Chapter M: ARNOLD (Obermann Once More) (1)

* * * * *

Learn to win a lady’s faith
Nobly as the thing is high,
Bravely as for life and death,
With a loyal gravity.

E. B. BROWNING (_The Lady’s Yes_).

* * * * *

THE CORAL REEF

In my dreams I dreamt
Of a coral reef—
Far away, far, far away,
Where seas were lulled and calm,
A place of silver sand.
Truly a lovely land,
Truly a lovely dream,
Truly a peaceful scene—
When, like a flash, through all the sea
There shone a gleam.
Rising like Venus from her wat’ry bed
Rose a young mermaid with her hair unkempt,
Beautiful hair! light as a golden leaf,
Shining like Phoebus at the break of day.
And she tossed and shook her lovely head,
Shook off drops more precious, far, than pearls.
To a coral rock she slowly went,
Slowly floated like a graceful swan;
Combed her hair that hung in yellow curls
Till the evening shadows ’gan to fall;
Then she gave one look round, that was all,
Rose—and then, her figure curved, arms bent
Above her head—a flash! and she was gone;
And ripples in wide circles rise and fall,
Spreading and spreading still, where she has been.

BETTY BRAY, January 1918. Aged 11.

See Note on page 155.

* * * * *

BENEATH MY WINDOW

Beneath my window, roses red and white
Nod like a host of flitting butterflies;
But, faded by the day, one ev’ry night
Shakes its soft petals to the ground, and dies.
And that is why I see, when night doth pass,
Tears in her sisters’ eyes, and on the grass.

BETTY BRAY, 1920. Aged 13.

* * * * *

MUSIC

Three wondrous things there are upon the earth,
Three gentle spirits, that I love full well,
Three glorious voices, which by far excel
Even the silver-throated Philomel.

For not in sound alone lies music’s worth,
But rather in the feeling that it brings,
Whether of joy, or peace, or dreaminess.

And when I hear the rain soft, softly beat,
Singing with low, sweet voice, and musical,
I think of all the tears that ever fell
In perfect happiness, or deep distress,
And so it brings a pang, half sad, half sweet,
Into my heart.

Then, when the sparkling rill
Dances between the sunny banks, and sings
For very joy, all dimpling with delight,
O all the happy laughter ’neath the sky
Rings sweet and clear, and makes the world more bright.

And, when the sun has sunk beneath the sea
And vanished from the glory of the west,
Leaving the peaceful eve to melt to night,—
O then it is the loveliest voice of all,
The gentle night-wind softly sings to me,
Tender and low, as sweetest lullaby
As ever hushed a weary head to rest:
On, on it sings, until from drowsiness
My tired eyes softly close, and all is still.

BETTY BRAY, 1920 Aged 13.

See Note on page 155.

* * * * *

THE MARTYR

When night fell softly on the silent city,
A little white moth thro’ my window came
Out of the darkness and the shadows dim,
Seeking the brightness of my candle’s flame.
Around and round the lighted wick he flew,
Winging his wonderful and curious flight;
And near, and still more near, the circles grew....
And then—the flame no more was bright for him.
Then all my heart went out in sudden pity
To that small martyr, who had sought for light,
And found—his death. O he was fair to die.
I rose and snuffed the candle with a sigh.

BETTY BRAY, September 26, 1920. Aged 14 years.

These fresh, clear, spontaneous verses have a special value.
They bring us a promise of Spring—the message that we may still
hope for a revival of English Poetry.

Therefore, I have included them (in this third edition)
although they are outside the general scope of my book.

Miss Betty Bray has been writing since she was seven years of
age. She writes with great facility and has already filled two
manuscript books. Her verses are entirely her own, no defects
being pointed out or other assistance or guidance given her.

She was born on June 11th, 1906. She is the daughter of Mr.
Denys de Saumarez Bray, C.S.I., and the grand-niece of my late
partner the Hon. Sir John Bray, K.C.M.G., who was Premier of
South Australia. Her grandfather was born in Adelaide.

* * * * *

Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

MILTON (_Paradise Lost_).

Milton refers to his blindness in this and other passages—as in
the well known sonnet.

* * * * *

THE ATTAINMENT

You love? That’s high as you shall go;
For ’tis as true as Gospel text,
Not noble then is never so,
Either in this world or the next.

COVENTRY PATMORE (_The Angel in the House_).

* * * * *

For one fair Vision ever fled
Down the waste waters day and night,
And still we follow where she led,
In hope to gain upon her flight.
Her face was evermore unseen,
And fixt upon the far sea-line;
But each man murmured, “O my Queen,
I follow till I make thee mine!”

And now we lost her, now she gleamed
Like Fancy made of golden air.
Now nearer to the prow she seemed
Like Virtue firm, like Knowledge fair,
Now high on waves that idly burst
Like Heavenly Hope she crowned the sea,
And now, the bloodless point reversed,
She bore the blade of Liberty.

