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diff --git a/old/2almy10.txt b/old/2almy10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e82c4d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2almy10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2412 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext of Flower of the Mind, by Alice Meynell +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Later Poems, by Alice Meynell +#9 and #10 in our series by Alice Meynell + +This file contains two complete Alice Meynell books. + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk +from the 1893 Grant Richards edition of The Flower of the Mind and +the 1902 John Lane edition of Later Poems. + + + + + +THE FLOWER OF THE MIND + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + + +Partial collections of English poems, decided by a common subject +or bounded by narrow dates and periods of literary history, are +made at very short intervals, and the makers are safe from the +reproach of proposing their own personal taste as a guide for the +reading of others. But a general Anthology gathered from the whole +of English literature--the whole from Chaucer to Wordsworth--by a +gatherer intent upon nothing except the quality of poetry, is a +more rare enterprise. It is hardly to be made without tempting the +suspicion--nay, hardly without seeming to hazard the confession--of +some measure of self-confidence. Nor can even the desire to enter +upon that labour be a frequent one--the desire of the heart of one +for whom poetry is veritably "the complementary life" to set up a +pale for inclusion and exclusion, to add honours, to multiply +homage, to cherish, to restore, to protest, to proclaim, to depose; +and to gain the consent of a multitude of readers to all those +acts. Many years, then--some part of a century--may easily pass +between the publication of one general anthology and the making of +another. + +The enterprise would be a sorry one if it were really arbitrary, +and if an anthologist should give effect to passionate preferences +without authority. An anthology that shall have any value must be +made on the responsibility of one but on the authority of many. +There is no caprice; the mind of the maker has been formed for +decision by the wisdom of many instructors. It is the very study +of criticism, and the grateful and profitable study, that gives the +justification to work done upon the strongest personal impulse, and +done, finally, in the mental solitude that cannot be escaped at the +last. In another order, moral education would be best crowned if +it proved to have quick and profound control over the first +impulses; its finished work would be to set the soul in a state of +law, delivered from the delays of self-distrust; not action only, +but the desires would be in an old security, and a wish would come +to light already justified. This would be the second--if it were +not the only--liberty. Even so an intellectual education might +assuredly confer freedom upon first and solitary thoughts, and +confidence and composure upon the sallies of impetuous courage. In +a word, it should make a studious anthologist quite sure about +genius. And all who have bestowed, or helped in bestowing, the +liberating education have given their student the authority to be +free. Personal and singular the choice in such a book must be, not +without right. + +Claiming and disclaiming so much, the gatherers may follow one +another to harvest, and glean in the same fields in different +seasons, for the repetition of the work can never be altogether a +repetition. The general consent of criticism does not stand still; +and moreover, a mere accident has until now left a poet of genius +of the past here and there to neglect or obscurity. This is not +very likely to befall again; the time has come when there is little +or nothing left to discover or rediscover in the sixteenth century +or the seventeenth; we know that there does not lurk another +Crashaw contemned, or another Henry Vaughan disregarded, or another +George Herbert misplaced. There is now something like finality of +knowledge at least; and therefore not a little error in the past is +ready to be repaired. This is the result of time. Of the slow +actions and reactions of critical taste there might be something to +say, but nothing important. No loyal anthologist perhaps will +consent to acknowledge these tides; he will hardly do his work well +unless he believe it to be stable and perfect; nor, by the way, +will he judge worthily in the name of others unless he be resolved +to judge intrepidly for himself. + +Inasmuch as even the best of all poems are the best upon +innumerable degrees, the size of most anthologies has gone far to +decide what degrees are to be gathered in and what left without. +The best might make a very small volume, and be indeed the best, or +a very large volume, and be still indeed the best. But my labour +has been to do somewhat differently--to gather nothing that did not +overpass a certain boundary-line of genius. Gray's Elegy, for +instance, would rightly be placed at the head of everything below +that mark. It is, in fact, so near to the work of genius as to be +most directly, closely, and immediately rebuked by genius; it meets +genius at close quarters and almost deserves that Shakespeare +himself should defeat it. Mediocrity said its own true word in the +Elegy: + + +"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, +And waste its sweetness on the desert air." + + +But greatness had said its own word also in a sonnet: + + +"The summer flower is to the summer sweet +Though to itself it only live and die." + + +The reproof here is too sure; not always does it touch so quick, +but it is not seldom manifest, and it makes exclusion a simple +task. Inclusion, on the other hand, cannot be so completely +fulfilled. The impossibility of taking in poems of great length, +however purely lyrical, is a mechanical barrier, even on the plan +of the present volume; in the case of Spenser's Prothalamion, the +unmanageably autobiographical and local passage makes it +inappropriate; some exquisite things of Landor's are lyrics in +blank verse, and the necessary rule against blank verse shuts them +out. No extracts have been made from any poem, but in a very few +instances a stanza or a passage has been dropped out. No poem has +been put in for the sake of a single perfectly fine passage; it +would be too much to say that no poem has been put in for the sake +of two splendid passages or so. The Scottish ballad poetry is +represented by examples that are to my mind finer than anything +left out; still, it is but represented; and as the song of this +multitude of unknown poets overflows by its quantity a collection +of lyrics of genius, so does severally the song of Wordsworth, +Crashaw, and Shelley. It has been necessary, in considering +traditional songs of evidently mingled authorship, to reject some +one invaluable stanza or burden--the original and ancient surviving +matter of a spoilt song--because it was necessary to reject the +sequel that has cumbered it since some sentimentalist took it for +his own. An example, which makes the heart ache, is that burden of +keen and remote poetry: + + +"O the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom, +The broom of Cowdenknowes!" + + +Perhaps some hand will gather all such precious fragments as these +together one day, freed from what is alien in the work of the +restorer. It is inexplicable that a generation resolved to forbid +the restoration of ancient buildings should approve the eighteenth +century restoration of ancient poems; nay, the architectural +"restorer" is immeasurably the more respectful. In order to give +us again the ancient fragments, it is happily not necessary to +break up the composite songs which, since the time of Burns, have +gained a national love. Let them be, but let the old verses be +also; and let them have, for those who desire it, the solitariness +of their state of ruin. Even in the cases--and they are not few-- +where Burns is proved to have given beauty and music to the ancient +fragment itself, his work upon the old stanza is immeasurably finer +than his work in his own new stanzas following, and it would be +less than impiety to part the two. + +I have obeyed a profound conviction which I have reason to hope +will be more commended in the future than perhaps it can be now, in +leaving aside a multitude of composite songs--anachronisms, and +worse than mere anachronisms, as I think them to be, for they patch +wild feeling with sentiment of the sentimentalist. There are some +exceptions. The one fine stanza of a song which both Sir Walter +Scott and Burns restored is given with the restorations of both, +those restorations being severally beautiful; and the burden, +"Hame, hame, hame," is printed with the Jacobite song that carries +it; this song seems so mingled and various in date and origin that +no apology is needed for placing it amongst the bundle of Scottish +ballads of days before the Jacobites. Sir Patrick Spens is treated +here as an ancient song. It is to be noted that the modern, or +comparatively modern, additions to old songs full of quantitative +metre--"Hame, hame, hame," is one of these--full of long notes, +rests, and interlinear pauses, are almost always written in +anapaests. The later writer has slipped away from the fine, +various, and subtle metre of the older. Assuredly the popularity +of the metre which, for want of a term suiting the English rules of +verse, must be called anapaestic, has done