an arrow in its flight,
Mocking the pursuing sight;
'Tis a vapour in the air;
'Tis a whirlwind rushing there;
'Tis a short-lived fading flower;
'Tis a rainbow on a shower;
'Tis a momentary ray
Smiling in a winter's day;
'Tis a torrent's rapid stream;
'Tis a shadow; 'tis a dream;
'Tis the closing watch of night,
Dying at approaching light;
'Tis a landscape vainly gay,
Painted upon crumbling clay;
'Tis a lamp that wastes its fires,
'Tis a smoke that quick expires;
'Tis a bubble,'tis a sigh:
Be prepared, O Man! to die.

They are like strings of precious stones, rosaries, these Tudor laments, one image following another, and however sad in colour, all making beauty:

As withereth the primrose by the river,
As fadeth summer's sun from gliding fountains,
As vanisheth the light-blown bubble ever,
As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains:
So melts, so vanisheth, so fades, so withers,
The rose, the shine, the bubble, and the snow,
Of praise, pomp, glory, joy, which short life gathers,
Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy.
The withered primrose by the mourning river,
The faded summer's sun from weeping fountains,
The light-blown bubble vanishèd for ever,
The molten snow upon the naked mountains,
Are emblems that the treasures we uplay,
Soon wither, vanish, fade, and melt away....

403. "THE WILD HYAENA." (line 11)

In old times it was believed that if a hungry hyaena or jaccatray--who cannot wry his neck "because his backbone stretches itself out to the head"--dreams, he dreams so vividly that he calls into his sleeping brain a vision of the beasts he covets for prey. And this vision is so lifelike that he howls out of his sleep in mockery of the beasts--and thus decoys them to his den! He is a nocturnal scavenger, haunting graveyards, and "when" says Lyly, he "speaketh lyke a man," he "deviseth most mischief."

404. "IN XANADU DID KUBLA KHAN."

"Now, this lord (the Great Caan)," says Friar Odoric in his _Cathay_, "passeth the summer at a certain place which is called SANDU, situated towards the north, and the coolest habitation in the world. But in the winter season he abideth in Cambalech. And when he will ride from the one place to the other this is the order thereof. He hath four armies of horsemen, one of which goeth a day's march in front of him, one at each side, and one a day's march in rear, so that he goeth always as it were, in the middle of a cross. And marching thus, each army hath its route laid down for it day by day, and findeth at its halts all necessary provender. But his own immediate company hath its order of march thus. The king travelleth in a two-wheeled carriage, in which is formed a very goodly chamber, all of lign-aloes and gold, and covered over with great and fine skins, and set with many precious stones. And the carriage is drawn by four elephants, well broken in and harnessed, and also by four splendid horses, richly caparisoned. And alongside go four barons, who are called CUTHE, keeping watch and ward over the chariot that no hurt come to the king. Moreover, he carrieth with him in his chariot twelve gerfalcons; so that even as he sits therein upon his chair of state or other seat, if he sees any birds pass he lets fly his hawks at them. And none may dare to approach within a stone's throw of the carriage, unless those whose duty brings them there. And thus it is that the king travelleth."

"A SUNLESS SEA."

Our English eyes, loving light, weary a little of the short cold days in our country, when the sun makes "winter arches." Sadder still would be our state in the regions told of by Marco Polo in the following passage:

"Beyond the most distant part of the territory of the Tartars, ... there is another region [thick set with dark impenetrable woods] which extends to the utmost bounds of the north, and is called the Region of Darkness, because during most part of the winter months the sun is invisible, and the atmosphere is obscured to the same degree as that in which we find it just about the dawn of day, when we may be said to see and not to see. The men of this country are well made and tall, but of a very pallid complexion. They are not united under the government of a king or prince, and they live without any established laws or usages, in the manner of the brute creation. Their intellects also are dull, and they have an air of stupidity. The Tartars often proceed on plundering expeditions against these people, to rob them of their cattle and goods. For this purpose they avail themselves of those months in which the darkness prevails, in order that their approach may be unobserved; but, being unable to ascertain the direction in which they should return homeward with their booty, they provide against the chance of going astray by riding mares that have young foals at the time, which latter they suffer to accompany the dams as far as the confines of their own territory, but leave them, under proper care, at the commencement of the gloomy region. When their works of darkness have been accomplished, and they are desirous of revisiting the region of light, they lay the bridles on the necks of their mares, and suffer them freely to take their own course. Guided by maternal instinct, they make their way directly to the spot where they had quitted their foals; and by these means the riders are enabled to regain in safety the places of their residence."

