Chapter D: G. ROSSETTI (Lovesight)

* * * * *

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Romola_).

* * * * *

Room in all the ages
For our love to grow,
Prayers of both demanded
A little while ago:

And now a few poor moments,
Between life and death,
May be proven all too ample
For love’s breath.

RODEN NOEL (_The Pity of It_).

* * * * *

There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
Under those spider-webs lying!...

Is it your moral of Life?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife?

Over our heads truth and nature—
Still our life’s zigzags and dodges,
Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature—
God’s gold just showing its last where that lodges,
Palled beneath man’s usurpature.

So we o’ershroud stars and roses,
Cherub and trophy and garland;
Nothings grow something which quietly closes
Heaven’s earnest eye; not a glimpse of the far land
Gets through our comments and glozes.

R. BROWNING (_Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_).

Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is an imaginary name, but it probably
indicates the great Sebastian Bach, who came from that part of
Germany. The “masterpiece, hard number twelve,” referred to
in the poem, may be (Dr. E. Harold Davies tells me) the great
Organ Fugue in F Minor, which is in “five part” counter-point.

This very interesting poem is written in a half-humorous
fashion, but its intention is quite serious. In a wonderfully
imitative manner,[8] it describes the wrangling and disputing
in a five-voiced fugue (where five persons appear to be taking
part):

One is incisive, corrosive;
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:
Five ... O Danaïdes, O Sieve!

(For killing their husbands the fifty Danaïdes were doomed to
pour water everlastingly into a sieve.)

“Where in all this is the music?” asks Browning. And, although
he is writing humorously, yet, however rank the heresy, he
finds that the fugue, with its elaborate counterpoint, is
wanting in the essentials of true art. He prefers Palestrina’s
simpler and more emotional mode of expression:

Hugues! I advise _meâ poenâ_[9]
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,
Blare out the _mode Palestrina_.

In the poem, where occurs the passage quoted, one can vividly
follow the poet’s thought. Music is essentially the language of
feeling, of _emotion_; the fugue is a triumph of _invention_,
and, therefore, the result of _intellect_. Feeling is
elemental, simple, and unanalysable. The subtleties of pure
harmony are the expression of deepness and richness of feeling;
the intricacies of the fugue are artificially constructed and,
therefore, unsuited to the expression of pure emotion. They
represent intellect as against feeling. And essentially in the
moral world, but also in our general outlook upon truth and
nature, the spiritual perception is derived from simple human
emotion rather than intellect; “Thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (The
whole of Browning’s poetry teaches that love, not intellect,
is the solution of all moral problems, and the goal of the
universe.)

In the poem the organist has been playing on the organ in
an old church; and Browning suddenly sees an illustration
of his thought in the fine gilded ceiling covered by thick
cobwebs. The cobwebs that obscure the gold of the ceiling
are the intellectual wranglings that destroy music in the
fugue—and both are symbolical of what occurs in our lives.
Truth and Nature, “God’s gold”—the pure, simple truths of the
higher life—are over us, bright and clear as the noon-day
sun. But by doubts and disputations, warring philosophies and
contending creeds, by strife over non-essentials, casuistries,
self-deceptions, by questions of dogma (often as fine as any
spider’s web), by endless “comments and glozes,” we lose sight
of the elemental truths and clear principles that should guide
our lives. The pure and simple-hearted reach the Mount of
Vision: to them comes the clear sense of Love and Duty. Those
of us who turn our intellects to a perverse use and exclude
the spiritual perception of the soul are like the spiders who
cover up “stars and roses, Cherub and trophy and garland.”
We obscure and forget all noble ideals, abolish God’s high
“legislature,” and follow a lawless life of selfish passion
and sordid ambitions. The Good and Beautiful and True have
been obliterated and forgotten; “God’s gold” is tarnished, His
harmonies lost in discord; and we become morally dead.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!...

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send;
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,
And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

MATTHEW ARNOLD (_Palladium_).

* * * * *

(Referring to the Gorham case) The future historian of opinion will write of us in this strain: “The people who spoke the language of Shakespeare were great in the constructive arts: the remains of their vast works evince an extraordinary power of combining and economizing labour: their colonies were spread over both hemispheres, and their industry penetrated to the remotest tribes: they knew how to subjugate nature and to govern men: but the weakness of their thought presented a strange contrast to the vigour of their arm; and though they were an earnest people, their conceptions of human life and its Divine Author seems to have been of the most puerile nature. Some orations have been handed down—apparently delivered before one of their most dignified tribunals—in which the question is discussed: ‘In what way the washing of new-born babes according to certain rules prevented God’s hating them.’ The curious feature is, that the discussion turns entirely upon the manner in which this wetting operated; and no doubt seems to have been entertained by disputants, judges, or audience, that, without it, a child or other person dying would fall into the hands of an angry Deity, and be kept alive for ever to be tortured in a burning cave. Now, all researches into the contemporary institutions of the island show that its religion found its chief support among the classes possessing no mean station or culture, and that the education for the priesthood was the highest which the country afforded. This strange belief must be taken, therefore, as the measure, not of popular ignorance, but of their most intellectual faith. A philosophy and worship embodying such a superstition can present nothing to reward the labour of research.”

JAMES MARTINEAU (_Essay on “The Church of England”_).

In the Gorham case, which went on appeal to the Privy Council,
it was decided that Mr. Gorham’s beliefs, although unusual,
were not repugnant to the doctrines of the Church of England.
His views were that baptism is generally necessary to
salvation, that it is a sign of grace by which God works in
us, but only in those who worthily receive it. In others it is
not effectual. Infants baptized who die before actual sin are
certainly saved, but regeneration does not necessarily follow
on baptism.

In such matters one question stands out very prominently.
The priest is consecrated to the high office of teaching the
eternal truths of Christ—Love and Duty and Moral Aspiration.
How can he keep those truths in due perspective when his
intellect is engaged in warfare over miserable casuistries.

And as the strife waxes fiercer among the priests of the Most
High, they call in the aid of hired mercenaries. Think of
the lawyers paid by one side or the other to argue questions
of baptism and prevenient grace! It was precisely this
introduction into religion of legal formalism and technicality,
the arguing from texts and ancient commentaries, the verbal
quibbling and hair-splitting, the “letter” that “killeth” as
against the “spirit” that “giveth life,” which led to Christ’s
bitter invectives against the “Scribes” or lawyers of His day.