TENNYSON (_The Voyage_).

* * * * *

King Stephen was a worthy peere,
His breeches cost him but a crowne;
He held them sixpence all too deare
Therefore he called the taylor lowne, rascal
He was a wight of high renowne
And thouse but of a low degree, thou art
It’s pride that putts the countrye downe,
Man, take thine old cloake about thee.

PERCY’S _Reliques_.

The poor man wants a new cloak, but his wife objects.

The verse is sung by Iago (_Othello_, Act II., Sc. 3), the
words being a little different.

* * * * *

LOVE’S LAST MESSAGES

Merry, merry little stream,
Tell me, hast thou seen my dear?
I left him with an azure dream,
Calmly sleeping on his bier—
But he has fled!

“I passed him in his churchyard bed—
A yew is sighing o’er his head,
And grass-roots mingle with his hair.”

What doth he there?
O cruel, can he lie alone?
Or in the arms of one more dear?
Or hides he in that bower of stone,
To cause, and kiss away my fear?

“He doth not speak, he doth not moan—
Blind, motionless, he lies alone;
But, ere the grave-snake fleshed his sting,
This one warm tear he bade me bring
And lay it at thy feet
Among the daisies sweet.”

Moonlight whisperer, summer air,
Songster of the groves above,
Tell the maiden rose I wear
Whether thou hast seen my love.

“This night in heaven I saw him lie,
Discontented with his bliss;
And on my lips he left this kiss,
For thee to taste and then to die.”

T. L. BEDDOES (1803-1849).

Beddoes intended to destroy this poem, but it was published
without his knowledge. This is one of the cases where artists
have shown themselves incapable critics of their own work.

* * * * *

O Earth so full of dreary noises!
O men with wailing in your voices!
O delvèd gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse that o’er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all
And giveth His beloved sleep.

E. B. BROWNING (_The Sleep_).

* * * * *

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse,—
Nothing refuse
...
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go
The gods arrive.

R. W. EMERSON (_Give all to Love_).

* * * * *

On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more trace than have last winter’s snowflakes. This commonplace sequence and flowing on of life is immeasurably affecting. That winter morning when Charles lost his head in front of the banqueting-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung from the eaves of the houses here, and the clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted shoon, and thought but of his supper when, at three o’clock, the red sun set in the purple mist.... Battles have been fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself; but, all unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched apples-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and smoked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, and rejoiced over its newborn children, and with proper solemnity carried its dead to the churchyard.

ALEXANDER SMITH (_Dreamthorp_).

* * * * *

O moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

SIR P. SIDNEY.

“Do they call ungratefulness a virtue?”

* * * * *

Quixotism, or Utopianism: that is another of the devil’s pet words. I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready to make, that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is “Utopian,” beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.

JOHN RUSKIN (_Lectures on Architecture and Painting_).

* * * * *

Two angels guide
The path of man, both aged and yet young,
As angels are, ripening through endless years.
On one he leans: some call her Memory,
And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet,
With deep mysterious accord: the other,
Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams
A light divine and searching on the earth,
Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,
Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew
Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp
Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked
But for Tradition; we walk evermore
To higher paths, by brightening Reason’s lamp.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Spanish Gypsy_).

* * * * *

Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance: not one Christian: not one but undervalues Christianity—singly, what am I to do? Wesley (have you read his life?) was he not an elevated character? Wesley has said “Religion is not a solitary thing.” Alas! it necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary.

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) (_Letter to S. T. Coleridge, Jan. 10, 1797_).

Poor lovable Charles Lamb! When he wrote this he was only
twenty-one years of age, he had already been himself confined
in an asylum, and now his sister in a moment of madness had
killed her mother. When afterwards he was allowed to take care
of Mary, he had still to take her back to the asylum from time
to time, as a fresh attack of mania began to manifest itself.
The picture of the weeping brother and sister on their way to
the asylum is dreadfully sad. The passage seems interesting
because of Lamb’s reference to Wesley.

* * * * *

Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain:
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain:
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.

KEATS (_The Eve of St. Agnes_).

Madeline is lying asleep in bed—but the last line could be used
in quite another sense as prettily expressing _rejuvenation_.

* * * * *

Beneath the moonlight and the snow
Lies dead my latest year;
The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.

I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well!

J. G. WHITTIER (_My Birthday_).

* * * * *

If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink:—
Good wine; a friend; or being dry;
Or lest we should be by and by;
Or—any other reason why.

HENRY ALDRICH (1647-1710).

_Autres temps, autres moeurs!_ Aldrich was Dean of Christ
Church, Oxford, when he wrote these lines.

* * * * *

INSCRIPTION FOR A BUST OF CUPID

Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître;
Il l’est, le fut, ou le doit être.

(Whatso’er thou art, thy master see!
He was, or is, or is to be.)

VOLTAIRE.