406. "ONE HELD A SHELL UNTO HIS SHELL-LIKE EAR."

(line 6)

... Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

407. "LIKE SOLEMN APPARITIONS LULLED SUBLIME TO EVERLASTING
REST." (line 11)

... In the caves of the deep--lost Youth! lost Youth!--
O'er and o'er, fleeting billows! fleeting billows!--
Rung to his restless everlasting sleep
By the heavy death-bells of the deep,
Under the slimy-drooping sea-green willows,
Poor Youth! lost Youth!
Laying his dolorous head, forsooth,
On Carian reefs uncouth--
Poor Youth!
On the wild sand's ever-shifting pillows!...

O could my Spirit wing
Hills over, where salt Ocean hath his fresh headspring
And snowy curls bedeck the Blue-haired King,
Up where sweet oral birds articulate sing
Within the desert ring--
Their mighty shadows o'er broad Earth the Lunar
Mountains fling,
Where the Sun's chariot bathes in Ocean's fresh headspring--
O could my Spirit wing!...

GEORGE DARLEY

Full fathom five thy Father lies,
Of his bones are Corrall made:
Those are Pearles that were his eies,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a Sea-change
Into something rich, and strange:
Sea-Nimphs hourly ring his knell--
_Ding dong_.
Harke now I heare them, _ding-dong bell_.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

411. "THE GOLDEN VANITY."

This is a patchwork of stanzas from three versions of the old ballad. In one version the "Golden Vanity" is said to be the "Sweet Trinity," and to have been built by Sir Walter Raleigh in the Netherlands. According to yet another, the Cabin-boy, after threatening to sink the "Goulden Vanitie" as he had "sunk the French gallee," is taken on board and the Captain and merchant adventurers proved "far better than their word." But if stanza 12 is any witness, this seems unlikely. Can one not actually _see_ the cold faces mocking down upon the water?

412.

To an eye and ear new to them, these old Scottish ballads may seem a little difficult and forbidding. But read on, and their enchantment has no match--the very strangeness of the words, the rare music, the colour and light and clearness and vehemence, and, besides these, a wildness and ancientness like that of an old folk-tune which seems to carry with its burden as many lost memories as an old churchyard has gravestones. The stories they tell are world wide. How they came into that world (for of some of them there are as many as twenty to thirty different versions), how they have fared in their long journey, and even when and by whom they were made, are still questions on which even scholars are not yet agreed.

"Kevels" in line 5 of "Brown Robyn," means _lots_, and recalls a far older story:

"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.... And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.... Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm upon you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.... So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from her raging."

415. "A SEAL MY FATHER WAS."

Notes of music for the enticement of seals, with other beautiful old Gaelic airs and poems and tales, will be found in Journals 23/5 of The Folk-Song Society, collected by Mr. Martin Freeman.

418. "SIR PATRICK SPENCE."

The longer version of the ballad into which the genius of Sir Walter Scott wove a few new stanzas is the better known. But this, I think, is the best. Indeed, the secret art of this naked and lovely poetry seems nowadays to be lost: its marvel is how much it tells by means of the little it says.

"LATE, LATE YESTREEN." (stanza 7)

With money in his pocket and bewaring of glass, the Man of Superstitions bows low and seven times to the new moon. If he sees a dim cindrous light filling in the circle of which this crescent is the edge, he "looks out for squalls"--the new moon has "the auld moone in hir arme." That light is the earth-shine. The sun illumines the earth; the earth like a looking-glass reflects his radiance upon the moon; and she thus melancholily returns it; whereas the silver blaze on her eastern edge is light direct: eyes looking upward thence into her black skies are lit with her prodigious mornings.

419. "ALLISON GROSS."

Here I have changed only two words of the original.

420. "SIR HUGH."

If this ballad tells of a fact, then the young Sir Hugh was beguiled out of his life by the dark beautiful Jewess in the year 1255. The story comes from a monastery, and it is historically certain that the wealthiest Jews of Lincoln were in this year crucified on this charge. True or false, what a clear, pellucid picture the ballad builds up in the imagination--the ancient town; the boys at their game; the narrow, gabled, cobbled streets; the evening gold on roof and wall; night; lamentation; and the clanging of the bells.