Seeley, in _Ecce Homo_, points out that when Christ summoned
the disciples to him, he required from them only Faith, and not
belief in any specific doctrines. As it was not until later
that they learnt He was to suffer death and rise again, they
could at first have held no belief in the Atonement or the
Resurrection. “Nor,” says Seeley, “do we find Him frequently
examining His followers in their creed, and rejecting one as
a sceptic and another as an infidel.... Assuredly those who
represent Christ as presenting to man an abstruse _theology_,
and saying to them peremptorily: ‘Believe or be damned,’ have
the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world.”

As I have read somewhere, “From all barren Orthodoxy, good
Lord, deliver us.”[10]

* * * * *

For while a youth is lost in soaring thought,
And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful,
And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth,
And while a child, and while a flower is born,
And while one wrong cries for redress and finds
A soul to answer, still the world is young!

LEWIS MORRIS (_Epic of Hades_).

* * * * *

Poems are painted window panes.
If one looks from the square into the church,
Dusk and dimness are his gains—
Sir Philistine is left in the lurch!
The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,
Nor anything henceforth assuage him.

But come just inside what conceals;
Cross the holy threshold quite—
All at once ’tis rainbow-bright,
Device and story flash to light,
A gracious splendour truth reveals.
This to God’s children is full measure,
It edifies and gives you pleasure!

GOETHE.

This is George MacDonald’s translation (but never can a
translation of poetry reproduce the original). MacDonald says
of the poem: “This is true concerning every form in which truth
is embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric diagram
or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough
regarded from the outside; prismatic in its revelation of truth
from within.” Among the arts this statement is most applicable
to poetry, and hence the reason why notes are often required to
assist many persons to “come inside,” to enter into the heart
of a poem—to reach the point of vision.

* * * * *

DE TEA FABULA

Do I sleep? Do I dream?
Am I hoaxed by a scout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

Which expressions like these
May be fairly applied
By a party who sees
A Society skied
Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.

’Twas November the third.
And I says to Bill Nye,
“Which it’s true what I’ve heard:
If you’re, so to speak, fly,
There’s a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as
High.”

Which I mentioned its name
And he ups and remarks:
“If dress-coats is the game
And pow-wow in the Parks,
Then I’m nuts on Sordello and Hohensteil-Schwangau and similar Snarks.”

Now the pride of Bill Nye
Cannot well be express’d;
For he wore a white tie
And a cut-away vest:
Says I: “Solomon’s lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well
dress’d.”

But not far did we wend,
When we saw Pippa pass
On the arm of a friend
—Dr. Furnivall ’twas,
And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.

“Well,” I thought, “this is odd.”
But we came pretty quick
To a sort of a quad
That was all of red brick,
And I says to the porter: “R. Browning: free passes and kindly look
slick.”

But says he, dripping tears
In his check handkerchief,
“That symposium’s career’s
Been regrettably brief,
For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder leaf!”

Then we tucked up the sleeves
Of our shirts (that were biled),
Which the reader perceives
That our feelings were riled,
And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her
child.

Which emotions like these
Must be freely indulged
By a party who sees
A Society bulged
On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.

But I ask: Do I dream?
_Has_ it gone up the spout;
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.

This parody on Bret Harte’s “Plain Language from Truthful
James” was written at the time when the Browning Society at
Keble College, Oxford, came to an end—apparently, according to
these verses, because its funds had been exhausted in afternoon
teas!

τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (pronounced _toe tee ane einai_). In Oxford
special attention is paid to Aristotle; and Quiller-Couch,
being an Oxford man, assumes that his readers are familiar
with this phrase. It means “the essential nature of a thing,”
or, literally, “the question what a thing really is.” Such
a Society would be engaged in discovering the true meaning
of Browning’s difficult poems, so that the phrase is as
appropriate as it is amusing in its application.

The title “De Tea fabula” is a pun on Horace’s “Quid rides?
Mutato nomine _de te Fabula_ narratur” (Sat. 1, 69). “Wherefore
do you laugh? Change but the name, of thee the tale is told.”
Oxford, which Matthew Arnold called the home of lost causes,
still refuses to pronounce Latin correctly, and makes _te_
rhyme with _fee_, _see_, _bee_. It ought of course to rhyme
with _fay_, _say_, _bay_. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted
to the pronunciation of _ea_ which prevailed until the end of
the Eighteenth Century. See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”:

Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

_Dr. Furnivall_ (1825-1910), an eminent philologist, was the
founder of the society, the first society ever formed to study
the works of a living poet. From the context he may have
specially admired, as he certainly threw special light upon,
Browning’s _Pippa Passes_.

_Scout_ at Oxford is a (male) college servant.

* * * * *

One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat.

R. BROWNING (_Fra Lippo Lippi_).

The “cheekiest” line I know.

* * * * *

TO THE MOON

The wind is shrill on the hills, and the plover
Wheels up and down with a windy scream;
The birch has loosen’d her bright locks over
The nut-brown pools of the mountain stream:
Yet here I linger in London City,
Thinking of meadows where I was born—
And over the roofs, like a face of pity,
Up comes the Moon, with her dripping horn.

O Moon, pale Spirit, with dim eyes drinking
The sheen of the Sun as he sweepeth by,
I am looking long in those eyes, and thinking
Of one who hath loved thee longer than I;
I am asking my heart if ye Spirits cherish
The souls that ye witch with a harvest call?—
If the dreams must die when the dreamer perish?—
If it be idle to dream at all?

The waves of the world roll hither and thither,
The tumult deepens, the days go by,
The dead men vanish—we know not whither,
The live men anguish—we know not why;
The cry of the stricken is smothered never,
The Shadow passes from street to street;
And—o’er us fadeth, for ever and ever,
The still white gleam of thy constant feet.

The hard men struggle, the students ponder,
The world rolls round on its westward way;
The gleam of the beautiful night up yonder
Is dim on the dreamer’s cheek all day;
The old earth’s voice is a sound of weeping,
Round her the waters wash wild and vast,
There is no calm, there is little sleeping,—
Yet nightly, brightly, thou glimmerest past!

