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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: My Commonplace Book - -Author: Various - -Editor: J. T. Hackett - -Release Date: November 5, 2019 [EBook #60637] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY COMMONPLACE BOOK *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">MY<br /> -COMMONPLACE<br /> -BOOK</p> - -<p class="titlepage">J. T. HACKETT</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">“<i>Omne meum, nihil meum</i>”</p> - -<p class="titlepage">T. FISHER UNWIN LTD<br /> -LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><i>First publication in Great Britain, September, 1919.</i></p> - -<p class="center"><i>Second English Edition, September, 1920.</i></p> - -<p class="center"><i>Third English Edition, January, 1921.</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>O Memories!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>O Past that is!</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage">DEDICATED<br /> -<span class="smaller">TO MY</span><br /> -DEAR FRIEND<br /> -<span class="larger"><i>RICHARD HODGSON</i></span><br /> -<span class="smaller">WHO HAS PASSED OVER<br /> -TO THE OTHER SIDE</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Of wounds and sore defeat</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I made my battle-stay;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Wingèd sandals for my feet</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I wove of my delay;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Of weariness and fear</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I made my shouting spear;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Of loss, and, doubt, and dread,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>And swift oncoming doom</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I made a helmet for my head</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>And a floating plume.</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>From the shutting mist of death,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>From the failure of the breath</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I made a battle-horn to blow</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Across the vales of overthrow.</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>O hearken, love, the battle-horn!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>The triumph clear, the silver scorn!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>O hearken where the echoes bring,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Down the grey disastrous morn,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Laughter and rallying!</i><a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William Vaughn Moody.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>I cannot but remember such things were,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>That were most precious to me.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Macbeth</span>, IV, 3.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="PREFACE">PREFACE<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></h2> - -<p>A large proportion of the most interesting quotations in this -book was collected between 1874 and 1886. During that period -I was under the influence of Richard Hodgson, who was my -close friend from childhood. To him directly and indirectly -this book is largely indebted.</p> - -<p>Hodgson (1855-1905) had a remarkably pure, noble, and -lovable character, and was one of the most gifted men Australia -has produced. He is known in philosophic circles from some early -contributions to <i>Mind</i> and other journals, but is mainly known -from his work in psychical research, to which he devoted the best -years of his life. Apart from his great ability in other directions, -he was endowed, even in youth, with fine taste and a clear and -mature literary judgment. This will appear to some extent in -the quotations over his name, and the note on <a href="#Page_208">p. 208</a> will give -further particulars of his career. He was from two to three years -older than myself, and guided me in my early reading. Therefore, -indirectly, he has to do with most of the contents of this -book.</p> - -<p>But, more than this, about one-third of the main quotations -(not including the notes which I have only now added) came direct -from Hodgson. He left Australia in 1877, but we maintained -a voluminous correspondence until 1886. This correspondence -contained most of the quotations referred to, and the remainder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> -Hodgson gave me in London on the only occasion I met him after -he left Australia. (After 1886 he became so immersed in -psychical research, and I in legal work, that our correspondence -ceased to be of a literary character.) Thus directly and indirectly -Hodgson has much to do with the book—and, if it had been -practicable, I would have placed his name on the title-page.</p> - -<p>This book is simply one to be taken up at odd moments, like -any other collection of quotations. But there are two reasons -why it may have some special interest. One reason is that it -includes passages from a number of authors who appear to have -become forgotten, or, at any rate, to be passing Lethe-wards. -We, who dwell in the underworld,<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> cannot, of course, have a -complete knowledge of what is known or forgotten in the inner -literary circles of England. We can depend only on the books -and periodicals that happen to come to our hands, and perhaps -should not rely too much on such sources of information. Yet -I cannot but think that Robert Buchanan, for example, has -become largely forgotten, and apparently this is the case also -with a number of other authors from whom I quote. Because of -this, I have retained all the passages I had from such authors.</p> - -<p>It must be remembered that this book is not an anthology. -A commonplace book is usually a collection of <i>reminders</i> made -by a young man who cannot afford an extensive library. There -is no system in such a collection. A book is borrowed and -extracts made from it; another book by the same author is <i>bought</i> -and no extract made from it. On the one hand a favourite verse, -although well known, is written out for some reason or other; -on the other hand hundreds of beautiful poems are omitted. -So far from this being an anthology, I have, as a matter of course, -omitted many poems that since the seventy-eighty period have -become general favourites; and, as regards the most beautiful -gems of our literature, they are almost all excluded. There are -for example, only a few lines from Shakespeare.</p> - -<p>Some exceptions have, however, been made. In a series of -word-pictures, a few of the best-known passages will be found. -A few others have been included for reasons that will readily -appear; they either form part of a series or the reason is apparent -from the notes. Apart from these I have retained Blanco -White’s great sonnet and “The Night has a thousand eyes,” -written by F. W. Bourdillon when an undergraduate at Worcester -College, Oxford, because with regard to these I had an interesting -and instructive experience. I accidentally discovered that of four -well-read men (two at least of them more thorough students<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span> -of poetry than myself) two were ignorant of the one poem and -two of the other. Seeking an explanation, I turned to the anthologies. -I could not find in any of them Bourdillon’s little gem -until I came to the comparatively recent <i>Oxford Book of Victorian -Verse</i> and <i>The Spirit of Man</i>. The Blanco White sonnet I could -find <i>nowhere</i> except in collections of sonnets, which in my opinion -are little read. It will be observed that in anthologies alone can -Blanco White’s one and only poem be kept alive.</p> - -<p>The second reason why this book may have a special interest is -that it may serve as a reminder to my contemporaries of our stirring -thoughts and experiences in the seventies and eighties. How -interesting this period was it is difficult to show in a few lines. -In pure literature, books of value simply poured from the press. -In the closing year, 1889, “One who never turned his back, -but marched breast forward” died on the day that his last book, -<i>Asolando</i>, was published, leaving Tennyson, an old man of eighty, -the sole survivor of the poets of a great period. At almost the -same moment “Crossing the Bar” was published.</p> - -<p>Apart from literature, the seventies and eighties were an -eventful period in science and religion. Darwinism was still -causing its tremendous upheaval, and the supposed conflict -between religion and science exercised an enormous effect on the -minds of men. Evolution had explained so much of the processes -in the history of life, that the <i>majority</i> of thinkers at that time -imagined that no room was left for the super-natural. Science -was supposed to have given a death-blow to religion, and the -greatest wave of materialism ever known in the history of the -world swept over England and Europe. It is strange how many -great thinkers missed what now appears so obvious a fact, that -causality still stood behind all law, and that Darwin, like Newton, -had merely helped to show the method by which the universe -is governed. (It seems to me that James Martineau stood supreme -at that time as a man of genius who saw clearly the inherent -defect of the whole materialist movement.)</p> - -<p>However, agnosticism, materialism, positivism flourished and -triumphed. Science, whose dignity had been so long unrecognized, -came into her own, and, in her turn, usurped the same -dogmatic superior attitude she had resented in ecclesiasticism. -On the one hand pessimistic literature and philosophy poured -from the press; on the other hand new religions arose to take -the place of the old. Theosophy and spiritualism were in evidence -everywhere (leading in 1882 to the happy result that the Society -for Psychical Research was founded). Harrison, Clifford, Swinburne -and others preached the deification of man. There were -discords within, as well as foes without the church. The severely -orthodox fought against the revelations of Colenso and the higher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span> -criticism; Seeley’s <i>Ecce Homo</i> and a host of other works -aroused fierce antagonism; Pius IX, who had in 1864 published -his Syllabus which would have destroyed modern civilization, -proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope in 1870—and in 1872 -was deprived of temporal power. Such questions as the literal -interpretation and inerrancy of the Bible were the subjects of -intense conflict—and especially strange is it to remember the -dire struggle of well-intentioned men to maintain the horrible -doctrine of eternal punishment. I imagine that this book -will assist to some extent in recalling the atmosphere and aroma -of that remarkable period.</p> - -<p>I have made very little attempt to arrange my quotations—and -now wish I had done less in that direction. The book -is intended for casual reading, and to arrange it under headings -would tend to make it <i>heavy</i>. The element of surprise is more -calculated to make the book attractive.</p> - -<p>I began the notes that are appended to some of the quotations -with the intention of giving only such short, necessary explanations -as would be of assistance to the inexperienced reader. -When, however, I began to write, I found my pen running away -with me. Apart from the usual, ineffectual efforts of one’s -youth, I had never before attempted literary work, and for the -first time experienced the great pleasure there is in such writing. -With the immense variety of subjects in a collection of quotations, -one could continue to write over a series of years; but it was -necessary to keep the book within reasonable bounds, and, therefore, -I had arbitrarily to come to a stop. In these notes I do not -claim that there is much, if any, originality,<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> they are mostly -recollections of old reading. Still they may serve the important -purpose of revivifying old truths (<a href="#Page_78">see p. 78</a>).</p> - -<p>I have been astonished at the great deal of work this book -has involved—and also how much I have needed the assistance -of my friends. There were some sixty or seventy quotations -in respect to which I had neglected to give any reference to the -authors (for the same reason as one did not put the names on -photographs of old friends—it seemed impossible that the names -could be forgotten). The difficulty of finding even one such -quotation is enormous, and we have no British Museum in Adelaide, -but only some limited public libraries. However, with the help -of my friends I have succeeded in tracing the paternity of most -of these “orphans.” In this and other directions I have had -the kind assistance of many gentlemen. Of these first and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span> -foremost comes Mr. G. F. Hassell, the publisher of the Adelaide -edition, who, in his devotion to literature as well as to his own -art of printing, is a worthy representative of the old Renaissance -printers. He has given me every assistance, has gone through -every line, and, as he is both an exceedingly well-read man and -also of a younger generation than myself, I have left it to him -to decide what should be omitted and what retained in this book. -Professor Mitchell has also been so kind as to revise and make -suggestions concerning a number of notes on philosophic and -other subjects. Professor Darnley Naylor has been uniformly -good in revising any notes of a classical nature—though he takes -no responsibility whatever for the views I express. Dr. E. -Harold Davies has also helped me with two notes on music, -in one instance correcting a serious mistake I had made. Sir -Langdon Bonython, my friend of many years, has assisted -me with practical as well as literary suggestions, and has thrown -open his library to me. Mr. Francis Edwards, of High Street, -Marylebone, has assisted in my search for references to quotations. -Mr. H. Rutherford Purnell, Public Librarian of Adelaide, and his -staff have helped me throughout, and Mr. E. La Touche Armstrong, -Public Librarian of Melbourne, has gone to great trouble -on my account. Miss M. R. Walker has assisted me in various -ways, and especially in preparing the very difficult Index of -Subjects. Mr. Sydney Temple Thomas has lent me a number -of important books I specially required. Others who have -helped me in one way or another are two English friends, Mrs. -Caroline Sidgwick and Mrs. Rachael Bray, Messrs. J. R. Fowler, -H. W. Uffindell, S. Talbot Smith and Dr. J. W. Browne, of -Adelaide, Professor Dettmann of New Zealand, Professor Hyslop -of New York and Mr. F. C. Govers of the State War Council, -Sydney.</p> - -<p>For permission to include quotations from their works I thank -the following authors: Rev. F. W. Boreham, Mr. F. W. Bourdillon, -Mr. A. J. Edmunds, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Thomas -Hardy, O.M., Professor Hobhouse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. -E. F. Knight, Mr. R. Le Gallienne, Mr. W. S. Lilly, Mr. Robert -Loveman, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, -Professor A. H. Sayce, Mrs. Cronwright Schreiner, Mr. J. C. -Squire, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Samuel Waddington, Mrs. -Humphry Ward, Mr. F. A. Westbury, Mr. F. S. Williamson and -Sir Francis Younghusband.</p> - -<p>For extracts from the writings of their relatives I am grateful -to Lady Arnold, Sir Francis Darwin, Mr. Henry James, The -Earl of Lytton, Dr. Greville McDonald, Miss Martineau, Miss -Massey, Mr. W. M. Meredith, Mrs. F. W. H. Myers, the Rev. -Conrad Noel, Mr. William M. Rossetti, Sir Herbert Stephen and -Lord Tennyson. Mr. Piddington has also given much assistance.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span></p> - -<p>I am indebted to the following for quotations from the works -of the authors named: of Ruskin to the Ruskin Literary Trustees -and their publishers, Messrs. George Allen and Unwin; of Brunton -Stephens to Messrs. Angus and Robertson; of C. S. Calverley -to Messrs. G. Bell and Sons; of George Eliot to Messrs. William -Blackwood & Sons; of James Kenneth Stephen to Messrs. Bowes -and Bowes; of Francis Thompson to Messrs. Burns and Oates; -of R. L. Stevenson to Messrs. Chatto and Windus and to Messrs. -Charles Scribner’s Sons; of Robert Buchanan to Messrs. Chatto -and Windus and to Mr. W. E. Martyn; of James Thomson -(B.V.) to Messrs. P. J. and A. E. Dobell; of D. G. Rossetti -to Messrs. Ellis; of Swinburne to Mr. W. Heinemann; of Mr. -Le Gallienne, H. D. Lowry, Stephen Phillips and J. B. Tabb -to Mr. John Lane; of R. Loveman to the J. B. Lippincott Co.; -of A. K. H. Boyd, R. Jeffries, W. E. H. Lecky and the Rev. -James Martineau, to Messrs. Longmans Green & Co.; of Alfred -Austin, T. E. Brown, Lewis Carroll, Edward Fitzgerald, F. W. H. -Myers, Walter Pater, Lord Tennyson and Charles Tennyson -Turner to Messrs. Macmillan & Co.; of V. O’Sullivan to Mr. -Elkin Matthews; of Mrs. Elizabeth Waterhouse to Messrs. -Methuen & Co.; of Robert Browning to Mr. John Murray; of -Dr. Moncure Conway and Sir Alfred Lyall to Messrs. Paul (Kegan), -Trench Trubner & Co.; of George Gissing to Mr. James B. -Pinker; of John Payne to Mr. O. M. Pritchard, his executor, -and to Mr. Thomas Wright; of Sir Edwin Arnold, P. J. Bailey -(Festus) and Coventry Patmore to Messrs. George Routledge & -Sons; of G. Whyte Melville to Messrs. Ward Lock & Co. (songs -and verses); of George MacDonald to Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son; -Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s “L’Envoi” is reprinted from Departmental -Ditties, by kind permission of the author and Messrs. -Methuen & Co.; “To the True Romance” is published by Messrs. -Macmillan & Co., to whom I am deeply indebted, not only for -this and the permissions mentioned above, but also for much -assistance in tracing copyrights. Messrs. Longmans, Green & -Co., Mr. John Murray and Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son have been -most helpful in this direction, as have also been Messrs. T. B. -Lippincott, the Oxford University Press and Messrs. Watts & Co. -Messrs. Constable & Co. have generously granted permission for -the quotations from George Meredith and, as the representatives -in London of the Houghton Mifflin Co. of Boston, Mass., have -secured the quotations from the works of American authors -published by that Firm, viz., T. B. Aldrich, R. W. Gilder, W. V. -Moody, S. M. B. Piatt, E. M. Thomas, C. D. Warner and the Classics -of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier. Messrs. G. P. -Putnam’s Sons have also given much help; the lines from Anna -Reeve Aldrich and R. C. Rogers are published by their New York -House. Mr. Martin Seeker joins in the consent given by Mr. -Squire for the extract from his poems. I thank the Editor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span> -of the Contemporary Review for quotations from the writings -of Professor A. Bain and the Rev. R. F. Littledale; and the -Editor of the Nineteenth Century for some lines by W. M. -Hardinge (Greek Anthology) and an article on Multiplex -Personality. I thank also the Society for Psychical Research -for an obituary article by F. W. H. Myers on Gladstone, printed -in the Journal of that Society.</p> - -<p>For any unintentional omissions, oversights, or failures to trace -rights I beg to tender my apologies. The distance of Adelaide -from the centre of publication may, in some measure, serve as -an excuse for such shortcomings.</p> - -<p><i>All profits derived from the sale of this book will be paid to the -Red Cross Fund.</i></p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">J. T. Hackett.</span></p> - -<p>Adelaide.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PREFACE<br /> -<span class="smaller"><span class="smaller">TO THE</span><br /> -SECOND ENGLISH EDITION.</span></h2> - -<p>In preparing this edition I have made a great number of more -or less important corrections, alterations and additions. Most of -these occupy only a few lines apiece and, although none call for -special mention, they should together add to the interest and -usefulness of this book. For a number of them I am indebted to -Mr. Vernon Rendall, formerly editor of the <i>Athenæum</i> and <i>Notes -and Queries</i>. With his wonderfully wide and exact knowledge of -English and classical literature, he gave me much assistance and -I am grateful to him.</p> - -<p>The issue of a Second Edition enables me to thank my friend, -Sir John Cockburn, for his truly remarkable kindness to me. -When I sent this book home from Adelaide to be published, he -undertook the heavy work of seeking the consent of the numerous -copyright owners, negotiating with publishers, and seeing -the book through the press. Only those who are experienced in -such matters can realize the <i>enormous</i> amount of time and labour -that all this involved. It is impossible for me to express -adequately my obligations to my friend. He did not include any -reference to himself in the original Preface, in spite of my -insistence by letter and cable.</p> - -<p>In associating his name with this book, I am bound to add -that Sir John disagrees with and, therefore, disapproves of much -that I have said in some notes on the Ancient Greeks.</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">J. T. Hackett.</span></p> - -<p>London, <i>September, 1920.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PREFACE<br /> -<span class="smaller"><span class="smaller">TO THE</span><br /> -THIRD ENGLISH EDITION.</span></h2> - -<p>This has presumably to be called a new edition, rather than a -new issue, seeing that there are revisions and alterations. But -these are not numerous, and the only ones to which I need call -special attention are the substituted verses on <a href="#Page_153">pp. 153-5</a>.</p> - -<p>I am indebted to Mr. Denys Bray for permission to include -his daughter’s verses.</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">J. T. Hackett.</span></p> - -<p>Mentone, <i>December, 1920.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span></p> - -<h2>YOUTH AND AGE</h2> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Verse, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Both were mine! Life went a-maying</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent3"><i>When I was young!</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i><span class="antiqua">When</span> I was young?—Ah, woful When!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>This breathing house not built with hands,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>This body that does me grievous wrong,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>O’er aery cliffs and glittering sands</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>How lightly <span class="antiqua">then</span> it flashed along:—</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>On winding lakes and rivers wide,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>That ask no aid of sail or oar,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>That fear no spite of wind or tide!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Nought cared this body for wind or weather</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>When Youth and I lived in’t together.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Flowers are lovely: Love is flower-like;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Friendship is a sheltering tree;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>O! the joys, that came down shower-like,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent2"><i>Ere I was old!</i></div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i><span class="antiqua">Ere</span> I was old? Ah, woful Ere,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Which tells me, Youth’s no longer here!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>O Youth! for years so many and sweet</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>’Tis known that Thou and I were one,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I’ll think it but a fond conceit—</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>It cannot be, that thou art gone!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll’d:—</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>And thou wert aye a masker bold!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>What strange disguise hast now put on</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>To <span class="antiqua">make believe</span> that Thou art gone?</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I see these locks in silvery slips,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>This drooping gait, this alter’d size:</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Life is but Thought: so think I will</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>That Youth and I are house-mates still.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Dew-drops are the gems of morning,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>But the tears of mournful eve!</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Where no hope is, life’s a warning</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>That only serves to make us grieve</i></div> -<div class="verse indent4"><i>When we are old:</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>—That only serves to make us grieve</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>With oft and tedious taking-leave,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Like some poor nigh-related guest</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>That may not rudely be dismist,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Yet hath outstay’d his welcome while,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>And tells the jest without the smile.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1>My Commonplace Book</h1> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Our God and soldier we alike adore,</div> -<div class="verse">When at the brink of ruin, not before;</div> -<div class="verse">After deliverance both alike requited,</div> -<div class="verse">Our God forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Francis Quarles</span> (1592-1644).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In an age of fops and toys,</div> -<div class="verse">Wanting wisdom, void of right,</div> -<div class="verse">Who shall nerve heroic boys</div> -<div class="verse">To hazard all in Freedom’s fight?</div> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -<div class="verse">So nigh is grandeur to our dust,</div> -<div class="verse">So near is God to man,</div> -<div class="verse">When Duty whispers low, <i>Thou must</i>,</div> -<div class="verse">The youth replies, <i>I can</i>.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (<i>Voluntaries</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ENGLAND</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When I have borne in memory what has tamed</div> -<div class="verse">Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart</div> -<div class="verse">When men change swords for ledgers, and desert</div> -<div class="verse">The student’s bower for gold, some fears unnamed</div> -<div class="verse">I had, my Country—am I to be blamed?</div> -<div class="verse">Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,</div> -<div class="verse">Verily, in the bottom of my heart,</div> -<div class="verse">Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> -<div class="verse">For dearly must we prize thee; we who find</div> -<div class="verse">In thee a bulwark for the cause of men;</div> -<div class="verse">And I by my affection was beguiled:</div> -<div class="verse">What wonder if a Poet now and then,</div> -<div class="verse">Among the many movements of his mind,</div> -<div class="verse">Felt for thee as a lover or a child!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (1803).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record</div> -<div class="verse">One death struggle in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;</div> -<div class="verse">Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—</div> -<div class="verse">Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,</div> -<div class="verse">Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>The Present Crisis</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Amid the dust of books to find her,</div> -<div class="verse">Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.</div> -<div class="verse">Many in sad faith sought for her,</div> -<div class="verse">Many with crossed hands sighed for her;</div> -<div class="verse">But these, our brothers, fought for her,</div> -<div class="verse">At life’s dear peril wrought for her,</div> -<div class="verse">So loved her that they died for her....</div> -<div class="verse">They saw her plumed and mailed,</div> -<div class="verse">With sweet, stern face unveiled,</div> -<div class="verse">And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>Ode at Harvard Commemoration, 1865</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This Ode was written in memory of the Harvard University men -who had died in the Secession war. Our own brave men are also fighting -in the cause of Truth, against the hideous falsity of German teaching and -morals.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent15">The future’s gain</div> -<div class="verse">Is certain as God’s truth; but, meanwhile, pain</div> -<div class="verse">Is bitter, and tears are salt: our voices take</div> -<div class="verse">A sober tone; our very household songs</div> -<div class="verse">Are heavy with a nation’s griefs and wrongs;</div> -<div class="verse">And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake</div> -<div class="verse">Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat.</div> -<div class="verse">The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. G. Whittier</span> (<i>In War Time</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">PRIEST</div> -<div class="verse">“The glory of Man is his strength,</div> -<div class="verse">And the weak man must die,” said the Lord.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">CHORUS</div> -<div class="verse">Hark to the Song of the Sword!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">PRIEST</div> -<div class="verse">Uplift! let it gleam in the sun—</div> -<div class="verse">Uplift in the name of the Lord!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">KAISER</div> -<div class="verse">Lo! how it gleams in the light,</div> -<div class="verse">Beautiful, bloody, and bright.</div> -<div class="verse">Yea, I uplift the Sword</div> -<div class="verse">Thus in the name of the Lord!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">THE CHIEFS</div> -<div class="verse">Form ye a circle of fire</div> -<div class="verse">Around him, our King and our Sire—</div> -<div class="verse">While in the centre he stands,</div> -<div class="verse">Kneel with your swords in your hands,</div> -<div class="verse">Then with one voice deep and free</div> -<div class="verse">Echo like waves of the sea—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“In the name of the Lord!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">VOICES WITHOUT</div> -<div class="verse">Where is he?—he fades from our sight!</div> -<div class="verse">Where the Sword?—all is blacker than night.</div> -<div class="verse">Is it finish’d, that loudly ye cry?</div> -<div class="verse">Doth he sheathe the great Sword while we die?</div> -<div class="verse">O bury us deep, most deep;</div> -<div class="verse">Write o’er us, wherever we sleep,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“In the name of the Lord!”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">KAISER</div> -<div class="verse">While I uplift the Sword,</div> -<div class="verse">Thus in the name of the Lord,</div> -<div class="verse">Why, with mine eyes full of tears,</div> -<div class="verse">Am I sick of the song in mine ears?</div> -<div class="verse">God of the Israelite, hear;</div> -<div class="verse">God of the Teuton, be near;</div> -<div class="verse">Strengthen my pulse lest I fail.</div> -<div class="verse">Shut out these slain while they wail—</div> -<div class="verse">For they come with the voice of the grave</div> -<div class="verse">On the glory they give me and gave.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">CHORUS</div> -<div class="verse">In the name of the Lord? Of what Lord?</div> -<div class="verse">Where is He, this God of the Sword?</div> -<div class="verse">Unfold Him; where hath He His throne?</div> -<div class="verse">Is He Lord of the Teuton alone?</div> -<div class="verse">Doth He walk on the earth? Doth He tread</div> -<div class="verse">On the limbs of the dying and dead?</div> -<div class="verse">Unfold Him! We sicken, and long</div> -<div class="verse">To look on this God of the strong!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">PRIEST</div> -<div class="verse">Hush! In the name of the Lord,</div> -<div class="verse">Kneel ye, and bless ye the Sword!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>The Apotheosis of the<br />Sword, Versailles, 1871</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Short is mine errand to tell, and the end of my desire:</div> -<div class="verse">For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth;</div> -<div class="verse">But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;</div> -<div class="verse">And the edge of the sword to the traitor and the flame to the slanderous breath:</div> -<div class="verse">And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should sleep,</div> -<div class="verse">And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Morris</span> (<i>Sigurd the Volsung, Book III</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SACRIFICE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though love repine, and reason chafe,</div> -<div class="verse">There came a voice without reply,—</div> -<div class="verse">“’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,</div> -<div class="verse">When for the truth he ought to die.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">GREEKS OR GERMANS?</p> - -<p>Do not imagine that you are fighting about a single issue, freedom -or slavery. You have an empire to lose, and are exposed to danger -by reason of the hatred which your imperial rule has inspired -in other states. And you cannot resign your power, although -some timid or unambitious spirits want you to act justly. For -now your empire has become a <i>despotism</i>, a thing which in the -opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired yet cannot be -safely relinquished. The men of whom I speak, if they could -find followers, would soon ruin the state, and, if they were to -found a state of their own, would just as soon ruin that.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Speech by Pericles.</i>)</p> - -<p>I have observed again and again that a democracy cannot -govern an empire; and never more clearly than now, when I see -you regretting the sentence you pronounced on the Mityleneans. -Having no fear or suspicion of one another, you deal with your -allies on the same principle. You do not realize that, whenever -you yield to them out of pity, or are prevailed on by their pleas, -you are guilty of a weakness dangerous to yourselves and receive -no gratitude from them. You need to bear in mind that your -empire is a <i>despotism</i> exercised over unwilling subjects who are -ever conspiring against you. They do not obey because of any -kindness you show them: they obey just so far as you show yourselves -their masters. They have no love for you, but are held -down by force....</p> - -<p>You must not be misled by pity, or eloquent pleading or by -generosity. There are no three things more fatal to empire.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Speech by Cleon</i>) <span class="smcap">Thucydides</span>, II, 63; III, 37, 40.</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It will be seen that these odious sentiments are attributed by the -impartial Thucydides to his hero Pericles as well as to the demagogue Cleon. -The Greeks were fervent supporters of Democracy and Equality, but not -when it came to dealing either with foreign states or with their own <i>women -or slaves</i>. (See also Socrates and Aristotle, <a href="#Page_367">p. 367</a>.)</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier -and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service -of their country; but he, that stands it <i>now</i>, deserves the love -and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily -conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder -the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain -too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives -anything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price -upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial -an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Paine</span> (1776).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Outside the Bible and other books of religion, I think it would be difficult -to find any single passage in the world’s literature that produced so wonderful -a result as the above passage of Tom Paine’s. It was the opening -paragraph of the first number of <i>The Crisis</i>, and was written by miserable, -flaring candle-light, when Paine was a private in Washington’s ill-clad, -worn-out army at Trenton. The soldiers, who were then despairing from -hardship and defeat, were roused by these words to such enthusiasm that -next day they rushed bravely in and won the first American victory, which -turned the tide of the war of independence.</p> - -<p>Previously to this, it was through Paine’s pamphlet, <i>Common Sense</i>, -that the Americans first saw that separation was the only remedy for their -grievances. Conway tells an amusing story about <i>Common Sense</i> and <i>The -Rights of Man</i>. When the Bolton town crier was sent round to seize these -prohibited books, he reported that he could not find any Rights of Man -or Common Sense anywhere!</p> - -<p>For trying to save the life of Louis XVI during the revolution, Paine -was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a curious accident. -It was customary for chalk-marks to be made on the cell-doors of those -to be guillotined the following morning, and these doors opened outwards. -When Paine’s door was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark -was made on the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not -visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have been described -in those days as a wonderful interposition of Providence!</p> - -<p>Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When Paine, -whose services to America, and to Washington himself, had been so magnificent, -was thrown into the Bastille, Washington could have saved him by -a word—but remained silent! This was no doubt the reason why Paine, -after his liberation, was led to make an unjust attack on Washington’s -military and Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington -and the bigotry of the time against the author of <i>The Age of Reason</i>, that -Paine fell utterly into disrepute.</p> - -<p>When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by an -Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to the city by his -admirers, but was promptly declined! And yet Conway says that on the -day, whose centenary was then being celebrated, Paine was idolized in -America above all other men, Washington included.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> - -<p>The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by Moncure -D. Conway in <i>The Fortnightly</i>, March, 1879. I think the fact mentioned -in the last paragraph and the town-crier story do not appear in Conway’s -subsequent <i>Life of Paine</i>.</p> - -<p>Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper recognition -of Paine’s fine character and important work. (The unpleasant -flippancy<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> with which he dealt with serious religious questions is no doubt -partly the cause of this.) I find very inadequate appreciation of him in -<i>The Americana</i> and <i>The Biographical Dictionary of America</i>—and also in -our own <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>. The general impression among -the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist; as a matter of fact, -he was a Theist, and his will ends with the words, “I die in perfect composure -and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”</p> - -<p>Carlyle’s reference to Paine is amusing: “Nor is our England without -her missionaries. She has her Paine: rebellious staymaker; unkempt; -who feels that he, a single needleman, did, by his <i>Common-Sense</i> Pamphlet, -free America—that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the -other.” (<i>French Revolution.</i>)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Buy my English posies!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You that will not turn—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Buy my hot-wood clematis,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Buy a frond o’ fern</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gather’d where the Erskine leaps</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Down the road to Lorne—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Buy my Christmas creeper</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And I’ll say where you were born!</div> -<div class="verse">West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin—</div> -<div class="verse">They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn—</div> -<div class="verse">Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main—</div> -<div class="verse">Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Buy my English posies!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Ye that have your own</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Buy them for a brother’s sake</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Overseas, alone.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Weed ye trample underfoot</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Floods his heart abrim—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Bird ye never heeded,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">O, she calls his dead to him!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;</div> -<div class="verse">Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!</div> -<div class="verse">Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land—</div> -<div class="verse">Masters of the Seven Seas, O, love and understand!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span> (<i>The Flowers</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Of the verses in this fine poem which speak for the various British -Dominions I take only the one that represents my own country. At the -time Kipling wrote, the inhabitants of our beloved mother-country did not -seem to fully realize that we were their kindred—that our fern and clematis -made <i>English posies</i>—but no doubt their feeling has altered since we -have fought side by side in mutual defence. However, to us England was -always “home,” and when Kipling wrote this poem he entered straight -into our hearts.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">RUFINUS</div> -<div class="verse">Here lilies, here the rosebud, and here too</div> -<div class="verse">The windflower with her petals drenched in dew,</div> -<div class="verse">And daffodillies cool, and violets blue.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">MELEAGER</div> -<div class="verse">It’s oh! to be a wild wind—when my lady’s in the sun—</div> -<div class="verse">She’d just unbind her neckerchief and take me breathing in,</div> -<div class="verse">It’s oh! to be a red rose—just a faintly blushing one—</div> -<div class="verse">So she’d pull me with her hand and to her snowy breast I’d win.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">PLATO TO ASTER</div> -<div class="verse">Thou gazest on the stars—a star to me</div> -<div class="verse">Thou<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> art—but oh! that I the heavens might be</div> -<div class="verse">And with a thousand eyes still gaze on thee!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">PALLADAS</div> -<div class="verse">Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we</div> -<div class="verse">Live, and a little space the sunlight see—</div> -<div class="verse">Even all that live—each being an instrument</div> -<div class="verse">To which the generous air its life has lent.</div> -<div class="verse">If with the hand one quench our draught of breath,</div> -<div class="verse">He sends the stark soul shuddering down to death.</div> -<div class="verse">We, that are nothing on our pride are fed,</div> -<div class="verse">Seeing, but for a little air, we are as dead.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">AESOPUS</div> -<div class="verse">Is there no help from life save only death?</div> -<div class="verse">“Life that such myriad sorrows harboureth</div> -<div class="verse">I dare not break, I cannot bear”—one saith.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Sweet are stars, sun, and moon, and sea, and earth,</div> -<div class="verse">For service and for beauty these had birth,</div> -<div class="verse">But all the rest of life is little worth—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Yea, all the rest is pain and grief” saith he</div> -<div class="verse">“For if it hap some good thing come to me</div> -<div class="verse">An evil end befalls it speedily!”<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">PHILODEMUS</div> -<div class="verse">I loved—and you. I played—who hath not been</div> -<div class="verse">Steeped in such play? If I was mad, I ween</div> -<div class="verse">’Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hence with it all! Then dark my youthful head,</div> -<div class="verse">Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead,</div> -<div class="verse">Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I gathered roses while the roses blew,</div> -<div class="verse">Playtime is past, my play is ended too.</div> -<div class="verse">Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. M. Hardinge</span> (<i>Nineteenth Century</i>, Nov. 1878).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the “Leslie” -in Mallock’s <i>New Republic</i>. Another version of Plato’s beautiful epigram -(which was addressed to “Aster,” or “Star”) is the following by Professor -Darnley Naylor:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou gazest on the stars, my Star;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Oh! might I be</div> -<div class="verse">The starry sky with myriad eyes</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To gaze on thee!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> - -<p>The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4,500 short poems by -about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one thousand seven -hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D. At first these poems were -epigrams—using the word “epigram” in its original sense, as a verse -intended to be inscribed on a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead -person or important event. Later they included poems on any subject, -so long as they contained one fine thought couched in concise language. -Still later any short lyric was included.</p> - -<p>This wonderful collection forms a great treasure-house of poetry, -which gives much insight into the Greek life of the time, and it also largely -influenced English and European literature. For instance, the first verse -of Ben Jonson’s “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is taken direct from the -Anthology (Agathias, <i>Anth. Pal.</i>, V., 261). I may add that the second -verse, in which the poet sends the wreath, not as a compliment to the lady -but as a kindness to the roses which could not wither if worn by her, is -also borrowed from a Greek source. (Philostratus, <i>Epistolai Erotikai</i>.)</p> - -<p>Numberless English and European scholars have attempted the difficult -task of translating or paraphrasing these little poetic gems into correspondingly -poetic and concise language, but the beauty of the original -can never be fully retained.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">PLATO TO STELLA</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou wert the morning star among the living,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Ere thy fair light had fled:—</div> -<div class="verse">Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving</div> -<div class="verse indent2">New splendour to the dead.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley’s Version.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">PTOLEMY</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I know that we are mortal, the children of a day;</div> -<div class="verse">But when I scan the circling spires, the serried stars’ array,</div> -<div class="verse">I tread the earth no longer and soar where none hath trod,</div> -<div class="verse">To feast in Heaven’s banquet-hall and drink the wine of God.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">H. Darnley Naylor’s Version.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Although there cannot be absolute certainty, this Ptolemy is no doubt -the great Greek astronomer; and the epigram would date from about -140 A.D.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">HERACLEITUS.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead,</div> -<div class="verse">They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.</div> -<div class="verse">I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I</div> -<div class="verse">Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,</div> -<div class="verse">A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,</div> -<div class="verse">Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;</div> -<div class="verse">For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William (Johnson) Cory</span> (1823-1892).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is a paraphrase of verses written by Callimachus on hearing of -the death of his friend, the poet Heracleitus (not the philosopher of that -name).</p> - -<p>Francis Thompson (<i>Sister Songs</i>) hoped that his “nightingales” -would continue to sing after his death, just as light would come from -a star long after it had ceased to exist:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,</div> -<div class="verse">Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,</div> -<div class="verse">Set with a towering press of fantasies,</div> -<div class="verse indent9">Drop safely down the time,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Leaving mine islèd self behind it far</div> -<div class="verse">Soon to be sunk in the abysm of seas,</div> -<div class="verse">(As down the years the splendour voyages</div> -<div class="verse indent2">From some long ruined and night-submergèd star).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When I consider the shortness of my life, lost in an eternity -before and behind, “passing away as the remembrance of a guest -who tarrieth but a day,” the little space I fill or behold in the -infinite immensity of spaces, of which I know nothing and which -know nothing of me—when I reflect this, I am filled with terror, -and wonder why I am <i>here</i> and not <i>there</i>, for there was no reason -why it should be the one rather than the other; why <i>now</i> rather -than <i>then</i>. Who set me here? By whose command and rule were -this time and place appointed me? How many kingdoms -know nothing of us! The eternal silence of those infinite spaces -terrifies me.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Pascal</span> (<i>Pensées</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ye weep for those who weep? she said,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ah, fools! I bid you pass them by.</div> -<div class="verse">Go weep for those whose hearts have bled</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What time their eyes were dry.</div> -<div class="verse">Whom sadder can I say? she said.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>The Mask</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See also Seneca (<i>Hipp.</i>), <i>Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent</i>, -“Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Star unto star speaks light.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">P. J. Bailey</span> (<i>Festus, Scene 1, Heaven</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O love, my love! if I no more should see</div> -<div class="verse">Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—</div> -<div class="verse">How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope</div> -<div class="verse">The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The wind of Death’s imperishable wing!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span> (<i>Lovesight</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and -act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, -but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out -of our consciousness.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Romola</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Room in all the ages</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For our love to grow,</div> -<div class="verse">Prayers of both demanded</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A little while ago:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And now a few poor moments,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Between life and death,</div> -<div class="verse">May be proven all too ample</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For love’s breath.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Roden Noel</span> (<i>The Pity of It</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Under those spider-webs lying!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Is it your moral of Life?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Such a web, simple and subtle,</div> -<div class="verse">Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Death ending all with a knife?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Over our heads truth and nature—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Still our life’s zigzags and dodges,</div> -<div class="verse">Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">God’s gold just showing its last where that lodges,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Palled beneath man’s usurpature.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So we o’ershroud stars and roses,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Cherub and trophy and garland;</div> -<div class="verse">Nothings grow something which quietly closes</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Heaven’s earnest eye; not a glimpse of the far land</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Gets through our comments and glozes.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is an imaginary name, but it probably indicates -the great Sebastian Bach, who came from that part of Germany. The -“masterpiece, hard number twelve,” referred to in the poem, may be -(Dr. E. Harold Davies tells me) the great Organ Fugue in F Minor, which is -in “five part” counter-point.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> - -<p>This very interesting poem is written in a half-humorous fashion, but -its intention is quite serious. In a wonderfully imitative manner,<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> it -describes the wrangling and disputing in a five-voiced fugue (where five persons -appear to be taking part):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">One is incisive, corrosive;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;</div> -<div class="verse">Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:</div> -<div class="verse">Five ... O Danaïdes, O Sieve!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>(For killing their husbands the fifty Danaïdes were doomed to pour -water everlastingly into a sieve.)</p> - -<p>“Where in all this is the music?” asks Browning. And, although -he is writing humorously, yet, however rank the heresy, he finds that the -fugue, with its elaborate counterpoint, is wanting in the essentials of true -art. He prefers Palestrina’s simpler and more emotional mode of expression:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hugues! I advise <i>meâ poenâ</i><a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></div> -<div class="verse indent1">(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)</div> -<div class="verse">Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,</div> -<div class="verse">Blare out the <i>mode Palestrina</i>.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In the poem, where occurs the passage quoted, one can vividly follow -the poet’s thought. Music is essentially the language of feeling, of <i>emotion</i>; -the fugue is a triumph of <i>invention</i>, and, therefore, the result of <i>intellect</i>. -Feeling is elemental, simple, and unanalysable. The subtleties of pure -harmony are the expression of deepness and richness of feeling; the intricacies -of the fugue are artificially constructed and, therefore, unsuited -to the expression of pure emotion. They represent intellect as against -feeling. And essentially in the moral world, but also in our general outlook -upon truth and nature, the spiritual perception is derived from simple -human emotion rather than intellect; “Thou hast hid these things from -the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (The whole -of Browning’s poetry teaches that love, not intellect, is the solution of all -moral problems, and the goal of the universe.)</p> - -<p>In the poem the organist has been playing on the organ in an old church; -and Browning suddenly sees an illustration of his thought in the fine gilded -ceiling covered by thick cobwebs. The cobwebs that obscure the gold -of the ceiling are the intellectual wranglings that destroy music in the fugue—and -both are symbolical of what occurs in our lives. Truth and Nature, -“God’s gold”—the pure, simple truths of the higher life—are over us, -bright and clear as the noon-day sun. But by doubts and disputations, -warring philosophies and contending creeds, by strife over non-essentials, -casuistries, self-deceptions, by questions of dogma (often as fine as any -spider’s web), by endless “comments and glozes,” we lose sight of the -elemental truths and clear principles that should guide our lives. The pure -and simple-hearted reach the Mount of Vision: to them comes the clear -sense of Love and Duty. Those of us who turn our intellects to a perverse -use and exclude the spiritual perception of the soul are like the spiders<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -who cover up “stars and roses, Cherub and trophy and garland.” We -obscure and forget all noble ideals, abolish God’s high “legislature,” and -follow a lawless life of selfish passion and sordid ambitions. The Good and -Beautiful and True have been obliterated and forgotten; “God’s gold” -is tarnished, His harmonies lost in discord; and we become morally dead.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.</div> -<div class="verse">Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;</div> -<div class="verse">Cold plashing past it, crystal waters roll;</div> -<div class="verse">We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,</div> -<div class="verse">Upon our life a ruling effluence send;</div> -<div class="verse">And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,</div> -<div class="verse">And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold</span> (<i>Palladium</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Referring to the Gorham case) The future historian of -opinion will write of us in this strain: “The people who spoke the -language of Shakespeare were great in the constructive arts: the -remains of their vast works evince an extraordinary power of combining -and economizing labour: their colonies were spread over -both hemispheres, and their industry penetrated to the remotest -tribes: they knew how to subjugate nature and to govern men: -but the weakness of their thought presented a strange contrast -to the vigour of their arm; and though they were an earnest -people, their conceptions of human life and its Divine Author -seems to have been of the most puerile nature. Some orations -have been handed down—apparently delivered before one of -their most dignified tribunals—in which the question is discussed: -‘In what way the washing of new-born babes according to certain -rules prevented God’s hating them.’ The curious feature is, -that the discussion turns entirely upon the manner in which this -wetting operated; and no doubt seems to have been entertained -by disputants, judges, or audience, that, without it, a child or -other person dying would fall into the hands of an angry Deity, and -be kept alive for ever to be tortured in a burning cave. Now, -all researches into the contemporary institutions of the island -show that its religion found its chief support among the classes -possessing no mean station or culture, and that the education -for the priesthood was the highest which the country afforded. -This strange belief must be taken, therefore, as the measure, -not of popular ignorance, but of their most intellectual faith. -A philosophy and worship embodying such a superstition can -present nothing to reward the labour of research.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (<i>Essay on “The Church of England”</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In the Gorham case, which went on appeal to the Privy Council, it -was decided that Mr. Gorham’s beliefs, although unusual, were not repugnant -to the doctrines of the Church of England. His views were that -baptism is generally necessary to salvation, that it is a sign of grace by which -God works in us, but only in those who worthily receive it. In others it -is not effectual. Infants baptized who die before actual sin are certainly -saved, but regeneration does not necessarily follow on baptism.</p> - -<p>In such matters one question stands out very prominently. The -priest is consecrated to the high office of teaching the eternal truths of -Christ—Love and Duty and Moral Aspiration. How can he keep those -truths in due perspective when his intellect is engaged in warfare over -miserable casuistries.</p> - -<p>And as the strife waxes fiercer among the priests of the Most High, -they call in the aid of hired mercenaries. Think of the lawyers paid by -one side or the other to argue questions of baptism and prevenient grace! -It was precisely this introduction into religion of legal formalism and technicality, -the arguing from texts and ancient commentaries, the verbal -quibbling and hair-splitting, the “letter” that “killeth” as against the -“spirit” that “giveth life,” which led to Christ’s bitter invectives against -the “Scribes” or lawyers of His day.</p> - -<p>Seeley, in <i>Ecce Homo</i>, points out that when Christ summoned the -disciples to him, he required from them only Faith, and not belief in any -specific doctrines. As it was not until later that they learnt He was to -suffer death and rise again, they could at first have held no belief in the -Atonement or the Resurrection. “Nor,” says Seeley, “do we find Him -frequently examining His followers in their creed, and rejecting one as -a sceptic and another as an infidel.... Assuredly those who represent -Christ as presenting to man an abstruse <i>theology</i>, and saying to them peremptorily: -‘Believe or be damned,’ have the coarsest conception of the Saviour -of the world.”</p> - -<p>As I have read somewhere, “From all barren Orthodoxy, good Lord, -deliver us.”<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For while a youth is lost in soaring thought,</div> -<div class="verse">And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful,</div> -<div class="verse">And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth,</div> -<div class="verse">And while a child, and while a flower is born,</div> -<div class="verse">And while one wrong cries for redress and finds</div> -<div class="verse">A soul to answer, still the world is young!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lewis Morris</span> (<i>Epic of Hades</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Poems are painted window panes.</div> -<div class="verse">If one looks from the square into the church,</div> -<div class="verse">Dusk and dimness are his gains—</div> -<div class="verse">Sir Philistine is left in the lurch!</div> -<div class="verse">The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor anything henceforth assuage him.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But come just inside what conceals;</div> -<div class="verse">Cross the holy threshold quite—</div> -<div class="verse">All at once ’tis rainbow-bright,</div> -<div class="verse">Device and story flash to light,</div> -<div class="verse">A gracious splendour truth reveals.</div> -<div class="verse">This to God’s children is full measure,</div> -<div class="verse">It edifies and gives you pleasure!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Goethe.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is George MacDonald’s translation (but never can a translation -of poetry reproduce the original). MacDonald says of the poem: “This -is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether -it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, -it may be dismal enough regarded from the outside; prismatic in its revelation -of truth from within.” Among the arts this statement is most -applicable to poetry, and hence the reason why notes are often required -to assist many persons to “come inside,” to enter into the heart of a poem—to -reach the point of vision.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">DE TEA FABULA</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Do I sleep? Do I dream?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Am I hoaxed by a scout?</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Are things what they seem,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Or is Sophists about?</div> -<div class="verse">Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Which expressions like these</div> -<div class="verse indent4">May be fairly applied</div> -<div class="verse indent3">By a party who sees</div> -<div class="verse indent4">A Society skied</div> -<div class="verse">Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">’Twas November the third.