Chapter D: G. ROSSETTI (The Blessed Damozel)

* * * * *

When as in silk my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes!

ROBERT HERRICK (_Upon Julia’s Clothes_),

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

* * * * *

Whatever else may or may not work on through eternity, we are bound to believe that the love, which moved the Father to redeem the world at such infinite cost, must work on, while there is one pang in the universe, born of sin, which can touch the Divine pity, or one wretched prodigal in rags and hunger far from the home and the heart of God.

REV. BALDWIN BROWN.

Canon Farrar is not happy in his rejoinder to the argument that to cast a doubt on the endlessness of punishment is to invalidate the argument for the endlessness of bliss, since both rest on exactly the same Biblical sanction. There are three replies, cumulatively exhaustive, which he has failed to adduce.... (Firstly, evil and temptation are banished from heaven; Second, the two arguments do _not_ rest on the same Biblical sanction) ... Thirdly, the difference of the two eternities, heaven and hell, consists in the presence or absence of God. Let us put α for each of those eternities or aeons, and θ to denote Him. The assertion of the equality of the two, then, is that α + θ = α - θ, which can stand only if θ = 0, the postulate of atheism.

REV. R. F. LITTLEDALE, D.C.L.

Both these passages come from an Article in the _Contemporary_
for April, 1878.

As this book is partly intended to revive the memories of
forty years ago, I include these out of the passages in my
commonplace book which refer to the intense struggle that then
raged over the question of Eternal Punishment. Surely no other
word, since the world began, raised so tremendous an issue,
created such conflict and caused so much heart-burning as the
one word αἰώνιος.

(Liddell and Scott, 1901, gives the following meanings for
αἰώνιος: _lasting for an age_, _perpetual_, _everlasting_,
_eternal_.)

* * * * *

I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of Hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure the misery of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs, methinks, no addition to compleat our afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. I fear GOD, yet am not afraid of Him: His Mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His Judgments afraid thereof.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682) (_Religio Medici_).

* * * * *

Ne nous imaginons pas que l’enfer consiste dans ces étangs de feu et de soufre, dans ces flammes éternellement dévorantes, dans cette rage, dans ce désespoir, dans cet horrible grincement de dents. L’enfer, si nous l’entendons, c’est péché même: l’enfer, c’est d’être éloigné de Dieu.

BOSSUET (1627-1704).

(Let us not imagine that hell consists in those lakes of fire
and brimstone, in those eternally-devouring flames, in that
rage, in that despair, in that horrible gnashing of teeth.
Hell, if we understand it aright, is sin itself: hell consists
in being banished from God.)

* * * * *

... Sir Henry Wotton’s celebrated answer to a priest in Italy, who asked him, “Where was your religion to be found before Luther?” “My religion was to be found there—where yours is not to be found now—in the written word of God.” In Selden’s _Table Talk_ we have the following more witty reply made to the same question: “Where was America an hundred or six score years ago?”

BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_, VIII, 176.

I do not wish to introduce sectarian questions, but these
answers are interesting and clever. The next quotation is
pro-Catholic.

* * * * *

During the horrible time of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, a French priest and a Jew became very intimate friends. The priest, very anxious for the future welfare of his friend, urged him to be received into the church: and the Jew promised to earnestly consider this advice. The priest, however, gave up all hope on learning that the Jew was called by his business to Rome, where he would see the unutterably monstrous life of the Pope and clergy. To his surprise the Jew on his return announced that he wished to be baptized, saying that a religion, which could still exist in spite of such abominations, must be the true religion.

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

I noted this from an old French book, but the real story must
be the earlier one of Boccaccio (1315-1375). Alexander Borgia
was Pope, 1492-1503.

* * * * *

I verily believe that, if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength and energy enough to stick it into a Dissenter.

SYDNEY SMITH.

Shortly before his death in 1844 he gave this as a singular
proof of his declining strength! (See _Memoir_ by his daughter,
Lady Holland).

* * * * *

A hundred times when, roving high and low,
I have been harassed with the toil of verse,
Much pains and little progress, and at once
Some lovely Image in the song rose up
Full-formed like Venus rising from the sea.

W. WORDSWORTH (_Prelude, Bk. IV_).

The “Prelude” is extremely interesting as a poet’s
autobiography.

