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<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pomegranates from an English Garden, by Robert Browning</title>
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<body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53335 ***</div>
<div>
<h1 class='c000'>POMEGRANATES<br />FROM AN ENGLISH GARDEN:</h1>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div>A SELECTION FROM THE POEMS OF</div>
<div>ROBERT BROWNING.</div>
<div class='c001'>WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY</div>
<div>JOHN MONRO GIBSON.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-b c002'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which, if cut deep down the middle,</div>
<div class='line'>Shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in30'><i>Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.</i></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div>NEW YORK:</div>
<div>CHAUTAUQUA PRESS,</div>
<div>C. L. S. C. Department.</div>
<div>1885.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c003' />
</div>
<p class='c004'>The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended
by a Council of six. It must, however, be understood that
recommendation does not involve an approval by the
Council, or by any member of it, of every principle or doctrine
contained in the book recommended.</p>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div>Copyright 1885, by <span class='sc'>Phillips & Hunt</span>, 805 Broadway, New York.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_i'>i</span>
<h2 class='c005'>INTRODUCTORY.</h2>
</div>
<p class='c006'>The name of Robert Browning has been before the world
now for fifty years. For the greater part of the time his work
has had so little recognition, that one marvels at his courage in
going so steadily on with it. His “Pomegranates” have been
produced year after year, decade after decade, in unfailing
abundance; and, while critics have kept paring at the rind, and
the general public has not even asked if there was anything
beneath it, he has laboured on with unremitting energy, calmly
awaiting the time when “the heart within, blood-tinctured, of a
veined humanity,” should be at length discovered. It can scarcely
be said, even yet, that that time has come; but it is coming fast.
Already he is something more than “the poet’s poet.” Few
intelligent people now are content to know one of the master
minds of the age simply as the author of “The Pied Piper of
Hamelin,” as if that were the only thing he had written worth
reading!</p>
<p class='c007'>That the form in which the thought of Browning is cast is
altogether admirable, is what none but his most undiscriminating
admirers will assert. It is often, unquestionably, rough and
forbidding. But there is strength even in its ruggedness; and
in its entire freedom from conventionality there is a charm such
as one enjoys in wild mountain scenery, even though only in
little patches it may have any suggestion of the garden or the
lawn. There are those who have charged the poet with affectation
of the uncouth and the bizarre; but careful reading will, we
think, render it apparent that it is rather his utter freedom from
affectation which determines and perpetuates the peculiarities
and oddities of his style; that, in fact, the aphorism of Buffon, “<i>le
<span class='pageno' id='Page_ii'>ii</span>style est l’homme même</i>,” is undoubtedly true as applied to him.
It would, of course, be absurd to claim for the pomegranate the
bloom and beauty of the peach; but, equally with the other, it
is Nature’s gift, and to toss aside a rough-rinded fruit because it
needs to be “cut deep down the middle” before its pulp and
juices can be reached, is surely far from wise. Even hard nuts
are not to be despised, if the kernels are good; and as to
Browning’s “nuts,” we have this to say, that not only are they
well worth cracking, but there is in the process excellent
exercise for the teeth.</p>
<p class='c007'>This brings us to the alleged “obscurity” of Browning’s
writings, which still continues to be the main obstacle to their
general appreciation. It is freely admitted that often it is not quite
easy, and sometimes very difficult, to understand him; and it is
hard for most people to see why he could not make his meaning
plainer, and matter for regret to many, who heartily admire him,
that he has not done so. That he has taken some pains to this
end is evident from what he says in the preface to “Sordello,”
written for an edition issued in 1863, twenty-three years after its
original publication: “My own faults of expression were
many.... I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my
best then and since, for I lately gave time and pains to turn my
work into what the many might—instead of what the few must—like.”
In a later preface (1872) he says, “Nor do I apprehend
any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously
careless, or perversely harsh.” The true explanation of it seems
to be what we have already suggested, that he does not think of
his audience as he writes, his only care being to express the
thought in the way which comes most natural to him. As a
dramatist, he can throw himself with abandonment into the
persons he represents; but he never seems to think of putting
himself in the position of a listener, or, if he does, he assumes
too readily that he has a mind of similar texture and grasp to
his own. On the other hand, it is fair to say that the difficulty
of understanding him arises in great part from the very excellence
<span class='pageno' id='Page_iii'>iii</span>of his work. The following considerations will illustrate
what we mean:—</p>
<p class='c007'>1. His work is full of <i>thought</i>, and the thought is never
commonplace. There is so much of it, and all is so fresh,
and therefore unfamiliar, that some mental effort is necessary
to grasp it. The following characteristic remark of Bishop
Butler, in his preface to the famous Fifteen Sermons, is
worth consideration in this connection: “It must be acknowledged
that some of the following Discourses are very
abstruse and difficult; or, if you please, obscure; but I must
take leave to add that those alone are judges, whether or no
and how far this is a fault, who are judges, whether or no
and how far it might have been avoided—those only who will be
at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to see how
far the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might
have been put in a plainer manner; which yet I am very far
from asserting that they could not.”</p>
<p class='c007'>2. The expression is always the briefest. Not only are no
words wasted, but, where connecting ideas are easily supplied,
they are often left unexpressed, the intelligence and mental
activity of the reader being always taken for granted.</p>
<p class='c007'>3. The poems are, for the most part, dramatic in principle.
The reader is brought face to face with some soul, in its
thoughts and emotions, frequently in the very process of the
thinking and the feeling. The poet has stepped aside, and of
course supplies no key. The author does not appear, like the
chorus in a Greek play, to point a moral or explain the situation.
The <i>dramatis personæ</i> must explain themselves. And, just as
Shakespeare must be <i>studied</i> in order to an appreciation other
than second-hand, so must Browning be studied in order to be
appreciated at all; for his writings are not yet old enough to
secure much second-hand enthusiasm.</p>
<p class='c007'>4. The wealth of allusion is another source of difficulty. The
learning of our poet is encyclopædic; and though there is no
display of it, there is large use of it; and it often happens that
<span class='pageno' id='Page_iv'>iv</span>passages or phrases, which seem crabbed or obscure, require
only the knowledge of some unfamiliar fact in science or in
history, or it may be something not readily thought of, and yet
within easy range of a keen enough observation, to light them
up and reveal unsuspected strength or beauty.</p>
<p class='c007'>Before leaving the subject of the rough and often tough
exterior of Browning’s work, it may be interesting to refer to
the characteristic illustration of it he has lately given us in
the prologue to “Ferishtah’s Fancies,” his most recent work.
He begins by asking the reader whether he has ever “eaten
ortolans in Italy,” and then goes on to describe the preparation
of them. The following lines will show the use he makes of
the illustration:</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“First comes plain bread, crisp, brown, a toasted square;</div>
<div class='line in5'>Then, a strong sage-leaf;</div>
<div class='line in1'>(So we find books with flowers dried here and there</div>
<div class='line in5'>Lest leaf engage leaf.)</div>
<div class='line in1'>First, food—then, piquancy—and last of all</div>
<div class='line in5'>Follows the thirdling;</div>
<div class='line in1'>Through wholesome hard, sharp soft, your tooth must bite</div>
<div class='line in5'>Ere reach the birdling.</div>
<div class='line in1'>Now, were there only crust to crunch, you’d wince:</div>
<div class='line in5'>Unpalatable!</div>
<div class='line in1'>Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent—so’s a quince;</div>
<div class='line in5'>Eat each who’s able!</div>
<div class='line in1'>But through all three bite boldly—lo, the gust!</div>
<div class='line in5'>Flavour—no fixture—</div>
<div class='line in1'>Flies permeating flesh and leaf and crust</div>
<div class='line in5'>In fine admixture.</div>
<div class='line in1'>So with your meal, my poem; masticate</div>
<div class='line in5'>Sense, sight and song there!</div>
<div class='line in1'>Digest these, and I praise your peptics’ state,</div>
<div class='line in5'>Nothing found wrong there.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This extract also furnishes an example of the strange rhymes
in which the poet sometimes indulges, with what appears too
little refinement of taste.</p>
<p class='c007'>The themes of Browning’s poetry are the very greatest that
can engage the thought of man. He ranges over a vast variety
of topic; but, wherever his thought may lead him, he never
<span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>loses sight of that which is to him the centre of all, the human
soul, with its infinite wants and capabilities. In the preface to
“Sordello” he says: “The historical decoration was purposely
of no more importance than a background requires; and my
stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little
else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so.” To this
principle he has kept true through all his work; and hence it is
that, whether the particular subject be love, or home, or
country; poetry, painting, or music; life, death, or immortality;
it is dealt with in its relation to “the development of a soul.”
Hence it is that his poetry is so thoroughly and profoundly
spiritual, and so exceedingly valuable as a counteractive to the
materialism of the age, which ever tends to merge the soul in
the body, and swallow up the real in mere phenomena.</p>
<p class='c007'>As might be expected of one who deals so profoundly with all
that he touches, the great reality of the universe to him is God.
Agnosticism has little mercy at his hands; if a man knows
anything at all, he knows God. And the God whom he knows
is not a God apart, looking down from some infinite or indefinite
height upon the world, but one in whom all live and move and
have their being. Out of this springs, of course, the hope of
immortality, and also that bright and cheerful view of life so
completely opposed to the dark pessimism to which much of the
unbelieving speculation of the present day so painfully tends.
The dark things of human life and destiny are by no means
ignored; rather are they dwelt on with a painful and sometimes
frightful realism; but even amid deepest darkness the light
above is never quite extinguished, and some little “Pippa
passes” singing:</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“The year’s at the spring</div>
<div class='line in1'>And day’s at the morn;</div>
<div class='line in1'>Morning’s at seven;</div>
<div class='line in1'>The hill-side’s dew-pearled;</div>
<div class='line in1'>The lark’s on the wing;</div>
<div class='line in1'>The snail’s on the thorn:</div>
<div class='line in1'>God’s in his heaven—</div>
<div class='line in1'>All’s right with the world.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>There has been much discussion as to Browning’s personal
attitude to Christianity. The profoundly Christian tone of his
writings is, of course, universally acknowledged; but attempts
are sometimes made to evade the force of those numerous
passages in which he speaks of the Incarnation, and Death,
and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, in a way which seems
to imply his hearty acceptance of the substance of what is
known as evangelical truth. Much has been made in this
connection of the way in which, in one of his prefaces, he
characterises his work as “poetry always dramatic in principle,
and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not
mine;” and it has been asserted that it is as unwarrantable to
consider him to be speaking his own sentiments in a poem like
“Christmas Eve,” as in one like “Johannes Agricola,” or
“Bishop Blougram’s Apology.” The obvious answer is that
this profound sympathy with the Christ of God and His
salvation is not found in some solitary production, but appears
and reappears, often when least expected, all through his works.
In that remarkable little poem, entitled “House,” in which
more strongly than anywhere else he claims personal privacy,
while he declines to be regarded as having furnished his
publishers with tickets to view his own soul’s dwelling, he
admits that “whoso desires to penetrate deeper” may do so
“by the spirit sense;” and accordingly some of his admirers,
who dissent from him most strongly on this point, are the most
ready to acknowledge that his Christian faith is no stage suit,
but the very garment of his soul. As illustration of this we
may refer to the admirable essay by the late James Thomson,
published in Part II. of the Browning Society’s Papers, in
which, after expressing his amazement that a great mind like
Browning’s could be Christian, he asserts the, to him, remarkable
but quite undeniable fact in these words: “The devout and
hopeful Christian faith, explicitly or implicitly affirmed in such
poems as <i>Saul</i>, <i>Kharshish</i>, <i>Cleon</i>, <i>Caliban upon Setebos</i>, <i>A
Death in the Desert</i>, <i>Instans Tyrannus</i>, <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span><i>Prospice</i>, the <i>Epilogue</i>, and throughout that stupendous monumental
work, <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, must surely be as clear as
noonday to even the most purblind vision.”</p>
<p class='c007'>That a great Christian poet, in an age when so many of the
intellectual magnates of the time are hostile or simply silent,
should remain unknown or little known to any large proportion
of Christian readers, is certainly very much to be regretted.
Surely the admiration which is freely and generously accorded
to his work by many who are constrained to it in spite of his
faith in a Christ whom they reject, is a rebuke to the indifference
of those who, sharing his faith, do not give themselves the
trouble to inquire what he has to say about it. There are not
so many avowed and outspoken Christians in the highest walks
of literature that we can afford to pay only slight attention to
the utterances of one who has the ear of the deepest thinkers in
every school of thought all the world over.</p>
<hr class='c008' />
<p class='c007'>The immediate object of this selection is to supply an introduction
to the study of Browning for the benefit of the readers
of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; but it is
hoped that many others, inspired with similar aims, and who
have not had such advantages that they can dispense with all
assistance in the study of a difficult author, may find help from
this little book. It is, of course, better to read for one’s self than
to follow the guidance of another; and yet it may be necessary
to open a path far enough to lead within sight of the treasures in
store. This is all that has been attempted here—only the indication
of a few veins near the surface of a rich mine, which the
reader is strongly recommended to explore for himself.</p>
<p class='c007'>The selection has been arranged on the principle of beginning
with that which is simple, and proceeding gradually to the more
complex, with some regard also to variety and progress in subjects,
and at the same time to appropriateness for the use of those
younger readers for whom this selection mainly is intended.</p>
<p class='c007'>The notes are meant to serve only as a guide to beginners;
<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>and as guides are proverbially an annoyance when their services
are imposed unsought, these are disposed at the end of each
poem, and without reference marks to mar the pages, so that
the selection may be read, if desired, without any interference
from the notes.</p>
<p class='c007'>Within the limits of a volume like this, only the shorter poems
could find a place. Most valuable extracts from the longer
works might have been given; but this is always a questionable
method of dealing with the best writers, with those especially
whose thought is strictly consecutive, while the effect of particular
passages depends to a large extent on their setting and
their relation to the work as a whole. The only<a id='rA' /><a href='#fA' class='c009'><sup>[A]</sup></a> exception to
this is the treatment of “Christmas Eve and Easter Day,” with
extracts from which this volume closes. That remarkable work
occupies a middle position between the shorter and the longer
poems of our author; and, though too long for insertion entire,
is yet so important, that it seemed very desirable to give some
idea of it. In furnishing a series of extracts from this work, an
attempt has been made to reduce the disadvantage above
referred to by supplying along with them a slight sketch or
“argument,” so as to give some idea, to those unacquainted with
it, of the course of thought throughout.</p>
<p class='c007'>It is right to say that Mr. Browning has given his kind
permission for the publication in the United States of this
Selection, and also of the Notes, for which, however, as for the
selection itself, he is in no wise responsible.</p>
<hr class='c010' />
<div class='footnote' id='fA'>
<p class='c007'><span class='label'><a href='#rA'>A</a>. </span>It has been found necessary also to give only the latter part of the noble
poem “Saul.” A slight sketch of the part omitted is given, and the poem
is continued without interruption to its close.</p>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS.</h2>
</div>
<table class='table0' summary=''>
<colgroup>
<col width='86%' />
<col width='13%' />
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class='c011'> </td>
<td class='c012'>PAGE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Introductory</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_i'>i</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Home Thoughts, from Abroad</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_11'>11</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Home Thoughts, from the Sea</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_12'>12</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'>“<span class='sc'>How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix</span>”</td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_13'>13</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Echetlos</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_16'>16</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Helen’s Tower</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_18'>18</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Shop</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_19'>19</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Boy and the Angel</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_25'>25</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Patriot</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_29'>29</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Instans Tyrannus</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_31'>31</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Lost Leader</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_34'>34</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Love among the Ruins</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_36'>36</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>My Star</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_40'>40</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_41'>41</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Never the Time and the Place</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_43'>43</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Wanting is—What?</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Evelyn Hope</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_45'>45</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Prospice</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_48'>48</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Good, to Forgive</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_49'>49</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Touch him ne’er so Lightly</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_51'>51</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Popularity</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_52'>52</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Guardian Angel</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_56'>56</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Deaf and Dumb</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_59'>59</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Abt Vogler</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>One Word More</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_68'>68</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Saul</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_77'>77</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>An Epistle</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Christmas-Eve</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_100'>100</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Easter-Day</span></td>
<td class='c012'><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c003' />
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c003'>
<div><span class='xxlarge'>A SELECTION FROM THE POEMS</span></div>
<div><span class='xxlarge'>OF ROBERT BROWNING.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c003' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>
<h2 class='c005'>HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Oh, to be in England now that April’s there,</div>
<div class='line'>And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware,</div>
<div class='line'>That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf</div>
<div class='line'>Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,</div>
<div class='line'>While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough</div>
<div class='line'>In England—now!</div>
<div class='line'>And after April, when May follows,</div>
<div class='line'>And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!</div>
<div class='line'>Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge</div>
<div class='line'>Leans to the field and scatters on the clover</div>
<div class='line'>Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—</div>
<div class='line'>That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over</div>
<div class='line'>Lest you should think he never could recapture</div>
<div class='line'>The first fine careless rapture!</div>
<div class='line'>And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,</div>
<div class='line'>All will be gay when noontide wakes anew</div>
<div class='line'>The buttercups, the little children’s dower</div>
<div class='line'>—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>
<h2 class='c005'>HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-West died away;</div>
<div class='line'>Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;</div>
<div class='line'>Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;</div>
<div class='line'>In the dimmest North-East distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;</div>
<div class='line'>“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?”—say,</div>
<div class='line'>Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,</div>
<div class='line'>While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The former of these companion poems may have been written from Italy
or the south of Spain, as would appear from the last line of it. Mr. E. C.
