Chapter D: G. ROSSETTI (Stillborn Love) (2)

If you examine the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, you will find that nearly all its expressions, having reference to the country, show ... either a foolish sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. Nothing is more remarkable than the general conception of the country merely as a series of green fields, and the combined ignorance and dread of more sublime scenery. The love of fresh air and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures of men; but that of the sublimer features of scenery had no place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed by the formalisms of the age. And although in the second-rate writers continually, and in the first-rate ones occasionally, you find an affectation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests, yet whenever they write from their heart, you will find an utter absence of feeling respecting anything beyond gardens and grass. Examine, for instance, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Molière, and the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expression of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them. Perhaps Sterne’s _Sentimental Journey_, in its total absence of sentiment on any subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice of anything at Geneva which might not as well have been seen at Coxwold, is the most striking instance I could give you; and if you compare with this negation of feeling on one side, the interludes of Molière, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception of the general spirit of the age.

JOHN RUSKIN (_Architecture and Painting_).

* * * * *

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!”

CHARLES DICKENS (_David Copperfield_).

* * * * *

And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul, when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

HENRY VAUGHAN (_Friends Departed_).

This is Vision.

* * * * *

... The trial-test
Appointed to all flesh at some one stage
Of soul’s achievement—when the strong man doubts
His strength, the good man whether goodness be,
The artist in the dark seeks, fails to find
Vocation, and the saint forswears his shrine.

R. BROWNING (_The Inn Album_).

* * * * *

I sits with my toes in a brook;
If anyone asks me for why,
I hits him a rap with my crook—
’Tis sentiment kills me, says I.

HORACE WALPOLE.

This was written in a game of _bouts rimés_ (rhymed ends). Four
lines had to be composed ending with “brook,” “why,” “crook,”
“I.”

* * * * *

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.
And I said in underbreath,—all our life is mixed with death,
And who knoweth which is best?

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness—
Round our restlessness, His rest.

E. B. BROWNING (_Rhyme of the Duchess May_).

* * * * *

I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!

R. BROWNING (_Paracelsus_).

Referring to Bryant’s poem, “To a Waterfowl”:—

He who from zone to zone
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

* * * * *

Souvent femme varie,
Bien fol est qui s’y fie!

(Woman is very fickle,
Great fool he who trusts in her!)

VICTOR HUGO (_Le Roi s’amuse_).

In the play Francis I (1494-1547) enters singing these lines.
(Francis wrote on the walls of the royal apartments at Chambord
_Toute femme varie_, “Every woman is fickle.”) One finds this
never-ending theme of poets and cynics in Virgil’s _Varium et
mutabile semper Femina_, “Woman is a fickle and changeable
thing” (_Aeneid_ iv, 569), _La donna è mobile_ (_Rigoletto_),
and countless other passages.

* * * * *

Crowned with flowers I saw fair Amaryllis
By Thyrsis sit, hard by a fount of Chrystal,
And with her hand more white than snow or lilies,
On sand she wrote “My faith shall be immortal”:
And suddenly a storm of wind and weather
Blew all her faith and sand away together.

ANON.

* * * * *

For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,
Than women’s are.

_Twelfth Night_, II, 4.

* * * * *

If Thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return’st, will tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know:
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.

JOHN DONNE (_Song_).

* * * * *

In his broken fashion Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs and great people generally were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides it was very convenient on an excursion—much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks. Upon occasion a chief would call his attendant, and desire him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree—perhaps in some damp marshy place.

HERMAN MELVILLE (_Moby Dick_).

* * * * *

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde:
Hae mercy o’ my soul, Lord God;
As I wad do, were I Lord God,
And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.

G. MACDONALD (_David Elginbrod_).

* * * * *

Dieu me pardonnera; c’est son métier.

(God will pardon me; that is His business.)

HEINE.

* * * * *

O Lord, it broke my heart to see his pain!
I thought—I dared to think—if _I_ were God,
Poor Caird should never gang so dark a road;
I thought—ay, dared to think, the Lord forgie!—
The Lord was crueller than I could be;
Forgetting God is just and knoweth best
What folk should burn in fire, what folk be blest.

R. BUCHANAN (_A Scottish Eclogue_).

* * * * *

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA.

Thoughts and tears as I turn away,
Tears for a long ago:
She looks out on a summer day,
I on a night of snow.
But I see some ferns and a rushing rill
And my love that promised me,
And a day we spent on God’s great hill
On the other side of the sea,
My heart,
On the other side of the sea.

Ay! the hill was green and the sky was blue,
And the path was dappled fair,
But a light from loving eyes shone through
Beyond the sunlight there.
And I gave my life—and who’s to blame?—
As over the hill went we:
But the sky and the hill and the way we came
Are the other side of the sea,
Sad heart,
Are the other side of the sea....

’Mid trees and grass and a tangled wall
We wandered merrily down,
Through the homeless boughs and the forest fall
Of the dead leaves thick and brown.
But faith is broken and life is pain
And oh! it can never be
That I gather those golden hours again
On the other side of the sea,
Poor heart,
On the other side of the sea.