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And I says to Bill Nye,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">“Which it’s true what I’ve heard:</div> -<div class="verse indent4">If you’re, so to speak, fly,</div> -<div class="verse">There’s a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Which I mentioned its name</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And he ups and remarks:</div> -<div class="verse indent3">“If dress-coats is the game</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And pow-wow in the Parks,</div> -<div class="verse">Then I’m nuts on Sordello and Hohensteil-Schwangau and similar Snarks.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Now the pride of Bill Nye</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Cannot well be express’d;</div> -<div class="verse indent3">For he wore a white tie</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And a cut-away vest:</div> -<div class="verse">Says I: “Solomon’s lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well dress’d.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">But not far did we wend,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">When we saw Pippa pass</div> -<div class="verse indent3">On the arm of a friend</div> -<div class="verse indent4">—Dr. Furnivall ’twas,</div> -<div class="verse">And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“Well,” I thought, “this is odd.”</div> -<div class="verse indent4">But we came pretty quick</div> -<div class="verse indent3">To a sort of a quad</div> -<div class="verse indent4">That was all of red brick,</div> -<div class="verse">And I says to the porter: “R. Browning: free passes and kindly look slick.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">But says he, dripping tears</div> -<div class="verse indent4">In his check handkerchief,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">“That symposium’s career’s</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Been regrettably brief,</div> -<div class="verse">For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder leaf!”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Then we tucked up the sleeves</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Of our shirts (that were biled),</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Which the reader perceives</div> -<div class="verse indent4">That our feelings were riled,</div> -<div class="verse">And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her child.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Which emotions like these</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Must be freely indulged</div> -<div class="verse indent3">By a party who sees</div> -<div class="verse indent4">A Society bulged</div> -<div class="verse">On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">But I ask: Do I dream?</div> -<div class="verse indent4"><i>Has</i> it gone up the spout;</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Are things what they seem,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Or is Sophists about?</div> -<div class="verse">Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This parody on Bret Harte’s “Plain Language from Truthful James” -was written at the time when the Browning Society at Keble College, Oxford, -came to an end—apparently, according to these verses, because its funds -had been exhausted in afternoon teas!</p> - -<p>τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (pronounced <i>toe tee ane einai</i>). In Oxford special attention -is paid to Aristotle; and Quiller-Couch, being an Oxford man, assumes -that his readers are familiar with this phrase. It means “the essential -nature of a thing,” or, literally, “the question what a thing really is.” -Such a Society would be engaged in discovering the true meaning of Browning’s -difficult poems, so that the phrase is as appropriate as it is amusing -in its application.</p> - -<p>The title “De Tea fabula” is a pun on Horace’s “Quid rides? Mutato -nomine <i>de te Fabula</i> narratur” (Sat. 1, 69). “Wherefore do you laugh? -Change but the name, of thee the tale is told.” Oxford, which Matthew -Arnold called the home of lost causes, still refuses to pronounce Latin -correctly, and makes <i>te</i> rhyme with <i>fee</i>, <i>see</i>, <i>bee</i>. It ought of course -to rhyme with <i>fay</i>, <i>say</i>, <i>bay</i>. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted to the -pronunciation of <i>ea</i> which prevailed until the end of the Eighteenth Century. -See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,</div> -<div class="verse">Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><i>Dr. Furnivall</i> (1825-1910), an eminent philologist, was the founder -of the society, the first society ever formed to study the works of a living -poet. From the context he may have specially admired, as he certainly -threw special light upon, Browning’s <i>Pippa Passes</i>.</p> - -<p><i>Scout</i> at Oxford is a (male) college servant.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">One fine frosty day,</div> -<div class="verse">My stomach being empty as your hat.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The “cheekiest” line I know.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">TO THE MOON</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The wind is shrill on the hills, and the plover</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wheels up and down with a windy scream;</div> -<div class="verse">The birch has loosen’d her bright locks over</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The nut-brown pools of the mountain stream:</div> -<div class="verse">Yet here I linger in London City,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thinking of meadows where I was born—</div> -<div class="verse">And over the roofs, like a face of pity,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Up comes the Moon, with her dripping horn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O Moon, pale Spirit, with dim eyes drinking</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sheen of the Sun as he sweepeth by,</div> -<div class="verse">I am looking long in those eyes, and thinking</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of one who hath loved thee longer than I;</div> -<div class="verse">I am asking my heart if ye Spirits cherish</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The souls that ye witch with a harvest call?—</div> -<div class="verse">If the dreams must die when the dreamer perish?—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">If it be idle to dream at all?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The waves of the world roll hither and thither,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The tumult deepens, the days go by,</div> -<div class="verse">The dead men vanish—we know not whither,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The live men anguish—we know not why;</div> -<div class="verse">The cry of the stricken is smothered never,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The Shadow passes from street to street;</div> -<div class="verse">And—o’er us fadeth, for ever and ever,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The still white gleam of thy constant feet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The hard men struggle, the students ponder,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The world rolls round on its westward way;</div> -<div class="verse">The gleam of the beautiful night up yonder</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is dim on the dreamer’s cheek all day;</div> -<div class="verse">The old earth’s voice is a sound of weeping,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Round her the waters wash wild and vast,</div> -<div class="verse">There is no calm, there is little sleeping,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yet nightly, brightly, thou glimmerest past!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Another summer, new dreams departed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And yet we are lingering, thou and I;</div> -<div class="verse">I on the earth, with my hope proud-hearted,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou, in the void of a violet sky!</div> -<div class="verse">Thou art there! I am here! and the reaping and mowing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of the harvest year is over and done,</div> -<div class="verse">And the hoary snow-drift will soon be blowing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Under the wheels of the whirling Sun.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">While tower and turret lie silver’d under,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When eyes are closed and lips are dumb,</div> -<div class="verse">In the nightly pause of the human wonder,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From dusky portals I see thee come;</div> -<div class="verse">And whoso wakes and beholds thee yonder,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is witch’d like me till his days shall cease,—</div> -<div class="verse">For in his eyes, wheresoever he wander,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Flashes the vision of God’s white Peace.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There is no short cut, no patent tramroad, to wisdom: after -all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the -thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with -bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them -of old time.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>The Lifted Veil</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Let us think less of men and more of God.</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us,</div> -<div class="verse">Like a small bird winging the still blue air;</div> -<div class="verse">And then again, at other times, it rises</div> -<div class="verse">Slow, like a cloud, which scales the skies all breathless,</div> -<div class="verse">And just overhead lets itself down on us,</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind</div> -<div class="verse">Rush like a rocket tearing up the sky,</div> -<div class="verse">That we should join with God, and give the world</div> -<div class="verse">The slip: but, while we wish, the world turns round</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And peeps us in the face—the wanton world;</div> -<div class="verse">We feel it gently pressing down our arm—</div> -<div class="verse">The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;</div> -<div class="verse">We feel it softly bearing on our side—</div> -<div class="verse">We feel it touch and thrill us through the body,—</div> -<div class="verse">And we are fools, and there’s the end of us.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">P. J. Bailey</span> (<i>Festus</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It fell upon a merry May morn,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I’ the perfect prime of that sweet time</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,—</div> -<div class="verse">The dear Babe Christabel was born.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Look how a star of glory swims</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Down aching silences of space,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Flushing the Darkness till its face</div> -<div class="verse">With beating heart of light o’erbrims!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So brightening came Babe Christabel,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To touch the earth with fresh romance,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And light a Mother’s countenance</div> -<div class="verse">With looking on her miracle.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">With hands so flower-like soft, and fair,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She caught at life, with words as sweet</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As first spring violets, and feet</div> -<div class="verse">As faery-light as feet of air.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She grew, a sweet and sinless Child,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In shine and shower,—calm and strife;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A Rainbow on our dark of Life.</div> -<div class="verse">From Love’s own radiant heaven down-smiled!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In lonely loveliness she grew,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A shape all music, light, and love,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With startling looks, so eloquent of</div> -<div class="verse">The spirit burning into view.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Such mystic lore was in her eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And light of other worlds than ours,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She looked as she had fed on flowers,</div> -<div class="verse">And drunk the dews of Paradise<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah! she was one of those who come</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With pledgèd promise not to stay</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Long, ere the Angels let them stray</div> -<div class="verse">To nestle down in earthly home:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And, thro’ the windows of her eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We often saw her saintly soul,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Serene, and sad, and beautiful,</div> -<div class="verse">Go sorrowing for lost Paradise.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She came—like music in the night</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Floating as heaven in the brain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A moment oped, and shut again,</div> -<div class="verse">And all is dark where all was light.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In this dim world of clouding cares,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We rarely know, till wildered eyes</div> -<div class="verse indent1">See white wings lessening up the skies,</div> -<div class="verse">The Angels with us unawares.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Our beautiful Bird of light hath fled;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Awhile she sat with folded wings—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sang round us a few hoverings—</div> -<div class="verse">Then straightway into glory sped.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And white-wing’d Angels nurture her;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With heaven’s white radiance robed and crown’d,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And all Love’s purple glory round,</div> -<div class="verse">She summers on the Hills of Myrrh.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thro’ Childhood’s morning-land, serene</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She walked betwixt us twain, like Love;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">While, in a robe of light above,</div> -<div class="verse">Her better Angel walked unseen,—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Till Life’s highway broke bleak and wild;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then, lest her starry garments trail</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,</div> -<div class="verse">The Angel’s arms caught up the child.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her wave of life hath backward roll’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To the great ocean; on whose shore</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We wander up and down, to store</div> -<div class="verse">Some treasures of the times of old:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And aye we seek and hunger on</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For precious pearls and relics rare,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Strewn on the sands for us to wear</div> -<div class="verse">At heart, for love of her that’s gone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gerald Massey</span> (<i>The Ballad of Babe Christabel</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These exquisite verses appear to be forgotten.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If you loved only what were worth your love,</div> -<div class="verse">Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Make the low nature better by your throes!</div> -<div class="verse">Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>James Lee’s Wife</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">... He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Hereditary bent</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That hedges in intent</div> -<div class="verse">He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He loves the souls He made,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He knows His own hand laid</div> -<div class="verse">On each the mark of some ancestral stain.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anna Reeve Aldrich.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">I have lost the dream of Doing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the other dream of Done,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The first spring in the pursuing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The first pride in the Begun,—</div> -<div class="verse">First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>The Lost Bower</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is the saddest of things that we lose our early enthusiasms.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The other (maiden) up arose<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></div> -<div class="verse">And her fair lockes, which formerly were bound</div> -<div class="verse">Up in one knot, she low adowne did loose:</div> -<div class="verse">Which, flowing long and thick her clothed around.</div> -<div class="verse">And the ivorie in golden mantle gowned:</div> -<div class="verse">So that fair spectacle from him was reft,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet that, which reft it, no less faire was found:</div> -<div class="verse">So, hid in lockes and waves from looker’s theft,</div> -<div class="verse">Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Withall she laughèd, and she blushed withall,</div> -<div class="verse">That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,</div> -<div class="verse">And laughter to her blushing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Spenser</span> (<i>Faerie Queene 2</i>, XII, 67).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I love and honour Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be -Epaminondas. Nor can you excite me to the least uneasiness -by saying, “He acted, and thou sittest still.” I see action to -be good when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. One -piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock, and one for the sleeper -of a bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (<i>Spiritual Laws</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly -reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. By a -strange chance in these latter days, it happened that, alone of -all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native village of -our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulmans, and heard -again, after ages of dull oppression, the cheering clatter of social -freedom, and the voices of laughing girls. When I was at Bethlehem, -though long after the flight of the Mussulmans, the cloud -of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to cast its cold -shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, -pray heaven there still may be heard there the voice of free innocent -girls. Distant at first, and then nearer and nearer the -timid flock will gather round you with their large burning eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -gravely fixed against yours, so that they see into your brain; -and if you imagine evil against them they will know of your ill-thought -before it is yet well born, and will fly and be gone in the -moment. But presently if you will only look virtuous enough to -prevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the -blithe maidens will draw nearer and nearer to you; and soon there -will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right -up to your side, and touch the hem of your coat in playful defiance -of the danger; and then the rest will follow the daring of their -youthful leader, and gather close round you, and hold a shrill -controversy on the wondrous formation that you call a hat, and -the cunning of the hands that clothed you with cloth so fine; -and then, growing more profound in their researches, they will -pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contemplation -of your stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy -glow of your English cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse -of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring -with their sweet screams of delight and amazement, as they -compare the fairness of your hand with the hues of your sunburnt -face, or with their own warmer tints. Instantly the ringleader -of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin; with tremulous boldness -she touches, then grasps your hand, and smoothes it gently -betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, -as though it were silk of Damascus or shawl of Cashmere. And -when they see you, even then still sage and gentle, the joyous -girls will suddenly, and screamingly, and all at once, explain -to each other that you are surely quite harmless and innocent—a -lion that makes no spring—a bear that never hugs; and upon -this faith, one after the other, they will take your passive hand, -and strive to explain it, and make it a theme and a controversy. -But the one—the fairest and the sweetest of all—is yet the most -timid; she shrinks from the daring deeds of her playmates, -and seeks shelter behind their sleeves, and strives to screen -her glowing consciousness from the eyes that look upon her. -But her laughing sisters will have none of this cowardice; they -vow that the fair one <i>shall</i> be their <i>complice</i>—<i>shall</i> share their -dangers—<i>shall</i> touch the hand of the stranger; they seize her -small wrist and draw her forward by force, and at last, whilst -yet she strives to turn away, and to cover up her whole soul under -the folds of downcast eyelids, they vanquish her utmost strength, -they vanquish her utmost modesty and marry her hand to -yours. The quick pulse springs from her fingers and throbs -like a whisper upon your listening palm. For an instant her -large timid eyes are upon you—in an instant they are shrouded -again, and there comes a blush so burning, that the frightened -girls stay their shrill laughter as though they had played too -perilously and harmed their gentle sister. A moment, and all -with a sudden intelligence turn away and fly like deer; yet soon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -again like deer they wheel round, and return, and stand, and gaze -upon the danger, until they grow brave once more.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. W. Kinglake</span> (<i>Eothen</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Let us hope that the present war will be a successful “Crusade” and -that the Turks will disappear from the land which is sacred to the memory -of our Lord.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Discedant nunc amores; maneat Amor.</p> - -<p>(Loves, farewell; let Love, the sole, remain.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Remember me when I am gone away,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gone far away into the silent land;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When you can no more hold me by the hand,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.</div> -<div class="verse">Remember me when no more day by day</div> -<div class="verse indent1">You tell me of our future that you planned:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Only remember me; you understand</div> -<div class="verse">It will be late to counsel then or pray.</div> -<div class="verse">Yet if you should forget me for a while</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And afterwards remember, do not grieve:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For if the darkness and corruption leave</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,</div> -<div class="verse">Better by far you should forget and smile</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Than that you should remember and be sad.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Compare Shakespeare’s sonnet LXXI:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No longer mourn for me when I am dead,</div> -<div class="verse indent6">... for I love you so</div> -<div class="verse">That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,</div> -<div class="verse">If thinking on me then should make you woe.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I saw a son weep o’er a mother’s grave:</div> -<div class="verse">“Ay, weep, poor boy—weep thy most bitter tears</div> -<div class="verse">That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love,</div> -<div class="verse">Forgetfulness grows over it like grass;</div> -<div class="verse"><i>That</i> is the thing to weep for, not the dead.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (<i>A Boy’s Poem</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">UNTIL DEATH</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If thou canst love another, be it so.</div> -<div class="verse">I would not reach out of my quiet grave</div> -<div class="verse">To bind thy heart, if it should choose to go.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Love shall not be a slave....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It would not make me sleep more peacefully,</div> -<div class="verse">That thou wert waiting all thy life in woe</div> -<div class="verse">For my poor sake. What love thou hast for me</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Bestow it ere I go....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Forget me when I die. The violets</div> -<div class="verse">Above my rest will blossom just as blue</div> -<div class="verse">Nor miss thy tears—E’en Nature’s self forgets—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But while I live be true.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. A. Westbury.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These verses are by a South Australian writer. “Forget me when I -die” is an unpleasing sentiment; yet in “When I am dead, my dearest,” -Christina Rossetti says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">If thou wilt, remember,</div> -<div class="verse">And if thou wilt, forget.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>As regards the latter poem, the curious fact is that it is read as an exquisite -piece of <i>music</i>, and not for any poetic thought it contains. If it <i>has</i> any -coherent meaning, it is that the speaker is indifferent whether or not “her -dearest” will remember her or she will remember him. Yet the haunting -music of the lines has made it a favourite poem, and it finds a place in all -the leading anthologies. Christina Rossetti is by no means a great poet. -(Mr. Gosse’s estimate in the <i>Britannica</i> is exaggerated), but she had a wonderful -gift of language and metre. Take, for example, the pretty lilt contained -in the simplest words in “Maiden-Song”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Long ago and long ago,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And long ago still,</div> -<div class="verse">There dwelt three merry maidens</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Upon a distant hill.</div> -<div class="verse">One was tall Meggan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And one was dainty May,</div> -<div class="verse">But one was fair Margaret,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">More fair than I can say,</div> -<div class="verse">Long ago and long ago.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Am I not richer than of old?</div> -<div class="verse">Safe in thy immortality,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What change can reach the wealth I hold?</div> -<div class="verse">What chance can mar the pearl and gold</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thy love hath left in trust for me?</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And while in life’s long afternoon,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where cool and long the shadows grow,</div> -<div class="verse">I walk to meet the night that soon</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shall shape and shadow overflow,</div> -<div class="verse">I cannot feel that thou art far,</div> -<div class="verse">Since near at need the angels are;</div> -<div class="verse">And when the sunset gates unbar,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shall I not see thee waiting stand,</div> -<div class="verse">And, white against the evening star,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The welcome of thy beckoning hand?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Greenleaf Whittier</span> (<i>Snow-Bound</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I have a dream—that some day I shall go</div> -<div class="verse">At break of dawn adown a rainy street,</div> -<div class="verse">A grey old street, and I shall come in the end</div> -<div class="verse">To the little house I have known, and stand; and you,</div> -<div class="verse">Mother of mine, who watch and wait for me.</div> -<div class="verse">Will you not hear my footstep in the street,</div> -<div class="verse">And, as of old, be ready at the door,</div> -<div class="verse">To give me rest again?... I shall come home.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">H. D. Lowry.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind</div> -<div class="verse">I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom</div> -<div class="verse">But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,</div> -<div class="verse">That spot which no vicissitude can find?</div> -<div class="verse">Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—</div> -<div class="verse">But how could I forget thee? Through what power,</div> -<div class="verse">Even for the least division of an hour,</div> -<div class="verse">Have I been so beguiled as to be blind</div> -<div class="verse">To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return</div> -<div class="verse">Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,</div> -<div class="verse">Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,</div> -<div class="verse">Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;</div> -<div class="verse">That neither present time, nor years unborn</div> -<div class="verse">Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Written of the poet’s child Catherine, who died in 1812 at three years -of age, and of whom Wordsworth had also written, “Loving she is, and tractable, -though wild.” <i>Forty years after</i> the death of this child and her -brother, who died about the same time, the poet spoke of them to Aubrey -de Vere with the same acute sense of bereavement as if they had only -recently died.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">DEATH</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It is not death, that sometime in a sigh</div> -<div class="verse">This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;</div> -<div class="verse">That sometime these bright stars, that now reply</div> -<div class="verse">In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;</div> -<div class="verse">That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,</div> -<div class="verse">And all life’s ruddy springs forget to flow;</div> -<div class="verse">That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright</div> -<div class="verse">Be lapp’d in alien clay and laid below;</div> -<div class="verse">It is not death to know this,—but to know</div> -<div class="verse">That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves</div> -<div class="verse">In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go</div> -<div class="verse">So duly and so oft—and when grass waves</div> -<div class="verse">Over the passed-away, there may be then</div> -<div class="verse">No resurrection in the minds of men.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hood.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A little pain, a little fond regret,</div> -<div class="verse">A little shame, and we are living yet,</div> -<div class="verse">While love, that should outlive us, lieth dead.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Morris.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O never rudely will I blame his faith</div> -<div class="verse">In the might of stars and angels!...</div> -<div class="verse indent2">... For the stricken heart of Love</div> -<div class="verse">This visible nature, and this common world,</div> -<div class="verse">Is all too narrow: yea, a deeper import</div> -<div class="verse">Lurks in the legend told my infant years</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn,</div> -<div class="verse">For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birth-place:</div> -<div class="verse">Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays and talismans,</div> -<div class="verse">And spirits; and delightedly believes</div> -<div class="verse">Divinities, being himself divine.</div> -<div class="verse">The intelligible forms of ancient poets,</div> -<div class="verse">The fair humanities of old religion,</div> -<div class="verse">The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,</div> -<div class="verse">That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,</div> -<div class="verse">Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,</div> -<div class="verse">Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.</div> -<div class="verse">They live no longer in the faith of reason!</div> -<div class="verse">But still the heart doth need a language, still</div> -<div class="verse">Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,</div> -<div class="verse">And to yon starry world they now are gone,</div> -<div class="verse">Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth</div> -<div class="verse">With man as with their friend; and to the lover</div> -<div class="verse">Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky</div> -<div class="verse">Shoot influence down: and even at this day</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,</div> -<div class="verse">And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Wallenstein—The Piccolomini</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>His faith.</i>—Wallenstein, the great German soldier and statesman -(1583-1634) believed in astrology.</p> - -<p>The “intelligible forms of ancient poets” and “fair humanities of -old religion” are the gods and inferior divinities that please our fancy. -Thus the Greeks peopled the heavens (not very distant heavens to them) -with their gods who visited earth and mingled with men. There were also -the lesser deities, as the Hours and the Graces; and also the Nymphs—the -Nereïds, Naiads, Orcades and Dryads—who inhabited seas, springs, -rivers, and trees respectively. The Nymphs would correspond somewhat -to the elves, gnomes and fairies of Northern religions.</p> - -<p>Coleridge’s translation of “Wallenstein” (of which “The Piccolomini” -is a portion) is considered a masterpiece. Schiller was fortunate in having -a finer poet than himself to translate his drama. In the above passage -Coleridge greatly improved on the original; the seven splendid lines beginning -“The intelligible forms of ancient poets” are his and not Schiller’s; -and, therefore, this passage may fairly be ascribed to him as author.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">By rose-hung river and light-foot rill</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There are who rest not; who think long</div> -<div class="verse">Till they discern as from a hill</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At the sun’s hour of morning song.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Known of souls only, and those souls free,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sacred spaces of the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. C. Swinburne</span> (<i>Prelude—Songs before Sunrise</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The sea typifies the wider, nobler life of the soul.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Je prends mon bien où je le trouve.</p> - -<p>(I take my property wherever I find it.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Molière</span> (1622-1673).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This famous saying is quoted in French literature as though Molière -had said, “I admit plagiarism, but I so improve what I borrow from others -that it becomes my own” (see <i>Larousse</i>, under “<i>Bien</i>”).</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Tho’ old the thought and oft expressed,</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis his at last who says it best.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">It is, however, an interesting question whether this was the true meaning -intended by Molière.</p> - -<p>The story is told by Grimarest, the first biographer of the great dramatist. -In 1671 Molière produced <i>Les Fourberies de Scapin</i>, in which he had -inserted two scenes taken from <i>Le Pedant Joué</i>, of Cyrano de Bergerac -(1619-1655). (They are the amusing scenes where Geronte repeatedly -says, <i>Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère</i>, “What the deuce was he doing -in that Turkish galley?”) Grimarest says that Cyrano had used in these -scenes what he had overheard from Molière, and that the latter, when taxed -with the plagiarism, replied, “Je <i>reprends</i> mon bien où je le trouve” (“I -<i>take back</i> my property, wherever I find it”). That is to say, he definitely -<i>denied</i> the plagiarism.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, in a “Life of Molière,” makes a general assertion (not referring -specially to this incident) that all Grimarest’s stories are false. This -must, of course, be far too sweeping an assertion, and Grimarest is in fact -quoted as an authority. Voltaire himself (1694-1778) uses the saying in -the sense given by Grimarest (<i>La Pucelle</i>, Chant III.):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Cette culotte est mienne; et je prendrai</div> -<div class="verse">Ce que fut mien où je le trouverai.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">(“These breeches are mine, and I shall take what was mine wherever I -find it.”) Agnès Sorel had been captured dressed as a man and wearing -the garment in question, which had been previously stolen from the speaker.</p> - -<p>It seems to me that Grimarest’s story must be accepted, that Molière -claimed the scenes as originally his and denied plagiarism. There is no -evidence to the contrary, and the saying is given its obvious meaning. (It -is word for word as in the Digest, <i>Ubi rem meam invenio, ibi vindico</i>, “Where -I find my own property, I appropriate it.”) But the question then arises, -Why should so commonplace a statement have attained such notoriety?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> - -<p>The explanation seems simple. Molière had many jealous and bitter -enemies, who laid every charge they could against him. He was well known -to have borrowed ideas, characters and scenes in all directions—and his -enemies constantly and persistently attacked him on this ground. Then -came his most glaring plagiarism from a comparatively recent play, written -by a man whose dare-devil exploits had made him a perfect hero of romance. -Molière’s story that Cyrano had previously stolen the scenes from him would -not been have accepted for a moment. Cyrano had never been known to -plagiarize, nor would it have been natural for a man of his character to do -anything clandestine. Also Molière would have had nothing to support his -statement—and Cyrano was not alive to contradict him. The conclusion, -therefore, seems to be that the dramatist’s statement was received in Paris -with such incredulity, indignation, and ridicule that it became a byword.</p> - -<p>But if this is so, why have the words been given an entirely fictitious -meaning? The answer seems to lie in the fact that as Molière’s great -genius became realized the desire arose to remove a blemish from his -character. His is the greatest name in French literature, and almost -anything would be excused in him. (We ourselves pass lightly over plagiarisms -by Shakespeare.) Also, whether morally justified or not, Molière -enriched the world’s literature by his borrowings. It was, therefore, no -serious matter to Frenchmen that he should have borrowed from Cyrano, -but it was a distinct blemish on his character that he should have denied -the fact and also slandered a dead man. Ordinarily, in such a case, the -story is ignored and forgotten, just as the one improper act of Sir Walter -Scott, his borrowing from Coleridge of the “Christabel” metre, is usually -ignored or slurred over. But the saying had become rooted in literature -and this course was not practicable. However, there is little that enthusiasm -cannot accomplish by some means or other, and the object in this -instance has been achieved by <i>reversing the meaning</i> of Molière’s words. -If this conjecture is correct, it is an illustration of what has occurred on a -far greater scale in connection with the Greeks (see Index of Subjects).</p> - -<p>As regards the meaning now given to the saying, Seneca claimed the -same right to borrow at will. <i>Quidquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est</i> (<i>Ep. -XVI</i>). After advising his reader to consider the Epistle carefully and see -what value it had for him, he says, “You need not be surprised if I am still -free with other people’s property. But why do I say ‘other people’s -property’? Whatever has been well said by anyone belongs to me.”<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> - -<p>So also the late Samuel Butler said, “Appropriate things are meant -to be appropriated.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Our finest hope is finest memory,</div> -<div class="verse">As they who love in age think youth is blest</div> -<div class="verse">Because it has a life to fill with love.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>A Minor Poet</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The disposition to judge every enterprise by its event, and -believe in no wisdom that is not endorsed by success, is apt -to grow upon us with years, till we sympathize with nothing -for which we cannot take out a policy of assurance.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (<i>Hours of Thought I, 87</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes -to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to -drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility -and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, -you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated -his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought -little of at the time.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">De Quincey</span> (<i>Murder, as one of the Fine Arts</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For when the mellow autumn flushed</div> -<div class="verse">The thickets, where the chestnut fell,</div> -<div class="verse">And in the vales the maple blushed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Another came who knew her well,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Who sat with her below the pine</div> -<div class="verse">And with her through the meadow moved,</div> -<div class="verse">And underneath the purpling vine</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She sang to him the song I loved.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">N. G. Shepherd.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t -room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to -me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, “You -know, Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing -a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me!”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Dickens</span> (<i>David Copperfield</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(After looking at his watch) “Two days wrong!” sighed -the Hatter. “I told you butter would not suit the works!” -he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.</p> - -<p>“It was the <i>best</i> butter,” the March Hare replied.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lewis Carroll</span> (<i>Alice in Wonderland</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“They were learning to draw,” the Dormouse went on, “and -they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an -M—”</p> - -<p>“Why with an M?” said Alice.</p> - -<p>“Why not?” said the March Hare.</p> - -<p>Alice was silent.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lewis Carroll</span> (<i>Alice in Wonderland</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Perhaps, as two negatives make one affirmative, it may be -thought that two layers of moonshine might coalesce into one -pancake; and two Barmecide banquets might be the square -root of one poached egg.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In a Dublin lunatic asylum, one of the inmates peremptorily -ordered a visitor to take off his hat. Deferentially obeying -the order, the visitor asked why he should remove his hat. The -lunatic replied: “Do you not know, sir, that I am the Crown -Prince of Prussia?” Having duly made his apologies, the -visitor proceeded on his round; but, coming upon the same -lunatic, was met with the same demand. Again obeying the -order, he repeated the question: “May I ask why you wish me -to take off my hat?” The lunatic replied: “Are you not aware, -sir, that I am the Prince of Wales?” “But,” said the visitor, -“you told me just now you were the Crown Prince of Prussia.” -The lunatic, after scratching his head and deliberating for a -moment, replied: “Ah, but that was by a different mother.”</p> - -<p>(Another Irish lunatic always lost himself and insisted on looking -for himself under the bed.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These are true stories but localized—another injustice to Ireland!</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should -live till I were married.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Much Ado About Nothing.</i>)</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p><i>Pointz.</i> Come, your reason, Jack,—your reason.</p> - -<p><i>Falstaff.</i> Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons -were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason -upon compulsion, I.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>1 Henry IV</i>, ii, 4.)</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Reason</i> needs to be given its old pronunciation, “raison” (<i>or raisin</i>) -in order to understand Falstaff’s pun.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Still I cannot believe in clairvoyance—<i>because the thing is -impossible</i>.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855</span> (<i>Table Talk</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Rogers mentions some remarkable facts about the clairvoyant, Alexis, -and ends with this convincing argument. Apart from clairvoyance (of -which I know nothing), Rogers would no doubt have made a similar reply -if some prophet had foretold that men would one day communicate with -each other by wireless telegraphy; and the same effective argument is to-day -opposed by many to the evidence that the dead communicate with -the living.</p> - -<p>I might follow the eight preceding quotations (which illustrate “the -art of reasoning”) with the well-known story of Charles Lamb, who, when -blamed for coming late to the office, excused himself on the ground that he -always left early. (He also said, “A man could not have too little to do -and too much time to do it in.”) There is also the reply of Lord -Rothschild, when the cabman told him that his son paid better fares than -he did, “Yes, but He has a rich father, and I haven’t.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">TO THE TRUE ROMANCE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Thy face is far from this our war,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Our call and counter-cry,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I shall not find Thee quick and kind,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Nor know Thee till I die.</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Enough for me in dreams to see</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>And touch Thy garments’ hem:</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Thy feet have trod so near to God</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>I may not follow them.</i></div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Through wantonness if men profess</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They weary of Thy parts,</div> -<div class="verse">E’en let them die at blasphemy</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And perish with their arts;</div> -<div class="verse">But we that love, but we that prove</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thine excellence august,</div> -<div class="verse">While we adore discover more</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thee perfect, wise, and just.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Since spoken word Man’s Spirit stirred</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Beyond his belly-need,</div> -<div class="verse">What is is Thine of fair design</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In thought and craft and deed;</div> -<div class="verse">Each stroke aright of toil and fight,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That was and that shall be,</div> -<div class="verse">And hope too high, wherefore we die,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Has birth and worth in Thee.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Who holds by Thee hath Heaven in fee</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To gild his dross thereby,</div> -<div class="verse">And knowledge sure that he endure</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A child until he die—</div> -<div class="verse">For to make plain that man’s disdain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is but new Beauty’s birth—</div> -<div class="verse">For to possess in loneliness</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The joy of all the earth.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">As thou didst teach all lovers speech</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And Life all mystery,</div> -<div class="verse">So shalt Thou rule by every school</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Till love and longing die,</div> -<div class="verse">Who wast or yet the Lights were set</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A whisper in the Void,</div> -<div class="verse">Who shalt be sung through planets young</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When this is clean destroyed.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Beyond the bounds our staring rounds,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Across the pressing dark,</div> -<div class="verse">The children wise of outer skies</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Look hitherward and mark</div> -<div class="verse">A light that shifts, a glare that drifts</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Rekindling thus and thus,</div> -<div class="verse">Not all forlorn, for Thou hast borne</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Strange tales to them of us.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Time hath no tide but must abide</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The servant of Thy will;</div> -<div class="verse">Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The ranging stars stand still—</div> -<div class="verse">Regent of spheres that lock our fears</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our hopes invisible,</div> -<div class="verse">Oh! ’twas certés at Thy decrees</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We fashioned Heaven and Hell!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Pure Wisdom hath no certain path</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That lacks thy morning-eyne,</div> -<div class="verse">And captains bold by Thee controlled</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Most like to God’s design;</div> -<div class="verse">Thou art the Voice to kingly boys</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To lift them through the fight.</div> -<div class="verse">And Comfortress of Unsuccess,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To give the dead good-night.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A veil to draw ’twixt God, His law,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And Man’s infirmity,</div> -<div class="verse">A shadow kind to dumb and blind</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The shambles where we die;</div> -<div class="verse">A rule to trick th’ arithmetic</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Too base of leaguing odds—</div> -<div class="verse">The spur of trust, the curb of lust,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou handmaid of the Gods!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O Charity, all patiently</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Abiding wrack and scaith!</div> -<div class="verse">O Faith, that meets ten thousand cheats</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yet drops no jot of faith!</div> -<div class="verse">Devil and brute Thou dost transmute</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To higher, lordlier show,</div> -<div class="verse">Who art in sooth that lovely Truth</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The careless angels know!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Thy face is far from this our war,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Our call and counter-cry,</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>I may not find Thee quick and kind,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Nor know Thee till I die.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Yet may I look with heart unshook</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>On blow brought home or missed—</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Yet may I hear with equal ear</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>The clarions down the List;</i></div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -<div class="verse"><i>Yet set my lance above mischance</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>And ride the barrière—</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Oh, hit or miss, how little ’tis,</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>My Lady is not there!</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>All attempts to define poetic imagination, to determine its scope or -prescribe its limits, leave us cold and unsatisfied, for the simple reason -that its variety and range are unlimited. The aesthetic, moral and spiritual -faculties are all in essence identical, so that no definition of the aesthetic -can exclude the spiritual, and art and poetry spring from the same root as -religion. They all have what Wordsworth calls the “Spirit of Paradise.”<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> -Imagination<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> in its larger sense includes all those higher faculties of man, -all that lifts him above his material existence. The “True Romance” -in this fine poem is imagination in this complete sense. By our lower -perceptive faculties we see the world of Nature in its material form; by -our higher powers we apprehend its aesthetic, moral and spiritual beauty. -(Man with his consciousness, will, reason, and also his higher imaginative -faculties, is as much part of <i>Nature</i> as any star or clod, crystal or gas, -fly or flower.) Hence imagination gives us the vision of glory in earth and -sky, the sense of wonder and worship, the emotions of sympathy and love; -it teaches us duty and self sacrifice; it awakens in us a sense of the -mystery of birth, life and death, directing our thoughts from the finite and -material world to the infinite realm of the spiritual.</p> - -<p><i>Verse 4, lines 5, 6.</i> Our faculties develop, and we realize, for example, -the beauty of Nature which was not apparent to the Greeks of Plato’s -time (<a href="#Page_379">see p. 379</a>; <a href="#Page_283">see also p. 283</a>). <i>Verse 9, l. 5, 6.</i> Imagination teaches -us heroism. In the italicized verses, “our war” is, of course, the strife -of our material existence: we can face with courage the mischances of life, -seeing that “My Lady Romance,” the soul which is our higher nature, -must persist through life and after death. (“<i>Barrière</i>,” barrier.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively -at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent -into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The stars make no noise.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Irish Proverb.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WHO FANCIED WHAT A PRETTY SIGHT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Who fancied what a pretty sight</div> -<div class="verse">This rock would be if edged around</div> -<div class="verse">With living snow-drops? circlet bright!</div> -<div class="verse">How glorious to this orchard ground!</div> -<div class="verse">Who loved the little rock, and set</div> -<div class="verse">Upon its head this coronet?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Was it the humour of a child?</div> -<div class="verse">Or rather of some gentle maid,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose brows, the day that she was styled</div> -<div class="verse">The Shepherd-queen, were thus arrayed?</div> -<div class="verse">Of man mature, or matron sage?</div> -<div class="verse">Or old man toying with his age?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I asked—’twas whispered, “The device</div> -<div class="verse">To each and all might well belong:</div> -<div class="verse">It is the Spirit of Paradise</div> -<div class="verse">That prompts such work, a Spirit strong</div> -<div class="verse">That gives to all the self-same bent</div> -<div class="verse">Where life is wise and innocent.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates -of men are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who -regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common -obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do -with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. -The community of the centre of all creation suggests an -inter-radiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else -a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied. -The blank, which is only a forgotten life lying behind the consciousness, -and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped -life lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other -connections with the worlds around us than those of science and -poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green -glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the -hidden things of a man’s soul, and, it may be, with the secret -history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house -within which he abides.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Phantastes</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">O weary time, O life,</div> -<div class="verse">Consumed in endless, useless strife</div> -<div class="verse">To wash from out the hopeless clay</div> -<div class="verse">Of heavy day and heavy day</div> -<div class="verse">Some specks of golden love, to keep</div> -<div class="verse">Our hearts from madness ere we sleep!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Morris</span> (<i>The Earthly Paradise</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>To an Australian, a metaphor taken from alluvial gold-mining is -interesting.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Dr. Slop has been uttering terrible curses against Obadiah) -I declare, quoth my Uncle Toby, my heart would not let me -curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the -father of curses, replied Dr. Slop.—So am not I, replied my uncle.—But -he is cursed and damned already to all eternity, replied -Dr. Slop.</p> - -<p>I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Laurence Sterne</span> (<i>Tristram Shandy</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Faust.</i> If heaven was made for man, ’twas made for me.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Good Angel.</i> Faustus, repent; yet heaven will pity thee.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Bad Angel.</i> Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Faust.</i> Be I a devil, yet God may pity me.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Marlowe</span> (<i>Doctor Faustus</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But fare-you-well, Auld Nickie-Ben!</div> -<div class="verse">O, wad ye tak a thought and men’!</div> -<div class="verse">Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken—</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Still hae a stake:</div> -<div class="verse">I’m wae to think upo’ yon den,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Ev’n for your sake!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span> (<i>Address to the Deil</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“Shargar, what think ye? Gin the deil war to repent, wad -God forgie him?”</p> - -<p>“There’s no sayin’ what folk wad dae till ance they’re tried,” -returned Shargar cautiously.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George MacDonald</span> (<i>Robert Falconer, ch. xii.</i>)</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>There is a passage, I think in one of MacDonald’s novels, where the question -is again put, “Gin the de’il war to repent?” The reply is to the effect, -“Do not wish even him anything so dreadful. The agony of his repentance -would be far worse than anything he can suffer in hell.”</p> - -<p>Scotus Erigena, a very able Irish theologian and philosopher of the -9th century, believed that Satan himself must ultimately be reclaimed, -since otherwise God could not in the end conquer and extinguish sin. He -cites Origen and others in support of his contention. These old and very -serious discussions seem more remote than Plato, but the belief in a -personal devil was not uncommon even in my young days.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent9">Hope, whose eyes</div> -<div class="verse">Can sound the seas unsoundable, the skies</div> -<div class="verse">Inaccessible of eyesight; that can see</div> -<div class="verse">What earth beholds not, hear what wind and sea</div> -<div class="verse">Hear not, and speak what all these crying in one</div> -<div class="verse">Can speak not to the sun.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>Thalassius</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF CHARITIE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">In Virgo now the sultry sun did sheene, <span class="linenote">shine</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">And hot upon the meads did cast his ray;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The apple reddened from its paly green,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The pied chelándry sang the livelong day; <span class="linenote">goldfinch</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">’Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,</div> -<div class="verse">And eke the ground was decked in its most deft aumere. <span class="linenote">apparel</span></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">The sun was gleaming in the midst of day.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Dead-still the air, and eke the welkin blue,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When from the sea arose in drear array</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -<div class="verse indent2">A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The which full fast unto the woodland drew,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Hiding at once the sunnès festive face,</div> -<div class="verse">And the black tempest swelled, and gathered up apace.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Beneath a holm, fast by a pathway-side <span class="linenote">holm-oak</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">Which did unto Saint Godwin’s convent lead,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A hapless pilgrim moaning did abide,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Poor in his view, ungentle in his weed, clothing</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Long brimful of the miseries of need.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Where from the hailstorm could the beggar fly?</div> -<div class="verse">He had no houses there, nor any convent nigh.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Look in his gloomèd face, his sprite there scan;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">How woe-begone, how withered, dwindled, dead!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Haste to thy church-glebe-house, accursed man! <span class="linenote">grave</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">Haste to thy shroud, thy only sleeping bed.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Cold as the clay which will grow on thy head</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Are Charity and Love among high elves;</div> -<div class="verse">For knights and barons live for pleasure and themselves.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">The gathered storm is ripe; the big drops fall,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The sunburnt meadows smoke, and drink the rain;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The coming ghastness doth the cattle ’pall, <span class="linenote">gloom, appal</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the full flocks are driving o’er the plain;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Dashed from the clouds, the waters fly again;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The welkin opes; the yellow lightning flies,</div> -<div class="verse">And the hot fiery steam in the wide flashings dies.