more than any other +thing to vulgarise the national sense of rhythm and to silence the +finer rhythms. Anapaests came quite suddenly into English poetry +and brought coarseness, glibness, volubility, dapper and fatuous +effects. A master may use it well, but as a popular measure it has +been disastrous. I would be bound to find the modern stanzas in an +old song by this very habit of anapaests and this very +misunderstanding of the long words and interlinear pauses of the +older stanzas. This, for instance, is the old metre: + + +"Hame, hame, hame! O hame fain wad I be!" + + +and this the lamentable anapaestic line (from the same song): + + +"Yet the sun through the mirk seems to promise to me -." + + +It has been difficult to refuse myself the delight of including A +Divine Love of Carew, but it seemed too bold to leave out four +stanzas of a poem of seven, and the last four are of the poorest +argument. This passage at least shall speak for the first three: + + +"Thou didst appear +A glorious mystery, so dark, so clear, +As Nature did intend +All should confess, but none might comprehend." + + +From Christ's Victory in Heaven of Giles Fletcher (out of reach for +its length) it is a happiness to extract here at least the passage +upon "Justice," who looks "as the eagle + + +"that hath so oft compared +Her eye with heaven's"; + + +from Marlowe's poem, also unmanageable, that in which Love ran to +the priestess + + +"And laid his childish head upon her breast"; + + +with that which tells how Night, + + +"deep-drenched in misty Acheron, +Heaved up her head, and half the world upon +Breathed darkness forth"; + + +from Robert Greene two lines of a lovely passage: + + +"Cupid abroad was lated in the night, +His wings were wet with ranging in the rain"; + + +from Ben Jonson's Hue and Cry (not throughout fine) the stanza: + + +"Beauties, have ye seen a toy, +Called Love, a little boy, +Almost naked, wanton, blind; +Cruel now, and then as kind? +If he be amongst ye, say; +He is Venus' run-away"; + + +from Francis Davison: + + +"Her angry eyes are great with tears"; + + +from George Wither: + + +"I can go rest +On her sweet breast +That is the pride of Cynthia's train"; + + +from Cowley: + + +"Return, return, gay planet of mine east"! + + +The poems in which these are cannot make part of the volume, but +the citation of the fragments is a relieving act of love. + +At the very beginning, Skelton's song to "Mistress Margery +Wentworth" had almost taken a place; but its charm is hardly fine +enough. + +If it is necessary to answer the inevitable question in regard to +Byron, let me say that in another Anthology, a secondary Anthology, +the one in which Gray's Elegy would have an honourable place, some +more of Byron's lyrics would certainly be found; and except this +there is no apology. If the last stanza of the "Dying Gladiator" +passage, or the last stanza on the cascade rainbow at Terni, + + +"Love watching madness with unalterable mien," + + +had been separate poems instead of parts of Childe Harold, they +would have been amongst the poems that are here collected in no +spirit of arrogance, or of caprice, of diffidence or doubt. + +The volume closes some time before the middle of the century and +the death of Wordsworth. + +A. M. + +[As there would be considerable overlap between the poems in this +book and those already released by Project Gutenberg the text of +the poems is not included in this eText. The poems that Alice +selected are shown below and are followed by her comments on them.- +-DP] + + +Anonymous. + The first carol +Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) + Verses before death +Edmund Spenser (1553-1599) + Easter + Fresh spring + Like as a ship + Epithalamion +John Lyly (1554?-1606) + The Spring +Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) + True love + The moon + Kiss + Sweet judge + Sleep + Wat'red was my wine +Thomas Lodge (1556-1625) + Rosalynd's madrigal + Rosaline + The solitary shepherd's song +Anonymous + I saw my lady weep +George Peele (1558?-1597) + Farewell to arms +Robert Greene (1560?-1592) + Fawnia + Sephestia's song to her child +Christopher Marlowe (1562-1593) + The passionate shepherd to his love +Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) + Sleep + My spotless love +Michael Drayton (1563-1631) + Since there's no help +Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618) + Were I as base +William Shakespeare (1564-1616) + Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth + O me! What eyes hath love put in my head + Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? + When in the chronicle of wasted time + That time of year thou may'st in me behold + How like a winter hath my absence been + Being your slave, what should I do but tend + When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes + They that have power to hurt, and will do + Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing + When to the sessions of sweet silent thought + Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye + The forward violet thus did I chide + O lest the world should task you to recite + Let me not to the marriage of true minds + How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st + Full many a glorious morning have I seen + The expense of spirit in a waste of shame + Fancy + Fairies + Come away + Full fathom five + Dirge (Fear no more the heat o' the sun) + Song (Take, O take those lips away) + Song (How should I your true love know) +Anonymous + Tom o' Bedlam +Thomas Campion (circa 1567-1620) + Kind are her answers + Laura + Her sacred bower + Follow + When thou must home + Western wind + Follow your saint + Cherry-ripe +Thomas Nash (1567-1601?) + Spring +John Donne (1573-1631) + This happy dream + Death + Hymn to God the father + The funeral +Richard Barnefield (1574?-?) + The nightingale +Ben Jonson (1574-1637) + Charis' triumph + Jealousy + Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H. + Hymn to Diana + On my first daughter + Echo's lament for Narcissus + An epitaph on Salathiel Pavy, a child of Queen Elizabeth's +Chapel +John Fletcher (1579-1625) + Invocation to sleep, from Valentinian + To Bacchus +John Webster (-?1625) + Song from the Duchess of Malfi + Song from the Devil's Law-case + In Earth, dirge from Vittoria Corombona +William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) + Song (Phoebus, arise!) + Sleep, Silence' child + To the nightingale + Madrigal I + Madrigal II +Beaumont and Fletcher (1586-1616)-(1579-1625) + I died true +Francis Beaumont (1586-1616) + On the tombs in Westminster Abbey +Sir Francis Kynaston (1587-1642) + To Cynthia, on concealment of her beauty +Nathaniel Field (1587-1638) + Matin song +George Wither (1588-1667) + Sleep, baby, sleep! +Thomas Carew (1589-1639) + Song (Ask me no more where Jove bestows) + To my inconstant mistress + An hymeneal dialogue + Ingrateful beauty threatened +Thomas Dekker (-1638?) + Lullaby + Sweet content +Thomas Heywood (-1649?) + Good-morrow +Robert Herrick (1591-1674?) + To Dianeme + To meadows + To blossoms + To daffodils + To violets + To primroses + To daisies, not to shut so soon + To the virgins, to make much of time + Dress + In silks + Corinna's going a-maying + Grace for a child + Ben Jonson +George Herbert (1593-1632) + Holy baptism + Virtue + Unkindness + Love + The pulley + The collar + Life + Misery +James Shirley (1596-1666) + Equality +Anonymous (circa 1603) + Lullaby (Weep you no more, sad fountains) +Sir William Davenant (1605-1668) + Morning +Edmund Waller (1605-1687) + The rose +Thomas Randolph (1606-1634?) + His mistress +Charles Best (-?) + A sonnet of the moon +John Milton (1608-1674) + Hymn on Christ's nativity + L'allegro + Il penseroso + Lycidas + On his blindness + On his deceased wife + On Shakespeare + Song on May morning + Invocation to Sabrina, from Comus + Invocation to Echo, from Comus + The attendant spirit, from Comus +James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1612-1650) + The vigil of death +Richard Crashaw (1615?-1652) + On a prayer-book sent to Mrs. M. R. + To the morning + Love's horoscope + On Mr. G. Herbert's book + Wishes to his supposed mistress + Quem Vidistis Pastores etc. + Music's duel + The flaming heart +Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) + On the death of Mr. Crashaw + Hymn to the light +Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) + To Lucasta on going to the wars + To Amarantha + Lucasta + To Althea, from prison + A guiltless lady imprisoned: after penanced + The rose +Andrew Marvell (1620-1678) + A Horatian ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland + The picture of T. C. in a prospect of flowers + The nymph complaining of death of her fawn + The definition of love + The garden +Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) + The dawning + Childhood + Corruption + The night + The eclipse + The retreat + The world of light +Scottish Ballads + Helen of Kirconnell + The wife of Usher's well + The dowie dens of Yarrow + Sweet William and May Margaret + Sir Patrick Spens + Hame, hame, hame +Border Ballad + A lyke-wake dirge +John Dryden (1631-1700) + Ode (Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies) +Aphre Behn (1640-1689) + Song, from Abdelazar +Joseph Addison (1672-1719) + Hymn (The spacious firmament on high) +Alexander Pope (1688-1744) + Elegy +William Cowper (1731-1800) + Lines on receiving his mother's picture +Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) + Life +William Blake (1757-1828) + The land of dreams + The piper + Holy Thursday + The tiger + To the muses + Love's secret +Robert