Though the sea is wild and the sea is dark,
It will sink and slip away
At the bounding scorn of my speeding bark
To the land of that dear day;
But never the Love of my soul be seen,
The light of that day to me,
For I know there is lying our hearts between
A wilder and darker sea,
O God!
The depth of a bitterer sea.

RICHARD HODGSON.

This was written in March, 1879, after Hodgson had left
Australia for England. The love-episode is imaginary.

* * * * *

They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,
And go to church on Sunday;
And many are afraid of God—
And more of Mrs. Grundy.

F. LOCKER-LAMPSON (_The Jester’s Plea_).

* * * * *

Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity.

SHELLEY (_Hellas_).

It is very true that the amazing intellectual power of the
Greeks in a primitive age ensures them an immortality of fame;
and this is finely expressed _in the last two lines_. But those
two splendid lines are utterly spoilt by the two that precede
them. One asks, Why “Greece _and_ her foundations”? One does
not say “a house _and_ its foundations” are built somewhere
or other. This by itself would be trivial, but next comes the
question, What is the meaning of the second line? We know what
Shelley intended—that the memory and influence of Greece will
withstand its destruction by war—but why in that case should
she not be built _above_, instead of submerged _below_ the
tide of war? Later on, in lines 836-7, the Emperor Palæologus,
at the siege of Constantinople, is said to have cast himself
“_beneath_ the stream of war”; that is to say, he was
overwhelmed and killed. The words, in fact, do not express the
poet’s meaning. The third and fatal defect of the lines is the
juxtaposition of “tide” and “sea” —the city is _built below a
tide_, and also _based on a sea_. Not only is this combination
absurd in itself, but it also destroys the beauty of the last
two magnificent lines. The moving unstable water is scarcely
a foundation to build upon, yet this meaning is forcibly
impressed upon the word “sea” by the previous mention of a
“tide.” What Shelley meant was an immense broad, deep, expanse
of _solid crystal_—the “sea of glass like unto crystal” of
Revelations (iv, 6) and the _Mer de Glace_ (“sea of ice”), the
great Alpine glacier.[34] Therefore, anyone who had exactness
of thought or perception of poetry would omit the first two
lines and give only the last two as a quotation.

Mrs. Shelley in her note on “Hellas” specially refers to
this verse as a beautiful example of Shelley’s style, and
she quotes _all four_ lines. We may assume, therefore, that
Shelley himself thought highly of the verse, and we thus have
an illustration of the curious fact that a great poet is often
a poor judge of his own poetry. (Almost certainly Shakespeare
himself did not realize how god-like he stood above all other
poets.) However, it is not only for this reason that I have
included the above quotation, but because with it I propose to
make a flank attack upon Mr. R. W. Livingstone, the author of
_The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us_. I do this, of course,
with a special object in view.

Mr. Livingstone’s book is important, valuable, and highly
interesting—and is especially admirable because the author
does not envelope his subject in the usual glamour, born of
enthusiasm. He is, indeed, most exceptional in this respect,
that he endeavours to look at the Greeks from an ordinary
commonsense point of view. But he makes the mistake, not
unusual with classical men, of supposing that he is a qualified
critic of poetry; and he, therefore, gives us a special
dissertation upon the comparative values of English and Greek
poetry.

Apart from this dissertation, he quotes three or four passages
from English poets in the course of the book. Of these the
most prominent is the above verse of Shelley’s, and he quotes
_all four_ lines without comment. Thus we see an able man, in
whom classical study should have induced exactness of thought,
failing to analyse and understand what he is quoting. But,
more than this, the question is one of poetic perception. The
imagery in the last _two_ lines is sublime—in the _four_ lines
it is ludicrous. Therefore, we begin with the fact that our
literary critic was unable to see palpable and grave defects in
one of the few verses he himself quotes. (I might give other
illustrations, as where he admires poor verse of Dryden’s, but
I must be brief.)

Mr. Livingstone’s point is that the “direct” and “truthful”
character of Greek poetry is superior to the “imaginative”
quality of English verse. He goes so far as to say that “Sappho
and Simonides _with four words_ make him see a nightingale and
give him a greater and far saner pleasure” than Shelley’s poem
“To a Skylark.” I take his quotation from Simonides, as it
involves less discussion than that from Sappho.[35] It is (Fr,
73) ἀὴδονες πολυκώτιλοι χλωραύχενες εἰαριναί, “The warbling
nightingales with olive necks, the birds of spring.”

As Mr. Livingstone is not discussing beauty of expression we
can leave this out of consideration.[36] He is discussing
the _substance_ of poetry, comparing the “directness” and
“truthfulness” of Simonides (in this case) with the imaginative
element in Shelley’s poem. He would apparently discard the
latter element altogether, and prefers a simple description of
the nightingale—that it sings, has an olive neck, and appears
in spring. The first suggestion that occurs to one is that
if, say, an auctioneer’s catalogue of farm stock—without any
addition whatever to its contents—could be worded prettily and
made metrical, it would afford huge enjoyment to our literary
critic.