* * * * *

UP-HILL

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum[22]
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

* * * * *

A pebble in the streamlet scant
Has turned the course of many a river,
A dewdrop in the baby plant
Has warped the giant oak for ever.

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes’ his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone.”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago,—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.

But now his nose is thin.
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff.
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh....

O. W. HOLMES (_The Last Leaf_).

* * * * *

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know!

JOHN KEATS (_Ode on a Grecian Urn_).

Matthew Arnold says of this: “No, it is not all; but it is
true, deeply true, and we have deep need to know it.... To see
things in their beauty is to see things in their truth, and
Keats knew it. ‘What the Imagination seizes on as Beauty must
be Truth,’ he says in prose.”

* * * * *

Were it not sadder, in the years to come,
To feel the hand-clasp slacken for long use,
The untuned heart-strings for long stress refuse
To yield old harmonies, the songs grow dumb
For weariness, and all the old spells lose
The first enchantment? Yet this they must be:
Love is but mortal, save in memory.

JOHN PAYNE (_A Farewell_).

* * * * *

Aux coeurs blessés—l’ombre et le silence.

(For the wounded heart—shade and silence.)

BALZAC (_Le Médecin de Campagne_).

* * * * *

The huge mass of black crags that towered at the head of the gloomy defile was exactly what one would picture as the enchanted castle of the evil magician, within sight of which all vegetation withered, looking from over the desolate valley of ruins to the barren shore strewed with its sad wreckage, and the wild ocean beyond....

The land-crabs certainly looked their part of goblin guardians of the approaches to the wicked magician’s fastness. They were fearful as the firelight fell on their yellow cynical faces, fixed as that of the sphinx, but fixed in a horrid grin. Those who have observed this foulest species of crab will know my meaning. Smelling the fish we were cooking they came down the mountains in thousands upon us. We threw them lumps of fish, which they devoured with crab-like slowness, yet perseverance.

It is a ghastly sight, a land-crab at his dinner. A huge beast was standing a yard from me; I gave him a portion of fish, and watched him. He looked at me straight in the face with his outstarting eyes, and proceeded with his two front claws to tear up his food, bringing bits of it to his mouth with one claw, as with a fork. But all this while he never looked at what he was doing; his face was fixed in one position, staring at me. And when I looked around, lo! there were half a dozen others all steadily feeding, but with immovable heads turned to me with that fixed basilisk stare. It was indeed horrible, and the effect was nightmarish in the extreme. While we slept that night they attacked us, and would certainly have devoured us, had we not awoke; and did eat holes in our clothes. One of us had to keep watch, so as to drive them from the other two, otherwise we should have had no sleep.

Imagine a sailor cast alone on this coast, weary, yet unable to sleep a moment on account of these ferocious creatures. After a few days of an existence full of horror he would die raving mad, and then be consumed in an hour by his foes. In all Dante’s Inferno there is no more horrible a suggestion of punishment than this.

E. F. KNIGHT (_The Cruise of the “Falcon”_).

The scene is in the Island of Trinidad, off the coast of Brazil.

* * * * *

... Nor the end of love is sure,
(Alas! how much less sure than anything!)
Whether the little love-light shall endure
In the clear eyes of her we loved in Spring.

Or if the faint flowers of remembering
Shall blow, we know not: only this we know,—
Afar Death comes with silent steps and slow.

JOHN PAYNE (_Salvestra_).

* * * * *

The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

W. WORDSWORTH (_Three Years She Grew_).

* * * * *

As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary: the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle: because man doth not live by bread alone, but also by the desert manna; by every wondrous word and unknowable work of God.

JOHN RUSKIN.

* * * * *

Alas! the long gray years have vanquished me,
The shadow of the inexorable days!
I am grown sad and silent: for the sea
Of Time has swallowed all my pleasant ways.
I am grown weary of the years that flee
And bring no light to set my bound hope free,
No sun to fill the promise of old Mays.

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

LOVE

Cet égoisme à deux.

DE STAËL.

* * * * *

It is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

* * * * *

I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. For my own part, I do not know what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it _feels_ like a real fight,—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and fears. For such a half-wild, half-saved universe our nature is adapted. The deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears.... In these depths of personality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise. Here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature of things; and compared with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract statements and scientific arguments—the veto, for example, which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith—sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth.

WILLIAM JAMES (_Is Life Worth Living?_).

(Mr. T. R. Glover in _The Jesus of History_ points out that
when Christ said “Ye are they that have continued with me in my
temptations” (Luke xxii, 26), He meant that the disciples had
_helped Him_ by their fidelity.)