Burns (1759-1796) + To a mouse + The farewell +William Wordsworth (1770-1850) + Why art thou silent? + Thoughts of a Briton on the subjugation of Switzerland + It is a beauteous evening, calm and free + On the extinction of the Venetian Republic + O friend! I know not + Surprised by joy + To Toussaint L'ouverture + With ships the sea was sprinkled + The world + Upon Westminster bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 + When I have borne in memory + Three years she grew + The daffodils + The solitary reaper + Elegiac stanzas + To H. C. + 'Tis said that some have died for love + The pet lamb + Stepping westward + The childless father + Ode on intimations of immortality +Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) + Proud Maisie + A weary lot is thine + The Maid of Neidpath +Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) + Kubla Khan + Youth and age + The rime of the ancient mariner +Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) + Rose Aylmer + Epitaph + Child of a day +Thomas Campbell (1767-1844) + Hohenlinden + Earl March +Charles Lamb (1775-1835) + Hester +Allan Cunningham (1784-1842) + A wet sheet and a flowing sea +George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1823) + The Isles of Greece +Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) + Hellas + Wild with weeping + To the night + To a skylark + To the moon + The question + The waning moon + Ode to the west wind + Rarely, rarely comest thou + The invitation, to Jane + The recollection + Ode to heaven + Life of life + Autumn + Stanzas written in dejection near Naples + Dirge for the year + A widow bird + The two spirits +John Keats (1795-1821) + La Belle Dame sans merci + On first looking into Chapman's Homer + To sleep + The gentle south + Last sonnet + Ode to a nightingale + Ode on a Grecian urn + Ode to Autumn + Ode to Psyche + Ode to Melancholy +Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) + She is not fair + + + +ALICE MEYNELL'S COMMENTS/NOTES + + + +EPITHALAMION + +Written by Spensor on his marriage in Ireland, Elizabeth Boyle of +Kilcoran, who survived him, married one Roger Seckerstone, and was +again a widow. Dr. Grosart seems to have finally decided the +identity of the heroine of this great poem. It is worth while to +explain, once for all, that I do not use the accented e for the +longer pronunciation of the past participle. The accent is not an +English sign, and, to my mind, disfigures the verse; neither do I +think it necessary to cut off the e with an apostrophe when the +participle is shortened. The reader knows at a glance how the word +is to be numbered; besides, he may have his preferences where +choice is allowed. In reading such a line as Tennyson's + +"Dear as remembered kisses after death," + +one man likes the familiar sound of the word "remembered" as we all +speak it now; another takes pleasure in the four light syllables +filling the line so full. Tennyson uses the apostrophe as a rule, +but neither he nor any other author is quite consistent. + + +ROSALYND'S MADRIGAL + + +It may please the reader to think that this frolic, rich, and +delicate singer was Shakespeare's very Rosalind. From Dr. Thomas +Lodge's novel, Euphues' Golden Legacy, was taken much of the story, +with some of the characters, and some few of the passages, of As +You Like It. + + +ROSALINE + + +This splendid poem (from the same romance), written on the poet's +voyage to the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries, has the fire +and freshness of the south and the sea; all its colours are clear. +The reader's ear will at once teach him to read the sigh "heigh ho" +so as to give the first syllable the time of two (long and short). + + +FAREWELL TO ARMS + + +George Peele's four fine stanzas (which must be mentioned as +dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, but are better without that +dedication) exist in another form, in the first person, and with +some archaisms smoothed. But the third person seems to be far more +touching, the old man himself having done with verse. + + +THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD + + +The sixth stanza is perhaps by Izaak Walton. + + +TAKE, O TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY + + +The author of this exquisite song is by no means certain. The +second stanza is not with the first in Shakespeare, but it is in +Beaumont and Fletcher. + + +KIND ARE HER ANSWERS + + +These verses are a more subtle experiment in metre by the musician +and poet, Campion, than even the following, Laura, which he himself +sweetly commended as "voluble, and fit to express any amorous +conceit." In Kind are her Answers the long syllables and the +trochaic movement of the short lines meet the contrary movement of +the rest, with an exquisite effect of flux and reflux. The +"dancers" whose time they sang must have danced (with Perdita) like +"a wave of the sea." + + +DIRGE + + +I have followed the usual practice in omitting the last and less +beautiful stanza. + + +FOLLOW + + +Campion's "airs," for which he wrote his words, laid rules too +urgent upon what would have been a delicate genius in poetry. The +airs demanded so many stanzas; but they gave his imagination leave +to be away, and they depressed and even confused his metrical play, +hurting thus the two vital spots of poetry. Many of the stanzas +for music make an unlucky repeating pattern with the poor variety +that a repeating wall-paper does not attempt. And yet Campion +began again and again with the onset of a true poet. Take, for +example, the poem beginning with the vitality of this line, +"touching in its majesty"- + +"Awake, thou spring of speaking grace; mute rest becomes not thee!" + +Who would have guessed that the piece was to close in a jogging +stanza containing a reflection on the fact that brutes are +speechless, with these two final lines - + +"If speech be then the best of graces, +Doe it not in slumber smother!" + +Campion yields a curious collection of beautiful first lines. + +"Sleep, angry beauty, sleep and fear not me" + +is far finer than anything that follows. So is there a single +gloom in this - + +"Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!" + +And a single joy in this - + +"Oh, what unhoped-for sweet supply!" + +Another solitary line is one that by its splendour proves Campion +the author of Cherry Ripe - + +"A thousand cherubim fly in her looks." + +And yet "a thousand cherubim" is a line of a poem full of the +dullest kind of reasoning--curious matter for music--and of the +intricate knotting of what is a very simple thread of thought. It +was therefore no easy matter to choose something of Campion's for a +collection of the finest work. For an historical book of +representative poetry the question would be easy enough, for there +Campion should appear by his glorious lyric, Cherry Ripe, by one or +two poems of profounder imagination (however imperfect), and by a +madrigal written for the music (however the stanzas may flag in +their quibbling). But the work of choosing among his lyrics for +the sake of beauty shows too clearly the inequality, the brevity of +the inspiration, and the poet's absolute disregard of the moment of +its flight and departure. A few splendid lines may be reason +enough for extracting a short poem, but must not be made to bear +too great a burden. + + +WHEN THOU MUST HOME + + +Of the quality of this imaginative lyric there is no doubt. It is +fine throughout, as we confess even after the greatness of the +opening:- + +"When thou must home to shades of underground, +And there arrived, a new admired guest--" + +It is as solemn and fantastic at the close as at this dark and +splendid opening, and throughout, past description, Elizabethan. +This single poem must bind Campion to that period without question; +and as he lived thirty-six years in the actual reign of Elizabeth, +and printed his Book of Airs with Rosseter two years before her +death, it is by no violence that we give him the name that covers +our earlier poets of the great age. When thou must Home is of the +day of Marlowe. It has the qualities of great poetry, and +especially the quality of keeping its simplicity; and it has a +quality of great simplicity not at all child-like, but adult, +large, gay, credulous, tragic, sombre, and amorous. + + +THE FUNERAL + + +Donne, too, is a poet of fine onsets. It was with some hesitation +that I admitted a poem having the middle stanza of this Funeral; +but the earlier lines of the last are fine. + + +CHARIS' TRIUMPH + + +The freshest of Ben Jonson's lyrics have been chosen. Obviously it +is freshness that he generally lacks, for all his vigour, his +emphatic initiative, and his overbearing and impulsive voice in +verse. There is a stale breath in that hearty shout. Doubtless it +is to the credit of his honesty that he did not adopt the country- +phrases in vogue; but when he takes landscape as a task the effect +is ill enough. I have already had the temerity to find fault for a +blunder of meaning, with the passage of a most famous lyric, where +it says the contrary of what it would say - + +"But might I of Jove's nectar sup +I would not change for thine;" + +and for doing so have encountered the anger rather than the +argument of those who cannot admire a pretty lyric but they must +hold reason itself to be in error rather than allow that a line of +it has chanced to get turned in the rhyming. + + +IN EARTH + + +"I ever saw anything," says Charles Lamb, "like this funeral dirge, +except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in +the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the +earth, earthy. Both have that intentness of feeling which seems to +resolve itself into the element which it contemplates." + + +SONG (Phoebus, arise!) + + +All Drummond's poems seem to be minor poems, even at their finest, +except only this. He must have known, for the creation of that +poem, some more impassioned and less restless hour. It is, from +the outset to the close, the sigh of a profound expectation. There +is no division into stanzas, because its metre is the breath of +life. One might wish that the English ode (roughly called +"Pindaric") had never been written but with passion, for so written +it is the most immediate of all metres; the shock of the heart and +the breath of elation or grief are the law of the lines. It has +passed out of the gates of the garden of stanzas, and walks (not +astray) in the further freedom where all is interior law. Cowley, +long afterwards, wrote this Pindaric ode, and wrote it coldly. But +Drummond's (he calls it a song) can never again be forgotten. With +admirable judgment it was set up at the very gate of that Golden +Treasury we all know so well; and, therefore, generation after +generation of readers, who have never opened Drummond's poems, know +this fine ode as well as they know any single poem in the whole of +English literature. There was a generation that had not been +taught by the Golden Treasury, and Cardinal Newman was of it. +Writing to Coventry Patmore of his great odes, he called them +beautiful but fragmentary; was inclined to wish that they might +some day be made complete. There is nothing in all poetry more +complete. Seldom is a poem in stanzas so complete but that another +stanza might have made a final close; but a master's ode has the +unity of life, and when it ends it ends for ever. + +A poem of Drummond's has this auroral image of a blush: Anthea has +blushed to hear her eyes likened to stars (habit might have caused +her, one would think, to bear the flattery with a front as cool as +the very daybreak), and the lover tells her that the sudden +increase of her beauty is futile, for he cannot admire more: "For +naught thy cheeks that morn do raise." What sweet, nay, what +solemn roses! + +Again: + +"Me here she first perceived, and here a morn +Of bright carnations overspread her face." + +The seventeenth century has possession of that "morn" caught once +upon its uplands; nor can any custom of aftertime touch its +freshness to wither it. + + +TO MY INCONSTANT MISTRESS + + +The solemn vengeance of this poem has a strange tone--not unique, +for it had sounded somewhere in mediaeval poetry in Italy--but in a +dreadful sense divine. At the first reading, this sentence against +inconstancy, spoken by one more than inconstant, moves something +like indignation; nevertheless, it is menacingly and obscurely +justified, on a ground as it were beyond the common region of +tolerance and pardon. + + +THE PULLEY + + +An editor is greatly tempted to mend a word in these exquisite +verses. George Herbert was maladroit in using the word "rest" in +two senses. "Peace" is not quite so characteristic a word, but it +ought to take the place of "rest" in the last line of the second +stanza; so then the first line of the last stanza would not have +this rather distressing ambiguity. The poem is otherwise perfect +beyond description. + + +MISERY + + +George Herbert's work is so perfectly a box where thoughts +"compacted lie," that no one is moved, in reading his rich poetry, +to detach a line, so fine and so significant are its neighbours; +nevertheless, it may be well to stop the reader at such a lovely +passage as this - + +"He was a garden in a Paradise." + + +THE ROSE + + +There is nothing else of Waller's fine enough to be admitted here; +and even this, though unquestionably a beautiful poem, elastic in +words and fresh in feeling, despite its wearied argument, is of the +third-class. Greatness seems generally, in the arts, to be of two +kinds, and the third rank is less than great. The wearied argument +of The Rose is the almost squalid plea of all the poets, from +Ronsard to Herrick: "Time is short; they make the better bargain +who make haste to love." This thrifty business and essentially +cold impatience was--time out of mind--unknown to the truer love; +it is larger, illiberal, untender, and without all dignity. The +poets were wrong to give their verses the message of so sorry a +warning. There is only one thing that persuades you to forgive the +paltry plea of the poet that time is brief--and that is the +charming reflex glimpse it gives of her to whom the rose and the +verse were sent, and who had not thought that time was brief. + + +L'ALLEGRO + + +The sock represents the stage, in L'Allegro, for comedy, and the +buskin, in Il Penseroso, for tragedy. Milton seems to think the +comic drama in England needs no apology, but he hesitates at the +tragic. The poet of King Lear is named for his sweetness and his +wood-notes wild. + + +IL PENSEROSO + + +It is too late to protest against Milton's display of weak Italian. +Pensieroso is, of course, what he should have written. + + +LYCIDAS + + +Most of the allusions in Lycidas need no explaining to readers of +poetry. The geography is that of the western coasts from furthest +north to Cornwall. Deva is the Dee; "the great vision" means the +apparition of the Archangel, St. Michael, at St. Michael's Mount; +Namancos and Bayona face the mount from the continental coast; +Bellerus stands for Belerium, the Land's End. + +Arethusa and Mincius--Sicilian and Italian streams--represent the +pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil. + + +ON A PRAYER-BOOK + + +"Fair and flagrant things"--Crashaw's own phrase--might serve for a +brilliant and fantastic praise and protest in description of his +own verses. In the last century, despite the opinion of a few, and +despite the fact that Pope took possession of Crashaw's line - + +"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep," + +and for some time of the present century, the critics had a wintry +word to blame him with. They said of George Herbert, of Lovelace, +of Crashaw, and of other light hearts of the seventeenth century-- +not so much that their inspiration was in bad taste, as that no +reader of taste could suffer them. A better opinion on that +company of poets is that they had a taste extraordinarily liberal, +generous, and elastic, but not essentially lax: taste that gave +now and then too much room to play, but anon closed with the purest +and exactest laws of temperance and measure. The extravagance of +Crashaw is a far more lawful thing than the extravagance of +Addison, whom some believe to have committed none; moreover, Pope +and all the politer poets nursed something they were pleased to +call a "rage," and this expatiated (to use another word of their +own) beyond all bounds. Of sheer voluntary extremes it is not in +the seventeenth century conceit that we should seek examples, but +in an eighteenth century "rage." A "noble rage," properly +provoked, could be backed to write more trash than fancy ever +tempted the half-incredulous sweet poet of the older time to run +upon. He was fancy's child, and the bard of the eighteenth century +was the child of common sense with straws in his hair--vainly +arranged there. The eighteenth century was never content with a +moderate mind; it invented "rage"; it matched rage with a flagrant +diction mingled of Latin words and simple English words made vacant +and ridiculous, and these were the worst; it was resolved to be +behind no century in passion--nay, to show the way, to fire the +nations. Addison taught himself, as his hero taught the battle, +"where to rage"; and in the later years of the same literary age, +Johnson summoned the lapsed and absent fury, with no kind of +misgiving as to the resulting verse. Take such a phrase as "the +madded land"; there, indeed, is a word coined by the noble rage as +the last century evoked it. "The madded land" is a phrase intended +to prove that the law-giver of taste, Johnson himself, could lodge +the fury in his breast when opportunity occurred. "And dubious +title shakes the madded land." It would be hard to find anything, +even in Addison, more flagrant and less fair. + +Take The Weeper of Crashaw--his most flagrant poem. Its follies +are all sweet-humoured, they smile. Its beauties are a quick and +abundant shower. The delicate phrases are so mingled with the +flagrant that it is difficult to quote them without rousing that +general sense of humour of which any one may make a boast; and I am +therefore shy even of citing the "brisk cherub" who has early +sipped the Saint's tear: "Then to his music," in Crashaw's +divinely simple phrase; and his singing "tastes of this breakfast +all day long." Sorrow is a queen, he cries to the Weeper, and when +sorrow would be seen in state, "then is she drest by none but +thee." Then you come upon the fancy, "Fountain and garden in one +face." All places, times, and objects are "Thy tears' sweet +opportunity." If these charming passages lurk in his worst poems, +the reader of this anthology will not be able to count them in his +best. In the Epiphany Hymn the heavens have found means + +'To disinherit the sun's rise, +Delicately to displace +The day, and plant it fairer in thy face." + +To the Morning: Satisfaction for Sleep, is, all through, luminous. +It would be difficult to find, even in the orient poetry of that +time, more daylight or more spirit. True, an Elizabethan would not +have had poetry so rich as in Love's Horoscope, but yet an +Elizabethan would have