* * * * *

LONG EXPECTED

O many and many a day before we met,
I knew some spirit walked the world alone,
Awaiting the Belovèd from afar;
And I was the anointed chosen one
Of all the world to crown her queenly brows
With the imperial crown of human love.
I knew my sunshine somewhere warmed the world,
And I should reach it, in His own good time
Who sendeth sun, and dew, and love for all....

Earth, with her thousand voices, talked of thee—
Sweet winds, and whispering leaves, and piping birds,
The hum of happiness in summer woods,
And the light dropping of the silver rain;
And standing as in God’s own presence-chamber.
When silence lay like sleep upon the world,
And it seemed rich to die, alone with Night,
Like Moses ’neath the kisses of God’s lips,
The stars have trembled thro’ the holy hush,
And smiled down tenderly, and read to me
The love hid for me in a budding breast,
Like incense folded in a young flower’s heart.

GERALD MASSEY

“Rich to die” is reminiscent of Keats’ _Ode to a Nightingale_:

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.

* * * * *

“Come back, come back”; behold with straining mast
And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast;
With one new sun to see her voyage o’er,
With morning light to touch her native shore,
“Come back, come back.”

“Come back, come back”; across the flying foam,
We hear faint far-off voices call us home,
“Come back,” ye seem to say; “Ye seek in vain;
We went, we sought, and homeward turned again.
Come back, come back.”

“Come back, come back”; and whither back or why?
To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try;
Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street;
Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.
“Come back, come back.”

“Come back, come back”; and whither and for what?
To finger idly some old Gordian knot,
Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,
And with much toil attain to half-believe.
“Come back, come back.”

“Come back, come back”; yea back, indeed, do go
Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;
Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,
And wishes idly struggle in the strings;
“Come back, come back.”...

“Come back, come back!”
Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back;
The long smoke wavers on the homeward track,
Back fly with winds things which the winds obey—
The strong ship follows its appointed way.

A. H. CLOUGH (_Songs in Absence_).

I have ventured to put quotation marks in the above to make
the meaning clear at first view. Also—but that italics seldom
look well in a poem—I would have written the last two lines as
follows:

_Back_ fly with winds _things which the winds obey_—
The _strong_ ship follows its appointed way.

* * * * *

When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move

Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,
Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,
And all these triumphs for thy beauty’s sake:
When thou hast told these honours done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.

THOMAS CAMPION.

* * * * *

A QUESTION

To Fausta.

Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
Like the wave;
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles; and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die
Like spring flowers;
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves with bitter tears
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

We count the hours! These dreams of ours,
False and hollow,
Do we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smiled and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow?

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

* * * * *

Dead! that is the word
That rings through my brain till it crazes!
Dead, while the mayflowers bud and blow,
While the green creeps over the white of the snow,
While the wild woods ring with the song of the bird,
And the fields are a-bloom with daisies.

See! even the clod
Thrills, with life’s glad passion shaken!
The vagabond weeds, with their vagrant train,
Laugh in the sun, and weep in the rain,
The blue sky smiles like the eye of God,
Only my dead do not waken.

Dead! There is the word
That I sit in the darkness and ponder!
Why should the river, the sky and the sea
Babble of summer and joy to me,
While a strong, true heart, with its pulse unstirred,
Lies hushed in the silence yonder?

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

Our voices one by one
Fail in the hymn begun;
Our last sad song of Life is done,
Our first sweet song of Death.

EDMUND GOSSE (_Encomium Mortis_).

This poem appeared in early editions of _On viol and Flute_,
but is now omitted from Mr. Gosse’s poems.

* * * * *

There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,
Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten,
With human sensations and voice and corporeal members;
So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man’s fashion,
And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead,
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.

XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON (About 570 B.C.).

I do not know whose paraphrase this is; it was prefixed by
Tyndall to his Belfast Address, 1874. He probably imagined that
these lines contained an argument in favour of materialism; but
on the contrary the Greek philosopher affirms the existence of
a supreme God. All that he says is that the conception of him
as resembling a mortal in his physical attributes is wrong.

At the back of Tyndall’s mind was no doubt the prevalent idea
that any “anthropomorphic” conception of the _nature_ of the
Deity is necessarily absurd. But there is nothing unreasonable
in believing that His nature, though immeasurably superior,
is nevertheless _akin_ to our own. The argument is that the
source or power of the world must be greater than the highest
thing it has produced, the mind of man; and that it must more
nearly resemble the higher than the lower of its products. In
particular it is impossible for us to believe that our moral
ideas of truth, justice, right and wrong, etc., can differ at
all in _kind_, however much in _degree_, from those of God.
So also our _reason_ must be akin to His _insight_. Such a
belief should be regarded, not as “anthropomorphic,” but as
(in a sense different from that of Clifford and Harrison) a
“deification of man”—the recognition of the Divine that is in
him.