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">List! now the thunder’s rattling noisy sound</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Moves slowly on, and then full-swollen clangs,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Shakes the high spire, and lost, expended, drowned,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Still on the frighted ear of terror hangs;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The winds are up; the lofty elmtree swangs; <span class="linenote">swings</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">Again the lightning, and the thunder pours,</div> -<div class="verse">And the full clouds are burst at once in stony showers.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Spurring his palfrey o’er the watery plain,</div> -<div class="verse">The Abbot of Saint Godwin’s convent came;</div> -<div class="verse">His chapournette was drenched with the rain, <span class="linenote">small round hat</span></div> -<div class="verse">His painted girdle met with mickle shame;</div> -<div class="verse">He aynewarde told his bederoll at the same; <span class="linenote">told his beads</span></div> -<div class="verse">The storm increases, and he drew aside, <span class="linenote">backwards,</span></div> -<div class="verse">With the poor alms-craver near to the holm to bide. <span class="linenote">i.e., cursed</span></div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">His cope was all of Lincoln cloth so fine,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With a gold button fastened near his chin,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">His autremete was edged with golden twine, <span class="linenote">robe</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">And his shoe’s peak a noble’s might have been;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Full well it shewèd he thought cost no sin.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The trammels of his palfrey pleased his sight,</div> -<div class="verse">For the horse-milliner his head with roses dight.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“An alms, sir priest!” the drooping pilgrim said,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“Oh! let me wait within your convent-door,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Till the sun shineth high above our head,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the loud tempest of the air is o’er.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Helpless and old am I, alas! and poor.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">No house, no friend, nor money in my pouch,</div> -<div class="verse">All that I call my own is this my silver crouche.” <span class="linenote">crucifix</span></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“Varlet!” replied the Abbot, “cease your din;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">This is no season alms and prayers to give.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">My porter never lets a beggar in;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">None touch my ring who not in honour live.”</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And now the sun with the black clouds did strive,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And shot upon the ground his glaring ray;</div> -<div class="verse">The abbot spurred his steed, and eftsoons rode away.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Once more the sky was black, the thunder rolled,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Fast running o’er the plain a priest was seen;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Not dight full proud, nor buttoned up in gold.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">His cope and jape were grey, and eke were clean; <span class="linenote">short surplice</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">A Limitor he was of order seen; <span class="linenote">Begging Friar</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">And from the pathway-side then turnèd he,</div> -<div class="verse">Where the poor beggar lay beneath the holmen tree.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“An alms, sir priest!” the drooping pilgrim said,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“For sweet Saint Mary and your order’s sake.”</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The Limitor then loosened his pouch-thread,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And did thereout a groat of silver take:</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The needy pilgrim did for gladness shake,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“Here, take this silver, it may ease thy care,</div> -<div class="verse">We are God’s stewards all, naught of our own we bear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“But ah! unhappy pilgrim, learn of me.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Scarce any give a rent-roll to their lord;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Here, take my semicope, thou’rt bare, I see. <span class="linenote">short cloak</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">’Tis thine; the saints will give me my reward.”</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He left the pilgrim, and his way aborde. <span class="linenote">went on his way</span></div> -<div class="verse indent2">Virgin and holy Saints, who sit in gloure, <span class="linenote">glory</span></div> -<div class="verse">Or give the mighty will, or give the good man power!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770).</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The sun would conventionally be said to be in Virgo in August.</p> - -<p>It is sad and strange to think of the amazing story of this child-genius, -who lived in a world of romance but was driven by destitution to commit -suicide at <i>seventeen</i> years of age. The above was one of the “Rowley -forgeries,” but, for the antique words which Chatterton used (often incorrectly) -to imitate the language of the Fifteenth Century, modern words -have been substituted where possible.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I thought once how Theocritus had sung</div> -<div class="verse">Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,</div> -<div class="verse">Who each one in a gracious hand appears</div> -<div class="verse">To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:</div> -<div class="verse">And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,</div> -<div class="verse">I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,</div> -<div class="verse">The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years.</div> -<div class="verse">Those of my own life, who by turns had flung</div> -<div class="verse">A shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,</div> -<div class="verse">So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move</div> -<div class="verse">Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;</div> -<div class="verse">And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—</div> -<div class="verse">“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But there,</div> -<div class="verse">The silver answer rang.—“Not Death, but Love.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is the first of the chain of sonnets, which Mrs. Browning called -“Sonnets from the Portuguese.” They tell her own love-story, and were -written in secret and without thought of publication. Robert Browning -learnt of them only the year after the marriage, and then insisted on their -being published. They include some of the finest sonnets in our language.</p> - -<p>To appreciate this and the other sonnets, it is necessary to know -the beautiful story of the two poets. Mrs. Browning was six years older -than her husband and a life-long invalid, expecting, as she says in this -sonnet, Death rather than Love. Their marriage was supremely happy, -and the great poet, when in England, used to visit the church in which they -were married to express his thankfulness. He tells the love-story in the -next quotation.</p> - -<p>In these sonnets Mrs. Browning laid bare her innermost feelings.</p> - -<p>Robert Browning, however, in several poems says the privacy of a -poet’s life and feelings should not be bared to the public. Wordsworth -had written in 1827:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Scorn not the Sonnet.... With this key</div> -<div class="verse">Shakespeare unlocked his heart.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> - -<p>Browning in 1876 (thirty years after the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” -were written) wrote in his poem called <i>House</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent13">“<i>With this same key</i></div> -<div class="verse indent2"><i>Shakespeare unlocked his heart</i>”....</div> -<div class="verse">Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Swinburne comments on these lines: “No whit the less like Shakespeare, -but undoubtedly the less like Browning.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">... Come back with me to the first of all,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Let us lean and love it over again,</div> -<div class="verse">Let us now forget and now recall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Break the rosary in a pearly rain,</div> -<div class="verse">And gather what we let fall!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hither we walked then, side by side,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,</div> -<div class="verse">And still I questioned or replied,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">While my heart, convulsed to really speak,</div> -<div class="verse">Lay choking in its pride.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And pity and praise the chapel sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">And care about the fresco’s loss,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And wish for our souls a like retreat,</div> -<div class="verse">And wonder at the moss.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We stoop and look in through the grate,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">See the little porch and rustic door,</div> -<div class="verse">Read duly the dead builder’s date;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,</div> -<div class="verse">Take the path again—but wait!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh moment, one and infinite!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The water slips o’er stock and stone;</div> -<div class="verse">The West is tender, hardly bright:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How grey at once is the evening grown—</div> -<div class="verse">One star, its chrysolite!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We two stood there with never a third,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But each by each, as each knew well:</div> -<div class="verse">The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The lights and the shades made up a spell</div> -<div class="verse">Till the trouble grew and stirred.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh, the little more, and how much it is!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the little less, and what worlds away!</div> -<div class="verse">How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or a breath suspend the blood’s best play,</div> -<div class="verse">And life be a proof of this!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A moment after, and hands unseen</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Were hanging the night around us fast;</div> -<div class="verse">But we knew that a bar was broken between</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Life and life: we were mixed at last</div> -<div class="verse">In spite of the mortal screen....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How the world is made for each of us!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How all we perceive and know in it</div> -<div class="verse">Tends to some moment’s product thus,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When a soul declares itself—to wit,</div> -<div class="verse">By its fruit, the thing it does!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I am named and known by that moment’s feat;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There took my station and degree;</div> -<div class="verse">So grew my own small life complete,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As nature obtained her best of me—</div> -<div class="verse">One born to love you, sweet!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And to watch you sink by the fire-side now</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Back again, as you mutely sit</div> -<div class="verse">Musing by fire-light, that great brow</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the spirit-small hand propping it,</div> -<div class="verse">Yonder, my heart knows how!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>By the Fireside</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The last verse, describing Mrs. Browning, makes it clear that the poet -is speaking of his own love-story, although the scene is imaginary. The -last two verses are to be read literally, as an expression of the poet’s firm -belief, and not as poetical exaggeration.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary -to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; -and nobody knows. Wise men are afraid to say that there is -anything contrary to nature, except what is contrary to mathematical -truth, as that two and two cannot make five. There -are dozens and hundreds of things in the world which we should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -certainly have said were contrary to nature, if we did not see -them going on under our eyes all day long. If people had never -seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite different -shapes from themselves, and these trees again produce fresh seeds, -they would have said, “The thing cannot be”.... Suppose -that no human being had ever seen or heard of an elephant. -And suppose that you described him to people, and said, “This -is the shape, and plan, and anatomy of the beast ... and this -is the section of his skull, more like a mushroom than a reasonable -skull of a reasonable or unreasonable beast; yet he is the wisest -of all beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast -accounts.” People would surely have said, “Nonsense; your -elephant is contrary to nature,” and have thought you were -telling stories—as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he came -back to Paris and said that he had shot a giraffe; and as the -King of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor, when -he said that in his country water turned to marble, and rain fell -as feathers. The truth is that folks’ fancy that such and such -things cannot be, simply because they have not seen them, -is worth no more than a savage’s fancy that there cannot be -such a thing as a locomotive, because he never saw one running -wild in the forest.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)</span> (<i>Water-Babies</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This passage interested us greatly in the old days, and also another -passage drawing a not very satisfactory analogy between the transformation -of insects and our probable transformation at death. I do not know -whether the elephant’s brain warrants Kingsley’s deduction.</p> - -<p>This book, published in 1863,<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> had a considerable effect in doing away -with the barbarous employment of young children in mines, factories, -brickfields, etc. It called attention particularly to the chimney-sweep -boys of four or five years of age who had to climb up the narrow chimneys, -and who were simply slaves, neglected and ill-treated by their drunken -masters. We are apt to forget how recently we emerged from barbarism -in many directions, and that we are only now becoming civilized in other -respects, as, for instance, with regard to the poor, suffering, and ignorant.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The worst way to improve the world</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is to condemn it.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">P. J. Bailey</span> (<i>Festus</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE DARK GLASS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Not I myself know all my love for thee:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To-morrow’s dower by gage of yesterday?</div> -<div class="verse">Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be</div> -<div class="verse">As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay</div> -<div class="verse">And ultimate outpost of eternity?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.</div> -<div class="verse">Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call</div> -<div class="verse">And veriest touch of powers primordial</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That any hour-girt life may understand.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The gods are on the side of the strongest.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tacitus</span> (<i>Hist.</i> 4, 17).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>De Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, said in 1677, “God is on the side of the -heaviest battalions.” Voltaire again said, in 1770, that there are far more -fools than wise men, “and they say that God always favours the heaviest -battalions” (Letter to Le Riche). Gibbon wrote, “The winds and waves -are always on the side of the ablest navigators” (Ch. LXVIII). (I owe -part of this note to <i>King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations</i>.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE OCTOPUS</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> ALGERNON <i>SINBURN</i></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whence camest to dazzle our eyes,</div> -<div class="verse">With thy bosom bespangled and banded,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With the hues of the seas and the skies?</div> -<div class="verse">Is thy name European or Asian,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Oh mystical monster marine,</div> -<div class="verse">Part molluscous and partly crustacean,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Betwixt and between?</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wast thou born to the sound of sea-trumpets?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess</div> -<div class="verse">Of the sponges—thy muffins and crumpets—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of the sea-weed—thy mustard and cress?</div> -<div class="verse">Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Remote from reproof or restraint?</div> -<div class="verse">Art thou innocent, art thou immoral,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Sinburnian or Saint?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Lithe limbs curling free as a creeper,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That creeps in a desolate place,</div> -<div class="verse">To enrol and envelop the sleeper</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In a silent and stealthy embrace;</div> -<div class="verse">Cruel beak craning forward to bite us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our juices to drain and to drink,</div> -<div class="verse">Or to whelm as in waves of Cocytus,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Indelible ink!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh, breast that ’twere rapture to writhe on!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Oh, arms ’twere delicious to feel</div> -<div class="verse">Clinging close with the crush of the Python,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When she maketh her murderous meal!</div> -<div class="verse">In thy eight-fold embraces enfolden</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Let our empty existence escape;</div> -<div class="verse">Give us death that is glorious and golden,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Crushed all out of shape!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah, thy red limbs lascivious and luscious,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With death in their amorous kiss!</div> -<div class="verse">Cling round us and clasp us and crush us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With bitings of agonized bliss!</div> -<div class="verse">We are sick with the poison of pleasure,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dispense us the potion of pain;</div> -<div class="verse">Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">And bite us again!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. C. Hilton (1851-1877)</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This extraordinarily clever parody of Swinburne’s “Dolores” was -written by Arthur Clement Hilton, when he was an undergraduate at -St. John’s, Cambridge. It appeared in <i>The Light Green</i>, a clever but -short-lived magazine published in Cambridge in the early seventies as a -rival to <i>The Dark Blue</i>, published in London by Oxford men. Hilton was -the main contributor to <i>The Light Green</i>. He died when only twenty-six -years of age. This brilliant young author is not included in <i>The -Dictionary of National Biography</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The Octopus” is one of the best of English parodies. I had not seen -it for forty years, until I recently found it in Adam and White’s <i>Parodies -and Imitations</i> (1912). In that book, although the authors presumably -had <i>The Light Green</i> to print from, the punctuation is inferior to that in my -copy, and the word “Dispose” instead of “Dispense” in the third last -line must be a misprint.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He seemed to me to be one of those men who have not very -extended minds, but who know what they know very well—shallow -streams, and clear because they are shallow.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Table Talk</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen -to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept -your soul alive.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. L. Stevenson</span> (<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.</p> - -<p>(To know all is forgive all.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">French Proverb.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This proverb is said to have originated from a sentence in Mme. -de Staël’s <i>Corinne, Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent</i>, “Understanding -everything makes one very forgiving.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The true life of the human community is planted deep in the -private affections of its members; in the greatness of its individual -minds; in the pure severities of its domestic conscience; in the -noble and transforming thoughts that fertilize its sacred nooks. -Who can observe, without astonishment, the durable action -of men truly great on the history of the world, and the evanescence -of vast military revolutions, once threatening all things -with destruction? How often is it the fate of the former to be -invisible for an age, and then live for ever; of the latter, to sweep -a generation from the earth, and then vanish with slight trace?</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (<i>The Outer and the Inner Temple</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Wars seem to leave little trace except where they result in the immigration -and settlement of a tribe or nation. Otherwise they appear to cancel -one another. The present war will probably destroy the only trace of the -Franco-Prussian war, and, with respect to Turkey, Poland, and other -countries, will no doubt cancel the effects of many tremendous conflicts -of past centuries.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A century ago men were following, with bated breath, the -march of Napoleon, and waiting with feverish impatience for the -latest news of the wars. And all the while, in their own homes, -babies were being born. But who could think about <i>babies</i>? Everybody -was thinking about <i>battles</i>. In one year, lying midway -between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there stole into the world -a host of heroes! During that one year, 1809, Mr. Gladstone was -born in Liverpool; Alfred Tennyson was born at the Somersby -rectory and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appearance -in Massachusetts. On the very self-same day of that -self-same year Charles Darwin made his debut at Shrewsbury, -and Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath in old Kentucky. -Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, -and of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg. Within the same year, -too, Samuel Morley was born in Homerton, Edward Fitzgerald -in Woodbridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Durham, and -Frances Kemble in London. But nobody thought of babies. -Everybody was thinking of battles. Yet, viewing that age in the -truer perspective which the distance of a hundred years enables -us to command, we may well ask ourselves, “Which of the battles -of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809?” ...</p> - -<p>We fancy that God can only manage His world by big battalions -abroad, when all the while He is doing it by beautiful -babies at home. When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants -preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into -the world to do it. That is why, long, long ago, a babe was born -in Bethlehem.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Frank W. Boreham</span> (<i>Mountains in the Mist</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">REINFORCEMENTS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When little boys with merry noise</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the meadows shout and run;</div> -<div class="verse">And little girls, sweet woman buds,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Brightly open in the sun;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> -<div class="verse">I may not of the world despair,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our God despaireth not, I see;</div> -<div class="verse">For blithesomer in Eden’s air</div> -<div class="verse indent1">These lads and maidens could not be.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why were they born, if Hope must die?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wherefore this health, if Truth should fail?</div> -<div class="verse">And why such Joy, if Misery</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Be conquering us and must prevail?</div> -<div class="verse">Arouse! our spirit may not droop!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">These young ones fresh from Heaven are;</div> -<div class="verse">Our God hath sent another troop,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And means to carry on the war.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Toke Lynch</span> (1818-1871).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O wind, a word with you before you pass;</div> -<div class="verse">What did you to the Rose that on the grass</div> -<div class="verse">Broken she lies and pale, who loved you so?</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE WIND</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Roses must live and love, and winds must blow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Philip Bourke Marston</span> (<i>The Rose and the Wind</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WHAT OF THE DARKNESS?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?</div> -<div class="verse">Are there great calms, and find ye silence there?</div> -<div class="verse">Like soft-shut lilies all your faces glow</div> -<div class="verse">With some strange peace our faces never know,</div> -<div class="verse">With some great faith our faces never dare:</div> -<div class="verse">Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie?</div> -<div class="verse">Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry?</div> -<div class="verse">Is it a Hand to still the pulse’s leap?</div> -<div class="verse">Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep?</div> -<div class="verse">Day shows us not such comfort anywhere:</div> -<div class="verse">Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Out of the Day’s deceiving light we call,</div> -<div class="verse">Day, that shows man so great and God so small.</div> -<div class="verse">That hides the stars and magnifies the grass;</div> -<div class="verse">O is the Darkness too a lying glass</div> -<div class="verse">Or, undistracted, do ye find truth there?</div> -<div class="verse">What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. le Gallienne.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These lines were written of <i>the blind</i>, but become even more beautiful -and true if applied to a different subject, <i>the dead</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Continuing the work of creation, <i>i.e.</i>, co-operating as instruments -of Providence in bringing order out of disorder ... is -only a part of the mission of mankind, and the time will come -again when its due rank will be assigned to contemplation and -the calm culture of reverence and love. Then poetry will resume -her equality with prose.... But that time is not yet, and the -crowning glory of Wordsworth is that he has borne witness to -it and kept alive its traditions in an age, which, but for him, -would have lost sight of it entirely.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. S. Mill.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In that utilitarian period the figure of the great poet stands out in sheer -sublimity. Apart from the depressing atmosphere of the time, one needs -to remember how serenely he continued to deliver his high message in -spite of the most deadly want of appreciation. At thirty he received -£10 from his poems and nothing more until he was sixty-five! The -quotation is from a letter in Caroline Fox’s <i>Journals</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>My sarcastic friend says, with the utmost gravity, that no -man with less than a thousand pounds a year can afford to have -private opinions upon certain important subjects. He admits -that he has known it done upon eight hundred a year; but only -by very prudent people with small families.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir A. Helps</span> (<i>Companions of my Solitude</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>’Tis an old theme, this Divine Love, and it cannot be exhausted. -Men have not outlived it, angels cannot outlearn it. It swayed -the ancient world by many a fair god and goddess; its light has -been cast over ages of Christian controversy and warfare; it is -still the guiding Star of the Sea to each voyager after the nobler<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -faith. The youth leaves the old shore of belief, only because -love has left it. His starved affections will no longer accept -stone, though pulverized flour-like and artfully kneaded, for -bread. Their white sails fill the purple and the sombre seas, -and they hail each other to ask for the summer-land, where faith -climbs to beauty, and the lost bowers of childhood’s trust may -be found again.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Moncure Daniel Conway</span> (1832-1907).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This fine writer was a Unitarian minister, but afterwards became a -“Free-thinker.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There are in this loud stunning tide</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of human care and crime,</div> -<div class="verse">With whom the melodies abide</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of th’ everlasting chime;</div> -<div class="verse">Who carry music in their heart</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Through dusky lane and wrangling mart.</div> -<div class="verse">Plying their daily task with busier feet,</div> -<div class="verse">Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Keble</span> (<i>The Christian Year</i>, “<i>St. Matthew.</i>”)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE DARK COMPANION</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There is an orb that mocked the lore of sages</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Long time with mystery of strange unrest;</div> -<div class="verse">The steadfast law that rounds the starry ages</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gave doubtful token of supreme behest;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But they who knew the ways of God unchanging,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Concluded some far influence unseen—</div> -<div class="verse">Some kindred sphere through viewless others ranging,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whose strong persuasions spanned the void between;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And knowing it alone through perturbation</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And vague disquiet of another star,</div> -<div class="verse">They named it, till the day of revelation,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“The Dark Companion”—darkly guessed afar.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But when, through new perfection of appliance,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Faith merged at length in undisputed sight,</div> -<div class="verse">The mystic mover was revealed to science,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No Dark Companion, but—a speck of light:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No Dark Companion, but a sun of glory:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No fell disturber, but a bright compeer:</div> -<div class="verse">The shining complement that crowned the story:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The golden link that made the meaning clear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh, Dark Companion, journeying ever by us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Oh, grim Perturber of our works and ways,</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, potent Dread, unseen, yet ever nigh us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Disquieting all the tenor of our days—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh, Dark Companion, Death, whose wide embraces</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Overtake remotest change of clime and skies—</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, Dark Companion, Death, whose grievous traces</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are scattered shreds of riven enterprise—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou, too, in this wise, when, our eyes unsealing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The clearer day shall change our faith to sight,</div> -<div class="verse">Shalt show thyself, in that supreme revealing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No Dark Companion, but a thing of light:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No ruthless wrecker of harmonious order:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No alien heart of discord and caprice:</div> -<div class="verse">A beckoning light upon the Blissful Border:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A kindred element of law and peace.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So, too, our strange unrest in this our dwelling,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The trembling that thou joinest with our mirth,</div> -<div class="verse">Are by thy magnet-communing compelling</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our spirits farther from the scope of earth.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So, doubtless, when beneath thy potence swerving,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Tis that thou lead’st us by a path unknown,</div> -<div class="verse">Our seeming deviations all subserving</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The perfect orbit round the central throne.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The night wind moans. The Austral wilds are round me.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The loved who live—ah, God! how few they are!</div> -<div class="verse">I looked above; and Heaven in mercy found me</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This parable of comfort in a star.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Brunton Stephens</span> (<i>Convict Once and other Poems</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The “Dark Companion” is no doubt the star known as the “Companion -of Sirius.” Certain peculiarities in the motion of Sirius led Bessel -in 1844 to the belief that it had an obscure companion, with which it was -in revolution. The position of the companion having been ascertained -by calculation, it was at last found in 1862. It is equal in mass to our sun -but is obscured by the brilliancy of Sirius, which is the brightest of the fixed -stars. Brunton Stephens’ poem was published in Melbourne in 1873.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SEQUEL TO “MY QUEEN”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“<i>When and where shall I earliest meet her</i>,” etc.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yes, but the years run circling fleeter,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ever they pass me—I watch, I wait—</div> -<div class="verse">Ever I dream, and awake to meet her;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She cometh never, or comes too late.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Should I press on? for the day grows shorter—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ought I to linger? the far end nears;</div> -<div class="verse">Ever ahead have I looked, and sought her</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the bright sky-line of the gathering years.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Now that the shadows are eastward sloping,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As I screen mine eyes from the slanting sun,</div> -<div class="verse">Cometh a thought—It is past all hoping,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Look not ahead, she is missed and gone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here on the ridge of my upward travel,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ere the life-line dips to the darkening vales,</div> -<div class="verse">Sadly I turn, and would fain unravel</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The entangled maze of a search that fails.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When and where have I seen and passed her?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What are the words I forgot to say?</div> -<div class="verse">Should we have met had a boat rowed faster?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Should we have loved, had I stayed that day?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Was it her face that I saw, and started,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gliding away in a train that crossed?</div> -<div class="verse">Was it her form that I once, faint-hearted,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Followed awhile in a crowd and lost?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Was it there she lived, when the train went sweeping</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Under the moon through the landscape hushed?</div> -<div class="verse">Somebody called me, I woke from sleeping,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Saw but a hamlet—and on we rushed.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Listen and linger—She yet may find me</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the last faint flush of the waning light—</div> -<div class="verse">Never a step on the path behind me;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I must journey alone, to the lonely night.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But is there somewhere on earth, I wonder,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A fading figure, with eyes that wait,</div> -<div class="verse">Who says, as she stands in the distance yonder,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“He cometh never, or comes too late?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Alfred Lyall.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Too late for love, too late for joy,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Too late, too late!</div> -<div class="verse">You loitered on the road too long,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">You trifled at the gate:</div> -<div class="verse">The enchanted dove upon her branch</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Died without a mate;</div> -<div class="verse">The enchanted princess in her tower</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Slept, died, behind the grate;</div> -<div class="verse">Her heart was starving all this while</div> -<div class="verse indent1">You made it wait.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ten years ago, five years ago,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One year ago,</div> -<div class="verse">Even then you had arrived in time,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Though somewhat slow;</div> -<div class="verse">Then you had known her living face</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which now you cannot know:</div> -<div class="verse">The frozen fountain would have leaped,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The buds gone on to blow,</div> -<div class="verse">The warm south wind would have awaked</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To melt the snow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti</span> (<i>The Prince’s Progress</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Where waitest thou,</div> -<div class="verse">Lady I am to love? Thou comest not!</div> -<div class="verse">Thou knowest of my sad and lonely lot;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">I looked for thee ere now!...</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Where art thou, sweet?</div> -<div class="verse">I long for thee, as thirsty lips for streams!</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, gentle promised Angel of my dreams,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Why do we never meet?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou art as I,—</div> -<div class="verse">Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;</div> -<div class="verse">We cannot live apart; must meeting be</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Never before we die ...?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Edwin Arnold</span> (<i>À Ma Future</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Mild is the parting year, and sweet</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The odour of the falling spray;</div> -<div class="verse">Life passes on more rudely fleet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And balmless is its closing day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I wait its close, I court its gloom,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But mourn that never must there fall</div> -<div class="verse">Or on my breast or on my tomb</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The tear that would have sooth’d it all.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. S. Landor.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The devil has made the stuff of our life and God makes the -hem.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Victor Hugo</span> (<i>By the King’s Command</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I think, I said, I can make it plain that there are at least -six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in a -dialogue between John and Thomas.</p> - -<p class="hanging">Three Johns: The real John—known only to his Maker. -John’s ideal John—never the real one, and often very -unlike him. Thomas’s ideal John—never the real John, -nor John’s John, but often very unlike either.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p> - -<p class="hanging">Three Thomases: The real Thomas. Thomas’s ideal Thomas. -John’s ideal Thomas.</p> - -<p>Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed -on a platform balance; but the other two are just as important -in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, -dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred -on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, -John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, -and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. -Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; -therefore he <i>is</i>, so far as Thomas’s attitude in the conversation -is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. -The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows -that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker -knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be -at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. -Of these the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one -that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants -often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening -all at the same time.</p> - -<p>(A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks -was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, -who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare -vegetable little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me -<i>via</i> this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that -remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one -apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference -was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the -peaches.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">O. W. Holmes</span> (<i>Autocrat of the Breakfast Table</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">When aweary of your mirth,</div> -<div class="verse">From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,</div> -<div class="verse">And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Grudge every minute as it passes by,</div> -<div class="verse">Made the more mindful that the sweet days die—</div> -<div class="verse">Remember me a little then, I pray,</div> -<div class="verse">The idle singer of an empty day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Morris</span> (<i>The Earthly Paradise</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which was my sin, though it were done before?</div> -<div class="verse">Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And do run still, though still I do deplore?—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;</div> -<div class="verse indent3">For I have more.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Others to sin, and made my sins their door?</div> -<div class="verse">Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A year or two, but wallowed in a score?—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;</div> -<div class="verse indent3">For I have more.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;</div> -<div class="verse">But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shall shine, as He Shines now and heretofore;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And having done that, Thou hast done:</div> -<div class="verse indent3">I fear no more.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Donne (1573-1631).</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In line (1) the reference is to the old doctrine that the guilt of Adam -and Eve’s “original sin” tainted all generations of man; (3) “run,” ran; -(8) his sin—the example he has set—is the door which opened to others -the way of sin.</p> - -<p>In this fine poem there are <i>puns</i>. In the last verse one pun is on the -words “Son” and “Sun,” Christ being the “Sun of righteousness who -arises with healing in his wings” (<i>Malachi</i> iv, 2). Also in the fifth, eleventh, and -seventeenth lines, the play is on the last word “done” and the poet’s name -Donne, which was pronounced <i>dun</i>.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> (It was occasionally written Dun, Dunne, -or Done: see Grierson’s <i>Poems of John Donne</i>, Vol. II, pp. lvii, lxxvii, -lxxxvii, 8 and 12. Contrariwise, the adjective “dun,” dull-brown, -was spelt <i>donne</i> in the poet’s time.) We are accustomed only to the jocular -use of puns, but here there is a serious intention to give two meanings to -one expression. Such a use of puns was one of the “quaint conceits” -of that period of our literature, and it is found also in serious Persian poetry.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish -little beaks of their young ones: it is certain that women do. -There must be some sort of pleasure, which we men don’t understand, -which accompanies the pain of being scarified.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span> (<i>Pendennis</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we -see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only -know them when they are gone.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Felix Holt</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LET IT BE THERE.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">Not there, not there!</div> -<div class="verse">Not in that nook, that ye deem so fair;—</div> -<div class="verse">Little reck I of the bright, blue sky,</div> -<div class="verse">And the stream that floweth so murmuringly,</div> -<div class="verse">And the bending boughs, and the breezy air—</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Not there, good friends, not there!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In the city churchyard, where the grass</div> -<div class="verse">Groweth rank and black, and where never a ray</div> -<div class="verse">Of that self-same sun doth find its way</div> -<div class="verse">Through the heaped-up houses’ serried mass—</div> -<div class="verse">Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng,</div> -<div class="verse">And the clatter of wheels as they rush along—</div> -<div class="verse">Or the plash of the rain, or the wind’s hoarse cry,</div> -<div class="verse">Or the busy tramp of the passer-by,</div> -<div class="verse">Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air—</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Good friends, let it be <i>there</i>!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I am old, my friends—I am very old—</div> -<div class="verse">Fourscore and five—and bitter cold</div> -<div class="verse">Were that air on the hill-side far away;</div> -<div class="verse">Eighty full years, content, I trow,</div> -<div class="verse">Have I lived in the home where ye see me now,</div> -<div class="verse">And trod those dark streets day by day,</div> -<div class="verse">Till my soul doth love them; I love them all,</div> -<div class="verse">Each battered pavement, and blackened wall,</div> -<div class="verse">Each court and corner. Good sooth! to me</div> -<div class="verse">They are all comely and fair to see—</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> -<div class="verse">They have <i>old faces</i>—each one doth tell</div> -<div class="verse">A tale of its own, that doth like me well,</div> -<div class="verse">Sad or merry, as it may be,</div> -<div class="verse">From the quaint old book of my history.</div> -<div class="verse">And, friends, when this weary pain is past,</div> -<div class="verse">Fain would I lay me to rest at last</div> -<div class="verse">In their very midst; full sure am I,</div> -<div class="verse">How dark soever be earth and sky,</div> -<div class="verse">I shall sleep softly—I shall know</div> -<div class="verse">That the things I loved so here below</div> -<div class="verse">Are about me still—so never care</div> -<div class="verse">That my last home looketh all bleak and bare—</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Good friends, let it be <i>there</i>!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Westwood</span> (1814-1888).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Every man hath his gift, one a cup of wine, another heart’s -blood.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Hafiz.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Some poets sing of wine or sensuous enjoyment, but Hafiz pours out his -heart’s blood in song. Presumably wine and blood are contrasted because -of their similar appearance.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The devil could drive woman out of Paradise; but the devil -himself cannot drive the Paradise out of a woman.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Robert Falconer</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE PULLEY</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">When God at first made man,</div> -<div class="verse">Having a glass of blessings standing by,</div> -<div class="verse">“Let us,” said He, “pour on him all we can;</div> -<div class="verse">Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Contract into a span.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">So strength first made a way,</div> -<div class="verse">Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure;</div> -<div class="verse">When almost all was out, God made a stay,</div> -<div class="verse">Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,</div> -<div class="verse indent4"><i>Rest</i> in the bottom lay.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“For if I should,” said He,</div> -<div class="verse">“Bestow this jewel also on My creature,</div> -<div class="verse">He would adore My gifts instead of Me,</div> -<div class="verse">And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:</div> -<div class="verse indent4">So both should losers be.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">“Yet let him keep the rest,</div> -<div class="verse">But keep them with repining restlessness;</div> -<div class="verse">Let him be rich and weary, that at least,</div> -<div class="verse">If goodness lead him not, yet weariness</div> -<div class="verse indent4">May toss him to My breast.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Herbert</span> (1593-1633).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“The Pulley” because by the desire for rest after toil and tribulation -God <i>draws man up</i> to Himself.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i> was published in November, 1859.) -At the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860 Huxley -had on Thursday, June 28, directly contradicted Professor -Owen’s statement that a gorilla’s brain differed more from a -man’s than it did from the brain of the lowest of the Quadrumana -(apes, monkeys, and lemurs). He was thus marked out as the -champion of evolution. On the Saturday, although the public -were not admitted, the members crowded the room to suffocation, -anxious to hear the brilliant controversialist, Bishop Wilberforce, -take part in the debate. An unimportant paper was read -bearing upon Darwinism, and a discussion followed. The Bishop, -inspired by Owen, began his speech. He spoke in dulcet tones, -persuasive manner, and with well-turned periods, but ridiculing -Darwin badly and Huxley savagely. “In a light, scoffing -tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the -idea of evolution: rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had -always been. Then, turning to Huxley, with a smiling insolence, -he begged to know, <i>was it through his grandfather or his grandmother -that he claimed his descent from a monkey</i>.”</p> - -<p>As he said this, Huxley turned to his neighbour and said, -“The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands!” On rising -to speak, he first gave a forcible and eloquent reply to the scientific -part of the Bishop’s argument. Then “he stood before us and -spoke those tremendous words—words, which no one seems sure -of now, nor, I think, could remember just after they were spoken, -for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no -doubt as to what it was. “He was not ashamed to have a monkey -for his ancestor: but he would be ashamed to be connected -with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth.” No one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -doubted his meaning, and the effect was tremendous. One -lady fainted and had to be carried out; I, for one, jumped out -of my seat.” (<i>Macmillan’s</i>, 1898.) There is no verbatim -report of this incident, but the varying accounts agree in outline.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Extracted from Life of Huxley.</i>)</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>One object of this book is to bring back the memories of the seventy-eighties—and -of overwhelming interest at the time was the alleged conflict -between religion and science. Through Darwin’s great discovery and -Herbert Spencer’s world-wide extension of the evolution theory, so much -was found covered by law that men were blinded to the fact that the essential -question of causality, lying behind all law, was still untouched.</p> - -<p>The important and thrilling incident referred to above took place -in 1860, when I was two years old, but it was still an absorbing topic thirteen -or fourteen years later, and is one of my most vivid recollections.</p> - -<p>Wilberforce (1805-1873) was a great Churchman and, indeed, has -been said to be the greatest prelate of his age, although his nickname -“Soapy Sam” led to a popular depreciation of his merits. (This epithet -originally meant that he was evasive on certain questions, but it took a -further meaning from his persuasive eloquence.) In this instance he meddled -with a subject of which he was ignorant. Owen, who instigated him to -make this attack on Darwin and Huxley had at first welcomed the theory -of evolution, but quailed before the orthodox indignation against the necessary -extension of that theory to the origin of man. Huxley (1825-1895) -was thirty-five years of age when he thus showed himself a strong debater -and a power in the scientific world.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>On tracing the line of life backwards, we see it approaching -more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. -We come at length to those organisms which I have compared -to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We -reach the <i>protogenes</i> of Haeckel, in which we have “a type -distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely -granular character.” Can we pause here? We break a magnet -and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the -process of breaking; but however small the parts, each carries -with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when -we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the -polar molecules. Are we not urged to do <i>something</i> similar -in the case of life?... Believing, as I do, in the continuity of -nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to -be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements -the vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered and -justified by science I cross the boundary of the experimental -evidence, and <i>discern in that Matter</i> which we, in our ignorance -of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence -for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, <i>the -promise and potency of all terrestrial Life</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> - -<p>(Referring to the question of inquiring into the mystery -of our origin). Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me -to handle, but which will assuredly be handled by the loftiest -minds, <i>when you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have -melted into the infinite azure of the past</i>.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Tyndall.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The italics are mine.</p> - -<p>As in the preceding quotation the subject is the alleged conflict between -religion and science, which occupied so large a space in our life and thought -in the seventies and eighties. The above are the two passages from Tyndall’s -presidential address at the Belfast meeting of the British Association -in 1874, which caused an immense sensation. The Belfast Address, like -Huxley’s smashing reply to Bishop Wilberforce, was useful in showing -that all scientific questions must be considered with an open mind, free of -theological bias, and also in adding testimony to the importance and value -of Darwin’s investigation. Although fifteen years had passed since <i>The -Origin of Species</i> was published, this was still necessary. (At that very -time Professor McCoy, afterwards Sir Frederick McCoy, F.R.S., when -lecturing at the Melbourne University to his students, of whom I was one, -was still making inane jokes about evolution and our monkey cousins.)</p> - -<p>But, while the world was in ferment over the question of man’s alleged -kinship with the monkey, there came the further startling fact that the -President of the British Association also proclaimed his belief in <i>materialism</i> -and, inferentially, that there was no life after death. Englishmen had not -before realized how widely materialism had spread through England and -Europe. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that a <i>majority</i> at least -of the leading thinkers had become materialists.</p> - -<p>In travelling outside science into metaphysics, Tyndall betrayed -a lamentable ignorance of the latter—a parallel case to that of Bishop -Wilberforce when he attempted to meddle with science. Martineau, -referring to the first quotation above, wrote: “There is no magic in the -superlatively little to draw from the universe its last secret. Size is but -relative, magnified or dwindled by a glass, variable with the organ of perception: -to one being, the speck which only the microscope can show us -may be a universe; to another, the solar system but a molecule; and in -the passing from the latter to the former you reach no end of search or -beginning of things. You merely substitute a miniature of nature for its -life-size without at all showing whence the features arise.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE NEW GOSPEL</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title"><i>HAECKELIUS loquitur</i>:</div> -<div class="verse">The ages have passed and come with the beat of a measureless tread</div> -<div class="verse">And piled up their palace-dome on the dust of the ageless dead,</div> -<div class="verse">Since the atom of life first glowed in the breast of eternal time,</div> -<div class="verse">And shaped for itself its abode in the womb of the shapeless slime;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And the years matured its form with slow, unwearying toil.</div> -<div class="verse">Moulded by sun and storm, and rich with the centuries’ spoil,</div> -<div class="verse">Till the face of the earth was fair, and life grew up into mind,</div> -<div class="verse">And breathed its earliest prayer to its god in the dawn or wind,</div> -<div class="verse">And called itself by the name of man, the master and lord,</div> -<div class="verse">Who conquers the strength of flame and tempers the spear and sword;</div> -<div class="verse">For the world grows wiser by war, and death is the law of life,</div> -<div class="verse">The lowermost rock in the scar is red with the stains of strife.</div> -<div class="verse">Burst thro’ the bounds of sight, and measure the least of things,</div> -<div class="verse">Plummet the infinite and make to thy fancy wings;</div> -<div class="verse">From crystal, and coral, and weed, up to man in his noblest race,</div> -<div class="verse">The weaker shall fail in his need, and the stronger shall hold his place!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title"><i>RENANUS loquitur</i>:</div> -<div class="verse">Ah! leave me yet a little while, to watch</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The golden glory of the dying day,</div> -<div class="verse">Till all the purple mountains gleam and catch</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The last faint light that slowly steals away.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Too soon the night is on us; aye, too soon</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We know the cloud is born of blinding mist:</div> -<div class="verse">The throne, whereon the gods sate crowned at noon</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With ruby rays and liquid amethyst,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Is but a vapour, dim and grey, a streak</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of hollow rain that freezes in its fall,</div> -<div class="verse">A dull, cold shape that settles on the peak,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Icy and stifling as a dead man’s pall.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The world’s old faith is fairest in its death,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For death is fairer oftentimes than life;</div> -<div class="verse">No vulgar passion quivers in the breath:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The dead forget their weariness and strife.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Say not that death is even as decay,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A hideous charnel choked with rotting dust;</div> -<div class="verse">The cold white lips are beautiful as spray</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Cast on an iceberg by the northern gust.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The memories of the past are diadem’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">About the brow and folded on the eyes;</div> -<div class="verse">The weary lids beneath are bent and gemm’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With charmèd dreams and mystic reveries.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Once more she sits in her imperial chair,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And kings and Cæsars kneel before her feet,</div> -<div class="verse">And clouds of incense fill the heavy air,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And shouts of homage echo thro’ the street.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Or yet, again, she stretches forth the hand,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And men are done to death at her desire;</div> -<div class="verse">The smoke of burning cities dims the land,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And limbs are torn or shrivelled in the fire.