The whole question is as to the value of the imaginative
element which to our minds makes Shelley’s poem one of the
most beautiful lyrics—possibly the most beautiful—in all
literature. In sweeping away this element, Mr. Livingstone
tells us how much of English poetry must be cast aside. But he
does not realize that much else has also to be flung on the
scrap-heap. Imagination, in its true sense, includes all those
aesthetic, moral, and spiritual faculties which are higher than
the intellect—all, in fact, that raises man above his material
existence. (See pp. 39, 40, 358.) With the immense deal of
English poetry which Mr. Livingstone proposes to “scrap” must
go all our most beautiful music, all that is great in painting
(which is never “direct” and “truthful” in this sense, or
it would not be great), _all Greek statuary_, and all that
expresses high moral and spiritual truths in our literature. I
do not think that Mr. Livingstone will find many adherents to
his new creed.

This critic also discusses _style_, and we find that he speaks
of Pope as a “great poet,” and apparently revels in his
monotonous verse! When pointing out that English verse, unlike
what we have left of Greek poetry, includes much unequal and
ill-finished work, he says, “Of all our great poets, perhaps
only Milton and Pope can boast unfailing excellence of style.”

As regards this inequality in the work of English poets the
answer is very simple. Mr. Livingstone forgets the fact—a
very important fact in any speculation upon the scheme of the
universe—that only the good things ultimately survive. How
very little we have left of many Greek poets! Of Sophocles
only seven plays remain out of one hundred and twenty-seven,
_and the Fragments collected are said to be very poor_ (many,
of course, are only grammatical illustrations)—and more than
half of Homer must have been dropped. We probably still have
everything that is _best_ in Greek literature. Again, it is
not in fact _desirable_ to restrict publication to work of the
highest importance, and the facilities afforded by printing
have made it _unnecessary_ thus to restrict it—so that even _My
Commonplace Book_ is now, at least temporarily, part of English
literature!

Greatly as I admire Mr. Livingstone’s book, I feel bound to
call attention to a view of poetry that must do great harm to
University students and others. I am also bound to mention
him as an illustration of the fact that classical men usually
imagine that their study of the Greek and Latin languages and
literature qualifies them to become literary critics.[37] This
fact has impressed itself upon me from youth upwards. One of my
teachers, a man of some weight in the classical world, was in
the habit of saying that only through study of Latin and Greek
could a man learn to write good English![38] His own English
was simply execrable.

I will now give another instance where the classical
enthusiast, as in Mr. Livingstone’s case, tends to exaggerate
the value of his favourite literature—truly wonderful as it is.
Gissing’s _Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_ is an interesting
book of wide circulation, in which the author displays great
admiration for and familiarity with the classics. Speaking
of Xenophon’s _Anabasis_, he says “Were it the sole book
existing in Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to
learn the language in order to read it.” That is to say,
it would be worth while expending, out of our short lives,
some years of study for the sole purpose of reading in the
original an extremely _simple_, _prose_ historical narrative,
which has been excellently translated! (If Gissing had said
_Homer_ instead of Xenophon, no one would have quarrelled with
him.) Again, he says, “Many a single line presents a picture
which deeply stirs the emotions”; and he gives us what he
calls “a good instance of such a line.” A guide, who has led
the Greeks through hostile country, has to return through
the same perilous district, and the wonderful line is Ἐπεὶ
ἑσπέρα ἐγένετο, ᾤχετο τῆς νυκτὸς ἀπιών. This line Gissing
translates, “When evening came he took leave of us and went
away by night”—a sentence which only by inadvertence could have
appeared in, say, a _Times_ leader, seeing that the words “by
night” are redundant. As a matter of fact, the translation is
incorrect; there is nothing about “taking leave of us,” and the
meaning is, “As soon as evening came, he had slipped away into
the darkness.”

(Professor Naylor points out to me that the word ᾤχετο in this
line is interesting. It conveys the idea of a swift or abrupt
departure or disappearance. It is used in connection with that
most interesting man Alcibiades (Xen, _Hell._, 2. I. 26) and
gives a fine impression of his quick insolent temper. The Greek
admirals had put themselves in a position of extreme danger
and he came to warn them of their peril. Their reply was the
usual expression of ineptitude, “We are the admirals, not you”;
and immediately follows the one word ᾤχετο, “he turned on his
heels and left”—and with this word Alcibiades disappears from
contemporary history.)

* * * * *

In referring to Mr. Livingstone’s remarks above I could not
use the Sappho quotation, because there are certain initial
questions that need to be first settled. (In briefly discussing
these I must speak as though I were expressing _definite
opinions_, since otherwise the note could not be compressed
sufficiently, but I mean the following rather as _suggestions_
which may possibly be found useful.)