Another summer, new dreams departed,
And yet we are lingering, thou and I;
I on the earth, with my hope proud-hearted,
Thou, in the void of a violet sky!
Thou art there! I am here! and the reaping and mowing
Of the harvest year is over and done,
And the hoary snow-drift will soon be blowing
Under the wheels of the whirling Sun.

While tower and turret lie silver’d under,
When eyes are closed and lips are dumb,
In the nightly pause of the human wonder,
From dusky portals I see thee come;
And whoso wakes and beholds thee yonder,
Is witch’d like me till his days shall cease,—
For in his eyes, wheresoever he wander,
Flashes the vision of God’s white Peace.

R. BUCHANAN.

* * * * *

There is no short cut, no patent tramroad, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

GEORGE ELIOT (_The Lifted Veil_).

* * * * *

Let us think less of men and more of God.
Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us,
Like a small bird winging the still blue air;
And then again, at other times, it rises
Slow, like a cloud, which scales the skies all breathless,
And just overhead lets itself down on us,
Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind
Rush like a rocket tearing up the sky,
That we should join with God, and give the world
The slip: but, while we wish, the world turns round
And peeps us in the face—the wanton world;
We feel it gently pressing down our arm—
The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;
We feel it softly bearing on our side—
We feel it touch and thrill us through the body,—
And we are fools, and there’s the end of us.

P. J. BAILEY (_Festus_).

* * * * *

It fell upon a merry May morn,
I’ the perfect prime of that sweet time
When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,—
The dear Babe Christabel was born.

...

Look how a star of glory swims
Down aching silences of space,
Flushing the Darkness till its face
With beating heart of light o’erbrims!

So brightening came Babe Christabel,
To touch the earth with fresh romance,
And light a Mother’s countenance
With looking on her miracle.

With hands so flower-like soft, and fair,
She caught at life, with words as sweet
As first spring violets, and feet
As faery-light as feet of air.

...

She grew, a sweet and sinless Child,
In shine and shower,—calm and strife;
A Rainbow on our dark of Life.
From Love’s own radiant heaven down-smiled!

In lonely loveliness she grew,—
A shape all music, light, and love,
With startling looks, so eloquent of
The spirit burning into view.

Such mystic lore was in her eyes,
And light of other worlds than ours,
She looked as she had fed on flowers,
And drunk the dews of Paradise[11]

...

Ah! she was one of those who come
With pledgèd promise not to stay
Long, ere the Angels let them stray
To nestle down in earthly home:

And, thro’ the windows of her eyes,
We often saw her saintly soul,
Serene, and sad, and beautiful,
Go sorrowing for lost Paradise.

She came—like music in the night
Floating as heaven in the brain,
A moment oped, and shut again,
And all is dark where all was light.

...

In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The Angels with us unawares.

Our beautiful Bird of light hath fled;
Awhile she sat with folded wings—
Sang round us a few hoverings—
Then straightway into glory sped.

And white-wing’d Angels nurture her;
With heaven’s white radiance robed and crown’d,
And all Love’s purple glory round,
She summers on the Hills of Myrrh.

Thro’ Childhood’s morning-land, serene
She walked betwixt us twain, like Love;
While, in a robe of light above,
Her better Angel walked unseen,—

Till Life’s highway broke bleak and wild;
Then, lest her starry garments trail
In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,
The Angel’s arms caught up the child.

Her wave of life hath backward roll’d
To the great ocean; on whose shore
We wander up and down, to store
Some treasures of the times of old:

And aye we seek and hunger on
For precious pearls and relics rare,
Strewn on the sands for us to wear
At heart, for love of her that’s gone.

GERALD MASSEY (_The Ballad of Babe Christabel_).

These exquisite verses appear to be forgotten.

* * * * *

If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
Make the low nature better by your throes!
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

R. BROWNING (_James Lee’s Wife_).

* * * * *

... He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.

Hereditary bent
That hedges in intent
He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain.
He loves the souls He made,
He knows His own hand laid
On each the mark of some ancestral stain.

ANNA REEVE ALDRICH.

* * * * *

I have lost the dream of Doing,
And the other dream of Done,
The first spring in the pursuing,
The first pride in the Begun,—
First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won.

E. B. BROWNING (_The Lost Bower_).

It is the saddest of things that we lose our early enthusiasms.

* * * * *

The other (maiden) up arose[12]
And her fair lockes, which formerly were bound
Up in one knot, she low adowne did loose:
Which, flowing long and thick her clothed around.
And the ivorie in golden mantle gowned:
So that fair spectacle from him was reft,
Yet that, which reft it, no less faire was found:
So, hid in lockes and waves from looker’s theft,
Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.

Withall she laughèd, and she blushed withall,
That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,
And laughter to her blushing.

SPENSER (_Faerie Queene 2_, XII, 67).

* * * * *

I love and honour Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. Nor can you excite me to the least uneasiness by saying, “He acted, and thou sittest still.” I see action to be good when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. One piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.