Stedman, one of the severest of Browning’s appreciative critics, commenting
(in his “Victorian Poets”) on the lines beginning “That’s the wise thrush,”
says:—“Having in mind Shakespeare and Shelley, I nevertheless think
these three lines the finest ever written touching the song of a bird.”</p>
<hr class='c008' />
<p class='c007'>In the latter poem, the course is from the southern point of Portugal
through the Straits. “Here and here”—the reference is to the battles of
Cape St. Vincent (1796) and Trafalgar (1805), and perhaps to the defence
of Gibraltar (1782).</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>
<h2 class='c005'>“HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD<br />NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.”</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>[16—.]</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;</div>
<div class='line'>I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;</div>
<div class='line'>“Good speed!” cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;</div>
<div class='line'>“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;</div>
<div class='line'>Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,</div>
<div class='line'>And into the midnight we galloped abreast.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace</div>
<div class='line'>Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;</div>
<div class='line'>I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,</div>
<div class='line'>Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,</div>
<div class='line'>Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,</div>
<div class='line'>Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near</div>
<div class='line'>Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;</div>
<div class='line'>At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;</div>
<div class='line'>At Düffeld, ’twas morning as plain as could be;</div>
<div class='line'>And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,</div>
<div class='line'>So, Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,</div>
<div class='line'>And against him the cattle stood black every one,</div>
<div class='line'>To stare thro’ the mist at us galloping past,</div>
<div class='line'>And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,</div>
<div class='line'>With resolute shoulders, each butting away</div>
<div class='line'>The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back</div>
<div class='line'>For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;</div>
<div class='line'>And one eye’s black intelligence,—ever that glance</div>
<div class='line'>O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!</div>
<div class='line'>And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon</div>
<div class='line'>His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!</div>
<div class='line'>“Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,</div>
<div class='line'>“We’ll remember at Aix”—for one heard the quick wheeze</div>
<div class='line'>Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,</div>
<div class='line'>And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,</div>
<div class='line'>As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,</div>
<div class='line'>Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;</div>
<div class='line'>The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,</div>
<div class='line'>’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;</div>
<div class='line'>Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,</div>
<div class='line'>And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“How they’ll greet us!”—and all in a moment his roan</div>
<div class='line'>Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;</div>
<div class='line'>And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight</div>
<div class='line'>Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,</div>
<div class='line'>With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,</div>
<div class='line'>And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,</div>
<div class='line'>Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,</div>
<div class='line'>Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,</div>
<div class='line'>Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;</div>
<div class='line'>Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,</div>
<div class='line'>Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And all I remember is, friends flocking round</div>
<div class='line'>As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground;</div>
<div class='line'>And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,</div>
<div class='line'>As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,</div>
<div class='line'>Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)</div>
<div class='line'>Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The indefiniteness of the date at the head of this poem will be best
explained by the following extract from a letter of Mr. Browning’s, published
in 1881 in the <i>Boston Literary World</i>:—</p>
<p class='c007'>“There is no sort of historical foundation about ‘Good News From
Ghent.’ I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast,
after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop
on the back of a certain good horse ‘York,’ then in my stable at home.”</p>
<p class='c007'>This poem, therefore, widely known and appreciated as one of the most
stirring in the language, may be regarded as a living picture to illustrate
the pages—no page in particular—of Motley.</p>
<p class='c007'>As parallels in American literature, reference may be made to “Paul
Revere’s Ride,” by Longfellow, and “Sheridan’s Ride,” by T. B. Reade.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>
<h2 class='c005'>ECHETLOS.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Here is a story, shall stir you! Stand up, Greeks dead and gone,</div>
<div class='line'>Who breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling on,</div>
<div class='line'>Did the deed and saved the world, since the day was Marathon!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>No man but did his manliest, kept rank and fought away</div>
<div class='line'>In his tribe and file: up, back, out, down—was the spear-arm play:</div>
<div class='line'>Like a wind-whipt branchy wood, all spear-arms a-swing that day!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But one man kept no rank, and his sole arm plied no spear,</div>
<div class='line'>As a flashing came and went, and a form i’ the van, the rear,</div>
<div class='line'>Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Nor helmed nor shielded, he! but, a goat-skin all his wear,</div>
<div class='line'>Like a tiller of the soil, with a clown’s limbs broad and bare,</div>
<div class='line'>Went he ploughing on and on: he pushed with a ploughman’s share.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Did the weak mid-line give way, as tunnies on whom the shark</div>
<div class='line'>Precipitates his bulk? Did the right-wing halt when, stark</div>
<div class='line'>On his heap of slain, lay stretched Kallimachos Polemarch?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need,</div>
<div class='line'>The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed,</div>
<div class='line'>As he routed through the Sakian and rooted up the Mede.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>But the deed done, battle won,—nowhere to be descried</div>
<div class='line'>On the meadow, by the stream, at the marsh,—look far and wide</div>
<div class='line'>From the foot of the mountain, no, to the last blood-plashed sea-side,—</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Not anywhere on view blazed the large limbs thonged and brown,</div>
<div class='line'>Shearing and clearing still with the share before which—down</div>
<div class='line'>To the dust went Persia’s pomp, as he ploughed for Greece, that clown!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>How spake the Oracle? “Care for no name at all!</div>
<div class='line'>Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call</div>
<div class='line'>The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne’er grows small.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Not the great name! Sing—woe for the great name Míltiadés,</div>
<div class='line'>And its end at Paros isle! Woe for Themistokles—</div>
<div class='line'>Satrap in Sardis court! Name not the clown like these!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The name, Echetlos, is derived from ἐχέτλη, a plough handle. It is not
strictly a proper name, but an appellative, meaning “the Holder of the
Ploughshare.” The story is found in Pausanias, author of the “Itinerary
of Greece” (1, 15, 32). Nothing further is necessary in order to understand
this little poem and appreciate its rugged strength than familiarity with the
battle of Marathon, and some knowledge of Miltiades and Themistocles,
the one known as the hero of Marathon, and the other as the hero of
Salamis. The lesson of the poem (“The great <i>deed</i> ne’er grows small, not
the great <i>name</i>!”) is taught in a way not likely to be forgotten. One is
reminded of another, who wished to be nameless, heard only as “the voice
of one crying in the wilderness!”</p>
<p class='c007'>The ellipsis in thought between the eighth and ninth stanzas is so easily
supplied that it is noticed here only as a simple illustration of what is sometimes
the occasion of difficulty (see Introduction, p. iii). It would only have
lengthened the poem and weakened it to have inserted a stanza telling in so
many words that when the hero could not be found, a message was sent to
the Oracle to enquire who it could be.</p>
<p class='c007'>As a companion to “Echetlos” may be read the stirring poem of “Hervé
Riel.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>
<h2 class='c005'>HELEN’S TOWER.</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>Ἑλένη ἐπὶ πύργῳ</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Who hears of Helen’s Tower, may dream perchance,</div>
<div class='line in4'>How the Greek Beauty from the Scæan Gate</div>
<div class='line in4'>Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate,</div>
<div class='line'>Death-doom’d because of her fair countenance.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance,</div>
<div class='line in4'>Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate:</div>
<div class='line in4'>Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate,</div>
<div class='line'>Yet, unlike hers, was bless’d by every glance.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange:</div>
<div class='line in4'>A transitory shame of long ago,</div>
<div class='line in6'>It dies into the sand from which it sprang:</div>
<div class='line'>But thine, Love’s rock-built Tower, shall fear no change:</div>
<div class='line in4'>God’s self laid stable Earth’s foundations so,</div>
<div class='line in6'>When all the morning-stars together sang.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The tower is one built by Lord Dufferin, in memory of his mother Helen,
Countess of Gifford, on one of his estates in Ireland. “The Greek Beauty”
is, of course, Helen of Troy, and the reference in the alternative heading is
apparently to that fine passage in the third book of the “Iliad,” where
Helen meets the Trojan chiefs at the Scæan Gate (see line 154, which
speaks of “Helen at the Tower”).</p>
<p class='c007'>On the last two lines, founded of course on the well-known passage in
Job (xxxviii. 4-7), compare Dante:</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“E il sol montava in su con quelle stelle</div>
<div class='line'>Ch’eran con lui, quando l’Amor Divino</div>
<div class='line'>Mosse da prima quelle cose belle.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Aloft the sun ascended with those stars</div>
<div class='line'>That with him rose, when Love Divine first moved</div>
<div class='line'>Those its fair works.”</div>
<div class='line'>—<i>Inferno</i> I. 38-40.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>
<h2 class='c005'>SHOP.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>So, friend, your shop was all your house!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Its front, astonishing the street,</div>
<div class='line'>Invited view from man and mouse</div>
<div class='line in2'>To what diversity of treat</div>
<div class='line in2'>Behind its glass—the single sheet!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:</div>
<div class='line in2'>Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;</div>
<div class='line'>Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog:</div>
<div class='line in2'>Queer names, too, such a catalogue!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I thought “And he who owns the wealth</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Which blocks the window’s vastitude,</div>
<div class='line'>“—Ah, could I peep at him by stealth</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude</div>
<div class='line in2'>“On house itself, what scenes were viewed!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“If wide and showy thus the shop,</div>
<div class='line in2'>“What must the habitation prove?</div>
<div class='line'>“The true house with no name a-top—</div>
<div class='line in2'>“The mansion, distant one remove,</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Once get him off his traffic groove!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Pictures he likes, or books perhaps;</div>
<div class='line in2'>“And as for buying most and best,</div>
<div class='line'>“Commend me to these city chaps.</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Or else he’s social, takes his rest</div>
<div class='line in2'>“On Sundays, with a Lord for guest.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Some suburb-palace, parked about</div>
<div class='line in2'>“And gated grandly, built last year:</div>
<div class='line'>“The four-mile walk to keep off gout;</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer:</div>
<div class='line in2'>“But then he takes the rail, that’s clear.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Or, stop! I wager, taste selects</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Some out o’ the way, some all-unknown</div>
<div class='line'>“Retreat: the neighbourhood suspects</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Little that he who rambles lone</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence</div>
<div class='line in2'>Fit to receive and entertain,—</div>
<div class='line'>Nor Hampstead villa’s kind defence</div>
<div class='line in2'>From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,—</div>
<div class='line in2'>Nor country-box was soul’s domain!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>IX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Nowise! At back of all that spread</div>
<div class='line in2'>Of merchandize, woe’s me, I find</div>
<div class='line'>A hole i’ the wall where, heels by head,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The owner couched, his ware behind,</div>
<div class='line in2'>—In cupboard suited to his mind.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>For, why? He saw no use of life</div>
<div class='line in2'>But, while he drove a roaring trade,</div>
<div class='line'>To chuckle “Customers are rife!”</div>
<div class='line in2'>To chafe “So much hard cash outlaid</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Yet zero in my profits made!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“This novelty costs pains, but—takes?</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Cumbers my counter! Stock no more!</div>
<div class='line'>“This article, no such great shakes,</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Fizzes like wild fire? Underscore</div>
<div class='line in2'>“The cheap thing—thousands to the fore!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>’Twas lodging best to live most nigh</div>
<div class='line in2'>(Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be)</div>
<div class='line'>Receipt of Custom; ear and eye</div>
<div class='line in2'>Wanted no outworld: “Hear and see</div>
<div class='line in2'>“The bustle in the shop!” quoth he.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>XIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>My fancy of a merchant-prince</div>
<div class='line in2'>Was different. Through his wares we groped</div>
<div class='line'>Our darkling way to—not to mince</div>
<div class='line in2'>The matter—no black den where moped</div>
<div class='line in2'>The master if we interloped!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Shop was shop only: household-stuff?</div>
<div class='line in2'>What did he want with comforts there?</div>
<div class='line'>“Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,</div>
<div class='line in2'>“So goods on sale show rich and rare!</div>
<div class='line in2'>“<i>Sell and scud home</i>,” be shop’s affair!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Since somehow business must be done</div>
<div class='line'>At cost of trouble,—see, he throws</div>
<div class='line in2'>You choice of jewels, everyone</div>
<div class='line in2'>Good, better, best, star, moon and sun!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Which lies within your power of purse?</div>
<div class='line in2'>This ruby that would tip aright</div>
<div class='line'>Solomon’s sceptre? Oh, your nurse</div>
<div class='line in2'>Wants simply coral, the delight</div>
<div class='line in2'>Of teething baby,—stuff to bite!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>XVII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Howe’er your choice fell, straight you took</div>
<div class='line in2'>Your purchase, prompt your money rang</div>
<div class='line'>On counter,—scarce the man forsook</div>
<div class='line in2'>His study of the “Times,” just swang</div>
<div class='line in2'>Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,—</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then off made buyer with a prize,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Then seller to his “Times” returned,</div>
<div class='line'>And so did day wear, wear, till eyes</div>
<div class='line in2'>Brightened apace, for rest was earned:</div>
<div class='line in2'>He locked door long ere candle burned.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And whither went he? Ask himself,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Not me! To change of scene, I think.</div>
<div class='line'>Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Nor all his music—money-chink.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Because a man has shop to mind</div>
<div class='line in2'>In time and place, since flesh must live,</div>
<div class='line'>Needs spirit lack all life behind,</div>
<div class='line in2'>All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,</div>
<div class='line in2'>All loves except what trade can give?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>XXI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I want to know a butcher paints,</div>
<div class='line in2'>A baker rhymes for his pursuit,</div>
<div class='line'>Candlestick-maker much acquaints</div>
<div class='line in2'>His soul with song, or, haply mute,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Blows out his brains upon the flute!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But—shop each day and all day long!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Friend, your good angel slept, your star</div>
<div class='line'>Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong!</div>
<div class='line in2'>From where these sorts of treasures are,</div>
<div class='line in2'>There should our hearts be—Christ, how far!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>There ought to be far more in a man than can be put into a front window.
This man had all sorts of “curios” in his shop window, but there was
nothing rich or rare in his soul; and so there was room for all of <i>him</i> in a
den which would not have held the hundredth part of his wares. The contemptible
manner of the man’s life is strikingly brought out by the various
suppositions (stanzas 5, 6, 7) so different from the poor reality (8-9). All
he cared for was business, which made him “chuckle” on the one hand or
“chafe” on the other, according as times were good or bad (10). Even in
his business it was not the real excellence of his wares he cared for, only
their saleability (11). A merchant prince is a very different person (13-19).
The last three stanzas give the lesson in a style partly humorous, but passing
in the end to an impressive solemnity.</p>
<p class='c007'>In connection with this should be read the companion piece, “House,” to
which reference is made in the Introduction.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>
<h2 class='c005'>THE BOY AND THE ANGEL.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Morning, evening, noon and night,</div>
<div class='line'>“Praise God!” sang Theocrite.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then to his poor trade he turned,</div>
<div class='line'>Whereby the daily meal was earned.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Hard he laboured, long and well;</div>
<div class='line'>O’er his work the boy’s curls fell.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But ever, at each period,</div>
<div class='line'>He stopped and sang, “Praise God!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then back again his curls he threw,</div>
<div class='line'>And cheerful turned to work anew.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Said Blaise, the listening monk, “Well done;</div>
<div class='line'>“I doubt not thou art heard, my son:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“As well as if thy voice to-day</div>
<div class='line'>“Were praising God, the Pope’s great way.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome</div>
<div class='line'>“Praises God from Peter’s dome.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Said Theocrite, “Would God that I</div>
<div class='line'>“Might praise Him, that great way, and die!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Night passed, day shone,</div>
<div class='line'>And Theocrite was gone.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>With God a day endures alway,</div>
<div class='line'>A thousand years are but a day.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>God said in heaven, “Nor day nor night</div>
<div class='line'>“Now brings the voice of my delight.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then Gabriel, like a rainbow’s birth,</div>
<div class='line'>Spread his wings and sank to earth;</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Entered, in flesh, the empty cell,</div>
<div class='line'>Lived there, and played the craftsman well;</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And morning, evening, noon and night,</div>
<div class='line'>Praised God in place of Theocrite.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And from a boy, to youth he grew:</div>
<div class='line'>The man put off the stripling’s hue:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The man matured and fell away</div>
<div class='line'>Into the season of decay:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And ever o’er the trade he bent,</div>
<div class='line'>And ever lived on earth content.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>(He did God’s will; to him, all one</div>
<div class='line'>If on the earth or in the sun.)</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>God said, “A praise is in mine ear;</div>
<div class='line'>“There is no doubt in it, no fear:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“So sing old worlds, and so</div>
<div class='line'>“New worlds that from my footstool go.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>“Clearer loves sound other ways:</div>
<div class='line'>“I miss my little human praise.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then forth sprang Gabriel’s wings, off fell</div>
<div class='line'>The flesh disguise, remained the cell.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>’Twas Easter Day: He flew to Rome,</div>
<div class='line'>And paused above Saint Peter’s dome.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>In the tiring-room close by</div>
<div class='line'>The great outer gallery,</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>With his holy vestments dight,</div>
<div class='line'>Stood the new Pope, Theocrite:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And all his past career</div>
<div class='line'>Came back upon him clear,</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,</div>
<div class='line'>Till on his life the sickness weighed;</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And in his cell, when death drew near,</div>
<div class='line'>An angel in a dream brought cheer:</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And, rising from the sickness drear,</div>
<div class='line'>He grew a priest, and now stood here.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>To the East with praise he turned,</div>
<div class='line'>And on his sight the angel burned.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“I bore thee from thy craftsman’s cell,</div>
<div class='line'>“And set thee here; I did not well.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>“Vainly I left my angel-sphere,</div>
<div class='line'>“Vain was thy dream of many a year.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Thy voice’s praise seemed weak; it dropped—</div>
<div class='line'>“Creation’s chorus stopped!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Go back and praise again</div>
<div class='line'>“The early way, while I remain.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“With that weak voice of our disdain,</div>
<div class='line'>“Take up creation’s pausing strain.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Back to the cell and poor employ:</div>
<div class='line'>“Resume the craftsman and the boy!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Theocrite grew old at home;</div>
<div class='line'>A new Pope dwelt in Peter’s dome.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>One vanished as the other died:</div>
<div class='line'>They sought God side by side.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The lesson of this beautiful fancy is the complement of the “Shop”
lesson. Even drudgery may be divine; since the will of God is the work
to be done, no matter whether under St. Peter’s dome or in the cell of the
craftsman (the Boy)—“all one, if on the earth or in the sun” (the Angel).</p>
<p class='c007'>The poem is so full of exquisite things, that only a few can be noted.
The value of the “little human praise” to God Himself (distich 12), all
the dearer because of the doubts and fears in it (20-22); and the contrast
between its seeming weakness and insignificance and its real importance as
a necessary part of the great chorus of creation (34); the eager desire of
Gabriel to anticipate the will of God, and his content to live on earth and
bend over a common trade, if only thus he can serve Him best (13-19);
and again the content of the “new pope Theocrite” to go back to his “cell
and poor employ” and fill out the measure of his day of service, growing
old at home, while Gabriel as contentedly takes his place as pope (probably
a harder trial than the more menial service) and waits for the time when
both “sought God side by side”—these are some of the fine and far
reaching thoughts which find simple and beautiful expression here.</p>
<p class='c007'>Longfellow’s “King Robert of Sicily,” though not really parallel, has
points of similarity to “The Boy and the Angel.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>
<h2 class='c005'>THE PATRIOT.</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>AN OLD STORY.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>It was roses, roses, all the way,</div>
<div class='line in2'>With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:</div>
<div class='line'>The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,</div>
<div class='line'>A year ago on this very day.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The air broke into a mist with bells,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.</div>
<div class='line'>Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels—</div>
<div class='line in2'>“But give me your sun from yonder skies!”</div>
<div class='line'>They had answered “And afterward, what else?”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun</div>
<div class='line in2'>To give it my loving friends to keep!</div>
<div class='line'>Nought man could do, have I left undone:</div>
<div class='line in2'>And you see my harvest, what I reap</div>
<div class='line'>This very day, now a year is run.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>There’s nobody on the house-tops now—</div>
<div class='line in2'>Just a palsied few at the windows set;</div>
<div class='line'>For the best of the sight is, all allow,</div>
<div class='line in2'>At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet,</div>
<div class='line'>By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I go in the rain, and, more than needs,</div>
<div class='line in2'>A rope cuts both my wrists behind,</div>
<div class='line'>And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,</div>
<div class='line in2'>For they fling, whoever has a mind,</div>
<div class='line'>Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Thus I entered, and thus I go!</div>
<div class='line in2'>In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.</div>
<div class='line'>“Paid by the world, what dost thou owe</div>
<div class='line in2'>Me?”—God might question; now instead,</div>
<div class='line'>’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The Patriot, on his way to the scaffold, surrounded by a hooting crowd,
remembers how, just a year ago, the same people had been mad in
their enthusiasm for him. Anything at all, however extravagant, would
have been too little for them to do for him (stanza 2; cf. Gal. iv. 15, 16);
but now——! The fourth stanza is very powerful. All have gone who
can, to be ready to see the execution; only the “palsied few,” who cannot,
are at the windows to see him pass. In the last stanza the thought of a
more sudden contrast still is presented. A man may drop dead in the
midst of a triumph, to find that in its brief plaudits he has his reward,
while a vast account stands against him at the higher tribunal. Far better
die amid the execrations of men and find the contrast reversed.</p>
<p class='c007'>It is “an old story,” and therefore general; but one naturally thinks of
such cases as Arnold of Brescia, or the tribune Rienzi. A higher Name
than these need not be introduced here, in proof of the people’s fickleness!</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>
<h2 class='c005'>INSTANS TYRANNUS.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Of the million or two, more or less,</div>
<div class='line'>I rule and possess,</div>
<div class='line'>One man, for some cause undefined,</div>
<div class='line'>Was least to my mind.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I struck him, he grovelled of course—</div>
<div class='line'>For, what was his force?</div>
<div class='line'>I pinned him to earth with my weight</div>
<div class='line'>And persistence of hate;</div>
<div class='line'>And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,</div>
<div class='line'>As his lot might be worse.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Were the object less mean, would he stand</div>
<div class='line'>“At the swing of my hand!</div>
<div class='line'>“For obscurity helps him, and blots</div>
<div class='line'>“The hole where he squats.”</div>
<div class='line'>So, I set my five wits on the stretch</div>
<div class='line'>To inveigle the wretch.</div>
<div class='line'>All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw</div>
<div class='line'>Still he couched there perdue;</div>
<div class='line'>I tempted his blood and his flesh,</div>
<div class='line'>Hid in roses my mesh,</div>
<div class='line'>Choicest cates and the flagon’s best spilth</div>
<div class='line'>Still he kept to his filth.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Had he kith now or kin, were access</div>
<div class='line'>To his heart, did I press</div>
<div class='line'>Just a son or a mother to seize!</div>
<div class='line'>No such booty as these.</div>
<div class='line'>Were it simply a friend to pursue</div>
<div class='line'>’Mid my million or two,</div>
<div class='line'>Who could pay me, in person or pelf,</div>
<div class='line'>What he owes me himself!</div>
<div class='line'>No: I could not but smile through my chafe:</div>
<div class='line'>For the fellow lay safe</div>
<div class='line'>As his mates do, the midge and the nit,</div>
<div class='line'>—Through minuteness, to wit.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then a humour more great took its place</div>
<div class='line'>At the thought of his face:</div>
<div class='line'>The droop, the low cares of the mouth,</div>
<div class='line'>The trouble uncouth</div>
<div class='line'>’Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain</div>
<div class='line'>To put out of its pain.</div>
<div class='line'>And, “no!” I admonished myself,</div>
<div class='line'>“Is one mocked by an elf,</div>
<div class='line'>“Is one baffled by toad or by rat?</div>
<div class='line'>“The gravamen’s in that!</div>
<div class='line'>“How the lion, who crouches to suit</div>
<div class='line'>“His back to my foot,</div>
<div class='line'>“Would admire that I stand in debate!</div>
<div class='line'>“But the small turns the great</div>
<div class='line'>“If it vexes you,—that is the thing!</div>
<div class='line'>“Toad or rat vex the king?</div>
<div class='line'>“Though I waste half my realm to unearth</div>
<div class='line'>“Toad or rat, ’tis well worth!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>So, I soberly laid my last plan</div>
<div class='line'>To extinguish the man.</div>
<div class='line'>Round his creep-hole, with never a break</div>
<div class='line'>Ran my fires for his sake;</div>
<div class='line'>Over-head, did my thunder combine</div>
<div class='line'>With my under-ground mine:</div>
<div class='line'>Till I looked from my labour content</div>
<div class='line'>To enjoy the event.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>When sudden ... how think ye, the end?</div>
<div class='line'>Did I say “without friend?”</div>
<div class='line'>Say rather from marge to blue marge</div>
<div class='line'>The whole sky grew his targe</div>
<div class='line'>With the sun’s self for visible boss,</div>
<div class='line'>While an Arm ran across</div>
<div class='line'>Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast</div>
<div class='line'>Where the wretch was safe prest!</div>
<div class='line'>Do you see! Just my vengeance complete,</div>
<div class='line'>The man sprang to his feet,</div>
<div class='line'>Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed!</div>
<div class='line'>—So, <i>I</i> was afraid!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>“Instans Tyrannus,” the <i>present</i> tyrant, the tyrant for the time only, whose
apparently illimitable power to hurt shrivels into nothing in presence of the
King of kings, whose dominion is everlasting.</p>
<p class='c007'>The poor victim of this tyrant’s oppression is a true child of God, but the
nobility of his inner life is of course concealed from the proud wretch who
despises him, and who, it must be remembered, is the speaker throughout.
We must be careful, therefore, to estimate at their proper worth the epithets
he applies and the motives he attributes to the object of his hate. <i>He</i> can,
of course, think of no other reason why his victim “would not moan, would
not curse,” than that, if he did, “his lot might be worse.” And again,
when temptation failed to shake his steadfast patience, the tyrant is quite
consistent with himself, as one of those who call evil good, and good evil,
in speaking of him as still keeping “to his filth.” The last stanza is magnificent.
Has the power of prayer ever been set forth in nobler language?</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>
<h2 class='c005'>THE LOST LEADER.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Just for a handful of silver he left us,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Just for a riband to stick in his coat—</div>
<div class='line'>Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Lost all the others, she lets us devote;</div>
<div class='line'>They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,</div>
<div class='line in2'>So much was theirs who so little allowed:</div>
<div class='line'>How all our copper had gone for his service!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!</div>
<div class='line'>We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,</div>
<div class='line'>Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Made him our pattern to live and to die!</div>
<div class='line'>Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!</div>
<div class='line'>He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,</div>
<div class='line in2'>He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>We shall march prospering,—not thro’ his presence;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre;</div>
<div class='line'>Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:</div>
<div class='line'>Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,</div>
<div class='line in2'>One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,</div>
<div class='line'>One more devil’s-triumph and sorrow for angels,</div>
<div class='line in2'>One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>Life’s night begins: let him never come back to us!</div>
<div class='line in2'>There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,</div>
<div class='line'>Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Never glad confident morning again!</div>
<div class='line'>Best fight on well, for we taught him—strike gallantly,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Menace our heart ere we master his own;</div>
<div class='line'>Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>“The Lost Leader” is supposed to be the poet Wordsworth, who, on
accepting the laureateship, abandoned the party of distinguished literary
men who had enthusiastically supported the principles of the French
Revolution. It is necessary, of course, to enter into the lofty enthusiasm of
that party, and for the moment to identify ourselves with it, in order to
appreciate the wonderful power and pathos of this exquisite poem. (See
Wordsworth’s “French Revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its
commencement.”)</p>
<p class='c007'>The contrasts are very powerful between the one (paltry) gift he gained,
and all the others (love, loyalty, life, &c.) they were privileged to <i>devote</i> (far
richer than mere possession); and again, between the niggardliness of his
new patrons with their dole of silver, contrasted with the enthusiastic
devotion of his own followers, who having nothing but “copper,” would
yet put it all at his service—having nothing but “rags,” were yet so liberal
with what they had, that had they been purple, he would have been proud
indeed, seeing that “a riband to stick in his coat” had proved so great an
attraction.</p>
<p class='c007'>In the second stanza the fountains of the great deep of human feeling
are broken up. “Life’s night begins” suggests at once the strength
of the previous attachment, and the hopelessness of the broken tie being ever
knit again on earth. The best thing is to be counted enemies now, and fight
against each other as gallantly as they would have fought together. At the
same time there is absolute confidence in the ultimate triumph of the party of
freedom—he may “menace our hearts,” but we shall “master his”—and
in the ultimate recovery of the lost leader himself, whom he hopes to find
“pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>
<h2 class='c005'>LOVE AMONG THE RUINS.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles,</div>
<div class='line in6'>Miles and miles,</div>
<div class='line'>On the solitary pastures where our sheep</div>
<div class='line in6'>Half-asleep</div>
<div class='line'>Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop</div>
<div class='line in6'>As they crop—</div>
<div class='line'>Was the site once of a city great and gay,</div>
<div class='line in6'>(So they say)</div>
<div class='line'>Of our country’s very capital, its prince,</div>
<div class='line in6'>Ages since,</div>
<div class='line'>Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far</div>
<div class='line in6'>Peace or war.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Now,—the country does not even boast a tree,</div>
<div class='line in6'>As you see,</div>
<div class='line'>To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills</div>
<div class='line in6'>From the hills</div>
<div class='line'>Intersect and give a name to, (else they run</div>
<div class='line in6'>Into one)</div>
<div class='line'>Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires</div>
<div class='line in6'>Up like fires</div>
<div class='line'>O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall</div>
<div class='line in6'>Bounding all,</div>
<div class='line'>Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed</div>
<div class='line in6'>Twelve abreast.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass</div>
<div class='line in6'>Never was!</div>
<div class='line'>Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads</div>
<div class='line in6'>And embeds</div>
<div class='line'>Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,</div>
<div class='line in6'>Stock or stone—</div>
<div class='line'>Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe</div>
<div class='line in6'>Long ago;</div>
<div class='line'>Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame</div>
<div class='line in6'>Struck them tame;</div>
<div class='line'>And that glory and that shame alike, the gold</div>
<div class='line in6'>Bought and sold.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Now,—the single little turret that remains</div>
<div class='line in6'>On the plains,</div>
<div class='line'>By the caper overrooted, by the gourd</div>
<div class='line in6'>Overscored,</div>
<div class='line'>While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks</div>
<div class='line in6'>Through the chinks—</div>
<div class='line'>Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time</div>
<div class='line in6'>Sprang sublime,</div>
<div class='line'>And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced</div>
<div class='line in6'>As they raced,</div>
<div class='line'>And the monarch and his minions and his dames</div>
<div class='line in6'>Viewed the games.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And I know—while thus the quiet-coloured eve</div>
<div class='line in6'>Smiles to leave</div>
<div class='line'>To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece</div>
<div class='line in6'>In such peace,</div>
<div class='line'>And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey</div>
<div class='line in6'>Melt away—</div>
<div class='line'>That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair</div>
<div class='line in6'>Waits me there</div>
<div class='line'>In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul</div>
<div class='line in6'>For the goal,</div>
<div class='line'>When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb</div>
<div class='line in6'>Till I come.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But he looked upon the city, every side,</div>
<div class='line in6'>Far and wide,</div>
<div class='line'>All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades</div>
<div class='line in6'>Colonnades,</div>
<div class='line'>All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then,</div>
<div class='line in6'>All the men!</div>
<div class='line'>When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand</div>
<div class='line in6'>Either hand</div>
<div class='line'>On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace</div>
<div class='line in6'>Of my face,</div>
<div class='line'>Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech</div>
<div class='line in6'>Each on each.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>In one year they sent a million fighters forth</div>
<div class='line in6'>South and North,</div>
<div class='line'>And they built their gods a brazen pillar high</div>
<div class='line in6'>As the sky,</div>
<div class='line'>Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—</div>
<div class='line in6'>Gold, of course.</div>
<div class='line'>Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!</div>
<div class='line in6'>Earth’s returns</div>
<div class='line'>For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!</div>
<div class='line in6'>Shut them in,</div>
<div class='line'>With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!</div>
<div class='line in6'>Love is best.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The supreme value of love is a constantly recurring thought in the poems
of our author. We shall meet it in its higher ranges in selections to come.