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Once more the scene is shifted, and the gleam</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of eastern suns about her brow is curled;</div> -<div class="verse">Once more she roams a maiden by the stream,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Despised of men, the Magdalen of the world.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So scene on scene floats lightly, as a haze</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That comes and goes with sudden gust and lull:</div> -<div class="verse">Limned with the sunset hues of other days,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They are but dreams; yet dreams are beautiful.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Archibald Henry Sayce</span> (<i>Academy, Dec. 5, 1885</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>As in the two preceding quotations, the subject is the supposed conflict -of religion and science. Haeckel (born 1834, recently dead) was the most -ruthless of all the biologists in accounting for evolution and all progress by -a struggle for existence. Renan (1823-1892), the French writer, whose love -of Christianity survived his belief in it, speaks of the passing away of the -old faith as “the golden glory of the dying day,” and says that in its death -it will be more beautiful than in its life, when it led to passion, persecution -and war. The penultimate verse refers to the time when temporal power -was removed from the church, and she reverted to the humility, and also the -beauty, of primitive Christianity when it came in its morning glory from the -East.</p> - -<p>The fact that these fine verses are by the great philologist and archæologist, -Professor Sayce, who has not publicly appeared in the rôle of a poet, -adds greatly to their interest. The few verses he has published have mostly -appeared over the initials “A.H.S.” in the old <i>Academy</i> (the present -periodical is a different concern), and he was not known to the public -as the author.</p> - -<p>Anything about Professor Sayce must be interesting to the reader, -and I, therefore, need not apologize for mentioning the following incidents, -which, I imagine, are known only among his friends. In 1870, during the -Franco-German War, Mr. Sayce was ordered to be shot at Nantes as a -German spy, and only escaped “by the skin of his teeth.” It was just before -Gambetta had flown in his balloon out of Paris, and there was no recognized -Government in the country. Nantes was full of fugitives, and bands of -Uhlans were in the neighbourhood. Mr. Sayce was arrested when walking -round the old citadel examining its walls—not realizing that it was occupied -by French troops. Fortunately, some ladies of the garrison came in during -his examination to see the interesting young prisoner and, after Mr. Sayce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -had been placed against the wall and a soldier told off to shoot him, they -prevailed upon the Commandant to give him a second examination, which -ended in his acquittal.</p> - -<p>Mr. Sayce was also among the Carlists in the Carlist war of 1873, and was -present at some of the so-called battles which, he says, were dangerous -only to the onlookers. He also once had a pitched battle with Bedouins -in Syria.</p> - -<p>Professor Sayce (he became Professor in 1876) has also the proud -distinction of being the only person known to have survived the bite of the -Egyptian cerastes asp, which is supposed to have killed Cleopatra. He -accidentally trod on the reptile in the desert some three or four miles north -of Assouan and was bitten in the leg. Luckily, he happened to be just -outside the dahabieh in which he was travelling with three Oxford friends, -one of them the late Master of Balliol. The cook had a small pair of red-hot -tongs, with which he had been preparing lunch, and Professor Sayce -was able to burn the bitten leg down to the bone within two minutes after -the accident; thus saving his life at the expense of a few weeks’ lameness.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A soft and silvery sound—I know it well.</div> -<div class="verse">Its tinkling tells me that a time is near</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Precious to me—it is the Dinner Bell.</div> -<div class="verse">O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:</div> -<div class="verse">Seared is, of course, my heart—but unsubdued</div> -<div class="verse">Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But on one statement I may safely venture:</div> -<div class="verse">That few of our most highly gifted men</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Have more appreciation of the trencher.</div> -<div class="verse">I go. One pound of British beef, and then</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What Mr. Swiveller called a “modest quencher”;</div> -<div class="verse">That, “home-returning,” I may “soothly say,”</div> -<div class="verse">“Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">C. S. Calverley</span> (<i>Beer</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These are the two last verses of a parody on Byron. In each of the last -three lines there is a literary reference. The first, of course, is to the happy-go-lucky -Dick Swiveller of Dickens’s <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>.</p> - -<p>The next reference is to the amusing story about Sir Walter Scott -that became known about the time Calverley was writing (1862). Scott, -in his description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight (“Lay of the Last -Minstrel”) says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,</div> -<div class="verse">Go visit it by the pale moonlight;</div> -<div class="verse">For the gay beams of lightsome day</div> -<div class="verse">Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey....</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> - -<p class="noindent">Yet there can be no doubt that <i>he himself had never seen</i> the Abbey by -moonlight! He further tells his readers that they can</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Home returning, soothly</i> swear</div> -<div class="verse">Was never scene so sad and fair.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">They, having seen it, can “soothly” (<i>i.e.</i>, <i>truthfully</i>) swear to its beauty, -which was more than he himself could!</p> - -<p>Calverley’s last line is from Sydney Smith’s “Recipe for a Salad”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Oh, herbaceous treat!</div> -<div class="verse">’Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;</div> -<div class="verse">Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,</div> -<div class="verse">And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl;</div> -<div class="verse">Serenely full the epicure would say,</div> -<div class="verse">“Fate cannot harm me—I have dined to-day.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This again is an adaptation of Dryden’s “Imitation of Horace” (Book -III, Ode 29):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Happy the man, and happy he alone,</div> -<div class="verse">He who can call to-day his own;</div> -<div class="verse">He who, secure within, can say,</div> -<div class="verse">To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv’d to-day.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We may live without poetry, music and art;</div> -<div class="verse">We may live without conscience, and live without heart:</div> -<div class="verse">We may live without friends; we may live without books;</div> -<div class="verse">But civilized man can not live without cooks.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He may live without books—what is knowledge but grieving?</div> -<div class="verse">He may live without hope—what is hope but deceiving?</div> -<div class="verse">He may live without love—what is passion but pining?</div> -<div class="verse">But where is the man that can live without dining?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Earl of Lytton, “Owen Meredith”</span> (1831-1891) (<i>Lucile</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Is what we chiefly need:</div> -<div class="verse">Pepper and vinegar besides</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are very good indeed—</div> -<div class="verse">Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We can begin to feed.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lewis Carroll</span> (<i>The Walrus and the Carpenter</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That all-softening, overpowering knell,</div> -<div class="verse">The tocsin of the soul—the dinner bell.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Byron</span> (<i>Don Juan</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">First of the first,</div> -<div class="verse">Such I pronounce Pompilia, then as now</div> -<div class="verse">Perfect in whiteness: stoop thou down, my child..</div> -<div class="verse">My rose, I gather for the breast of God..</div> -<div class="verse">And surely not so very much apart,</div> -<div class="verse">Need I place thee, my warrior-priest..</div> -<div class="verse indent4">In thought, word and deed,</div> -<div class="verse">How throughout all thy warfare thou wast pure,</div> -<div class="verse">I find it easy to believe: and if</div> -<div class="verse">At any fateful moment of the strange</div> -<div class="verse">Adventure, the strong passion of that strait,</div> -<div class="verse">Fear and surprise may have revealed too much,—</div> -<div class="verse">As when a thundrous midnight, with black air</div> -<div class="verse">That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell,</div> -<div class="verse">Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed</div> -<div class="verse">Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides</div> -<div class="verse">Immensity of sweetness,—so, perchance,</div> -<div class="verse">Might the surprise and fear release too much</div> -<div class="verse">The perfect beauty of the body and soul</div> -<div class="verse">Thou savedst in thy passion for God’s sake,</div> -<div class="verse">He who is Pity. Was the trial sore?</div> -<div class="verse">Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!</div> -<div class="verse">Why comes temptation but for man to meet</div> -<div class="verse">And master and make crouch beneath his feet,</div> -<div class="verse">And so be pedestaled in triumph?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Ring and the Book, X</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A young handsome priest, who had led a gay life, was moved by pure -motives to rescue a beautiful young wife from a dreadful husband, and he -travelled with her for three days to Rome. The husband was following -with an armed band, the priest was risking disgrace, and the girl was risking -death. The mutual danger would in itself tend to draw the fugitives -too closely together; but also the girl had shown herself doubly lovable, -for the strain and stress had revealed in her a very beautiful nature—just -as a midnight thunder-storm opens and draws rich scent from</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent17">Some sheathed</div> -<div class="verse">Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides</div> -<div class="verse">Immensity of sweetness.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> - -<p>Coleridge has a similar illustration, “Quarrels of anger ending in tears -are favourable to love in its spring tide, as plants are found to grow very -rapidly after a thunderstorm with rain”—(Allsop’s <i>Letters, etc., of Coleridge</i>). -Coleridge died in 1834, and “The Ring and the Book” was published -in 1868-9: it is curious that both poets should have been impressed with a -fact that appears to have been only recently recognized. In the seventies -Lemström proved that plants thrive under electricity; but I think it is only -a few years ago that in some agricultural experiments in Germany it was -found that electricity was of no benefit to the crops <i>without rain or other -moisture</i>.</p> - -<p>The quotation is from the fine judgment which the Pope delivers.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams -out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically -sealed and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swift</span> (<i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or, for thy more -sweet understanding, a woman.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Love’s Labour Lost, I, 1.</i>)</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The whole World was made for man, but the twelfth part -of man for woman: Man is the whole World, and the Breath of -God; Woman the rib and crooked piece of man.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Thomas Browne</span> (1605-1682) (<i>Religio Medici</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Give me but what this ribband bound,</div> -<div class="verse">Take all the rest the sun goes round!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Edmund Waller</span> (1606-1687) (<i>On a Girdle</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy -and self-sacrifice that I am acquainted with.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. P. F. Richter</span> (<i>Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If she be made of white and red</div> -<div class="verse">Her faults will ne’er be known.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution">(<i>Love’s Labour Lost, I, 2</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>God made the world in six days, and then he rested. He then -made man and rested again. He then made woman and, since -then, neither man, woman, nor anything else has rested.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou art my life, my love, my heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The very eyes of me.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Herrick</span> (<i>To Anthea</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">As perchance carvers do not faces make,</div> -<div class="verse">But that away, which hid them there, do take:</div> -<div class="verse">Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,</div> -<div class="verse">And be his Image, or not his, but He.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Donne</span> (<i>The Cross</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>As sculptors chisel away the marble that hides the statue within, -so let “crosses” or afflictions remove the impurities which hide the Christ -in us, so that we shall become His image, or not His <i>image</i>, but <i>Himself</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>What is experience? A little cottage made with the <i>débris</i> -of those palaces of gold and marble which we call our <i>illusions</i>.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He has outsoared the shadow of our night;</div> -<div class="verse">Envy and calumny and hate and pain,</div> -<div class="verse">And that unrest which men miscall delight,</div> -<div class="verse">Can touch him not and torture not again;</div> -<div class="verse">From the contagion of the world’s slow stain.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -<div class="verse">He is secure, and now can never mourn</div> -<div class="verse">A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;</div> -<div class="verse">Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,</div> -<div class="verse">With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Adonaïs, an Elegy on Keats, XL</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This verse is engraved on Shelley’s own monument in the Priory -Church at Christchurch, Hampshire.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met Mr. Green and -myself in a lane near Highgate. Green knew him and spoke. It -was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed a minute or so. -After he had left us a little way, he came back and said, “Let -me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your -hand!” “There is death in that hand,” I said to Green, when -Keats was gone; yet this was, I believe, before the consumption -showed itself distinctly.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Table Talk</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was about 1819. It is pathetic, this meeting of two great poets, -Keats who was to die two years afterwards at the early age of twenty-six, -and Coleridge, whose few brilliant years of poetic life had long previously -ended in slavery to the opium-habit.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE BALLAD OF JUDAS ISCARIOT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the body of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lay in the Field of Blood;</div> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Beside the body stood.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Black was the earth by night,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And black was the sky;</div> -<div class="verse">Black, black were the broken clouds,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Tho’ the red Moon went by....</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So grim, and gaunt, and gray,</div> -<div class="verse">Raised the body of Judas Iscariot,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And carried it away.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For days and nights he wandered on</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Upon an open plain,</div> -<div class="verse">And the days went by like blinding mist,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the nights like rushing rain.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He wandered east, he wandered west,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And heard no human sound;</div> -<div class="verse">For months and years, in grief and tears,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He wandered round and round....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Strange, and sad, and tall,</div> -<div class="verse">Stood all alone at dead of night</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Before a lighted hall.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And the wold was white with snow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And his foot-marks black and damp,</div> -<div class="verse">And the ghost of the silvern Moon arose,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Holding her yellow lamp.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And the icicles were on the eaves,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the walls were deep with white,</div> -<div class="verse">And the shadows of the guests within</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Pass’d on the window light.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The shadows of the wedding guests</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Did strangely come and go,</div> -<div class="verse">And the body of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lay stretch’d along the snow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The body of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lay stretched along the snow;</div> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ran swiftly to and fro.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To and fro, and up and down,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He ran so swiftly there,</div> -<div class="verse">As round and round the frozen Pole</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Glideth the lean white bear.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the lights burnt bright and clear—</div> -<div class="verse">“Oh, who is that,” the Bridegroom said,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Whose weary feet I hear?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas one look’d from the lighted hall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And answered soft and slow,</div> -<div class="verse">“It is a wolf runs up and down</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With a black track in the snow.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Bridegroom in his robe of white</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sat at the table-head—</div> -<div class="verse">“Oh, who is that who moans without?”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The blessed Bridegroom said.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas one looked from the lighted hall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And answered fierce and low</div> -<div class="verse">“’Tis the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gliding to and fro.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Did hush itself and stand.</div> -<div class="verse">And saw the Bridegroom at the door</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With a light in his hand.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Bridegroom stood in the open door,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And he was clad in white,</div> -<div class="verse">And far within the Lord’s Supper</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Was spread so broad and bright.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Bridegroom shaded his eyes and look’d,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And his face was bright to see—</div> -<div class="verse">“What dost thou here at the Lord’s Supper</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With thy body’s sins?” said he.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stood black, and sad, and bare—</div> -<div class="verse">“I have wandered many nights and days;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There is no light elsewhere.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the wedding guests cried out within,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And their eyes were fierce and bright—</div> -<div class="verse">“Scourge the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Away into the night!”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Bridegroom stood in the open door,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And he waved hands still and slow,</div> -<div class="verse">And the third time that he waved his hands</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The air was thick with snow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And of every flake of falling snow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Before it touched the ground,</div> -<div class="verse">There came a dove, and a thousand doves</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Made sweet sound.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the body of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Floated away full fleet,</div> -<div class="verse">And the wings of the doves that bare it off</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Were like its winding-sheet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And beckon’d, smiling sweet;</div> -<div class="verse">’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stole in, and fell at his feet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The Holy Supper is spread within,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the many candles shine,</div> -<div class="verse">And I have waited long for thee</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Before I poured the wine!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The supper wine is poured at last,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The lights burn bright and fair,</div> -<div class="verse">Iscariot washes the Bridegroom’s feet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And dries them with his hair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Buchanan.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See reference to Buchanan in the <a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Now, as of old,</div> -<div class="verse">Man by himself is priced:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For thirty pieces Judas sold</div> -<div class="verse">Himself, not Christ.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Hester Cholmondeley.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I learn from the <i>New Statesman</i> reviewer of the first English Edition -that these lines were by Hester, a gifted sister of Mary Cholmondeley. She -died at 22.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when -thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current -coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh -and new.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (<i>On the Writing of Essays</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, -as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom -to remember and our weakness to forget.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sydney Smith.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most -useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions -of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect -caused by the very circumstances of their universal admission. -Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and -interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all -the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the -soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Aids to Reflection</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I have given no man of my fruit to eat,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.</div> -<div class="verse">Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This wild new growth of the corn and vine,</div> -<div class="verse">This wine and bread without lees or leaven,</div> -<div class="verse">We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,</div> -<div class="verse">Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In the change of years, in the coil of things,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the clamour and rumour of life to be,</div> -<div class="verse">We, drinking love at the furthest springs,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Covered with love as a covering tree,</div> -<div class="verse">We had grown as gods, as the gods above,</div> -<div class="verse">Filled from the heart to the lips with love,</div> -<div class="verse">Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O love, my love, had you loved but me!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen</div> -<div class="verse">Grief collapse as a thing disproved,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Death consume as a thing unclean,</div> -<div class="verse">Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast</div> -<div class="verse">Soul to soul while the years fell past;</div> -<div class="verse">Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Had the chance been with us that has not been.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>The Triumph of Time</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">But she is far away</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar</div> -<div class="verse">Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey</div> -<div class="verse">And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When we shall meet once more.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Oh sweet her bending grace</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then when I kneel beside her feet;</div> -<div class="verse">And sweet her eyes o’erhanging heaven; and sweet</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The gathering folds of her embrace;</div> -<div class="verse">And her fall’n hair at last shed round my face</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When breaths and tears shall meet ...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Ah! by a colder wave</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On deathlier airs the hour must come</div> -<div class="verse">Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Between the lips of the low cave</div> -<div class="verse">Against that night the lapping waters lave,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the dark lips are dumb.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">But there Love’s self doth stand,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And with Life’s weary wings far-flown,</div> -<div class="verse">And with Death’s eyes that make the water moan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gathers the water in his hand:</div> -<div class="verse">And they that drink know nought of sky or land</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But only love alone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span> (<i>The Stream’s Secret</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here,</div> -<div class="verse">With Angels’ faces, and harmful, hellish hearts,</div> -<div class="verse">With smiling looks, and deep deceitful thoughts,</div> -<div class="verse">With tender skins, and stony cruel minds....</div> -<div class="verse">The younger sort come piping on apace</div> -<div class="verse">In whistles made of fine enticing wood,</div> -<div class="verse">Till they have caught the birds for whom they brided.</div> -<div class="verse">The elder sort go stately stalking on,</div> -<div class="verse">And on their backs they bear both land and fee,</div> -<div class="verse">Castles and Towers, revénues and receipts,</div> -<div class="verse">Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all.</div> -<div class="verse">What should these be? (Speak you, my lovely lord!)</div> -<div class="verse">They be not men: for why? they have no beards.</div> -<div class="verse">They be no boys, which wear such side-long gowns.</div> -<div class="verse">What be they? women, masking in men’s weeds,</div> -<div class="verse">With dutchkin doublets and with jerkins jagged,</div> -<div class="verse">With Spanish spangs and ruffs set out of France.</div> -<div class="verse">They be so sure even <i>Wo</i> to <i>Men</i> indeed.</div> -<div class="verse">High time it were for my poor muse to wink,</div> -<div class="verse">Since all the hands, all paper, pen and ink,</div> -<div class="verse">Which ever yet this wretched world possessed,</div> -<div class="verse">Cannot describe this Sex in colours due.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gascoigne</span> (<i>The Steele Glas</i>, 1576).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I’m not denying the women are foolish: God Almighty made -’em to match the men.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Adam Bede</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They are slaves who fear to speak</div> -<div class="verse">For the fallen and the weak;</div> -<div class="verse">They are slaves who will not choose</div> -<div class="verse">Hatred, scoffing and abuse,</div> -<div class="verse">Rather than in silence shrink</div> -<div class="verse">From the truth they needs must think;</div> -<div class="verse">They are slaves who dare not be</div> -<div class="verse">In the right with two or three.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>Stanzas on Freedom</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to the poor, -who were listening with all their might and faith to the preacher’s -awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation; -and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug -and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his -terrace, and muse, over preacher and audience, and turn to his -roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey -and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, -we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful -loneliness and selfishness, so to speak—the more shameful, -because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene. -Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What -is public or private faith? Myths alike enveloped in enormous -tradition. If seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, -Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, -you submit to them without any protest farther than a laugh: -if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole -wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the fight -for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the -ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to -lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and -the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at -all, than such a sensual coward.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. M. Thackeray</span> (<i>Pendennis, XXIII</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the -agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with -slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies -of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes -that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;—and -yet looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, -how surprising are his attributes! Poor soul, here for so little, -cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate -and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely -descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow -lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with -his destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and -behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues: infinitely -childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting -down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong -and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle for an egg or -die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial -affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing with long-suffering -solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery, we find -in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought -of duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> -neighbour, to his God; an ideal of decency, to which he would -rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be -possible, he will not stoop.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. L. Stevenson</span> (<i>Pulvis et Umbra</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The Godhead’s most benignant grace;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Nor know we anything so fair</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As is the smile upon thy face:</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Flowers laugh before thee on their beds</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And fragrance in thy footing treads;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;</div> -<div class="verse">And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>Ode to Duty</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A CHARGE.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If thou has squander’d years to grave a gem</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Commission’d by thy absent Lord, and while</div> -<div class="verse indent4">’Tis incomplete,</div> -<div class="verse">Others would bribe thy needy skill to them—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dismiss them to the street!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Should’st thou at last discover Beauty’s grove,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At last be panting on the fragrant verge,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">But in the track,</div> -<div class="verse">Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Turn at her bidding back.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And every spectre mutters up more dire</div> -<div class="verse indent4">To snatch control</div> -<div class="verse">And loose to madness thy deep-kennell’d Fears—</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Then to the helm, O Soul!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Last; if upon the cold green-mantling sea</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Both castaway,</div> -<div class="verse">And one must perish—let it not be he</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whom thou art sworn to obey!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Herbert Trench</span> (<i>Born 1865</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Human nature, trained in the School of Christianity, throws -away as false the delineation of piety in the disguise of Hebe, -and declares that there is something higher than happiness—that -thought which is ever full of care and truth is better far—that -all true and disinterested affection, which often is called -to mourn, is better still—that the devoted allegiance of conscience -to duty and to God—which ever has in it more of penitence than -of joy—is noblest of all.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (<i>Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 42</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There is in man a <i>Higher</i> than Love of Happiness; he can do -without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was -it not to preach forth this same <i>Higher</i> that sages and martyrs, -the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered; -bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike -that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength -and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also -honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold -merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! -O thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain; -thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated.... -Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING -YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks -and works, it is well with him.... To the <i>Worship of Sorrow</i>, -ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that -Worship originated, and been generated? Is it not <i>here</i>? -Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is -Belief; all else is Opinion.... Do the Duty which liest nearest -thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty. The Situation that -has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes -here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein -thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work -it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. The Ideal -is in thyself.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Carlyle</span> (<i>Sartor Resartus</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The belief that the sense of duty and moral aspiration arise from -within ourselves, and are the cause rather than the result of sociological -evolution is far more widespread to-day than in what Carlyle calls his -“atheistical century.” The “Everlasting Yea” is opposed to the “Everlasting -No” of nescience.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He that hath found some fledged bird’s nest may know</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At first sight, if the bird be flown;</div> -<div class="verse">But what fair well or grove he sings in now</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That is to him unknown.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Henry Vaughan</span> (<i>Friends Departed</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>For the subject of the verse see title of poem.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">Must it last for ever,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">The passionate endeavour,</div> -<div class="verse">Ah, have ye, there in heaven, hearts to throb and still aspire?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">In the life you know now,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Rendered white as snow now,</div> -<div class="verse">Do fresher glory-heights arise, and beckon higher—higher?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Are you dreaming, dreaming,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Is your soul still roaming,</div> -<div class="verse">Still gazing upward as we gazed, of old in the autumn gloaming?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">But ah, that pale moon roaming</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Thro’ fleecy mists of gloaming,</div> -<div class="verse">Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powder’d sky,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And ah, the days departed</div> -<div class="verse indent4">With your friendship gentle-hearted,</div> -<div class="verse">And ah, the dream we dreamt that night, together you and I!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Is it fashioned wisely,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">To help us or to blind us,</div> -<div class="verse">That at each height we gain we turn, and behold a heaven behind us?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>To David in Heaven</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>David Gray was a young poet and a great friend of Buchanan’s. -Another verse in the poem is:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">In some heaven star-lighted,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Are you now united</div> -<div class="verse">Unto the poet-spirits that you loved of English race?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Is Chatterton still dreaming?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And, to give it stately seeming,</div> -<div class="verse">Has the music of his last strong song passed into Keats’s face?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Is Wordsworth there? and Spenser?</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Beyond the grave’s black portals,</div> -<div class="verse">Can the grand eye of Milton <i>see</i> the glory he sang to mortals?</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">What would one have?</div> -<div class="verse">In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—</div> -<div class="verse">Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,</div> -<div class="verse">Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,</div> -<div class="verse">For Leonard, Rafael, Angelo and me</div> -<div class="verse">To cover.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span> (<i>Andrea del Sarto</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Andrea del Sarto says that, but for certain unfortunate circumstances, -he might have reached the high eminence of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, -and Michael Angelo. In heaven he may have another chance to compete -with them.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Their noon-day never knows</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What names immortal are:</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis night alone that shows</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How star surpasseth star.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. B. Tabb</span> (<i>Fame</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted</div> -<div class="verse">Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!</div> -<div class="verse">A savage place! as holy and enchanted</div> -<div class="verse">As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted</div> -<div class="verse">By woman wailing for her demon-lover!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Kubla Khan</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This and the five following quotations and others through the book are -from a small collection of word-pictures, that I had begun to put together. -They are mostly well-known.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Behold the Nereïds under the green sea,</div> -<div class="verse">Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,</div> -<div class="verse">Their white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair</div> -<div class="verse">With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,</div> -<div class="verse">Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Prometheus Unbound</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns</div> -<div class="verse">The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds</div> -<div class="verse">To dying ears, when unto dying eyes</div> -<div class="verse">The casement slowly grows a glimmering square:</div> -<div class="verse">So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Princess</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“But show me the child thou callest mine,</div> -<div class="verse">Is she out to-night in the ghost’s sunshine?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“In St. Peter’s Church she is playing on,</div> -<div class="verse">At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When the moonbeams right through the window go,</div> -<div class="verse">Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She says the rest of them do not stir,</div> -<div class="verse">But one comes down to play with her.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Phantastes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is a ghost-child who is playing in the great cathedral.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Golden head by golden head,</div> -<div class="verse">Like two pigeons in one nest</div> -<div class="verse">Folded in each other’s wings,</div> -<div class="verse">They lay down in their curtained bed.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti</span> (<i>Goblin Market</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn;</div> -<div class="verse">The cow’s in the meadow, the sheep in the corn;</div> -<div class="verse">Is this the way you mind your sheep,</div> -<div class="verse">Under the haycock fast asleep?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><i>Nursery Rhyme.</i></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Edward Fitzgerald, quoting this in “Euphranor,” says the “meadow” is the grass -reserved for meadowing, or mowing.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE FEAST OF ADONIS.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Is Praxinoë at home?</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I am. Euno, -find a chair—get a cushion for it.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> It will do beautifully as it is.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Do sit down.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Oh, this gad-about spirit! I could hardly get to you, -Praxinoë, through all the crowd and all the carriages. Nothing -but heavy boots, nothing but men in uniform. And what -a journey it is! My dear child, you really live <i>too</i> far off.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> It is all that insane husband of mine. He has -chosen to come out here to the end of the world, and take a hole -of a place—for a house it is not—on purpose that you and I -might not be neighbours. He is always just the same—anything -to quarrel with one! anything for spite!</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> My dear, don’t talk so of your husband before the -little fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. (<i>Talking -to the child.</i>) Never mind, Zopyrio my pet, she is not talking -about papa. (Good heavens, the child does really understand.) -Pretty papa!</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> That “pretty papa” of his the other day (though -I told him beforehand to mind what he was about), when I sent -him to a shop to buy soap and rouge, brought me home salt -instead; stupid, great, big, interminable animal!</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Mine is just the fellow to him. But never mind now, -get on your things and let us be off to the palace to see the Adonis. -I hear the Queen’s decorations are something splendid.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> “In grand people’s houses everything is grand.” -What things you have seen in Alexandria! What a deal you will -have to tell to anybody who has never been there!</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Come, we ought to be going.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> “Every day is a holiday to people who have nothing -to do.” Eunoë, pick up your work; and take care, you lazy -girl, how you leave it lying about again; the cats find it just -the bed they like. Come, stir yourself, fetch me some water, -quick! I wanted the water first, and the girl brings me the soap. -Never mind; give it me. Not all that, extravagant! Now -pour out the water—stupid! Why don’t you take care of my -dress? That will do. I have got my hands washed as it pleased -God. Where is the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here—quick!</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Praxinoë, you can’t think how well that dress, made -full, as you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how much did -it cost—the dress by itself, I mean?</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Don’t talk of it, Gorgo: more than eight guineas -of good hard money. And about the work on it, I have almost -worn my life out.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Well, you couldn’t have done better.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put my -hat properly on my head—<i>properly</i>. No, child (<i>to her little -boy</i>,) I am not going to take you; there’s a bogey on horseback<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -who bites. Cry as much as you like; I’m not going to have you -lamed for life. Now we’ll start. Nurse take the little one and -amuse him; call the dog in, and shut the street door. (<i>They -go out.</i>) Good heavens! what a crowd of people! How on earth -are we ever to get through all this? They are like ants: you -can’t count them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become of us? -Here are the Royal Horse Guards. My good man, don’t ride -over me! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt upright; what -a vicious one! Eunoë, you mad girl, do take care!—that horse -will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How glad -I am now, that I left the child safe at home.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> All right, Praxinoë, we are safe behind them; and they -have gone on to where they are stationed.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From the time -I was a little girl I have had more horror of horses and snakes -than of anything else in the world. Let us get on; here’s a great -crowd coming this way upon us.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo</i> (<i>to an old woman</i>). Mother, are you from the palace?</p> - -<p><i>Old woman.</i> Yes, my dears.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Has one a tolerable chance of getting there?</p> - -<p><i>Old woman.</i> My pretty young lady, the Greeks got to Troy -by dint of trying hard; trying will do anything in this world.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> The old creature has delivered an oracle and disappeared.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Women can tell you everything about everything, -even about Jupiter’s marriage with Juno!</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Look, Praxinoë, what a squeeze at the palace gates.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Tremendous! Take hold of me, Gorgo; and you, -Eunoë, take hold of Eutychis!—tight hold, or you’ll be lost. -Here we go in all together. Hold tight to us, Eunoë! Oh, dear! -oh, dear! Gorgo, there’s my scarf torn right in two. For -heaven’s sake, my good man, as you hope to be saved, take care -of my dress!</p> - -<p><i>Stranger.</i> I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t depend upon me.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> What heaps of people! They push like a drove -of pigs.</p> - -<p><i>Stranger.</i> Don’t be frightened, ma’am, we are all right.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> May you be all right, my dear sir, to the last day -you live, for the care you have taken of us! What a kind, -considerate man! There is Eunoë jammed in a squeeze. Push, -you goose, push! Capital! We are all of us the right side -of the door, as the bridegroom said when he had locked himself -in with the bride.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Praxinoë, come this way. Do but look at that work, -how delicate it is!—how exquisite! Why, the gods might wear -it in heaven.</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Goddess of Spinning, what hands were hired to -do that work? Who designed those beautiful patterns? They -seem to stand up and move about, as if they were real—as if -they were living things, and not needlework. Well, man is a -wonderful creature! And look, look, how charming <i>he</i> lies -there on his silver couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, -that beloved Adonis—Adonis, whom one loves even though he -is dead!</p> - -<p><i>Another stranger.</i> You wretched women, do stop your incessant -chatter! Like turtles, you go on for ever.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Lord, where does the man come from? What is it -to you if we <i>are</i> chatterboxes? Order about your own servants!</p> - -<p><i>Praxinoë.</i> Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more -masters than the one we’ve got! We don’t the least care for -<i>you</i>; pray don’t trouble yourself for nothing.</p> - -<p><i>Gorgo.</i> Be quiet, Praxinoë! That first-rate singer, the -Argive woman’s daughter, is going to sing the <i>Adonis</i> hymn. -She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are -sure to have something first-rate from <i>her</i>. She is going through -her airs and graces ready to begin.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Theocritus</span> (<i>Fifteenth Idyll</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is Matthew Arnold’s translation of a <i>poem</i> by Theocritus, who -lived in the Third Century B.C., 2,200 years ago, (see Arnold’s Essay on -<i>Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment</i>). I have altered a few words and -also omitted part because of its length.</p> - -<p>Gorgo, a lady of Alexandria, calls on her friend Praxinoë, to take -her to the Festival of Adonis. Greek ladies were allowed to go out on -Festival days if veiled and attended, and, therefore, Gorgo and Praxinoë -take with them their respective maids, Eutychis and Eunoë, who would -no doubt be slave-girls.</p> - -<p>Some curious facts may be noted. The wife is kept in seclusion and -the husband does the marketing, buying among other things her <i>rouge</i>. -Observe how perfunctory are the pretty lady’s ablutions (the soap, by the -way, is in the form of paste). The little boy represents the ruling sex -and will be removed at an early age from her control. She is disposed -to rebel against her lord and master, but takes the utmost care of the -important boy-child. While the ladies with their slaves make up their -own dresses, the designs and the finest needlework are done by men. The -Greek woman in Athens was practically uneducated and regarded as an -inferior being; but these ladies were Dorian Greeks and would no doubt -be better treated and have somewhat more freedom—especially in Alexandria, -which was a colony and, therefore, probably less conservative. -Although no doubt veiled, their eyes would be visible and, as seen in the -East to-day, a pretty woman can always manage to show her beauty, if -she chooses. It will be seen that one man is polite to the two young,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -pretty, richly-dressed ladies, and saves them from being crushed by the -crowd, while another is a crusty, grumpy person, who treats them with -some rudeness and, in the original, ridicules their Dorian pronunciation. -Praxinoë is most grateful to the polite man for what would now be an -ordinary act of courtesy.</p> - -<p>As regards the conversation Andrew Lang says: “Nothing can be -more gay and natural than the chatter of the women, which has changed -no more in two thousand years than the song of birds.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">I have seen</div> -<div class="verse">A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract</div> -<div class="verse">Of inland ground, applying to his ear</div> -<div class="verse">The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;</div> -<div class="verse">To which, in silence hushed, his very soul</div> -<div class="verse">Listened intensely; and his countenance soon</div> -<div class="verse">Brightened with joy; for from within were heard</div> -<div class="verse">Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed</div> -<div class="verse">Mysterious union with its native sea.</div> -<div class="verse">Even such a shell the universe itself</div> -<div class="verse">Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,</div> -<div class="verse">I doubt not, when to you it doth impart</div> -<div class="verse">Authentic tidings of invisible things;</div> -<div class="verse">Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;</div> -<div class="verse">And central peace, subsisting at the heart</div> -<div class="verse">Of endless agitation.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Excursion</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Marriage is a desperate thing; the Frogs in Aesop were -extreme wise: they had a great mind to some Water, but they -would not leap into the Well, because they could not get out -again.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>’Tis reason a Man that will have a Wife should be at the Charge -of her Trinkets, and pay all the Scores she sets on him. He -that will keep a Monkey, ’tis fit he should pay for the Glasses -he breaks.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Selden</span> (<i>Table Talk</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When you’re a married man, Samivel, you’ll understand a good -many things as you don’t understand now; but vether it’s worth -while goin’ through so much to learn so little, as the charity-boy -said wen he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o’ taste. -<i>I</i> rayther think it isn’t.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span> (<i>Pickwick Papers</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favour.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A man, who admires a fine woman, has yet no more reason -to wish himself her husband, than one, who admired the Hesperian -fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that -kept it.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You wish, Paula, to marry Priscus. I am not surprised;</div> -<div class="verse">You are wise; Priscus will not marry you and he is wise.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Martial</span>, IX, 5.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">IN THE TWILIGHT.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Men say the sullen instrument,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That, from the Master’s bow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With pangs of joy or woe,</div> -<div class="verse">Feels music’s soul through every fibre sent,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whispers the ravished strings</div> -<div class="verse">More than he knew or meant;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Old summers in its memory glow;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The secrets of the wind it sings;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It hears the April-loosened springs;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And mixes with its mood</div> -<div class="verse indent2">All it dreamed when it stood</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In the murmurous pine-wood,</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Long ago!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The magical moonlight then</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Steeped every bough and cone;</div> -<div class="verse">The roar of the brook in the glen</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Came dim from the distance blown;</div> -<div class="verse">The wind through its glooms sang low,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And it swayed to and fro</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With delight as it stood</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In the wonderful wood,</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Long ago!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O my life, have we not had seasons</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That only said, Live and rejoice?</div> -<div class="verse">That asked not for causes and reasons,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But made us all feeling and voice?</div> -<div class="verse">When we went with the winds in their blowing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When Nature and we were peers,</div> -<div class="verse">And we seemed to share in the flowing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of the inexhaustible years?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Have we not from the earth drawn juices</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Too fine for earth’s sordid uses?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Have I heard, have I seen</div> -<div class="verse indent3">All I feel and I know?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Doth my heart overween?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Or could it have been</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Long ago?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sometimes a breath floats by me,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">An odour from Dreamland sent,</div> -<div class="verse">That makes the ghost seem nigh me</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of a splendour that came and went,</div> -<div class="verse">Of a life lived somewhere, I know not</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In what diviner sphere,</div> -<div class="verse">Of memories that stay not and go not,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like music heard once by an ear</div> -<div class="verse indent2">That cannot forget or reclaim it,</div> -<div class="verse">A something so shy, it would shame it</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To make it a show,</div> -<div class="verse">A something too vague, could I name it,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For others to know,</div> -<div class="verse">As if I had lived it or dreamed it,</div> -<div class="verse">As if I had acted or schemed it,</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Long ago!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And yet, could I live it over,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This life that stirs in my brain</div> -<div class="verse">Could I be both maiden and lover,</div> -<div class="verse">Moon and tide, bee and clover,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As I seem to have been, once again,</div> -<div class="verse">Could I but speak and show it,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This pleasure more sharp than pain,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">That baffles and lures me so,</div> -<div class="verse">The world should not lack a poet,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Such as it had</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In the ages glad,</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Long ago.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I am especially pleased with their <i>freundin</i> (the German word -meaning a female friend), which unlike the <i>amica</i> of the Romans, -is seldom used but in its best and purest sense. Now I know -it will be said that a friend is already something more than -a friend, when a man feels an anxiety to express to himself -that this friend is a female; but this I deny—in that sense at least -in which the objection will be made. I would hazard the impeachment -of heresy, rather than abandon my belief that there is a -sex in our souls as well as in their perishable garments; and he -who does not feel it, never truly loved a sister—nay, is not capable -even of loving a wife as she deserves to be loved, if she indeed be -worthy of that holy name.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Biographia Literaria</i>, Letter to a Lady).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Coleridge also says: “The qualities of the sexes correspond. The -man’s courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted -by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. -Can it be true what is so constantly affirmed, that there is no sex in souls?—I -doubt it, I doubt it exceedingly.”—<i>Table Talk.</i></p> - -<p>But surely Coleridge might have found the best proof of his contention -in the nature of children, the small boy who fights with his fists, plays with -tin soldiers and despises “girls,” and the girl-child who loves her doll and -her pretty clothes. See next quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">O thou most dear!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Who art thy sex’s complex harmony</div> -<div class="verse indent4">God-set more facilely;</div> -<div class="verse indent4">To thee may love draw near</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Without one blame or fear.</div> -<div class="verse">Unchidden save by his humility:</div> -<div class="verse">Thou Perseus’ Shield wherein I view secure</div> -<div class="verse">The mirrored Woman’s fateful-fair allure!</div> -<div class="verse">Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity,</div> -<div class="verse">As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free;</div> -<div class="verse">With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind</div> -<div class="verse">The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind.</div> -<div class="verse">Wild Dryad, all unconscious of thy tree,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">With which indissólubly</div> -<div class="verse">The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole;</div> -<div class="verse">Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Who wear’st thy femineity</div> -<div class="verse">Light as entrailèd blossoms, that shalt find</div> -<div class="verse">It erelong silver shackles unto thee.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;—</div> -<div class="verse indent4">As hoarded in the vine</div> -<div class="verse">Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine,</div> -<div class="verse">As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze;—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In whom the mystery which lures and sunders;</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges,</div> -<div class="verse">—The dragon to its own Hesperides—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Is gated under slow-revolving changes,</div> -<div class="verse">Manifold doors of heavy-hingèd years.