R. W. EMERSON (_Spiritual Laws_).

* * * * *

You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. By a strange chance in these latter days, it happened that, alone of all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native village of our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulmans, and heard again, after ages of dull oppression, the cheering clatter of social freedom, and the voices of laughing girls. When I was at Bethlehem, though long after the flight of the Mussulmans, the cloud of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to cast its cold shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, pray heaven there still may be heard there the voice of free innocent girls. Distant at first, and then nearer and nearer the timid flock will gather round you with their large burning eyes gravely fixed against yours, so that they see into your brain; and if you imagine evil against them they will know of your ill-thought before it is yet well born, and will fly and be gone in the moment. But presently if you will only look virtuous enough to prevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the blithe maidens will draw nearer and nearer to you; and soon there will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right up to your side, and touch the hem of your coat in playful defiance of the danger; and then the rest will follow the daring of their youthful leader, and gather close round you, and hold a shrill controversy on the wondrous formation that you call a hat, and the cunning of the hands that clothed you with cloth so fine; and then, growing more profound in their researches, they will pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contemplation of your stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy glow of your English cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of delight and amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with the hues of your sunburnt face, or with their own warmer tints. Instantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin; with tremulous boldness she touches, then grasps your hand, and smoothes it gently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, as though it were silk of Damascus or shawl of Cashmere. And when they see you, even then still sage and gentle, the joyous girls will suddenly, and screamingly, and all at once, explain to each other that you are surely quite harmless and innocent—a lion that makes no spring—a bear that never hugs; and upon this faith, one after the other, they will take your passive hand, and strive to explain it, and make it a theme and a controversy. But the one—the fairest and the sweetest of all—is yet the most timid; she shrinks from the daring deeds of her playmates, and seeks shelter behind their sleeves, and strives to screen her glowing consciousness from the eyes that look upon her. But her laughing sisters will have none of this cowardice; they vow that the fair one _shall_ be their _complice_—_shall_ share their dangers—_shall_ touch the hand of the stranger; they seize her small wrist and draw her forward by force, and at last, whilst yet she strives to turn away, and to cover up her whole soul under the folds of downcast eyelids, they vanquish her utmost strength, they vanquish her utmost modesty and marry her hand to yours. The quick pulse springs from her fingers and throbs like a whisper upon your listening palm. For an instant her large timid eyes are upon you—in an instant they are shrouded again, and there comes a blush so burning, that the frightened girls stay their shrill laughter as though they had played too perilously and harmed their gentle sister. A moment, and all with a sudden intelligence turn away and fly like deer; yet soon again like deer they wheel round, and return, and stand, and gaze upon the danger, until they grow brave once more.

A. W. KINGLAKE (_Eothen_).

Let us hope that the present war will be a successful “Crusade”
and that the Turks will disappear from the land which is sacred
to the memory of our Lord.

* * * * *

Discedant nunc amores; maneat Amor.

(Loves, farewell; let Love, the sole, remain.)

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Compare Shakespeare’s sonnet LXXI:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
... for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.

* * * * *

I saw a son weep o’er a mother’s grave:
“Ay, weep, poor boy—weep thy most bitter tears
That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love,
Forgetfulness grows over it like grass;
_That_ is the thing to weep for, not the dead.”

ALEXANDER SMITH (_A Boy’s Poem_)

* * * * *

UNTIL DEATH

If thou canst love another, be it so.
I would not reach out of my quiet grave
To bind thy heart, if it should choose to go.
Love shall not be a slave....

It would not make me sleep more peacefully,
That thou wert waiting all thy life in woe
For my poor sake. What love thou hast for me
Bestow it ere I go....

Forget me when I die. The violets
Above my rest will blossom just as blue
Nor miss thy tears—E’en Nature’s self forgets—
But while I live be true.

F. A. WESTBURY.

These verses are by a South Australian writer. “Forget me when
I die” is an unpleasing sentiment; yet in “When I am dead, my
dearest,” Christina Rossetti says:

If thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

As regards the latter poem, the curious fact is that it is
read as an exquisite piece of _music_, and not for any poetic
thought it contains. If it _has_ any coherent meaning, it is
that the speaker is indifferent whether or not “her dearest”
will remember her or she will remember him. Yet the haunting
music of the lines has made it a favourite poem, and it finds
a place in all the leading anthologies. Christina Rossetti
is by no means a great poet. (Mr. Gosse’s estimate in the
_Britannica_ is exaggerated), but she had a wonderful gift
of language and metre. Take, for example, the pretty lilt
contained in the simplest words in “Maiden-Song”:

Long ago and long ago,
And long ago still,
There dwelt three merry maidens
Upon a distant hill.
One was tall Meggan,
And one was dainty May,
But one was fair Margaret,
More fair than I can say,
Long ago and long ago.

* * * * *

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust for me?
And while in life’s long afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (_Snow-Bound_).

* * * * *

I have a dream—that some day I shall go
At break of dawn adown a rainy street,
A grey old street, and I shall come in the end
To the little house I have known, and stand; and you,
Mother of mine, who watch and wait for me.
Will you not hear my footstep in the street,
And, as of old, be ready at the door,
To give me rest again?... I shall come home.

H. D. LOWRY.

* * * * *

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Written of the poet’s child Catherine, who died in 1812 at
three years of age, and of whom Wordsworth had also written,
“Loving she is, and tractable, though wild.” _Forty years
after_ the death of this child and her brother, who died
about the same time, the poet spoke of them to Aubrey de Vere
with the same acute sense of bereavement as if they had only
recently died.

* * * * *

DEATH

It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life’s ruddy springs forget to flow;
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright
Be lapp’d in alien clay and laid below;
It is not death to know this,—but to know
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go
So duly and so oft—and when grass waves
Over the passed-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.

THOMAS HOOD.

* * * * *

A little pain, a little fond regret,
A little shame, and we are living yet,
While love, that should outlive us, lieth dead.

W. MORRIS.

* * * * *

O never rudely will I blame his faith
In the might of stars and angels!...
... For the stricken heart of Love
This visible nature, and this common world,
Is all too narrow: yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn,
For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birth-place:
Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays and talismans,
And spirits; and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
’Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Wallenstein—The Piccolomini_).

_His faith._—Wallenstein, the great German soldier and
statesman (1583-1634) believed in astrology.

The “intelligible forms of ancient poets” and “fair humanities
of old religion” are the gods and inferior divinities that
please our fancy. Thus the Greeks peopled the heavens (not very
distant heavens to them) with their gods who visited earth and
mingled with men. There were also the lesser deities, as the
Hours and the Graces; and also the Nymphs—the Nereïds, Naiads,
Orcades and Dryads—who inhabited seas, springs, rivers, and
trees respectively. The Nymphs would correspond somewhat to the
elves, gnomes and fairies of Northern religions.

Coleridge’s translation of “Wallenstein” (of which “The
Piccolomini” is a portion) is considered a masterpiece.
Schiller was fortunate in having a finer poet than himself to
translate his drama. In the above passage Coleridge greatly
improved on the original; the seven splendid lines beginning
“The intelligible forms of ancient poets” are his and not
Schiller’s; and, therefore, this passage may fairly be ascribed
to him as author.

* * * * *

By rose-hung river and light-foot rill
There are who rest not; who think long
Till they discern as from a hill
At the sun’s hour of morning song.
Known of souls only, and those souls free,
The sacred spaces of the sea.

A. C. SWINBURNE (_Prelude—Songs before
Sunrise_).

The sea typifies the wider, nobler life of the soul.