had it no fresher. The Hymn to St. Teresa +has the brevities which this poet--reproached with his longueurs-- +masters so well. He tells how the Spanish girl, six years old, set +out in search of death: "She's for the Moors and Martyrdom. +Sweet, not so fast!" Of many contemporary songs in pursuit of a +fugitive Cupid, Crashaw's Cupid's Cryer: out of the Greek, is the +most dainty. But if readers should be a little vexed with the +poet's light heart and perpetual pleasure, with the late ripeness +of his sweetness, here, for their satisfaction, is a passage +capable of the great age that had lately closed when Crashaw wrote. +It is in his summons to nature and art: + +"Come, and come strong, +To the conspiracy of our spacious song!" + +I have been obliged to take courage to alter the reading of the +seventeenth and nineteenth lines of the Prayer-Book, so as to make +them intelligible; they had been obviously misprinted. I have also +found it necessary to re-punctuate generally. + + +WISHES TO HIS SUPPOSED MISTRESS + + +This beautiful and famous poem has its stanzas so carelessly thrown +together that editors have allowed themselves a certain freedom +with it. I have done the least I could, by separating two stanzas +that repeated the rhyme, and by suppressing one that grew tedious. + + +ON THE DEATH OF MR. CRASHAW + + +This ode has been chosen as more nobly representative than that, +better known, On the Death of Mr. William Harvey. In the Crashaw +ode, and in the Hymn to the Light, Cowley is, at last, tender. But +it cannot be said that his love-poems had tenderness. Be wrote in +a gay language, but added nothing to its gaiety. He wrote the +language of love, and left it cooler than he found it. What the +conceits of Lovelace and the rest-- flagrant, not frigid--did not +do was done by Cowley's quenching breath; the language of love +began to lose by him. But even then, even then, who could have +foretold what the loss at a later day would be! + + +HYMN TO THE LIGHT + + +It is somewhat to be regretted that this splendid poem should show +Cowley as the writer of the alexandrine that divides into two +lines. For he it was who first used (or first conspicuously used) +the alexandrine that is organic, integral, and itself a separate +unit of metre. He first passed beyond the heroic line, or at least +he first used the alexandrine freely, at his pleasure, amid heroic +verse; and after him Dryden took possession and then Pope. But +both these masters, when they wrote alexandrines, wrote them in the +French manner, divided. Cowley, however, with admirable art, is +able to prevent even an accidental pause, making the middle of his +line fall upon the middle of some word that is rapid in the +speaking and therefore indivisible by pause or even by any +lingering. Take this one instance - + +"Like some fair pine o'erlooking all the ignobler wood." + +If Cowley's delicate example had ruled in English poetry (and he +surely had authority on this one point, at least), this alexandrine +would have taken its own place as an important line of English +metre, more mobile than the heroic, less fitted to epic or dramatic +poetry, but a line liberally lyrical. It would have been the +light, pursuing wave that runs suddenly, outrunning twenty, further +up the sands than these, a swift traveller, unspent, of longer +impulse, of more impetuous foot, of fuller and of hastier breath, +more eager to speak, and yet more reluctant to have done. Cowley +left the line with all this lyrical promise within it, and if his +example had been followed, English prosody would have had in this a +valuable bequest. + +Cowley probably was two or three years younger than Richard +Crashaw, and the alexandrine is to be found--to be found by +searching--in Crashaw; and he took precisely the same care as +Cowley that the long wand of that line should not give way in the +middle--should be strong and supple and should last. Here are four +of his alexandrines - + +"Or you, more noble architects of intellectual noise." +"Of sweets you have, and murmur that you have no more." +"And everlasting series of a deathless song." +"To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name." + +A later poet--Coventry Patmore--wrote a far longer line than even +these--a line not only speeding further, but speeding with a more +celestial movement than Cowley or Crashaw heard with the ear of +dreams. + +"He unhappily adopted," says Dr. Johnson as to Cowley's diction, +"that which was predominant." "That which was predominant" was as +good a vintage of English language as the cycles of history have +ever brought to pass. + + +TO LUCASTA + + +Colonel Richard Lovelace, an enchanting poet, is hardly read, +except for two poems which are as famous as any in our language. +Perhaps the rumour of his conceits has frightened his reader. It +must be granted they are now and then daunting; there is a poem on +"Princess Louisa Drawing" which is a very maze; the little paths of +verse and fancy turn in upon one another, and the turns are pointed +with artificial shouts of joy and surprise. But, again, what a +reader unused to a certain living symbolism will be apt to take for +a careful and cold conceit is, in truth, a rapture--none graver, +none more fiery or more luminous. But even to name the poem where +these occur might be to deliver delicate and ardent poetry over to +the general sense of humour, which one distrusts. Nor is Lovelace +easy reading at any time (the two or three famous poems excepted). +The age he adorned lived in constant readiness for the fiddler. +Eleven o'clock in the morning was as good an hour as another for a +dance, and poetry, too, was gay betimes, but intricate with +figures. It is the very order, the perspective, as it were, of the +movement that seems to baffle the eye, but the game was a free +impulse. Since the first day danced with the first night, no +dancing was more natural--at least to a dancer of genius. True, +the dance could be tyrannous. It was an importunate fashion. When +the Bishop of Hereford, compelled by Robin Hood, in merry +Barnsdale, danced in his boots ("and glad he could so get away"), +he was hardly in worse heart or trim than a seventeenth century +author here and there whose original seriousness or work-a-day +piety would have been content to go plodding flat-foot or halting, +as the muse might naturally incline with him, but whom the tune, +the grace, and gallantry of the time beckoned to tread a perpetual +measure. Lovelace was a dancer of genius; nay, he danced to rest +his wings, for he was winged, cap and heel. The fiction of flight +has lost its charm long since. Modern art grew tired of the idea, +now turned to commonplace, and painting took leave of the buoyant +urchins--naughty cherub and Cupid together; but the seventeenth +century was in love with that old fancy--more in love, perhaps, +than any century in the past. Its late painters, whose human +figures had no lack of weight upon the comfortable ground, yet kept +a sense of buoyancy for this hovering childhood, and kept the +angels and the loves aloft, as though they shook a tree to make a +flock of birds flutter up. + +Fine is the fantastic and infrequent landscape in Lovelace's +poetry: + +"This is the palace of the wood, +And court o' the royal oak, where stood +The whole nobility." + +In more than one place Lucasta's, or Amarantha's, or Laura's hair +is sprinkled with dew or rain almost as freshly and wildly as in +Wordsworth's line. + +Lovelace, who loved freedom, seems to be enclosed in so narrow a +book; yet it is but a "hermitage." To shake out the light and +spirit of its leaves is to give a glimpse of liberty not to him, +but to the world. + +In To Lucasta I have been bold to alter, at the close, "you" to +"thou." Lovelace sent his verses out unrevised, and the +inconsistency of pronouns is common with him, but nowhere else so +distressing as in this brief and otherwise perfect poem. The fault +is easily set right, and it seems even an unkindness not to lend +him this redress, offered him here as an act of comradeship. + + +LUCASTA PAYING HER OBSEQUIES + + +That errors should abound in the text of Lovelace is the more +lamentable because he was apt to make a play of phrases that depend +upon the precision of a comma--nay, upon the precision of the voice +in reading. Lucasta Paying her Obsequies is a poem that makes a +kind of dainty confusion between the two vestals--the living and +the dead; they are "equal virgins," and you must assign the +pronouns carefully to either as you read. This, read twice, must +surely be placed amongst the loveliest of his lovely writings. It +is a joy to meet such a phrase as "her brave eyes." + + +TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON + + +This is a poem that takes the winds with an answering flight. +Should they be "birds" or "gods" that wanton in the air in the +first of these gallant stanzas? Bishop Percy shied at "gods," and +with admirable judgment suggested "birds," an amendment adopted by +the greater number of succeeding editors, until one or two wished +for the other phrase again, as an audacity fit for Lovelace. But +the Bishop's misgiving was after all justified by one of the Mss. +of the poem, in which the "gods" proved to be "birds" long before +he changed them. The reader may ask, what is there to choose +between birds so divine and gods so light? But to begin with +"gods" would be to make an anticlimax of the close. Lovelace led +from birds and fishes to winds, and from winds to angels. + +"When linnet-like confined" is another modern reading. "When, like +committed