421. "EDWARD."

The spelling of this ballad usually begins "Why dois your brand sae dripp wie bluid," and so on. This spelling Professor Child thought "affectedly antique." But since, as he says, mere antiquated "spelling will not make an old ballad, so it will not _un_make one." And "Edward" in any guise is "one of the noblest" of the popular ballads. Here it is, then, in our own spelling for proof.

422. "I WILL SING."

The king in the third line is James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England--the king, according to the old waggery, "who never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one." But see Green. The "wanton laird of young Logie" is John Wemyss who plotted against him with the Earl of Bothwell in 1592. His bold, crafty and merry young wife, May Margaret, says Mr. Sidgwick, had one of these four delectable maiden names--Vinstar, Weiksterne, Twynstoun, or Twinslace. It is dubious which.

All ladies in those old days carried knives at their girdles. The one in stanza 8 was clearly a wedding gift. And to judge from the ballads, doughty uses they sometimes put them to.

423. "FAIR ANNIE."

In the margins of Mr. Nahum's copy of this ballad, two exquisite damosels were painted in green, blue and amethyst on gold (as in a monk's work), and between their fingers hung a linen napkin seemingly broidered with pearls and in the midst of it a sleeping dove. Whatever he may have meant by this, I confess that at first reading I fell in love with both these ladies. My feelings for the "noble knight" who ransomed fair Annie, then wearied of her, were different. It was strange to find a noble knight so hard a gentleman, not so much because he wearied of her (since to weary of one so true, intelligent and tender was even more of a punishment than a misfortune) but most particularly, with regard to his craving for "gowd and gear." He reminds me of a similar piece of humanity described in three short stanzas which were found by Mr. Macmath written on the fly-leaf of a little volume printed at Edinburgh about 1670, and which _I_ found in Child's Ballads:

"He steps full statly on the street,
He hads the charters of him sell,
In to his cloathing he is complete,
In Craford's mure he bears the bell....

"I wish I had died my own fair death,
In tender age, when I was young;
I would never [then] have broke my heart
For the love of any churl's son.

"Wo be to my parents all,
That lives so farr beyond the sea!
I might have lived a noble life,
And wedded in my own countrée."

425. "BUT THINK NA' YE MY HEART WAS SAIR?"

(line 21)

Down in yon garden sweet and gay
Where bonnie grows the lily,
I heard a fair maid sighing say,
"My wish be wi' sweet Willie!"

"Willie's rare, and Willie's fair,
And Willie's wondrous bonny;
And Willie hecht to marry me
Gin e'er he married ony.

"O gentle wind, that bloweth south
From where my Love repaireth,
Convey a kiss frae his dear mouth
And tell me how he fareth!

"O tell sweet Willie to come doun
And hear the mavis singing,
And see the birds on ilka bush
And leaves around them hinging.

"The lav'rock there, wi' her white breast
And gentle throat sae narrow;
There's sport eneuch for gentlemen
On Leader haughs and Yarrow.

"O Leader haughs are wide and braid
And Yarrow haughs are bonny;
There Willie hecht to marry me
If e'er he married ony.

"But Willie's gone, whom I thought on,
And does not hear the weeping
Draws many a tear frae's true love's e'e,
When other maids are sleeping.

"Yestreen I made my bed fu' braid,
The night I'll mak' it narrow,
For a' the lee-lang winter night
I lie twined o' my marrow.

"O came ye by yon water-side?
Pu'd you the rose or lily?
Or came you by yon meadow green,
Or saw you my sweet Willie?"

She sought him up, she sought him down,
She sought him braid and narrow;
Syne, in the cleaving of a crag,
She found him drowned in Yarrow!

_Hecht_ (line 6) means vowed; _haughs_ are water-meadows; and to be twined o' one's marrow, is to be separated from one's loved one.

427. THE TWA SISTERS.

Here is another ballad--"The Water o Wearie's Well,"--of a similar pattern. But in this the drowner of the King's daughters himself finds a "watery grave":

There came a bird out o a bush,
On water for to dine,
An sighing sair, says the king's daughter,
"O wae's this heart o mine!"