* * * * *

Je prends mon bien où je le trouve.

(I take my property wherever I find it.)

MOLIÈRE (1622-1673).

This famous saying is quoted in French literature as though
Molière had said, “I admit plagiarism, but I so improve what
I borrow from others that it becomes my own” (see _Larousse_,
under “_Bien_”).

“Tho’ old the thought and oft expressed,
’Tis his at last who says it best.”

It is, however, an interesting question whether this was the
true meaning intended by Molière.

The story is told by Grimarest, the first biographer of the
great dramatist. In 1671 Molière produced _Les Fourberies de
Scapin_, in which he had inserted two scenes taken from _Le
Pedant Joué_, of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655). (They are
the amusing scenes where Geronte repeatedly says, _Que diable
allait-il faire dans cette galère_, “What the deuce was he
doing in that Turkish galley?”) Grimarest says that Cyrano
had used in these scenes what he had overheard from Molière,
and that the latter, when taxed with the plagiarism, replied,
“Je _reprends_ mon bien où je le trouve” (“I _take back_ my
property, wherever I find it”). That is to say, he definitely
_denied_ the plagiarism.

Voltaire, in a “Life of Molière,” makes a general assertion
(not referring specially to this incident) that all Grimarest’s
stories are false. This must, of course, be far too sweeping
an assertion, and Grimarest is in fact quoted as an authority.
Voltaire himself (1694-1778) uses the saying in the sense given
by Grimarest (_La Pucelle_, Chant III.):

Cette culotte est mienne; et je prendrai
Ce que fut mien où je le trouverai.

(“These breeches are mine, and I shall take what was mine
wherever I find it.”) Agnès Sorel had been captured dressed
as a man and wearing the garment in question, which had been
previously stolen from the speaker.

It seems to me that Grimarest’s story must be accepted, that
Molière claimed the scenes as originally his and denied
plagiarism. There is no evidence to the contrary, and the
saying is given its obvious meaning. (It is word for word as
in the Digest, _Ubi rem meam invenio, ibi vindico_, “Where I
find my own property, I appropriate it.”) But the question then
arises, Why should so commonplace a statement have attained
such notoriety?

The explanation seems simple. Molière had many jealous and
bitter enemies, who laid every charge they could against
him. He was well known to have borrowed ideas, characters
and scenes in all directions—and his enemies constantly and
persistently attacked him on this ground. Then came his most
glaring plagiarism from a comparatively recent play, written
by a man whose dare-devil exploits had made him a perfect
hero of romance. Molière’s story that Cyrano had previously
stolen the scenes from him would not been have accepted for a
moment. Cyrano had never been known to plagiarize, nor would
it have been natural for a man of his character to do anything
clandestine. Also Molière would have had nothing to support
his statement—and Cyrano was not alive to contradict him.
The conclusion, therefore, seems to be that the dramatist’s
statement was received in Paris with such incredulity,
indignation, and ridicule that it became a byword.

But if this is so, why have the words been given an entirely
fictitious meaning? The answer seems to lie in the fact that
as Molière’s great genius became realized the desire arose
to remove a blemish from his character. His is the greatest
name in French literature, and almost anything would be
excused in him. (We ourselves pass lightly over plagiarisms
by Shakespeare.) Also, whether morally justified or not,
Molière enriched the world’s literature by his borrowings.
It was, therefore, no serious matter to Frenchmen that he
should have borrowed from Cyrano, but it was a distinct
blemish on his character that he should have denied the fact
and also slandered a dead man. Ordinarily, in such a case,
the story is ignored and forgotten, just as the one improper
act of Sir Walter Scott, his borrowing from Coleridge of the
“Christabel” metre, is usually ignored or slurred over. But
the saying had become rooted in literature and this course
was not practicable. However, there is little that enthusiasm
cannot accomplish by some means or other, and the object in
this instance has been achieved by _reversing the meaning_
of Molière’s words. If this conjecture is correct, it is an
illustration of what has occurred on a far greater scale in
connection with the Greeks (see Index of Subjects).

As regards the meaning now given to the saying, Seneca claimed
the same right to borrow at will. _Quidquid bene dictum est
ab ullo, meum est_ (_Ep. XVI_). After advising his reader to
consider the Epistle carefully and see what value it had for
him, he says, “You need not be surprised if I am still free
with other people’s property. But why do I say ‘other people’s
property’? Whatever has been well said by anyone belongs to
me.”[13]

So also the late Samuel Butler said, “Appropriate things are
meant to be appropriated.”

* * * * *

Our finest hope is finest memory,
As they who love in age think youth is blest
Because it has a life to fill with love.

GEORGE ELIOT (_A Minor Poet_).

* * * * *

The disposition to judge every enterprise by its event, and believe in no wisdom that is not endorsed by success, is apt to grow upon us with years, till we sympathize with nothing for which we cannot take out a policy of assurance.

JAMES MARTINEAU (_Hours of Thought I, 87_).

* * * * *

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

DE QUINCEY (_Murder, as one of the Fine Arts_).

* * * * *

For when the mellow autumn flushed
The thickets, where the chestnut fell,
And in the vales the maple blushed,
Another came who knew her well,

Who sat with her below the pine
And with her through the meadow moved,
And underneath the purpling vine
She sang to him the song I loved.

N. G. SHEPHERD.

* * * * *

Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, “You know, Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me!”

DICKENS (_David Copperfield_).

* * * * *

(After looking at his watch) “Two days wrong!” sighed the Hatter. “I told you butter would not suit the works!” he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.

“It was the _best_ butter,” the March Hare replied.

LEWIS CARROLL (_Alice in Wonderland_).

* * * * *

“They were learning to draw,” the Dormouse went on, “and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—”

“Why with an M?” said Alice.

“Why not?” said the March Hare.

Alice was silent.

LEWIS CARROLL (_Alice in Wonderland_).

* * * * *

Perhaps, as two negatives make one affirmative, it may be thought that two layers of moonshine might coalesce into one pancake; and two Barmecide banquets might be the square root of one poached egg.