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">So once, ere Heaven’s eyes were filled with wonders</div> -<div class="verse indent4">To see Laughter rise from Tears,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Lay in beauty not yet mighty,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Conchèd in translucencies,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">The antenatal Aphodrite,</div> -<div class="verse">Caved magically under magic seas;</div> -<div class="verse">Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Francis Thompson</span> (<i>Sister Songs</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Francis Thompson is one of the “difficult” poets who repay study. -Here he says that, in the young girl, sex appears in a less complex form -than in the woman and, just as Perseus could safely look at the reflection -on his shield of the fatal Medusa’s head, so we can freely view womanhood -in the girl-child. Nothing conceals her open, innocent, feminine nature. -She is the Dryad, the Nymph who lives in the tree and is born and dies -with it, but is as yet unconscious of the tree, that is, of her sex. Her -“young sex is yet but in her soul,” and is like the juice of the grape which -has not yet fermented into wine, or the calm air which sleeps undisturbed. -The mystery of womanhood, which attracts and yet, in its own protection, -repulses man, will not come to her until after the changes of years. It is -the Aphrodite lying in unawakened beauty before she rises as a goddess -from the sea. (“Facilely” appears to have the strained meaning “easy -to understand” or “simply”; the word “gated,” “confined,” is a curious -use of a university word: the Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate, who has -misbehaved, may be “gated” for a period, <i>i.e.</i>, confined to the precincts -of his own college.) “The dragon to its own Hesperides”—the Hesperides -were maidens who guarded the golden apples of love and fruitfulness, which -Earth had given to Hera on her marriage to Zeus. The maidens were -protected by a dragon. Here the dragon is the maiden’s own sensitive -reserve and self-protecting nature, which enable her to protect herself. -(“Conchèd,” Aphrodite is lying in her shell.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so -generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer -when once we know them.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Compare the ancient with the modern world; “Look on this -picture, and on that.” One broad distinction in the characters -of men forces itself into prominence. Among all the men of the -ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom -we might venture to apply the epithet “holy.” In other words, -there were not more than one or two, if any, who besides being -virtuous in their actions were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm -of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded -even a vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will -deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, -which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it -has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is, that there has -scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the time -of Christ where a century has passed without exhibiting a character -of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad -and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the -presence of God Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? -or can Christianity die?</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir J. R. Seeley</span> (<i>Ecce Homo</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The quotation from Hamlet should read, “Look here, upon this -picture, and on this.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">DAY</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Waking one morning</div> -<div class="verse">In a pleasant land,</div> -<div class="verse">By a river flowing</div> -<div class="verse">Over golden sand:—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Whence flow ye, waters,</div> -<div class="verse">O’er your golden sand?</div> -<div class="verse">We come flowing</div> -<div class="verse">From the Silent Land.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Whither flow ye, waters,</div> -<div class="verse">O’er your golden sand?</div> -<div class="verse">We go flowing</div> -<div class="verse">To the Silent Land.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And what is this fair realm?</div> -<div class="verse">A grain of golden sand</div> -<div class="verse">In the great darkness</div> -<div class="verse">Of the Silent Land.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span> (“B.V.”)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For there is not a lie, spite of God’s high decree,</div> -<div class="verse">But has made its nest sure on some branch of our tree,</div> -<div class="verse">And has some vested right to exist in the land:</div> -<div class="verse">And many will have it the tree could not stand,</div> -<div class="verse">If the sticks, straws, and feathers, that sheltered the wrong,</div> -<div class="verse">Were swept from the boughs they have cumbered so long.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. C. Smith</span> (<i>Borland Hall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I shall be old and ugly one day, and I shall look for man’s -chivalrous help, but I shall not find it. The bees are very -attentive to the flowers till their honey is done, and then they -fly over them.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Olive Schreiner</span> (<i>The Story of an African Farm</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There are some of us who in after years say to Fate “Now -deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us -never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Olive Schreiner</span> (<i>The Story of an African Farm</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Il n’a jamais fait couler larmes à personne sauf à sa mort.</p> - -<p>(He never caused any one to shed tears, except at his death.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><i>B. Seebohm’s Life of Grellet.</i></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Epitaph on Pétion, President of Hayti about 1816.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>... that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations -of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than -any single momentous bargain.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If there are two things not to be hidden—love and a cough—I -say there is a third, and that is ignorance, when one is obliged -to do something besides wagging his head.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Romola</i>—Nello speaking).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>George Eliot is quoting the Latin proverb, <i>Amor tussisque non celantur</i>. -It is also found in George Herbert’s <i>Jacula Prudentum</i>, 1640. The same -proverb appears with all sorts of variations, “love and a sneeze,” “love -and smoke,” “love and a red nose,” “love and poverty,” etc., being the -things that cannot be hidden. “Love and murder will out” (Congreve, -<i>The Double Dealer</i>, Act IV, 2). (I took these instances from some collection -of proverbs.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We Men, who in our morn of youth defied</div> -<div class="verse">The elements, must vanish;—be it so!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Enough, if something from our hands have power</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To live, and act, and serve the future hour:</div> -<div class="verse">And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower,</div> -<div class="verse">We feel that we are greater than we know.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>After-Thought</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You can’t turn curds to milk again,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then;</div> -<div class="verse">And, having tasted stolen honey,</div> -<div class="verse">You can’t buy innocence for money.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Felix Holt</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The gods are brethren. Wheresoe’er</div> -<div class="verse">They set their shrines of love or fear</div> -<div class="verse">In Grecian woods, by banks of Nile,</div> -<div class="verse">Where cold snows sleep or roses smile,</div> -<div class="verse">The gods are brethren. Zeus the Sire</div> -<div class="verse">Was fashioned of the self-same fire</div> -<div class="verse">As Odin, He, whom Ind brought forth,</div> -<div class="verse">Hath his pale kinsman east and north;</div> -<div class="verse">And more than one, since life began,</div> -<div class="verse">Hath known Christ’s agony for Man.</div> -<div class="verse">The gods are brethren. Kin by fate,</div> -<div class="verse">In gentleness as well as hate,</div> -<div class="verse">’Mid heights that only Thought may climb</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They come, they go; they are, or seem;</div> -<div class="verse">Each, rainbow’d from the rack of Time,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Casts broken lights across God’s Dream.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>Balder the Beautiful</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“You remember Tom Martin, Neddy? Bless my dear eyes,” -said Mr. Roker, shaking his head slowly from side to side, and -gazing abstractedly out of the grated window before him, as if -he were fondly recalling some peaceful scene of his early youth; -“it seems but yesterday that he whopped the coal-heaver down -Fox-under-the-hill, by the wharf there. I think I can see him -now, a-coming up the Strand between the two street-keepers, -a little sobered by his bruising, with a patch o’ winegar and brown -paper over his right eyelid, and that ’ere lovely bull-dog, as pinned -the little boy arterwards, a-following at his heels. What a rum -thing Time is, ain’t it, Neddy?”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span> (<i>Pickwick Papers</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Mr. Roker is a turnkey in the Fleet prison.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE COURTIN’</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">God makes sech nights, all white an’ still</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Fur’z you can look or listen,</div> -<div class="verse">Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All silence an’ all glisten.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown</div> -<div class="verse indent1">An’ peeked in thru’ the winder,</div> -<div class="verse">An’ there sot Huldy all alone,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Ith no one nigh to hender.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A fireplace filled the room’s one side</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With half a cord o’ wood in—</div> -<div class="verse">There warn’t no stoves (till comfort died)</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To bake ye to a puddin’.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Towards the pootiest, bless her,</div> -<div class="verse">An’ leetle flames danced all about</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The chiny on the dresser....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The very room, coz she was in,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Seemed warm from floor to ceilin’,</div> -<div class="verse">An’ she looked full ez rosy agin</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ez the apples she was peelin’....</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He was six foot o’ man, A1,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Clear grit an’ human natur’;</div> -<div class="verse">None couldn’t quicker pitch a ton</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor dror a furrer straighter.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He’d squired ’em, danced ’em, druv ’em,</div> -<div class="verse">Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All is, he couldn’t love ’em.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But long o’ her his veins ’ould run</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All crinkly like curled maple,</div> -<div class="verse">The side she breshed felt full o’ sun</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ez a south slope in Ap’il.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She thought no v’ice hed sech a swing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ez hisn in the choir;</div> -<div class="verse">My! when he made Ole Hundred ring,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She <i>knowed</i> the Lord was nigher.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">An’ she’d blush scarlit, right in prayer,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When her new meetin’-bunnet</div> -<div class="verse">Felt somehow thru’ its crown a pair</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O’ blue eyes sot upon it.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thet night, I tell ye, she looked <i>some</i>!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She seemed to ’ve gut a new soul,</div> -<div class="verse">For she felt sartin-sure he’d come,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Down to her very shoe-sole.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She heered a foot, an’ knowed it tu,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A-raspin’ on the scraper,—</div> -<div class="verse">All ways to once her feelins flew</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like sparks in burnt-up paper.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He kin’ o’ l’itered on the mat,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Some doubtfle o’ the sekle, <span class="linenote">sequel.</span></div> -<div class="verse">His heart kep’ goin’ pity-pat,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But hern went pity Zekle.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">An’ yit she gin her cheer a jerk</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ez though she wished him furder,</div> -<div class="verse">An’ on her apples kep’ to work,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Parin’ away like murder.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Wal ... no ... I come designin’”—</div> -<div class="verse">“To see my Ma? She’s sprinklin’ clo’es</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To say why gals acts so or so,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or don’t, ’ould be presumin’;</div> -<div class="verse">Mebby to mean <i>yes</i> an’ say <i>no</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1">Comes nateral to women.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He stood a spell on one foot fust,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then stood a spell on t’other,</div> -<div class="verse">An’ on which one he felt the wust</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He couldn’t ha’ told ye nuther.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sez he, “I’d better call agin;”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sez she, “Think likely, Mister;”</div> -<div class="verse">Thet last word pricked him like a pin,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">An’ ... Wal he up an’ kist her.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Huldy sot pale ez ashes,</div> -<div class="verse">All kin’ o’ smily roun’ the lips</div> -<div class="verse indent1">An’ teary roun’ the lashes....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The blood clost roun’ her heart felt glued</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Too tight for all expressin’,</div> -<div class="verse">Till mother see how metters stood,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">An’ gin ’em both her blessin’.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then her red come back like the tide,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Down to the Bay o’ Fundy,</div> -<div class="verse">An’ all I know is they was cried</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In meetin’ come nex’ Sunday.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Russell Lowell</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>What is the life of man? Is it not to turn from side to side? -From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation -and unbutton another?</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sterne</span> (<i>Tristram Shandy</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I know thy heart by heart.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">P. J. Bailey</span> (<i>Festus</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">HERBERT SPENCER’S “FIRST PRINCIPLES.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Spencer’s genesis of the universe from chaos to the -Crimean War ... For our own part, we must confess -that this new book of Genesis appears to us no more credible than -the old.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Martineau</span> (<i>Science, Nescience, and Faith</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">JAMES MILL.</p> - -<p>Did the facts of consciousness stand, as he represents them, -his method would work. He satisfactorily explains—the wrong -human nature.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Martineau</span> (<i>Essay on John Stuart Mill</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Referring to those who insist on the <i>practical</i> as against -the <i>theoretical</i>.) This solitary term (“practical”) serves a large -number of persons as a substitute for all patient and steady -thought; and, at all events, instead of meaning that which is -useful as opposed to that which is useless, it constantly signifies -that of which the use is grossly and immediately palpable, as -distinguished from that of which the usefulness can only be discerned -after attention and exertion.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Henry Maine.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Men are) dragged along the physiological history, because -easy to conceive, and baffled by the spiritual, because it has no -pictures to help it.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Martineau</span> (<i>Hours of Thought</i>, I, 100).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As psychology comprises all our sensibilities, pleasures, -affections, aspirations, capacities, it is thought on that ground -to have a special nobility and greatness, and a special power -of evoking in the student the feelings themselves. The mathematician, -dealing with conic sections, spirals, and differential -equations, is in danger of being ultimately resolved into a function -or a co-efficient: the metaphysician, by investigating conscience, -must become conscientious; driving fat oxen is the way to grow -fat.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Bain</span> (1818-1903) (<i>Contemporary Review</i>, April 1877).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There is a crude absurd materialism abroad which hasn’t -yet learned the fundamental difference between Mind and Matter. -It is altogether incomprehensible how any material processes -can beget sensations and feelings and thoughts; it is altogether -incomprehensible how <i>you</i> arose or <i>I</i> arose. Listen to Spencer:—“Were -we compelled to choose between the alternatives of translating -mental phenomena into physical phenomena, or of translating -physical phenomena into mental phenomena, the latter -alternative would seem the more preferable of the two.... Hence -though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called Matter -into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit into so-called -Matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet no -translation can carry us beyond our symbols.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Hodgson</span> (<i>Letter, March 21, 1880</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p><i>Clown.</i> What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?</p> - -<p><i>Malvolio.</i> That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit -a bird.</p> - -<p><i>Clown.</i> What thinkest thou of his opinion?</p> - -<p><i>Malvolio.</i> I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve -his opinion.</p> - -<p><i>Clown.</i> Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (<i>Twelfth Night</i>, IV, 2).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, -very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, “That, that is, is.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (<i>Twelfth Night</i>, IV, 2).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WHAT IS LOVE?</p> - -<p>The passion which unites the sexes ... is the most compound, -and therefore the most powerful of all the feelings. Added -to the purely physical elements of it are, first, those highly -complex impressions produced by personal beauty.... With -this there is united the complex sentiment which we term affection—a -sentiment which, as it can exist between those of the same -sex, must be regarded as an independent sentiment.... Then -there is the sentiment of admiration, respect, or reverence.... There -comes next the feeling called love of approbation. To -be preferred above all the world, and that by one admired above -all others, is to have the love of approbation gratified in a degree -passing every previous experience.... Further, the allied -emotion of self-esteem comes into play. To have succeeded in -gaining such attachment from, and sway over, another is a -proof of power which cannot fail agreeably to excite the <i>amour -propre</i>. Yet again, the proprietary feeling has its share in the -general activity: there is the pleasure of possession—the two -belong to each other. Once more, the relation allows of an -extended liberty of action. Towards other persons a restrained -behaviour is requisite. Round each there is a subtle boundary -that may not be crossed—an individuality on which none may -trespass. But in this case the barriers are thrown down; and thus -the love of unrestrained activity is gratified. Finally there is an -exaltation of the sympathies. Egoistic pleasures of all kinds -are doubled by another’s sympathetic participation; and the -pleasures of another are added to the egoistic pleasures. Thus, -round the physical feeling, forming the nucleus of the whole, are -gathered the feelings produced by personal beauty, that -constituting simple attachment, those of reverence, of love of -approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love of freedom, -of sympathy. These, all greatly exalted, and severally tending -to reflect their excitements on one another, unite to form the -mental state we call Love.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Herbert Spencer</span> (<i>Principles of Psychology</i>, 3rd Ed., Vol. I, 487).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The heading is, of course, mine—not Spencer’s.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WHAT AM I?</p> - -<p>The aggregate of feelings and ideas, constituting the mental <i>I</i>, -have not in themselves the principle of cohesion holding them -together as a whole; but the <i>I</i> which continuously survives -as the subject of these changing states is that portion of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -Unknowable Power, which is statically conditioned in (my -particular one of those) special nervous structures pervaded -by a dynamically-conditioned portion of the Unknowable Power -called energy.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Herbert Spencer</span> (<i>Principles of Psychology</i>, 3rd Ed., Vol. II, 504).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The heading and words in brackets are mine. As the reader may -at any time be asked “What are you?” it would be well to be ready with -a simple reply.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>New truths, old truths! sirs, there is nothing new possible -to be revealed to us in the moral world; we know all we shall -ever know: and it is for simply reminding us, by their various -respective expedients, how we do know this and the other matter, -that men get called prophets, poets, and the like. A philosopher’s -life is spent in discovering that, of the half-dozen truths he knew -when a child, such an one is a lie, as the world states it in set -terms; and then, after a weary lapse of years, and plenty of hard-thinking, -it becomes a truth again after all, as he happens to newly -consider it and view it in a different relation with the others: -and so he restates it, to the confusion of somebody else in good -time. As for adding to the original stock of truths,—impossible!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>A Soul’s Tragedy</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,</div> -<div class="verse">And proved it, ’twas no matter what he said.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Byron</span> (<i>Don Juan, Canto XI</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The law of equal freedom which Herbert Spencer deduces -is binding only upon those who admit both that human happiness -is the Divine Will and that we should act in accordance with the -Divine Will. Why should I obey this law? Because without -such obedience human happiness cannot be complete. Why -should I aim at human happiness? Because human happiness -is the Divine Will. The inexorable <i>why</i> pursues us here—Why -should I aim at the fulfilment of the Divine Will? To this -question there seems no satisfactory reply but that it is for my -own happiness to do so.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Hodgson</span> (<i>Unpublished Essay</i>, 1879).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I have no ambition to wander into the inane and usurp the -sceptre of the dim Hegel, situated Nowhere, with pure Nothing -behind him, and pure Being before him, steadfastly and vainly -endeavouring with his <i>Werden</i> to stop the sand-flowing of smiling -Time.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Hodgson</span> (<i>Early Unpublished Essay</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Werden</i> in Hegel is usually translated “Becoming.” To Hegel the -truth of the world is found in life or movement, not in Being which is changeless, -but tells and does nothing.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Edwin (afterwards Sir Edwin) Arnold was with Herbert -Spencer on a Nile steamer. Spencer was dyspeptic and irritable; -Arnold was a nocturnal bird, pacing the deck alone in a long -gown and smoking a long pipe. Suddenly appeared a white -figure, Spencer in his night-shirt, who in the bad light took -Arnold for a sailor (and Arnold did not undeceive him).</p> - -<p>“Hi! there!”</p> - -<p>“Ay, ay, Sir.”</p> - -<p>“What are the men making that noise there forward for?”</p> - -<p>“Cleaning the engines, Sir.”</p> - -<p>“Just tell them not to make such a row, keeping good -Christians from their sleep at this time of night.”</p> - -<p>“Ay, ay, Sir.”</p> - -<p>(Disappearance of ghost; joke next morning,)</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Told by Arnold to Hodgson, June, 1884</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The great agnostic, usually most precise in his language, describes -himself as a “good Christian”!</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The very law which moulds a tear</div> -<div class="verse">And bids it trickle from its source,—</div> -<div class="verse">That law preserves the earth a sphere,</div> -<div class="verse">And guides the planets in their course.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Samuel Rogers</span> (<i>On a Tear</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WILLIAM BLAKE.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He came to the desert of London town</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Grey miles long;</div> -<div class="verse">He wander’d up and he wander’d down,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Singing a quiet song,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He came to the desert of London Town,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Mirk miles broad;</div> -<div class="verse">He wandered up and he wandered down,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ever alone with God.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There were thousands and thousands of human kind</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In this desert of brick and stone:</div> -<div class="verse">But some were deaf and some were blind,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And he was there alone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">At length the good hour came; he died</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As he had lived, alone:</div> -<div class="verse">He was not miss’d from the desert wide,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Perhaps he was found at the Throne.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span> (“B.V.”).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>The desert of London town</i>—<i>Magna civitas, magna solitudo</i>: “a -great city is a great solitude.”</p> - -<p>It is strange to think that these verses (and especially the last verse) -were written by the pessimist who wrote in all sincerity the terrible lines -in Pt. VIII of “The City of Dreadful Night.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Farewell, green fields and happy grove,</div> -<div class="verse">Where flocks have ta’en delight;</div> -<div class="verse">Where lambs have nibbled, silent move</div> -<div class="verse">The feet of angels bright;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Unseen, they pour blessing</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And joy without ceasing,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">On each bud and blossom,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And each sleeping bosom.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They look in every thoughtless nest,</div> -<div class="verse">Where birds are covered warm;</div> -<div class="verse">They visit caves of every beast,</div> -<div class="verse">To keep them all from harm:</div> -<div class="verse indent2">If they see any weeping</div> -<div class="verse indent2">That should have been sleeping,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">They pour sleep on their head,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And sit down by their bed.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When wolves and tigers howl for prey,</div> -<div class="verse">They pitying stand and weep;</div> -<div class="verse">Seeking to drive their thirst away,</div> -<div class="verse">And keep them from the sheep,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But if they rush dreadful,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The angels, most heedful,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Receive each mild spirit,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">New worlds to inherit.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William Blake</span> (<i>Night</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves,</div> -<div class="verse">Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis, oves,</div> -<div class="verse">Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes,</div> -<div class="verse">Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra, boves.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(So you, birds, build nests—not for yourselves,</div> -<div class="verse">So you, sheep, grow fleeces—not for yourselves,</div> -<div class="verse">So you, bees, make honey—not for yourselves,</div> -<div class="verse">So you, oxen, draw the plough—not for yourselves.)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Virgil.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>According to Donatus, Virgil wrote a couplet in praise of Cæsar and -posted it anonymously on the portals of the palace (31 <span class="smcap">B.C.</span>). Bathyllus -gave himself out as the author of this couplet, and on that account received -a present from Cæsar. Next night <i>Sic vos non vobis</i> (“So you not for -you”) was found written four times in the same place. The Romans were -puzzled as to what was meant by these words, until Virgil came forward -and completed the verse—adding a preliminary line, <i>Hos ego versiculos feci, -tulit alter honores</i>, “I wrote the lines, another wears the bays.”</p> - -<p>Shelley in <i>Song to the Men of England</i> wrote as a socialist:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The seed ye sow, another reaps;</div> -<div class="verse">The wealth ye find, another keeps;</div> -<div class="verse">The robes ye weave, another wears;</div> -<div class="verse">The arms ye forge, another bears.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In previous verses he refers to bees, and, of course, the above quotation -was in his mind.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I know, of late experience taught, that him</div> -<div class="verse">Who is my foe I must but hate as one</div> -<div class="verse">Whom I may yet call Friend: and him who loves me</div> -<div class="verse">Will I but serve and cherish as a man</div> -<div class="verse">Whose love is not abiding. Few be they</div> -<div class="verse">Who, reaching friendship’s port, have there found rest.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sophocles</span> (<i>Ajax</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is from C. S. Calverley’s fine translation of the speech of Ajax.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards,</div> -<div class="verse">And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety:</div> -<div class="verse">He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure,</div> -<div class="verse">Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">C. S. Calverley.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Imitating the now-forgotten Martin Tupper.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony.... -Even that vulgar and Tavern Musick, which makes one man -merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and -a profound contemplation of the First Composer.... There is -something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an -Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and -creatures of God; such a melody to the ear as the whole World, -well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, -it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds -in the ears of God.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Thomas Browne</span> (<i>Religio Medici</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Speaking of an Essay on Wordsworth he is about to write -for some Melbourne society) I purpose describing briefly the -poetic tendencies, or rather the unpoetic tendencies, of the -18th Century, and the new school beginning to manifest itself -in Cowper. I shall then refer to W.’s principles—shall banish -to a future time the working out of the <i>psychological</i> connection -between forms of nature and the human soul—shall banish -also the feelings, the elementary feelings, of humanity, which -W. drew <i>powerful</i> attention to, and confine myself to pointing -out those characteristics in external nature which he took note -of. These produce corresponding feelings in the “human,” -and some of them are <i>beauty</i>, <i>silence and calm</i>, <i>joyousness</i>, <i>generosity</i>, -<i>freedom</i>, <i>grandeur</i>, and <i>Spirituality</i>. These are found in -Nature, and W. saw them, and in the growing familiarity with -them a man’s soul becomes <i>beautiful</i>, <i>calm</i>, <i>joyous</i>, <i>generous</i>, -<i>free</i>, <i>grand</i>, and <i>spiritual</i>. The first ones, of course, all depend on -and grow from the last, and the Spirituality is God immanent. -This last, as the root of all the others, will merit special attention—it -exhibits W.’s poetico-philosophy so far as it regards the work -of Nature upon man; and includes too the Platonic Reminiscence -business. (<i>Here follows personal chit-chat.</i>) I think we -might add the “supreme loftiness of <i>labour</i>” to the foregoing -elements in Nature. In the <i>Gipsies</i> (I give both readings)</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">O better wrong and strife,</div> -<div class="verse">Better vain deeds or evil than such life!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The silent heavens have goings-on;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The stars have tasks—but these have none!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Oh, better wrong and strife</div> -<div class="verse">(By nature transient) than this torpid life:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Life which the very stars reprove</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As on their silent tasks they move.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Hodgson</span> (<i>Letter</i>, 1877, when aged 21).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In 1877 Blake was little appreciated. (I remember only that in -our children’s books we had “Tiger, Tiger burning bright”—and it was a -strange thing to include in such books a poem which raises the problems of -the existence of evil and the nature of God). Hence it will be evident -why so keen a student of poetry as Hodgson did not couple Blake with -Cowper as a precursor of the Romantic Revival. As a matter of fact -Blake had more of the “Romantic” spirit than Cowper, and really preceded -him, for the poor verse that Cowper published the year before Blake’s -<i>Poetical Sketches</i> need not be considered. While still in his teens Blake -wrote (“To the Muses”):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">... Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry,</div> -<div class="verse">How have you left the ancient love</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That bards of old enjoyed in you!</div> -<div class="verse">The languid strings do scarcely move,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sound is forced, the notes are few.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Curiously enough Gray also had in him an element of the Romantic -<i>which he suppressed</i>. It is very remarkable that in his Elegy (published -1751) he cut out the following verse:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By hands unseen are showers of violets found;</div> -<div class="verse">The redbreast loves to build and warble there,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And little footsteps lightly print the ground.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;</div> -<div class="verse">His daily teachers had been woods and rills,</div> -<div class="verse">The silence that is in the starry sky,</div> -<div class="verse">The sleep that is among the lonely hills.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ambition tempts to rise,</div> -<div class="verse">Then whirls the wretch from high</div> -<div class="verse">To bitter Scorn a sacrifice</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And grinning Infamy.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Gray</span> (<i>On a Distant Prospect of Eton College</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Slightly altered verbally to admit of quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,</div> -<div class="verse">Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?</div> -<div class="verse">Westward across the ocean, and Northward across the snow,</div> -<div class="verse">Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm</div> -<div class="verse">Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm;</div> -<div class="verse">In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet we all say, “Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,</div> -<div class="verse">As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings;</div> -<div class="verse">And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry</div> -<div class="verse">Of those who are heavy-laden, and of cowards loth to die.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills,</div> -<div class="verse">Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot that kills;</div> -<div class="verse">Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,</div> -<div class="verse">We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim,</div> -<div class="verse">And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim;</div> -<div class="verse">And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest,</div> -<div class="verse">Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The path, ah! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?</div> -<div class="verse">The haven, ah! who has known it? for steep is the mountain side.</div> -<div class="verse">Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath</div> -<div class="verse">Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an ancient name,</div> -<div class="verse">Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame;</div> -<div class="verse">They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard our race,</div> -<div class="verse">Ever I watch and worship—they sit with a marble face.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests,</div> -<div class="verse">The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts!</div> -<div class="verse">What have they wrung from the Silence? Hath even a whisper come</div> -<div class="verse">Of the secret, Whence and Whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?</div> -<div class="verse">“The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your message to me?”</div> -<div class="verse">It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began,</div> -<div class="verse">How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once was man.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I had thought, “Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,</div> -<div class="verse">They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main—”</div> -<div class="verse">Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the dreamer awake?</div> -<div class="verse">Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the mirror break?</div> -<div class="verse">Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone</div> -<div class="verse">From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled,</div> -<div class="verse">But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?</div> -<div class="verse">The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep</div> -<div class="verse">With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and the voices of women who weep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Alfred Lyall.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">MEDITATION OF A HINDU PRINCE -AND SCEPTIC</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I think till I weary with thinking, said the sad-eyed Hindu King,</div> -<div class="verse">But I see but shadows around me, illusion in everything.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How knowest thou aught of God, of his favour or his wrath?</div> -<div class="verse">Can the little fish tell what the lion thinks, or map out the eagle’s path?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Can the finite the infinite search,—did the blind discover the stars?</div> -<div class="verse">Is the thought that I think a thought, or a throb of the brain in its bars?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For aught that my eye can discern, your god is what you think good,</div> -<div class="verse">Yourself flashed back from the glass when the light pours on it in flood!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You preach to me of his justice, and this is his realm, you say,</div> -<div class="verse">Where the good are dying of hunger, and the bad gorge every day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You tell me he loveth mercy, but the famine is not yet gone,—</div> -<div class="verse">That he hateth the shedder of blood, yet he slayeth us, everyone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You tell me the soul must live, that spirit can never die,</div> -<div class="verse">If he was content when I was not, why not when I’ve passed by?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You say that I must have a meaning! So has dung,—and its meaning is flowers:</div> -<div class="verse">What if our lives are but nurture for souls that are higher than ours?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When the fish swims out of the water, when the bird soars out of the blue,</div> -<div class="verse">Man’s thought shall transcend man’s knowledge, and your God be no reflex of you!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The preceding poem by Lyall had the same title as these verses, -“Meditation of a Hindu Prince <i>and Sceptic</i>” when first published in the -<i>Cornhill</i>, September, 1877. I was fully convinced, for reasons that would -take too long to set out here, that these verses were by Hodgson. But -Mrs. Piper, the well-known trance-medium, says that Hodgson gave her -a copy signed with other initials than his, and that she is sure he was not -the author. She has mislaid the copy she refers to. In view of this statement -I must not attribute the verses to Hodgson, although I cannot but -doubt whether Mrs. Piper’s recollection is correct.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">One summer hour abides, what time I perched,</div> -<div class="verse">Dappled with noon-day, under simmering leaves,</div> -<div class="verse">And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof</div> -<div class="verse">An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled,</div> -<div class="verse">Denouncing me an alien and a thief.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>The Cathedral</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The present writer ... was seated in a railway-carriage, -five minutes or so before starting, and had time to contemplate -certain waggons or trucks filled with cattle, drawn up on a parallel -line, and quite close to the window at which he sat. The cattle -wore a much-enduring aspect; and, as he looked into their -large, patient, melancholy eyes,—for, as before mentioned, there -was no space to speak of intervening,—a feeling of puzzlement -arose in his mind.... The much-enduring animals in the trucks -opposite had unquestionably some rude twilight of a notion of a -world; of objects they had some unknown cognizance; but he -could not get behind the melancholy eye within a yard of him -and look through it. How, from that window, the world shaped -itself, he could not discover, could not even fancy; and yet, -staring on the animals, he was conscious of a certain fascination -in which there lurked an element of terror. These wild, unkempt -brutes, with slavering muzzles, penned together, lived, could choose -between this thing and the other, could be frightened, could be -enraged, could even love and hate; and gazing into a placid, heavy -countenance, and the depths of a patient eye, not a yard away, he -was conscious of an obscure and shuddering recognition of a life -akin so far with his own. But to enter into that life imaginatively, -and to conceive it, he found impossible. Eye looked upon eye, but -the one could not flash recognition on the other; and, thinking -of this, he remembers, with what a sense of ludicrous horror, -the idea came,—what, if looking on one another thus, some spark -of recognition could be elicited; if some rudiment of thought -could be detected; if there were indeed a point at which man -and ox could meet and compare notes? Suppose some gleam -or scintillation of humour had lighted up the unwinking, amber -eye? Heavens, the bellow of the weaning calf would be pathetic, -shoe-leather would be forsworn, the eating of roast meat, hot -or cold, would be cannibalism, the terrified world would make a -sudden dash into vegetarianism!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (<i>On the Importance of Man to Himself</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Does not this give the reason why we do not eat dogs and horses? -We, more than other nations, recognize in the horse, as well as in the dog, -a life and intelligence akin to our own. We also believe that both animals -reciprocate the affection we feel towards them. (Coleridge in <i>Table Talk</i> -says: “The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a στοργή or affection -<i>upwards</i> to man.”)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When I am playing with my Cat, who knowes whether she have -more sport in dallying with me, than I have in gaming with her? -We entertaine one another with mutual apish trickes: If I have -my houre to begin or to refuse, so hath she hers.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Montaigne</span> (<i>Bk. II, ch. 12</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O what are these Spirits that o’er us creep,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And touch our eyelids and drink our breath?</div> -<div class="verse">The first, with a flower in his hand, is Sleep;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The next, with a star on his brow, is Death.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>Balder the Beautiful</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—</div> -<div class="verse">He hath awakened from the dream of life—</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep</div> -<div class="verse">With phantoms an unprofitable life.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Adonaïs</i> XXXIX).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Have you found your life distasteful?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My life did—and does—smack sweet.</div> -<div class="verse">Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Mine I saved and hold complete.</div> -<div class="verse">Do your joys with age diminish?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When mine fails me, I’ll complain.</div> -<div class="verse">Must in death your daylight finish?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My sun sets to rise again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>At the Mermaid</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“My life did—and does—smack sweet”—<a href="#Page_236">see note p. 236</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE LAMB</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Little lamb, who made thee?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Dost thou know who made thee,</div> -<div class="verse">Gave thee life, and bade thee feed</div> -<div class="verse">By the stream and o’er the mead;</div> -<div class="verse">Gave thee clothing of delight,</div> -<div class="verse">Softest clothing, woolly, bright;</div> -<div class="verse">Gave thee such a tender voice,</div> -<div class="verse">Making all the vales rejoice?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Little lamb, who made thee?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Dost thou know who made thee?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;</div> -<div class="verse">He is called by thy name.</div> -<div class="verse">For He calls Himself a Lamb.</div> -<div class="verse">He is meek, and He is mild,</div> -<div class="verse">He became a little child.</div> -<div class="verse">I a child, and thou a lamb,</div> -<div class="verse">We are called by His name.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Little lamb, God bless thee!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Little lamb, God bless thee!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Blake</span> (1757-1827).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Who can wrestle against Sleep? Yet is that giant very -gentleness.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Martin Tupper</span> (<i>Of Beauty</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ON A FINE MORNING</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">I.</div> -<div class="verse">Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing</div> -<div class="verse">What is doing, suffering, being,</div> -<div class="verse">Not from noting Life’s conditions,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But in cleaving to the Dream,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And in gazing at the Gleam</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Whereby gray things golden seem.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">II.</div> -<div class="verse">Thus do I this heyday, holding</div> -<div class="verse">Shadows but as lights unfolding,</div> -<div class="verse">As no specious show this moment</div> -<div class="verse">With its iridized embowment;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But as nothing other than</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Part of a benignant plan;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Proof that earth was made for man.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hardy.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is not in the <i>Selected Poems</i>. It is interesting as showing Mr. -Hardy in an optimistic mood.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Without the smile from partial beauty won,</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, what were man? a world without a sun!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell</span> (<i>Pleasures of Hope, Pt. II</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Of two opposite methods of action, do you desire to know -which should have the preference? Calculate their effects in -pleasures and pains, and prefer that which promises the greater -sum of pleasures.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Think not that a man will so much as lift up his little finger -on your behalf, unless he sees his advantage in it.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Jeremy Bentham</span> (1748-1832).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These cold-blooded and repulsive aphorisms are typical of Bentham’s -Utilitarian philosophy, from which all sense of duty and moral aspiration -were excluded. It is strange that these views should be held by a great -thinker who was himself of benevolent character. Such a doctrine could not -have survived to my time, had it not been supplemented by John Stuart -Mill (1806-1873), who gave a different place to the humanist element. While -still adhering to Bentham’s doctrine that there is no good but pleasure and no -evil but pain, he introduced as the higher forms of pleasure those derived -from the wish for self-culture and the desire to satisfy our mental and moral -aims. He gave priority to all the sympathetic and altruistic motives that -govern our actions. Whereas Bentham held that all pleasures were equal and -could be counted in one column, Mill said that they differed in quality,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -that they could no more be added up in one column than pounds, shillings -and pence; that, in fact, there is no equivalent for a higher pleasure in any -quantity of a lower one. This was typical of Mill’s sincerity: but he did -not see that his additions were fatal to Bentham’s doctrine and to hedonism -generally. How, for instance, is a higher pleasure to be known for a higher? -In what respect is an intellectual pleasure or the satisfaction of doing one’s -duty of higher quality than the gratification of the senses? To ascertain -this it is necessary to pass from the pleasure itself to the thing that gives -the pleasure or, in other words, to the character that finds the pleasure. -Many illustrations of this might be given. In one of Sir Alfred Lyall’s -poems, which is founded on fact, an Englishman who has been captured by -Arabs has no religious belief; his loved ones are waiting his return; he can -save his life if he will only repeat the Mahomedan formula; if he dies no -one will know of his self-sacrifice: yet he decides to die for the honour of -England. However, Bentham’s careful calculus of equal pleasures and -pains, “push-pin” being “worth as much as poetry,”<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> came to an end -through Mill, and Mill at once made way for Spencer on the one hand, and -T. H. Green on the other; both of these rejected the calculation of pleasures -or happiness as the standard of right either for the individual or the greatest -number. In all directions the low moral stage of philosophic thought -represented by Benthamism has been passed through and forgotten. We -no longer hold the belief that the only sphere of Government is to protect -our persons and property, but follow loftier ideals; and in art and poetry -we look for higher aims than mere luxury and sensuous pleasure.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LIFE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We are born; we laugh; we weep;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We love; we droop; we die!</div> -<div class="verse">Ah! wherefore do we laugh, or weep?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Why do we live, or die?</div> -<div class="verse">Who knows that secret deep?</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Alas, not I!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why doth the violet spring</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unseen by human eye?</div> -<div class="verse">Why do the radiant seasons bring</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sweet thoughts that quickly fly?</div> -<div class="verse">Why do our fond hearts cling</div> -<div class="verse indent3">To things that die?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We toil,—through pain and wrong;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We fight,—and fly;</div> -<div class="verse">We love; we lose; and then, ere long,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stone dead we lie.</div> -<div class="verse">Life! is <i>all</i> thy song</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Endure and—die?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">B. W. Procter</span> (<i>Barry Cornwall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Stop and consider! Life is but a day;</div> -<div class="verse">A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way</div> -<div class="verse">From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep</div> -<div class="verse">While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep</div> -<div class="verse">Of Montmorenci,—Why so sad a moan?</div> -<div class="verse">Life is the rose’s hope while yet unblown;</div> -<div class="verse">The reading of an ever-changing tale;</div> -<div class="verse">The light uplifting of a maiden’s veil;</div> -<div class="verse">A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;</div> -<div class="verse">A laughing school boy, without grief or care,</div> -<div class="verse">Riding the springy branches of an elm.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Keats</span> (<i>Sleep and Poetry</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Life is compared to the brief fall of a dewdrop, the Indian’s unconscious -sleep while his boat hastens to destruction; but life also is Hope, Intellect, -Beauty, and Physical Enjoyment.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat;</div> -<div class="verse">Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit</div> -<div class="verse">Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay—</div> -<div class="verse">To-morrow’s falser than the former day;</div> -<div class="verse">Lies worse and, while it says we shall be blessed</div> -<div class="verse">With some new joys, cuts off what we possesst.</div> -<div class="verse">Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;</div> -<div class="verse">And, from the dregs of life, think to receive</div> -<div class="verse">What the first sprightly running would not give,</div> -<div class="verse">I’m tired with waiting for this chymic gold,</div> -<div class="verse">Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Dryden</span> (<i>Aureng-zebe</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,</div> -<div class="verse">Lest you should think he never could recapture</div> -<div class="verse">The first fine careless rapture!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Home-Thoughts from Abroad</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">PEU DE CHOSE ET PRESQUE TROP.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">La vie est vaine:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Un peu d’amour,</div> -<div class="verse">Un peu de haine ...</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Et puis—bonjour!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">La vie est brève:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Un peu d’espoir,</div> -<div class="verse">Un peu de rêve ...</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Et puis—bonsoir!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(Life is vain: A little love, A little hate, ... And then—good-day!)</div> -<div class="verse">(Life is short: A little hope, A little dream, ... And then—good night!)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Leon Montenaeken.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This haunting little lyric is a literary curiosity from one point of -view. In spite of expostulations from the author (a Belgian poet), and -repeated public statements by others from time to time, the poem is constantly -being wrongly attributed to one or another of the French poets. -It appeared in <i>Le Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique</i>, 1887, but had probably -been written and published some years before that date. In the <i>Nineteenth -Century</i>, September, 1893, William Sharp pointed out that the poem -was always being attributed to the wrong author—even Andrew Lang -being one of the culprits. The author himself wrote to <i>The Literary World</i> of -June 3, 1904, to the same effect. The subject was again spoken of in -<i>Notes and Queries</i>, January 5, 1907, when the author’s letter was republished. -London <i>Truth</i> also brought the matter up at one time, and probably the -same fact has been publicly pointed out elsewhere a hundred times—but -the poem continues to be attributed to the wrong author! In the <i>Dictionary -of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations</i>, by H. P. Jones, published -so recently as 1913, the verses are ascribed to Alfred de Musset.</p> - -<p>There is a third verse, which reads like an answer or retort to the other -two:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">La vie est telle,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Que Dieu la fit;</div> -<div class="verse">Et telle, quelle,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Elle suffit!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">(Life is such As God made it, And, just as it is, ... It suffices!)</p> - -<p>One of the writers to <i>Notes and Queries</i> quotes the following lines:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">On entre, on crie,</div> -<div class="verse">Et c’est la vie!</div> -<div class="verse">On baîlle, on sort,</div> -<div class="verse">Et c’est la mort!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution">(<i>Ausone de Chancel</i>, 1836)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">(You enter, you cry, and that is life: you yawn, you go out, and that is -death.)</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A very strange, fantastic world—where each one pursues -his own golden bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing -the same. I have been thinking how a moral Linnæus would -classify our race.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">TWO LOVERS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They leaned soft cheeks together there,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Mingled the dark and sunny hair.</div> -<div class="verse">And heard the wooing thrushes sing,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O budding time!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O love’s blest prime!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Two wedded from the portal stept:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The bells made happy carollings,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The air was soft as fanning wings,</div> -<div class="verse">White petals on the pathway slept.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O pure-eyed bride!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O tender pride!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Two faces o’er a cradle bent:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Two hands above the head were locked;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">These pressed each other while they rocked.</div> -<div class="verse">Those watched a life that love had sent.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O solemn hour!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O hidden power!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Two parents by the evening fire:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The red light fell about their knees</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On heads that rose by slow degrees</div> -<div class="verse">Like buds upon the lily spire.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O patient life!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O tender strife</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The two still sat together there,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The red light shone about their knees:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But all the heads by slow degrees</div> -<div class="verse">Had gone and left that lonely pair.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O voyage fast!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O vanished past!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The red light shone upon the floor</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And made the space between them wide;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They drew their chairs up side by side,</div> -<div class="verse">Their pale cheeks joined, and said, “Once more!”</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O memories!</div> -<div class="verse indent4">O past that is!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Some of your griefs you have cured,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the sharpest you still have survived;</div> -<div class="verse">But what torments of pain you endured</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From evils that never arrived!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (<i>From the French</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This sentiment has been expressed by many different authors. Some -friends of mine have as their favourite motto, “I have had many troubles -in my life, and most of them never happened.