He's taen a harp into his hand,
He's harped them all asleep,
Except it was the king's daughter,
Who one wink couldna get.

He's luppen on his berry-brown steed,
Taen 'er on behind himsell,
Then baith rede down to that water
That they ca Wearie's Well.

"Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well."

The first step that she steppèd in,
She stepped to the knee;
And sighend says this lady fair,
"This water's nae for me."

"Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well."

The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the middle;
"O," sighend says this lady fair,
"I've wat my gowden girdle."

"Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times have I watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well."

The next step that she steppèd in,
She stepped to the chin;
"O," sighend says this lady fair,
"They sud gar twa loves twin!"

"Seven king's daughters I've drownd there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
And I'll make you the eight o them,
And ring the common bell."

"Since I am standing here," she says,
"This dowie death to die,
One kiss o your comely mouth
I'm sure wad comfort me."

He louted him oer his saddle bow,
To kiss her cheek and chin;
She's taen him in her arms twa,
And thrown him headlong in.

"Since seven king's daughters ye've drowned there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
I'll make you bridegroom to them a',
An ring the bell mysell."

And aye she warsled, and aye she swam,
And she swam to dry lan;
She thankèd God most cheerfully
The dangers she oercame.

428. "SWEET WILLIAM AND MAY MARGARET."

_Hermione._ Come Sir, now I am for you againe:
Pray you sit by us, and tell's a Tale.

_Mamillius_ (her son). Merry, or sad, shal't bee?

_Hermione._ As merry as you will.

_Mamillius._ A sad Tale's best for Winter:
I have one of Sprights, and Goblins.

_Hermione._ Let's have that, good Sir.
Come-on, sit downe, come-on, and doe your best
To fright me with your Sprights: you're powrefull at it.

_Mamillius._ There was a man....

_Hermione._ Nay, come sit downe: then on.

_Mamillius._ Dwelt by a Churchyard:
I will tell it softly,
Yond Crickets shall not heare it.

_Hermione._ Come on then, and giv't me in mine eare....

_The Winter's Tale_

429. "THAT BIRK GREW FAIR ENEUGH." (stanza 6)

The strangest feature of these ballads is that the stories they tell, the customs, beliefs, lore they refer to, may be found scattered up and down all over the world. In Russia, for one small instance, the birk or birch tree is honoured in this fashion: A little before Whitsuntide, says Sir James Fraser in _The Golden Bough_, the young women, with dancing and feasting, cut down a living birch-tree, deck it with bright clothes or hang it with ribbons; then set it up as an honoured guest in one of the village houses. On Whit Sunday itself they fling it, finery and all, into a stream for a charm.

And now for England: "Thirty years ago," says Mrs. Wright, "it was still customary in some west-Midland districts to decorate village churches on Whit Sunday with sprigs of birch stuck in holes bored in the tops of the pews. I can remember this being done by an old village clerk in Herefordshire, but when he was gathered to his fathers in the same profession, the custom died with him." How happy must he have been then--as happy as for that one evening was the Wife of Usher's Well herself--to lift his eyes upon a silver birch brushing with its green tresses the very gates of Paradise!

433. "A SPANGLE HERE."

Dew sate on Julia's haire,
And spangled too,
Like leaves that laden are
With trembling dew:
Or glittered to my sight,
As when the Beames
Have their reflected light,
Daunc't by the Streames.

ROBERT HERRICK

If the daisies are not to shut their eyes until Julia shut hers, should they not most assuredly wait also until "dear love Isabella," shut _hers_? She was the bosom friend and aunt of Marjorie Fleming, Sir Walter Scott's little friend, who was born in 1803, and who, having written her few tim-tam-tot little rhymes, died in 1811. And here is Isabel:

Here lies sweet Isabell in bed,
With a night-cap on her head;
Her skin is soft, her face is fair,
And she has very pretty hair;
She and I in bed lies nice,
And undisturbed by rats or mice;
She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,
Though he plays upon the organ.
Her nails are neat, her teeth are white,
Her eyes are very, very bright;
In a conspicuous town she lives,
And to the poor her money gives;
Here ends sweet Isabella's story,
And may it be much to her glory.

434.