Here we are still in the sphere of the mere earthly affection, with only the
suggestion, in contrast with the transitoriness of earthly glory, of its indestructibility.</p>
<p class='c007'>No explanation seems needed, excepting perhaps to call attention to this,
that the “little turret” in stanza 4 is not a bartizan, but a staircase turret,
or it could not “mark the basement, whence a tower in ancient time sprang
sublime.”</p>
<p class='c007'>Observe, in each stanza, the striking contrast between the former and the
latter half, so balanced that the poem might be divided into fourteen single
or six double stanzas.</p>
<p class='c007'>There is not much of the descriptive in the poems of our author; he is
the poet, not of Nature, but of Human Nature; but when he does touch
landscape, as here, it is with the hand of a master.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>
<h2 class='c005'>MY STAR.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>All that I know</div>
<div class='line in2'>Of a certain star</div>
<div class='line'>Is, it can throw</div>
<div class='line in2'>(Like the angled spar)</div>
<div class='line'>Now a dart of red,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Now a dart of blue;</div>
<div class='line'>Till my friends have said</div>
<div class='line in2'>They would fain see, too,</div>
<div class='line'>My star that dartles the red and the blue!</div>
<div class='line'>Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:</div>
<div class='line in2'>They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.</div>
<div class='line'>What matter to me if their star is a world?</div>
<div class='line in2'>Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The following sentence, from Walter Besant, in “All Sorts and Conditions
of Men,” well expresses the key-thought of this little gem of a poem: “So
great is the beauty of human nature, even in its second rate or third rate
productions, that love generally follows when one of the two, by confession
or unconscious self-betrayal, stands revealed to the other.”</p>
<p class='c007'>Compare also the closing stanzas of “One Word More,” especially
stanza 18.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>
<h2 class='c005'>RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives</div>
<div class='line'>First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves</div>
<div class='line'>The world; and, vainly favoured, it repays</div>
<div class='line'>The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze</div>
<div class='line'>By no change of its large calm front of snow.</div>
<div class='line'>And, underneath the Mount, a Flower I know,</div>
<div class='line'>He cannot have perceived, that changes ever</div>
<div class='line'>At his approach; and, in the lost endeavour</div>
<div class='line'>To live his life, has parted, one by one,</div>
<div class='line'>With all a flower’s true graces, for the grace</div>
<div class='line'>Of being but a foolish mimic sun,</div>
<div class='line'>With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.</div>
<div class='line'>Men nobly call by many a name the Mount</div>
<div class='line'>As over many a land of theirs its large</div>
<div class='line'>Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe</div>
<div class='line'>Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie,</div>
<div class='line'>Each to its proper praise and own account:</div>
<div class='line'>Men call the Flower, the Sunflower, sportively.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look</div>
<div class='line'>Across the waters to this twilight nook,</div>
<div class='line'>—The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed?</div>
<div class='line'>Go!—saying ever as thou dost proceed,</div>
<div class='line'>That I, French Rudel, choose for my device</div>
<div class='line'>A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice</div>
<div class='line'>Before its idol. See! These inexpert</div>
<div class='line'>And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt</div>
<div class='line'>The woven picture; ’tis a woman’s skill</div>
<div class='line'>Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill</div>
<div class='line'>Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed</div>
<div class='line'>On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees</div>
<div class='line'>On my flower’s breast as on a platform broad:</div>
<div class='line'>But, as the flower’s concern is not for these</div>
<div class='line'>But solely for the sun, so men applaud</div>
<div class='line'>In vain this Rudel, he not looking here</div>
<div class='line'>But to the East—the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This poem was first published in “Bells and Pomegranates” under the
head of “Queen Worship.” How exquisite the plea of the unnoticed
Flower, with no pretence to vie with the Mountain in its claim upon the
Sun’s attention, except this, that the great unchanging Mountain is
“vainly favoured,” while the Flower yields itself up in ceaseless and self-forgetting
devotion to an imitation, however feeble and foolish, of the great
Sun Life.</p>
<p class='c007'>The second stanza is very rich. There is no mention in it of Sun or
Mountain or Flower; but as the Flower looks up to the Sun from its nook
at the Mountain’s base, so Rudel yearns for “one gold look” from his Sun,
the “Angel of the East.”</p>
<p class='c007'>The meaning of the third stanza will be apparent when it is remembered
that “French Rudel” was a troubadour of the 12th century—the days of
the Crusades, and of the romance of chivalry. In those days the best way
to communicate with the East would be through some pilgrim passing
thither: and nothing would be more natural than such a reference to the
“device” which he had patiently, and in spite of difficulty, worked so as to
wear it as her “favour:” and once more, it is eminently natural to represent
the troubadour, not as sending a written message, but as finding a sympathetic
pilgrim to burden his memory with it—charging him to keep it fresh
by repetition till it had been duly delivered.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>
<h2 class='c005'>NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Never the time and the place</div>
<div class='line in2'>And the loved one all together!</div>
<div class='line'>This path—how soft to pace!</div>
<div class='line in2'>This May—what magic weather!</div>
<div class='line'>Where is the loved one’s face?</div>
<div class='line'>In a dream that loved one’s face meets mine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>But the house is narrow, the place is bleak</div>
<div class='line'>Where, outside, rain and wind combine</div>
<div class='line in2'>With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak</div>
<div class='line in2'>With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,</div>
<div class='line'>With a malice that marks each word, each sign!</div>
<div class='line'>O enemy sly and serpentine</div>
<div class='line in2'>Uncoil thee from the waking man!</div>
<div class='line in8'>Do I hold the Past</div>
<div class='line in8'>Thus firm and fast</div>
<div class='line in2'>Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?</div>
<div class='line in2'>This path so soft to pace shall lead</div>
<div class='line in2'>Through the magic of May to herself indeed!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Or narrow if needs the house must be,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Outside are the storms and strangers: we—</div>
<div class='line in2'>Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,</div>
<div class='line in2'>—I and she!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This poem, published in “Jocoseria” in 1883, has no connection with
“Rudel,” published in “Bells and Pomegranates” in 1842; but it will
naturally follow it as “another of the same,” only with a happier ending;
for though we learn from history that poor Rudel did one day reach Tripoli,
it was only to die there,—let us hope still looking “to the East—the
East!”</p>
<p class='c007'>We get a glimpse here of the shifting moods of a lover’s soul. First, there
are the thoughts connected with the present experience—time and place all
that could be desired, but the loved one, absent, (lines 1-5); next, thoughts
arising from a dark dream or foreboding of the future when he and his loved
one shall meet, but under circumstances cruelly unpropitious, the house
narrow, the weather stormy, unsympathetic strangers by with furtive ears
and hostile eyes, and even malice in their hearts (6-11); and last, the man
within him rises to shake off the horrid serpent-like dream, and look forward
with a healthy hope that time and place and all will be well; or, if the house
must be narrow, (compare the Latin, “res angusta domi”) it will be a
Home, storms and strangers without, peace and rest within!</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>
<h2 class='c005'>WANTING IS—WHAT?</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Wanting is—what?</div>
<div class='line'>Summer redundant,</div>
<div class='line'>Blueness abundant,</div>
<div class='line'>—Where is the spot?</div>
<div class='line'>Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same,</div>
<div class='line'>—Framework which waits for a picture to frame:</div>
<div class='line'>What of the leafage, what of the flower?</div>
<div class='line'>Roses embowering with nought they embower!</div>
<div class='line'>Come then, complete incompletion, O comer,</div>
<div class='line'>Pant through the blueness, perfect the Summer!</div>
<div class='line'>Breathe but one breath</div>
<div class='line'>Rose-beauty above,</div>
<div class='line'>And all that was death</div>
<div class='line'>Grows life, grows love,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Grows love!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This is still the love of earth; but dealt with so grandly, that it is no
wonder that some have understood it of the higher love, and to the question
of the first line would give the answer, “God.” Nor can it be said that the
thought is alien—rather is it close akin; for is not the earthly love, when
pure and true, an image of the heavenly? It would be well, indeed, if love
songs were oftener written in such a way as to suggest thoughts of the love
of Heaven. The Bible is especially fearless in its use of the one to illustrate
the other. With the higher thought in view, we are reminded of the closing
lines of “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” by Mrs. Browning—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness—</div>
<div class='line in8'>Round our restlessness, His rest.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Compare “By the Fireside,” especially stanza 39.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>
<h2 class='c005'>EVELYN HOPE.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Sit and watch by her side an hour.</div>
<div class='line'>That is her book-shelf, this her bed;</div>
<div class='line in2'>She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,</div>
<div class='line'>Beginning to die too, in the glass;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Little has yet been changed, I think:</div>
<div class='line'>The shutters are shut, no light may pass</div>
<div class='line in2'>Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Sixteen years old when she died!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;</div>
<div class='line'>It was not her time to love; beside,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Her life had many a hope and aim,</div>
<div class='line'>Duties enough and little cares,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And now was quiet, now astir,</div>
<div class='line'>Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,—</div>
<div class='line in2'>And the sweet white brow is all of her.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?</div>
<div class='line in2'>What, your soul was pure and true,</div>
<div class='line'>The good stars met in your horoscope,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Made you of spirit, fire and dew—</div>
<div class='line'>And, just because I was thrice as old,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And our paths in the world diverged so wide.</div>
<div class='line'>Each was nought to each, must I be told?</div>
<div class='line in2'>We were fellow mortals, nought beside?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>No, indeed! for God above</div>
<div class='line in2'>Is great to grant, as mighty to make,</div>
<div class='line'>And creates the love to reward the love:</div>
<div class='line in2'>I claim you still, for my own love’s sake!</div>
<div class='line'>Delayed it may be for more lives yet,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:</div>
<div class='line'>Much is to learn, much to forget</div>
<div class='line in2'>Ere the time be come for taking you.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But the time will come, at last it will,</div>
<div class='line in2'>When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)</div>
<div class='line'>In the lower earth, in the years long still,</div>
<div class='line in2'>That body and soul so pure and gay?</div>
<div class='line'>Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And your mouth of your own geranium’s red—</div>
<div class='line'>And what you would do with me, in fine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>In the new life come in the old one’s stead.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Given up myself so many times,</div>
<div class='line'>Gained me the gains of various men,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;</div>
<div class='line'>Yet one thing, one, in my soul’s full scope,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Either I missed or itself missed me:</div>
<div class='line'>And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!</div>
<div class='line in2'>What is the issue? let us see!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!</div>
<div class='line in2'>My heart seemed full as it could hold;</div>
<div class='line'>There was place and to spare for the frank young smile</div>
<div class='line in2'>And the red young mouth, and the hair’s young gold.</div>
<div class='line'>So hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep:</div>
<div class='line in2'>See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!</div>
<div class='line'>There, that is our secret: go to sleep!</div>
<div class='line in2'>You will wake, and remember, and understand.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This poem, so exquisite in finish, well-nigh perfect in form, is one of the
few works of our author, almost universally known and admired. It is
doubtful, however, if all its admirers look beneath the form and finish, or
understand much more of it than they do of other poems, the crabbed style
of which repels admiration as strongly as this attracts it. The tender pathos
of the “geranium leaf” in the first and last stanzas, touches a chord in every
heart; but <i>the</i> thought of the piece is something far deeper and stronger,
namely this, that true love is immortal, and that, therefore, however much
it may fail of its object here, or even (if possible) in lives that follow this, it
cannot fail for ever, it <i>must</i> find its object and be satisfied. It is a poem,
not of the pathos of death, but of the promise of Life!</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>
<h2 class='c005'>PROSPICE.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The mist in my face,</div>
<div class='line'>When the snows begin, and the blasts denote</div>
<div class='line in2'>I am nearing the place,</div>
<div class='line'>The power of the night, the press of the storm,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The post of the foe;</div>
<div class='line'>Where he stands the Arch Fear in a visible form,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Yet the strong man must go:</div>
<div class='line'>For the journey is done and the summit attained,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And the barriers fall,</div>
<div class='line'>Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The reward of it all.</div>
<div class='line'>I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The best and the last!</div>
<div class='line'>I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And bade me creep past.</div>
<div class='line'>No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers</div>
<div class='line in2'>The heroes of old,</div>
<div class='line'>Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears</div>
<div class='line in2'>Of pain, darkness and cold.</div>
<div class='line'>For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The black minute’s at end,</div>
<div class='line'>And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Shall dwindle, shall blend,</div>
<div class='line'>Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Then a light, then thy breast,</div>
<div class='line'>O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And with God be the rest!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>
<h2 class='c005'>GOOD, TO FORGIVE.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Good, to forgive;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Best, to forget!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Living, we fret;</div>
<div class='line'>Dying, we live.</div>
<div class='line'>Fretless and free,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Soul, clap thy pinion!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Earth have dominion,</div>
<div class='line'>Body, o’er thee!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Wander at will,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Day after day,—</div>
<div class='line in2'>Wander away,</div>
<div class='line'>Wandering still—</div>
<div class='line'>Soul that canst soar!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Body may slumber:</div>
<div class='line in2'>Body shall cumber</div>
<div class='line'>Soul-flight no more</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Waft of soul’s wing!</div>
<div class='line in2'>What lies above?</div>
<div class='line in2'>Sunshine and Love,</div>
<div class='line'>Sky-blue and Spring!</div>
<div class='line'>Body hides—where?</div>
<div class='line in2'>Ferns of all feather,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Mosses and heather,</div>
<div class='line'>Yours be the care!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This is the proem to “La Saisiaz,” one of the most remarkable of the
poet’s works, in which the doctrine of immortality is argued with a profundity
of thought that has perhaps never been surpassed, even in language
freed from the fetters of verse. It also appears as No. III. of “Pisgah
Sights” in the second English series of selections. Both of these connections
suggest the key-note.</p>
<p class='c007'>Observe the progress in the thought. In the first stanza the soul is
“fretless and free”; in the second it moves onward and upward; in the
third it has reached the region of “Sunshine and Love, Sky-blue and
Spring!” Similarly as to the body—in the first stanza there is the apparent
victory of the grave, “dust to dust”; in the next comes the thought that,
after all, the body may only be slumbering; in the last, there is the
beautiful suggestion that it is only hiding where it is tenderly cared for,
till</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in2'>“——with the morn those angel faces smile</div>
<div class='line'>Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>
<h2 class='c005'>TOUCH HIM NE’ER SO LIGHTLY.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Touch him ne’er so lightly, into song he broke:</div>
<div class='line'>Soil so quick-receptive,—not one feather-seed,</div>
<div class='line'>Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke</div>
<div class='line'>Vitalizing Virtue: song would song succeed</div>
<div class='line'>Sudden as spontaneous—prove a poet-soul!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in46'>Indeed?</div>
<div class='line'>Rock’s the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare:</div>
<div class='line'>Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage</div>
<div class='line'>Vainly both expend,—few flowers awaken there:</div>
<div class='line'>Quiet in its cleft broods—what the after age</div>
<div class='line'>Knows and names a pine, a nation’s heritage.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>These lines appeared first as the Epilogue to the second series of
Dramatic Idyls, published in 1880. In October of the same year, the poet
wrote, in the Album of a young American lady, a sequel to them, which
appeared (in fac-simile) in the <i>Century Magazine</i> of November, 1882.
They are given here, with the kind consent of the publishers of that
magazine:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters,</div>
<div class='line'>Poets dead and gone: and lo, the critics cried</div>
<div class='line'>“Out on such a boast!”—as if I dreamed that fetters</div>
<div class='line'>Binding Dante, bind up—me! as if true pride</div>
<div class='line'>Were not also humble!</div>
<div class='line in24'>So I smiled and sighed</div>
<div class='line'>As I ope’d your book in Venice this bright morning,</div>
<div class='line'>Sweet new friend of mine! and felt tho’ clay or sand—</div>
<div class='line'>Whatsoe’er my soil be,—break—for praise or scorning—</div>
<div class='line'>Out in grateful fancies—weeds, but weeds expand</div>
<div class='line'>Almost into flowers, held by such a kindly hand!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>
<h2 class='c005'>POPULARITY.</h2>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Stand still, true poet that you are!</div>
<div class='line in2'>I know you; let me try and draw you.</div>
<div class='line'>Some night you’ll fail us: when afar</div>
<div class='line in2'>You rise, remember one man saw you,</div>
<div class='line'>Knew you, and named a star!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>My star, God’s glow-worm! Why extend</div>
<div class='line in2'>That loving hand of His which leads you,</div>
<div class='line'>Yet locks you safe from end to end</div>
<div class='line in2'>Of this dark world, unless He needs you,</div>
<div class='line'>Just saves your light to spend?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>His clenched hand shall unclose at last,</div>
<div class='line in2'>I know, and let out all the beauty:</div>
<div class='line'>My poet holds the future fast,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Accepts the coming ages’ duty,</div>
<div class='line'>Their present for this past.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>That day, the earth’s feast-master’s brow</div>
<div class='line in2'>Shall clear, to God the chalice raising;</div>
<div class='line'>“Others give best at first, but Thou</div>
<div class='line in2'>“Forever set’st our table praising,</div>
<div class='line'>“Keep’st the good wine till now!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Meantime, I’ll draw you as you stand,</div>
<div class='line in2'>With few or none to watch and wonder:</div>
<div class='line'>I’ll say—a fisher, on the sand</div>
<div class='line in2'>By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder,</div>
<div class='line'>A netful, brought to land.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Who has not heard how Tyrian shells</div>
<div class='line in2'>Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes</div>
<div class='line'>Whereof one drop worked miracles,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And coloured like Astarte’s eyes</div>
<div class='line'>Raw silk the merchant sells?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And each bystander of them all</div>
<div class='line in2'>Could criticize, and quote tradition</div>
<div class='line'>How depths of blue sublimed some pall</div>
<div class='line in2'>—To get which, pricked a king’s ambition;</div>
<div class='line'>Worth sceptre, crown and ball.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Yet there’s the dye, in that rough mesh,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The sea has only just o’er-whispered!</div>
<div class='line'>Live whelks, each lip’s beard dripping fresh,</div>
<div class='line in2'>As if they still the water’s lisp heard</div>
<div class='line'>Through foam the rock-weeds thresh.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>IX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Enough to furnish Solomon</div>
<div class='line in2'>Such hangings for his cedar-house,</div>
<div class='line'>That, when gold-robed he took the throne</div>
<div class='line in2'>In that abyss of blue, the Spouse</div>
<div class='line'>Might swear his presence shone.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Most like the centre-spike of gold</div>
<div class='line in2'>Which burns deep in the blue-bell’s womb</div>
<div class='line'>What time, with ardours manifold,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The bee goes singing to her groom,</div>
<div class='line'>Drunken and overbold.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof!</div>
<div class='line in2'>Till cunning come to pound and squeeze</div>
<div class='line'>And clarify,—refine to proof</div>
<div class='line in2'>The liquor filtered by degrees,</div>
<div class='line'>While the world stands aloof.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And there’s the extract, flasked and fine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And priced and saleable at last!</div>
<div class='line'>And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine</div>
<div class='line in2'>To paint the future from the past,</div>
<div class='line'>Put blue into their line.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>XIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats:</div>
<div class='line in2'>Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup:</div>
<div class='line'>Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,—</div>
<div class='line in2'>Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?</div>
<div class='line'>What porridge had John Keats?</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The true poet is he who discovers and discloses, for man’s recognition
and enjoyment, the hidden beauties which abound everywhere in the great
kingdom of God. These beauties may be unrecognised at first, so that the
poet is not known as a poet, except to such as the speaker here is supposed
to be (“I know you”). He recognises in him a star. How is it, then, that
his light is hidden? The hand of God, who looks down on him from far
above (“God’s glow-worm”) as I look up to him from far below (“my
star”), has closed around him to keep him and his light safe till the time
shall come for discovery (Stanza 3) and for recognition (4). The drawing,
or simile follows, of a Tyrian fisherman (5), who brings from the great sea
the common-looking little whelk, from which, by a secret process, is
obtained that wonderful dye which out-dazzles art, and almost equals
Nature’s most exquisite tints (6-10). While the process is going on, the
world stands aloof (11); but as soon as the extract is “priced and saleable,”
the commonest people (12) can recognise it and make it pay (13);
while the man who fished it up remains poor and unknown to fame.</p>
<p class='c007'>The application is made with characteristic brevity, oddity, and antithetic
power: Nokes, Stokes, & Co., gorging turtle; John Keats wanting
porridge!</p>
<p class='c007'>In connection with “Popularity” should be studied “The Two Poets of
Croisic,” far too long to be inserted here. An interesting comparison, also,
may be made with a little poem of Tennyson’s called “The Flower,”
beginning—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Once in a golden hour</div>
<div class='line in2'>I cast to earth a seed,</div>
<div class='line'>Up there came a flower,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The people said, a weed.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>
<h2 class='c005'>THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL.</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>A PICTURE AT FANO.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave</div>
<div class='line in2'>That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!</div>
<div class='line'>Let me sit all the day here, that when eve</div>
<div class='line in2'>Shall find performed thy special ministry,</div>
<div class='line'>And time come for departure, thou, suspending</div>
<div class='line'>Thy flight, may’st see another child for tending,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Another still, to quiet and retrieve.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,</div>
<div class='line in2'>From where thou standest now, to where I gaze.</div>
<div class='line'>—And suddenly my head is covered o’er</div>
<div class='line in2'>With those wings, white above the child who prays</div>
<div class='line'>Now on that tomb—and I shall feel thee guarding</div>
<div class='line'>Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding</div>
<div class='line in2'>Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I would not look up thither past thy head</div>
<div class='line in2'>Because the door opes, like that child, I know,</div>
<div class='line'>For I should have thy gracious face instead,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low</div>
<div class='line'>Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,</div>
<div class='line'>And lift them up to pray, and gently tether</div>
<div class='line in2'>Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment’s spread?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>If this was ever granted, I would rest</div>
<div class='line in2'>My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands</div>
<div class='line'>Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Pressing the brain which too much thought expands,</div>
<div class='line'>Back to its proper size again, and smoothing</div>
<div class='line'>Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!</div>
<div class='line in2'>I think how I should view the earth and skies</div>
<div class='line'>And sea, when once again my brow was bared</div>
<div class='line in2'>After thy healing, with such different eyes.</div>
<div class='line'>O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:</div>
<div class='line'>And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.</div>
<div class='line in2'>What further may be sought for or declared?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Guercino drew this angel I saw teach</div>
<div class='line in2'>(Alfred, dear friend!)—that little child to pray,</div>
<div class='line'>Holding the little hands up, each to each</div>
<div class='line in2'>Pressed gently,—with his own head turned away</div>
<div class='line'>Over the earth where so much lay before him</div>
<div class='line'>Of work to do, though heaven was opening o’er him,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And he was left at Fano by the beach.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>We were at Fano, and three times we went</div>
<div class='line in2'>To sit and see him in his chapel there,</div>
<div class='line'>And drink his beauty to our soul’s content</div>
<div class='line in2'>—My angel with me too: and since I care</div>
<div class='line'>For dear Guercino’s fame (to which in power</div>
<div class='line'>And glory comes this picture for a dower,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Fraught with a pathos so magnificent),</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And since he did not work thus earnestly</div>
<div class='line in2'>At all times, and has else endured some wrong—</div>
<div class='line'>I took one thought his picture struck from me,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And spread it out, translating it to song.</div>
<div class='line'>My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend?</div>
<div class='line'>How rolls the Wairoa at your world’s far end?</div>
<div class='line in2'>This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>“The Guardian Angel” is given as a slight specimen of an important
class, dealing with painting and painters. In the lovely poem, “One
Word More,” Browning disclaims all ability to paint; but no one could
have a more exquisite appreciation of the art.</p>
<p class='c007'>Has the tender pathos of these verses ever been surpassed? The calm
of heaven is in this thought spread out—translated into song. Let it
be read in connection with Spenser’s exquisite lines, beginning “And is
there care in heaven?”</p>
<p class='c007'>“Alfred, dear friend,” is Mr. Alfred Domett, who was then Prime
Minister of New Zealand, at which far end of the world the Wairoa rolls
to the sea.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>
<h2 class='c005'>DEAF AND DUMB.</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>A GROUP BY WOOLNER.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Only the prism’s obstruction shows aright</div>
<div class='line'>The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light</div>
<div class='line'>Into the jewelled bow from blankest white;</div>
<div class='line in4'>So may a glory from defect arise:</div>
<div class='line'>Only by Deafness may the vexed love wreak</div>
<div class='line'>Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek,</div>
<div class='line'>Only by Dumbness adequately speak</div>
<div class='line in4'>As favoured mouth could never, through the eyes.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This is a “gem of purest ray.” In order to understand it fully, it is
necessary to know that the “group by Woolner” is of two deaf and dumb
children—the one as if speaking, the other in the attitude of listening.