Sappho’s line is (Fr, 39) Ἦρος ἄγγελος ἱμερόφωνος ἀήδων,
which Mr. Livingstone translates “The messenger of spring,
the lovely-voiced nightingale.” Now ἱμερος (_himeros_) means
animal passion, so that ἱμερόφωνος (_himerophonos_) is a strong
word meaning singing of, or with, passion—in this case the
passion of the pairing-time. Why then does Mr. Livingstone,
following Liddell and Scott, give the totally different meaning
“lovely-voiced”? Apparently it is because Theocritus (XXVIII,
7) applies the expression “himerophonos” to the Charites, and,
according to the current conception, those deities were pure
unimpassionate beings.[39]

In questions of this character, seeing that the Greek gods were
guilty of every form of immorality and the Greeks themselves
were one of the most sensual nations that ever existed, the
presumption is in favour of impurity: the onus of proof is
on those who allege purity. I have not undertaken the heavy
work of looking up the innumerable references to the Charites
in Greek literature, but I know of nothing that supports
the prevalent conception of those deities. Apart from the
fact that Theocritus uses the word _himerophonos_, Meleager
(Anth. Pal, V, 195) speaks of _himeros_ as conferred by the
Charites. There is nothing in the meaning of _charis_, or the
verb _charizesthai_ to support the current idea (both being
even used in an immodest sense); Homer identifies Charis with
Aphrodite, with whom Hesiod also identifies Aglaia, since each
is made the wife of Hephaestus; the Charites are constantly
associated with Aphrodite and Erôs (and consequently with
Himeros, the personification of passion) so that the maxim
_Noscitur a sociis_ applies; Sappho repeatedly claims them as
her patrons; as regards the representation of the Charites in
art, girl friendship would be a subject quite alien to the
Greek mind.

If the view suggested is correct our authorities with their
preconceived ideas _presume to correct Theocritus and Sappho_!
They not only give a wrong view of the Charites, but also hide
the coarseness of the compliment paid by Theocritus to his lady
friend—in each case _distorting the truth_.

Mr. Livingstone may have another reason for altering the
meaning of “himerophonos.” He appears to hold the opinion that
a Greek writer would not ascribe intelligence or emotion to a
bird, as Mrs. Browning does in “To a Seamew.” (I quite agree
with him as to the false, feminine sentiment in this poem.
It is mainly the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” that raise
Mrs. Browning above the minor poets.) Mr. Livingstone, for
example, translates ἡμερόφων’ ἀλέκτωρ, “O cock that criest
_at_ dawn.” This should surely mean “that announceth the
dawn;” the attitude and the very _crow_ of the bird would
suggest this to the Greeks; and the fowl did, as a matter
of fact, serve in place of an alarm-clock to them (see, for
instance, Aristophanes’ _Birds_, 488). Does not Mr. Livingstone
forget that the Greeks attributed not only intelligence
but also miraculous powers to animals (see p. 370)? If so,
this illustrates another fact noticeable among classical
authorities. They often fail to consider _all the premises_
before arriving at a conclusion. Taking another illustration
from Mr. Livingstone, he says that the Greeks had little of
the feeling of wonder, did not “muse on the strangeness of the
world,” and would not have experienced the emotion Pascal felt
when viewing the starry heavens, “The eternal silence of those
infinite spaces terrifies me.” The premise he appears to omit
here is the fact of the intense ignorance of the Greeks. Their
world was a very limited one, with its flat earth and solid
lid, certain bright objects conceived as gods or otherwise
moving in the intermediate space. To illustrate this, Herodotus
(II, 24) believes that the sun-god is forced by the cold winds
in winter to move to the warm sky above Libya; and in 434 B.C.
(about the same time) the great advanced thinker, Anaxagoras,
is arrested for blasphemy and exiled because he taught that
the sun must be a mass of blazing metal larger than the
Peloponnesus! Everything in nature had its god, whose action
explained whatever happened. If the Greeks had once realized
the awful infinity of the universe their whole outlook on
nature would have changed, and I cannot think that so highly
intellectual a people would not have been moved by wonder.
I cannot see any element in “the Greek genius” that would
indicate this. (Observe Ptolemy’s epigram on p. 10.)

Returning to the Sappho quotation, Mr. Livingstone translates
ἦρος ἄγγελος literally as “the messenger of spring.” Does he
mean the messenger “sent by spring” or “announcing spring”?
Presumably he does not mean the latter, as it would impute
intelligence or emotion to the bird. But, if we accept the
former interpretation, it leads to the curious result that
the poet, not content with a Goddess of Spring and the Hours
who represent the seasons, intends still further to personify
spring. Is not the true meaning of Sappho’s words “the
nightingale with its passionate song sent (by Proserpine) to
let men know that spring is approaching”? This is not mere
captious criticism. To Sappho the goddess Proserpine was a
concrete being with some sort of corporeal form, who brings
a _thing_ called spring, and who actually _does_ send the
nightingale ahead to sing of the passion of the pairing-time,
and thus let men know that spring is coming. There is no poetic
imagery, no imaginative picture in the poet’s mind, but the
statement of an _actual fact_. See also the reference to the
halcyon, p. 370. It seems to me that, in this as in other
cases, our classical authorities _fail to place themselves in
the position of the Greeks_. Here they interpret as imagination
what was meant as reality. (However, as I have said before,
the above are merely suggestions which I myself hope to
consider further; but, until we knew exactly what Sappho’s
verse meant, it could not be brought into the discussion of Mr.
Livingstone’s views.)