Bunyan's "Comparison" for this poem runs thus:

Our Gospel has had here a Summers day;
But in its Sun-shine we, like Fools, did play,
Or else fall out, and with each other wrangle,
And did instead of work not much but jangle.
And if our Sun seems angry, hides his face,
Shall it go down, shall Night possess this place?
Let not the voice of night-Birds us afflict,
And of our mis-spent Summer us convict.

437.

From the "Songs of Innocence"; and this is from the "Songs of Experience":

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisp'rings are in the dale.
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.

For to grow old and look back on one's childhood, though in much it is a happy thing, may be also a thing full of dread and regret. The old poets never wearied of bidding youth gather its roses, seize its fleeting moments. But not all roses are fresh and fragrant in the keeping, and "lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

440. "AFTERWARDS."

Every fine poem says much in little. It packs into the fewest possible words--by means of their sound, their sense, and their companionship--a wide or rare experience. So, in particular, with such a poem as this. It tells of a man thinking of the day when he shall have bidden goodbye to a world whose every live and lovely thing--Spring, hawk, evening, wintry skies--he has dearly loved. And if what it tells of is to be seen as clearly and truly as if it were before one's very eyes, it must be read intently--all one's imagination alert to gather up the full virtue of the words, and to picture in the mind each fleeting and living object in turn.

As I write these lines I cannot refrain from suggesting how thankful we should be to be living in a day when three great poets, who have been long in the world, are adding to the riches of English poetry--Thomas Hardy, Charles Doughty, and the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges. It is but a little while, too, since the death of that exquisite writer, and lover of all things true and beautiful, Alice Meynell, and of W. H. Hudson, who was no less a poet because he wrote not in verse but in prose.

To compare the great things of one age with the great things of another is an exceedingly difficult task (and to pit poet against poet, or imagination against imagination, an exceedingly stupid one). But that in Elizabeth's day England was indeed a "nest of singing birds" may be realised by the fact that when Shakespeare was finishing his last play, _The Tempest_, in the Spring, apparently, of 1611--when, that is, he himself was aged 47 (and his Queen had been eight years dead), Sir Walter Raleigh was 59, Anthony Munday 58, Samuel Daniel 49, Michael Drayton 48, Thomas Campion 44, Thomas Dekker (?) 41, John Donne and Ben Jonson were 38, John Fletcher was 32, Francis Beaumont 27, William Drummond 26, John Ford 25, William Browne and Robert Herrick 20, Francis Quarles 19, George Herbert 18, Thomas Carew (?) 16, James Shirley 15, and John Milton (and Sir John Suckling) were 2. It was seven years before the birth of Richard Lovelace and Abraham Cowley, ten before Marvell's, and eleven before Vaughan's. Edmund Spenser had been twelve years dead, Sir Philip Sidney twenty-five--and Chaucer 211.

Two hundred and fifty years afterwards--in 1861--another great queen was on the Throne, Victoria. It was the year in which the Prince Consort died, and Edward, Prince of Wales, came of age. Nor was England's garden silent then: for in that year William Barnes and Cardinal Newman were 60, Edward Fitzgerald and Tennyson were 52, Robert Browning 49, Charles Kingsley 42, Matthew Arnold 39, Coventry Patmore 38, William Allingham 37, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Meredith were 33, Christina Rossetti was 31, William Morris 27, Algernon Swinburne 24, Mr. Thomas Hardy was 21, Mr. Robert Bridges 17, Robert Louis Stevenson 11, and Francis Thompson was 2. Other great writers, in English, then alive were Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, Ruskin, Darwin and Huxley; Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow and Walt Whitman. So the strange flame of genius fitfully burns in this world. And 1611 knew as little of 1861 as 1861 knew of 2111. (But would that 1923 could leave to the future one-tenth part of such a legacy as did 1611--the English Bible!)

But to return to Shakespeare. He was born in April 1564. About 1591 he wrote the first of his plays, _Love's Labour's Lost_. By 1611 he had finished the last of them; 34 in all as they appear in the first Folio, 37 as they now appear in the Canon. And apart from these, his Poems. There followed a strange silence. On the 25th of March, 1616, "in perfect health and memory (God be praised!)," he made his will. On St. George's Day, 1616, he died. To reflect for a moment on that brief lifetime, on that twenty years' work which is now a perennial fountain of happiness, light and wisdom to the whole world, is to marvel indeed. The life-giving secret of this supreme genius none can tell. We know not even our own. But there is a story told by Thomas Campbell: "It was predicted of a young man lately belonging to one of our universities, that he would certainly become a prodigy because he read sixteen hours a day. 'Ah, but,' said somebody, 'how many hours a day does he _think_?' It might have been added, 'How many hours does he feel?'" So of Shakespeare. As, then, said his old friends and fellow-players, John Heminge and Henry Condell in their Preface to the Folio: "Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger...."