The speech denied passage through the lips, breaks out in rarer beauty
from the eyes; and for the hearing denied entrance by the ears, there is,
instead, a subtle responsiveness of brow and cheek to the spirit utterance
from the soul of the other; so that love, though “vexed,” is not suppressed.</p>
<p class='c007'>The exquisite beauty of the illustration of “the prism’s obstruction,”
and the tender pathos of the thought, will be manifest to every reader.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>
<h2 class='c005'>ABT VOGLER.</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE MUSICAL</div>
<div>INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION.)</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,</div>
<div class='line'>Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed</div>
<div class='line in2'>Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,</div>
<div class='line'>Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,—</div>
<div class='line'>Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!</div>
<div class='line'>Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!</div>
<div class='line'>And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,</div>
<div class='line'>Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,</div>
<div class='line'>Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:</div>
<div class='line'>For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,</div>
<div class='line in2'>When a great illumination surprises a festal night—</div>
<div class='line'>Outlining round and round Rome’s dome from space to spire)</div>
<div class='line in2'>Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man’s birth,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;</div>
<div class='line'>And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,</div>
<div class='line in2'>As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:</div>
<div class='line'>Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Not a point nor peak but found, but fixed its wandering star;</div>
<div class='line'>Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,</div>
<div class='line in2'>For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,</div>
<div class='line'>Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;</div>
<div class='line'>Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,</div>
<div class='line in2'>But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:</div>
<div class='line'>What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;</div>
<div class='line in2'>And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,</div>
<div class='line in2'>All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,</div>
<div class='line'>All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth.</div>
<div class='line'>Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;</div>
<div class='line'>It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws</div>
<div class='line in2'>Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enrolled:—</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Existent behind all laws: that made them, and, lo, they are!</div>
<div class='line'>And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,</div>
<div class='line in2'>That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.</div>
<div class='line'>Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;</div>
<div class='line in2'>It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:</div>
<div class='line'>Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought,</div>
<div class='line in2'>And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;</div>
<div class='line'>For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,</div>
<div class='line in2'>That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.</div>
<div class='line'>Never to be again! But many more of the kind</div>
<div class='line in2'>As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?</div>
<div class='line'>To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind</div>
<div class='line in2'>To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>IX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?</div>
<div class='line in2'>Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!</div>
<div class='line'>What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?</div>
<div class='line in2'>Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?</div>
<div class='line'>There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;</div>
<div class='line in2'>The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;</div>
<div class='line'>What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;</div>
<div class='line in2'>On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power</div>
<div class='line'>Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,</div>
<div class='line in2'>When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.</div>
<div class='line'>The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,</div>
<div class='line'>Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;</div>
<div class='line in2'>Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>XI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence</div>
<div class='line in2'>For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?</div>
<div class='line'>Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?</div>
<div class='line in2'>Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?</div>
<div class='line'>Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:</div>
<div class='line'>But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;</div>
<div class='line in2'>The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis we musicians know.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:</div>
<div class='line in2'>I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.</div>
<div class='line'>Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,—yes,</div>
<div class='line'>And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep</div>
<div class='line'>Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,</div>
<div class='line in2'>The C major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Having given specimen poems dealing with the arts of poetry, painting,
and sculpture, we add one on the subject of music, which, though difficult
to understand fully, has beauties which are apparent even to those who do
not enter into its deepest thought. Vogler is not known as a composer of
the first rank, having left no works behind him which entitle him to a place
among the great masters; but, for this very reason, he is better suited for
<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>the poet’s purpose, which is to deal with music, not as represented by printed
notes, but as existing for the moment in all its perfection, and at once
melting away into silence and apparent nothingness. It is as extemporizer,
not as author, he is chosen, and as Abbé (<i>Ger.</i> Abt) he appropriately thinks
of those deep spiritual truths on which the loftier hopes of the latter part of
the poem are founded.</p>
<p class='c007'>The musician “has been extemporizing,”—pouring out his whole soul
through the keys of his organ, and from that state of ecstasy he suddenly
awakes and cries out, “Would that the structure brave, the manifold music
I build ... might tarry!” It has been no mere “volume,” but a
“palace” of sound. As Solomon (according to the well-known legend)
summoned all spirits from above and from below, and all creatures of the
earth, to build him a palace at once, so by a touch, “calling the keys to
their work,” he has summoned demons of the bass, angels of the treble,
earth creatures of the middle tones, who, by eager and tumultuous and yet
harmoniously united efforts, have caused “the pinnacled glory” to “rush
into sight” (stanzas 1-3).</p>
<p class='c007'>Into sight? There was far more in it than could be seen. As the soul
of the musician ascended from earth, heaven descended on him; its stars
crowned his work; its moons, its suns were close beside him—“there was
no more near nor far” (4). And the boundaries of time, as well as the limits
of space, were gone. The <i>absolute</i>, the <i>perfect</i> was reached; and to this
palace of perfection had flocked “presences plain in the place,” from the
far Future and from the mystic Past. “There was no more sea”—no
more distance or separation—all one, together, perfect (5). Reached how?
Through music—the only one of the arts that leads into the region of the
absolute and perfect, its effects not springing from causes the operation of
which can be traced, and the law of their production defined, but responding
directly to the will, even as creation responded to the <i>fiat</i> of God. Out
of such simple elements can that be evoked, which should lead those who
“consider” these things to “bow the head” (6, 7).</p>
<p class='c007'>But was it only for a moment? Is it gone? Forever? (8).</p>
<p class='c007'>I turn to God, and know it cannot be. Then follows that glorious
passage, one of the finest in any language, every word of which should be
studied, beginning—“There shall never be one lost good!” on to the end
of stanza 11, which is the true climax of the poem.</p>
<p class='c007'>The last stanza may be compared to the closing one of “Saul.” It is the
return from the empyrean to the plain of common life. Let some musical
friend show how at the cadence of a very grand piece he would feel his way
<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>down the chromatic scale, and then pause on that poignant discord, known
as “the minor ninth,” effecting, as it were, a separation (“alien ground”)
from the heights just descended, and giving thus the opportunity of looking
up once more before a resting-place is found in “the common chord,”—“the
C major of this life.”</p>
<p class='c007'>This is a poem which should be read over and over till the music of it has
fairly entered the soul.</p>
<p class='c007'>It has become common now to speak slightingly of those representations
of heaven which make large use of music to give them body in our thought,
as if the idea intended to be conveyed were that the joy of heaven was to
consist in an endless idle singing, a concert without a finale; but this easy
criticism is surely too disregardful of the distinctive feature of music so
strikingly set forth in this poem—viz., that it is the only one of the arts
which while strongly appealing to sense, yet in its essence belongs to the
realm of the unseen, so that it is in fact the only symbol within the range of
man’s experience which can even suggest the absolute, the perfect, the pure
heavenly.</p>
<p class='c007'>The following passage, from the “Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal,”
(p. 151) is so strikingly illustrative of “Abt Vogler,” that we cannot forbear
quoting it:—</p>
<p class='c007'>“In the train I had one of those curious musical visions which only very
rarely visit me. I hear strange and very beautiful chords, generally full,
slow and grand, succeeding each other in most interesting sequences. I do
not invent them, I could not; they pass before my mind, and I only listen.
Now and then my will seems aroused when I see ahead how some fine
resolution might follow, and I seem to <i>will</i> that certain chords should come,
and then they do come; but then my will seems suspended again, and they
go on quite independently. It is so interesting, the chords seem to <i>fold
over each other</i>, and die away down into music of infinite softness, and then
they <i>un</i>fold and open out, as if great curtains were being withdrawn one
after another, widening the view, till, with a gathering power and intensity
and fulness, it seems as if the very skies were being opened out before one,
and a sort of great blaze and glory of music, such as my outward ears never
heard, gradually swells out in perfectly sublime splendour. This time there
was an added feature; I seemed to hear depths and heights of sound
beyond the scale which human ears can receive, keen, far-up octaves, like
vividly twinkling <i>starlight</i> of music, and mighty slow vibrations of gigantic
strings going down into grand thunders of depths, octaves below anything
otherwise appreciable as musical notes. Then, all at once, it seemed as if
my soul had got a new sense, and I could <i>see</i> this inner music as well as
hear it; and then it was like gazing down into marvellous <i>abysses of sound</i>,
and up into dazzling regions of what, to the eye, would have been light and
colour, but to this new sense was <i>sound</i>.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>
<h2 class='c005'>ONE WORD MORE.</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>TO E. B. B.</div>
<div class='c001'><i>London, September, 1855.</i></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>There they are, my fifty men and women</div>
<div class='line'>Naming me the fifty poems finished!</div>
<div class='line'>Take them, love, the book and me together:</div>
<div class='line'>Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>II.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Rafael made a century of sonnets,</div>
<div class='line'>Made and wrote them in a certain volume</div>
<div class='line'>Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil</div>
<div class='line'>Else he only used to draw Madonnas:</div>
<div class='line'>These, the world might view—but one, the volume.</div>
<div class='line'>Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.</div>
<div class='line'>Did she live and love it all her life-time?</div>
<div class='line'>Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,</div>
<div class='line'>Die and let it drop beside her pillow</div>
<div class='line'>Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,</div>
<div class='line'>Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving—</div>
<div class='line'>Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,</div>
<div class='line'>Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>III.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>You and I would rather read that volume,</div>
<div class='line'>(Taken to his beating bosom by it)</div>
<div class='line'>Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,</div>
<div class='line'>Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,</div>
<div class='line'>Her, that visits Florence in a vision,</div>
<div class='line'>Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre—</div>
<div class='line'>Seen by us and all the world in circle.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>You and I will never read that volume.</div>
<div class='line'>Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple,</div>
<div class='line'>Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.</div>
<div class='line'>Guido Reni dying, all Bologna</div>
<div class='line'>Cried, and the world cried too “Ours, the treasure!”</div>
<div class='line'>Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Dante once prepared to paint an angel:</div>
<div class='line'>Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.”</div>
<div class='line'>While he mused and traced it and retraced it,</div>
<div class='line'>(Peradventure with a pen corroded</div>
<div class='line'>Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,</div>
<div class='line'>When, his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,</div>
<div class='line'>Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,</div>
<div class='line'>Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment,</div>
<div class='line'>Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,</div>
<div class='line'>Let the wretch go festering through Florence)—</div>
<div class='line'>Dante, who loved well because he hated,</div>
<div class='line'>Hated wickedness that hinders loving,</div>
<div class='line'>Dante standing, studying his angel,—</div>
<div class='line'>In there broke the folk of his Inferno.</div>
<div class='line'>Says he—“Certain people of importance”</div>
<div class='line'>(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)</div>
<div class='line'>“Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.”</div>
<div class='line'>Says the poet—“Then I stopped my painting.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>You and I would rather see that angel,</div>
<div class='line'>Painted by the tenderness of Dante,</div>
<div class='line'>Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>You and I will never see that picture.</div>
<div class='line'>While he mused on love and Beatrice,</div>
<div class='line'>While he softened o’er his outlined angel,</div>
<div class='line'>In they broke, those “people of importance:”</div>
<div class='line'>We and Bice bear the loss for ever.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture?</div>
<div class='line'>This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not</div>
<div class='line'>Once, and only once, and for one only,</div>
<div class='line'>(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language</div>
<div class='line'>Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—</div>
<div class='line'>Using nature that’s an art to others,</div>
<div class='line'>Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature.</div>
<div class='line'>Ay, of all the artists living, loving,</div>
<div class='line'>None but would forego his proper dowry,—</div>
<div class='line'>Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,—</div>
<div class='line'>Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,</div>
<div class='line'>Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,</div>
<div class='line'>Once, and only once, and for one only.</div>
<div class='line'>So to be the man and leave the artist,</div>
<div class='line'>Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>IX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement.</div>
<div class='line'>He who smites the rock and spreads the water,</div>
<div class='line'>Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,</div>
<div class='line'>Even he, the minute makes immortal,</div>
<div class='line'>Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute.</div>
<div class='line'>Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.</div>
<div class='line'>While he smites, how can he but remember,</div>
<div class='line'>So he smote before, in such a peril,</div>
<div class='line'>When they stood and mocked—“Shall smiting help us?”</div>
<div class='line'>When they drank and sneered—“A stroke is easy!”</div>
<div class='line'>When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,</div>
<div class='line'>Throwing him for thanks—“But drought was pleasant.”</div>
<div class='line'>Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;</div>
<div class='line'>Thus the doing savours of disrelish;</div>
<div class='line'>Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;</div>
<div class='line'>O’er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,</div>
<div class='line'>Carelessness or consciousness—the gesture.</div>
<div class='line'>For he bears an ancient wrong about him,</div>
<div class='line'>Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,</div>
<div class='line'>Hears, yet one time more, the ’customed prelude—</div>
<div class='line'>“How should’st thou, of all men, smite, and save us?”</div>
<div class='line'>Guesses what is like to prove the sequel—</div>
<div class='line'>“Egypt’s flesh-pots—nay, the drought was better.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!</div>
<div class='line'>Theirs, the Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance,</div>
<div class='line'>Right-arm’s rod-sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat.</div>
<div class='line'>Never dares the man put off the prophet.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>XI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Did he love one face from out the thousands,</div>
<div class='line'>(Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely,</div>
<div class='line'>Were she but the Æthiopian bond-slave,)</div>
<div class='line'>He would envy yon dumb patient camel,</div>
<div class='line'>Keeping a reserve of scanty water</div>
<div class='line'>Meant to save his own life in the desert;</div>
<div class='line'>Ready in the desert to deliver</div>
<div class='line'>(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)</div>
<div class='line'>Hoard and life together for his mistress.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I shall never, in the years remaining,</div>
<div class='line'>Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,</div>
<div class='line'>Make you music that should all-express me;</div>
<div class='line'>So it seems: I stand on my attainment.</div>
<div class='line'>This of verse alone, one life allows me;</div>
<div class='line'>Verse and nothing else have I to give you.</div>
<div class='line'>Other heights in other lives, God willing:</div>
<div class='line'>All the gifts from all the heights, your own, love!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Yet a semblance of resource avails us—</div>
<div class='line'>Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it.</div>
<div class='line'>Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,</div>
<div class='line'>Lines I write the first time and the last time.</div>
<div class='line'>He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,</div>
<div class='line'>Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,</div>
<div class='line'>Makes a strange art of an art familiar,</div>
<div class='line'>Fills his lady’s missal-marge with flowerets.</div>
<div class='line'>He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver,</div>
<div class='line'>Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.</div>
<div class='line'>He who writes, may write for once as I do.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Love, you saw me gather men and women,</div>
<div class='line'>Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,</div>
<div class='line'>Enter each and all, and use their service,</div>
<div class='line'>Speak from every mouth,—the speech, a poem.</div>
<div class='line'>Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,</div>
<div class='line'>Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:</div>
<div class='line'>I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s,</div>
<div class='line'>Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.</div>
<div class='line'>Let me speak this once in my true person,</div>
<div class='line'>Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,</div>
<div class='line'>Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence—</div>
<div class='line'>Pray you, look on these my men and women,</div>
<div class='line'>Take and keep my fifty poems finished;</div>
<div class='line'>Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!</div>
<div class='line'>Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self!</div>
<div class='line'>Here in London, yonder late in Florence,</div>
<div class='line'>Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.</div>
<div class='line'>Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,</div>
<div class='line'>Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,</div>
<div class='line'>Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth.</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,</div>
<div class='line'>Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder,</div>
<div class='line'>Perfect till the nightingales applauded.</div>
<div class='line'>Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished.</div>
<div class='line'>Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs.</div>
<div class='line'>Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,</div>
<div class='line'>Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>What, there’s nothing in the moon note-worthy?</div>
<div class='line'>Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,</div>
<div class='line'>Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)</div>
<div class='line'>All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos)</div>
<div class='line'>She would turn a new side to her mortal,</div>
<div class='line'>Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman—</div>
<div class='line'>Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,</div>
<div class='line'>Blind to Galileo on his turret,</div>
<div class='line'>Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!</div>
<div class='line'>Think, the wonder of the moon-struck mortal—</div>
<div class='line'>When she turns round, comes again in heaven,</div>
<div class='line'>Opens out anew for worse or better!</div>
<div class='line'>Proves she like some portent of an iceberg</div>
<div class='line'>Swimming full upon the ship it founders,</div>
<div class='line'>Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?</div>
<div class='line'>Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire</div>
<div class='line'>Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?</div>
<div class='line'>Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu</div>
<div class='line'>Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,</div>
<div class='line'>Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.</div>
<div class='line'>Like the bodied heaven in his clearness</div>
<div class='line'>Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,</div>
<div class='line'>When they ate and drank and saw God also!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>XVII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know</div>
<div class='line'>Only this is sure—the sight were other,</div>
<div class='line'>Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence,</div>
<div class='line'>Dying now impoverished here in London.</div>
<div class='line'>God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures</div>
<div class='line'>Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,</div>
<div class='line'>One to show a woman when he loves her!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>This I say of me, but think of you, Love!</div>
<div class='line'>This to you—yourself my moon of poets!</div>
<div class='line'>Ah, but that’s the world’s side, there’s the wonder,</div>
<div class='line'>Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!</div>
<div class='line'>There, in turn I stand with them and praise you—</div>
<div class='line'>Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.</div>
<div class='line'>But the best is when I glide from out them,</div>
<div class='line'>Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,</div>
<div class='line'>Come out on the other side, the novel</div>
<div class='line'>Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,</div>
<div class='line'>Where I hush and bless myself with silence.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,</div>
<div class='line'>Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,</div>
<div class='line'>Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it,</div>
<div class='line'>Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>“Men and Women,” a collection of fifty poems, first published in 1855,
is probably the best known of our author’s numerous volumes. Some of
the very finest of his work is in it. To this collection “One Word More”
<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>is an appendix, in the form of a dedication of the fifty poems to his wife,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. As we learn from stanza 13, this work differs
from all others in having been dashed off, the first time of writing being
also the last time; and yet (such is the inspiration of love) it stands with
the very highest of his works. It needs careful reading, but presents no
such difficulties as “Abt Vogler.”</p>
<p class='c007'>Rafael, painter for the world, becomes for once a poet for his dearest.