* * * * *

Ah! the weariness and weight of tears,
The crying out to God, the wish for slumber,
They lay so deep, so deep! God heard them all;
He set them unto music of his own.

R. BUCHANAN, 1866 (_Bexhill_).

Buchanan is speaking of the sad lives in the poor quarters of
London.

* * * * *

Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent
Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe:
Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Not till the fire is dying in the grate
Look we for any kinship with the stars.

G. MEREDITH (_Modern Love IV._)

A fine expression of a familiar fact. Under the influence
of love, anger, or other strong passion, a man becomes an
unreasoning animal, and actually _hates_ to be told the truth.
Wild passion glares through the bars of its self-constituted
cage at philosophy standing calm, lofty, and serene. Only “when
the fire is dying in the grate” do we again become akin to
cold, dispassionate, star-like Philosophy.

* * * * *

The triumph of machinery is when man wonders at his own works; thus, says Derwent Coleridge, all science begins in wonder and ends in wonder, but the first is the wonder of ignorance, the last that of adoration.

CAROLINE FOX’S JOURNALS.

Evidently a comment on S. T. Coleridge’s Aphorism IV. on
“Spiritual Religion” (_Aids to Reflection_).

* * * * *

No one of himself can rise out of the depths, but must clasp some outstretched hand.

SENECA (? 3 B.C.-65 A.D.) (_Epistle 52_).

* * * * *

THE RIME OF REDEMPTION

The ways are white in the moon’s light,
Under the leafless trees:
Strange shadows go across the snow
Before the tossing breeze.

The burg stands grim upon the rim
Of the low wooded hill:
Sir Loibich sits beside the hearth,
Fill’d with a thought of ill.

The knight sits bent with eyes intent
Upon the dying fire;
Sad dreams and strange in sooth do range
Before the troubled sire.

He sees the maid the past years laid
Upon his breast to sleep,
Long dead in sin, laid low within
The grave unblest and deep.

He hears her wail, with lips that fail,
To him to save her soul:
He sees her laid, unhouselèd,[40]
Under the crossless knoll.

“Ah! would, dear Christ, my tears sufficed
To ransom her!” he cries:
“Sweet Heaven, to win her back from sin,
I would renounce the skies.

“Could I but bring her suffering
To pardon and to peace,
I for my own sin would atone,
Where never pain doth cease!

“I for my part would gnaw my heart,
Chain’d in the flames of hell;
I would abide, unterrified,
More than a man shall tell.”

The moon is pale, the night winds wail,
Weird whispers fill the night:
“Dear heart, what word was that I heard
Ring out in the moonlight?”

’Twas but the blast that hurried past,
Shrieking among the pines:
The souls that wail upon the gale,
When the dim starlight shines.

Great God! the name! once more it came
Ringing across the dark!
“Loibich!” it cried. The night is wide,
The dim pines stand and hark.

“Loibich! Loibich! my soul is sick
With hungering for thee!
The night fades fast, the hours fly past;
Stay not, come forth to me!”

The cloudwrack grey did break away,
Out shone the ghostly moon;
Down slid the haze from off the ways
Before her silver shoon.

Pale silver-ray’d, out shone the glade,
Before the castle wall,
And on the lea the knight could see
A maid both fair and tall.

Gold was her hair, her face was fair,
As fair as fair can be;
But through the night the blue corpse-light
About her could he see.

She raised her face towards the place
Where Loibich stood adread;
There was a sheen in her two een,
As one that long is dead.

She look’d at him in the light dim,
And beckon’d with her hand:
“Dear Knight,” she said, “thy prayer hath sped
Unto the heavenly land.

“Come forth with me: the night is free
For us to work the thing
That is to do, before we two
Shall hear the dawn-bird sing.

“Saddle thy steed, Sir Knight, with speed,
Thy faithfullest,” quoth she,
“For many a tide we twain must ride
Before the end shall be.”

The steed is girt, black Dagobert,
Swift-footed as the wind;
The knight leapt up upon his croup,
The maid sprang up behind.

The wind screams past; they ride so fast,—
Like troops of souls in pain
The snowdrifts spin, but none may win
To rest upon the twain.

So fast they ride, the blasts divide
To let them hurry on;
The wandering ghosts troop past in hosts
Across the moonlight wan.

A singing light did cleave the night,
High up a hill rode they;
The veils of Heaven for them were riven,
And all the skies pour’d day.

The golden gate did stand await,
The golden town did lie
Before their sight, the realms of light
God builded in the sky.

The steed did wait before the gate,
Sheer up the street looked they.
They saw the bliss in Heaven that is,
They saw the saints’ array.