441. "WITH SUCH A SKY."

It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder--everlastingly....

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

442. "SHEPHERDS ALL, AND MAIDENS FAIR, FOLD YOUR FLOCKS."

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight.
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:...

These lines and the stanzas that follow them in the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ are as familiar as any in English, and may be found in almost every collection of poems. Here, "a figure on paper"--from a letter to a friend written by the author of them, Thomas Gray, on November 19, 1764, is a description--not of evening after the setting of the sun--but of a sun-_rise_ as vivid as if one's own naked eye had watched its "Levee":

I must not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was, that (in the course of my late tour) I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea-coast time enough to be at the Sun's Levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapours open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreathes, and the tide (as it flowed gently in upon the sands) first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at once a little line of unsufferable brightness that (before I can write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen. It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it, as long as the sun, or at least as long as I endure. I wonder whether anybody ever saw it before? I hardly believe it."

So each day, one remembers, the sun rises, indeed is rising always above _some_ watchful eye's horizon, and we come so to expect its rising, and so to be assured of it, as though it were no less certain than that twice two are four. But, in fact, it is only just certain enough to prevent night from being a dreadful apprehension, and life from becoming a mere routine. As Coleridge says in his _Table Talk_:

"Suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with fear; and even at the end of a thousand years, all that a man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety."

... High among the lonely hills,
While I lay beside my sheep,
Rest came down and filled my soul,
From the everlasting deep.

Changeless march the stars above,
Changeless morn succeeds to even;
Still the everlasting hills
Changeless watch the changeless heaven....

CHARLES KINGSLEY

444. "THE CHILDREN ARE GOING TO BED."

Hush-a-ba, birdie, croon, croon,
Hush-a-ba, birdie, croon.
The Sheep are gane to the siller wood,
And the cows are gane to the broom, broom.

And it's braw milking the kye, kye,
It's braw milking the kye,
The birds are singing, the bells are ringing,
And the wild deer come galloping by, by.

And hush-a-ba, birdie, croon, croon,
Hush-a-ba, birdie, croon.
The Gaits are gane to the mountain hie,
And they'll no be hame till noon, noon.

This for the littlest ones, the cradle-creatures. But for the rest:

Boys and Girls, come out to play,
The Moon doth shine as bright as day;
Come with a whoop, come with a call,
Come with a goodwill or don't come at all;
Lose your supper and lose your sleep--
So come to your playmates in the street.

And if you should want actually to bring that Moon to earth, this is how Quince managed it in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_:

THE REHEARSAL.

_Snout._ Doth the Moone shine that night wee play our
play?

_Bottom._ A Calender, a Calender, looke in the Almanack,
finde out Moone-shine, finde out Moone-shine.

_Quince._ Yes, it doth shine that night.

_Bottom._ Why then may you leave a casement of the great
chamber window (where we play) open, and
the Moone may shine in at the casement.

_Quince._ Ay, or else one must come in with a bush of
thorns and a lanthorne, and say he comes
to disfigure, or to present the person of
Moone-shine....

THE PLAY.

_Lysander._ Proceed, Moone.

_Moone._ All that I have to say, is to tell you, that the
Lanthorne is the Moone; I, the man in the
Moone; this thorne bush, my thorne bush;
and this dog, my dog....

And here is a stanza from a very old poem about that same "man in the Moone":

Mon, in the mone, stond ant streit,
On is bot-forke is burthen he bereth:
Hit is muche wonder that he na down slyt,
For doute leste he valle he shoddreth ant shereth:
When the frost freseth muche chele he byd,
The thornes beth kene is hattren to-tereth;
Nis no wytht in the world that wot wen he syt,
Ne, bote hit bue the hegge, whet wedes he wereth.

which means, I gather, that

the Man in the Moon stands up there stark and still in her
silver, carrying his thornbush on his pitchfork. It's a marvel
he doesn't slide down; he's shuddering and shaking at the
thought of it. When the frost sharpens, he'll be frozen to his
marrow. The prickles stick out to tear his clothes; but nobody
in the world has seen him sit down, or knows apart from his
thornbush what he has on.