If only these wonderful sonnets could be found, how we should prize them;
but the volume is hopelessly lost (stanzas 2-4).</p>
<p class='c007'>Dante, poet for the world, prepares for once to paint an angel for <i>his</i>
dearest. But, alas! he is hindered by the breaking in of some “people of
importance” of the city, the sort of people who served as character models
for “the folk of his Inferno” (5-7).</p>
<p class='c007'>There would evidently be less of art and more of nature in such an outpouring
of soul; and, therefore, the true artist would long to do it “once,
and only once, and for one only.” “The man’s joy” would be found in
the mere utterance of his soul to his dearest, without any thought of art,
which, to the true artist, lifts so high an ideal that his shortcoming is
always a “sorrow” (8).</p>
<p class='c007'>So is it with the prophet, the exercise of whose high calling can never be
dissociated from its burdens and cares (9). If he dared, which he may not
(10), how gladly for the one that he loved would he “put off the prophet”
and provide water, not by the forth putting of power, but simply as the
man, through the self-denial of love (11).</p>
<p class='c007'>Browning himself has only the one art, so cannot leave his poetry to
paint, or carve, or “make music” (12); but as the nearest equivalent
possible to him will write “once, and only once, and for one only,” a
purely extemporaneous production (13), which shall not, like his other
works, be dramatic in principle, but spoken in his own “true person” (14).</p>
<p class='c007'>Then follows the wonderful moon illustration, so marvellously wrought
out, based upon the familiar astronomical fact that, through all her phases
and movements she always presents exactly the same face to the earth (15),
the other remaining entirely concealed (“unseen of herdsman, huntsman,
steersman,” &c.), and therefore available as a new revelation (who knows of
what grandeur?) for the loved and specially-favoured mortal (16).</p>
<p class='c007'>The application of the illustration in stanzas 17 and 18 is exquisitely
beautiful, as is the gem-like quatrain with which the poem closes.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>
<h2 class='c005'>SAUL.</h2>
</div>
<p class='c006'>[The three selections which fill up the rest of this little volume are given
as specimens of the distinctively Christian poems of our author. The first
gives us Christ in the Old Testament; the second, Christ in the New; the
third, Christianity in its essential truth and practical application. As only
a portion of “Saul” can be given, a few words will be necessary to prepare
the reader unacquainted with the whole for taking up the thread at the 14th
stanza, from which, in the selection, the poem is continued uninterruptedly
to the end.]</p>
<p class='c007'>Young David is telling over to himself (see “my voice to my heart,” in
stanza 14) the story of his mission to Saul, when, as an inspired poet-musician,
he charmed the evil spirit away from him. Stanza 16, consisting
of one line, is the hinge of the entire poem; for David has just reached
the point where, after several unsuccessful, or very partially successful,
attempts—first, by playing one and another and another tune, which might
awaken some chord in the apathetic spirit of the king, and then by singing,
accompanied by the harp, first, of the joy of life, then of the splendid
results of a royal life like Saul’s in the great future of the world—he at
last, the truth coming upon him, strikes the high key where full relief is
found. As he approaches this crisis in the tale, he cannot go on without
an earnest invocation for help to tell what he had been so wonderfully led
to sing:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And behold while I sang ... but O Thou who didst grant me, that day,</div>
<div class='line'>And, before it, not seldom hast granted thy help to essay,</div>
<div class='line'>Carry on and complete an adventure,—my shield and my sword</div>
<div class='line'>In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,—</div>
<div class='line'>Still help me, who then at the summit of human endeavour</div>
<div class='line'>And scaling the highest, man’s thought could, gazed hopeless as ever</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>On the new stretch of heaven above me—till, mighty to save,</div>
<div class='line'>Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance—God’s throne from man’s grave!</div>
<div class='line'>Let me tell out my tale to its ending—my voice to my heart</div>
<div class='line'>Which scarce dares believe in what marvels last night I took part,</div>
<div class='line'>As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep!</div>
<div class='line'>And fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep,</div>
<div class='line'>For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves</div>
<div class='line'>Dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves</div>
<div class='line'>Slow the damage of yesterday’s sunshine.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in20'>I say then,—my song</div>
<div class='line'>While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever more strong,</div>
<div class='line'>Made a proffer of good to console him—he slowly resumed</div>
<div class='line'>His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed</div>
<div class='line'>His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes</div>
<div class='line'>Of his turban, and see—the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,</div>
<div class='line'>He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,</div>
<div class='line'>And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before.</div>
<div class='line'>He is Saul, ye remember in glory,—ere error had bent</div>
<div class='line'>The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,</div>
<div class='line'>To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.</div>
<div class='line'>So sank he along by the tent-prop, still, stayed by the pile</div>
<div class='line'>Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,</div>
<div class='line'>And sat out my singing,—one arm round the tent-prop, to raise</div>
<div class='line'>His bent head, and the other hung slack—till I touched on the praise</div>
<div class='line'>I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;</div>
<div class='line'>And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was ’ware</div>
<div class='line'>That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees</div>
<div class='line'>Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots which please</div>
<div class='line'>To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know</div>
<div class='line'>If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow</div>
<div class='line'>Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care</div>
<div class='line'>Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: thro’ my hair</div>
<div class='line'>The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power—</div>
<div class='line'>All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.</div>
<div class='line'>Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine—</div>
<div class='line'>And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?</div>
<div class='line'>I yearned—“Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>“I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this;</div>
<div class='line'>“I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,</div>
<div class='line'>“As this moment,—had love but the warrant, love’s heart to dispense!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then the truth came upon me. No harp more—no song more! outbroke—</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke;</div>
<div class='line'>“I, a work of God’s hand for that purpose, received in my brain</div>
<div class='line'>“And pronounced on the rest of his handwork—returned him again</div>
<div class='line'>“His creation’s approval or censure: I spoke as I saw,</div>
<div class='line'>“Reported, as man may of God’s work—all’s love, yet all’s law.</div>
<div class='line'>“Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked</div>
<div class='line'>“To perceive him has gained an abyss, where a dew-drop was asked.</div>
<div class='line'>“Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.</div>
<div class='line'>“Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!</div>
<div class='line'>“Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?</div>
<div class='line'>“I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>“In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God</div>
<div class='line'>“In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.</div>
<div class='line'>“And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew</div>
<div class='line'>“(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)</div>
<div class='line'>“The submission of man’s nothing-perfect to God’s all-complete,</div>
<div class='line'>“As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.</div>
<div class='line'>“Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,</div>
<div class='line'>“I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.</div>
<div class='line'>“There’s a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hood-wink,</div>
<div class='line'>“I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think)</div>
<div class='line'>“Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst</div>
<div class='line'>“E’en the Giver in one gift.—Behold, I could love if I durst!</div>
<div class='line'>“But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o’ertake</div>
<div class='line'>“God’s own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love’s sake.</div>
<div class='line'>—“What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,</div>
<div class='line'>“Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal?</div>
<div class='line'>“In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?</div>
<div class='line'>“Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift,</div>
<div class='line'>“That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?</div>
<div class='line'>“Here, the creature surpass the Creator,—the end what began?</div>
<div class='line'>“Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>“And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?</div>
<div class='line'>“Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,</div>
<div class='line'>“To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower</div>
<div class='line'>“Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,</div>
<div class='line'>“Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?</div>
<div class='line'>“And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest),</div>
<div class='line'>“These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?</div>
<div class='line'>“Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height</div>
<div class='line'>“This perfection,—succeed, with life’s dayspring, death’s minute of night:</div>
<div class='line'>“Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake,</div>
<div class='line'>“Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake</div>
<div class='line'>“From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set</div>
<div class='line'>“Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet</div>
<div class='line'>“To be run and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure!</div>
<div class='line'>“The man taught enough by life’s dream, of the rest to make sure;</div>
<div class='line'>“By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,</div>
<div class='line'>“And the next world’s reward and repose, by the struggles in this.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>XVIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“I believe it! ’Tis thou, God, that givest, ’tis I who receive:</div>
<div class='line'>“In the first is the last, in thy will is my powder to believe.</div>
<div class='line'>“All’s one gift: thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my prayer,</div>
<div class='line'>“As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.</div>
<div class='line'>“From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:</div>
<div class='line'>“<i>I</i> will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth</div>
<div class='line'>“To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare</div>
<div class='line'>“Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?</div>
<div class='line'>“This;—’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!</div>
<div class='line'>“See the King—I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall through.</div>
<div class='line'>“Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,</div>
<div class='line'>“To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which,</div>
<div class='line'>“I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!</div>
<div class='line'>“Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou—so wilt thou!</div>
<div class='line'>“So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown—</div>
<div class='line'>“And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down</div>
<div class='line'>“One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>“Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!</div>
<div class='line'>“As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved</div>
<div class='line'>“Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!</div>
<div class='line'>“He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.</div>
<div class='line'>“’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek</div>
<div class='line'>“In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be</div>
<div class='line'>“A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,</div>
<div class='line'>“Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand</div>
<div class='line'>“Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.</div>
<div class='line'>There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,</div>
<div class='line'>Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:</div>
<div class='line'>I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,</div>
<div class='line'>As a runner beset by the populace famished for news—</div>
<div class='line'>Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;</div>
<div class='line'>And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot</div>
<div class='line'>Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,</div>
<div class='line'>For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,</div>
<div class='line'>Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.</div>
<div class='line'>Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth—</div>
<div class='line'>Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day’s tender birth;</div>
<div class='line'>In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;</div>
<div class='line'>In the shuddering forests’ held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;</div>
<div class='line'>In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still,</div>
<div class='line'>Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill</div>
<div class='line'>That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe:</div>
<div class='line'>E’en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law.</div>
<div class='line'>The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;</div>
<div class='line'>The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:</div>
<div class='line'>And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,</div>
<div class='line'>With their obstinate, all but hushed voices—“E’en so, it is so!”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'><i>Stanza 14.</i>—Observe the meeting of the human and divine in the poet-prophet’s
inspiration. As poet, his powers were in their fullest exercise,
and still there was an unfathomable heaven of the unknown above him, till
“one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance.”</p>
<p class='c007'>The close of this stanza sets before us the scene of the writing of this
reminiscence.</p>
<hr class='c008' />
<p class='c007'><i>Stanza 15.</i>—The soothing influence of the singing begins to appear. Be
sure to keep in mind the picture, so wonderfully illustrated, of the attitude
of the two; and mark the words of David, “All my heart how it loved
<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>him,” connecting them carefully with the next stanza (16), “<i>Then</i> the truth
came upon me.” It is only to the earnestly-loving heart that such a revelation
of God could be given. “God is Love, and he that loveth not
knoweth not God.” Observe, also, in this short stanza the effect of the
intense earnestness of his soul, leading him to lay aside his harp and cease
his singing, and simply break out in impassioned speech.</p>
<hr class='c008' />
<p class='c007'><i>Stanza 17.</i>—Shall God be infinitely above his creature man, in all
faculties except one, and that “the greatest of all,” viz., Love? (Note, in
passing, the exquisite beauty of the lines: “With that stoop of the soul
which in bending upraises it too,” and “As by each new obeisance in spirit,
I climb to his feet.” The passage immediately following this line is of
course ironical at his own expense, which is indicated by the parenthetical
“I laugh as I think”; as if to say “how utterly foolish the thought that
such a wide province, such a grand gift, as Love, should be mine quite
apart from God, the great Ruler and Giver of all!”)</p>
<hr class='c008' />
<p class='c007'><i>Stanza 18.</i>—Impossible! God is the giver: all that I have—Love, as
well as everything else—is from him; I can wish, but cannot will the
thing I would; but God can, therefore God will; his love cannot be
frustrated as mine is; it must even for such as “Saul, the failure, the ruin
he seems now,” find Salvation; being infinite it must have its will, and find
a way, however hard it be (see the striking line “it is by no breath,” &c.);
and <i>there it is</i>! See <span class='sc'>the Christ</span> stand!</p>
<p class='c007'>Remember carefully the position as explained in the 15th stanza as
you read the magnificent climax, beginning—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>“O Saul, it shall be</div>
<div class='line'>A Face like my face that receives thee;”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>observe also the effect of the spondee with which stanza 18 closes, instead
of the usual anapæst; it gives wonderful dignity and strength to the
thought. The same effect is produced several times in the early part of the
poem by the same means, but nowhere with such power as in this, the
grand climax.</p>
<hr class='c008' />
<p class='c007'>What a contrast here to the petty mechanical notions of inspiration
which have so often degraded the loftiest subject of human thought; and
how marvellously is the presence and the power of the Unseen on such a
soul as David’s imaged forth in the lines of the closing stanza, in words
which seem almost to utter the unutterable.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>
<h2 class='c005'>AN EPISTLE</h2>
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c013'>
<div>CONTAINING THE</div>
<div>STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH,</div>
<div>THE ARAB PHYSICIAN.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='lg-container-l c013'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs,</div>
<div class='line'>The not-incurious in God’s handiwork</div>
<div class='line'>(This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made,</div>
<div class='line'>Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,</div>
<div class='line'>To coop up and keep down on earth a space</div>
<div class='line'>That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul)</div>
<div class='line'>—To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,</div>
<div class='line'>Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,</div>
<div class='line'>Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks</div>
<div class='line'>Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,</div>
<div class='line'>Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip</div>
<div class='line'>Back and rejoin its source before the term,—</div>
<div class='line'>And aptest in contrivance (under God)</div>
<div class='line'>To baffle it by deftly stopping such:—</div>
<div class='line'>The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home</div>
<div class='line'>Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)</div>
<div class='line'>Three samples of true snake-stone—rarer still,</div>
<div class='line'>One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,</div>
<div class='line'>(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)</div>
<div class='line'>And writeth now the twenty-second time.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>My journeyings were brought to Jericho:</div>
<div class='line'>Thus I resume. Who studious in our art</div>
<div class='line'>Shall count a little labour unrepaid?</div>
<div class='line'>I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>On many a flinty furlong of this land.</div>
<div class='line'>Also, the country-side is all on fire</div>
<div class='line'>With rumours of a marching hitherward:</div>
<div class='line'>Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.</div>
<div class='line'>A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear:</div>
<div class='line'>Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:</div>
<div class='line'>I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.</div>
<div class='line'>Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,</div>
<div class='line'>And once a town declared me for a spy;</div>
<div class='line'>But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,</div>
<div class='line'>Since this poor covert where I pass the night,</div>
<div class='line'>This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence</div>
<div class='line'>A man with plague-sores at the third degree</div>
<div class='line'>Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!</div>
<div class='line'>’Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,</div>
<div class='line'>To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip</div>
<div class='line'>And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.</div>
<div class='line'>A viscid choler is observable</div>
<div class='line'>In tertians, I was nearly bold to say;</div>
<div class='line'>And falling-sickness hath a happier cure</div>
<div class='line'>Than our school wots of: there’s a spider here</div>
<div class='line'>Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,</div>
<div class='line'>Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;</div>
<div class='line'>Take five and drop them ... but who knows his mind,</div>
<div class='line'>The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to?</div>
<div class='line'>His service payeth me a sublimate</div>
<div class='line'>Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.</div>
<div class='line'>Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,</div>
<div class='line'>There set in order my experiences,</div>
<div class='line'>Gather what most deserves, and give thee all—</div>
<div class='line'>Or I might add, Judæa’s gum-tragacanth</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,</div>
<div class='line'>Cracks ’twixt the pestle and the porphyry,</div>
<div class='line'>In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease</div>
<div class='line'>Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy:</div>
<div class='line'>Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar—</div>
<div class='line'>But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in2'>Yet stay! my Syrian blinketh gratefully,</div>
<div class='line'>Protesteth his devotion is my price—</div>
<div class='line'>Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?</div>
<div class='line'>I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,</div>
<div class='line'>What set me off a-writing first of all.</div>
<div class='line'>An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!</div>
<div class='line'>For, be it this town’s barrenness—or else</div>
<div class='line'>The Man had something in the look of him—</div>
<div class='line'>His case has struck me far more than ’tis worth.</div>
<div class='line'>So, pardon if—(lest presently I lose,</div>
<div class='line'>In the great press of novelty at hand,</div>
<div class='line'>The care and pains this somehow stole from me)</div>
<div class='line'>I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,</div>
<div class='line'>Almost in sight—for, wilt thou have the truth?</div>
<div class='line'>The very man is gone from me but now,</div>
<div class='line'>Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.</div>
<div class='line'>Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in2'>’Tis but a case of mania: subinduced</div>
<div class='line'>By epilepsy, at the turning-point</div>
<div class='line'>Of trance prolonged unduly some three days</div>
<div class='line'>When, by the exhibition of some drug</div>
<div class='line'>Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art</div>
<div class='line'>Unknown to me and which ’twere well to know,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>The evil thing, out-breaking, all at once,</div>
<div class='line'>Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,—</div>
<div class='line'>But, flinging (so to speak) life’s gates too wide,</div>
<div class='line'>Making a clear house of it too suddenly,</div>
<div class='line'>The first conceit that entered might inscribe</div>
<div class='line'>Whatever it was minded on the wall</div>
<div class='line'>So plainly at that vantage, as it were,</div>
<div class='line'>(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent</div>
<div class='line'>Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls</div>
<div class='line'>The just-returned and new-established soul</div>
<div class='line'>Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart</div>
<div class='line'>That henceforth she will read or these or none.</div>
<div class='line'>And first—the man’s own firm conviction rests</div>
<div class='line'>That he was dead (in fact they buried him)</div>
<div class='line'>—That he was dead and then restored to life</div>
<div class='line'>By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:</div>
<div class='line'>—’Sayeth, the same bade “Rise,” and he did rise.</div>
<div class='line'>“Such cases are diurnal,” thou wilt cry.</div>
<div class='line'>Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume,</div>
<div class='line'>Instead of giving way to time and health,</div>
<div class='line'>Should eat itself into the life of life,</div>
<div class='line'>As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all!</div>
<div class='line'>For see, how he takes up the after-life.</div>
<div class='line'>The man—it is one Lazarus a Jew,</div>
<div class='line'>Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,</div>
<div class='line'>The body’s habit wholly laudable,</div>
<div class='line'>As much, indeed, beyond the common health</div>
<div class='line'>As he were made and put aside to show.</div>
<div class='line'>Think, could we penetrate by any drug</div>
<div class='line'>And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,</div>
<div class='line'>And bring it clear and fair, by three days’ sleep!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?</div>
<div class='line'>This grown man eyes the world now like a child.</div>
<div class='line'>Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,</div>
<div class='line'>Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,</div>
<div class='line'>To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,</div>
<div class='line'>Now sharply, now with sorrow,—told the case,—</div>
<div class='line'>He listened not except I spoke to him,</div>
<div class='line'>But folded his two hands and let them talk,</div>
<div class='line'>Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.</div>
<div class='line'>And that’s a sample how his years must go.</div>
<div class='line'>Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,</div>
<div class='line'>Should find a treasure,—can he use the same</div>
<div class='line'>With straitened habitude and tastes starved small,</div>
<div class='line'>And take at once to his impoverished brain</div>
<div class='line'>The sudden element that changes things,</div>
<div class='line'>That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand,</div>
<div class='line'>And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?</div>
<div class='line'>Is he not such an one as moves to mirth—</div>
<div class='line'>Warily parsimonious, when no need,</div>
<div class='line'>Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?</div>
<div class='line'>All prudent counsel as to what befits</div>
<div class='line'>The golden mean, is lost on such an one:</div>
<div class='line'>The man’s fantastic will is the man’s law.</div>
<div class='line'>So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say,</div>
<div class='line'>Increased beyond the fleshly faculty—</div>
<div class='line'>Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,</div>
<div class='line'>Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing heaven:</div>
<div class='line'>The man is witless of the size, the sum,</div>
<div class='line'>The value in proportion of all things,</div>
<div class='line'>Or whether it be little or be much.</div>
<div class='line'>Discourse to him of prodigious armaments</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>Assembled to besiege his city now,</div>
<div class='line'>And of the passing of a mule with gourds—</div>
<div class='line'>’Tis one! Then take it on the other side,</div>
<div class='line'>Speak of some trifling fact,—he will gaze rapt</div>
<div class='line'>With stupor at its very littleness,</div>
<div class='line'>(Far as I see) as if in that indeed</div>
<div class='line'>He caught prodigious import, whole results;</div>
<div class='line'>And so will turn to us the bystanders</div>
<div class='line'>In ever the same stupor (note this point)</div>
<div class='line'>That we too see not with his opened eyes.</div>
<div class='line'>Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,</div>
<div class='line'>Preposterously, at cross purposes.</div>
<div class='line'>Should his child sicken unto death,—why, look</div>
<div class='line'>For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,</div>
<div class='line'>Or pretermission of the daily craft!</div>
<div class='line'>While a word, gesture, glance from that same child</div>
<div class='line'>At play or in the school or laid asleep,</div>
<div class='line'>Will startle him to an agony of fear,</div>
<div class='line'>Exasperation, just as like. Demand</div>
<div class='line'>The reason why—“’tis but a word,” object—</div>
<div class='line'>“A gesture”—he regards thee as our lord</div>
<div class='line'>Who lived there in the pyramid alone,</div>
<div class='line'>Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,</div>
<div class='line'>We both would unadvisedly recite</div>
<div class='line'>Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his,</div>
<div class='line'>Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst</div>
<div class='line'>All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.</div>
<div class='line'>Thou and the child have each a veil alike</div>
<div class='line'>Thrown o’er your heads, from under which ye both</div>
<div class='line'>Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match</div>
<div class='line'>Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>He holds on firmly to some thread of life—</div>
<div class='line'>(It is the life to lead perforcedly)</div>
<div class='line'>Which runs across some vast distracting orb</div>
<div class='line'>Of glory on either side that meagre thread,</div>
<div class='line'>Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet—</div>
<div class='line'>The spiritual life around the earthly life:</div>
<div class='line'>The law of that is known to him as this,</div>
<div class='line'>His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.</div>
<div class='line'>So is the man perplext with impulses</div>
<div class='line'>Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,</div>
<div class='line'>Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,</div>
<div class='line'>And not along, this black thread through the blaze—</div>
<div class='line'>“It should be” baulked by “here it cannot be.”</div>
<div class='line'>And oft the man’s soul springs into his face</div>
<div class='line'>As if he saw again and heard again</div>
<div class='line'>His sage that bade him “Rise,” and he did rise.</div>
<div class='line'>Something, a word, a tick o’ the blood within</div>
<div class='line'>Admonishes: then back he sinks at once</div>
<div class='line'>To ashes, who was very fire before,</div>
<div class='line'>In sedulous recurrence to his trade</div>
<div class='line'>Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;</div>
<div class='line'>And studiously the humbler for that pride,</div>
<div class='line'>Professedly the faultier that he knows</div>
<div class='line'>God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life.</div>
<div class='line'>Indeed the especial marking of the man</div>
<div class='line'>Is prone submission to the heavenly will—</div>
<div class='line'>Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.</div>
<div class='line'>’Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last</div>
<div class='line'>For that same death which must restore his being</div>
<div class='line'>To equilibrium, body loosening soul</div>
<div class='line'>Divorced even now by premature full growth:</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live</div>
<div class='line'>So long as God please, and just how God please.</div>
<div class='line'>He even seeketh not to please God more</div>
<div class='line'>(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.</div>
<div class='line'>Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach</div>
<div class='line'>The doctrine of his sect whate’er it be,</div>
<div class='line'>Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:</div>
<div class='line'>How can he give his neighbour the real ground,</div>
<div class='line'>His own conviction? Ardent as he is—</div>
<div class='line'>Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old</div>
<div class='line'>“Be it as God please” reassureth him.</div>
<div class='line'>I probed the sore as thy disciple should:</div>
<div class='line'>“How, beast,” said I, “this stolid carelessness</div>
<div class='line'>“Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march</div>
<div class='line'>“To stamp out like a little spark thy town,</div>
<div class='line'>“Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?”</div>
<div class='line'>He merely looked with his large eyes on me.</div>
<div class='line'>The man is apathetic, you deduce?</div>
<div class='line'>Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,</div>
<div class='line'>Able and weak, affects the very brutes</div>
<div class='line'>And birds—how say I? flowers of the field—</div>
<div class='line'>As a wise workman recognises tools</div>
<div class='line'>In a master’s workshop, loving what they make.</div>
<div class='line'>Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:</div>
<div class='line'>Only impatient, let him do his best,</div>
<div class='line'>At ignorance and carelessness and sin—</div>
<div class='line'>An indignation which is promptly curbed:</div>
<div class='line'>As when in certain travel I have feigned</div>
<div class='line'>To be an ignoramus in our art</div>
<div class='line'>According to some preconceived design</div>
<div class='line'>And happed to hear the land’s practitioners</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,</div>
<div class='line'>Prattle fantastically on disease,</div>
<div class='line'>Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in2'>Thou wilt object—Why have I not ere this</div>
<div class='line'>Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene</div>
<div class='line'>Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,</div>
<div class='line'>Conferring with the frankness that befits?</div>
<div class='line'>Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech</div>
<div class='line'>Perished in a tumult many years ago,</div>
<div class='line'>Accused,—our learning’s fate,—of wizardry,</div>
<div class='line'>Rebellion, to the setting up a rule</div>
<div class='line'>And creed prodigious as described to me.</div>
<div class='line'>His death, which happened when the earthquake fell</div>
<div class='line'>(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss</div>
<div class='line'>To occult learning in our lord the sage</div>
<div class='line'>Who lived there in the pyramid alone)</div>
<div class='line'>Was wrought by the mad people—that’s their wont!</div>
<div class='line'>On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,</div>
<div class='line'>To his tried virtue, for miraculous help—</div>
<div class='line'>How could he stop the earthquake? That’s their way!</div>
<div class='line'>The other imputations must be lies:</div>
<div class='line'>But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,</div>
<div class='line'>In mere respect for any good man’s fame.</div>
<div class='line'>(And after all, our patient Lazarus</div>
<div class='line'>Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?</div>
<div class='line'>Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech</div>
<div class='line'>’Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)</div>
<div class='line'>This man so cured regards the curer, then,</div>
<div class='line'>As—God forgive me! who but God himself,</div>
<div class='line'>Creator and sustainer of the world,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile.</div>
<div class='line'>—’Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,</div>
<div class='line'>Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,</div>
<div class='line'>Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,</div>
<div class='line'>And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat,</div>
<div class='line'>And must have so avouched himself, in fact,</div>
<div class='line'>In hearing of this very Lazarus</div>
<div class='line'>Who saith—but why all this of what he saith?</div>
<div class='line'>Why write of trivial matters, things of price</div>
<div class='line'>Calling at every moment for remark?</div>
<div class='line'>I noticed on the margin of a pool</div>
<div class='line'>Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,</div>
<div class='line'>Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in2'>Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,</div>
<div class='line'>Which, now that I review it, needs must seem</div>
<div class='line'>Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!</div>
<div class='line'>Nor I myself discern in what is writ</div>
<div class='line'>Good cause for the peculiar interest</div>
<div class='line'>And awe indeed this man has touched me with.</div>
<div class='line'>Perhaps the journey’s end, the weariness</div>
<div class='line'>Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:</div>
<div class='line'>I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills</div>
<div class='line'>Like an old lion’s cheek teeth. Out there came</div>
<div class='line'>A moon made like a face with certain spots</div>
<div class='line'>Multiform, manifold and menacing:</div>
<div class='line'>Then a wind rose behind me. So we met</div>
<div class='line'>In this old sleepy town at unawares,</div>
<div class='line'>The man and I. I send thee what is writ.</div>
<div class='line'>Regard it as a chance, a matter risked</div>
<div class='line'>To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.</div>
<div class='line'>Jerusalem’s repose shall make amends</div>
<div class='line'>For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;</div>
<div class='line'>Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in2'>The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?</div>
<div class='line'>So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too—</div>
<div class='line'>So, through the thunder comes a human voice</div>
<div class='line'>Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!</div>
<div class='line'>“Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!</div>
<div class='line'>“Thou hast no power nor may’st conceive of mine:</div>
<div class='line'>“But love I gave thee, with myself to love,</div>
<div class='line'>“And thou must love me who have died for thee!”</div>
<div class='line'>The madman saith He said so: it is strange.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This most interesting and beautiful poem will afford a good illustration of
one of the cases of difficulty referred to in the Introduction. The reader is
placed in the position of one who has just found this Arabian epistle, and
must decipher and interpret it without any extraneous aid.</p>
<p class='c007'>First comes, according to Eastern custom, the name (line 1), then the
address (7), with the greeting (15), and mention of articles sent with the
letter—all in true Eastern style—with such adjuncts as give a general idea of
the school of physiology and medicine to which the writer belongs.</p>
<p class='c007'>The twenty-first letter had ended at Jericho, and here, accordingly, the
twenty-second begins. The date appears as we read on, marked by the
expedition of Vespasian and his son Titus against Jerusalem. When
Bethany is mentioned, our interest is awakened, and we wonder what is
coming; but to the writer Bethany has no such associations, as is indicated
by the light and jocular way in which he marks its distance from Jerusalem,
and carelessly proceeds to record the observations it is his main business to
make wherever he goes.</p>
<p class='c007'>Further on, however, we discover that there is something of importance
weighing on his mind, which makes him hesitate and debate as to the trustworthiness
<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>of the messenger he intends to employ; while, at the same
time, he is evidently ashamed to tell his master what is troubling him. This
accounts for his abruptly ending his letter (determining, for the moment, to
say nothing about it); then, unable to refrain, beginning again, yet still
trying to conceal the depth of his feeling, and to apologize for what appears
in spite of himself.</p>
<p class='c007'>A long account of the case follows. By this time the reader has begun
to have a pretty good idea who “the man” is that “had something in the
look of him,” and knows that it is a veritable case of one raised from the
dead. But Karshish cannot, of course, except under strong compulsion,
be expected to take this view; and, accordingly, he begins by looking at it
in a strictly professional light—“’Tis but a case of mania,” &c. He
naturally supposes that his master will set it down as an ordinary instance
of hallucination: “Such cases are diurnal, thou wilt cry.” Then he
mentions points which strike him as altogether peculiar, certain features of
the “after life” which are quite inconsistent with the idea of mania.