The following is from Professor Hobhouse’s _Questions of
War and Peace_, repeating what he had set out at length in
his _Development and Purpose_ (I take the quotation from
_The Spectator_ review, as the book is not yet procurable in
Australia):

“I think, therefore, that we must go back into ourselves for
faith, and away from ourselves into the world for reason.
The deeper we go into ourselves the more we throw off forms
and find the assurance not only that the great things exist,
but that they are the heart of our lives, and, since after
all we are of one stock, they must be at the heart of your
lives as well as mine. You say there are bad men and wars and
cruelties and wrong, I say all these are the collision of
undeveloped forms. What is the German suffering from but a
great illusion that the State is something more than man, and
that power is more than justice! Strip him of this and he is
a man like yourself, pouring out his blood for the cause that
he loves, and that you and I detest. Probe inwards, then, and
you find the same spring of life everywhere and it is good.
Look outwards, and you find, as you yourself admit the slow
movement towards a harmony which just means that these impulses
of primeval energy come, so to say, to understand one another.
Every form they take as they grow will provoke conflict,
perish, and be cast aside until the whole unites, and there
you have the secret of your successive efforts and failures
which yet leave something behind them. God is not the creator
who made the world in six days, rested on the seventh and saw
that it was good. He is growing in the actual evolution of the
world.”

* * * * *

And since (man) cannot spend and use aright
The little time here given him in trust.
But wasteth it in weary undelight
Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and lust.
He naturally claimeth to inherit
The everlasting Future, that his merit
May have full scope; as surely is most just.

JAMES THOMSON (_The City of Dreadful Night_).

* * * * *

The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

JOHN KEATS (_His Last Sonnet_, 1820).

* * * * *

With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
Love caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.

He loves to sit and hear me sing.
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.

W. BLAKE (_Song_).

This poem was written before Blake was _fourteen_ years of age.

* * * * *

When the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom....
He was perfumèd like a milliner;
And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box. And still he smiled and talked;
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

SHAKESPEARE (_1 Henry IV._, i. 3).

* * * * *

... High-kilted perhaps, as once at Dundee I saw them,
Petticoats up to the knees, or even, it might be, above them
Matching their lily-white legs with the clothes that they trod in the
wash-tub!
...
... In a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey,
Barefoot, barelegged he beheld her, with arms bare up to the elbows,
Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting potatoes!

A. H. CLOUGH (_The Bothie of Tober-na Vuolich_).

* * * * *

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire
Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;
The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath
Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;
Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold
Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

JAMES THOMSON (_The City of Dreadful Night_).

The five quotations above are from a series of word-pictures
(see p. 85).

* * * * *

SHE COMES AS COMES THE SUMMER NIGHT

She comes as comes the summer night,
Violet, perfumed, clad with stars,
To heal the eyes hurt by the light
Flung by Day’s brandish’d scimitars.
The parted crimson of her lips
Like sunset clouds that slowly die
When twilight with cool finger-tips
Unbraids her tresses in the sky.

The melody of waterfalls
Is in the music of her tongue,
Low chanted in dim forest halls
Ere Dawn’s loud bugle-call has rung.
And as a bird with hovering wings
Halts o’er her young one in the nest,
Then droops to still his flutterings,
She takes me to her fragrant breast.

O star and bird at once thou art,
And Night, with purple-petall’d charm,
Shining and singing to my heart,
And soothing with a dewy calm.
Let Death assume this lovely guise,
So darkly beautiful and sweet,
And, gazing with those starry eyes,
Lead far away my weary feet.

And that strange sense of valleys fair
With birds and rivers making song
To lull the blossoms gleaming there,
Be with me as I pass along.
Ah! lovely sisters, Night and Death,
And lovelier Woman—wondrous three,
“Givers of Life,” my spirit saith,
Unfolders of the mystery.

Ah! only Love could teach me this,
In memoried springtime long since flown;
Red lips that trembled to my kiss,
That sighed farewell, and left me lone.
O Joy and Sorrow intertwined,—
A kiss, a sigh, and blinding tears,—
Yet ever after in the wind,
The bird-like music of the spheres!

FRANK S. WILLIAMSON.

This is from the author’s “Purple and Gold,” a book of poems
published in Melbourne (Thomas C. Lothian, publisher).

* * * * *

No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

G. MACDONALD (_Robert Falconer_).

* * * * *

WHEN LOVE MEETS LOVE

When love meets love, breast urged to breast,
God interposes,
An unacknowledged guest,
And leaves a little child among our roses.

O, gentle hap!
O, sacred lap!
O, brooding dove!
But when he grows
Himself to be a rose,
God takes him—Where is then our love?
O, where is all our love?

* * * * *

BETWEEN OUR FOLDING LIPS

Between our folding lips
God slips
An embryon life, and goes;
And this becomes your rose.
We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth
God spies occasion for a birth.
_Then is it His, or is it ours?_
I know not—He is fond of flowers.

T. E. BROWN.

Compare the well-known lines by George MacDonald:

Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here....

How did they all[23] just come to be you?
God thought about me, and so I grew.

The suggestion that we are the result of God’s thought appears
elsewhere in MacDonald, as in _Robert Falconer_:

If God were _thinking_ me—ah! But if He be only _dreaming_ me,
I shall go mad.

And in _The Marquis of Lossie_:

I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be
when He thought of you first.