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">With him ther was his son, a yong Squyer,<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> <span class="linenote">Squire</span></div> -<div class="verse">A lovyere and a lusty bachelor, <span class="linenote">lover</span></div> -<div class="verse">With lokkès crulle, as they were leyd in presse. <span class="linenote">curly locks</span></div> -<div class="verse">Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse....</div> -<div class="verse">Singinge he was, or floytinge, al the day; <span class="linenote">playing the flute</span></div> -<div class="verse">He was as fresh as is the month of May.</div> -<div class="verse">Short was his goune, with slevès long and wide,</div> -<div class="verse">Well coude he sitte on hors and fairè ride.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Chaucer</span> (<i>Canterbury Tales—Prologue</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">With a waist and with a side</div> -<div class="verse">White as Hebe’s, when her zone</div> -<div class="verse">Slipt its golden clasp, and down</div> -<div class="verse">Fell her kirtle to her feet,</div> -<div class="verse">While she held her goblet sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">And Jove grew languid.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Keats</span> (<i>Fancy</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Like Angels stopped upon the wing by sound</div> -<div class="verse">Of harmony from heaven’s remotest spheres.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Prelude, Bk. XIV.</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Arm in arm, all against the raying West,</div> -<div class="verse">Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess’d.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. Meredith</span> (<i>Love in the Valley</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The blessed Damozel leaned out</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From the gold bar of Heaven;</div> -<div class="verse">Her eyes were deeper than the depth</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of waters stilled at even;</div> -<div class="verse">She had three lilies in her hand,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the stars in her hair were seven.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No wrought flowers did adorn,</div> -<div class="verse">But a white rose of Mary’s gift,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For service meetly worn;</div> -<div class="verse">Her hair that lay along her back</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Was yellow like ripe corn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span> (<i>The Blessed Damozel</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When as in silk my Julia goes,</div> -<div class="verse">Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows</div> -<div class="verse">The liquefaction of her clothes!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Herrick</span> (<i>Upon Julia’s Clothes</i>),</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The six quotations above are from a series of word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Whatever else may or may not work on through eternity, -we are bound to believe that the love, which moved the Father -to redeem the world at such infinite cost, must work on, while -there is one pang in the universe, born of sin, which can touch -the Divine pity, or one wretched prodigal in rags and hunger -far from the home and the heart of God.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Rev. Baldwin Brown.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p> - -<p>Canon Farrar is not happy in his rejoinder to the argument -that to cast a doubt on the endlessness of punishment is to -invalidate the argument for the endlessness of bliss, since both -rest on exactly the same Biblical sanction. There are three -replies, cumulatively exhaustive, which he has failed to adduce.... -(Firstly, evil and temptation are banished from heaven; -Second, the two arguments do <i>not</i> rest on the same Biblical -sanction) ... Thirdly, the difference of the two eternities, heaven -and hell, consists in the presence or absence of God. Let us put α -for each of those eternities or aeons, and θ to denote Him. The -assertion of the equality of the two, then, is that α + θ = α - θ, -which can stand only if θ = 0, the postulate of atheism.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Rev. R. F. Littledale, D.C.L.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Both these passages come from an Article in the <i>Contemporary</i> for -April, 1878.</p> - -<p>As this book is partly intended to revive the memories of forty years -ago, I include these out of the passages in my commonplace book which -refer to the intense struggle that then raged over the question of Eternal -Punishment. Surely no other word, since the world began, raised so -tremendous an issue, created such conflict and caused so much heart-burning -as the one word αἰώνιος.</p> - -<p>(Liddell and Scott, 1901, gives the following meanings for αἰώνιος: -<i>lasting for an age</i>, <i>perpetual</i>, <i>everlasting</i>, <i>eternal</i>.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid -of Hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place. I -have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost -forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys -of the one, than endure the misery of the other: to be deprived -of them is a perfect Hell, and needs, methinks, no addition to -compleat our afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained -me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. -I fear GOD, yet am not afraid of Him: His Mercies make me -ashamed of my sins, before His Judgments afraid thereof.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Thomas Browne</span> (1605-1682) (<i>Religio Medici</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Ne nous imaginons pas que l’enfer consiste dans ces étangs -de feu et de soufre, dans ces flammes éternellement dévorantes, -dans cette rage, dans ce désespoir, dans cet horrible grincement -de dents. L’enfer, si nous l’entendons, c’est péché même: -l’enfer, c’est d’être éloigné de Dieu.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bossuet</span> (1627-1704).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>(Let us not imagine that hell consists in those lakes of fire and brimstone, -in those eternally-devouring flames, in that rage, in that despair, in that -horrible gnashing of teeth. Hell, if we understand it aright, is sin itself: -hell consists in being banished from God.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>... Sir Henry Wotton’s celebrated answer to a priest in -Italy, who asked him, “Where was your religion to be found before -Luther?” “My religion was to be found there—where yours -is not to be found now—in the written word of God.” In Selden’s -<i>Table Talk</i> we have the following more witty reply made to the -same question: “Where was America an hundred or six score -years ago?”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Boswell’s</span> <i>Life of Johnson</i>, VIII, 176.</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I do not wish to introduce sectarian questions, but these answers are -interesting and clever. The next quotation is pro-Catholic.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>During the horrible time of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, -a French priest and a Jew became very intimate friends. The -priest, very anxious for the future welfare of his friend, urged -him to be received into the church: and the Jew promised -to earnestly consider this advice. The priest, however, gave up -all hope on learning that the Jew was called by his business to -Rome, where he would see the unutterably monstrous life of the -Pope and clergy. To his surprise the Jew on his return announced -that he wished to be baptized, saying that a religion, which could -still exist in spite of such abominations, must be the true religion.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I noted this from an old French book, but the real story must be the -earlier one of Boccaccio (1315-1375). Alexander Borgia was Pope, 1492-1503.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I verily believe that, if the knife were put into my hand, -I should not have strength and energy enough to stick it into a -Dissenter.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sydney Smith.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Shortly before his death in 1844 he gave this as a singular proof of his -declining strength! (See <i>Memoir</i> by his daughter, Lady Holland).</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A hundred times when, roving high and low,</div> -<div class="verse">I have been harassed with the toil of verse,</div> -<div class="verse">Much pains and little progress, and at once</div> -<div class="verse">Some lovely Image in the song rose up</div> -<div class="verse">Full-formed like Venus rising from the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Wordsworth</span> (<i>Prelude, Bk. IV</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The “Prelude” is extremely interesting as a poet’s autobiography.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LONG EXPECTED</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O many and many a day before we met,</div> -<div class="verse">I knew some spirit walked the world alone,</div> -<div class="verse">Awaiting the Belovèd from afar;</div> -<div class="verse">And I was the anointed chosen one</div> -<div class="verse">Of all the world to crown her queenly brows</div> -<div class="verse">With the imperial crown of human love.</div> -<div class="verse">I knew my sunshine somewhere warmed the world,</div> -<div class="verse">And I should reach it, in His own good time</div> -<div class="verse">Who sendeth sun, and dew, and love for all....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Earth, with her thousand voices, talked of thee—</div> -<div class="verse">Sweet winds, and whispering leaves, and piping birds,</div> -<div class="verse">The hum of happiness in summer woods,</div> -<div class="verse">And the light dropping of the silver rain;</div> -<div class="verse">And standing as in God’s own presence-chamber.</div> -<div class="verse">When silence lay like sleep upon the world,</div> -<div class="verse">And it seemed rich to die, alone with Night,</div> -<div class="verse">Like Moses ’neath the kisses of God’s lips,</div> -<div class="verse">The stars have trembled thro’ the holy hush,</div> -<div class="verse">And smiled down tenderly, and read to me</div> -<div class="verse">The love hid for me in a budding breast,</div> -<div class="verse">Like incense folded in a young flower’s heart.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gerald Massey</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Rich to die” is reminiscent of Keats’ <i>Ode to a Nightingale</i>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Now more than ever seems it rich to die,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To cease upon the midnight with no pain.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come back, come back”; behold with straining mast</div> -<div class="verse">And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast;</div> -<div class="verse">With one new sun to see her voyage o’er,</div> -<div class="verse">With morning light to touch her native shore,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">“Come back, come back.”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come back, come back”; across the flying foam,</div> -<div class="verse">We hear faint far-off voices call us home,</div> -<div class="verse">“Come back,” ye seem to say; “Ye seek in vain;</div> -<div class="verse">We went, we sought, and homeward turned again.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Come back, come back.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come back, come back”; and whither back or why?</div> -<div class="verse">To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try;</div> -<div class="verse">Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street;</div> -<div class="verse">Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">“Come back, come back.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come back, come back”; and whither and for what?</div> -<div class="verse">To finger idly some old Gordian knot,</div> -<div class="verse">Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,</div> -<div class="verse">And with much toil attain to half-believe.</div> -<div class="verse indent4">“Come back, come back.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come back, come back”; yea back, indeed, do go</div> -<div class="verse">Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;</div> -<div class="verse">Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,</div> -<div class="verse">And wishes idly struggle in the strings;</div> -<div class="verse indent4">“Come back, come back.”...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come back, come back!”</div> -<div class="verse">Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back;</div> -<div class="verse">The long smoke wavers on the homeward track,</div> -<div class="verse">Back fly with winds things which the winds obey—</div> -<div class="verse">The strong ship follows its appointed way.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. H. Clough</span> (<i>Songs in Absence</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I have ventured to put quotation marks in the above to make the -meaning clear at first view. Also—but that italics seldom look well in -a poem—I would have written the last two lines as follows:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse"><i>Back</i> fly with winds <i>things which the winds obey</i>—</div> -<div class="verse">The <i>strong</i> ship follows its appointed way.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When thou must home to shades of underground,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,</div> -<div class="verse">The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,</div> -<div class="verse">To hear the stories of thy finished love</div> -<div class="verse">From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,</div> -<div class="verse">Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And all these triumphs for thy beauty’s sake:</div> -<div class="verse">When thou hast told these honours done to thee,</div> -<div class="verse">Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Campion.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A QUESTION</p> - -<p class="center">To Fausta.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Like the wave;</div> -<div class="verse">Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Love lends life a little grace,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A few sad smiles; and then,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Both are laid in one cold place,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">In the grave.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Like spring flowers;</div> -<div class="verse">Our vaunted life is one long funeral.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Men dig graves with bitter tears</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For their dead hopes; and all,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Mazed with doubts and sick with fears,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Count the hours.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We count the hours! These dreams of ours,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">False and hollow,</div> -<div class="verse">Do we go hence and find they are not dead?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Joys we dimly apprehend,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Faces that smiled and fled,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hopes born here, and born to end,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Shall we follow?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Dead! that is the word</div> -<div class="verse">That rings through my brain till it crazes!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dead, while the mayflowers bud and blow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">While the green creeps over the white of the snow,</div> -<div class="verse">While the wild woods ring with the song of the bird,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the fields are a-bloom with daisies.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">See! even the clod</div> -<div class="verse">Thrills, with life’s glad passion shaken!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The vagabond weeds, with their vagrant train,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Laugh in the sun, and weep in the rain,</div> -<div class="verse">The blue sky smiles like the eye of God,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Only my dead do not waken.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Dead! There is the word</div> -<div class="verse">That I sit in the darkness and ponder!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Why should the river, the sky and the sea</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Babble of summer and joy to me,</div> -<div class="verse">While a strong, true heart, with its pulse unstirred,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lies hushed in the silence yonder?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Our voices one by one</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Fail in the hymn begun;</div> -<div class="verse">Our last sad song of Life is done,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Our first sweet song of Death.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Edmund Gosse</span> (<i>Encomium Mortis</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This poem appeared in early editions of <i>On viol and Flute</i>, but is now -omitted from Mr. Gosse’s poems.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature;</div> -<div class="verse">But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten,</div> -<div class="verse">With human sensations and voice and corporeal members;</div> -<div class="verse">So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man’s fashion,</div> -<div class="verse">And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead,</div> -<div class="verse">Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,</div> -<div class="verse">Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Xenophanes of Colophon</span> (About 570 B.C.).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I do not know whose paraphrase this is; it was prefixed by Tyndall -to his Belfast Address, 1874. He probably imagined that these lines contained -an argument in favour of materialism; but on the contrary the -Greek philosopher affirms the existence of a supreme God. All that he -says is that the conception of him as resembling a mortal in his physical -attributes is wrong.</p> - -<p>At the back of Tyndall’s mind was no doubt the prevalent idea that -any “anthropomorphic” conception of the <i>nature</i> of the Deity is necessarily -absurd. But there is nothing unreasonable in believing that His nature, -though immeasurably superior, is nevertheless <i>akin</i> to our own. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -argument is that the source or power of the world must be greater than -the highest thing it has produced, the mind of man; and that it must more -nearly resemble the higher than the lower of its products. In particular -it is impossible for us to believe that our moral ideas of truth, justice, right -and wrong, etc., can differ at all in <i>kind</i>, however much in <i>degree</i>, from -those of God. So also our <i>reason</i> must be akin to His <i>insight</i>. Such a -belief should be regarded, not as “anthropomorphic,” but as (in a sense -different from that of Clifford and Harrison) a “deification of man”—the -recognition of the Divine that is in him.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the winter winds are wearily sighing:</div> -<div class="verse">Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,</div> -<div class="verse">And tread softly and speak low,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For the old year lies a-dying....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:</div> -<div class="verse">Step from the corpse, and let him in</div> -<div class="verse">That standeth there alone,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And waiteth at the door.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And a new face at the door, my friend,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A new face at the door.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Death of the Old Year</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>To see the soul as she really is, not as we now behold her, -marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you -must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original -purity—and then her beauty will be revealed.... We must -remember that we have seen her only in a condition which may -be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original -image can hardly be discerned because his natural members -are broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all -sorts of ways, and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed -and shells and stones, so that he is more like some monster than -his own natural form. And the soul which we behold is in a -similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills. But not there, -Glaucon, not there must we look.</p> - -<p>Where then!</p> - -<p>At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what -society and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with -the immortal and eternal and divine; also how different she would -become if wholly following this superior principle, and borne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and -disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and -rock which in wild variety spring up around her because she feeds -upon earth, and is overgrown by the good things of this life as -they are termed: then you would see her as she is, and know ... -what her nature is.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Plato</span> (<i>Republic</i>, Bk. 10, Jowett’s translation).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Apart from the intrinsic interest of such a passage, the picture of the -old sea-god, with long hair and long beard, his body ending in a scaly -tail, battered about by the waves, and overgrown with seaweed and shells, -is very curious. Without discussing how far the great philosopher himself -or some other advanced thinkers believed in such divinities, it must be -remembered that to the Greeks generally the gods were very real personages.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Youth’s quick and warm, old age is slow and tame,</div> -<div class="verse">And only Heaven can fairly halve their blame.</div> -<div class="verse">To-day the passionate roses breathe and blow</div> -<div class="verse">And ask no counsel from to-morrow’s snow,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose fretwork sparkles to the winter moon</div> -<div class="verse">White, as if roses never flushed in June.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me an old aunt—a -maiden aunt—an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage and -a front of light, coffee-coloured hair—how my children should -work work-bags for her, and my Julia and I would make her -comfortable! Sweet—sweet vision! Foolish—foolish dream!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span> (<i>Vanity Fair</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">IDENTITY.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In Twilight-land—in No-Man’s land—</div> -<div class="verse">Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And bade each other stand.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“And who are you?” cried one a-gape,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shuddering in the gloaming light.</div> -<div class="verse">“I know not,” said the second Shape,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“I only died last night!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Bailey Aldrich.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Veil not thy mirror, sweet Amine,</div> -<div class="verse">Till night shall also veil each star!</div> -<div class="verse">Thou seeest a twofold marvel there:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The only face so fair as thine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The only eyes that, near or far,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Can gaze on thine without despair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. C. Mangan.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Has anyone ever pinched into its pillulous smallness the -cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">TO R.K.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">As long I dwell on some stupendous</div> -<div class="verse">And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)</div> -<div class="verse">Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrendous</div> -<div class="verse">Demoniaco-seraphic</div> -<div class="verse">Penman’s latest piece of graphic.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Browning.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Will there never come a season</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which shall rid us from the curse</div> -<div class="verse">Of a prose which knows no reason</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And an unmelodious verse:</div> -<div class="verse">When the world shall cease to wonder</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At the genius of an Ass,</div> -<div class="verse">And a boy’s eccentric blunder</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shall not bring success to pass:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When mankind shall be delivered,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From the clash of magazines,</div> -<div class="verse">And the inkstand shall be shivered</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Into countless smithereens:</div> -<div class="verse">When there stands a muzzled stripling,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Mute, beside a muzzled bore:</div> -<div class="verse">When the Rudyards cease from Kipling</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the Haggards Ride no more.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Kenneth Stephen.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“R.K.” is Rudyard Kipling, but what was the “boy’s eccentric -blunder” that brought him success I do not know. Stephen in this instance -showed a want of judgment. The books Kipling had then produced, -<i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i>, <i>Departmental Ditties</i>, and the six little books, -<i>Soldiers Three</i>, etc., all written before the age of twenty-four, should have -been sufficient to show that the author was certainly not a stripling to be -“muzzled.” Stephen’s misjudgment was, however, trivial when we -remember how many important writers have failed to understand and appreciate -the most beautiful poems. Jeffrey (1773-1850) thought to the end -of his days that of the poets of his time Keats and Shelley would die and -Campbell and Rogers alone survive. Shelley was <i>very</i> unfortunate in his -critics. Matthew Arnold and Carlyle also disparaged him, Theodore Hook -said “Prometheus Unbound” was properly named as no one would think -of binding it; and worst of all was Emerson. He said Shelley was not a -poet, had no imagination and his muse was uniformly imitative (“Thoughts -on Modern Literature”); his poetry was ‘rhymed English’ which ‘had -no charm’ (“Poetry and Imagination”). Just as amazing was the article -in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i>, 1816, on Coleridge’s volume containing “Christabel,” -“Kubla Khan,” etc. This article, usually attributed to Hazlitt, and -certainly having Jeffrey’s sanction, said: “We look upon this publication -as one of the most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has -lately been guilty; and one of the boldest experiments that have as yet -been made upon the patience or understanding of the public.” De Quincey -said the style of Keats “belonged essentially to the vilest collections of -waxwork filigree or gilt gingerbread.” Other instances are Swinburne’s -abuse of George Eliot and Walt Whitman, Carlyle’s brutality towards -Lamb, Jeffrey’s savage attack on Wordsworth (the famous “This will -never do” article—although it was not so very inexcusable), Edward -Fitzgerald’s letter that Mrs. Browning’s death was a relief to him (“No -more Aurora Leighs, thank God!”), Samuel Rogers’ statement that he -“could not relish Shakespeare’s sonnets,” and Steevens’ far worse condemnation -of them, and indeed the list could be extended indefinitely. On the -other hand, unmerited praise was given by whole generations of writers -to poems which are now properly forgotten. In face of such facts it is -somewhat of a mystery why the best things <i>do</i> survive. See next quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing -has been for centuries consecrated by public admiration, without -possessing in a high degree some kind of sterling excellence, it -is not because the average intellect and feeling of the majority -of the public are competent in any way to distinguish what is -really excellent, but because all erroneous opinion is inconsistent, -and all ungrounded opinion transitory; so that while the fancies -and feelings which deny deserved honour, and award what is -undue, have neither root nor strength sufficient to maintain -consistent testimony for a length of time, the opinions formed -on right grounds by those few who are in reality competent -judges, being necessarily stable, communicate themselves -gradually from mind to mind, descending lower as they extend -wider, until they leaven the whole lump, and rule by absolute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> -authority, even where the grounds and reasons for them cannot -be understood. On this gradual victory of what is consistent -over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of all that is highest -in art and literature.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Ruskin</span> (<i>Modern Painters</i>, I, 1).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is an excellent suggestion in explanation of the question raised -in the preceding note. It is also interesting because of the youth of this -great writer at the time. Ruskin was born in 1819, and the volume was -<i>published</i> in 1843, when he was twenty-four. Because of his youth, it was -thought inadvisable to give his name as author, and, therefore, the book -was published as “by an Oxford Graduate.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth, who owed -nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his -nation, who, by the pure quality of his nature, shed an epic -splendour around the facts of his death, which has transfigured -every particular into an universal symbol for the eyes of mankind. -This great defeat is hitherto our highest fact.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Emerson</span> (<i>Essay on Character</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">The best of men</div> -<div class="verse">That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer;</div> -<div class="verse">A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;</div> -<div class="verse">The first true gentleman that ever breathed.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Dekker</span> (1570-1641).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Willest be asked, and Thou shalt answer then,</div> -<div class="verse">Show the hid heart beneath creation beating,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Smile with kind eyes, and be a man with men.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Were it not thus, O King of my salvation,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Many would curse to Thee, and I for one,</div> -<div class="verse">Fling Thee thy bliss and snatch at thy damnation,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Scorn and abhor the shining of the sun.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ring with a reckless shivering of laughter</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wroth at the woe which Thou hast seen so long;</div> -<div class="verse">Question if any recompense hereafter</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Waits to atone the intolerable wrong.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (1843-1901.) (<i>Saint Paul</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Willest be asked</i>, “requirest to be asked,” as in “God willeth Samuel -to yield unto the importunity of the people” (1 Sam. viii., in margin).</p> - -<p><i>Saint Paul</i> was written for the Seatonian prize for religious English -verse, Cambridge, about 1866, but failed to secure the prize!</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Speaking of future state) “Those who are neither good nor -bad, or are too insignificant for notice, will be dropt entirely. This -is my opinion. It is consistent with my idea of God’s justice, -and with the reason that God has given me, and I gratefully -know that He has given me a large share of that Divine gift”(!)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Paine</span> (<i>Age of Reason</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SIXTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF -LOVE (ΑΓΑΠΗ).</p> - -<table summary="One Corinthians"> - <tr> - <td class="right">1.</td> - <td>It is long-suffering.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">2.</td> - <td>is kind.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">3.</td> - <td>envieth not.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">4.</td> - <td>vaunteth not itself.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">5.</td> - <td>is not puffed up.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">6.</td> - <td>doth not behave itself unseemly.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">7.</td> - <td>seeketh not its own.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">8.</td> - <td>is not easily provoked.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">9.</td> - <td>thinketh no evil.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">10.</td> - <td>rejoiceth not in iniquity.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">11.</td> - <td>rejoiceth in the truth.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">12.</td> - <td>beareth all things.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">13.</td> - <td>believeth all things.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">14.</td> - <td>hopeth all things.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">15.</td> - <td>endureth all things.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="right">16.</td> - <td>never faileth.</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">St. Paul</span> (<i>1 Cor.</i> xiii.)</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Ἀγάπη, brotherly love, “<i>Though I have all knowledge and all faith, -though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to -be burned, and have not ἀγάπη, it profiteth me nothing.</i>” (1 Cor. xiii, 2).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the Eighth Century B.C., in the heart of a world of idolatrous -polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception -of religion which appears to be as wonderful an inspiration of -genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. “And -what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love -mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. H. Huxley</span> (<i>Essays</i>, IV, 161).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The best of all we do and are,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Just God, forgive.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>Thoughts near the Residence of Burns</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LOST DAYS.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The lost days of my life until to-day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What were they, could I see them on the street</div> -<div class="verse">Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sown once for food but trodden into clay?</div> -<div class="verse">Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat</div> -<div class="verse">The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I do not see them there; but after death</div> -<div class="verse indent1">God knows I know the faces I shall see,</div> -<div class="verse">Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”</div> -<div class="verse">“And I—and I—thyself,” (lo! each one saith,)</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“And thou thyself to all eternity!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Count that day lost, whose low descending sun</div> -<div class="verse">Views from thy hand no worthy action done.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">BIRTHDAYS.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Time is the stuff of life”—then spend not thy days while they last</div> -<div class="verse">In dreams of an idle future, regrets for a vanished past;</div> -<div class="verse">The tombstones lie thickly behind thee, but the stream still hurries thee on,</div> -<div class="verse">New worlds of thought to be traversed, new fields to be fought and won.</div> -<div class="verse">Let work be thy measure of life—then only the end is well—</div> -<div class="verse">The birthdays we hail so blithely are strokes of the passing bell.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. E. H. Lecky.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the -stuff life is made of.” (Franklin, <i>Poor Richard’s Almanack</i>, 1757.)</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Nothing is of greater value than a single day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Goethe</span> (<i>Spruche im Prosa</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Tears for the passionate hearts I might have won,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Tears for the age with which I might have striven,</div> -<div class="verse">Tears for a hundred years of work undone,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Crying like blood to Heaven.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wm. Alexander.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My life, my beautiful life, all wasted;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The gold days, the blue days, to darkness sunk;</div> -<div class="verse">The bread was here, and I have not tasted:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The wine was here, and I have not drunk.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Middleton.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I do not find these lines in Middleton’s collected works, but I think -they are his.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But never a one so gay,</div> -<div class="verse">For he sings of what the world will be</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When the years have died away.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Poet’s Song</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This often-quoted verse does not give the highest view of poetry, as -Tennyson’s own poems show. The poet sings of a Universe,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Which moves with light and life informed,</div> -<div class="verse">Actual, divine and true.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He sings of Nature, Man, God, Immortality. (This note is from an early -letter of Hodgson’s. His quotation is from <i>The Prelude</i>, Bk. XIV.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why are Time’s feet so swift and ours so slow!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, -that passeth all the rest in doing his office? It is the Devil. -He is the most diligent preacher of all other, he is never out of -his diocese, ye shall never find him unoccupied, ye shall never -find him out of the way, call for him when you will; he is ever -at home, the diligentest preacher in all the Realm; ye shall never -find him idle, I warrant you.... He is no lordly loiterer, -but a busy ploughman, so that among all the pack of them the -Devil shall go for my money! Therefore, ye prelates, learn of -the Devil to be diligent in doing of your office. If you will not -learn of God nor good men: for shame learn of the Devil.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bishop Latimer</span> (<i>Sermon on the Ploughers</i>, 1549).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">APPRECIATION.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To the sea-shell’s spiral round</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis your heart that brings the sound:</div> -<div class="verse">The soft sea-murmurs, that you hear</div> -<div class="verse">Within, are captured from your ear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You do poets and their song</div> -<div class="verse">A grievous wrong,</div> -<div class="verse">If your own soul does not bring</div> -<div class="verse">To their high imagining</div> -<div class="verse">As much beauty as they sing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Bailey Aldrich.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man -among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself -to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot -unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he -unravel the mystery of the punishment of NO sin? Can he -entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? Has he -ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying—measured -the work it has done, and the reward it has got—put -his hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones -are piercing, and so looked up to Heaven with an entire understanding -of Heaven’s ways about the horse? Yet the horse is -a fact—no dream—no revelation among the myrtle trees by night;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -and the dust it dies upon, and the dogs that eat it, are facts; -and yonder happy person, whose the horse was, till its knees were -broken over the hurdles; who had an immortal soul to begin with, -and wealth and peace to help forward his immortality; who -has also devoted the powers of his soul, and body, and wealth, -and peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent, -and the oppression of the poor; and has, at this actual moment -of his prosperous life, as many curses waiting round about him in -calm shadow, with their death-eyes fixed upon him, biding their -time, as ever the poor cab-horse had launched at him in meaningless -blasphemies, when his failing feet stumbled at the stones,—this -happy person shall have no stripes,—shall have only -the horse’s fate of annihilation! Or, if other things are indeed -reserved for him, Heaven’s kindness or omnipotence is to be -doubted therefore!</p> - -<p>We cannot reason of these things. But this I know—and this -may by all men be known—that no good or lovely thing exists -in this world without its correspondent darkness; and that the -universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern -aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the -right hand and the left.</p> - -<p class="attribution">John Ruskin (<i>Modern Painters</i>, V, 19).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is one of the arguments in Plato’s <i>Phaedo</i> that the soul must survive, -since otherwise terribly wicked and cruel men would escape retribution; -annihilation would be a good thing for them.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All creatures and all objects, in degree,</div> -<div class="verse">Are friends and patrons of humanity.</div> -<div class="verse">There are to whom the garden, grove and field</div> -<div class="verse">Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield;</div> -<div class="verse">Who would not lightly violate the grace</div> -<div class="verse">The lowliest flower possesses in its place,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive,</div> -<div class="verse">Which nothing less than Infinite Power could give.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>Humanity</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Every man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to take -up the Gauntlet in the cause of Verity: many, from the ignorance -of these Maximes, and an inconsiderate Zeal unto Truth, have too -rashly charged the troops of Error, and remain as Trophies unto -the enemies of Truth. A man may be in as just possession of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> -Truth as of a City and yet be forced to surrender; ’tis therefore -far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazzard her on a battle.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Thomas Browne</span> (<i>Religio Medici</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“Very well,” cried I, “that’s a good girl; I find you are -perfectly qualified for making converts, and so go help your -mother to make a gooseberry pye.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Goldsmith</span> (<i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">White-handed Hope,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou hovering Angel girt with golden wings.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Milton</span> (<i>Comus</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became Regret.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Silas Marner</i>, ch. 15).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite -know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of -the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light -and making the struggle with darkness narrower.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>, ch. 39).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!</div> -<div class="verse">Here is custom come your way;</div> -<div class="verse">Take my brute, and lead him in,</div> -<div class="verse">Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay....</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I am old, but let me drink;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Bring me spices, bring me wine;</div> -<div class="verse">I remember, when I think,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That my youth was half divine....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fill the cup, and fill the can:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Have a rouse before the morn:</div> -<div class="verse">Every moment dies a man,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Every moment one is born....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Chant me now some wicked stave,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Till thy drooping courage rise,</div> -<div class="verse">And the glow-worm of the grave</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Change, reverting to the years,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When thy nerves could understand</div> -<div class="verse">What there is in loving tears,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the warmth of hand in hand....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fill the can, and fill the cup:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All the windy days of men</div> -<div class="verse">Are but dust that rises up,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And is lightly laid again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Vision of Sin</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Change</i>—i.e., change the subject. Many verses are omitted for the -sake of brevity.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A world without a contingency or an agony could have no hero -and no saint, and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a -Son of God. But for the suspended plot, that is folded in every -life, history is a dead chronicle of what was known before as well -as after; art sinks into the photograph of a moment, that hints -at nothing else; and poetry breaks the cords and throws the lyre -away. There is no Epic of the certainties; and no lyric without -the surprise of sorrow and the sigh of fear. Whatever touches and -ennobles us in the lives and in the voices of the past is a divine -birth from human doubt and pain. Let then the shadows lie, and -the perspective of the light still deepen beyond our view; else, -while we walk together, our hearts will never burn within us as -we go, and the darkness as it falls, will deliver us into no hand -that is Divine.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Jas. Martineau</span> (<i>Hours of Thought</i>, 1, 328).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The subject of the sermon is the <i>uncertainties</i> of life, the perils and -catastrophies that cannot be foreseen or provided for, death, disease, -and other ills which may fall upon us at any moment, the crises that arise -in the history of men and nations. It is by reason of these that <i>character</i> -is formed. If everything happened by known rule, and could be predicted -as surely as the movements of the stars, we should have no affections or -emotions and would be mere creatures of habit.</p> - -<p>From a recent book of poems, <i>The Lily of Malud</i>, by J. C. Squire, -I take the following musical verse. (“The Stronghold” is where pain, -hate, and all unpleasant things are excluded and peace only reigns.)</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">But O, if you find that castle,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Draw back your foot from the gateway,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Let not its peace invite you,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Let not its offerings tempt you,</div> -<div class="verse">For faded and decayed like a garment,</div> -<div class="verse">Love to a dust will have fallen,</div> -<div class="verse">And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,</div> -<div class="verse">And hope will have gone with pain;</div> -<div class="verse">And of all the throbbing heart’s high courage</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Nothing will remain.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Martineau not only did important work in philosophy, but he was -also eminent as a moral teacher. Taking together his originality, sublimity -of soul, and beauty of expression, the sermons in <i>Hours of Thought</i> and -other similar writings are the finest product of modern religious thought. -They indeed stand among the best productions of our <i>literature</i>, and should -be read even by those (if there are any such persons) who love literature -and thought but are indifferent to religion. To illustrate this, I choose—almost -at random—a passage where the thought itself has no interest -outside religion (<i>Hours of Thought</i>, II. 334):—</p> - -<p>Worship is the free offering of ourselves to God; ever renewed, -because ever imperfect. It expresses the consciousness that we are -His by right, yet have not duly passed into His hand; that the soul -has no true rest but in Him, yet has wandered in strange flights until -her wing is tired. It is her effort to return home, the surrender again -of her narrow self-will, her prayer to be merged in a life diviner than her -own. It is at once the lowliest and loftiest attitude of her nature: -we never hide ourselves in ravine so deep; yet overhead we never -see the stars so clear and high. The sense of saddest estrangement, -yet the sense also of eternal affinity between us and God meet and -mingle in the act; breaking into the strains, now penitential and now -jubilant, that, to the critic’s reason, may sound at variance but melt -into harmony in the ear of a higher love. This twofold aspect devotion -must ever have, pale with weeping, flushed with joy; deploring the -past, trusting for the future; ashamed of what is, kindled by what -is meant to be; shadow behind, and light before. Were we haunted -by no presence of sin and want, we should only browse on the pasture -of nature; were we stirred by no instinct of a holier kindred, we should -not be drawn towards the life of God.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">GROWN UP.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My son is straight and strong,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ready of lip and limb;</div> -<div class="verse">’Twas the dream of my whole life long</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To bear a son like him.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He has griefs I cannot guess,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He has joys I cannot know:</div> -<div class="verse">I love him none the less—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With a man it should be so.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But where, where, where</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is the child so dear to me,</div> -<div class="verse">With the silken-golden hair</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Who sobbed upon my knee?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Elizabeth Waterhouse.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For her alone the sea-breeze seemed to blow,</div> -<div class="verse">For her in music did the white surf fall,</div> -<div class="verse">For her alone the wheeling birds did call</div> -<div class="verse">Over the shallows, and the sky for her</div> -<div class="verse">Was set with white clouds far away and clear,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">E’en as her love, this strong and lovely one,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Who held her hand, was but for her alone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced</span> (<i>Perseus and Andromeda</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He cometh not a king to reign;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The world’s long hope is dim;</div> -<div class="verse">The weary centuries watch in vain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The clouds of heaven for Him.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And not for sign in heaven above</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or earth below they look,</div> -<div class="verse">Who know with John His smile of love,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With Peter His rebuke.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In joy of inward peace, or sense</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of sorrow over sin,</div> -<div class="verse">He is His own best evidence</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His witness is within.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The healing of His seamless dress,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is by our beds of pain;</div> -<div class="verse">We touch Him in life’s throng and press,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And we are whole again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O Lord and Master of us all!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whate’er our name or sign,</div> -<div class="verse">We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We test our lives by Thine....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What may Thy service be?—</div> -<div class="verse">Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But simply following Thee.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We faintly hear, we dimly see,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In differing phrase we pray;</div> -<div class="verse">But, dim or clear, we own in Thee,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The Light, the Truth, the Way!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Greenleaf Whittier</span> (<i>Our Master</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Many verses are omitted from this poem for want of space, and the -last two are transposed in order.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Tis weary watching wave by wave,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And yet the Tide heaves onward,</div> -<div class="verse">We climb, like Corals, grave by grave,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That pave a pathway sunward;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We are driven back, for our next fray</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A newer strength to borrow,</div> -<div class="verse">And, where the Vanguard camps To-day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The Rear shall rest To-morrow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gerald Massey</span> (<i>To-day and To-morrow</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Where gods are not, spectres rule.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Where children are is a golden age.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A people, like a child, is a separate educational problem.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Novalis.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Once in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves -in us, <i>not</i> a false imagining, an unreal character—but, looking -through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine -ideal of our nature—loves, not the man that we are, but the angel -that we may be. Such friends seem inspired by a divine gift -of prophecy—like the mother of St. Augustine, who, in the midst -of the wayward, reckless youth of her son, beheld him in a vision, -standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the right hand -of God—as he has stood for long ages since. Could a mysterious -foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends with -whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity, we -should follow them with faith and reverence through all the -disguises of human faults and weaknesses, “waiting for the -manifestation of the sons of God.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Harriet Beecher Stowe</span> (<i>The Minister’s Wooing</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace</div> -<div class="verse">To look through and behind this mask of me,</div> -<div class="verse">(Against which years have beat thus blanchingly</div> -<div class="verse">With their rains) and behold my soul’s true face,</div> -<div class="verse">The dim and weary witness of life’s race,—</div> -<div class="verse">Because thou hast the faith and love to see,</div> -<div class="verse">Through that same soul’s distracting lethargy,</div> -<div class="verse">The patient angel waiting for a place</div> -<div class="verse">In the new Heavens,—because nor sin nor woe,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor God’s infliction, nor death’s neighbourhood,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,—</div> -<div class="verse">Nothing repels thee, ... Dearest, teach me so</div> -<div class="verse">To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Here two fine thoughts of Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Browning are inspired -by the vision of Monica, the saintly mother of the great St. Augustine -(354-430).</p> - -<p>This is a good illustration of the need of notes. Without a reference -to St. Monica’s vision, I think that readers would be repelled, rather than -attracted, by Mrs. Browning’s sonnet. It does not accord with one’s sense -of modesty that a lady should say to her lover, “My unattractive person -and incurable illness turned other men away, but you saw that, behind all -this, I was ‘a patient <i>angel</i> waiting for a place in the new Heavens.’” -I myself could not understand how Mrs. Browning could write and her -husband could publish this poem, until Hodgson, in one of his letters to -me, referred to “the use made by Mrs. Browning of St. Monica’s vision in -one of her sonnets.”</p> - -<p>The sonnet is not quoted as one of the finest of the series.</p> - -<p>I have placed Mrs. Stowe’s quotation first for an obvious reason; but -<i>The Minister’s Wooing</i> was published in 1859, while the sonnet appeared -in 1847.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Death is the ocean of immortal rest; ...</div> -<div class="verse">Where shines ’mid laughing waves a far-off isle for me</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why fear? The light wind whitens all the brine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And throws fresh foam upon the marble shores;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or it may be that strong and strenuous oars</div> -<div class="verse">Must force the shallop o’er the hyaline;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But, welcome utter calm or bitter blast,—</div> -<div class="verse">The voyage will be done, the island reached at last.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Will it be thus when the strange sleep of Death</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lifts from the brow, and lost eyes live again?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Will morning dawn on the bewildered brain,</div> -<div class="verse">To cool and heal? And shall I feel the breath</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of freshening winds that travel from the sea,</div> -<div class="verse">And meet thy loving, laughing eyes, Earine?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O virgin world! O marvellous far days!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No more with dreams of grief doth love grow bitter</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor trouble dim the lustre wont to glitter</div> -<div class="verse">In happy eyes. Decay alone decays;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A moment—death’s dull sleep is o’er and we</div> -<div class="verse">Drink the immortal morning air, Earine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Mortimer Collins.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We live in a world, where one fool makes many fools, -but one wise man only a few wise men.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lichtenberg.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O Lady! We receive but what we give,</div> -<div class="verse">And in our life alone does Nature live:</div> -<div class="verse">Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And would we aught behold, of higher worth,</div> -<div class="verse">Than that inanimate cold world allowed</div> -<div class="verse">To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth</div> -<div class="verse">A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Enveloping the Earth—</div> -<div class="verse">And from the soul itself must there be sent</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,</div> -<div class="verse">Of all sweet sounds the life and element!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Dejection</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See note to next quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">TELLING STORIES.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A little child He took for sign</div> -<div class="verse">To them that sought the way Divine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And once a flower sufficed to show</div> -<div class="verse">The whole of that we need to know.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Now here we lie, the child and I,</div> -<div class="verse">And watch the clouds go floating by,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Just telling stories turn by turn....</div> -<div class="verse">Lord, which is teacher, which doth learn?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">H. D. Lowry.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>As Coleridge says in the last quotation, “We receive but what we give.” -We bring with us the mind that sees, and the feelings and emotions with -which we contemplate the universe; and, so far as use, habit, and other -causes still the activity and lessen the receptivity of the mind and spirit, -the world around us becomes less instinct with life and beauty.</p> - -<p>Putting aside the question whether, as Wordsworth says in his great -Ode,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Trailing clouds of glory do we come</div> -<div class="verse">From God, who is our home,</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p> - -<p>it will be familiar to anyone who has a sympathetic, appreciative sense -that the <i>child’s</i> outlook on the world around him is very different from our -own. It has in him a more intense emotional reaction. He sees it with -a freshness and wonder unfelt by us, because our sensibility is blunted and -less vivid. And for the same reason that we trust our faculties in their -prime rather than in their degeneration, so the fresh and clear emotional -response of a child’s nature represents more <i>truthful</i> appreciation than our -own. Our sensibility is blunted, not only by use and habit, but also by -the hardening and coarsening experiences of our lives; and also again by the -development of intellect, which grows largely at the expense of the emotions. -We lose the transparent soul of the child, his simple faith and trusting -nature. To anyone who cannot <i>feel</i> the difference between the child’s -outlook and his own, this will convey no meaning—and words cannot assist -him. It is as if one tried to describe love to a person who has never loved, -or a religious experience to one who has never had such an experience, -indeed, in both love and religious experience, there is the same child-like -attitude of pure emotion; and hence Christ’s comparison of His true followers -to “little children.” Poetry, music, love of nature, and the highest art -produce in us at times the same indefinable feeling and give us back for -evanescent periods the fresh, clear, emotional sensibility of a child.</p> - -<p>In Edward Fitzgerald’s <i>Euphranor</i>, at the point where Wordsworth’s -ode is being discussed, the following passage is interesting:—</p> - -<p>“I have heard tell of another poet’s saying that he knew of no human -outlook so solemn as that from an infant’s eyes; and how it was from those -of his own he learned that those of the Divine Child in Raffaelle’s Sistine -Madonna were not overcharged with expression, as he had previously -thought they might be.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said I, “that was on the occasion, I think, of his having watched -his child one morning <i>worshipping the sunbeam on the bedpost</i>—I suppose -the worship of wonder.... If but the philosopher or poet could live -in the child’s brain for a while!”</p> - -<p>(The poet referred to was Tennyson, see Memoir by his son, the baby -in question, Vol. I., 357).