Instead of being the worse for his mania, this man is immeasurably the
better. Could Karshish and his master but penetrate the secret, what
physicians they would be! The scene when Lazarus is brought in by the
Elders of his tribe—who regard him as a madman, because he is living a
life so far above anything they can understand—is inimitable.</p>
<p class='c007'>In the illustration of the beggar suddenly become rich, Karshish lets
out at last that he suspects there must be some truth in the man’s story.
His patient, he observes, now measures things with no earthly measure,
seeing often the small in the great and the great in the small; looking at
everything “with larger, other eyes than ours”; accepting with perfect
equanimity the very greatest <i>sorrow</i>, yet filled with alarm at the least
gesture or look which gives token of <i>sin</i>, because to him it was like
trifling with a match over a mine of Greek fire!</p>
<p class='c007'>In the next illustration, of the thread of life across an orb of glory, the
writer seems to get still fuller insight into the reality of the case—the little
thread being, of course, the poor life in Bethany, and the vast orb of glory,
the great eternity of God, in which Lazarus was consciously living. And
here, again, we have the same lesson as in “The Boy and the Angel.”
Though conscious of the glory of the great orb, Lazarus does not despise
the little duties belonging to the thread of his earthly life. He sedulously
follows his trade whereby he earns his daily bread; indeed, the special
<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>characteristic of the man is “prone submission to the Heavenly will.”
Mark the profound suggestiveness of the lines—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“He even seeketh not to please God more</div>
<div class='line'>(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>He is so calm as to be provoking. At his inquisitor’s burst of indignation,
he shows no sign of anger or impatience—“He merely looked with his
large eyes on me.” And yet no apathy about him; a man full of loving
interest in all things. (Compare Coleridge’s well-known lines: “He
prayeth best who loveth best,” &c.)</p>
<p class='c007'>The paragraph which follows introduces us to a region familiar and
sacred to us, but foreign and inexplicable to our physician, who refers to it
from his own point of view, stigmatizing the claim of “the Nazarene who
wrought this cure” as not only false, but monstrous; and yet—and yet—and
yet—he cannot get over it; it haunts him. But still he is ashamed
to acknowledge it, and so turns abruptly from what he affects to call
“trivial matters” to “things of price,” like “blue-flowering borage”!</p>
<p class='c007'>Then he gives another elaborate apology, and tries to account for the
hold the phenomenon has taken of him by a reference to his state of body
and surroundings when first he met this Lazarus; and, accordingly, professing
to care little whether the letter reaches or not, again he closes.</p>
<p class='c007'>Yet still he cannot rest. The great thought haunts him. “The very
God! <i>think</i>, Abib.” Then follows that consummate passage with which
this magnificent poem closes.</p>
<p class='c007'>After this “Epistle” should by all means be read “A Death in the
Desert,” too long and too difficult to be inserted here. The surprise
awaiting the reader of the parchment “supposed of Pamphylax the
Antiochene” will add to the interest of a poem so full of beauty and
power.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>
<h2 class='c005'>CHRISTMAS-EVE & EASTER-DAY.</h2>
</div>
<h3 class='c014'>CHRISTMAS-EVE.</h3>
<p class='c015'>Between Christmas-Eve and Easter-Morn lies the earth history of the
Incarnate Son of God. Into the shadows of our world He came; and,
after a brief night amid its darkness, rose again into the light of heaven.
These titles then may well include the whole substance of Christianity.
Christmas suggests the thought of heaven come down to earth; Easter,
of earth raised up to heaven. “Christmas-Eve” leads naturally to the
contemplation of the Christian Faith; “Easter-Day,” to the contemplation
of the Christian Life.</p>
<p class='c007'>Each poem turns on an impressive natural phenomenon which suggests
the blending of heaven and earth—the one, of the night, a lunar rainbow;
the other, of the dawn, the aurora borealis.</p>
<p class='c007'>The speaker (who is the same throughout the former poem) begins his
Christmas-Eve experiences with the flock assembling in “Zion Chapel,” a
congregation of rude, unlettered people, worshipping with heart and soul
indeed, but with little mind and less taste. It is not from choice that
he is there. It is a stormy night of wind and rain, from which he has
taken shelter in the “lath and plaster entry” of the little meeting house.</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Five minutes full, I waited first!</div>
<div class='line'>In the doorway, to escape the rain</div>
<div class='line'>That drove in gusts down the common’s centre,</div>
<div class='line'>At the edge of which the chapel stands,</div>
<div class='line'>Before I plucked up heart to enter.</div>
<div class='line'>Heaven knows how many sorts of hands</div>
<div class='line'>Reached past me, groping for the latch</div>
<div class='line'>Of the inner door that hung on catch</div>
<div class='line'>More obstinate the more they fumbled,</div>
<div class='line'>Till, giving way at last with a scold</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled</div>
<div class='line'>One sheep more to the rest in fold,</div>
<div class='line'>And left me irresolute, standing sentry</div>
<div class='line'>In the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry,</div>
<div class='line'>Four feet long by two feet wide,</div>
<div class='line'>Partitioned off from the vast inside—</div>
<div class='line'>I blocked up half of it at least.</div>
<div class='line'>No remedy; the rain kept driving.</div>
<div class='line'>They eyed me much as some wild beast,</div>
<div class='line'>That congregation, still arriving,</div>
<div class='line'>Some of them by the main road, white</div>
<div class='line'>A long way past me into the night,</div>
<div class='line'>Skirting the common, then diverging;</div>
<div class='line'>Not a few suddenly emerging</div>
<div class='line'>From the common’s self through the paling-gaps,</div>
<div class='line'>—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,</div>
<div class='line'>Where the road stops short with its safeguard border</div>
<div class='line'>Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—</div>
<div class='line'>But the most turned in yet more abruptly</div>
<div class='line'>From a certain squalid knot of alleys,</div>
<div class='line'>Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly,</div>
<div class='line'>Which now the little chapel rallies</div>
<div class='line'>And leads into day again,—its priestliness</div>
<div class='line'>Lending itself to hide their beastliness</div>
<div class='line'>So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),</div>
<div class='line'>And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on</div>
<div class='line'>Those neophytes too much in lack of it,</div>
<div class='line'>That, where you cross the common as I did,</div>
<div class='line'>And meet the party thus presided,</div>
<div class='line'>“Mount Zion” with Love-lane at the back of it,</div>
<div class='line'>They front you as little disconcerted</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,</div>
<div class='line'>And her wicked people made to mind him,</div>
<div class='line'>Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>In the same light and humorous, half irreverent style, he proceeds to a
somewhat detailed description of the people and their uncouth worship—not
altogether a caricature, but evidently wanting in that sympathy with
the good at the heart of it, the thought of which was afterwards so strongly
borne in upon his soul. So, he “very soon had enough of it,” and gladly
“flung out of the little chapel” “into the fresh night air again.”</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>There was a lull in the rain, a lull</div>
<div class='line'>In the wind too; the moon was risen,</div>
<div class='line'>And would have shone out pure and full,</div>
<div class='line'>But for the ramparted cloud-prison,</div>
<div class='line'>Block on block built up in the West,</div>
<div class='line'>For what purpose the wind knows best,</div>
<div class='line'>Who changes his mind continually.</div>
<div class='line'>And the empty other half of the sky</div>
<div class='line'>Seemed in its silence as if it knew</div>
<div class='line'>What, any moment, might look through</div>
<div class='line'>A chance gap in that fortress massy:—</div>
<div class='line'>Through its fissures you got hints</div>
<div class='line'>Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,</div>
<div class='line'>Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy</div>
<div class='line'>Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,</div>
<div class='line'>Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow,</div>
<div class='line'>All a-simmer with intense strain</div>
<div class='line'>To let her through,—then blank again,</div>
<div class='line'>At the hope of her appearance failing.</div>
<div class='line'>Just by the chapel, a break in the railing</div>
<div class='line'>Shows a narrow path directly across;</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>’Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss—</div>
<div class='line'>Besides, you go gently all the way uphill</div>
<div class='line'>I stooped under and soon felt better;</div>
<div class='line'>My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,</div>
<div class='line'>As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.</div>
<div class='line'>My mind was full of the scene I had left,</div>
<div class='line'>That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,</div>
<div class='line'>—How this outside was pure and different!</div>
<div class='line'>The sermon, now—what a mingled weft</div>
<div class='line'>Of good and ill! Were either less,</div>
<div class='line'>Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly;</div>
<div class='line'>But alas for the excellent earnestness,</div>
<div class='line'>And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,</div>
<div class='line'>But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,</div>
<div class='line'>However to pastor and flock’s contentment!</div>
<div class='line'>Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,</div>
<div class='line'>With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,</div>
<div class='line'>Till how could you know them, grown double their size</div>
<div class='line'>In the natural fog of the good man’s mind,</div>
<div class='line'>Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,</div>
<div class='line'>Haloed about with the common’s damps?</div>
<div class='line'>Truth remains true, the fault’s in the prover;</div>
<div class='line'>The zeal was good, and the aspiration;</div>
<div class='line'>And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,</div>
<div class='line'>Pharaoh received no demonstration,</div>
<div class='line'>By his Baker’s dream of Baskets Three,</div>
<div class='line'>Of the doctrine of the Trinity,—</div>
<div class='line'>Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,</div>
<div class='line'>Apparently his hearers relished it</div>
<div class='line'>With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if</div>
<div class='line'>They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>V.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>But wherefore be harsh on a single case?</div>
<div class='line'>After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,</div>
<div class='line'>Does the selfsame weary thing take place?</div>
<div class='line'>The same endeavour to make you believe,</div>
<div class='line'>And with much the same effect, no more:</div>
<div class='line'>Each method abundantly convincing,</div>
<div class='line'>As I say, to those convinced before,</div>
<div class='line'>But scarce to be swallowed without wincing</div>
<div class='line'>By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,</div>
<div class='line'>I have my own church equally:</div>
<div class='line'>And in this church my faith sprang first!</div>
<div class='line'>(I said, as I reached the rising ground,</div>
<div class='line'>And the wind began again, with a burst</div>
<div class='line'>Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound</div>
<div class='line'>From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,</div>
<div class='line'>I entered his church-door, nature leading me)</div>
<div class='line'>—In youth I looked to these very skies,</div>
<div class='line'>And probing their immensities,</div>
<div class='line'>I found God there, his visible power;</div>
<div class='line'>Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense</div>
<div class='line'>Of the power, an equal evidence</div>
<div class='line'>That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Then follows a long and rather abstruse passage, leading up to the following
lofty and inspiring conclusion:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>So, gazing up, in my youth, at love</div>
<div class='line'>As seen through power, ever above</div>
<div class='line'>All modes which make it manifest,</div>
<div class='line'>My soul brought all to a single test—</div>
<div class='line'>That he, the Eternal First and Last,</div>
<div class='line'>Who, in his power, had so surpassed</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>All man conceives of what is might,—</div>
<div class='line'>Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,</div>
<div class='line'>—Would prove as infinitely good;</div>
<div class='line'>Would never, (my soul understood,)</div>
<div class='line'>With power to work all love desires,</div>
<div class='line'>Bestow e’en less than man requires;</div>
<div class='line'>That he who endlessly was teaching,</div>
<div class='line'>Above my spirit’s utmost reaching,</div>
<div class='line'>What love can do in the leaf or stone,</div>
<div class='line'>(So that to master this alone,</div>
<div class='line'>This done in the stone or leaf for me,</div>
<div class='line'>I must go on learning endlessly)</div>
<div class='line'>Would never need that I, in turn,</div>
<div class='line'>Should point him out defect unheeded,</div>
<div class='line'>And show that God had yet to learn</div>
<div class='line'>What the meanest human creature needed,</div>
<div class='line'>—Not life, to wit, for a few short years,</div>
<div class='line'>Tracking his way through doubts and fears,</div>
<div class='line'>While the stupid earth on which I stay</div>
<div class='line'>Suffers no change, but passive adds</div>
<div class='line'>Its myriad years to myriads,</div>
<div class='line'>Though I, he gave it to, decay,</div>
<div class='line'>Seeing death come and choose about me,</div>
<div class='line'>And my dearest ones depart without me.</div>
<div class='line'>No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,</div>
<div class='line'>Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,</div>
<div class='line'>The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,</div>
<div class='line'>Shall arise, made perfect, from death’s repose of it.</div>
<div class='line'>And I shall behold thee, face to face,</div>
<div class='line'>O God, and in thy light retrace</div>
<div class='line'>How in all I loved here, still wast thou!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,</div>
<div class='line'>I shall find as able to satiate</div>
<div class='line'>The love, thy gift, as my spirit’s wonder</div>
<div class='line'>Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,</div>
<div class='line'>With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,</div>
<div class='line'>And glory in thee for, as I gaze</div>
<div class='line'>Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways</div>
<div class='line'>Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine—</div>
<div class='line'>Be this my way! And this is mine!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The lunar rainbow, so wonderfully described in the next stanza, is the
occasion and point of departure of the poetic vision or ecstasy which
occupies the remainder of the poem—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>For lo, what think you? suddenly</div>
<div class='line'>The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky</div>
<div class='line'>Received at once the full fruition</div>
<div class='line'>Of the moon’s consummate apparition.</div>
<div class='line'>The black cloud-barricade was riven,</div>
<div class='line'>Ruined beneath her feet, and driven</div>
<div class='line'>Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,</div>
<div class='line'>North and South and East lay ready</div>
<div class='line'>For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,</div>
<div class='line'>Sprang across them and stood steady.</div>
<div class='line'>’Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,</div>
<div class='line'>From heaven to heaven extending, perfect</div>
<div class='line'>As the mother-moon’s self, full in face.</div>
<div class='line'>It rose, distinctly at the base</div>
<div class='line'>With its seven proper colours chorded,</div>
<div class='line'>Which still, in the rising, were compressed,</div>
<div class='line'>Until at last they coalesced,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>And supreme the spectral creature lorded</div>
<div class='line'>In a triumph of whitest white,—</div>
<div class='line'>Above which intervened the night.</div>
<div class='line'>But above night too, like only the next,</div>
<div class='line'>The second of a wondrous sequence,</div>
<div class='line'>Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,</div>
<div class='line'>Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,</div>
<div class='line'>Another rainbow rose, a mightier,</div>
<div class='line'>Fainter, flushier and flightier,—</div>
<div class='line'>Rapture dying along its verge.</div>
<div class='line'>Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,</div>
<div class='line'>Whose, from the straining topmost dark,</div>
<div class='line'>On to the keystone of that arc?</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>He did see One emerging from the glory—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>All at once I looked up with terror.</div>
<div class='line'>He was there,</div>
<div class='line'>He himself with his human air,</div>
<div class='line'>On the narrow pathway, just before.</div>
<div class='line'>I saw the back of him, no more—</div>
<div class='line'>He had left the chapel, then, as I.</div>
<div class='line'>I forgot all about the sky.</div>
<div class='line'>No face: only the sight</div>
<div class='line'>Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,</div>
<div class='line'>With a hem that I could recognise.</div>
<div class='line'>I felt terror, no surprise;</div>
<div class='line'>My mind filled with the cataract,</div>
<div class='line'>At one bound of the mighty fact.</div>
<div class='line'>“I remember, he did say</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>“Doubtless, that, to this world’s end,</div>
<div class='line'>“Where two or three should meet and pray,</div>
<div class='line'>“He would be in the midst, their friend;</div>
<div class='line'>“Certainly he was there with them!”</div>
<div class='line'>And my pulses leaped for joy</div>
<div class='line'>Of the golden thought without alloy,</div>
<div class='line'>That I saw his very vesture’s hem.</div>
<div class='line'>Then rushed the blood black, cold and clear,</div>
<div class='line'>With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;</div>
<div class='line'>And I hastened, cried out while I pressed</div>
<div class='line'>To the salvation of the vest,</div>
<div class='line'>“But not so, Lord! It cannot be</div>
<div class='line'>“That thou, indeed, art leaving me—</div>
<div class='line'>“Me, that have despised thy friends!”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The confession of his sin in despising <i>His</i> friends in the little chapel is
speedily followed by a gracious token of forgiveness:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>IX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The whole face turned upon me full.</div>
<div class='line'>And I spread myself beneath it,</div>
<div class='line'>As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it</div>
<div class='line'>In the cleansing sun, his wool,—</div>
<div class='line'>Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness</div>
<div class='line'>Some defiled, discoloured web—</div>
<div class='line'>So lay I, saturate with brightness.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>His sin thus purged (how exquisitely wrought out the lovely simile of the
sun-cleansed wool!), he is “caught up in the whirl and drift of the
vesture’s amplitude,” and thus clinging to the garment’s hem, is carried
across land and sea—to a scene so complete a contrast to the one he has
just left that he is confused, and some time elapses before he discovers that
he is in front of St. Peter’s at Rome:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And so we crossed the world and stopped.</div>
<div class='line'>For where am I, in city or plain,</div>
<div class='line'>Since I am ’ware of the world again?</div>
<div class='line'>And what is this that rises propped</div>
<div class='line'>With pillars of prodigious girth?</div>
<div class='line'>Is it really on the earth,</div>
<div class='line'>This miraculous Dome of God?</div>
<div class='line'>Has the angel’s measuring-rod</div>
<div class='line'>Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,</div>
<div class='line'>’Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,</div>
<div class='line'>Meted it out,—and what he meted,</div>
<div class='line'>Have the sons of men completed?</div>
<div class='line'>—Binding, ever as he bade,</div>
<div class='line'>Columns in the colonnade</div>
<div class='line'>With arms wide open to embrace</div>
<div class='line'>The entry of the human race</div>
<div class='line'>To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,</div>
<div class='line'>Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,</div>
<div class='line'>With marble for brick, and stones of price</div>
<div class='line'>For garniture of the edifice?</div>
<div class='line'>Now I see; it is no dream;</div>
<div class='line'>It stands there and it does not seem:</div>
<div class='line'>For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,</div>
<div class='line'>And thus I have read of it in books</div>
<div class='line'>Often in England, leagues away,</div>
<div class='line'>And wondered how these fountains play,</div>
<div class='line'>Growing up eternally</div>
<div class='line'>Each to a musical water-tree,</div>
<div class='line'>Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,</div>
<div class='line'>To the granite layers underneath.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>There follows a description of the worship in the great cathedral—not
now, as before, unsympathetic and merely critical, but giving evidence of
the liveliest appreciation of the feelings of the intelligent and devout
ritualist, as in the following passage:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Earth breaks up, time drops away,</div>
<div class='line'>In flows heaven, with its new day</div>
<div class='line'>Of endless life, when he who trod,</div>
<div class='line'>Very man and very God,</div>
<div class='line'>This earth in weakness, shame and pain,</div>
<div class='line'>Dying the death whose signs remain</div>
<div class='line'>Up yonder on the accursed tree,—</div>
<div class='line'>Shall come again, no more to be</div>
<div class='line'>Of captivity the thrall,</div>
<div class='line'>But the one God, All in all,</div>
<div class='line'>King of kings, Lord of lords,</div>
<div class='line'>As his servant John received the words,</div>
<div class='line'>“I died, and live for evermore!”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Still he cannot enter into it. He is left outside the door. Distracted
with conflicting emotions, his reason repelled by the superstition, his spirit
attracted by the lofty devotion which he discovers at the heart of the too
gorgeous ritual—he cannot make up his mind whether he should join them
for the one reason, or shun them for the other—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in12'>Though Rome’s gross yoke</div>
<div class='line'>Drops off, no more to be endured,</div>
<div class='line'>Her teaching is not so obscured</div>
<div class='line'>By errors and perversities,</div>
<div class='line'>That no truth shines athwart the lies:</div>
<div class='line'>And he, whose eye detects a spark</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>Even where, to man’s, the whole seems dark,</div>
<div class='line'>May well see flame where each beholder</div>
<div class='line'>Acknowledges the embers smoulder.</div>
<div class='line'>But I, a mere man, fear to quit</div>
<div class='line'>The clue God gave me as most fit</div>
<div class='line'>To guide my footsteps through life’s maze,</div>
<div class='line'>Because himself discerns all ways</div>
<div class='line'>Open to reach him: I, a man</div>
<div class='line'>Able to mark where faith began</div>
<div class='line'>To swerve aside, till from its summit</div>
<div class='line'>Judgment drops her damning plummet,</div>
<div class='line'>Pronouncing such a fatal space</div>
<div class='line'>Departed from the founder’s base:</div>
<div class='line'>He will not bid me enter too,</div>
<div class='line'>But rather sit, as now I do,</div>
<div class='line'>Awaiting his return outside.</div>
<div class='line'>—’Twas thus my reason straight replied</div>
<div class='line'>And joyously I turned, and pressed</div>
<div class='line'>The garment’s skirt upon my breast,</div>
<div class='line'>Until, afresh its light suffusing me,</div>
<div class='line'>My heart cried “What has been abusing me</div>
<div class='line'>That I should wait here lonely and coldly,</div>
<div class='line'>Instead of rising, entering boldly,</div>
<div class='line'>Baring truth’s face, and letting drift</div>
<div class='line'>Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?</div>
<div class='line'>Do these men praise him? I will raise</div>
<div class='line'>My voice up to their point of praise!</div>
<div class='line'>I see the error; but above</div>
<div class='line'>The scope of error, see the love.—</div>
<div class='line'>Oh, love of those first Christian days!</div>
<div class='line'>—Fanned so soon into a blaze,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,</div>
<div class='line'>That the antique sovereign Intellect</div>
<div class='line'>Which then sat ruling in the world,</div>
<div class='line'>Like a change in dreams, was hurled</div>
<div class='line'>From the throne he reigned upon:</div>
<div class='line'>You looked up and he was gone.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The remainder of the stanza is taken up with a most eloquent, but somewhat
difficult passage, illustrating the triumph of the new Love over the
old Culture. In the following stanza he makes up his mind that he “will feast
his love, then depart elsewhere, that his intellect may find its share”; so
the next transition, by the same mode of rapture, is to a German University.