* * * * *

Some things are of that Nature as to make
One’s fancy checkle, while his Heart doth ake.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Checkle = chuckle.

* * * * *

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

LORD BYRON (_On my Thirty-sixth Year_).

* * * * *

’Tis a very good world to live in,
To spend, and to lend, and to give in;
But to beg, or to borrow, or ask for our own
’Tis the very worst world that ever was known.

J. BROMFIELD.

Often ascribed to the Earl of Rochester. See _Notes and
Queries_ July 18, 1896.

* * * * *

Dead years have yet the fire of life
In Memory’s holy urn;
Her altars, heaped with frankincense
Of bygone summers, burn;
And, when in everlasting night
We see yon sun decline,
Deep in the soul his purple flames
Eternally will shine.

ALBERT JOSEPH EDMUNDS (b. 1857) (_The Living
Past_).

Mr. Edmunds, when this was written in 1880, was a young English
poet and spiritualist, but has since settled in Philadelphia.
He has written a number of works, the principal being _Buddhist
and Christian Gospels now First Compared from the Originals_.

In 1883 he was cataloguing a library at Sunderland, and came
across books on the Alps, etc., by a Rev. Leslie Stephen.
He wrote to the publishers to find out if they were by the
same writer as the Leslie Stephen who had written on Ethics.
Sir (then Mr.) Leslie Stephen had just been appointed Clark
Lecturer at Cambridge. He replied to Edmunds, “I am one
person,” adding that he had given up holy orders. Edmunds
replied:

To Mr. Leslie Stephen, Sir,
Confound your personality;
I did, and now must here, aver
Belief was not reality.

I hope my slip may be excused,
And doom this time decided not,
For, though the _persons_ I confused,
Your _substance_ I divided not.

Now thanks to you, my mind’s relieved
From mystified plurality,
For, in your courteous note received,
You’ve unified _duality_.

Your Alpine thoughts will elevate
Old Cantab’s flat vicinity,
And give her church another _state_
By unifying _Trinity_!

You’ve left, you say, the fold of strife,
Where desperate _charges_ never end;
Not handsome _living_, handsome _life_
Henceforth will make you _reverend_.

I’m Edmunds, Millfield, Sutherland,
Where souls in sulphur barter, sir;
But, please excuse an ending grand—
My name to rhyme’s a Tartar, sir.

* * * * *

SPIRITUALISM

Only a rising billow,
Only a deep sigh drawn
By the great sea of chaos
Before Creation’s dawn.

Only a little princess
Spelling the words of kings;
Only the Godhead’s prattle
In Sinai mutterings!

The crowd mistakes and fears it,
And Aaron has ignored,
But Moses, far above them,
Is talking with the Lord!

ALBERT JOSEPH EDMUNDS.

See note to previous quotation. This poem was written in 1883.

Although I preserved these verses, I may add that I had no
interest whatever in spiritualism, permeated as it was with
childishness and fraud. But, nevertheless, it (together with
the so-called “Theosophy”) led to the happy result that the
Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882. Although
spiritualism did good in this way, its unhappy associations
do harm to the Society and hamper it in the important work it
has carried on during the last thirty-eight years. Popular
prejudice continues to associate it with the old spiritualism,
and in consequence no proper attention is paid to its
_intensely interesting_ and most valuable investigations.
For example, there are, apart from Public Libraries and
Universities, only six members or associates in the whole of
Australia! And yet, besides important work in other directions,
it must be admitted by any open-minded person that the evidence
collected by the Society that the dead (by telepathy or
otherwise) communicate with the living is unanswerable.

* * * * *

He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed.

THOMAS FULLER.

This refers to the French proverb, “_Il ne faut pas vendre la
peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué_,” or, as we say, “Do not
count your chickens before they are hatched.”

* * * * *

Habit dulls the senses and puts the critical faculty to sleep. The fierceness and hardness of ancient manners is apparent to us, but the ancients themselves were not shocked by sights which were familiar to them. To us it is sickening to think of the gladiatorial show, of the massacres common in Roman warfare, of the infanticide practised by grave and respectable citizens, who did not merely condemn their children to death, but often in practice, as they well knew, to what was still worse—a life of prostitution and beggary. The Roman regarded a gladiatorial show as we regard a hunt; the news of the slaughter of two hundred thousand Helvetians by Cæsar or half a million Jews by Titus excited in his mind a thrill of triumph; infanticide committed by a friend appeared to him a prudent measure of household economy.

SIR J. R. SEELEY (_Ecce Homo_).