* * * * *

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying....

Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,
And waiteth at the door.
There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.

TENNYSON (_The Death of the Old Year_).

* * * * *

To see the soul as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original purity—and then her beauty will be revealed.... We must remember that we have seen her only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original image can hardly be discerned because his natural members are broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all sorts of ways, and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and stones, so that he is more like some monster than his own natural form. And the soul which we behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills. But not there, Glaucon, not there must we look.

Where then!

At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what society and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine; also how different she would become if wholly following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the good things of this life as they are termed: then you would see her as she is, and know ... what her nature is.

PLATO (_Republic_, Bk. 10, Jowett’s translation).

Apart from the intrinsic interest of such a passage, the
picture of the old sea-god, with long hair and long beard, his
body ending in a scaly tail, battered about by the waves, and
overgrown with seaweed and shells, is very curious. Without
discussing how far the great philosopher himself or some other
advanced thinkers believed in such divinities, it must be
remembered that to the Greeks generally the gods were very real
personages.

* * * * *

Youth’s quick and warm, old age is slow and tame,
And only Heaven can fairly halve their blame.
To-day the passionate roses breathe and blow
And ask no counsel from to-morrow’s snow,
Whose fretwork sparkles to the winter moon
White, as if roses never flushed in June.

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me an old aunt—a maiden aunt—an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage and a front of light, coffee-coloured hair—how my children should work work-bags for her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable! Sweet—sweet vision! Foolish—foolish dream!

THACKERAY (_Vanity Fair_).

* * * * *

IDENTITY.

Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—
In Twilight-land—in No-Man’s land—
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.

“And who are you?” cried one a-gape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
“I know not,” said the second Shape,
“I only died last night!”

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

* * * * *

Veil not thy mirror, sweet Amine,
Till night shall also veil each star!
Thou seeest a twofold marvel there:
The only face so fair as thine,
The only eyes that, near or far,
Can gaze on thine without despair.

J. C. MANGAN.

* * * * *

Has anyone ever pinched into its pillulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?

GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).

* * * * *

TO R.K.

As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrendous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman’s latest piece of graphic.

BROWNING.

Will there never come a season
Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose which knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse:
When the world shall cease to wonder
At the genius of an Ass,
And a boy’s eccentric blunder
Shall not bring success to pass:

When mankind shall be delivered,
From the clash of magazines,
And the inkstand shall be shivered
Into countless smithereens:
When there stands a muzzled stripling,
Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more.

JAMES KENNETH STEPHEN.

“R.K.” is Rudyard Kipling, but what was the “boy’s eccentric
blunder” that brought him success I do not know. Stephen in
this instance showed a want of judgment. The books Kipling had
then produced, _Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Departmental
Ditties_, and the six little books, _Soldiers Three_, etc.,
all written before the age of twenty-four, should have been
sufficient to show that the author was certainly not a
stripling to be “muzzled.” Stephen’s misjudgment was, however,
trivial when we remember how many important writers have failed
to understand and appreciate the most beautiful poems. Jeffrey
(1773-1850) thought to the end of his days that of the poets of
his time Keats and Shelley would die and Campbell and Rogers
alone survive. Shelley was _very_ unfortunate in his critics.
Matthew Arnold and Carlyle also disparaged him, Theodore Hook
said “Prometheus Unbound” was properly named as no one would
think of binding it; and worst of all was Emerson. He said
Shelley was not a poet, had no imagination and his muse was
uniformly imitative (“Thoughts on Modern Literature”); his
poetry was ‘rhymed English’ which ‘had no charm’ (“Poetry
and Imagination”). Just as amazing was the article in _The
Edinburgh Review_, 1816, on Coleridge’s volume containing
“Christabel,” “Kubla Khan,” etc. This article, usually
attributed to Hazlitt, and certainly having Jeffrey’s sanction,
said: “We look upon this publication as one of the most notable
pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been
guilty; and one of the boldest experiments that have as yet
been made upon the patience or understanding of the public.” De
Quincey said the style of Keats “belonged essentially to the
vilest collections of waxwork filigree or gilt gingerbread.”
Other instances are Swinburne’s abuse of George Eliot and
Walt Whitman, Carlyle’s brutality towards Lamb, Jeffrey’s
savage attack on Wordsworth (the famous “This will never do”
article—although it was not so very inexcusable), Edward
Fitzgerald’s letter that Mrs. Browning’s death was a relief
to him (“No more Aurora Leighs, thank God!”), Samuel Rogers’
statement that he “could not relish Shakespeare’s sonnets,” and
Steevens’ far worse condemnation of them, and indeed the list
could be extended indefinitely. On the other hand, unmerited
praise was given by whole generations of writers to poems
which are now properly forgotten. In face of such facts it is
somewhat of a mystery why the best things _do_ survive. See
next quotation.