They saw the hosts upon the coasts
Of the clear crystal sea;
They saw the blest, that in the rest
Of Christ for ever be.

The choirs of God pulsed full and broad
Upon the ravish’d twain;
The angels’ feet upon the street
Rang out like golden rain.

Then said the maid, “Be not afraid,
God giveth heaven to thee;
Light down and rest with Christ His blest,
And think no more of me!”

Sir Loibich gazed, as one sore dazed,
Awhile upon the place:
Then, with a sigh, he turned his eye
Upon the maiden’s face.

“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,
“No heaven for me shall be,
Unless God give that thou shalt live
In heaven for aye with me.”

“Ah, curst am I!” the maid did cry;
“My place thou knowest well;
I must begone before the dawn,
To harbour me in hell.”

“By Christ His rest!” he beat his breast,
“Then be it even so;
With thee in hell I choose to dwell
And share with thee thy woe!

“Thy sin was mine,—By Christ His wine,
Mine too shall be thy doom;
What part have I within the sky,
And thou in Hell’s red gloom?”

The vision broke, as thus he spoke,
The city waned away:
O’er hill and brake, o’er wood and lake
Once more the darkness lay.

O’er hill and plain they ride again,
Under the night’s black spell,
Until there rise against the skies
The lurid lights of hell.

The dreadful cries they rend the skies,
The plain is ceil’d with fire:
The flames burst out, around, about,
The heats of hell draw nigher.

Unfear’d they ride; against the side
Of the red flameful sky
Grim forms are thrown, strange shapes upgrown
From out Hell’s treasury.

Fast rode the twain across the plain,
With hearts all undismay’d,
Until they came where all a-flame
Hell’s gates were open laid.

The awful stead gaped wide and red,
To gulph them in its womb:
There could they see the fiery sea
And all the souls in doom.

There came a breath, like living death,
Out of the gated way:
It scorched his face with its embrace,
It turn’d his hair to grey.

Then said the maid, “Art not dismay’d?
Here is our course fulfill’d:
Wilt thou not turn, nor rest to burn
With me, as God hath will’d?”

“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,
“Thy doom with thee dree I!
Here will we dwell, hand-link’d in hell,
Unseverèd for aye!”

He spurr’d his steed; the gates of dread
Gaped open for his course;
Sudden outrang a trumpet’s clang,
And backwards fell the horse.

The ghostly maid did wane and fade,
The lights of hell did flee;
Alone in night the mazèd wight
Stood on the frozen lea.

Out shone the moon; the mists were blown
Away before his sight
And through the dark he saw a spark,
A welcoming of light.

Thither he fared, with falchion bared,
Toward the friendly shine;
Eftsoon he came to where a flame
Did burn within a shrine.

Down on his knee low louted he
Before the cross of wood,
And for her spright he saw that night
Long pray’d he to the Rood.[41]

And as he pray’d, with heart down-weigh’d,
A wondrous thing befell:
He saw a light, and through the night
There rang a silver bell.

The earth-mists drew from off his view,
He saw God’s golden town;
He saw the street, he saw the seat
From whence God looketh down.

He saw the gate transfigurate,—
He saw the street of pearl,
And in the throng, the saints among,
He saw a gold-hair’d girl.

He saw a girl as white as pearl,
With hair as red as gold:
He saw her stand among the band
Of angels manifold.

He heard her smite the harp’s delight,
Singing most joyfully,
And knew his love prevail’d above
Judgment and destiny.

...

Gone is the night, the morn breaks white
Across the eastward hill;
The knightly sire by the dead fire
Sits in the dawning chill.

By the hearth white, there sits the knight,
Dead as the sunken fire;
But on his face is writ the grace
Of his fulfill’d desire.

JOHN PAYNE (b. 1841).

This poem is cut down one-half and thereby loses much of its
effect. Two adventures, in which the Knight refuses temptation
and adheres to his oath, are entirely omitted.

* * * * *

Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
They parted—ne’er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining—
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been reft asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Christabel_).

* * * * *

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.

SHAKESPEARE (_2 Henry IV._)

This and the next five quotations are word-pictures (see p. 85).

* * * * *

That strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.[42]

TENNYSON (_Tithonus_).

* * * * *

Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy
Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,
Cricketing below, rush’d brown and red with sunshine;
O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!
Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher
Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.
Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,
Said, “I will kiss you:” she laughed and lean’d her cheek.

G. MEREDITH (_Love in the Valley_).

* * * * *

One there is, the loveliest of them all,
Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out
For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?
Fruits of her father’s orchard are her wares,
And with the ruddy produce she walks round
Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed
Of her new office, blushing restlessly.

WORDSWORTH (_The Prelude, Bk. VIII._)

* * * * *

Out came the children running—
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

R. BROWNING (_The Pied Piper of Hamelin_).

* * * * *

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon:
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint.

KEATS (_The Eve of St. Agnes_).

The above are from a series of word-pictures (see pp. 86, 122).