It is still more important to realize that the exposure of
children was a recognized practice also among the Greeks, and
that no one, not even Plato, their noblest philosopher, saw
anything wrong in it. It is only by letting the mind dwell
on such facts as these, until their significance is fully
appreciated, that we can realize the width and depth of the
great gulf that separates the Pagan and the Christian, the
ancient and the modern world. Take this one fact only: imagine
the Greek father looking at his helpless babe and coldly
deciding that to rear it will be inconvenient,[24] or that
there are already enough children to divide the inheritance,
or that the child is sickly or deformed, or that its person
offends his idea of beauty—and then consigning his own
offspring to slavery, prostitution, or death! (The child would
either die or be picked up to be reared for some such purpose.)
Even in the very imperfect state of our own civilization, we at
least have children’s hospitals and crèches, and are inflamed
with righteous rage when even an _unknown_ baby is ill-treated.
(We, indeed, go further, and have laws and societies for
prevention of cruelty to _animals_.)

The consideration of such a fact leads us also to inquire as
to the relations of husband and wife, seeing that the woman
would have at least the affection for her offspring that is
common among the lower animals. We then find that the modern
chivalrous idea of womanhood was unknown to the Greeks; the
wife was not educated, and was considered an inferior being;
she was married mainly in order to provide sons to carry out
certain ritual observances necessary for the father’s welfare
after death; she was kept in an almost Eastern seclusion (and
therefore had to improve her pallid complexion by paint); she
would associate mainly with the children and slaves. We also
find that fidelity of the husband to the wife was neither
required nor _esteemed_; and that there was little marital love
or family life. (Plato in his model Republic would abolish both
the latter, for there was to be promiscuity of women, and all
children were to be brought up by the State.)

Considering further this practice of exposing children, we
realize that it indicates _the want of pity for the helpless
and suffering_, which is seen among the lower animals (but
with exceptions even among them). From this we may reasonably
infer that the Greeks would show little humanity in treating
other helpless or suffering people, the sick or distressed,
dependents or slaves, conquered enemies or others in their
power. (In this respect, however, they, as an intellectual
people, would subject themselves to and be controlled by
necessary _social_ laws and _practical_ considerations; and
also, as a fact, they at times showed generosity to a valiant
foe.) Again we can infer that, where even the spirit of mercy
was so wanting, the gospel of _love_ could not possibly exist,
and that the Greeks lived on a far lower _moral_ plane than
ours. These questions are far too large to discuss in this
book, and I must leave them to be dealt with elsewhere.

But, even from this very small portion of the available
evidence, we can arrive at three resulting facts: _First_,
that when in translations from the Greek we find such words as
“kindness,” “love,” “morality,” “purity,” “virtue,” “religion,”
etc., they have for us a far larger and higher content than the
Greek words in the original; _secondly_, that therefore, the
reader must get incorrect impressions of Greek literature and
thought; and, _thirdly_, that truly marvellous as the Greeks
were in art and literature, the current conception of them as a
noble-minded and refined people is erroneous.

In referring to the Greeks, one needs to limit the people and
period, and I am referring to the great age of the Attic or
Athenian Greeks, say the Fifth Century, B.C. There would, of
course, be gradations of character among them, and, no doubt,
some would be kind-hearted, others would have affection for
their wives, and so on. But this can only be assumption, for
there is little in their literature to support it. This will
be seen if the evidence adduced by Mr. Livingstone (“The Greek
Genius,” pp. 117-122) is carefully and critically examined.
(His references to Homer, who lived in a far distant age must
be omitted.) Also the fact that Herodotus, in the course of his
narrative, tells us that some men of another state had a moment
of compassion for a baby whom they were about to slay, does not
prove in the slightest degree that he was himself humane. The
wording of Mr. Livingstone’s translation, p. 118, “It happened
_by a divine chance_ that the baby smiled, etc.,” would appear
to confirm this view of his; but the Greek words simply mean
that a god by chance intervened. Knowing what we do of the
Greek gods, that intervention would certainly not be actuated
by any kindly feeling towards the infant—the object presumably
was that the child should live to fulfil the destiny prophesied
by the Delphic Oracle. (Herodotus was a typical Greek to whom
the world was peopled with gods, and he sees them constantly
interposing in human affairs.) As regards the exposure of
children, the point is that _it was a recognized and common
practice, duly sanctioned by law, and never condemned by any
writer_. Indeed Plato and Aristotle definitely approve of it,
and in Plato’s Ideal Republic the weakly and deformed children
were to be killed by the State.

As regards the current conception of the Greeks, Shelley in his
“Preface to Hellas” describes them as “those glorious beings
whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as
belonging to our kind.” Similar statements could be gathered
from innumerable English and European writers.

* * * * *

THE PACE THAT KILLS

The gallop of life was once exciting,
Madly we dashed over pleasant plains,
And the joy, like the joy of a brave man fighting,
Poured in a flood through our eager veins,
Hot youth is the time for the splendid ardour,
That stamps and startles, that throbs and thrills
And ever we pressed our horses harder,
Galloping on at the pace that kills!

So rapid the pace, so keen the pleasure,
Scarcely we paused to glance aside,
As we mocked the dullards, who watched at leisure
The frantic race that we chose to ride.
Yes, youth is the time when a master-passion,
Or love or ambition, our nature fills;
And each of us rode in a different fashion—
All of us rode at the pace that kills!