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE REVELATION</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">An idle poet, here and there,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Looks round him; but, for all the rest,</div> -<div class="verse">The world, unfathomably fair,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is duller than a witling’s jest.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Love wakes men, once a life-time each;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They lift their heavy heads and look;</div> -<div class="verse">And, lo, what one sweet page can teach</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They read with joy, then shut the book.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And most forget: but, either way,</div> -<div class="verse">That, and the Child’s unheeded dream,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is all the light of all their day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Coventry Patmore</span> (1823-1896).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any -of those which insane melancholy is filled with. The lunatic’s -visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. -Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual -existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you -protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself!<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> To -believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic times is hard for our -imagination—they seem too much like mere museum specimens. -Yet there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that -did not daily, through long years of the foretime, hold fast to -the body struggling in despair of some fated living victim. Forms -of horror just as dreadful to their victims, if on a smaller spatial -scale, fill the world about us to-day. Here on our very hearths and -in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or -holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes -and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; -their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that -drags its length along, and whenever they or other wild beasts -clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated -melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William James</span> (<i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Et in Arcadia ego.</p> - -<p>(I too have been in Arcady.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Arcadia was a mountainous district in Greece which was taken to be -the deal of pastoral simplicity and rural happiness—as in Sir Philip -Sidney’s <i>Arcadia</i> and other literature. It was famous for its musicians and -a favourite haunt of Pan.</p> - -<p>The saying is best known from the fine landscape in the Louvre by N. -Poussin (1594-1665). In part of the landscape is a tomb on which these -words are written, and some young people are seen reading them. I learn, -however, from <i>King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations</i> that the words had -been previously written on a picture by Bart. Schidone (1570-1615), where -two young shepherds are looking at a skull.</p> - -<p>The meaning intended was that <i>death</i> came even to the joyous shepherds -of Arcady. But the quotation is now used in a more general sense. “I -too had my golden days of youth and love and happiness.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It often happens that those are the best people, whose characters -have been most injured by slanderers; as we usually find that -to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been pecking at.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There are many flowers of heavenly origin in this world; -they do not flourish in this climate but are properly heralds, -clear-voiced messengers of a better existence: Religion is one; -Love is another.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Novalis.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ON DYING</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I always made an awkward bow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Keats.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>On n’a pas d’antécédent pour cela. Il faut improviser—c’est -donc si difficile. (Death admits of no rehearsal.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Amiel.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>C’est le maître jour; c’est le jour juge de tous les autres. (It -is the master-day; the day that judges all the others.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Montaigne.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Will she return, my lady? Nay:</div> -<div class="verse">Love’s feet, that once have learned to stray,</div> -<div class="verse">Turn never to the olden way.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Ah, heart of mine, where lingers she?</div> -<div class="verse">By what live stream or saddened sea?</div> -<div class="verse">What wild-flowered swath of sungilt lea</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Do her feet press, and are her days</div> -<div class="verse">Sweet with new stress of love and praise,</div> -<div class="verse">Or sad with echoes of old lays?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Payne</span> (<i>Light o’ Love</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent9">I search but cannot see</div> -<div class="verse">What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries</div> -<div class="verse">Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories</div> -<div class="verse">Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own</div> -<div class="verse">For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known</div> -<div class="verse">The gain of every life.</div> -<div class="verse center">...</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -<div class="verse">I say, I cannot think that gains—which will not be</div> -<div class="verse">Except a special soul had gained them—that such gain</div> -<div class="verse">Can ever be estranged, do aught but appertain</div> -<div class="verse">Immortally, by right firm, indefeasible,</div> -<div class="verse">To who performed the feat, through God’s grace and man’s will.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Fifine at the Fair</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Nature, they say, doth dote</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And cannot make a man</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Save on some worn-out plan</div> -<div class="verse">Repeating us by rote.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>Ode at Harvard Commemoration</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew -me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower, -where I thought a flower would grow.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Abraham Lincoln.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Why describe our life-history as a state of waking rather than -of sleep? Why assume that sleep is the acquired, vigilance -the normal condition? It would not be hard to defend the -opposite thesis. The newborn infant might urge with cogency -that his habitual state of slumber was primary, as regards the individual, -ancestral as regards the race; resembling at least, far more -closely than does our adult life, a primitive or protozoic habit. -“Mine,” he might say, “is a centrally stable state. It would -need only some change in external conditions (as the permanent -immersion in a nutritive fluid) to be safely and indefinitely -maintained. Your waking state, on the other hand, is centrally -unstable. While you talk and bustle around me you are living -on your physiological capital, and the mere prolongation of -vigilance is torture and death.”</p> - -<p>A paradox such as this forms no part of my argument; but it -may remind us that physiology at any rate hardly warrants -us in speaking of our waking state as if that alone represented -our true selves, and every deviation from it must be at best -a mere interruption. Vigilance in reality is but one of two -co-ordinate phases of our personality, which we have acquired -or differentiated from each other during the stages of our long -evolution.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (<i>Multiplex Personality</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is from an article in <i>The Nineteenth Century</i> for November, 1886, -in which Myers urged the study of the trance-personalities that exhibit -themselves under hypnotism. In his <i>Human Personality and Its Survival -of Bodily Death</i> his views on sleep may be very briefly summarized as follows: -In the low forms of animal life there is an undifferentiated state, neither -sleep nor waking, and this is also seen in our prenatal and earliest infantile -life. In life generally the waking time can exist only for brief periods -continuously. We cannot continue life without resort to the fuller vitality -which sleep brings to us. Again, from the original undifferentiated state, -our waking life has been developed by practical needs; the faculties required -for our earthly life then become intensified, but by natural selection other -faculties and sensations (including those which connect us with the spiritual -world) are dropped out of our consciousness. The state of sleep cannot be -regarded as the mere <i>absence of waking faculties</i>. In this state we have some -faint glimmer of the other faculties and sensations in various forms—dreams, -somnambulism, etc. Myers then develops the theory that the relations -of hysteria and <i>genius</i> to ordinary life correspond to those of somnambulism -and hypnotic trance to sleep; and he arrives at the question of self-suggestion -and hypnotism generally.</p> - -<p>Thus in sleep there are, <i>first</i>, certain physiological changes (including -a greater control of the physical organism, as seen in the muscular powers -of somnambulists); no length of time spent lying down awake in darkness -and silence will give the recuperative effect that even a few moments of -sleep will give. But also, <i>secondly</i>, we find existing in sleep the other -faculties withdrawn from use in ordinary waking life. Thus during sleep -we find memory revived, problems unexpectedly solved, poems like “Kubla -Khan” composed, and many intense sensations and emotions experienced. -Beyond these powers again Myers finds in sleep still higher powers which -seem to connect us with the spiritual world. Hence the advisability of -studying the phenomena of sleep and investigating it <i>experimentally</i> by -employing hypnotism.</p> - -<p>William James adopted much the same view as Myers (see, for example, -<i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i>). But much has been written of late -about sub-consciousness and about dreams; and the tendency is rather -to follow Martineau’s view of mental development—that the lower nervous -centres are unconscious “habits” deposited from the old intelligence (<a href="#Page_304">see -p. 304</a>). Thus, for instance, memories of the past would be recorded in the -sub-conscious, but there is nothing to be found there <i>of a higher character</i> -than in the conscious self. In sleep, the waking control being removed, -our dreams reveal impulses and desires that have been inhibited or kept -under in waking life, but do not reveal anything of the <i>higher</i> indicated -by Myers. However, although it is too large a subject to discuss here, there -is a vast deal yet to be explained, as, for example, inspiration, and what we -used to call “unconscious cerebration,” and the amazing results of hypnotism -and suggestion. Also who or what is it that <i>composes</i> the dream-story, -or who or what <i>makes us</i> act or dream the story?</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Without good nature man is but a better kind of vermin.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Extreme self-lovers will set a man’s house on fire, though it -were but to roast their eggs.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bacon.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where lies the land to which the ship would go?</div> -<div class="verse">Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.</div> -<div class="verse">And where the land she travels from? Away,</div> -<div class="verse">Far, far behind, is all that they can say.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face,</div> -<div class="verse">Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace,</div> -<div class="verse">Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below</div> -<div class="verse">The foaming wake far widening as we go.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,</div> -<div class="verse">How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!</div> -<div class="verse">The dripping sailor on the reeling mast</div> -<div class="verse">Exults to hear, and scorns to wish it past.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where lies the land to which the ship would go?</div> -<div class="verse">Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.</div> -<div class="verse">And where the land she travels from? Away,</div> -<div class="verse">Far, far behind, is all that they can say.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. H. Clough</span> (<i>Songs in Absence</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The Ship is the ship of life. The first line is taken from Wordsworth’s -sonnet, “Where lies the land to which yon Ship must go.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The brooding East with awe beheld</div> -<div class="verse">Her impious younger world.</div> -<div class="verse">The Roman tempest swell’d and swell’d,</div> -<div class="verse">And on her head was hurled.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The East bowed low before the blast</div> -<div class="verse">In patient, deep disdain;</div> -<div class="verse">She let the legions thunder past,</div> -<div class="verse">And plunged in thought again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">M. Arnold</span> (<i>Obermann Once More</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Learn to win a lady’s faith</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nobly as the thing is high,</div> -<div class="verse">Bravely as for life and death,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With a loyal gravity.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>The Lady’s Yes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE CORAL REEF</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">In my dreams I dreamt</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of a coral reef—</div> -<div class="verse">Far away, far, far away,</div> -<div class="verse">Where seas were lulled and calm,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A place of silver sand.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Truly a lovely land,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Truly a lovely dream,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Truly a peaceful scene—</div> -<div class="verse">When, like a flash, through all the sea</div> -<div class="verse indent2">There shone a gleam.</div> -<div class="verse">Rising like Venus from her wat’ry bed</div> -<div class="verse">Rose a young mermaid with her hair unkempt,</div> -<div class="verse">Beautiful hair! light as a golden leaf,</div> -<div class="verse">Shining like Phoebus at the break of day.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And she tossed and shook her lovely head,</div> -<div class="verse">Shook off drops more precious, far, than pearls.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To a coral rock she slowly went,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Slowly floated like a graceful swan;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Combed her hair that hung in yellow curls</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Till the evening shadows ’gan to fall;</div> -<div class="verse">Then she gave one look round, that was all,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Rose—and then, her figure curved, arms bent</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Above her head—a flash! and she was gone;</div> -<div class="verse">And ripples in wide circles rise and fall,</div> -<div class="verse">Spreading and spreading still, where she has been.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Betty Bray</span>, January 1918. Aged 11.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><a href="#Page_155">See Note on page 155.</a></p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">BENEATH MY WINDOW</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Beneath my window, roses red and white</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nod like a host of flitting butterflies;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But, faded by the day, one ev’ry night</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shakes its soft petals to the ground, and dies.</div> -<div class="verse">And that is why I see, when night doth pass,</div> -<div class="verse">Tears in her sisters’ eyes, and on the grass.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Betty Bray</span>, 1920. Aged 13.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">MUSIC</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Three wondrous things there are upon the earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Three gentle spirits, that I love full well,</div> -<div class="verse">Three glorious voices, which by far excel</div> -<div class="verse">Even the silver-throated Philomel.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">For not in sound alone lies music’s worth,</div> -<div class="verse">But rather in the feeling that it brings,</div> -<div class="verse">Whether of joy, or peace, or dreaminess.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">And when I hear the rain soft, softly beat,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Singing with low, sweet voice, and musical,</div> -<div class="verse">I think of all the tears that ever fell</div> -<div class="verse">In perfect happiness, or deep distress,</div> -<div class="verse">And so it brings a pang, half sad, half sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">Into my heart.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Then, when the sparkling rill</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dances between the sunny banks, and sings</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For very joy, all dimpling with delight,</div> -<div class="verse">O all the happy laughter ’neath the sky</div> -<div class="verse">Rings sweet and clear, and makes the world more bright.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">And, when the sun has sunk beneath the sea</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And vanished from the glory of the west,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Leaving the peaceful eve to melt to night,—</div> -<div class="verse">O then it is the loveliest voice of all,</div> -<div class="verse">The gentle night-wind softly sings to me,</div> -<div class="verse">Tender and low, as sweetest lullaby</div> -<div class="verse">As ever hushed a weary head to rest:</div> -<div class="verse">On, on it sings, until from drowsiness</div> -<div class="verse">My tired eyes softly close, and all is still.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Betty Bray</span>, 1920 Aged 13.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><a href="#Page_155">See Note on page 155.</a></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE MARTYR</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When night fell softly on the silent city,</div> -<div class="verse">A little white moth thro’ my window came</div> -<div class="verse">Out of the darkness and the shadows dim,</div> -<div class="verse">Seeking the brightness of my candle’s flame.</div> -<div class="verse">Around and round the lighted wick he flew,</div> -<div class="verse">Winging his wonderful and curious flight;</div> -<div class="verse">And near, and still more near, the circles grew....</div> -<div class="verse">And then—the flame no more was bright for him.</div> -<div class="verse">Then all my heart went out in sudden pity</div> -<div class="verse">To that small martyr, who had sought for light,</div> -<div class="verse">And found—his death. O he was fair to die.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">I rose and snuffed the candle with a sigh.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Betty Bray</span>, September 26, 1920. Aged 14 years.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These fresh, clear, spontaneous verses have a special value. They -bring us a promise of Spring—the message that we may still hope for a -revival of English Poetry.</p> - -<p>Therefore, I have included them (in this third edition) although they -are outside the general scope of my book.</p> - -<p>Miss Betty Bray has been writing since she was seven years of age. -She writes with great facility and has already filled two manuscript books. -Her verses are entirely her own, no defects being pointed out or other -assistance or guidance given her.</p> - -<p>She was born on June 11th, 1906. She is the daughter of Mr. Denys de -Saumarez Bray, C.S.I., and the grand-niece of my late partner the Hon. Sir -John Bray, K.C.M.G., who was Premier of South Australia. Her grandfather -was born in Adelaide.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">Thus with the year</div> -<div class="verse">Seasons return; but not to me returns</div> -<div class="verse">Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,</div> -<div class="verse">Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,</div> -<div class="verse">Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;</div> -<div class="verse">But cloud instead, and ever-during dark</div> -<div class="verse">Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men</div> -<div class="verse">Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair</div> -<div class="verse">Presented with a universal blank</div> -<div class="verse">Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,</div> -<div class="verse">And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Milton</span> (<i>Paradise Lost</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Milton refers to his blindness in this and other passages—as in the well -known sonnet.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE ATTAINMENT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You love? That’s high as you shall go;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For ’tis as true as Gospel text,</div> -<div class="verse">Not noble then is never so,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Either in this world or the next.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Coventry Patmore</span> (<i>The Angel in the House</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For one fair Vision ever fled</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Down the waste waters day and night,</div> -<div class="verse">And still we follow where she led,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In hope to gain upon her flight.</div> -<div class="verse">Her face was evermore unseen,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And fixt upon the far sea-line;</div> -<div class="verse">But each man murmured, “O my Queen,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I follow till I make thee mine!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And now we lost her, now she gleamed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like Fancy made of golden air.</div> -<div class="verse">Now nearer to the prow she seemed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like Virtue firm, like Knowledge fair,</div> -<div class="verse">Now high on waves that idly burst</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like Heavenly Hope she crowned the sea,</div> -<div class="verse">And now, the bloodless point reversed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She bore the blade of Liberty.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Voyage</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">King Stephen was a worthy peere,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His breeches cost him but a crowne;</div> -<div class="verse">He held them sixpence all too deare</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Therefore he called the taylor lowne, <span class="linenote">rascal</span></div> -<div class="verse">He was a wight of high renowne</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And thouse but of a low degree, <span class="linenote">thou art</span></div> -<div class="verse">It’s pride that putts the countrye downe,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Man, take thine old cloake about thee.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Percy’s</span> <i>Reliques</i>.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The poor man wants a new cloak, but his wife objects.</p> - -<p>The verse is sung by Iago (<i>Othello</i>, Act II., Sc. 3), the words being -a little different.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LOVE’S LAST MESSAGES</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Merry, merry little stream,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Tell me, hast thou seen my dear?</div> -<div class="verse">I left him with an azure dream,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Calmly sleeping on his bier—</div> -<div class="verse indent4">But he has fled!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I passed him in his churchyard bed—</div> -<div class="verse">A yew is sighing o’er his head,</div> -<div class="verse">And grass-roots mingle with his hair.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">What doth he there?</div> -<div class="verse">O cruel, can he lie alone?</div> -<div class="verse">Or in the arms of one more dear?</div> -<div class="verse">Or hides he in that bower of stone,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">To cause, and kiss away my fear?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“He doth not speak, he doth not moan—</div> -<div class="verse">Blind, motionless, he lies alone;</div> -<div class="verse">But, ere the grave-snake fleshed his sting,</div> -<div class="verse">This one warm tear he bade me bring</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And lay it at thy feet</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Among the daisies sweet.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Moonlight whisperer, summer air,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Songster of the groves above,</div> -<div class="verse">Tell the maiden rose I wear</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whether thou hast seen my love.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“This night in heaven I saw him lie,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Discontented with his bliss;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And on my lips he left this kiss,</div> -<div class="verse">For thee to taste and then to die.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. L. Beddoes</span> (1803-1849).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Beddoes intended to destroy this poem, but it was published without -his knowledge. This is one of the cases where artists have shown themselves -incapable critics of their own work.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O Earth so full of dreary noises!</div> -<div class="verse">O men with wailing in your voices!</div> -<div class="verse">O delvèd gold, the wailers heap!</div> -<div class="verse">O strife, O curse that o’er it fall!</div> -<div class="verse">God strikes a silence through you all</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And giveth His beloved sleep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>The Sleep</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Give all to love;</div> -<div class="verse">Obey thy heart;</div> -<div class="verse">Friends, kindred, days,</div> -<div class="verse">Estate, good-fame,</div> -<div class="verse">Plans, credit, and the Muse,—</div> -<div class="verse">Nothing refuse</div> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -<div class="verse">Cling with life to the maid;</div> -<div class="verse">But when the surprise,</div> -<div class="verse">First vague shadow of surmise</div> -<div class="verse">Flits across her bosom young</div> -<div class="verse">Of a joy apart from thee,</div> -<div class="verse">Free be she, fancy-free;</div> -<div class="verse">Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem</div> -<div class="verse">Nor the palest rose she flung</div> -<div class="verse">From her summer diadem.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though thou loved her as thyself,</div> -<div class="verse">As a self of purer clay,</div> -<div class="verse">Though her parting dims the day,</div> -<div class="verse">Stealing grace from all alive;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Heartily know,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When half-gods go</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The gods arrive.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (<i>Give all to Love</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more -trace than have last winter’s snowflakes. This commonplace -sequence and flowing on of life is immeasurably affecting. That -winter morning when Charles lost his head in front of the -banqueting-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung from the eaves -of the houses here, and the clown kicked the snowballs from his -clouted shoon, and thought but of his supper when, at three -o’clock, the red sun set in the purple mist.... Battles -have been fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself; -but, all unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched -apples-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and smoked its pipe, -and quaffed its mug of beer, and rejoiced over its newborn children, -and with proper solemnity carried its dead to the churchyard.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (<i>Dreamthorp</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent10">O moon, tell me,</div> -<div class="verse">Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?</div> -<div class="verse">Are beauties there as proud as here they be?</div> -<div class="verse">Do they above love to be loved, and yet</div> -<div class="verse">Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess?</div> -<div class="verse">Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir P. Sidney.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Do they call ungratefulness a virtue?”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Quixotism, or Utopianism: that is another of the devil’s pet -words. I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us -so ready to make, that, because things have long been wrong, -it is impossible they should ever be right, is one of the most -fatal sources of misery and crime from which this world suffers. -Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from attempting -to do well, on the ground that perfection is “Utopian,” beware -of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Ruskin</span> (<i>Lectures on Architecture and Painting</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent9">Two angels guide</div> -<div class="verse">The path of man, both aged and yet young,</div> -<div class="verse">As angels are, ripening through endless years.</div> -<div class="verse">On one he leans: some call her Memory,</div> -<div class="verse">And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">With deep mysterious accord: the other,</div> -<div class="verse">Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams</div> -<div class="verse">A light divine and searching on the earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew</div> -<div class="verse">Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp</div> -<div class="verse">Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked</div> -<div class="verse">But for Tradition; we walk evermore</div> -<div class="verse">To higher paths, by brightening Reason’s lamp.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Spanish Gypsy</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among -my acquaintance: not one Christian: not one but undervalues -Christianity—singly, what am I to do? Wesley (have you read -his life?) was he not an elevated character? Wesley has said -“Religion is not a solitary thing.” Alas! it necessarily is so -with me, or next to solitary.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span> (1775-1834) (<i>Letter to S. T. Coleridge, Jan. 10, 1797</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Poor lovable Charles Lamb! When he wrote this he was only twenty-one -years of age, he had already been himself confined in an asylum, and -now his sister in a moment of madness had killed her mother. When afterwards -he was allowed to take care of Mary, he had still to take her back to the -asylum from time to time, as a fresh attack of mania began to manifest -itself. The picture of the weeping brother and sister on their way to the -asylum is dreadfully sad. The passage seems interesting because of Lamb’s -reference to Wesley.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain:</div> -<div class="verse">As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Keats</span> (<i>The Eve of St. Agnes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Madeline is lying asleep in bed—but the last line could be used in quite -another sense as prettily expressing <i>rejuvenation</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Beneath the moonlight and the snow</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lies dead my latest year;</div> -<div class="verse">The winter winds are wailing low</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Its dirges in my ear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I grieve not with the moaning wind</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As if a loss befell;</div> -<div class="verse">Before me, even as behind,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">God is, and all is well!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. G. Whittier</span> (<i>My Birthday</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If on my theme I rightly think,</div> -<div class="verse">There are five reasons why men drink:—</div> -<div class="verse">Good wine; a friend; or being dry;</div> -<div class="verse">Or lest we should be by and by;</div> -<div class="verse">Or—any other reason why.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Henry Aldrich</span> (1647-1710).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Autres temps, autres moeurs!</i> Aldrich was Dean of Christ Church, -Oxford, when he wrote these lines.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">INSCRIPTION FOR A BUST OF CUPID</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître;</div> -<div class="verse">Il l’est, le fut, ou le doit être.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(Whatso’er thou art, thy master see!</div> -<div class="verse">He was, or is, or is to be.)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Voltaire.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">UP-HILL</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Does the road wind up-hill all the way?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yes, to the very end.</div> -<div class="verse">Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From morn to night, my friend.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But is there for the night a resting-place?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.</div> -<div class="verse">May not the darkness hide it from my face?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">You cannot miss that inn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Those who have gone before.</div> -<div class="verse">Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They will not keep you standing at that door.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of labour you shall find the sum<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></div> -<div class="verse">Will there be beds for me and all who seek?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yea, beds for all who come.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A pebble in the streamlet scant</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Has turned the course of many a river,</div> -<div class="verse">A dewdrop in the baby plant</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Has warped the giant oak for ever.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But now he walks the streets,</div> -<div class="verse">And he looks at all he meets</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Sad and wan,</div> -<div class="verse">And he shakes’ his feeble head,</div> -<div class="verse">That it seems as if he said,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“They are gone.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The mossy marbles rest</div> -<div class="verse">On the lips that he has prest</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In their bloom,</div> -<div class="verse">And the names he loved to hear</div> -<div class="verse">Have been carved for many a year</div> -<div class="verse indent2">On the tomb.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My grandmamma has said—</div> -<div class="verse">Poor old lady, she is dead</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Long ago,—</div> -<div class="verse">That he had a Roman nose,</div> -<div class="verse">And his cheek was like a rose</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In the snow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But now his nose is thin.</div> -<div class="verse">And it rests upon his chin</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Like a staff.</div> -<div class="verse">And a crook is in his back,</div> -<div class="verse">And a melancholy crack</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In his laugh....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">O. W. Holmes</span> (<i>The Last Leaf</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all</div> -<div class="verse">Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Keats</span> (<i>Ode on a Grecian Urn</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Matthew Arnold says of this: “No, it is not all; but it is true, deeply -true, and we have deep need to know it.... To see things in their -beauty is to see things in their truth, and Keats knew it. ‘What the -Imagination seizes on as Beauty must be Truth,’ he says in prose.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Were it not sadder, in the years to come,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To feel the hand-clasp slacken for long use,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The untuned heart-strings for long stress refuse</div> -<div class="verse">To yield old harmonies, the songs grow dumb</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For weariness, and all the old spells lose</div> -<div class="verse">The first enchantment? Yet this they must be:</div> -<div class="verse">Love is but mortal, save in memory.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Payne</span> (<i>A Farewell</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Aux coeurs blessés—l’ombre et le silence.</p> - -<p>(For the wounded heart—shade and silence.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Balzac</span> (<i>Le Médecin de Campagne</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The huge mass of black crags that towered at the head of the -gloomy defile was exactly what one would picture as the enchanted -castle of the evil magician, within sight of which all vegetation -withered, looking from over the desolate valley of ruins to the -barren shore strewed with its sad wreckage, and the wild ocean -beyond....</p> - -<p>The land-crabs certainly looked their part of goblin guardians -of the approaches to the wicked magician’s fastness. They were -fearful as the firelight fell on their yellow cynical faces, fixed -as that of the sphinx, but fixed in a horrid grin. Those who have -observed this foulest species of crab will know my meaning. -Smelling the fish we were cooking they came down the mountains -in thousands upon us. We threw them lumps of fish, which they -devoured with crab-like slowness, yet perseverance.</p> - -<p>It is a ghastly sight, a land-crab at his dinner. A huge beast -was standing a yard from me; I gave him a portion of fish, and -watched him. He looked at me straight in the face with his -outstarting eyes, and proceeded with his two front claws to tear -up his food, bringing bits of it to his mouth with one claw, as with -a fork. But all this while he never looked at what he was doing; -his face was fixed in one position, staring at me. And when -I looked around, lo! there were half a dozen others all steadily -feeding, but with immovable heads turned to me with that fixed -basilisk stare. It was indeed horrible, and the effect was nightmarish -in the extreme. While we slept that night they attacked -us, and would certainly have devoured us, had we not awoke; -and did eat holes in our clothes. One of us had to keep watch, -so as to drive them from the other two, otherwise we should have -had no sleep.</p> - -<p>Imagine a sailor cast alone on this coast, weary, yet unable to -sleep a moment on account of these ferocious creatures. After a -few days of an existence full of horror he would die raving mad, -and then be consumed in an hour by his foes. In all Dante’s -Inferno there is no more horrible a suggestion of punishment -than this.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. F. Knight</span> (<i>The Cruise of the “Falcon”</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The scene is in the Island of Trinidad, off the coast of Brazil.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">... Nor the end of love is sure,</div> -<div class="verse">(Alas! how much less sure than anything!)</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whether the little love-light shall endure</div> -<div class="verse">In the clear eyes of her we loved in Spring.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Or if the faint flowers of remembering</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shall blow, we know not: only this we know,—</div> -<div class="verse">Afar Death comes with silent steps and slow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Payne</span> (<i>Salvestra</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The stars of midnight shall be dear</div> -<div class="verse">To her; and she shall lean her ear</div> -<div class="verse">In many a secret place</div> -<div class="verse">Where rivulets dance their wayward round,</div> -<div class="verse">And beauty born of murmuring sound</div> -<div class="verse">Shall pass into her face.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Wordsworth</span> (<i>Three Years She Grew</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely -things are also necessary: the wild flower by the wayside, as well -as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the -forest, as well as the tended cattle: because man doth not live by -bread alone, but also by the desert manna; by every wondrous -word and unknowable work of God.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Ruskin.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Alas! the long gray years have vanquished me,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The shadow of the inexorable days!</div> -<div class="verse">I am grown sad and silent: for the sea</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of Time has swallowed all my pleasant ways.</div> -<div class="verse">I am grown weary of the years that flee</div> -<div class="verse">And bring no light to set my bound hope free,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No sun to fill the promise of old Mays.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LOVE</p> - -<p>Cet égoisme à deux.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">De Staël.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and -enmity of three.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Washington Irving.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible -world may not in part depend on the personal response -which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, -in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being -from our fidelity. For my own part, I do not know what the sweat -and blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything -short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in which something -is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better -than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw -at will. But it <i>feels</i> like a real fight,—as if there were something -really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and -faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our -own hearts from atheisms and fears. For such a half-wild, -half-saved universe our nature is adapted. The deepest thing in -our nature is this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell -alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses, our faiths -and fears.... In these depths of personality the sources of -all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise. Here is our -deepest organ of communication with the nature of things; and -compared with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract -statements and scientific arguments—the veto, for example, -which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith—sound to -us like mere chatterings of the teeth.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William James</span> (<i>Is Life Worth Living?</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>(Mr. T. R. Glover in <i>The Jesus of History</i> points out that when Christ -said “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations” -(Luke xxii, 26), He meant that the disciples had <i>helped Him</i> by their -fidelity.)</p> - -<p>The following is from Professor Hobhouse’s <i>Questions of War and -Peace</i>, repeating what he had set out at length in his <i>Development and -Purpose</i> (I take the quotation from <i>The Spectator</i> review, as the book -is not yet procurable in Australia):</p> - -<p>“I think, therefore, that we must go back into ourselves for faith, and -away from ourselves into the world for reason. The deeper we go into ourselves -the more we throw off forms and find the assurance not only that the -great things exist, but that they are the heart of our lives, and, since after -all we are of one stock, they must be at the heart of your lives as well as mine. -You say there are bad men and wars and cruelties and wrong, I say all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -these are the collision of undeveloped forms. What is the German suffering -from but a great illusion that the State is something more than man, and -that power is more than justice! Strip him of this and he is a man like yourself, -pouring out his blood for the cause that he loves, and that you and I -detest. Probe inwards, then, and you find the same spring of life everywhere -and it is good. Look outwards, and you find, as you yourself admit the -slow movement towards a harmony which just means that these impulses -of primeval energy come, so to say, to understand one another. Every -form they take as they grow will provoke conflict, perish, and be cast aside -until the whole unites, and there you have the secret of your successive -efforts and failures which yet leave something behind them. God is not the -creator who made the world in six days, rested on the seventh and saw -that it was good. He is growing in the actual evolution of the world.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And since (man) cannot spend and use aright</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The little time here given him in trust.</div> -<div class="verse">But wasteth it in weary undelight</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and lust.</div> -<div class="verse">He naturally claimeth to inherit</div> -<div class="verse">The everlasting Future, that his merit</div> -<div class="verse indent1">May have full scope; as surely is most just.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span> (<i>The City of Dreadful Night</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The moving waters at their priest-like task</div> -<div class="verse">Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Keats</span> (<i>His Last Sonnet</i>, 1820).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">With sweet May dews my wings were wet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;</div> -<div class="verse">Love caught me in his silken net,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And shut me in his golden cage.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He loves to sit and hear me sing.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;</div> -<div class="verse">Then stretches out my golden wing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And mocks my loss of liberty.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Blake</span> (<i>Song</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This poem was written before Blake was <i>fourteen</i> years of age.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent10">When the fight was done,</div> -<div class="verse">When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,</div> -<div class="verse">Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,</div> -<div class="verse">Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,</div> -<div class="verse">Fresh as a bridegroom....</div> -<div class="verse">He was perfumèd like a milliner;</div> -<div class="verse">And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held</div> -<div class="verse">A pouncet-box. And still he smiled and talked;</div> -<div class="verse">And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,</div> -<div class="verse">He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,</div> -<div class="verse">To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse</div> -<div class="verse">Betwixt the wind and his nobility.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (<i>1 Henry IV.</i>, i. 3).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">... High-kilted perhaps, as once at Dundee I saw them,</div> -<div class="verse">Petticoats up to the knees, or even, it might be, above them</div> -<div class="verse">Matching their lily-white legs with the clothes that they trod in the wash-tub!</div> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -<div class="verse">... In a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey,</div> -<div class="verse">Barefoot, barelegged he beheld her, with arms bare up to the elbows,</div> -<div class="verse">Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting potatoes!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. H. Clough</span> (<i>The Bothie of Tober-na Vuolich</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">As I came through the desert thus it was,</div> -<div class="verse">As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire</div> -<div class="verse">Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;</div> -<div class="verse">The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath</div> -<div class="verse">Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;</div> -<div class="verse">Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold</div> -<div class="verse">Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But I strode on austere;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">No hope could have no fear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span> (<i>The City of Dreadful Night</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The five quotations above are from a series of word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SHE COMES AS COMES THE SUMMER NIGHT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She comes as comes the summer night,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Violet, perfumed, clad with stars,</div> -<div class="verse">To heal the eyes hurt by the light</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Flung by Day’s brandish’d scimitars.</div> -<div class="verse">The parted crimson of her lips</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like sunset clouds that slowly die</div> -<div class="verse">When twilight with cool finger-tips</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unbraids her tresses in the sky.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The melody of waterfalls</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is in the music of her tongue,</div> -<div class="verse">Low chanted in dim forest halls</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ere Dawn’s loud bugle-call has rung.</div> -<div class="verse">And as a bird with hovering wings</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Halts o’er her young one in the nest,</div> -<div class="verse">Then droops to still his flutterings,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She takes me to her fragrant breast.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O star and bird at once thou art,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And Night, with purple-petall’d charm,</div> -<div class="verse">Shining and singing to my heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And soothing with a dewy calm.</div> -<div class="verse">Let Death assume this lovely guise,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So darkly beautiful and sweet,</div> -<div class="verse">And, gazing with those starry eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lead far away my weary feet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And that strange sense of valleys fair</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With birds and rivers making song</div> -<div class="verse">To lull the blossoms gleaming there,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Be with me as I pass along.</div> -<div class="verse">Ah! lovely sisters, Night and Death,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And lovelier Woman—wondrous three,</div> -<div class="verse">“Givers of Life,” my spirit saith,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unfolders of the mystery.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah! only Love could teach me this,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In memoried springtime long since flown;</div> -<div class="verse">Red lips that trembled to my kiss,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That sighed farewell, and left me lone.</div> -<div class="verse">O Joy and Sorrow intertwined,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A kiss, a sigh, and blinding tears,—</div> -<div class="verse">Yet ever after in the wind,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The bird-like music of the spheres!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Frank S. Williamson.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is from the author’s “Purple and Gold,” a book of poems published -in Melbourne (Thomas C. Lothian, publisher).</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much -as respectable selfishness.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Robert Falconer</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WHEN LOVE MEETS LOVE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When love meets love, breast urged to breast,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">God interposes,</div> -<div class="verse">An unacknowledged guest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And leaves a little child among our roses.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O, gentle hap!</div> -<div class="verse">O, sacred lap!</div> -<div class="verse">O, brooding dove!</div> -<div class="verse">But when he grows</div> -<div class="verse">Himself to be a rose,</div> -<div class="verse">God takes him—Where is then our love?</div> -<div class="verse">O, where is all our love?</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">BETWEEN OUR FOLDING LIPS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Between our folding lips</div> -<div class="verse">God slips</div> -<div class="verse">An embryon life, and goes;</div> -<div class="verse">And this becomes your rose.</div> -<div class="verse">We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth</div> -<div class="verse">God spies occasion for a birth.</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Then is it His, or is it ours?</i></div> -<div class="verse">I know not—He is fond of flowers.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. E. Brown.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Compare the well-known lines by George MacDonald:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where did you come from, baby dear?</div> -<div class="verse">Out of the everywhere into here....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How did they all<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> just come to be you?</div> -<div class="verse">God thought about me, and so I grew.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p> - -<p>The suggestion that we are the result of God’s thought appears elsewhere -in MacDonald, as in <i>Robert Falconer</i>:</p> - -<p class="hanging">If God were <i>thinking</i> me—ah! But if He be only <i>dreaming</i> -me, I shall go mad.</p> - -<p class="noindent">And in <i>The Marquis of Lossie</i>:</p> - -<p class="hanging">I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be -when He thought of you first.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Some things are of that Nature as to make</div> -<div class="verse">One’s fancy checkle, while his Heart doth ake.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Bunyan.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Checkle = chuckle.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My days are in the yellow leaf;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The flowers and fruits of love are gone;</div> -<div class="verse">The worm, the canker, and the grief</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are mine alone!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span> (<i>On my Thirty-sixth Year</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Tis a very good world to live in,</div> -<div class="verse">To spend, and to lend, and to give in;</div> -<div class="verse">But to beg, or to borrow, or ask for our own</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis the very worst world that ever was known.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Bromfield.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Often ascribed to the Earl of Rochester. See <i>Notes and Queries</i> -July 18, 1896.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Dead years have yet the fire of life</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In Memory’s holy urn;</div> -<div class="verse">Her altars, heaped with frankincense</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of bygone summers, burn;</div> -<div class="verse">And, when in everlasting night</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We see yon sun decline,</div> -<div class="verse">Deep in the soul his purple flames</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Eternally will shine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Albert Joseph Edmunds</span> (b. 1857) (<i>The Living Past</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Mr. Edmunds, when this was written in 1880, was a young English -poet and spiritualist, but has since settled in Philadelphia. He has written -a number of works, the principal being <i>Buddhist and Christian Gospels -now First Compared from the Originals</i>.</p> - -<p>In 1883 he was cataloguing a library at Sunderland, and came across -books on the Alps, etc., by a Rev. Leslie Stephen. He wrote to the publishers -to find out if they were by the same writer as the Leslie Stephen -who had written on Ethics. Sir (then Mr.) Leslie Stephen had just been -appointed Clark Lecturer at Cambridge. He replied to Edmunds, “I am -one person,” adding that he had given up holy orders. Edmunds replied:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To Mr. Leslie Stephen, Sir,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Confound your personality;</div> -<div class="verse">I did, and now must here, aver</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Belief was not reality.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I hope my slip may be excused,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And doom this time decided not,</div> -<div class="verse">For, though the <i>persons</i> I confused,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Your <i>substance</i> I divided not.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Now thanks to you, my mind’s relieved</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From mystified plurality,</div> -<div class="verse">For, in your courteous note received,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">You’ve unified <i>duality</i>.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Your Alpine thoughts will elevate</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Old Cantab’s flat vicinity,</div> -<div class="verse">And give her church another <i>state</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1">By unifying <i>Trinity</i>!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You’ve left, you say, the fold of strife,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where desperate <i>charges</i> never end;</div> -<div class="verse">Not handsome <i>living</i>, handsome <i>life</i></div> -<div class="verse indent1">Henceforth will make you <i>reverend</i>.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I’m Edmunds, Millfield, Sutherland,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where souls in sulphur barter, sir;</div> -<div class="verse">But, please excuse an ending grand—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My name to rhyme’s a Tartar, sir.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SPIRITUALISM</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Only a rising billow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Only a deep sigh drawn</div> -<div class="verse">By the great sea of chaos</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Before Creation’s dawn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Only a little princess</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Spelling the words of kings;</div> -<div class="verse">Only the Godhead’s prattle</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In Sinai mutterings!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The crowd mistakes and fears it,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And Aaron has ignored,</div> -<div class="verse">But Moses, far above them,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is talking with the Lord!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Albert Joseph Edmunds.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See note to previous quotation. This poem was written in 1883.</p> - -<p>Although I preserved these verses, I may add that I had no interest -whatever in spiritualism, permeated as it was with childishness and fraud. -But, nevertheless, it (together with the so-called “Theosophy”) led to the -happy result that the Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882. -Although spiritualism did good in this way, its unhappy associations do -harm to the Society and hamper it in the important work it has carried -on during the last thirty-eight years. Popular prejudice continues to -associate it with the old spiritualism, and in consequence no proper attention -is paid to its <i>intensely interesting</i> and most valuable investigations. For -example, there are, apart from Public Libraries and Universities, only -six members or associates in the whole of Australia! And yet, besides -important work in other directions, it must be admitted by any open-minded -person that the evidence collected by the Society that the dead -(by telepathy or otherwise) communicate with the living is unanswerable.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to -wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Fuller.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This refers to the French proverb, “<i>Il ne faut pas vendre la peau de -l’ours avant de l’avoir tué</i>,” or, as we say, “Do not count your chickens -before they are hatched.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Habit dulls the senses and puts the critical faculty to sleep. -The fierceness and hardness of ancient manners is apparent -to us, but the ancients themselves were not shocked by sights -which were familiar to them. To us it is sickening to think -of the gladiatorial show, of the massacres common in Roman -warfare, of the infanticide practised by grave and respectable -citizens, who did not merely condemn their children to death, -but often in practice, as they well knew, to what was still worse—a -life of prostitution and beggary. The Roman regarded a -gladiatorial show as we regard a hunt; the news of the slaughter -of two hundred thousand Helvetians by Cæsar or half a million -Jews by Titus excited in his mind a thrill of triumph; infanticide -committed by a friend appeared to him a prudent measure of -household economy.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir J. R. Seeley</span> (<i>Ecce Homo</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is still more important to realize that the exposure of children was -a recognized practice also among the Greeks, and that no one, not even -Plato, their noblest philosopher, saw anything wrong in it. It is only -by letting the mind dwell on such facts as these, until their significance -is fully appreciated, that we can realize the width and depth of the great -gulf that separates the Pagan and the Christian, the ancient and the modern -world. Take this one fact only: imagine the Greek father looking at his -helpless babe and coldly deciding that to rear it will be inconvenient,<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> -or that there are already enough children to divide the inheritance, or -that the child is sickly or deformed, or that its person offends his idea of -beauty—and then consigning his own offspring to slavery, prostitution, -or death! (The child would either die or be picked up to be reared for -some such purpose.) Even in the very imperfect state of our own civilization, -we at least have children’s hospitals and crèches, and are inflamed -with righteous rage when even an <i>unknown</i> baby is ill-treated. (We, -indeed, go further, and have laws and societies for prevention of cruelty -to <i>animals</i>.)