I see the Moon,
The Moon sees me;
God bless the sailors,
And bless me.

449. "THAT BUSY ARCHER." (line 4)

Though I am young and cannot tell
Either what Love or Death is well,
Yet I have heard they both bear darts
And both do aim at human hearts....

BEN JONSON

"ARE BEAUTIES THERE AS PROUD AS HERE THEY BE."

(line 11)

... The palace of her father the King, was on that side the Moon no mortal sees, and of such an enchantment was her cold beauty that on earth none resembles it. Yet all her flattery and pride was but to win the idolatrous love of far-travelling Princes, or even of wanderers of common blood; for the sake of that love and admiration only. And many perished in those rock-bound deserts and parched and icy lunar wildernesses on account of this proud damsel; before a strange fate befell her....

Here, too, is a fragment (from a thirteenth century MS.), to be found in _A Medieval Garner_:

"What shall we say of the ladies when they come to feasts? Each marks well the other's head; they wear bosses like horned beasts, and if any have no horns, she is a laughing stock for the rest. Their arms go merrily when they come into the room; they display their kerchiefs of silk and cambric, set on their buttons of coral and amber, and cease not their babble so long as they are in the bower.... But however well their attire be fashioned, when the feast is come, it pleases them nought; so great is their envy now and so high grows their pride, that the bailiff's daughter counterfeits the lady.'"

450. "SHE HATH NO AIR." (line 5)

--and that being so:

".... There will be no sounds on the moon.... Even a meteor shattering itself to a violent end against the surface of the moon would make no noise. Nor would it herald its coming by glowing into a 'shooting star,' as it would on entering the earth's atmosphere. There will be no floating dust, no scent, no twilight, no blue sky, no twinkling of the stars. The sky will be always black and the stars will be clearly visible by day as by night. The sun's wonderful corona, which no man on earth, even by seizing every opportunity during eclipses, can hope to see for more than two hours in all, in a long lifetime, will be visible all day. So will the great red flames of the sun.... There will be no life (since) for fourteen days there is continuous night, when the temperature must sink away down towards the absolute cold of space. This will be followed without an instant of twilight by full daylight. For another fourteen days the sun's rays will bear straight down, with no diffusion or absorption of their heat, or light, on the way...."

This is a matter-of-fact fragment out of "The Outline of Science," edited by Professor J. Arthur Thompson; but it would not be easy to say exactly how in its magical _effect_ on the mind it differs from poetry. Indeed, there can hardly be a quicker journey to the comprehension of scientific fact than by way of the imagination. Moonless mountainous Hesper, the Evening Star, is an even lovelier thing to watch shining in the fading rose and green of sunset when we realise that at her most radiant--a radiance that casts an earthly shadow even--it is but a slim crescent of the planet that we see, a planet, too, almost sister in magnitude to the earth, but whose briefer year is of an ardour that might be happiness to fiery sprite and salamander, but would be unendurable to watery creatures like ourselves. Nor could language be used more scientifically (concisely, pregnantly and exactly), than in the words _moving_, _human_, _mask_, in the following sonnet by John Keats--a sonnet written in mortal illness and in immortal sorrowfulness:

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--

No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

JOHN KEATS

455. "RIGHT GOOD IS REST."

Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving
Lock me in delight awhile;
Let some pleasing dreams beguile
All my fancies: that from thence
I may feel an influence
All my powers of care bereaving!

Though but a shadow, but a sliding,
Let me know some little joy!
We that suffer long annoy
Are contented with a thought
Through an idle fancy wrought:
O let my joys have some abiding!

JOHN FLETCHER

457. BEFORE SLEEPING.

I have pieced this rhyme together from well-known versions and fragments. But the Angels?--

"And after that, I sawe iiij Angels stande on the iiij corners of the erth holdynge the foure wyndes of the erth, that the wyndes shuld not blowe on the erth, nether on the see, nether on eny tree."

The Revelation of S. John the Divine (1539).

"And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands."

The Same (1611).