What he sees there provokes again his latent humour:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Alone! I am left alone once more—</div>
<div class='line'>(Save for the garment’s extreme fold</div>
<div class='line'>Abandoned still to bless my hold)</div>
<div class='line'>Alone, beside the entrance-door</div>
<div class='line'>Of a sort of temple,—perhaps a college,</div>
<div class='line'>—Like nothing I ever saw before</div>
<div class='line'>At home in England, to my knowledge.</div>
<div class='line'>The tall old quaint irregular town!</div>
<div class='line'>It may be ... though which, I can’t affirm ... any</div>
<div class='line'>Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;</div>
<div class='line'>And this flight of stairs where I sit down,</div>
<div class='line'>Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort,</div>
<div class='line'>Or Göttingen, I have to thank for ’t?</div>
<div class='line'>It may be Göttingen,—most likely.</div>
<div class='line'>Through the open door I catch obliquely</div>
<div class='line'>Glimpses of a lecture-hall;</div>
<div class='line'>And not a bad assembly neither,</div>
<div class='line'>Ranged decent and symmetrical</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>On benches, waiting what’s to see there;</div>
<div class='line'>Which, holding still by the vesture’s hem,</div>
<div class='line'>I also resolve to see with them,</div>
<div class='line'>Cautious this time how I suffer to slip</div>
<div class='line'>The chance of joining in fellowship</div>
<div class='line'>With any that call themselves his friends;</div>
<div class='line'>As these folks do, I have a notion.</div>
<div class='line'>But hist—a buzzing and emotion!</div>
<div class='line'>All settle themselves, the while ascends</div>
<div class='line'>By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,</div>
<div class='line'>Step by step, deliberate</div>
<div class='line'>Because of his cranium’s over-freight,</div>
<div class='line'>Three parts sublime to one grotesque,</div>
<div class='line'>If I have proved an accurate guesser,</div>
<div class='line'>The hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned Professor.</div>
<div class='line'>I felt at once as if there ran</div>
<div class='line'>A shoot of love from my heart to the man—</div>
<div class='line'>That sallow virgin-minded studious</div>
<div class='line'>Martyr to mild enthusiasm,</div>
<div class='line'>As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious</div>
<div class='line'>That woke my sympathetic spasm,</div>
<div class='line'>(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)</div>
<div class='line'>And stood, surveying his auditory</div>
<div class='line'>With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,—</div>
<div class='line'>Those blue eyes had survived so much!</div>
<div class='line'>While, under the foot they could not smutch,</div>
<div class='line'>Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.</div>
<div class='line'>Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,</div>
<div class='line'>Till the auditory’s clearing of throats</div>
<div class='line'>Was done with, died into a silence;</div>
<div class='line'>And, when each glance was upward sent,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>Each bearded mouth composed intent,</div>
<div class='line'>And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence</div>
<div class='line'>He pushed back higher his spectacles,</div>
<div class='line'>Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,</div>
<div class='line'>And giving his head of hair—a hake</div>
<div class='line'>Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity—</div>
<div class='line'>One rapid and impatient shake,</div>
<div class='line'>(As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie</div>
<div class='line'>When about to impart, on mature digestion,</div>
<div class='line'>Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)</div>
<div class='line'>—The Professor’s grave voice, sweet though hoarse,</div>
<div class='line'>Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The stanza which follows gives an account of the discourse, which is a
learned discussion of “this Myth of Christ,” “which, when reason had
strained and abated it of foreign matter, left, for residuum, a man!—a
right true man,” but nothing more. He has no difficulty in determining
his duty here (“this time He would not bid me enter.”) The religious
atmosphere in which Papist and Dissenter live may be far from pure, in the
one case for one reason, and in the other for the opposite; but either of
the two is immeasurably better than the vacuum left when the Critic has
done his work of destruction. Then follows a long argument to show the
unreasonableness of denying the divinity of Christ, only a part of which
can be given here.</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>This time he would not bid me enter</div>
<div class='line'>The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.</div>
<div class='line'>Truth’s atmosphere may grow mephitic</div>
<div class='line'>When Papist struggles with Dissenter,</div>
<div class='line'>Impregnating its pristine clarity,</div>
<div class='line'>—One, by his daily fare’s vulgarity,</div>
<div class='line'>Its gust of broken meat and garlic;</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>—One, by his soul’s too-much presuming</div>
<div class='line'>To turn the frankincense’s fuming</div>
<div class='line'>And vapours of the candle starlike</div>
<div class='line'>Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.</div>
<div class='line'>Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,</div>
<div class='line'>May poison it for healthy breathing—</div>
<div class='line'>But the Critic leaves no air to poison;</div>
<div class='line'>Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity</div>
<div class='line'>Atom by atom, and leaves you—vacuity.</div>
<div class='line'>Thus much of Christ, does he reject?</div>
<div class='line'>And what retain? His intellect?</div>
<div class='line'>What is it I must reverence duly?</div>
<div class='line'>Poor intellect for worship, truly,</div>
<div class='line'>Which tells me simply what was told</div>
<div class='line'>(If mere morality, bereft</div>
<div class='line'>Of the God in Christ, be all that’s left)</div>
<div class='line'>Elsewhere by voices manifold;</div>
<div class='line'>With this advantage, that the stater</div>
<div class='line'>Made nowise the important stumble</div>
<div class='line'>Of adding, he, the sage and humble,</div>
<div class='line'>Was also one with the Creator.</div>
<div class='line'>You urge Christ’s followers’ simplicity:</div>
<div class='line'>But how does shifting blame, evade it?</div>
<div class='line'>Have wisdom’s words no more felicity?</div>
<div class='line'>The stumbling-block, his speech—who laid it?</div>
<div class='line'>How comes it that for one found able</div>
<div class='line'>To sift the truth of it from fable,</div>
<div class='line'>Millions believe it to the letter?</div>
<div class='line'>Christ’s goodness, then—does that fare better?</div>
<div class='line'>Strange goodness, which upon the score</div>
<div class='line'>Of being goodness, the mere due</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>Of man to fellow-man, much more</div>
<div class='line'>To God,—should take another view</div>
<div class='line'>Of its possessor’s privilege,</div>
<div class='line'>And bid him rule his race! You pledge</div>
<div class='line'>Your fealty to such rule? What, all—</div>
<div class='line'>From heavenly John and Attic Paul,</div>
<div class='line'>And that brave weather-battered Peter</div>
<div class='line'>Whose stout faith only stood completer</div>
<div class='line'>For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,</div>
<div class='line'>As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,—</div>
<div class='line'>All, down to you, the man of men,</div>
<div class='line'>Professing here at Göttingen,</div>
<div class='line'>Compose Christ’s flock! They, you and I,</div>
<div class='line'>Are sheep of a good man!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Reasonings that grow out of the main discussion are continued throughout
stanzas 17-20, till once more he is caught up and carried back to his
original starting point. The remainder of the poem can now be given
without interruption, and will be readily understood. (The exquisite
development of the simile of the cup and the water will be specially noted,
as also the charitable wish so strikingly expressed on behalf of the poor
Professor, that before the end comes he may know Christ as “the God of
salvation.”)</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in18'>And I caught</div>
<div class='line'>At the flying robe, and unrepelled</div>
<div class='line'>Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught</div>
<div class='line'>With warmth and wonder and delight,</div>
<div class='line'>God’s mercy being infinite.</div>
<div class='line'>For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,</div>
<div class='line'>When, at a passionate bound, I sprung</div>
<div class='line'>Out of the wandering world of rain,</div>
<div class='line'>Into the little chapel again.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>XXII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>How else was I found there, bolt upright.</div>
<div class='line'>On my bench, as if I had never left it?</div>
<div class='line'>—Never flung out on the common at night</div>
<div class='line'>Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,</div>
<div class='line'>Seen the raree-show of Peter’s successor,</div>
<div class='line'>Or the laboratory of the Professor!</div>
<div class='line'>For the Vision, that was true, I wist,</div>
<div class='line'>True as that heaven and earth exist.</div>
<div class='line'>There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,</div>
<div class='line'>With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;</div>
<div class='line'>Yet my nearest neighbour’s cheek showed gall.</div>
<div class='line'>She had slid away a contemptuous space:</div>
<div class='line'>And the old fat woman, late so placable,</div>
<div class='line'>Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,</div>
<div class='line'>Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.</div>
<div class='line'>In short, a spectator might have fancied</div>
<div class='line'>That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,</div>
<div class='line'>Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,</div>
<div class='line'>Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,</div>
<div class='line'>And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.</div>
<div class='line'>But again, could such disgrace have happened?</div>
<div class='line'>Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;</div>
<div class='line'>And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?</div>
<div class='line'>Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?</div>
<div class='line'>Could I report as I do at the close,</div>
<div class='line'>First, the preacher speaks through his nose:</div>
<div class='line'>Second, his gesture is too emphatic:</div>
<div class='line'>Thirdly, to waive what’s pedagogic,</div>
<div class='line'>The subject-matter itself lacks logic:</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.</div>
<div class='line'>Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,</div>
<div class='line'>Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call</div>
<div class='line'>Of making square to a finite eye</div>
<div class='line'>The circle of infinity,</div>
<div class='line'>And find so all-but-just-succeeding!</div>
<div class='line'>Great news! the sermon proves no reading</div>
<div class='line'>Where bee-like in the flowers I may bury me,</div>
<div class='line'>Like Taylor’s the immortal Jeremy!</div>
<div class='line'>And now that I know the very worst of him,</div>
<div class='line'>What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?</div>
<div class='line'>Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?</div>
<div class='line'>Shall I take on me to change his tasks,</div>
<div class='line'>And dare, despatched to a river-head</div>
<div class='line'>For a simple draught of the element,</div>
<div class='line'>Neglect the thing for which he sent,</div>
<div class='line'>And return with another thing instead?—</div>
<div class='line'>Saying, “Because the water found</div>
<div class='line'>“Welling up from underground,</div>
<div class='line'>“Is mingled with the taints of earth,</div>
<div class='line'>“While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,</div>
<div class='line'>“And couldst, at wink or word, convulse</div>
<div class='line'>“The world with the leap of a river-pulse,—</div>
<div class='line'>“Therefore, I turned from the oozings muddy,</div>
<div class='line'>“And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:</div>
<div class='line'>“See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!</div>
<div class='line'>“One would suppose that the marble bled.</div>
<div class='line'>“What matters the water? A hope I have nursed</div>
<div class='line'>“The waterless cup will quench my thirst.”</div>
<div class='line'>—Better have knelt at the poorest stream</div>
<div class='line'>That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>For the less or the more is all God’s gift,</div>
<div class='line'>Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.</div>
<div class='line'>And here, is there water or not, to drink?</div>
<div class='line'>I then, in ignorance and weakness,</div>
<div class='line'>Taking God’s help, have attained to think</div>
<div class='line'>My heart does best to receive in meekness</div>
<div class='line'>That mode of worship, as most to his mind,</div>
<div class='line'>Where, earthly aids being cast behind,</div>
<div class='line'>His All in All appears serene</div>
<div class='line'>With the thinnest human veil between,</div>
<div class='line'>Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,</div>
<div class='line'>The many motions of his spirit,</div>
<div class='line'>Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.</div>
<div class='line'>For the preacher’s merit or demerit,</div>
<div class='line'>It were to be wished the flaws were fewer</div>
<div class='line'>In the earthern vessel, holding treasure,</div>
<div class='line'>Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;</div>
<div class='line'>But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?</div>
<div class='line'>Heaven soon sets right all other matters!—</div>
<div class='line'>Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,</div>
<div class='line'>This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,</div>
<div class='line'>This soul at struggle with insanity,</div>
<div class='line'>Who thence take comfort, can I doubt?</div>
<div class='line'>Which an empire gained, were a loss without.</div>
<div class='line'>May it be mine! And let us hope</div>
<div class='line'>That no worse blessing befall the Pope,</div>
<div class='line'>Turn’d sick at last of to-day’s buffoonery,</div>
<div class='line'>Of posturings and petticoatings,</div>
<div class='line'>Beside his Bourbon bully’s gloatings</div>
<div class='line'>In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!</div>
<div class='line'>Nor may the Professor forego its peace</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>At Göttingen presently, when, in the dusk</div>
<div class='line'>Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase</div>
<div class='line'>Prophesied of by that horrible husk—</div>
<div class='line'>When thicker and thicker the darkness fills</div>
<div class='line'>The world through his misty spectacles,</div>
<div class='line'>And he gropes for something more substantial</div>
<div class='line'>Than a fable, myth or personification,—</div>
<div class='line'>May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,</div>
<div class='line'>And stand confessed as the God of salvation!</div>
<div class='line'>Meantime, in the still recurring fear</div>
<div class='line'>Lest myself, at unawares, be found,</div>
<div class='line'>While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,</div>
<div class='line'>With none of my own made—I choose here!</div>
<div class='line'>The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;</div>
<div class='line'>I have done: and if any blames me,</div>
<div class='line'>Thinking that merely to touch in brevity</div>
<div class='line'>The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,—</div>
<div class='line'>Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,</div>
<div class='line'>On the bounds of the holy and the awful,—</div>
<div class='line'>I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,</div>
<div class='line'>And refer myself to <span class='sc'>Thee</span>, instead of him,</div>
<div class='line'>Who head and heart alike discernest,</div>
<div class='line'>Looking below light speech we utter,</div>
<div class='line'>When frothy spume and frequent sputter</div>
<div class='line'>Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest!</div>
<div class='line'>May truth shine out, stand ever before us!</div>
<div class='line'>I put up pencil and join chorus</div>
<div class='line'>To Hepzibah tune, without further apology,</div>
<div class='line'>The last five verses of the third section</div>
<div class='line'>Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield’s Collection,</div>
<div class='line'>To conclude with the doxology.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>
<h3 class='c014'>EASTER-DAY.</h3>
</div>
<p class='c015'>As Christmas-Eve has suggested the subject of the Christian Faith,
Easter-Day gives occasion to a discussion concerning the Christian Life—the
life of those who are “risen with Christ.” The poem is in substance a
conversation or discussion between two persons, one of whom (a thorough
Christian) finds it very hard, while the other (who takes a much lower and
more common-place view of spiritual things) thinks it quite easy, to be a
Christian. It is not, however, in the form of a conversation. As usual in
Browning’s work, one speaks, stating his own views and quoting the other’s,
which are therefore distinguished from his own (except when he quotes, as
he sometimes does, from himself) by quotation marks. The argument is
too abstruse to be followed out in all its ramifications; but enough of it
can be given to render quite intelligible the extracts from it which we find it
possible to give. The opening sentence will give the theme:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>I.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>How very hard it is to be</div>
<div class='line'>A Christian! Hard for you and me,</div>
<div class='line'>—Not the mere task of making real</div>
<div class='line'>That duty up to its ideal,</div>
<div class='line'>Effecting thus, complete and whole,</div>
<div class='line'>A purpose of the human soul—</div>
<div class='line'>For that is always hard to do;</div>
<div class='line'>But hard, I mean, for me and you</div>
<div class='line'>To realize it, more or less,</div>
<div class='line'>With even the moderate success</div>
<div class='line'>Which commonly repays our strife</div>
<div class='line'>To carry out the aims of life.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>After some preliminary discussion about faith in its relation to life, the
easy-going friend takes this position:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>VI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in8'>“Renounce the world!</div>
<div class='line'>“Were that a mighty hardship? Plan</div>
<div class='line'>“A pleasant life, and straight some man</div>
<div class='line'>“Beside you, with, if he thought fit,</div>
<div class='line'>“Abundant means to compass it,</div>
<div class='line'>“Shall turn deliberate aside</div>
<div class='line'>“To try and live as, if you tried</div>
<div class='line'>“You clearly might, yet most despise.</div>
<div class='line'>“One friend of mine wears out his eyes,</div>
<div class='line'>“Slighting the stupid joys of sense,</div>
<div class='line'>“In patient hope that, ten years hence,</div>
<div class='line'>“‘Somewhat completer,’ he may say,</div>
<div class='line'>“‘My list of <i>coleoptera</i>!’</div>
<div class='line'>“While just the other who most laughs</div>
<div class='line'>“At him, above all epitaphs</div>
<div class='line'>“Aspires to have his tomb describe</div>
<div class='line'>“Himself as sole among the tribe</div>
<div class='line'>“Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed</div>
<div class='line'>“A Grignon with the Regent’s crest.</div>
<div class='line'>“So that, subduing, as you want,</div>
<div class='line'>“Whatever stands predominant</div>
<div class='line'>“Among my earthly appetites</div>
<div class='line'>“For tastes and smells and sounds and sights,</div>
<div class='line'>“I shall be doing that alone,</div>
<div class='line'>“To gain a palm-branch and a throne,</div>
<div class='line'>“Which fifty people undertake</div>
<div class='line'>“To do, and gladly, for the sake</div>
<div class='line'>“Of giving a Semitic guess,</div>
<div class='line'>“Or playing pawns at blindfold chess.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>The stanza which follows gives the speaker’s answer, ending with this
striking passage:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Renounce the world!”—Ah, were it done</div>
<div class='line'>By merely cutting one by one</div>
<div class='line'>Your limbs off, with your wise head last,</div>
<div class='line'>How easy were it!—how soon past,</div>
<div class='line'>If once in the believing mood!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>To which the other replies by reproaching him for ingratitude to God,
who really asks us to give up nothing that is good, but only to observe such
moderation in our pleasures that life is all the more enjoyable, while sorrow
almost disappears, transfigured in the light of love. This answer has such
a ring of the true metal in it, that the speaker begins his rejoinder with the
question, “Do you say this, or I?” and then proceeds (in a passage of
wonderful power) to expose the superficiality of the view he is endeavouring
to support.</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>VIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Do you say this, or I?—Oh, you!</div>
<div class='line'>Then, what, my friend?—(thus I pursue</div>
<div class='line'>Our parley)—you indeed opine</div>
<div class='line'>That the Eternal and Divine</div>
<div class='line'>Did, eighteen centuries ago,</div>
<div class='line'>In very truth.... Enough! you know</div>
<div class='line'>The all-stupendous tale,—that Birth,</div>
<div class='line'>That Life, that Death! And all, the earth</div>
<div class='line'>Shuddered at,—all, the heavens grew black</div>
<div class='line'>Rather than see; all, nature’s rack</div>
<div class='line'>And throe at dissolution’s brink</div>
<div class='line'>Attested,—all took place, you think,</div>
<div class='line'>Only to give our joys a zest,</div>
<div class='line'>And prove our sorrows for the best?</div>
<div class='line'>We differ, then! Were I, still pale</div>
<div class='line'>And heartstruck at the dreadful tale,</div>
<div class='line'>Waiting to hear God’s voice declare</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>What horror followed for my share,</div>
<div class='line'>As implicated in the deed,</div>
<div class='line'>Apart from other sins,—concede</div>
<div class='line'>That if he blacked out in a blot</div>
<div class='line'>My brief life’s pleasantness, ’twere not</div>
<div class='line'>So very disproportionate!</div>
<div class='line'>Or there might be another fate—</div>
<div class='line'>I certainly could understand</div>
<div class='line'>(If fancies were the thing in hand)</div>
<div class='line'>How God might save, at that day’s price,</div>
<div class='line'>The impure in their impurities,</div>
<div class='line'>Give formal licence and complete</div>
<div class='line'>To choose the fair and pick the sweet.</div>
<div class='line'>But there be certain words, broad, plain,</div>
<div class='line'>Uttered again and yet again,</div>
<div class='line'>Hard to mistake or overgloss—</div>
<div class='line'>Announcing this world’s gain for loss,</div>
<div class='line'>And bidding us reject the same:</div>
<div class='line'>The whole world lieth (they proclaim)</div>
<div class='line'>In wickedness,—come out of it!</div>
<div class='line'>Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit,</div>
<div class='line'>But I who thrill through every nerve</div>
<div class='line'>At thought of what deaf ears deserve,—</div>
<div class='line'>How do you counsel in the case?</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The counsel was, to choose by all means the safe side, by giving up everything
as literally as did the martyrs in the early days of persecution; at
which a shudder of doubt comes over him, and he answers (note the very
remarkable illustration of the moles and the grasshoppers):—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>X.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>If after all we should mistake,</div>
<div class='line'>And so renounce life for the sake</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>Of death and nothing else? You hear</div>
<div class='line'>Our friends we jeered at, send the jeer</div>
<div class='line'>Back to ourselves with good effect—</div>
<div class='line'>“There were my beetles to collect!</div>
<div class='line'>“My box—a trifle, I confess,</div>
<div class='line'>“But here I hold it, ne’ertheless!”</div>
<div class='line'>Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart</div>
<div class='line'>And answer) we, the better part</div>
<div class='line'>Have chosen, though ’twere only hope,—</div>
<div class='line'>Nor envy moles like you that grope</div>
<div class='line'>Amid your veritable muck,</div>
<div class='line'>More than the grasshoppers would truck,</div>
<div class='line'>For yours, their passionate life away,</div>
<div class='line'>That spends itself in leaps all day</div>
<div class='line'>To reach the sun, you want the eyes</div>
<div class='line'>To see, as they the wings to rise</div>
<div class='line'>And match the noble hearts of them!</div>
<div class='line'>Thus the contemner we contemn,—</div>
<div class='line'>And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward</div>
<div class='line'>Its stroke off, caught upon our guard,</div>
<div class='line'>—Not struck enough to overturn</div>
<div class='line'>Our faith, but shake it—make us learn</div>
<div class='line'>What I began with, and, I wis,</div>
<div class='line'>End, having proved,—how hard it is</div>
<div class='line'>To be a Christian!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>His friend now reproaches him with the thanklessness of the task he is
undertaking, in trying to so little purpose to disturb the peace of a man
who has no such high-flown views of duty; whereupon he relates to him a
wonderful experience he had on Easter-morn three years before:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in16'>I commence</div>
<div class='line'>By trying to inform you, whence</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>It comes that every Easter-night</div>
<div class='line'>As now, I sit up, watch, till light,</div>