* * * * *

If the collective energies of the universe are identified with Divine Will, and the system is thus animate with an eternal consciousness as its moulding life, the conception we frame of its history will conform itself to our experience of intellectual volition. It is in origination, in disposing of new conditions, in setting up order by differentiation, that the mind exercises its highest function. When the product has been obtained, and a definite method of procedure established, the strain upon us is relaxed, habit relieves the constant demand for creation, and at length the rules of a practised art almost execute themselves. As the intensely voluntary thus works itself off into the automatic, thought, liberated from this reclaimed and settled province breaks into new regions, and ascends to ever higher problems: its supreme life being beyond the conquered and legislated realm, while a lower consciousness, if any at all, suffices for the maintenance of its ordered mechanism. Yet all the while it is one and the same mind that, under different modes of activity, thinks the fresh thoughts and carries on the old usages. Does anything forbid us to conceive similarly of the cosmical development; that it started from the freedom of indefinite possibilities and the ubiquity of universal consciousness; that, as intellectual exclusions narrowed the field, and traced the definite lines of admitted movement, the tension of purpose, less needed on these, left them as the habits of the universe, and operated rather for higher and ever higher ends not yet provided for; that the more mechanical, therefore, a natural law may be, the further is it from its source; and that the inorganic and unconscious portion of the world, instead of being the potentiality of the organic and conscious, is rather its residual precipitate, formed as the Indwelling Mind of all concentrates an intenser aim on the upper margin of the ordered whole, and especially on the inner life of natures that can resemble him?

JAMES MARTINEAU (1805-1900) (_Modern Materialism_).

The remarkably fine and suggestive essay in which this passage
occurs was written in 1876, in the course of a discussion
raised by Tyndall’s Belfast Address. It is not easy to
appreciate the speculation that Martineau offers in direct
opposition to the theory of Darwinism without reading his
preceding argument.

It may be well to begin with a quotation from his sermon,
“Perfection, Divine and Human”: “However vast and majestic the
uniformities of nature, they are nevertheless finite: science
counts them one by one; a completed science would count them
all. God, however, is not finite; He lives out beyond the
legislation He has made; and His thought, which defines the
rules of matter, does not transmigrate into them and cease
else-how to be; _but merely flings out the law as an emanating
act, and Himself abides behind as Thinking Power_.”

In the present essay Martineau first develops the argument that
there is only one Power that exercises all the forces in the
universe, whether mechanical, chemical, or vital. That power is
God, the Indwelling Mind of the world. He is of like nature to
(although infinitely higher than) His highest product, which
is conscious, thinking, and willing man. Seeing that God and
man are alike in their natures, Martineau proceeds to draw an
analogy between the history of the world and the history of
man’s own development. The Divine Mind at first _consciously_
exercises the forces that we know as gravitation, cohesion,
chemical attraction, etc.; just as, to take a simple example,
a baby has at first consciously to use its muscles and balance
its body in the process of walking. Later the baby, having
formed the _habit_, does all this _unconsciously_ and, while
walking, can pay attention to other matters. So the Indwelling
Mind of the world forms its _habits_ which we know as the laws
of gravitation, etc., and is free to attend to higher and
higher objects. In this progress there is no evolution of the
organic from the inorganic, or of the higher from the lower
forms of life. Inorganic matter, having become subject to fixed
laws, is precipitated and dropped out of further conscious
effort; also each lower form of life is similarly laid aside
as the Indwelling Mind proceeds to the higher forms, until
finally man is reached. The highest result thus arrived at is
the production of conscious _Mind_. All this involves what is
usually known as Special Creation, and the idea of “God at His
working-bench” creating one species after another is regarded
as absurd. But it is not absurd on Martineau’s argument,
because the Indwelling Mind is constantly doing the whole work
of the world (and also because a fact to be accounted for
by any theory is that a higher form of existence _appears_
whenever the environment is suitable). In the present state
of our knowledge Martineau’s speculation cannot be proved or
disproved, but it may contain the germ of a true scheme of the
universe—which scheme is yet far to seek. In any case, he makes
the important point that the nature of _power_ in the world
must be judged from the best thing it has done—namely, the
_minds_ it has produced. The idea of a blind, unconscious force
is incompatible with the fact that _that force has produced
conscious mind_. It is the same argument as the Psalmist uses,
“He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the
eye, shall He not see? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall
not He know?” (Ps. xciv, 9, 10.) The following (by whom written
I do not know) has the same idea: “Every thing is a thought,
and bears a relation to the thought that placed it there, and
the thought that finds it there.” It is interesting to consider
Martineau’s suggestion with that of William James on p. 165.

* * * * *

There’s lifeless matter; add the power of shaping,
And you’ve the crystal: add again the organs,
Wherewith to subdue sustenance to the form
And manner of one’s self, and you’ve the plant:
Add power of motion, senses, and so forth,
And you’ve all kind of beasts; suppose a pig:
To pig add reason, foresight, and such stuff,
Then you have man. What shall we add to man,
To bring him higher?