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

In a Dublin lunatic asylum, one of the inmates peremptorily ordered a visitor to take off his hat. Deferentially obeying the order, the visitor asked why he should remove his hat. The lunatic replied: “Do you not know, sir, that I am the Crown Prince of Prussia?” Having duly made his apologies, the visitor proceeded on his round; but, coming upon the same lunatic, was met with the same demand. Again obeying the order, he repeated the question: “May I ask why you wish me to take off my hat?” The lunatic replied: “Are you not aware, sir, that I am the Prince of Wales?” “But,” said the visitor, “you told me just now you were the Crown Prince of Prussia.” The lunatic, after scratching his head and deliberating for a moment, replied: “Ah, but that was by a different mother.”

(Another Irish lunatic always lost himself and insisted on looking for himself under the bed.)

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

These are true stories but localized—another injustice to
Ireland!

* * * * *

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

(_Much Ado About Nothing._)

* * * * *

_Pointz._ Come, your reason, Jack,—your reason.

_Falstaff._ Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.

(_1 Henry IV_, ii, 4.)

_Reason_ needs to be given its old pronunciation, “raison” (_or
raisin_) in order to understand Falstaff’s pun.

* * * * *

Still I cannot believe in clairvoyance—_because the thing is impossible_.

SAMUEL ROGERS, 1763-1855 (_Table Talk_).

Rogers mentions some remarkable facts about the clairvoyant,
Alexis, and ends with this convincing argument. Apart from
clairvoyance (of which I know nothing), Rogers would no doubt
have made a similar reply if some prophet had foretold that
men would one day communicate with each other by wireless
telegraphy; and the same effective argument is to-day opposed
by many to the evidence that the dead communicate with the
living.

I might follow the eight preceding quotations (which illustrate
“the art of reasoning”) with the well-known story of Charles
Lamb, who, when blamed for coming late to the office, excused
himself on the ground that he always left early. (He also said,
“A man could not have too little to do and too much time to do
it in.”) There is also the reply of Lord Rothschild, when the
cabman told him that his son paid better fares than he did,
“Yes, but He has a rich father, and I haven’t.”

* * * * *

TO THE TRUE ROMANCE

_Thy face is far from this our war,_
_Our call and counter-cry,_
_I shall not find Thee quick and kind,_
_Nor know Thee till I die._
_Enough for me in dreams to see_
_And touch Thy garments’ hem:_
_Thy feet have trod so near to God_
_I may not follow them._

Through wantonness if men profess
They weary of Thy parts,
E’en let them die at blasphemy
And perish with their arts;
But we that love, but we that prove
Thine excellence august,
While we adore discover more
Thee perfect, wise, and just.

Since spoken word Man’s Spirit stirred
Beyond his belly-need,
What is is Thine of fair design
In thought and craft and deed;
Each stroke aright of toil and fight,
That was and that shall be,
And hope too high, wherefore we die,
Has birth and worth in Thee.

Who holds by Thee hath Heaven in fee
To gild his dross thereby,
And knowledge sure that he endure
A child until he die—
For to make plain that man’s disdain
Is but new Beauty’s birth—
For to possess in loneliness
The joy of all the earth.

As thou didst teach all lovers speech
And Life all mystery,
So shalt Thou rule by every school
Till love and longing die,
Who wast or yet the Lights were set
A whisper in the Void,
Who shalt be sung through planets young
When this is clean destroyed.

Beyond the bounds our staring rounds,
Across the pressing dark,
The children wise of outer skies
Look hitherward and mark
A light that shifts, a glare that drifts
Rekindling thus and thus,
Not all forlorn, for Thou hast borne
Strange tales to them of us.

Time hath no tide but must abide
The servant of Thy will;
Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme
The ranging stars stand still—
Regent of spheres that lock our fears
Our hopes invisible,
Oh! ’twas certés at Thy decrees
We fashioned Heaven and Hell!

Pure Wisdom hath no certain path
That lacks thy morning-eyne,
And captains bold by Thee controlled
Most like to God’s design;
Thou art the Voice to kingly boys
To lift them through the fight.
And Comfortress of Unsuccess,
To give the dead good-night.

A veil to draw ’twixt God, His law,
And Man’s infirmity,
A shadow kind to dumb and blind
The shambles where we die;
A rule to trick th’ arithmetic
Too base of leaguing odds—
The spur of trust, the curb of lust,
Thou handmaid of the Gods!

O Charity, all patiently
Abiding wrack and scaith!
O Faith, that meets ten thousand cheats
Yet drops no jot of faith!
Devil and brute Thou dost transmute
To higher, lordlier show,
Who art in sooth that lovely Truth
The careless angels know!

_Thy face is far from this our war,_
_Our call and counter-cry,_
_I may not find Thee quick and kind,_
_Nor know Thee till I die._

_Yet may I look with heart unshook_
_On blow brought home or missed—_
_Yet may I hear with equal ear_
_The clarions down the List;_
_Yet set my lance above mischance_
_And ride the barrière—_
_Oh, hit or miss, how little ’tis,_
_My Lady is not there!_

RUDYARD KIPLING.

All attempts to define poetic imagination, to determine its
scope or prescribe its limits, leave us cold and unsatisfied,
for the simple reason that its variety and range are unlimited.
The aesthetic, moral and spiritual faculties are all in essence
identical, so that no definition of the aesthetic can exclude
the spiritual, and art and poetry spring from the same root as
religion. They all have what Wordsworth calls the “Spirit of
Paradise.”[14] Imagination[15] in its larger sense includes
all those higher faculties of man, all that lifts him above
his material existence. The “True Romance” in this fine poem
is imagination in this complete sense. By our lower perceptive
faculties we see the world of Nature in its material form;
by our higher powers we apprehend its aesthetic, moral and
spiritual beauty. (Man with his consciousness, will, reason,
and also his higher imaginative faculties, is as much part of
_Nature_ as any star or clod, crystal or gas, fly or flower.)
Hence imagination gives us the vision of glory in earth and
sky, the sense of wonder and worship, the emotions of sympathy
and love; it teaches us duty and self sacrifice; it awakens in
us a sense of the mystery of birth, life and death, directing
our thoughts from the finite and material world to the infinite
realm of the spiritual.

_Verse 4, lines 5, 6._ Our faculties develop, and we realize,
for example, the beauty of Nature which was not apparent to
the Greeks of Plato’s time (see p. 379; see also p. 283).
_Verse 9, l. 5, 6._ Imagination teaches us heroism. In the
italicized verses, “our war” is, of course, the strife of our
material existence: we can face with courage the mischances
of life, seeing that “My Lady Romance,” the soul which is our
higher nature, must persist through life and after death.
(“_Barrière_,” barrier.)