Of these Angels, having their fitting place among the hierarchies--Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels--no names are given. But Michael and Gabriel are archangels named in the Bible, and in the Apocrypha and elsewhere, Raphael, Zadkiel, Uriel, Chamuel, Jophiel. These too; steadfast or fallen: Samael, Semalion, Abdiel and gigantic Sandalphon, Rahab, Prince of the Sea; Ridia, Prince of the Rain; Yurkemi, Prince of the Hail; Af of Anger; Abaddona of Destruction; Lailah of Night. And in _Paradise Lost_:

Now had night measured with her shadowy cone
Halfway up-hill this vast sublunar vault;
And from their ivory port the Cherubim
Forth issuing, at the accustomed hour, stood armed....

Then speak together Gabriel, Uzziel, Ithuriel, Zephon. And last--not the most distant from mortal love--strangely-angelled Poe's shrill-tongued Israfel:

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute....

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely--flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

Oh speake againe bright angell, for thou art
As glorious to this night being ore my head,
As is a wingèd messenger of heaven
Unto the white upturned wondring eyes
Of mortalls that fall backe to gaze on him.

_Romeo and Juliet_

In paint and wood and words and stone Man has for centuries made pictures and images for symbols of angelic might and beauty. But what does he know of these Beings in themselves?--"That there are distinct orders of Angels, assuredly I believe, but what they are I cannot tell.... They are creatures that have not so much of a body as flesh is, as froth is, as a vapour is, as a sigh is; and yet with a touch they shall moulder a rock into less atoms than the sand that it stands upon, and a millstone into smaller flour than it grinds. They are creatures made, and yet not a minute older than when they were first made, if they were made before all measures of time begun; nor, if they were made in the beginning of time, and be now six thousand years old, have they one wrinkle of age in their face, one sob of weariness in their lungs. They are _primogeniti Dei_, God's eldest sons...."

JOHN DONNE

459.

This is the Song sung by his guardian Angel to a young sleeping Prince who has been cheated of his inheritance. It was printed by Charles Lamb in his _English Dramatic Poets_, from a Tragedy entitled _The Conspiracy_, written by Henry Killigrew when he was seventeen.

460. THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK.

The relics of this Saint, who for his miracles was thought to be a sorcerer, and was murdered by a mob, were interred in Alexandria. Hundreds of years afterwards these relics were coveted by the Venetians by reason of the story that the Saint had once visited their city and had heard speak to him an angel: _Pax tibi, Marce. Hic requiescet corpus tuum_. At length two Venetian merchants, having persuaded the Alexandrians that the sacred bones lay in danger of the raiding Saracens, travelled back with them to their own city, where they were reinterred with solemn ceremony in St. Mark's. This church was afterwards burned to the ground, and the relics were lost. A century passed; a wondrously beautiful church had arisen from the ashes of the old, and during the ceremony held in the faith that it would be revealed where they lay hid, suddenly a light shone forth from one of the great piers, there was a sound of falling masonry, and, lo, the body of the Saint, with arm outstretched, as if at finger's touch he had revealed his secret resting-place.

"DOVES OF SIAM, LIMA MICE, AND LEGLESS BIRDS OF PARADISE." (p.
470.)

What particular kinds of doves and mice Keats had in mind here I cannot yet discover. But, according to Topsell, mice are of these kinds: the short, small, fearful, peaceable, ridiculous, rustik, or country mouse, the urbane or citty mouse, the greedy, wary, unhappy, harmefull, black, obscene, little, whiner, biter, and earthly mouse. Mice, too, he says, are "sometimes blackish, sometimes white, sometimes yellow, sometimes broune and sometimes ashe colour. There are white mice amonge the people of Savoy, and Dolphin in France, called alaubroges, which the inhabitants of the country do beleev that they feede upon snow." Then, again, "the field mouse, the farie, with a long snout; and the sleeper, that is of a dun colour and will run on the edge of a sword and sleep on the point."

What Topsell meant by "whiner" I am uncertain, but it may be he refers to the mouse that sings. That is a habit quite distinct from the common squeaking, shrilling and shrieking. It resembles the slow low trill of a very distant and sleepy canary, but sweeter and more domestic, and is as pleasant a thing to hear behind a wainscot, as it is to watch the creatures gambolling. Why women are apt to fear these tiny beasts is a mystery. But whatever mischief their ravagings may cause, may I never live under a roof wherein (Cat or no Cat) there is no inch of house-room for Mistress Mouse!