T. L. BEDDOES (1803-1849) (_Death’s Jest-Book_,
V. 2).

_Death’s Jest-Book_ was published in 1850, after Beddoes’
death; _The Origin of Species_ appeared in 1859: the passage
is, therefore, curious. In suggesting, however, development by
the addition of faculties, it affords no explanation how those
faculties came to be added.

* * * * *

“OUTLANDISH PROVERBS”

Love rules his kingdom without a sword.
He plays well that wins.
The offender never pardons.
Nothing dries sooner than a tear.
Three women can hold their peace—if two are away.
A woman conceals what she knows not.
Saint Luke was a Saint and a Physician, yet is dead.[43]
Were there no hearers, there would be no backbiters.
He will burn his house to warm his hands.
The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one.
Ill ware is never cheap.
Punishment is lame—but it comes.
Gluttony kills more than the sword.[44]
The filth under the white snow the sun discovers.
You cannot know wine by the barrel.
At length the fox is brought to the furrier.
Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge.
None is a fool always, every one sometimes.[45]
In a great river great fish are found, but take heed lest you be drowned.
I wept when I was born, and every day shows why.
The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.
Gossips are frogs, they drink and talk.
He is a fool that thinks not that another thinks.
He that sows, trusts in God.
He that hath one hog makes him fat, and he that hath one son makes him
a fool.

Where your will is ready, your feet are light.
A fair death honours the whole life.
To a good spender God is the treasurer.
The choleric man never wants woe.
Love makes a good eye squint.
He that would have what he hath not should do what he doth not.
A wise man cares not for what he cannot have.
The fat man knoweth not what the lean thinketh.
In every country dogs bite.
None says his garner is full.
To a close-shorn sheep, God gives wind by measure.[46]
Silks and satins put out the fire in the chimney.
Lawyers’ houses are built on the heads of fools.
It is better to have wings than horns.
We have more to do when we die than we have done.

GEORGE HERBERT’S _Jacula Prudentum_.

The reader may not know of the “saintly Herbert’s” collection
of “Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc.” from which the few
examples above are taken.

* * * * *

AVALON.

We seek a land beneath the early beams
Of stars that rise beyond the sunset gate,
Where all the year the twilight lingers late,
Athwart whose coast the last-born sunray gleams.
Fair are the fields and full of pleasant streams,
Far sound the hedge-rows with the burgher bees,
Soft are the winds and taste of southern seas,
Night brings no longing there, and sleep no dreams.
O tillerman, steer true, while we, who bow
Above the oar-shafts, sing the land we seek,
Land of the past, its rapture and its ruth;
Future we ask none, we are memories now,
We bear the years whose lips no longer speak,
And round our galley’s prow the name is Youth.

ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS (b. 1862).

An American author who wrote the well-known song, “The Rosary.”

* * * * *

IF I COULD HOLD YOUR HANDS

If I could hold your hands to-night,
Just for a little while, and know
That only I, of all the world,
Possessed them so:

A slender shape in that old chair,
If I could see you here to-night,
Between me and the twilight pale—
So light and frail,

Your cool white dress, its folding lost
In one broad sweep of shadow grey;
Your weary head just drooped aside,
That sweet old way,

Bowed like a flower-cup dashed with rain,
The darkness crossing half your face,
And just the glimmer of a smile
For one to trace:

If I could see your eyes that reach
Far out into the farthest sky,
Where past the trail of dying suns
The old years lie:

Or touch your silent lips to-night,
And steal the sadness from their smile,
And find the last kiss they have kept
This weary while:

If it could be—Oh, all in vain
The restless trouble of my soul
Sets, as the great tides of the moon,
Toward your control!

In vain the longings of the lips,
The eye’s desire and the pain;
The hunger of the heart—O love,
_Is_ it in vain?

ANON.

* * * * *

A Cibo biscocto,
A medico indocto,
Ab inimico reconciliato,
A mala muliere
Libera nos, Domine.

(From twice-cooked food, from an ignorant doctor, from a reconciled enemy, from a wicked woman, Lord, deliver us.)

_Old Monkish Litany._

* * * * *

CONSTANCY REWARDED

I vowed unvarying faith, and she,
To whom in full I pay that vow,
Rewards me with variety
Which men who change can never know.

COVENTRY PATMORE (_The Angel in the House_).

* * * * *

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening....

We are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion—that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love for art’s sake, has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.

WALTER PATER (1839-1894) (_The Renaissance_).

In the Adelaide edition of this book this famous “pulsation”
passage appeared as originally written; it is now given as
Pater afterwards altered it.

Pater was a Hellenist and preached the new paganism of last
century. The Greek ideal life was supposed to be one of purely
aesthetic enjoyment, divorced from religious problems or from
any sense of the _higher_ in our nature. Pater, however,
altered his views, _Marius, the Epicurean_, being intended as a
recantation, and he became in effect an Anglo-Catholic. (See p.
343 note.)

Pater was “Rose” in Mallock’s _New Republic_.

* * * * *

A CHILD