<div class='line'>Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs,</div>
<div class='line'>Give, through my window-pane, grey proofs</div>
<div class='line'>That Easter-day is breaking slow.</div>
<div class='line'>On such a night three years ago,</div>
<div class='line'>It chanced that I had cause to cross</div>
<div class='line'>The common, where the chapel was,</div>
<div class='line'>Our friend spoke of, the other day—</div>
<div class='line'>You’ve not forgotten, I dare say.</div>
<div class='line'>I fell to musing of the time</div>
<div class='line'>So close, the blessed matin-prime</div>
<div class='line'>All hearts leap up at, in some guise—</div>
<div class='line'>One could not well do otherwise.</div>
<div class='line'>Insensibly my thoughts were bent</div>
<div class='line'>Toward the main point; I overwent</div>
<div class='line'>Much the same ground of reasoning</div>
<div class='line'>As you and I just now. One thing</div>
<div class='line'>Remained, however—one that tasked</div>
<div class='line'>My soul to answer; and I asked,</div>
<div class='line'>Fairly and frankly, what might be</div>
<div class='line'>That History, that Faith, to me</div>
<div class='line'>—Me there—not me in some domain</div>
<div class='line'>Built up and peopled by my brain,</div>
<div class='line'>Weighing its merits as one weighs</div>
<div class='line'>Mere theories for blame or praise,</div>
<div class='line'>—The kingcraft of the Lucumons,</div>
<div class='line'>Or Fourier’s scheme, its pros and cons,—</div>
<div class='line'>But my faith there, or none at all.</div>
<div class='line'>“How were my case, now, did I fall</div>
<div class='line'>“Dead here, this minute—should I lie</div>
<div class='line'>“Faithful or faithless?”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>To this solemn question a friendly answer seems to come from Common
Sense, assuring him that all would be right; for, though his ship might not
sail very grandly into the eternal haven, it was enough if, in whatever state
of wreck, it arrived at all; which leads him to utter the deepest wish and
expectation of his heart:—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in10'>Would the ship reach home!</div>
<div class='line'>I wish indeed “God’s kingdom come—”</div>
<div class='line'>The day when I shall see appear</div>
<div class='line'>His bidding, as my duty, clear</div>
<div class='line'>From doubt! And it shall dawn, that day,</div>
<div class='line'>Some future season; Easter may</div>
<div class='line'>Prove, not impossibly, the time—</div>
<div class='line'>Yes, that were striking—fates would chime</div>
<div class='line'>So aptly! Easter-morn, to bring</div>
<div class='line'>The Judgment!—deeper in the spring</div>
<div class='line'>Than now, however, when there’s snow</div>
<div class='line'>Capping the hills; for earth must show</div>
<div class='line'>All signs of meaning to pursue</div>
<div class='line'>Her tasks as she was wont to do</div>
<div class='line'>—The skylark, taken by surprise</div>
<div class='line'>As we ourselves, shall recognise</div>
<div class='line'>Sudden the end. For suddenly</div>
<div class='line'>It comes; the dreadfulness must be</div>
<div class='line'>In that; all warrants the belief—</div>
<div class='line'>“At night it cometh like a thief,”</div>
<div class='line'>I fancy why the trumpet blows;</div>
<div class='line'>—Plainly, to wake one. From repose</div>
<div class='line'>We shall start up, at last awake</div>
<div class='line'>From life, that insane dream we take</div>
<div class='line'>For waking now.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The next stanza gives the famous description of the fiery aurora, when
even “the south firmament with north-fire did its wings refledge!” (Compare
description of lunar rainbow in “Christmas-Eve.”) He feels sure
that his wish is realized, and the Judgment Day has come!</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'><span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>XV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in24'>I found</div>
<div class='line'>Suddenly all the midnight round</div>
<div class='line'>One fire. The dome of heaven had stood</div>
<div class='line'>As made up of a multitude</div>
<div class='line'>Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack</div>
<div class='line'>Of ripples infinite and black,</div>
<div class='line'>From sky to sky. Sudden there went,</div>
<div class='line'>Like horror and astonishment,</div>
<div class='line'>A fierce vindictive scribble of red</div>
<div class='line'>Quick flame across, as if one said</div>
<div class='line'>(The angry scribe of Judgment) “There—</div>
<div class='line'>“Burn it!” And straight I was aware</div>
<div class='line'>That the whole ribwork round, minute</div>
<div class='line'>Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,</div>
<div class='line'>Was tinted, each with its own spot</div>
<div class='line'>Of burning at the core, till clot</div>
<div class='line'>Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire</div>
<div class='line'>Over all heaven, which ’gan suspire</div>
<div class='line'>As fanned to measure equable,—</div>
<div class='line'>Just so great conflagrations kill</div>
<div class='line'>Night overhead, and rise and sink,</div>
<div class='line'>Reflected. Now the fire would shrink</div>
<div class='line'>And wither off the blasted face</div>
<div class='line'>Of heaven, and I distinct might trace</div>
<div class='line'>The sharp black ridgy outlines left</div>
<div class='line'>Unburned like network—then, each cleft</div>
<div class='line'>The fire had been sucked back into,</div>
<div class='line'>Regorged, and out it surging flew</div>
<div class='line'>Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>Till, tolerating to be tamed</div>
<div class='line'>No longer, certain rays world-wide</div>
<div class='line'>Shot downwardly. On every side</div>
<div class='line'>Caught past escape, the earth was lit;</div>
<div class='line'>As if a dragon’s nostril split,</div>
<div class='line'>And all his famished ire o’erflowed;</div>
<div class='line'>Then as he winced at his lord’s goad,</div>
<div class='line'>Back he inhaled: whereat I found</div>
<div class='line'>The clouds into vast pillars bound,</div>
<div class='line'>Based on the corners of the earth,</div>
<div class='line'>Propping the skies at top: a dearth</div>
<div class='line'>Of fire i’ the violet intervals,</div>
<div class='line'>Leaving exposed the utmost walls</div>
<div class='line'>Of time, about to tumble in</div>
<div class='line'>And end the world.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in18'>I felt begin</div>
<div class='line'>The Judgment-Day: to retrocede</div>
<div class='line'>Was too late now. “In very deed,”</div>
<div class='line'>(I uttered to myself) “that Day!”</div>
<div class='line'>The intuition burned away</div>
<div class='line'>All darkness from my spirit too:</div>
<div class='line'>There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,</div>
<div class='line'>Choosing the world. The choice was made;</div>
<div class='line'>And naked and disguiseless stayed,</div>
<div class='line'>And unevadable, the fact.</div>
<div class='line'>My brain held ne’ertheless compact</div>
<div class='line'>Its senses, nor my heart declined</div>
<div class='line'>Its office; rather, both combined</div>
<div class='line'>To help me in this juncture. I</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>Lost not a second,—agony</div>
<div class='line'>Gave boldness: since my life had end</div>
<div class='line'>And my choice with it—best defend,</div>
<div class='line'>Applaud both! I resolved to say,</div>
<div class='line'>“So was I framed by thee, such way</div>
<div class='line'>“I put to use thy senses here!</div>
<div class='line'>“It was so beautiful, so near,</div>
<div class='line'>“Thy world,—what could I then but choose</div>
<div class='line'>“My part there? Nor did I refuse</div>
<div class='line'>“To look above the transient boon</div>
<div class='line'>“Of time; but it was hard so soon</div>
<div class='line'>“As in a short life, to give up</div>
<div class='line'>“Such beauty: I could put the cup</div>
<div class='line'>“Undrained of half its fulness, by;</div>
<div class='line'>“But, to renounce it utterly,</div>
<div class='line'>“—That was too hard! Nor did the cry</div>
<div class='line'>“Which bade renounce it, touch my brain</div>
<div class='line'>“Authentically deep and plain</div>
<div class='line'>“Enough to make my lips let go.</div>
<div class='line'>“But thou, who knowest all, dost know</div>
<div class='line'>“Whether I was not, life’s brief while,</div>
<div class='line'>“Endeavouring to reconcile</div>
<div class='line'>“Those lips (too tardily, alas!)</div>
<div class='line'>“To letting the dear remnant pass,</div>
<div class='line'>“One day,—some drops of earthly good</div>
<div class='line'>“Untasted! Is it for this mood,</div>
<div class='line'>“That thou, whose earth delights so well,</div>
<div class='line'>“Hast made its complement a hell?”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XVII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>A final belch of fire like blood,</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>Overbroke all heaven in one flood</div>
<div class='line'>Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky</div>
<div class='line'>Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,</div>
<div class='line'>Then ashes. But I heard no noise</div>
<div class='line'>(Whatever was) because a voice</div>
<div class='line'>Beside me spoke thus, “Life is done,</div>
<div class='line'>“Time ends, Eternity’s begun,</div>
<div class='line'>“And thou art judged for evermore.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>As in “Christmas-Eve,” the question rises of a Presence in the awful
scene.</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XIX.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in16'>What if, ’twixt skies</div>
<div class='line'>And prostrate earth, he should surprise</div>
<div class='line'>The imaged vapour, head to foot,</div>
<div class='line'>Surveying, motionless and mute,</div>
<div class='line'>Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt</div>
<div class='line'>It vanish up again?—So hapt</div>
<div class='line'>My chance. <span class='sc'>He</span> stood there. Like the smoke</div>
<div class='line'>Pillared o’er Sodom, when day broke,—</div>
<div class='line'>I saw him. One magnific pall</div>
<div class='line'>Mantled in massive fold and fall</div>
<div class='line'>His head, and coiled in snaky swathes</div>
<div class='line'>About his feet: night’s black, that bathes</div>
<div class='line'>All else, broke, grizzled with despair,</div>
<div class='line'>Against the soul of blackness there.</div>
<div class='line'>A gesture told the mood within—</div>
<div class='line'>That wrapped right hand which based the chin</div>
<div class='line'>That intense meditation fixed</div>
<div class='line'>On his procedure,—pity mixed</div>
<div class='line'>With the fulfilment of decree.</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>Motionless, thus, he spoke to me,</div>
<div class='line'>Who fell before his feet, a mass,</div>
<div class='line'>No man now.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Then follows the Sentence, excluding him from the heaven of spirit, and
leaving him to the world of sense, hopeless for ever of anything higher—a
sentence which seemed to him at first to be rather a reward than a punishment,
as he thought of “earth’s resources—vast exhaustless beauty, endless
change of wonder!” Even a fern-leaf a museum in itself!</p>
<p class='c007'>The answer of the Voice to this shallow thought leads us into the very
loftiest regions of the imagination, suggesting views of the future of the
redeemed which make the soul thrill with eager expectancy—</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXIV.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then the Voice, “Welcome so to rate</div>
<div class='line'>“The arras-folds that variegate</div>
<div class='line'>“The earth, God’s antechamber, well!</div>
<div class='line'>“The wise, who waited there, could tell</div>
<div class='line'>“By these, what royalties in store</div>
<div class='line'>“Lay one step past the entrance-door.</div>
<div class='line'>“For whom, was reckoned, not too much,</div>
<div class='line'>“This life’s munificence? For such</div>
<div class='line'>“As thou,—a race, whereof scarce one</div>
<div class='line'>“Was able, in a million,</div>
<div class='line'>“To feel that any marvel lay</div>
<div class='line'>“In objects round his feet all day;</div>
<div class='line'>“Scarce one in many millions more,</div>
<div class='line'>“Willing, if able, to explore</div>
<div class='line'>“The secreter, minuter charm!</div>
<div class='line'>“—Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm</div>
<div class='line'>“Of power to cope with God’s intent,—</div>
<div class='line'>“Or scared if the south firmament</div>
<div class='line'>“With north-fire did its wings refledge!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>“All partial beauty was a pledge</div>
<div class='line'>“Of beauty in its plenitude:</div>
<div class='line'>“But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,</div>
<div class='line'>“Retain it! plenitude be theirs</div>
<div class='line'>“Who looked above!”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>At this answer “sharp despairs shot through” him, at the thought of
what he had missed; but on reflection he finds comfort in the prospect of the
possibilities of Art. Again the inexorable voice is heard, pronouncing loss
unspeakable. Even if he could be a Michelangelo (Buonarroti), it would
be only the initial earthly stage of his development that was possible for
him. (The whole passage is magnificent; but perhaps the exquisitely
wrought-out illustration of the lizard in its narrow rock-chamber will be
most enjoyed.)</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXVI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> * * * * *</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“If such his soul’s capacities,</div>
<div class='line'>“Even while he trod the earth,—think, now,</div>
<div class='line'>“What pomp in Buonarroti’s brow,</div>
<div class='line'>“With its new palace-brain where dwells</div>
<div class='line'>“Superb the soul, unvexed by cells</div>
<div class='line'>“That crumbled with the transient clay!</div>
<div class='line'>“What visions will his right hand’s sway</div>
<div class='line'>“Still turn to form, as still they burst</div>
<div class='line'>“Upon him? How will he quench thirst,</div>
<div class='line'>“Titanically infantine,</div>
<div class='line'>“Laid at the breast of the Divine?</div>
<div class='line'>“Does it confound thee,—this first page</div>
<div class='line'>“Emblazoning man’s heritage?—</div>
<div class='line'>“Can this alone absorb thy sight,</div>
<div class='line'>“As pages were not infinite,—</div>
<div class='line'>“Like the omnipotence which tasks</div>
<div class='line'>“Itself, to furnish all that asks</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>“The soul it means to satiate?</div>
<div class='line'>“What was the world, the starry state</div>
<div class='line'>“Of the broad skies,—what, all displays</div>
<div class='line'>“Of power and beauty intermixed,</div>
<div class='line'>“Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,—</div>
<div class='line'>“What else than needful furniture</div>
<div class='line'>“For life’s first stage? God’s work, be sure,</div>
<div class='line'>“No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!</div>
<div class='line'>“He filled, did not exceed, man’s want</div>
<div class='line'>“Of beauty in this life. But through</div>
<div class='line'>“Life pierce,—and what has earth to do,</div>
<div class='line'>“Its utmost beauty’s appanage,</div>
<div class='line'>“With the requirement of next stage?</div>
<div class='line'>“Did God pronounce earth ‘very good’?</div>
<div class='line'>“Needs must it be, while understood</div>
<div class='line'>“For man’s preparatory state;</div>
<div class='line'>“Nothing to heighten nor abate:</div>
<div class='line'>“Transfer the same completeness here,</div>
<div class='line'>“To serve a new state’s use,—and drear</div>
<div class='line'>“Deficiency gapes every side!</div>
<div class='line'>“The good, tried once, were bad, retried.</div>
<div class='line'>“See the enwrapping rocky niche,</div>
<div class='line'>“Sufficient for the sleep, in which</div>
<div class='line'>“The lizard breathes for ages safe:</div>
<div class='line'>“Split the mould—and as this would chafe</div>
<div class='line'>“The creature’s new world-widened sense,</div>
<div class='line'>“One minute after day dispense</div>
<div class='line'>“The thousand sounds and sights that broke</div>
<div class='line'>“In on him at the chisel’s stroke,—</div>
<div class='line'>“So, in God’s eye, the earth’s first stuff</div>
<div class='line'>“Was, neither more nor less, enough</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>“To house man’s soul, man’s need fulfil.</div>
<div class='line'>“Man reckoned it immeasurable?</div>
<div class='line'>“So thinks the lizard of his vault!</div>
<div class='line'>“Could God be taken in default,</div>
<div class='line'>“Short of contrivances, by you,—</div>
<div class='line'>“Or reached, ere ready to pursue</div>
<div class='line'>“His progress through eternity?</div>
<div class='line'>“That chambered rock, the lizard’s world,</div>
<div class='line'>“Your easy mallet’s blow has hurled</div>
<div class='line'>“To nothingness for ever; so,</div>
<div class='line'>“Has God abolished at a blow</div>
<div class='line'>“This world, wherein his saints were pent,—</div>
<div class='line'>“Who, though found grateful and content,</div>
<div class='line'>“With the provision there, as thou,</div>
<div class='line'>“Yet knew he would not disallow</div>
<div class='line'>“Their spirit’s hunger, felt as well,—</div>
<div class='line'>“Unsated,—not unsatable,</div>
<div class='line'>“As paradise gives proof. Deride</div>
<div class='line'>“Their choice now, thou who sit’st outside!”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>The poem proceeds in the same lofty strain, till—humbled to the dust at
the thought of the unutterable folly of his choice, especially in view of the
love of God expressed on Calvary, a love which he had slighted in the
happy days gone by—he presents the touching plea of the 31st stanza, the
result of which appears in what follows, spoken of by Professor Kirkman
of Cambridge, as “the splendid consummation of Easter-Day so closely
resembling the well-known crisis in Faust.”</p>
<div class='lg-container-l'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXXI.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And I cowered deprecatingly—</div>
<div class='line'>“Thou Love of God! Or let me die,</div>
<div class='line'>“Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>“Let me not know that all is lost,</div>
<div class='line'>“Though lost it be—leave me not tied</div>
<div class='line'>“To this despair, this corpse-like bride!</div>
<div class='line'>“Let that old life seem mine—no more—</div>
<div class='line'>“With limitation as before,</div>
<div class='line'>“With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:</div>
<div class='line'>“Be all the earth a wilderness!</div>
<div class='line'>“Only let me go on, go on,</div>
<div class='line'>“Still hoping ever and anon</div>
<div class='line'>“To reach one eve the Better Land!”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXXII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Then did the form expand, expand—</div>
<div class='line'>I knew him through the dread disguise</div>
<div class='line'>As the whole God within his eyes</div>
<div class='line'>Embraced me.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in14'>XXXIII.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in10'>When I lived again,</div>
<div class='line'>The day was breaking,—the grey plain</div>
<div class='line'>I rose from, silvered thick with dew.</div>
<div class='line'>Was this a vision? False or true?</div>
<div class='line'>Since then, three varied years are spent,</div>
<div class='line'>And commonly my mind is bent</div>
<div class='line'>To think it was a dream—be sure</div>
<div class='line'>A mere dream and distemperature—</div>
<div class='line'>The last day’s watching: then the night,—</div>
<div class='line'>The shock of that strange Northern Light</div>
<div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>Set my head swimming, bred in me</div>
<div class='line'>A dream. And so I live, you see,</div>
<div class='line'>Go through the world, try, prove, reject,</div>
<div class='line'>Prefer, still struggling to effect</div>
<div class='line'>My warfare; happy that I can</div>
<div class='line'>Be crossed and thwarted as a man,</div>
<div class='line'>Not left in God’s contempt apart,</div>
<div class='line'>With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,</div>
<div class='line'>Tame in earth’s paddock as her prize.</div>
<div class='line'>Thank God, she still each method tries</div>
<div class='line'>To catch me, who may yet escape,</div>
<div class='line'>She knows, the fiend in angel’s shape!</div>
<div class='line'>Thank God, no paradise stands barred</div>
<div class='line'>To entry, and I find it hard</div>
<div class='line'>To be a Christian, as I said!</div>
<div class='line'>Still every now and then my head</div>
<div class='line'>Raised glad, sinks mournful—all grows drear</div>
<div class='line'>Spite of the sunshine, while I fear</div>
<div class='line'>And think, “How dreadful to be grudged</div>
<div class='line'>“No ease henceforth, as one that’s judged,</div>
<div class='line'>“Condemned to earth for ever, shut</div>
<div class='line'>“From heaven!”</div>
<div class='line in20'>But Easter-Day breaks! But</div>
<div class='line'>Christ rises! Mercy every way</div>
<div class='line'>Is infinite,—and who can say?</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='figcenter id001'>
<img src='images/endpiece.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' />
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c003' />
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center c003'>
<div>AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.</div>
<div class='c001'><span class='xlarge'>THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>In order to create a permanent library of useful and standard
books for the homes of our C. L. S. C. members, and to reduce the
expense of the Seal courses, we have organized the <span class='sc'>Chautauqua
Press</span>.</p>
<p class='c007'>The first issues of the Chautauqua Press will be “<span class='sc'>The Garnet
Series</span>,” four volumes in the general line of the “required readings”
for the coming year, as follows:—</p>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div><span class='xlarge'>READINGS FROM RUSKIN.</span></div>
<div class='c001'>With an Introduction by <span class='sc'>H. A. Beers</span>, Professor of English Literature</div>
<div>in Yale College.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This volume contains chapters from Ruskin on “The Poetry of
Architecture,” “The Cottage—English, French, and Italian,” “The
Villa—Italian,” and “St. Mark’s,” from “Stones of Venice.”</p>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div><span class='xlarge'>READINGS FROM MACAULAY.</span></div>
<div class='c001'>With an Introduction by <span class='sc'>Donald G. Mitchell</span> (“Ik Marvel”).</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This volume contains Lord Macaulay’s Essays on “Dante,”
“Petrarch,” and “Machiavelli,” “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and
“Pompeii.”</p>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div><span class='xlarge'>ART, AND THE FORMATION OF</span></div>
<div><span class='xlarge'>TASTE.</span></div>
<div class='c001'><span class='sc'>By</span> LUCY CRANE.</div>
<div class='c001'>With an Introduction by <span class='sc'>Charles G. Whiting</span> of “The Springfield</div>
<div>[Mass.] Republican.”</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>This volume contains lectures on “Decorative Art, Form, Color,
Dress, and Needlework,” “Fine Arts,” “Sculpture,” “Architecture,”
“Painting.”</p>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div><span class='xlarge'>THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MICHAEL</span></div>
<div><span class='xlarge'>ANGELO.</span></div>
<div class='c001'><span class='sc'>By</span> R. DUPPA [<span class='sc'>Bohn’s Edition</span>].</div>
<div class='c001'>With an Introduction by <span class='sc'>Charles G. Whiting</span>.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Any graduate or undergraduate of the C. L. S. C. reading the four
volumes of the <span class='sc'>Chautauqua Library Garnet Series</span> will be
entitled to the new Garnet Seal (University Seal) on his diploma.</p>
<p class='c007'>These volumes are designed as much for the general market as for
members of the C. L. S. C., and will form the nucleus of a valuable
library of standard literature.</p>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div>PRICE OF EACH VOLUME, 75 CENTS.</div>
<div>OR $3 FOR THE SET, ENCLOSED IN NEAT BOX.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c007'>Address</p>
<div class='lg-container-r'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>CHAUTAUQUA PRESS,</div>
<div class='line'>117 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c001' />
</div>
<div class='nf-center-c1'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div>Transcriber’s note:</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class='c016'>Page vi, ‘implicity’ changed to ‘implicitly,’ “explicitly or implicitly affirmed”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 13, apostrophe inserted before ‘Twas,’ “’Twas moonset at starting”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 15, single quote changed to double quote before ‘How,’ ““How they’ll greet us!”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 42, comma changed to full stop after ‘chivalry,’ “of chivalry. In those days”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 50, double quote inserted after ‘awhile,’ “since, and lost awhile.””</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 51, single quote changed to double quote before ‘Touch,’ ““Touch him ne’er so”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 54, full stop inserted after ‘shone,’ “his presence shone.”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 61, full stop inserted after ‘sight,’ “soul was in sight.”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 67, double quote inserted after ‘sound,’ “new sense was sound.””</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 77, full stop inserted after ‘end,’ “uninterruptedly to the end.”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 81, single quote changed to double quote before ‘Here,’ ““Here, the creature”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 108, quoting regularized in stanza VIII.</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 122, single quote inserted before ‘My,’ “‘My list of coleoptera!”</p>
<p class='c016'>Page 133, ‘omipotence’ changed to ‘omnipotence,’ “Like the omnipotence which”</p>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53335 ***</div>
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