And vainly, O friends, ye strive to bind us;
Flippantly, gaily, we answer you:—
“Should _atra cura_[25] jump up behind us,
Strong are our steeds and can carry two!”
But we find the road, so smooth at morning,
Rugged at night ’mid the lonely hills;
And all too late we recall the warning
Weary at last of the pace that kills....

The gallop of life was just beginning;
Strength we wasted in efforts vain;
And now, when the prizes are worth the winning,
We’ve scarcely the spirit to ride again!
The spirit, forsooth! ’Tis our strength has failed us,
And sadly we ask, as we count our ills,
“What pitiful, pestilent folly ailed us?
_Why_ did we ride at the pace that kills?”

W. J. PROWSE.

* * * * *

Cato said ‘he had rather people should inquire why he had not a statue erected to his memory, than why he had.’

PLUTARCH (_Political Precepts_).

* * * * *

CHAMOUNI AND RYDAL.

I stood one shining morning, where
The last pines stand on Montanvert,
Gazing on giant spires that grow
From the great frozen gulfs below.

How sheer they soared, how piercing rose
Above the mists, beyond the snows!
No thinnest veil of vapour hid
Each sharp and airy pyramid.

No breeze moaned there, nor cooing bird,
Deep down the torrent raved, unheard,
Only the cow-bells’ clang, subdued,
Shook in the fields below the wood.

The vision vast, the lone large sky,
The kingly charm of mountains high,
The boundless silence, woke in me
Abstraction, reverence, reverie.

Days dawned that felt as wide away
As the far peaks of silvery grey,
Life’s lost ideal, love’s last pain
In those full moments throbbed again.

And a much differing scene was born
In my mind’s eye on that blue morn;
No splintered snowy summits there
Shot arrowy heights in crystal air:

But a calm sunset slanted still
O’er hoary crag and heath-flushed hill,
And at their foot, by birchen brake
Dimpled and smiled an English lake.

I roamed where I had roamed before
With heart elate in years of yore,
Through the green glens by Rotha side,
Which Arnold loved, where Wordsworth died.

That flower of heaven, eve’s tender star,
Trembled with light above Nab Scar;
And from his towering throne aloft
Fairfield poured purple shadows soft.

The tapers twinkled through the trees
From Rydal’s bower-bound cottages,
And gentle was the river’s flow,
Like love’s own quivering whisper low.

One held my arm will walk no more
On Loughrigg steeps by Rydall shore,
And a sweet voice was speaking clear—
Earth had no other sound so dear.

Her words were, as we passed along,
Of noble sons of truth and song—
Of Arnold brave, and Wordsworth pure.
And how their influences endure.

“They have not left us—are not dead”
(The earnest voice beside me said,)
“For teacher strong and poet sage
Are deeply working in the age.

“For aught we know they now may brood
O’er this enchanted solitude,
With thought and feeling more intense
Than we in the blind life of sense.”...

Those tones are hushed, that light is cold,
And we (but not the world) grow old;
The joy, “the bloom of young desire,”
The zest, the force, the strenuous fire,

Enthusiasms bright, sublime,
That heaven-like made that early time:—
These all are gone: must faith go too?
Is truth too lovely to be true?

In nature dwells no kindling soul?
Moves no vast life throughout the whole?
Are not thought, knowledge, love’s sweet might,
Shadows of substance infinite?

Shall rippling river, bow of rain,
Blue mountains, and the bluer main.
Red dawn, gold sundown, pearly star
Be fair, _nor something fairer far_?

That awful hope, so deep, that swells
At the keen clash of Easter bells
Is _it_ a waning moon, that dies
As morn-like lights of science rise?

By all that yearns in art and song,
By the vague dreams that make men strong,
By memory’s penance, by the glow
Of lifted mood poetic,—No!

No! by the stately forms that stand
Like angels in yon snowy land;
No! by the stars that, pure and pale,
Look down each night on Rydal-vale.

J. TRUMAN.

Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount. These verses were published in
_Macmillan’s_, 1879.

“_Nor something fairer far._” In Sir F. Younghusband’s
_Kashmir_ (1911) there is another suggestion, supplementary to
this: “There came upon me this thought, which doubtless has
occurred to many another besides myself—why the scene should so
influence me and yet make no impression on the men about me.
Here were men with far keener eyesight than my own, and around
me were animals with eyesight keener still.... Clearly it is
not the eye, but the soul that sees. But then comes the still
further reflection: what may there not be staring _me_ straight
in the face which I am as blind to as the Kashmir stags are to
the beauties amidst which they spend their entire lives? The
whole panorama may be vibrating with beauties man has not yet
the soul to see. Some already living, no doubt, see beauties
that we ordinary men cannot appreciate. It is only a century
ago that mountains were looked upon as hideous. And in the
long centuries to come may we not develop a soul for beauties
unthought of now? Undoubtedly we must. And often in reverie
on the mountains I have tried to imagine what still further
loveliness they may yet possess for men.”

