Chapter C: PATMORE (The Angel in the House)

* * * * *

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think—
More than I merit, yes, by many times.
But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow,
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
The fowler’s pipe and follows to the snare—
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
“God and the glory! never care for gain.”
I might have done it for you.

R. BROWNING (_Andrea del Sarto_).

The painter says that his wife, instead of urging him to work
for immediate gain, might have incited him to nobler efforts.

* * * * *

CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS

Once on a time, when sunny May
Was kissing up the April showers,
I saw fair Childhood hard at play
Upon a bank of blushing flowers;
Happy—he knew not whence or how—
And smiling,—who could choose but love him?
For not more glad than Childhood’s brow,
Was the blue heaven that beamed above him.

Old Time, in most appalling wrath,
That valley’s green repose invaded;
The brooks grew dry upon his path,
The birds were mute, the lilies faded.
But Time so swiftly winged his flight,
In haste a Grecian tomb to batter,
That Childhood watched his paper kite,
And knew just nothing of the matter....

Then stepped a gloomy phantom up,
Pale, cypress-crowned, Night’s awful daughter,
And proffered him a fearful cup
Full to the brim of bitter water:
Poor Childhood bade her tell her name;
And when the beldame muttered, “Sorrow,”
He said, “Don’t interrupt my game;
I’ll taste it, if I must, to-morrow.” ...

Then Wisdom stole his bat and ball,
And taught him with most sage endeavour,
Why bubbles rise and acorns fall,
And why no toy may last for ever.
She talked of all the wondrous laws
Which Nature’s open book discloses,
And Childhood, ere she made a pause
Was fast asleep among the roses.

Sleep on, sleep on! Oh! Manhood’s dreams
Are all of earthly pain or pleasure,
Of Glory’s toils, Ambition’s schemes,
Of cherished love, or hoarded treasure:
But to the couch where Childhood lies
A more delicious trance is given,
Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered Heaven!

W. M. PRAED.

* * * * *

Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.

G. MACDONALD (_Phantastes_).

* * * * *

L’ENVOI

There’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield
And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
Singing:—“Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover
And your English summer’s done.”
You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song—how long! how long!
Pull out on the trail again!

Ha’ done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass,
We’ve seen the seasons through,
And it’s time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.

It’s North you may run to the rime-ringed sun
Or South to the blind Horn’s hate;
Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,
Or West to the Golden Gate;
Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,
And the wildest tales are true,
And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
And life runs large on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.

The days are sick and cold, and the skies are grey and old,
And the twice-breathed airs blow damp;
And I’d sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll
Of a black Bilboa tramp;
With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass,
And a drunken Dago crew,
And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail
From Cadiz Bar on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.

There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;
But the sweetest way to me is a ship’s upon the sea
In the heel of the North-East trade,
Can you hear the crash on her bows, dear lass,
And the drum of the racing screw,
As she ships it green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
As she lifts and ’scends on the Long Trail—the trail that is always
new.

See the shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore,
And the fenders grind and heave,
And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate,
And the fall-rope whines through the sheave;
It’s “Gang-plank up and in,” dear lass,
It’s “Hawsers warp her through!”
And it’s “All clear aft” on the old trail, our own trail, the out
trail,
We’re backing down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new....

O the mutter overside, when the port-fog holds us tied,
And the sirens hoot their dread!
When foot by foot we creep o’er the hueless viewless deep
To the sob of the questing lead!
It’s down by the Lower Hope, dear lass,
With the Gunfleet Sands in view,
Till the Mouse swings green on the old trail, our own trail, the out
trail,
And the Gull Light lifts on the Long Trail—the trail that is always
new.

O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light
That holds the hot sky tame,
And the steady fore-foot snores through the planet-powder’d floors
Where the scared whale flukes in flame!
Her plates are scarr’d by the sun, dear lass,
And her ropes are taut with the dew,
For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out
trail,
We’re sagging south on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.

Then home, get her home, when the drunken rollers comb,
And the shouting seas drive by,
And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing,
And the Southern Cross rides high!
Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass,
That blaze in the velvet blue,
They’re all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out
trail,
They’re God’s own guides on the Long Trail—the trail that is always
new.

Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start—
We’re steaming all too slow,
And it’s twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle
Where the trumpet-orchids blow!
You have heard the call of the off-shore wind
And the voice of the deep-sea rain:
You have heard the song—how long! how long!
Pull out on the trail again!

The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And the deuce knows what we may do—
But we’re back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out
trail,
We’re down, hull down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

A great sea-song; we are on board passing through scene after
scene and feeling the very movement of the ship and its gear.

* * * * *

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou soul that art the eternity of thought
That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things—
With life and nature—purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

WORDSWORTH (_The Prelude_, Bk. I).

* * * * *

The Quakers have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help smiling at the conceit, that, if the taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-coloured creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

THOMAS PAINE (_The Age of Reason_).

This quotation reminds me of an interesting passage in
Professor Bateson’s Presidential Address to the British
Association at Melbourne in 1914. Although it has not a very
close connection with the quotation the reader will not object
to my giving it a place here:—

“Everyone must have a preliminary sympathy with the aims
of eugenists both abroad and at home. Their efforts at the
least are doing something to discover and spread truth as to
the physiological structure of society. The spread of such
organizations, however, almost of necessity suffers from a bias
towards the accepted and the ordinary, and if they had power it
would go hard with many ingredients of society that could be
ill-spared. I notice an ominous passage in which even Galton,
the founder of eugenics, feeling perhaps some twinge of his
Quaker ancestry, remarks that ‘as the Bohemianism in the nature
of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes, the
happier for mankind.’ It is not the eugenists who will give us
what Plato has called ‘divine releases from the common ways.’
If some fancier with the catholicity of Shakespeare would take
us in hand, well and good; but I would not trust Shakespeares,
_meeting as a committee_. Let us remember that Beethoven’s
father was an habitual drunkard and that his mother died of
consumption. From the genealogy of the patriarchs also we
learn—what may very well be the truth—that the fathers of such
as dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp or organ,
and the instructor of every artificer in brass or iron—the
founders, that is to say, of the arts and the sciences—came
in direct descent from Cain, and not in the posterity of the
irreproachable Seth, who is to us, as he probably was also in
the narrow circle of his own contemporaries, what naturalists
call a _nomen nudum_.”

_Nomen nudum_ is a bare name without further particulars,
but Donne, no doubt on the authority of Josephus (I. 2.3),
attributes Astronomy to Seth (“The Progresse of the Soule”):—

Wonder with mee
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those Arts whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vext us with Astronomie.

Donne (1573-1631) is “vext” with Astronomy, presumably because
at that time Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642) were
affirming the Copernican system and making other discoveries
supposed to be dangerous to religion.

* * * * *

Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.