linnets," daunted the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, +it is right seventeenth century, and is now happily restored; +happily, because Lovelace would not have the word "confined" twice +in this little poem. + + +A HORATIAN ODE + + +"He earned the glorious name," says a biographer of Andrew Marvell +(editing an issue of that poet's works which certainly has its +faults), "of the British Aristides." The portly dulness of the +mind that could make such a phrase, and having made, award it, is +not, in fairness, to affect a reader's thought of Marvell himself +nor even of his time. Under correction, I should think that the +award was not made in his own age; he did but live on the eve of +the day that cumbered its mouth with phrases of such foolish burden +and made literature stiff with them. Andrew Marvell's political +rectitude, it is true, seems to have been of a robustious kind; but +his poetry, at its rare best, has a "wild civility," which might +puzzle the triumph of him, whoever he was, who made a success of +this phrase of the "British Aristides." Nay, it is difficult not +to think that Marvell too, who was "of middling stature, roundish- +faced, cherry-cheeked," a healthy and active rather than a +spiritual Aristides, might himself have been somewhat taken by +surprise at the encounters of so subtle a muse. He, as a garden- +poet, expected the accustomed Muse to lurk about the fountain- +heads, within the caves, and by the walks and the statues of the +gods, keeping the tryst of a seventeenth century convention in +which there were certainly no surprises. And for fear of the +commonplaces of those visits, Marvell sometimes outdoes the whole +company of garden-poets in the difficult labours of the fancy. The +reader treads with him a "maze" most resolutely intricate, and is +more than once obliged to turn back, having been too much puzzled +on the way to a small, visible, plain, and obvious goal of thought. + +And yet this poet two or three times did meet a Muse he had hardly +looked for among the trodden paths; a spiritual creature had been +waiting behind a laurel or an apple-tree. You find him coming away +from such a divine ambush a wilder and a simpler man. All his +garden had been made ready for poetry, and poetry was indeed there, +but in unexpected hiding and in a strange form, looking rather like +a fugitive, shy of the poet who was conscious of having her rules +by heart, yet sweetly willing to be seen, for all her haste. + +The political poems, needless to say, have an excellence of a +different character and a higher degree. They have so much +authentic dignity that "the glorious name of the British Aristides" +really seems duller when it is conferred as the earnings of the +Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland than when it +inappropriately clings to Andrew Marvell, cherry-cheeked, caught in +the tendrils of his vines and melons. He shall be, therefore, the +British Aristides in those moments of midsummer solitude; at least, +the heavy phrase shall then have the smile it never sought. + +The Satires are, of course, out of reach for their inordinate +length. The celebrated Satire on Holland certainly makes the +utmost of the fun to be easily found in the physical facts of the +country whose people "with mad labour fished the land to shore." +The Satire on "Flecno" makes the utmost of another joke we know of- +-that of famine. Flecno, it will be remembered, was a poet, and +poor; but the joke of his bad verses was hardly needed, so fine +does Marvell find that of his hunger. Perhaps there is no age of +English satire that does not give forth the sound of that laughter +unknown to savages--that craven laughter. + + +THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS + + +The presence of a furtive irony of the sweetest kind is the sure +sign of the visit of that unlooked-for muse. With all spirit and +subtlety does Marvell pretend to offer the little girl T. C. (the +future "virtuous enemy of man") the prophetic homage of the +habitual poets. The poem closes with an impassioned tenderness not +to be found elsewhere in Marvell. + + +THE DEFINITION OF LOVE + + +The noble phrase of the Horatian Ode is not recovered again, high +or low, throughout Marvell's book, it we except one single splendid +and surpassing passage from The Definition of Love - + +"Magnanimous despair alone +Could show me so divine a thing." + + +CHILDHOOD + + +One of our true poets, and the first who looked at nature with the +full spiritual intellect, Henry Vaughan was known to few but +students until Mr. E. K. Chambers gave us his excellent edition. +The tender wit and grave play of Herbert, Crashaw's lovely rapture, +are all unlike this meditation of a soul condemned and banished +into life. Vaughan's imagination suddenly opens a new window +towards the east. The age seems to change with him, and it is one +of the most incredible of all facts that there should be more than +a century--and such a century!--from him to Wordsworth. The +passing of time between them is strange enough, but the passing of +Pope, Prior, and Gray--of the world, the world, whether reasonable +or flippant or rhetorical--is more strange. Vaughan's phrase and +diction seem to carry the light. Il vous semble que cette femme +degage de la lumiere en marchant? Vous l'aimez! says Marius in Les +Miserables (I quote from memory), and it seems to be by a sense of +light that we know the muse we are to love. + + +SCOTTISH BALLADS + + +It was no easy matter to choose a group of representative ballads +from among so many almost equally fine and equally damaged with +thin places. Finally, it seemed best to take, from among the +finest, those that had passages of genius--a line here and there of +surpassing imagination and poetry--rare in even the best folk- +songs. Such passages do not occur but in ballads that are +throughout on the level of the highest of their kind. "None but my +foe to be my guide" so distinguishes Helen of Kirconnell; the +exquisite stanza about the hats of birk, The Wife of Usher's Well; +its varied refrain, The Dowie Dens of Yarrow; the stanza spoken by +Margaret asking for room in the grave, Sweet William and Margaret; +and a number of passages, Sir Patrick Spens, such as that +beginning, "I saw the new moon late yestreen," the stanza beginning +"O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords," and almost all the +stanzas following. A Lyke Wake Dirge is of surpassing quality +throughout. I am sorry to have no room for Jamieson's version of +Fair Annie, for Edom o' Gordon, for The Daemon Lover, for Edward, +Edward, and for the Scottish edition of The Battle of Otterbourne. + + +MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW + + +This most majestic ode--one of the few greatest of its kind--is a +model of noble rhythm and especially of cadence. To print it whole +would be impossible, and one of the very few excisions in this book +is made in the midst of it. Dryden, so adult and so far from +simplicity, bears himself like a child who, having said something +fine, caps it with something foolish. The suppressed part of the +ode is silly with a silliness which Dryden's age chose to dodder in +when it would. The deplorable "rattling bones" of the closing +section has a touch of it. + + +SONG, FROM ABDELAZAR + + +It is a futile thing--and the cause of a train of futilities--to +hail "style" as though it were a separable quality in literature, +and it is not in that illusion that the style of the opening of +Aphra Behn's resounding song is to be praised. But it IS the +style--implying the reckless and majestic heart--that first takes +the reader of these great verses. + + +HYMN (The spacious firmament on high) + + +Whether Addison wrote the whole of this or not,--and it seems that +the inspired passages are none of his--it is to me a poem of +genius, magical in spite of the limited diction. + + +ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY + + +Also in spite of limited diction--the sign of thought closing in, +as it did fast close in during those years--are Pope's tenderness +and passion communicated in this beautiful elegy. It would not be +too much to say that all his passion, all his tenderness, and +certainly all his mystery, are in the few lines at the opening and +close. The Epistle of Eloisa is (artistically speaking) but a +counterfeit. Yet Pope's Elegy begins by stealing and translating +into the false elegance of altered taste that lovely and poetic +opening of Ben Jonson's - + +"What beckoning ghost, besprent with April dew, +Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?" + +All the gravity, all the sweetness, one might fear, must be lost in +such a change as Pope makes - + +"What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade +Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?" + +Yet they are not lost. Pope's awe and ardour are authentic, and +they prevail; the succeeding couplet--inimitably modulated, and of +tragic dignity--proves, without delay, the quality of the poem. +The poverty and coldness of the passage (towards the end), in which +the roses and the angels are somewhat trivially sung, cannot mar so +veritable an utterance. The four final couplets are the very glory +of the English couplet. + + +LINE ON RECEIVING HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE + + +Cowper, again, by the very directness of human feeling makes his +narrowing English a means of absolutely direct communication. Of +all his works (and this is my own mere and unshared opinion) this +single one deserves immortality. + + +LIFE + + +This fragment (the only fragment, properly so called, in the +present collection) so pleased Wordsworth that he wished he had +written the lines. They are very gently touched. + + +THE LAND OF DREAMS + + +When Blake writes of sleep and dreams he writes under the very +influence of the hours of sleep--with a waking consciousness of the +wilder emotion of the dream. Corot painted so, when at summer dawn +he went out and saw landscape in the hours of sleep. + + +SURPRISED BY JOY + + +It is not necessary to write notes on Wordsworth's sonnets--the +greatest sonnets in our literature; but it would be well to warn +editors how they print this one sonnet; "I wished to share the +transport" is by no means an uncommon reading. Into the history of +the variant I have not looked. It is enough that all the +suddenness, all the clash and recoil of these impassioned lines are +lost by that "wished" in the place of "turned." The loss would be +the less tolerable in as much as perhaps only here and in that +heart-moving poem, 'Tis said that some have died for love, is +Wordsworth to be confessed as an impassioned poet. + + +STEPPING WESTWARD + + +This and the preceding two exquisite poems of sympathy are far more +justified, more recollected and sincere than is that more +monumental composition, the famous poem of sympathy, Hartleap Well. +The most beautiful stanzas of this poem last-named are so rebuked +by the truths of nature that they must ever stand as obstacles to +the straightforward view of sensitive eyes upon the natural world. +Wordsworth shows us the ruins of an aspen-wood, a blighted hollow, +a dreary place forlorn because an innocent creature, hunted, had +there broken its heart in a leap from the rocks above; grass would +not grow, nor shade linger there - + +"This beast not unobserved by Nature fell, +His death was mourned by sympathy divine." + +And the signs of that sympathy are cruelly asserted to be these +arid woodland ruins--cruelly, because the common sight of the day +blossoming over the agonies of animals and birds is made less +tolerable by such fictions. We have to shut our ears to the benign +beauty of this stanza especially - + +"The Being that is in the clouds and air, +That is in the green leaves among the groves, +Maintains a deep and reverential care +For the unoffending creature whom He loves." + +We must shut our ears because the poet offers us, as a proof of +that "reverential care," the visible alteration of nature at the +scene of suffering--an alteration we are obliged to dispense with +every day we pass in the woods. We are tempted to ask whether +Wordsworth himself believed in a sympathy he asks us--upon such +grounds!--to believe in? Did he think his faith to be worthy of no +more than a fictitious sign or a false proof? + +To choose from Wordsworth is to draw close a net with very large +meshes--so that the lovely things that escape must doubtless cause +the reader to protest; but the poems gathered here are not only +supremely beautiful but exceedingly Wordsworthian. + + +YOUTH AND AGE + + +Close to the marvellous Kubla Khan--a poem that wrests the secret +of dreams and brings it to the light of verse--I place Youth and +Age as the best specimen of Coleridge's poetry that is quite +undelirious--to my mind the only fine specimen. I do not rate his +undelirious poems highly, and even this, charming and nimble as it +is, seems to me rather lean in thought and image. The tenderness +of some of the images comes to a rather lamentable close; the +likeness to "some poor nigh-related guest" with the three lines +that follow is too squalid for poetry, or prose, or thought. + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +This poem is surely more full of a certain quality of extreme +poetry--the simplest "flower of the mind," the most single magic-- +than any other in our language. But the reader must be permitted +to call the story silly. + +Page 265 (Are those her ribs through which the Sun) + +Coleridge used the sun, moon, and stars as a great dream uses them +when the sleeping imagination is obscurely threatened with illness. +All through The Ancient Mariner we see them like apparitions. It +is a pity that he followed the pranks also of a dream when he +impossibly placed a star WITHIN the tip of the crescent. + +Page 266 (I feer thee, ancient Mariner!) + +The likeness of "the ribbed sea sand" is said to be the one passage +actually composed by Wordsworth,--who according to the first plan +should have written The Ancient Mariner with Coleridge--"and +perhaps the most beautiful passage in the poem," adds one critic +after another. It is no more than a good likeness, and has nothing +whatever of the indescribable Coleridge quality. + +Coleridge reveals, throughout this poem, an exaltation of the +senses, which is the most poetical thing that can befall a simple +poet. It is necessary only to refer, for sight, to the stanza on +"the moving Moon" at the bottom of page 267; for hearing, to the +supernatural stanzas on page 271; and, for touch, to the line - + +"And still my body drank." + + +ROSE AYLMER + + +Never was a human name more exquisitely sung than in these perfect +stanzas. + + +THE ISLES OF GREECE + + +One really fine and poetic stanza--of course, the third; three +stanzas that are good eloquence--the fourth, fifth, and seventh; +and one that is a fair bit of argument--the tenth--may together +perhaps carry the rest. + + +HELLAS + + +The profounder spirit of Shelley's poem yet leaves it a careless +piece of work in comparison with Byron's. The two false rhymes at +the outset may not be of great importance, but there is something +annoying in the dissyllabic rhymes of the second stanza. +Dissyllabic rhymes are beautiful and enriching when they fall in +the right place; that is, where there is a pause for the second +little syllable to stand. For example, they could not be better +placed than they would have been at the end of the shorter lines of +this same stanza, where they would have dropped into a part of the +pause. Another sin of sheer heedlessness--the lapse of grammar in +The Skylark, at the top of page 296 (With thy clear keen joyance)-- +will remind the reader of the special habitual error of Drummond of +Hawthornden. + + +THE WANING MOON + + +In these few lines the Shelley spirit seems to be more intense than +in any other passage as brief. + + +ODE TO THE WEST WIND + + +This magnificent poem is surely the greatest of a great poses +writings, and one of the most splendid poems on nature and on +poetry in a literature resounding with odes on these enormous +themes. + + +THE INVITATION + + +No need to point to a poem that so shines as does this lucent +verse. + + +LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI + + +Keats is here the magical poet, as he is the intellectual poet in +the great sonnet following; and it is his possession or promise of +both imaginations that proves him greater than Coleridge. In his +day they seem to have found Coleridge to be a thinker in his +poetry. To me he seems to have had nothing but senses, magic, and +simplicity, and these he had to the utmost yet known to man. Keats +was to have been a great intellectual poet, besides all that in +fact he was. + + +ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE + + +Of the five odes of Keats, the Nightingale is perhaps the most +perfect, and certainly the most imaginative. But the Grecian Urn +is the finest, even though it has fancy rather than imagination, +for never was fancy more exquisite. The most conspicuous idea--the +emptying of the town because its folk are away at play in the tale +of the antique urn--is merely a fancy, and a most antic fancy--a +prank; it is an irony of man, a rallying of art, a mockery of time, +a burlesque of poetry, divine with tenderness. The six lines in +which this fancy sports are amongst the loveliest in all +literature: the "little town," the "peaceful citadel,"--were ever +simple adjectives more happy? But John Keats's final moral here is +undeniably a failure; it says so much and means so little. The Ode +to Autumn is an exterior ode, and not in so high a rank, but lovely +and perfect. The Psyche I love the least, because its fancy is +rather weak and its sentiment effusive. It has a touch of the +deadly sickliness of Endymion. None the less does it remain just +within the group of the really fine odes of English poets. The +eloquent Melancholy more narrowly escapes exclusion from that +group. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Flower of the Mind, by Alice Meynell +More below. . . + + + + +LATER POEMS + + + + +Contents: + + +The Shepherdess +"I am the Way" +Via, et Veritas, et Vita +Why wilt Thou Chide? +The Lady Poverty +The Fold +Cradle-song at Twilight +The Roaring Frost +Parentage +The Modern Mother +West Wind in Winter +November Blue +Chimes +Unto us a Son is given +A Dead Harvest +The Two Poets +A Poet's Wife +Veneration of Images +At Night + + + +THE SHEPHERDESS + + + +She walks--the lady of my delight - +A shepherdess of sheep. +Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; +She guards them from the steep. +She feeds them on the fragrant height, +And folds them in for sleep. + +She roams maternal hills and bright, +Dark valleys safe and deep. +Into that tender breast at night +The chastest stars may peep. +She walks--the lady of my delight - +A shepherdess of sheep. + +She holds her little thoughts in sight, +Though gay they run and leap. +She is so circumspect and right; +She has her soul to keep. +She walks--the lady of my delight - +A shepherdess of sheep. + + + +"I AM THE WAY" + + + +Thou art the Way. +Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal, +I cannot say +If Thou hadst ever met my soul. + +I cannot see - +I, child of process--if there lies +An end for me, +Full of repose, full of replies. + +I'll not reproach +The way that goes, my feet that stir. +Access, approach, +Art Thou, time, way, and wayfarer. + + + +VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA + + + +"You never attained to Him?" "If to attain +Be to abide, then that may be." +"Endless the way, followed with how much pain!" +"The way was He." + + + +"WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?" + + + +Why wilt thou chide, +Who hast attained to be denied? +Oh learn, above +All price is my refusal, Love. +My sacred Nay +Was never cheapened by the way. +Thy single sorrow crowns thee lord +Of an unpurchasable word. + +Oh strong, Oh pure! +As Yea makes happier loves secure, +I vow thee this +Unique rejection of a kiss. +I guard for thee +This jealous sad monopoly. +I seal this honour thine. None dare +Hope for a part in thy despair. + + + +THE LADY POVERTY + + + +The Lady Poverty was fair: +But she has lost her looks of late, +With change of times and change of air. +Ah slattern, she neglects her hair, +Her gown, her shoes. She keeps no state +As once when her pure feet were bare. + +Or--almost worse, if worse can be - +She scolds in parlours; dusts and trims, +Watches and counts. Oh, is this she +Whom Francis met, whose step was free, +Who with Obedience carolled hymns, +In Umbria walked with Chastity? + +Where is her ladyhood? Not here, +Not among modern kinds of men; +But in the stony fields, where clear +Through the thin trees the skies appear; +In delicate spare soil and fen, +And slender landscape and austere. + + + +THE FOLD + + + +BEHOLD, +The time is now! Bring back, bring back +Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim. +Oh lead them from the mountain-track - +Thy frolic thoughts untold. +Oh bring them in--the fields grow dim - +And let me be the fold. + +Behold, +The time is now! Call in, O call +Thy posturing kisses gone astray +For scattered sweets. Gather them all +To shelter from the cold. +Throng them together, close and gay, +And let me be the fold! + + + +CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT + + + +The child not yet is lulled to rest. +Too young a nurse, the slender Night +So laxly holds him to her breast +That throbs with flight. + +He plays with her and will not sleep. +For other playfellows she sighs; +An unmaternal fondness keep +Her alien eyes. + + + +THE ROARING FROST + + + +A flock of winds came winging from the North, +Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth +With a resounding call! + +Where will they close their wings and cease their cries - +Between what warming seas and conquering skies - +And fold, and fall? + + + +PARENTAGE + + + +"When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens of +Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people." + +Ah no, not these! +These, who were childless, are not they who gave +So many dead unto the journeying wave, +The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas; +Not they who doomed by infallible decrees +Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave. +But those who slay +Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs, +The death of innocences and despairs; +The dying of the golden and the grey. +The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay. +And she who slays is she who bears, who bears. + + + +THE MODERN MOTHER + + + +Oh what a kiss +With filial passion overcharged is this! +To this misgiving breast +The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest +Upon the light heart and the unoppressed. + +Unhoped, unsought! +A little tenderness, this mother thought +The utmost of her meed +She looked for gratitude; content indeed +With thus much that her nine years' love had bought. + +Nay, even with less. +This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress, +Desired ah! not so much +Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch +Expected, and the slight, the brief caress. + +Oh filial light +Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright +Intelligible stars! Their rays +Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze, +Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days. + + + +WEST WIND IN WINTER + + + +Another day awakes. And who - +Changing the world--is this? +He comes at whiles, the Winter through, +West Wind! I would not miss +His sudden tryst: the long, the new +Surprises of his kiss. + +Vigilant, I make haste to close +With him who comes my way. +I go to meet him as he goes; +I know his note, his lay, +His colour and his morning rose; +And I confess his day. + +My window waits; at dawn I hark +His call; at morn I meet +His haste around the tossing park +And down the softened street; +The gentler light is his; the dark, +The grey--he turns it sweet. + +So too, so too, do I confess +My poet when he sings. +He rushes on my mortal guess +With his immortal things. +I feel, I know him. On I press - +He finds me 'twixt his wings. + + + +NOVEMBER BLUE + + + +The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a +complementary tint to the air in the early evening.--ESSAY ON +LONDON. + +O, Heavenly colour! London town +Has blurred it from her skies; +And hooded in an earthly brown, +Unheaven'd the city lies. +No longer standard-like this hue +Above the broad road flies; +Nor does the narrow street the blue +Wear, slender pennon-wise. + +But when the gold and silver lamps +Colour the London dew, +And, misted by the winter damps, +The shops shine bright anew - +Blue comes to earth, it walks the street, +It dyes the wide air through; +A mimic sky about their feet, +The throng go crowned with blue. + + + +CHIMES + + + +Brief, on a flying night, +From the shaken tower, +A flock of bells take flight, +And go with the hour. + +Like birds from the cote to the gales, +Abrupt--O hark! +A fleet of bells set sails, +And go to the dark. + +Sudden the cold airs swing. +Alone, aloud, +A verse of bells takes wing +And flies with the cloud. + + + +UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN + + + +Given, not lent, +And not withdrawn--once sent - +This Infant of mankind, this One, +Is still the little welcome Son. + +New every year, +New-born and newly dear, +He comes with tidings and a song, +The ages long, the ages long. + +Even as the cold +Keen winter grows not old; +As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, +And spring in the familiar green; + +Sudden as sweet +Come the expected feet. +All joy is young, and new all art, +And He, too, Whom we have by heart. + + + +A DEAD HARVEST [IN KENSINGTON GARDENS] + + + +Along the graceless grass of town +They rake the rows of red and brown, +Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay, +Delicate, neither gold nor grey, +Raked long ago and far away. + +A narrow silence in the park; +Between the lights a narrow dark. +One street rolls on the north, and one, +Muffled, upon the south doth run. +Amid the mist the work is done. + +A futile crop; for it the fire +Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre. +So go the town's lives on the breeze, +Even as the sheddings of the trees; +Bosom nor barn is filled with these. + + + +THE TWO POETS + + + +Whose is the speech +That moves the voices of this lonely beech? +Out of the long West did this wild wind come - +Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, +Ready and dumb, until +The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill. + +Two memories, +Two powers, two promises, two silences +Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves +Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves +The purpose of the past, +Separate, apart--embraced, embraced at last. + +"Whose is the word? +Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?" +"Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!" +"Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee, +Thou visitant divine." +"O thou my Voice, the word was thine." +"Was thine." + + + +A POET'S WIFE + + + +I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land +Within a field's embrace - +The very sea! Afar it fled the strand +And gave the seasons chase, +And met the night alone, the tempest spanned, +Saw sunrise face to face. + +O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier! +In inaccessible rest +And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir, +Scattered through east to west, - +Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her +Who locks thee to her breast. + + + +VENERATION OF IMAGES + + + +Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat, +Gather, clasp, welcome, bind, +Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beat +With love of thine own kind; + +Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea, +Unshrined on this high-way, +O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee, +Thou rood of every day! + + + +AT NIGHT + + + +Home, home from the horizon far and clear, +Hither the soft wings sweep; +Flocks of the memories of the day draw near +The dovecote doors of sleep. + +O which are they that come through sweetest light +Of all these homing birds? +Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight? +Your words to me, your words! + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Later Poems, by Alice Meynell + diff --git a/old/2almy10.zip b/old/2almy10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8e8586 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2almy10.zip |