* * * * *

He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind, fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth best avert the dolours of death.

BACON.

* * * * *

Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give
To more virtue than doth live.

BEN JONSON (_Epigram_ CXXIV).

As Dr. Johnson said; “In lapidary inscriptions a man is not
upon oath.”

* * * * *

“En Angleterre,” said a cynical Dutch diplomatist, “numéro deux va chez numéro un, pour s’en glorifier auprès de numéro trois.”

(In England, Number Two goes to Number One’s house in order to boast about it to Number Three.)

LAURENCE OLIPHANT (_Piccadilly_).

* * * * *

Lord Jesus Christ, I know not how—
With this blue air, blue sea,
This yellow sand, that grassy brow,
All isolating me—

Thy thoughts to mine themselves impart,
My thoughts to thine draw near;
But thou canst fill who mad’st my heart,
Who gay’st me words must hear.

Thou mad’st the hand with which I write,
The eye that watches slow
Through rosy gates that rosy light
Across thy threshold go,

Those waves that bend in golden spray,
As if thy foot they bore:
I think I know thee, Lord, to-day,
Shall know thee evermore.

I know thy father, thine and mine:
Thou the great fact hast bared:
Master, the mighty words are thine—
Such I had never dared!

Lord, thou hast much to make me yet—
Thy father’s infant still:
Thy mind, Son, in my bosom set,
That I may grow thy will.

My soul with truth clothe all about,
And I shall question free:
The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt,
In that fear doubteth thee.

G. MACDONALD (_The Disciple_).

* * * * *

Our ideas, like the children of our youth, often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are fast approaching—where, though the brass and marble may remain, the inscriptions are effaced by time and the imagery moulders away.

JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704).

What makes such a passage attractive is its use of poetic
imagery; and yet Locke had no regard for poetry. See next
quotation.

* * * * *

If these may be any reasons against children’s making Latin themes at school, I have much more to say, and of more weight, against their making verses—verses of any sort. For if he has no genius to Poetry, ’tis the most unreasonable thing in the world to torment a child and waste his time about that which can never succeed; and if he have a poetic vein, ’tis to me the strangest thing in the world that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved. Methinks the parents should labour to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be; and I know not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who does not desire to have him bid defiance to all other callings and business.... For it is very seldom seen that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in Parnassus.... Poetry and Gaming usually go together.... If, therefore, you would not have your son the fiddle to every jovial company, without whom the Sparks could not relish their wine, nor know how to pass an afternoon idly; if you would not have him to waste his time and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left him by his ancestors, I do not think you will very much care he should be a Poet.

JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704) (_Some Thoughts Concerning Education_, 1693).

Locke was writing during the dreary Dryden period, when poetry
had so greatly degenerated since the brilliant Elizabethan
epoch. He himself evidently had no interest in poetry. We
know that he did not appreciate Milton (whose _Paradise Lost_
appeared in 1667, when Locke was in his prime).

Compare with the above quotation p. 357.

* * * * *

Weeping, we hold Him fast, who wept
For us, we hold Him fast,
And will not let Him go, except
He bless us first or last.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

* * * * *

INDWELLING.

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say, “This is not dead,”
And fill thee with Himself instead:

But thou art all replete with very _thou_.
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says, “This is enow
Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”

T. E. BROWN (1830-1897).

* * * * *

Oh! ever thus from childhood’s hour,
I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower,
But ’twas the first to fade away.
I never nursed a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die!

THOMAS MOORE (_Lalla Rookh_).

As in other cases mentioned in the Preface, I find that these
lines, so familiar in my day, appear to be unknown to younger
men.

* * * * *

ON BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES.

In taking leave of our Author (Sir William Blackstone) I finish gladly with this pleasing peroration: a scrutinizing judgment, perhaps, would not be altogether satisfied with it; but the ear is soothed by it, and the heart is warmed.

JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832) (_A Fragment of Government_).

I think it worth while quoting from my notes this amusing piece
of sarcasm aimed by a young man of twenty-eight at the most
renowned legal writer of the time. _A Fragment of Government_
(1776), the first of Bentham’s works, not only showed the utter
folly of Blackstone’s praise of the English constitution, but
also laid the foundation of political science. (The passage,
which the quotation refers to, is in Sec. 2 of the Introduction
to the _Commentaries_, “Thus far as to the right of the supreme
power to make law ... public tranquillity.”)

Not only was the English constitution a subject of eulogy in
Bentham’s day, but also English law, then in a most barbarous
state, was alleged to be the perfection of human reason!
Through the efforts of this great and original thinker
many dreadful abuses were removed, but it is a remarkable
illustration of the blind strength of English conservatism that
his wise counsel has not yet been followed in many exceedingly
important directions.

In the seventy-eighty period, with which this book mainly deals
there was a strong agitation for law reform, which had some
results.