* * * * *

If it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing has been for centuries consecrated by public admiration, without possessing in a high degree some kind of sterling excellence, it is not because the average intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are competent in any way to distinguish what is really excellent, but because all erroneous opinion is inconsistent, and all ungrounded opinion transitory; so that while the fancies and feelings which deny deserved honour, and award what is undue, have neither root nor strength sufficient to maintain consistent testimony for a length of time, the opinions formed on right grounds by those few who are in reality competent judges, being necessarily stable, communicate themselves gradually from mind to mind, descending lower as they extend wider, until they leaven the whole lump, and rule by absolute authority, even where the grounds and reasons for them cannot be understood. On this gradual victory of what is consistent over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of all that is highest in art and literature.

JOHN RUSKIN (_Modern Painters_, I, 1).

This is an excellent suggestion in explanation of the question
raised in the preceding note. It is also interesting because
of the youth of this great writer at the time. Ruskin was born
in 1819, and the volume was _published_ in 1843, when he was
twenty-four. Because of his youth, it was thought inadvisable
to give his name as author, and, therefore, the book was
published as “by an Oxford Graduate.”

* * * * *

The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth, who owed nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure quality of his nature, shed an epic splendour around the facts of his death, which has transfigured every particular into an universal symbol for the eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our highest fact.

EMERSON (_Essay on Character_).

* * * * *

The best of men
That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.

THOMAS DEKKER (1570-1641).

* * * * *

Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating
Willest be asked, and Thou shalt answer then,
Show the hid heart beneath creation beating,
Smile with kind eyes, and be a man with men.

Were it not thus, O King of my salvation,
Many would curse to Thee, and I for one,
Fling Thee thy bliss and snatch at thy damnation,
Scorn and abhor the shining of the sun.

Ring with a reckless shivering of laughter
Wroth at the woe which Thou hast seen so long;
Question if any recompense hereafter
Waits to atone the intolerable wrong.

F. W. H. MYERS (1843-1901.) (_Saint Paul_).

_Willest be asked_, “requirest to be asked,” as in “God willeth
Samuel to yield unto the importunity of the people” (1 Sam.
viii., in margin).

_Saint Paul_ was written for the Seatonian prize for religious
English verse, Cambridge, about 1866, but failed to secure the
prize!

* * * * *

(Speaking of future state) “Those who are neither good nor bad, or are too insignificant for notice, will be dropt entirely. This is my opinion. It is consistent with my idea of God’s justice, and with the reason that God has given me, and I gratefully know that He has given me a large share of that Divine gift”(!)

THOMAS PAINE (_Age of Reason_).

* * * * *

SIXTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF LOVE (ΑΓΑΠΗ).

1. It is long-suffering.
2. is kind.
3. envieth not.
4. vaunteth not itself.
5. is not puffed up.
6. doth not behave itself unseemly.
7. seeketh not its own.
8. is not easily provoked.
9. thinketh no evil.
10. rejoiceth not in iniquity.
11. rejoiceth in the truth.
12. beareth all things.
13. believeth all things.
14. hopeth all things.
15. endureth all things.
16. never faileth.

ST. PAUL (_1 Cor._ xiii.)

Ἀγάπη, brotherly love, “_Though I have all knowledge and all
faith, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and have not ἀγάπη, it
profiteth me nothing._” (1 Cor. xiii, 2).

* * * * *

In the Eighth Century B.C., in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion which appears to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. “And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”[20]

T. H. HUXLEY (_Essays_, IV, 161).

* * * * *

The best of all we do and are,
Just God, forgive.

WORDSWORTH (_Thoughts near the Residence of
Burns_).

* * * * *

LOST DAYS.

The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?

I do not see them there; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
“I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”
“And I—and I—thyself,” (lo! each one saith,)
“And thou thyself to all eternity!”