* * * * *

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).

* * * * *

The stars make no noise.

IRISH PROVERB.

* * * * *

WHO FANCIED WHAT A PRETTY SIGHT

Who fancied what a pretty sight
This rock would be if edged around
With living snow-drops? circlet bright!
How glorious to this orchard ground!
Who loved the little rock, and set
Upon its head this coronet?

Was it the humour of a child?
Or rather of some gentle maid,
Whose brows, the day that she was styled
The Shepherd-queen, were thus arrayed?
Of man mature, or matron sage?
Or old man toying with his age?

I asked—’twas whispered, “The device
To each and all might well belong:
It is the Spirit of Paradise
That prompts such work, a Spirit strong
That gives to all the self-same bent
Where life is wise and innocent.”

WORDSWORTH.

* * * * *

They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an inter-radiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connections with the worlds around us than those of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man’s soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house within which he abides.

G. MACDONALD (_Phantastes_).

* * * * *

O weary time, O life,
Consumed in endless, useless strife
To wash from out the hopeless clay
Of heavy day and heavy day
Some specks of golden love, to keep
Our hearts from madness ere we sleep!

W. MORRIS (_The Earthly Paradise_).

To an Australian, a metaphor taken from alluvial gold-mining is
interesting.

* * * * *

(Dr. Slop has been uttering terrible curses against Obadiah) I declare, quoth my Uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the father of curses, replied Dr. Slop.—So am not I, replied my uncle.—But he is cursed and damned already to all eternity, replied Dr. Slop.

I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby.

LAURENCE STERNE (_Tristram Shandy_).

* * * * *

_Faust._ If heaven was made for man, ’twas made for me.

_Good Angel._ Faustus, repent; yet heaven will pity thee.

_Bad Angel._ Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee.

_Faust._ Be I a devil, yet God may pity me.

MARLOWE (_Doctor Faustus_).

* * * * *

But fare-you-well, Auld Nickie-Ben!
O, wad ye tak a thought and men’!
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—
Still hae a stake:
I’m wae to think upo’ yon den,
Ev’n for your sake!

ROBERT BURNS (_Address to the Deil_).

* * * * *

“Shargar, what think ye? Gin the deil war to repent, wad God forgie him?”

“There’s no sayin’ what folk wad dae till ance they’re tried,” returned Shargar cautiously.

GEORGE MACDONALD (_Robert Falconer, ch. xii._)

There is a passage, I think in one of MacDonald’s novels, where
the question is again put, “Gin the de’il war to repent?” The
reply is to the effect, “Do not wish even him anything so
dreadful. The agony of his repentance would be far worse than
anything he can suffer in hell.”

Scotus Erigena, a very able Irish theologian and philosopher of
the 9th century, believed that Satan himself must ultimately be
reclaimed, since otherwise God could not in the end conquer and
extinguish sin. He cites Origen and others in support of his
contention. These old and very serious discussions seem more
remote than Plato, but the belief in a personal devil was not
uncommon even in my young days.

* * * * *

Hope, whose eyes
Can sound the seas unsoundable, the skies
Inaccessible of eyesight; that can see
What earth beholds not, hear what wind and sea
Hear not, and speak what all these crying in one
Can speak not to the sun.

SWINBURNE (_Thalassius_).

* * * * *

AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF CHARITIE

In Virgo now the sultry sun did sheene, shine
And hot upon the meads did cast his ray;
The apple reddened from its paly green,
And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray;
The pied chelándry sang the livelong day; goldfinch
’Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,
And eke the ground was decked in its most deft aumere. apparel

The sun was gleaming in the midst of day.
Dead-still the air, and eke the welkin blue,
When from the sea arose in drear array
A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue,
The which full fast unto the woodland drew,
Hiding at once the sunnès festive face,
And the black tempest swelled, and gathered up apace.

Beneath a holm, fast by a pathway-side holm-oak
Which did unto Saint Godwin’s convent lead,
A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide,
Poor in his view, ungentle in his weed, clothing
Long brimful of the miseries of need.
Where from the hailstorm could the beggar fly?
He had no houses there, nor any convent nigh.

Look in his gloomèd face, his sprite there scan;
How woe-begone, how withered, dwindled, dead!
Haste to thy church-glebe-house, accursed man! grave
Haste to thy shroud, thy only sleeping bed.
Cold as the clay which will grow on thy head
Are Charity and Love among high elves;
For knights and barons live for pleasure and themselves.

The gathered storm is ripe; the big drops fall,
The sunburnt meadows smoke, and drink the rain;
The coming ghastness doth the cattle ’pall, gloom, appal
And the full flocks are driving o’er the plain;
Dashed from the clouds, the waters fly again;
The welkin opes; the yellow lightning flies,
And the hot fiery steam in the wide flashings dies.

List! now the thunder’s rattling noisy sound
Moves slowly on, and then full-swollen clangs,
Shakes the high spire, and lost, expended, drowned,
Still on the frighted ear of terror hangs;
The winds are up; the lofty elmtree swangs; swings
Again the lightning, and the thunder pours,
And the full clouds are burst at once in stony showers.

Spurring his palfrey o’er the watery plain,
The Abbot of Saint Godwin’s convent came;
His chapournette was drenched with the rain, small round hat
His painted girdle met with mickle shame;
He aynewarde told his bederoll at the same; told his beads
The storm increases, and he drew aside, backwards,
With the poor alms-craver near to the holm to bide. i.e., cursed

His cope was all of Lincoln cloth so fine,
With a gold button fastened near his chin,
His autremete was edged with golden twine, robe
And his shoe’s peak a noble’s might have been;
Full well it shewèd he thought cost no sin.
The trammels of his palfrey pleased his sight,
For the horse-milliner his head with roses dight.

“An alms, sir priest!” the drooping pilgrim said,
“Oh! let me wait within your convent-door,
Till the sun shineth high above our head,
And the loud tempest of the air is o’er.
Helpless and old am I, alas! and poor.
No house, no friend, nor money in my pouch,
All that I call my own is this my silver crouche.” crucifix

“Varlet!” replied the Abbot, “cease your din;
This is no season alms and prayers to give.
My porter never lets a beggar in;
None touch my ring who not in honour live.”
And now the sun with the black clouds did strive,
And shot upon the ground his glaring ray;
The abbot spurred his steed, and eftsoons rode away.

Once more the sky was black, the thunder rolled,
Fast running o’er the plain a priest was seen;
Not dight full proud, nor buttoned up in gold.
His cope and jape were grey, and eke were clean; short surplice
A Limitor he was of order seen; Begging Friar
And from the pathway-side then turnèd he,
Where the poor beggar lay beneath the holmen tree.

“An alms, sir priest!” the drooping pilgrim said,
“For sweet Saint Mary and your order’s sake.”
The Limitor then loosened his pouch-thread,
And did thereout a groat of silver take:
The needy pilgrim did for gladness shake,
“Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care,
We are God’s stewards all, naught of our own we bear.

“But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me.
Scarce any give a rent-roll to their lord;
Here, take my semicope, thou’rt bare, I see. short cloak
’Tis thine; the saints will give me my reward.”
He left the pilgrim, and his way aborde. went on his way
Virgin and holy Saints, who sit in gloure, glory
Or give the mighty will, or give the good man power!

THOMAS CHATTERTON (1752-1770).

The sun would conventionally be said to be in Virgo in August.

It is sad and strange to think of the amazing story of this
child-genius, who lived in a world of romance but was driven by
destitution to commit suicide at _seventeen_ years of age. The
above was one of the “Rowley forgeries,” but, for the antique
words which Chatterton used (often incorrectly) to imitate
the language of the Fifteenth Century, modern words have been
substituted where possible.

* * * * *

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years.
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—
“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But there,
The silver answer rang.—“Not Death, but Love.”

E. B. BROWNING (_Sonnets from the Portuguese_).

This is the first of the chain of sonnets, which Mrs. Browning
called “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” They tell her own
love-story, and were written in secret and without thought of
publication. Robert Browning learnt of them only the year after
the marriage, and then insisted on their being published. They
include some of the finest sonnets in our language.

To appreciate this and the other sonnets, it is necessary to
know the beautiful story of the two poets. Mrs. Browning was
six years older than her husband and a life-long invalid,
expecting, as she says in this sonnet, Death rather than Love.
Their marriage was supremely happy, and the great poet, when in
England, used to visit the church in which they were married to
express his thankfulness. He tells the love-story in the next
quotation.

In these sonnets Mrs. Browning laid bare her innermost feelings.

Robert Browning, however, in several poems says the privacy of
a poet’s life and feelings should not be bared to the public.
Wordsworth had written in 1827:

Scorn not the Sonnet.... With this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

Browning in 1876 (thirty years after the “Sonnets from the
Portuguese” were written) wrote in his poem called _House_:

“_With this same key_
_Shakespeare unlocked his heart_”....
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

Swinburne comments on these lines: “No whit the less like
Shakespeare, but undoubtedly the less like Browning.”

* * * * *

... Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again,
Let us now forget and now recall,
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall!...

Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,
While my heart, convulsed to really speak,
Lay choking in its pride.

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,
And pity and praise the chapel sweet,
And care about the fresco’s loss,
And wish for our souls a like retreat,
And wonder at the moss.

We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder’s date;
Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,
Take the path again—but wait!

Oh moment, one and infinite!
The water slips o’er stock and stone;
The West is tender, hardly bright:
How grey at once is the evening grown—
One star, its chrysolite!

We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well:
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a breath suspend the blood’s best play,
And life be a proof of this!...

A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen....

How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment’s product thus,
When a soul declares itself—to wit,
By its fruit, the thing it does!...

I am named and known by that moment’s feat;
There took my station and degree;
So grew my own small life complete,
As nature obtained her best of me—
One born to love you, sweet!

And to watch you sink by the fire-side now
Back again, as you mutely sit
Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it,
Yonder, my heart knows how!

R. BROWNING (_By the Fireside_).

The last verse, describing Mrs. Browning, makes it clear that
the poet is speaking of his own love-story, although the scene
is imaginary. The last two verses are to be read literally, as
an expression of the poet’s firm belief, and not as poetical
exaggeration.

* * * * *

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows. Wise men are afraid to say that there is anything contrary to nature, except what is contrary to mathematical truth, as that two and two cannot make five. There are dozens and hundreds of things in the world which we should certainly have said were contrary to nature, if we did not see them going on under our eyes all day long. If people had never seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite different shapes from themselves, and these trees again produce fresh seeds, they would have said, “The thing cannot be”.... Suppose that no human being had ever seen or heard of an elephant. And suppose that you described him to people, and said, “This is the shape, and plan, and anatomy of the beast ... and this is the section of his skull, more like a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable or unreasonable beast; yet he is the wisest of all beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast accounts.” People would surely have said, “Nonsense; your elephant is contrary to nature,” and have thought you were telling stories—as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a giraffe; and as the King of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor, when he said that in his country water turned to marble, and rain fell as feathers. The truth is that folks’ fancy that such and such things cannot be, simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a savage’s fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never saw one running wild in the forest.

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875) (_Water-Babies_).

This passage interested us greatly in the old days, and also
another passage drawing a not very satisfactory analogy between
the transformation of insects and our probable transformation
at death. I do not know whether the elephant’s brain warrants
Kingsley’s deduction.

This book, published in 1863,[16] had a considerable effect
in doing away with the barbarous employment of young children
in mines, factories, brickfields, etc. It called attention
particularly to the chimney-sweep boys of four or five years
of age who had to climb up the narrow chimneys, and who were
simply slaves, neglected and ill-treated by their drunken
masters. We are apt to forget how recently we emerged from
barbarism in many directions, and that we are only now becoming
civilized in other respects, as, for instance, with regard to
the poor, suffering, and ignorant.

* * * * *

The worst way to improve the world
Is to condemn it.

P. J. BAILEY (_Festus_).

* * * * *

THE DARK GLASS

Not I myself know all my love for thee:
How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
To-morrow’s dower by gage of yesterday?
Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
And ultimate outpost of eternity?

Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
And veriest touch of powers primordial
That any hour-girt life may understand.