</p> - -<p>The consideration of such a fact leads us also to inquire as to the -relations of husband and wife, seeing that the woman would have at least -the affection for her offspring that is common among the lower animals. -We then find that the modern chivalrous idea of womanhood was unknown -to the Greeks; the wife was not educated, and was considered an inferior -being; she was married mainly in order to provide sons to carry out certain -ritual observances necessary for the father’s welfare after death; she -was kept in an almost Eastern seclusion (and therefore had to improve -her pallid complexion by paint); she would associate mainly with the -children and slaves. We also find that fidelity of the husband to the wife -was neither required nor <i>esteemed</i>; and that there was little marital love -or family life. (Plato in his model Republic would abolish both the latter, -for there was to be promiscuity of women, and all children were to be brought -up by the State.)</p> - -<p>Considering further this practice of exposing children, we realize -that it indicates <i>the want of pity for the helpless and suffering</i>, which is -seen among the lower animals (but with exceptions even among them). -From this we may reasonably infer that the Greeks would show little -humanity in treating other helpless or suffering people, the sick or distressed, -dependents or slaves, conquered enemies or others in their power. (In -this respect, however, they, as an intellectual people, would subject themselves -to and be controlled by necessary <i>social</i> laws and <i>practical</i> considerations; -and also, as a fact, they at times showed generosity to a valiant -foe.) Again we can infer that, where even the spirit of mercy was so -wanting, the gospel of <i>love</i> could not possibly exist, and that the Greeks -lived on a far lower <i>moral</i> plane than ours. These questions are far too -large to discuss in this book, and I must leave them to be dealt with elsewhere.</p> - -<p>But, even from this very small portion of the available evidence, we -can arrive at three resulting facts: <i>First</i>, that when in translations from -the Greek we find such words as “kindness,” “love,” “morality,” “purity,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -“virtue,” “religion,” etc., they have for us a far larger and higher content -than the Greek words in the original; <i>secondly</i>, that therefore, the reader -must get incorrect impressions of Greek literature and thought; and, -<i>thirdly</i>, that truly marvellous as the Greeks were in art and literature, the -current conception of them as a noble-minded and refined people is erroneous.</p> - -<p>In referring to the Greeks, one needs to limit the people and period, and I am referring -to the great age of the Attic or Athenian Greeks, say the Fifth Century, B.C. There -would, of course, be gradations of character among them, and, no doubt, some would be -kind-hearted, others would have affection for their wives, and so on. But this can -only be assumption, for there is little in their literature to support it. This will be seen -if the evidence adduced by Mr. Livingstone (“The Greek Genius,” pp. 117-122) is carefully -and critically examined. (His references to Homer, who lived in a far distant age -must be omitted.) Also the fact that Herodotus, in the course of his narrative, tells us -that some men of another state had a moment of compassion for a baby whom they were -about to slay, does not prove in the slightest degree that he was himself humane. The -wording of Mr. Livingstone’s translation, p. 118, “It happened <i>by a divine chance</i> that -the baby smiled, etc.,” would appear to confirm this view of his; but the Greek words -simply mean that a god by chance intervened. Knowing what we do of the Greek gods, -that intervention would certainly not be actuated by any kindly feeling towards the -infant—the object presumably was that the child should live to fulfil the destiny prophesied -by the Delphic Oracle. (Herodotus was a typical Greek to whom the world was -peopled with gods, and he sees them constantly interposing in human affairs.) As regards -the exposure of children, the point is that <i>it was a recognized and common practice, duly -sanctioned by law, and never condemned by any writer</i>. Indeed Plato and Aristotle definitely -approve of it, and in Plato’s Ideal Republic the weakly and deformed children were to -be killed by the State.</p> - -<p>As regards the current conception of the Greeks, Shelley in his “Preface to Hellas” -describes them as “those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure -to itself as belonging to our kind.” Similar statements could be gathered from innumerable -English and European writers.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE PACE THAT KILLS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The gallop of life was once exciting,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Madly we dashed over pleasant plains,</div> -<div class="verse">And the joy, like the joy of a brave man fighting,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Poured in a flood through our eager veins,</div> -<div class="verse">Hot youth is the time for the splendid ardour,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That stamps and startles, that throbs and thrills</div> -<div class="verse">And ever we pressed our horses harder,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Galloping on at the pace that kills!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So rapid the pace, so keen the pleasure,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Scarcely we paused to glance aside,</div> -<div class="verse">As we mocked the dullards, who watched at leisure</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The frantic race that we chose to ride.</div> -<div class="verse">Yes, youth is the time when a master-passion,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or love or ambition, our nature fills;</div> -<div class="verse">And each of us rode in a different fashion—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All of us rode at the pace that kills!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And vainly, O friends, ye strive to bind us;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Flippantly, gaily, we answer you:—</div> -<div class="verse">“Should <i>atra cura</i><a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> jump up behind us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Strong are our steeds and can carry two!”</div> -<div class="verse">But we find the road, so smooth at morning,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Rugged at night ’mid the lonely hills;</div> -<div class="verse">And all too late we recall the warning</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Weary at last of the pace that kills....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The gallop of life was just beginning;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Strength we wasted in efforts vain;</div> -<div class="verse">And now, when the prizes are worth the winning,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We’ve scarcely the spirit to ride again!</div> -<div class="verse">The spirit, forsooth! ’Tis our strength has failed us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And sadly we ask, as we count our ills,</div> -<div class="verse">“What pitiful, pestilent folly ailed us?</div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Why</i> did we ride at the pace that kills?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. J. Prowse.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cato said ‘he had rather people should inquire why he had not -a statue erected to his memory, than why he had.’</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Plutarch</span> (<i>Political Precepts</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">CHAMOUNI AND RYDAL.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I stood one shining morning, where</div> -<div class="verse">The last pines stand on Montanvert,</div> -<div class="verse">Gazing on giant spires that grow</div> -<div class="verse">From the great frozen gulfs below.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How sheer they soared, how piercing rose</div> -<div class="verse">Above the mists, beyond the snows!</div> -<div class="verse">No thinnest veil of vapour hid</div> -<div class="verse">Each sharp and airy pyramid.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No breeze moaned there, nor cooing bird,</div> -<div class="verse">Deep down the torrent raved, unheard,</div> -<div class="verse">Only the cow-bells’ clang, subdued,</div> -<div class="verse">Shook in the fields below the wood.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The vision vast, the lone large sky,</div> -<div class="verse">The kingly charm of mountains high,</div> -<div class="verse">The boundless silence, woke in me</div> -<div class="verse">Abstraction, reverence, reverie.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Days dawned that felt as wide away</div> -<div class="verse">As the far peaks of silvery grey,</div> -<div class="verse">Life’s lost ideal, love’s last pain</div> -<div class="verse">In those full moments throbbed again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And a much differing scene was born</div> -<div class="verse">In my mind’s eye on that blue morn;</div> -<div class="verse">No splintered snowy summits there</div> -<div class="verse">Shot arrowy heights in crystal air:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But a calm sunset slanted still</div> -<div class="verse">O’er hoary crag and heath-flushed hill,</div> -<div class="verse">And at their foot, by birchen brake</div> -<div class="verse">Dimpled and smiled an English lake.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I roamed where I had roamed before</div> -<div class="verse">With heart elate in years of yore,</div> -<div class="verse">Through the green glens by Rotha side,</div> -<div class="verse">Which Arnold loved, where Wordsworth died.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That flower of heaven, eve’s tender star,</div> -<div class="verse">Trembled with light above Nab Scar;</div> -<div class="verse">And from his towering throne aloft</div> -<div class="verse">Fairfield poured purple shadows soft.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The tapers twinkled through the trees</div> -<div class="verse">From Rydal’s bower-bound cottages,</div> -<div class="verse">And gentle was the river’s flow,</div> -<div class="verse">Like love’s own quivering whisper low.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">One held my arm will walk no more</div> -<div class="verse">On Loughrigg steeps by Rydall shore,</div> -<div class="verse">And a sweet voice was speaking clear—</div> -<div class="verse">Earth had no other sound so dear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her words were, as we passed along,</div> -<div class="verse">Of noble sons of truth and song—</div> -<div class="verse">Of Arnold brave, and Wordsworth pure.</div> -<div class="verse">And how their influences endure.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“They have not left us—are not dead”</div> -<div class="verse">(The earnest voice beside me said,)</div> -<div class="verse">“For teacher strong and poet sage</div> -<div class="verse">Are deeply working in the age.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“For aught we know they now may brood</div> -<div class="verse">O’er this enchanted solitude,</div> -<div class="verse">With thought and feeling more intense</div> -<div class="verse">Than we in the blind life of sense.”...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Those tones are hushed, that light is cold,</div> -<div class="verse">And we (but not the world) grow old;</div> -<div class="verse">The joy, “the bloom of young desire,”</div> -<div class="verse">The zest, the force, the strenuous fire,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Enthusiasms bright, sublime,</div> -<div class="verse">That heaven-like made that early time:—</div> -<div class="verse">These all are gone: must faith go too?</div> -<div class="verse">Is truth too lovely to be true?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In nature dwells no kindling soul?</div> -<div class="verse">Moves no vast life throughout the whole?</div> -<div class="verse">Are not thought, knowledge, love’s sweet might,</div> -<div class="verse">Shadows of substance infinite?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Shall rippling river, bow of rain,</div> -<div class="verse">Blue mountains, and the bluer main.</div> -<div class="verse">Red dawn, gold sundown, pearly star</div> -<div class="verse">Be fair, <i>nor something fairer far</i>?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That awful hope, so deep, that swells</div> -<div class="verse">At the keen clash of Easter bells</div> -<div class="verse">Is <i>it</i> a waning moon, that dies</div> -<div class="verse">As morn-like lights of science rise?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">By all that yearns in art and song,</div> -<div class="verse">By the vague dreams that make men strong,</div> -<div class="verse">By memory’s penance, by the glow</div> -<div class="verse">Of lifted mood poetic,—No!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No! by the stately forms that stand</div> -<div class="verse">Like angels in yon snowy land;</div> -<div class="verse">No! by the stars that, pure and pale,</div> -<div class="verse">Look down each night on Rydal-vale.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Truman.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount. These verses were published -in <i>Macmillan’s</i>, 1879.</p> - -<p>“<i>Nor something fairer far.</i>” In Sir F. Younghusband’s <i>Kashmir</i> -(1911) there is another suggestion, supplementary to this: “There came -upon me this thought, which doubtless has occurred to many another -besides myself—why the scene should so influence me and yet make no -impression on the men about me. Here were men with far keener eyesight -than my own, and around me were animals with eyesight keener still.... -Clearly it is not the eye, but the soul that sees. But then comes the still -further reflection: what may there not be staring <i>me</i> straight in the face -which I am as blind to as the Kashmir stags are to the beauties amidst -which they spend their entire lives? The whole panorama may be vibrating -with beauties man has not yet the soul to see. Some already living, no -doubt, see beauties that we ordinary men cannot appreciate. It is only a -century ago that mountains were looked upon as hideous. And in the long -centuries to come may we not develop a soul for beauties unthought of -now? Undoubtedly we must. And often in reverie on the mountains -I have tried to imagine what still further loveliness they may yet possess -for men.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded -in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt; and therefore -a mind, fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth best -avert the dolours of death.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bacon.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Underneath this stone doth lie</div> -<div class="verse">As much beauty as could die;</div> -<div class="verse">Which in life did harbour give</div> -<div class="verse">To more virtue than doth live.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson</span> (<i>Epigram</i> CXXIV).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>As Dr. Johnson said; “In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon -oath.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“En Angleterre,” said a cynical Dutch diplomatist, “numéro -deux va chez numéro un, pour s’en glorifier auprès de numéro -trois.”</p> - -<p>(In England, Number Two goes to Number One’s house in order to -boast about it to Number Three.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Laurence Oliphant</span> (<i>Piccadilly</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Lord Jesus Christ, I know not how—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With this blue air, blue sea,</div> -<div class="verse">This yellow sand, that grassy brow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All isolating me—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thy thoughts to mine themselves impart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My thoughts to thine draw near;</div> -<div class="verse">But thou canst fill who mad’st my heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Who gay’st me words must hear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou mad’st the hand with which I write,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The eye that watches slow</div> -<div class="verse">Through rosy gates that rosy light</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Across thy threshold go,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Those waves that bend in golden spray,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As if thy foot they bore:</div> -<div class="verse">I think I know thee, Lord, to-day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shall know thee evermore.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I know thy father, thine and mine:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou the great fact hast bared:</div> -<div class="verse">Master, the mighty words are thine—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Such I had never dared!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Lord, thou hast much to make me yet—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thy father’s infant still:</div> -<div class="verse">Thy mind, Son, in my bosom set,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That I may grow thy will.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My soul with truth clothe all about,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And I shall question free:</div> -<div class="verse">The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In that fear doubteth thee.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. Macdonald</span> (<i>The Disciple</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Our ideas, like the children of our youth, often die before us, -and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are fast -approaching—where, though the brass and marble may remain, -the inscriptions are effaced by time and the imagery moulders -away.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Locke</span> (1632-1704).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>What makes such a passage attractive is its use of poetic imagery; -and yet Locke had no regard for poetry. See next quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If these may be any reasons against children’s making Latin -themes at school, I have much more to say, and of more weight, -against their making verses—verses of any sort. For if he has -no genius to Poetry, ’tis the most unreasonable thing in the world -to torment a child and waste his time about that which can never -succeed; and if he have a poetic vein, ’tis to me the strangest -thing in the world that the father should desire or suffer it to be -cherished or improved. Methinks the parents should labour -to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be; and I know -not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who -does not desire to have him bid defiance to all other callings and -business.... For it is very seldom seen that any one discovers -mines of gold or silver in Parnassus.... Poetry and Gaming -usually go together.... If, therefore, you would not have -your son the fiddle to every jovial company, without whom the -Sparks could not relish their wine, nor know how to pass an -afternoon idly; if you would not have him to waste his time -and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left -him by his ancestors, I do not think you will very much care he -should be a Poet.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Locke</span> (1632-1704) (<i>Some Thoughts Concerning Education</i>, 1693).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Locke was writing during the dreary Dryden period, when poetry -had so greatly degenerated since the brilliant Elizabethan epoch. He -himself evidently had no interest in poetry. We know that he did not -appreciate Milton (whose <i>Paradise Lost</i> appeared in 1667, when Locke -was in his prime).</p> - -<p>Compare with the above quotation <a href="#Page_357">p. 357</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Weeping, we hold Him fast, who wept</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For us, we hold Him fast,</div> -<div class="verse">And will not let Him go, except</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He bless us first or last.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">INDWELLING.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,</div> -<div class="verse">Like to a shell dishabited,</div> -<div class="verse">Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,</div> -<div class="verse">And say, “This is not dead,”</div> -<div class="verse">And fill thee with Himself instead:</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But thou art all replete with very <i>thou</i>.</div> -<div class="verse">And hast such shrewd activity,</div> -<div class="verse">That, when He comes, He says, “This is enow</div> -<div class="verse">Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:</div> -<div class="verse">It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. E. Brown</span> (1830-1897).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh! ever thus from childhood’s hour,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;</div> -<div class="verse">I never loved a tree or flower,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But ’twas the first to fade away.</div> -<div class="verse">I never nursed a dear gazelle</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To glad me with its soft black eye,</div> -<div class="verse">But when it came to know me well,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And love me, it was sure to die!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span> (<i>Lalla Rookh</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>As in other cases mentioned in the <a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a>, I find that these lines, -so familiar in my day, appear to be unknown to younger men.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ON BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES.</p> - -<p>In taking leave of our Author (Sir William Blackstone) I finish -gladly with this pleasing peroration: a scrutinizing judgment, -perhaps, would not be altogether satisfied with it; but the ear -is soothed by it, and the heart is warmed.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Jeremy Bentham</span> (1748-1832) (<i>A Fragment of Government</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I think it worth while quoting from my notes this amusing piece -of sarcasm aimed by a young man of twenty-eight at the most renowned -legal writer of the time. <i>A Fragment of Government</i> (1776), the first of -Bentham’s works, not only showed the utter folly of Blackstone’s praise -of the English constitution, but also laid the foundation of political science. -(The passage, which the quotation refers to, is in Sec. 2 of the Introduction -to the <i>Commentaries</i>, “Thus far as to the right of the supreme power to -make law ... public tranquillity.”)</p> - -<p>Not only was the English constitution a subject of eulogy in Bentham’s -day, but also English law, then in a most barbarous state, was alleged to -be the perfection of human reason! Through the efforts of this great -and original thinker many dreadful abuses were removed, but it is a remarkable -illustration of the blind strength of English conservatism that his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -wise counsel has not yet been followed in many exceedingly important -directions.</p> - -<p>In the seventy-eighty period, with which this book mainly deals -there was a strong agitation for law reform, which had some results.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was the boast of Augustus, that he found Rome of brick -and left it of marble. But how much nobler will be our Sovereign’s -boast when he shall have it to say that he found law dear, -and left it cheap; found it a sealed book—left it a living letter; -found it the patrimony of the rich—left it the inheritance of the -poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression—left -it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lord Brougham</span> (1778-1868) (<i>Speech in Parliament</i>, 1828).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It would indeed be a proud boast—but not one of these objects has -yet been achieved.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When Lord Ellenborough was trying one of the Government -charges against Horne Tooke, he found occasion to praise the -impartial manner in which justice is administered. “In England, -Mr. Tooke, the law is open to all men, rich or poor.” “Yes, -my lord,” answered the prisoner, “and so is the London Tavern.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Henry S. Leigh</span> (<i>Jeux d’Esprit</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The same story is told in Rogers’ <i>Table Talk</i>, but a different judge is -named. (Probably both are wrong, but it is immaterial.) The London -Tavern was where Horne Tooke’s Constitutional Society met, and must -have been often referred to during the trial; but of course the meaning -simply is that the throne of justice cannot be approached with an empty -purse.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Revenons à nos moutons.</p> - -<p>(Let us return to our sheep.)</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>La Farce de Maistre Pierre Patelin</i>, Anon. 15 Cent.).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In the farce, a cloth merchant, who is suing his shepherd for stolen -sheep, discovers also that the attorney on the other side is a man who had -robbed him of some cloth. Dropping the charge against the shepherd, -he begins accusing the lawyer of his offence; and, to recall him to the point, -the judge impatiently interrupts him with <i>Sus revenons à nos moutons</i>, -“Come, let us get back to our sheep.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p> - -<p>Compare Martial VI, 19: “My suit has nothing to do with assault, -or battery, or poisoning, but is about three goats, which, I complain, have -been stolen by my neighbour. This the judge desires to have proved to -him; but you, with swelling words and extravagant gestures, dilate on the -Battle of Cannae, the Mithridatic war, and the perjuries of the insensate -Carthaginians, the Syllae, the Marii, and the Mucii. It is time, Postumus, -to say something about my three goats.”</p> - -<p>The reference to the French play I owe to <i>King’s Classical and Foreign -Quotations</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(The wife of a poor man deserted him for another man, and he -married again. On being convicted for bigamy Mr. Justice -Maule sentenced him as follows:) Prisoner at the bar: You -have been convicted of the offence of bigamy, that is to say, -of marrying a woman while you had a wife still alive, though it -is true she has deserted you and is living in adultery with another -man. You have, therefore, committed a crime against the laws -of your country, and you have also acted under a very serious -misapprehension of the course which you ought to have pursued. -You should have gone to the ecclesiastical court and there -obtained against your wife a decree <i>a mensa et thoro</i>. You should -then have brought an action in the courts of common law and -recovered, as no doubt you would have recovered, damages against -your wife’s paramour. Armed with these decrees, you should -have approached the legislature and obtained an Act of Parliament -which would have rendered you free and legally competent -to marry the person whom you have taken on yourself to marry -with no such sanction. It is quite true that these proceedings -would have cost you many hundreds of pounds, whereas you -probably have not as many pence. <i>But the law knows no distinction -between rich and poor.</i> The sentence of the court upon -you, therefore, is that you be imprisoned for one day, which period -has already been exceeded, as you have been in custody since -the commencement of the assizes.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir W. H. Maule</span> (1788-1858).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This fine piece of irony, well known to lawyers, materially helped to -end the old bad state of the law of divorce. We need more men of the -same stamp to draw attention to other abuses.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Is this pleading causes, Cinna? Is this speaking eloquently -to say nine words in ten hours? Just now you asked with a -loud voice for four more clepsydrae.<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> What a long time you take -to say nothing, Cinna!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Martial</span> VIII, 7.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In Racine’s comedy, <i>Les Plaideurs</i>, Act III, Sc. III, a prolix advocate -begins his speech by referring to the Creation of the world. “<i>Avocat, passons -au déluge</i>” (Let us get along to the Deluge), says the judge. See also -<i>The Merchant of Venice</i>, Act I, Sc. I:—</p> - -<p>Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing; more than any man in -all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels -of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them; and, when you have -them, they are not worth the search.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“There’s nae place like hame,” quoth the de’il, when he found -himself in the Court o’ Session.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Scottish Proverb.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I understand that the original wording was “‘Hame’s hamely,’ -quoth the de’il, etc.” Perhaps the only English Institution which the -Hindu appreciates is that of English Law—<i>but not as a system of Justice</i>. -To his acute mind it is a remarkably clever and most ingenious <i>gambling -game</i>. It is said that two Hindus will even fabricate mutual complaints, -the one against the other, to bring before the Courts—and that it is -almost equivalent to a patent of nobility to have had a case taken to the -Privy Council. The following incident actually happened to a friend of -mine who was Resident in a Native State. Sitting in his judicial capacity -he reproved a Hindu gentleman for his excessive litigiousness. The latter -retorted that it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black; that he had -seen the Resident put his rupees on the totalisator the day before; and -the British race-course wasn’t a bit more of a gamble than the British -Law Courts. For his part he preferred to have his flutter on the latter.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">BALDER’S RETURN TO EARTH<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">He sat down in a lonely land</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of mountain, moor, and mere,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And watch’d, with chin upon his hand,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Dark maids that milk’d the deer.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">And while the sun set in the skies,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And stars shone in the blue,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They sang sweet songs, till Balder’s eyes</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Were sad with kindred dew.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">He passed along the hamlets dim</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With twilight’s breath of balm,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And whatsoe’er was touch’d by him</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Grew beautiful and calm....</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">He came unto a hut forlorn</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As evening shadows fell,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And saw the man among the corn,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The woman at the well.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">And entering the darken’d place,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He found the cradled child;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stooping he lookt into its face,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Until it woke and smiled!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Then Balder passed into the night</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With soft and shining tread,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The cataract called upon the height,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The stars gleam’d overhead.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">He raised his eyes to those cold skies</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Which he had left behind,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And saw the banners of the gods</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Blown back upon the wind.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">He watched them as they came and fled,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Then his divine eyes fell.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“I love the green Earth best,” he said,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“And I on Earth will dwell!” ...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then Balder said, “The Earth is fair, and fair</div> -<div class="verse">Yea fairer than the stormy lives of gods,</div> -<div class="verse">The lives of gentle dwellers on the Earth;</div> -<div class="verse">For shapen are they in the likenesses</div> -<div class="verse">Of goddesses and gods, and on their limbs</div> -<div class="verse">Sunlight and moonlight mingle, and they lie</div> -<div class="verse">Happy and calm in one another’s arms</div> -<div class="verse">O’er-canopied with greenness; and their hands</div> -<div class="verse">Have fashioned fire that springeth beautiful</div> -<div class="verse">Straight as a silvern lily from the ground,</div> -<div class="verse">Wondrously blowing; and they measure out</div> -<div class="verse">Glad seasons by the pulses of the stars.”...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">And Balder bends above them, glory-crown’d.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Marking them as they creep upon the ground.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Busy as ants that toil without a sound,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With only gods to mark.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">But list! O list! what is that cry of pain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Faint as the far-off murmur of the main?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stoop low and hearken, Balder! List again!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“Lo! Death makes all things dark!”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Ay me, it is the earthborn souls that sigh,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Coming and going underneath the sky;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They move, they gather, clearer grows their cry—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">O Balder, bend, and hark!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">(Oh, listen! listen!) “Blessed is the light,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We love the golden day, the silvern night, ...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">“And yet though life is glad and love divine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This Shape we fear is here i’ the summer shine,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He blights the fruit we pluck, the wreath we twine,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And soon he leaves us stark.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“He haunts us fleetly on the snowy steep,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He finds us as we sow and as we reap,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He creepeth in to slay us as we sleep,—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Ah, Death makes all things dark.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Bright Balder cried, “Curst be this thing</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Which will not let man rest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Slaying with swift and cruel sting</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The very babe at breast!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“On man and beast, on flower and bird,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He creepeth evermore;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unseen he haunts the Earth; unheard</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He crawls from door to door.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">“I will not pause in any land,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Nor sleep beneath the skies,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Till I have held him by the hand</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And gazed into his eyes!”...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He sought him on the mountains bleak and bare</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And on the windy moors;</div> -<div class="verse">He found his secret footprints everywhere,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yea, ev’n by human doors.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All round the deerfold on the shrouded height</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The starlight glimmer’d clear;</div> -<div class="verse">Therein sat Death, wrapt round with vapours white</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Touching the dove-eyed deer.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">And thither Balder silent-footed flew,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But found the Phantom not;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The rain-wash’d moon had risen cold and blue</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Above that lonely spot.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Then as he stood and listen’d, gazing round</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In the pale silvern glow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He heard a wailing and a weeping sound</div> -<div class="verse indent2">From the wild huts below.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">He marked the sudden flashing of the lights</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He heard cry answering cry—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And lo! he saw upon the silent heights</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A shadowy form pass by.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Wan was the face, the eyeballs pale and wild,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The robes like rain wind-blown,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And as it fled it clasp’d a naked child</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Unto its cold breast-bone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">And Balder clutch’d its robe with fingers weak</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To stay it as it flew—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A breath of ice blew chill upon his cheek,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Blinding his eyes of blue.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">’Twas Death! ’twas gone!—All night the shepherds sped,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Searching the hills in fear;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At dawn they found their lost one lying dead</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Up by the lone black mere.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>Balder the Beautiful</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I retain this extract from Buchanan’s poem for the reason set out in -the <a href="#PREFACE">preface</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How many an acorn falls to die</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For one that makes a tree!</div> -<div class="verse">How many a heart must pass me by</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For one that cleaves to me!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How many a suppliant wave of sound</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Must still unheeded roll,</div> -<div class="verse">For one low utterance that found</div> -<div class="verse indent1">An echo in my soul.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Banister Tabb</span> (b. 1845)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I have “Compensation” as the title of these verses, but it must -surely be incorrect. If a man passes through life unrecognised by kindred -souls, it is the reverse of ‘compensation’ to him if he also fails to recognise -other sympathetic natures.</p> - -<p>The author is, or was, an American Catholic priest.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What we gave, we have;</div> -<div class="verse">What we spent, we had;</div> -<div class="verse">What we left, we lost.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution">(<i>Epitaph on Earl of Devonshire</i>, about 1200 A.D.)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ALL SUNG</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What shall I sing when all is sung</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And every tale is told,</div> -<div class="verse">And in the world is nothing young</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That was not long since old?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why should I fret unwilling ears</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With old things sung anew</div> -<div class="verse">While voices from the old dead year</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Still go on singing too?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A dead man singing of his maid</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Makes all my rhymes in vain,</div> -<div class="verse">Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And mine shall sing again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why should I strive thro’ weary moons</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To make my music true?</div> -<div class="verse">Only the dead men know the tunes</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The live world dances to.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. le Gallienne.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Mr. le Gallienne was not the first to complain that poetic subjects -were exhausted. A recent <i>Spectator</i> quotes the following from Choerilus, -a Samian poet of the Fifth Century, B.C. (2,000 years before Shakespeare): -“Happy was the follower of the muses in that time, when the field was -still virgin soil. But now when all has been divided up and the arts have -reached their limits, we are left behind in the race, and, look where’er we -may, there is no room anywhere for a new-yoked chariot to make its way -to the front.” (St. John Thackeray, <i>Anthologia Graeca</i>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Go out into the woods and valleys, when your heart is rather -harassed than bruised, and when you suffer from vexation more -than grief. Then the trees all hold out their arms to you to relieve -you of the burthen of your heavy thoughts; and the streams under -the trees glance at you as they run by, and will carry away your -trouble along with the fallen leaves; and the sweet-breathing air<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> -will draw it off together with the silver multitudes of the dew. But -let it be with anguish or remorse in your heart that you go forth -into Nature, and instead of your speaking her language, you make -her speak yours. Your distress is then infused through all things -and clothes all things, and Nature only echoes and seems to -authenticate your self-loathing or your hopelessness. Then you -find the device of your sorrow on the argent shield of the moon, -and see all the trees of the field weeping and wringing their hands -with you, while the hills, seated at your side in sackcloth, look -down upon you prostrate, and reprove you like the comforters -of Job.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Alfred Vaughan</span> (1823-1857) (<i>Hours with the Mystics</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>If this fine writer had lived, much might have been expected of him. -He is one of the many instances of “the fatal thirty-fours and thirty-sevens.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">First man appeared in the class of inorganic things,</div> -<div class="verse">Next he passed therefrom into that of plants,</div> -<div class="verse">For years he lived as one of the plants,</div> -<div class="verse">Remembering nought of his inorganic state so different;</div> -<div class="verse">And, when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state,</div> -<div class="verse">He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,</div> -<div class="verse">Except the inclination he felt to the world of plants,</div> -<div class="verse">Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers;</div> -<div class="verse">Like the inclination of infants towards their mothers,</div> -<div class="verse">Which know not the cause of their inclination to the breast.</div> -<div class="verse">Again, the great Creator, as you know,</div> -<div class="verse">Drew man out of the animal into the human state.</div> -<div class="verse">Thus man passed from one order of nature to another,</div> -<div class="verse">Till he became wise and knowing and strong as he is now.</div> -<div class="verse">Of his first souls he has now no remembrance,</div> -<div class="verse">And he will be again changed from his present soul.<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Masnair</span> (Bk. IV) of Jalal ad Din (13th century).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The gases gather to the solid firmament; the chemic lump -arrives at the plant and grows; arrives at the quadruped and -walks; arrives at the man and thinks.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Emerson</span> (<i>Uses of Great Men</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">HIAWATHA’S PHOTOGRAPHING</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">From his shoulder Hiawatha</div> -<div class="verse">Took the camera of rosewood,</div> -<div class="verse">Made of sliding, folding rosewood;</div> -<div class="verse">This he perched upon a tripod—</div> -<div class="verse">Crouched beneath its dusky cover—</div> -<div class="verse">Stretched his hand, enforcing silence—</div> -<div class="verse">Said, “Be motionless, I beg you!”</div> -<div class="verse">Mystic, awful was the process.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All the family in order</div> -<div class="verse">Sat before him for their pictures:</div> -<div class="verse">Each in turn, as he was taken,</div> -<div class="verse">Volunteered his own suggestions,</div> -<div class="verse">His ingenious suggestions.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">First the Governor, the Father:</div> -<div class="verse">He suggested velvet curtains</div> -<div class="verse">Looped about a massy pillar;</div> -<div class="verse">And the corner of a table,</div> -<div class="verse">Of a rosewood dining-table.</div> -<div class="verse">He would hold a scroll of something,</div> -<div class="verse">Hold it firmly in his left-hand;</div> -<div class="verse">He would keep his right-hand buried</div> -<div class="verse">(Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat;</div> -<div class="verse">He would contemplate the distance</div> -<div class="verse">With a look of pensive meaning,</div> -<div class="verse">As of ducks that die in tempests.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Grand, heroic was the notion:</div> -<div class="verse">Yet the picture failed entirely:</div> -<div class="verse">Failed, because he moved a little,</div> -<div class="verse">Moved, because he couldn’t help it,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Next, his better half took courage;</div> -<div class="verse"><i>She</i> would have her picture taken,</div> -<div class="verse">She came dressed beyond description,</div> -<div class="verse">Dressed in jewels and in satin</div> -<div class="verse">Far too gorgeous for an empress.</div> -<div class="verse">Gracefully she sat down sideways,</div> -<div class="verse">With a simper scarcely human,</div> -<div class="verse">Holding in her hand a bouquet</div> -<div class="verse">Rather larger than a cabbage.</div> -<div class="verse">All the while that she was sitting,</div> -<div class="verse">Still the lady chattered, chattered,</div> -<div class="verse">Like a monkey in the forest,</div> -<div class="verse">“Am I sitting still?” she asked him</div> -<div class="verse">“Is my face enough in profile?</div> -<div class="verse">Shall I hold the bouquet higher?</div> -<div class="verse">Will it come into the picture?”</div> -<div class="verse">And the picture failed completely.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> -<div class="verse">He suggested curves of beauty,</div> -<div class="verse">Curves pervading all his figure,</div> -<div class="verse">Which the eye might follow onward,</div> -<div class="verse">Till they centered in the breast-pin,</div> -<div class="verse">Centered in the golden breast-pin.</div> -<div class="verse">He had learnt it all from Ruskin</div> -<div class="verse">And perhaps he had not fully</div> -<div class="verse">Understood his author’s meaning;</div> -<div class="verse">But, whatever was the reason,</div> -<div class="verse">All was fruitless, as the picture</div> -<div class="verse">Ended in an utter failure.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Next to him the eldest daughter:</div> -<div class="verse">She suggested very little,</div> -<div class="verse">Only asked if he would take her</div> -<div class="verse">With her look of “passive beauty.”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Her idea of passive beauty</div> -<div class="verse">Was a squinting of the left-eye,</div> -<div class="verse">Was a drooping of the right-eye,</div> -<div class="verse">Was a smile that went up sideways</div> -<div class="verse">To the corner of the nostrils.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hiawatha, when she asked him,</div> -<div class="verse">Took no notice of the question,</div> -<div class="verse">Looked as if he hadn’t heard it;</div> -<div class="verse">But, when pointedly appealed to,</div> -<div class="verse">Smiled in his peculiar manner,</div> -<div class="verse">Coughed and said it “didn’t matter,”</div> -<div class="verse">Bit his lip and changed the subject.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor in this was he mistaken,</div> -<div class="verse">As the picture failed completely.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So in turn the other sisters.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Last, the youngest son was taken:</div> -<div class="verse">Very rough and thick his hair was,</div> -<div class="verse">Very round and red his face was,</div> -<div class="verse">Very dusty was his jacket,</div> -<div class="verse">Very fidgety his manner.</div> -<div class="verse">And his overbearing sisters</div> -<div class="verse">Called him names he disapproved of:</div> -<div class="verse">Called him Johnny, “Daddy’s Darling,”</div> -<div class="verse">Called him Jacky, “Scrubby School-boy.”</div> -<div class="verse">And, so awful was the picture,</div> -<div class="verse">In comparison the others</div> -<div class="verse">Seemed, to his bewildered fancy,</div> -<div class="verse">To have partially succeeded.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Finally my Hiawatha</div> -<div class="verse">Tumbled all the tribe together,</div> -<div class="verse">(“Grouped” is not the right expression).</div> -<div class="verse">And, as happy chance would have it,</div> -<div class="verse">Did at last obtain a picture</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Where the faces all succeeded:</div> -<div class="verse">Each came out a perfect likeness.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then they joined and all abused it,</div> -<div class="verse">Unrestrainedly abused it,</div> -<div class="verse">As “the worst and ugliest picture</div> -<div class="verse">They could possibly have dreamed of.</div> -<div class="verse">Giving one such strange expressions—</div> -<div class="verse">Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.</div> -<div class="verse">Really any one would take us</div> -<div class="verse">(Any one that did not know us)</div> -<div class="verse">For the most unpleasant people!”</div> -<div class="verse">(Hiawatha seemed to think so,</div> -<div class="verse">Seemed to think it not unlikely).</div> -<div class="verse">All together rang their voices,</div> -<div class="verse">Angry, loud, discordant voices,</div> -<div class="verse">As of dogs that howl in concert,</div> -<div class="verse">As of cats that wail in chorus.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But my Hiawatha’s patience,</div> -<div class="verse">His politeness and his patience,</div> -<div class="verse">Unaccountably had vanished,</div> -<div class="verse">And he left that happy party.</div> -<div class="verse">Neither did he leave them slowly,</div> -<div class="verse">With the calm deliberation,</div> -<div class="verse">The intense deliberation</div> -<div class="verse">Of a photographic artist:</div> -<div class="verse">But he left them in a hurry,</div> -<div class="verse">Left them in a mighty hurry,</div> -<div class="verse">Stating that he would not stand it,</div> -<div class="verse">Stating in emphatic language</div> -<div class="verse">What he’d be before he’d stand it.</div> -<div class="verse">Thus departed Hiawatha.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lewis Carroll</span> (C. L. Dodgson) 1832-1898.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man’s -death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too,—as -if it were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and -reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome -steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the -one who is spared that hard journey.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Janet’s Repentance</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It has been said by Schiller, in his letters on aesthetic culture, -that the sense of beauty never farthered the performance of a -single duty.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p> - -<p>Although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly be -accepted by any one in so many terms, seeing that there are few -so utterly lost but that they receive, and know that they receive, -at certain moments, strength of some kind, or rebuke from the -appealings of outward things; and that it is not possible for a -Christian man to walk across so much as a rood of the natural -earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving -strength and hope from stone, flower, leaf or sound, nor without -a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky; though I -say this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it -seems to be partly and practically so in much of the doing and -teaching even of holy men, who in the recommending of the love -of God to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most -abundantly and immediately shown; though they insist much on -his giving of bread, and raiment, and health (which he gives to -all inferior creatures), they require us not to thank him for that -glory of his works which he has permitted us alone to perceive: -they tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send us not, -like Isaac, into the fields at even; they dwell on the duty of -self-denial, but they exhibit not the <i>duty of delight</i>.<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Ruskin</span> (<i>Modern Painters</i>, III, I, XV).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">Not on the vulgar mass</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Called “work” must sentence pass,</div> -<div class="verse">Things done, that took the eye and had the price;</div> -<div class="verse indent5">O’er which, from level stand,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">The low world laid its hand,</div> -<div class="verse">Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">But all, the world’s coarse thumb</div> -<div class="verse indent5">And finger failed to plumb,</div> -<div class="verse">So passed in making up the main account;</div> -<div class="verse indent5">All instincts immature,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">All purposes unsure,</div> -<div class="verse">That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">Thoughts hardly to be packed</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Into a narrow act,</div> -<div class="verse">Fancies that broke through language and escaped;</div> -<div class="verse indent5">All, I could never be,</div> -<div class="verse indent5">All, men ignored in me,</div> -<div class="verse">This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">So, take and use thy work:</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Amend what flaws may lurk,</div> -<div class="verse">What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!</div> -<div class="verse indent5">My times be in Thy hand!</div> -<div class="verse indent5">Perfect the cup as planned!</div> -<div class="verse">Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span> (<i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“All (that) I could never be, All (that) man ignored in me.” All -that the world could not know, a man’s thoughts, desires, and intentions, -all that he wished or tried to be or do, although unknown to his fellows, -have their value in God’s eyes. Man is the Cup, whose shape (i.e., character) -has been formed by the wheel of the great Potter, God. See further as to -this Eastern metaphor.</p> - -<p>The late Mrs. A. W. Verrall, widow of Doctor Verrall and herself a -brilliant scholar, pointed out in the <i>Proceedings</i> of the Society for Psychical -Research, June, 1911, a probable connection between “Rabbi ben Ezra,” -and “Omar Khayyam,” and I do not think that her interesting views -have been published elsewhere.</p> - -<p>Both poems centre round the idea of man as a Cup, but treat the metaphor -from very different standpoints. Omar’s cup (quoting from the first -edition) is to be filled with “Life’s Liquor” (ii), with “Wine! <i>Red</i> Wine!” -(vi), with what “clears To-Day of past regrets” (xx); the object is to drown -the memory of the fact that “without asking” we are “hurried hither” -and “hurried hence” (xxx); the “Ruby Vintage” is to be drunk “with -old Khayyam,” and “when the Angel with his darker Draught draws -up” to us we are to take that draught without shrinking (xlviii). On the -other hand Rabbi ben Ezra’s Cup is to be used by the great Potter. We -are told to look “not down but up! to uses of a cup” (30). The Rabbi -asks “God who mouldest men ... to take and use His work” (32) and -the ultimate purpose of the Cup, when it has been made “perfect as planned,” -is to slake the thirst of the Master.</p> - -<p>The comparison of man to the Clay of the Potter in both poems is -not sufficient in itself to show any connection between them. Such a -comparison is found, as Fitzgerald reminds us, “in the Literature of the -World from the Hebrew Prophets to the present time”<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>; and it is as -appropriately employed by the Hebrew as by the Persian thinker. But -Mrs. Verrall has other grounds:</p> - -<p>The little pamphlet in its brown wrapper containing the <i>Rubaiyat -of Omar Khayyam</i> was first published by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859, and, -as is well known, attracted so little attention that, although there were -only 250 copies, it found its way into the two-penny boxes of the book-sellers, -(It now sells for about £50!) But, nevertheless, the poem was -eagerly read and enthusiastically praised by a small group, among whom -were Swinburne and Rossetti. In 1861 Robert Browning came to live<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -in London, and often saw Rossetti, who was his friend. It is, therefore, -very improbable that he did not learn of the poem, which had so impressed -Rossetti. In 1864 “Rabbi ben Ezra” was published in the volume -called <i>Dramatis Personae</i>.</p> - -<p>Again, there is intrinsic evidence that Browning intended a direct -refutation of Omar’s theory of life. Compare verses 26 and 27 of “Rabbi -ben Ezra” with verses xxxvi and xxxvii of “Omar Khayyam” (first -edition).</p> - -<p>Omar says that he “watched the Potter thumping his wet clay,” -and, thereupon advises:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah, fill the Cup;—what boots it to repeat</div> -<div class="verse">How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday,</div> -<div class="verse">Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Rabbi ben Ezra says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">... Note that Potter’s wheel.</div> -<div class="verse">That metaphor!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">and proceeds:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Thou, to whom fools propound,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">When the wine makes its round,</div> -<div class="verse">“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize To-day!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">Fool! all that is, at all,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Lasts ever, past recall;</div> -<div class="verse">Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Although the “carpe diem” (“seize to-day”) theory of life is no -doubt common to all literatures, the cumulative effect of Mrs. Verrall’s -argument is strong, although not conclusive.</p> - -<p>As regards the above verses, compare the next quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, Thy dread Sabaoth:</div> -<div class="verse"><i>I</i> will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth</div> -<div class="verse">To look that, even that, in the face too? Why is it I dare</div> -<div class="verse">Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?</div> -<div class="verse">This:—’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Saul</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Sabaoth</i>, armies, hosts. “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Let the thick curtain fall;</div> -<div class="verse">I better know than all</div> -<div class="verse">How little I have gained.</div> -<div class="verse">How vast the unattained.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Not by the page word-painted</div> -<div class="verse">Let life be banned or sainted;</div> -<div class="verse">Deeper than written scroll</div> -<div class="verse">The colours of the soul.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sweeter than any sung</div> -<div class="verse">My songs that found no tongue;</div> -<div class="verse">Nobler than any fact</div> -<div class="verse">My wish that failed of act.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. G. Whittier</span> (<i>My Triumph</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Between the great things that we <i>cannot</i> do, and the small -things we <i>will</i> not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Adolph Monod</span> (1802-1856).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Reputation is what men and women think of us; -Character is what God and the angels know of us.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Paine.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - - -<p>Love is the Amen of the Universe.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Novalis.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He (Dr. Johnson) would not allow Scotland to derive any -credit from Lord Mansfield, for he was educated in England. -“Much,” said he, “may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught -young.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Boswell</span> (<i>Life of Johnson</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(A Mr. Strahan, a Scotchman, asked Dr. Johnson what he -thought of Scotland) “That it is a very vile country to be sure, -Sir,” returned for answer Dr. Johnson. “Well, Sir!” replied -the other, somewhat mortified, “God made it.” “Certainly -he did,” answered Mr. Johnson again, “but we must always -remember that <i>he made it for Scotchmen</i>.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Piozzi</span> (<i>Johnsoniana</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These are the two best of Johnson’s chaffing jibes against Scotchmen. -The neatness of the latter is, to my mind, spoilt by the words at the end, -which I have omitted: “and—comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan,—but -God made hell.” The following may also be quoted as showing both -Johnson and that clever charlatan, Wilkes, quizzing Boswell (year 1781):</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p> - -<p><i>Wilkes</i>: “Pray, Boswell, how much may be got in a year by an -advocate at the Scotch bar?”</p> - -<p><i>Boswell</i>: “I believe two thousand pounds.”</p> - -<p><i>Wilkes</i>: “How can it be possible to spend that money in Scotland?”</p> - -<p><i>Johnson</i>: “Why, Sir, the money may be spent in <i>England</i>; -but there is a harder question. If one man in Scotland gets possession of -two thousand pounds, what remains for all the rest of the nation?”</p> - -<p>Many Scotchmen undoubtedly enjoy chaff against themselves and their -country, and I think this was so with Boswell. It is a phase of social -psychology that needs explaining.</p> - -<p>In these jokes Johnson was, consciously or not, influenced by the fine -Royalist poet, John Cleveland (1613-1658); but the latter was very much -in earnest. He detested the Scotch for fighting against Charles I. His -references to Scotland in <i>The Rebel Scot</i> are wonderfully clever:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A land that brings in question and suspense</div> -<div class="verse">God’s omnipresence.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And again:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;</div> -<div class="verse">Not forced him wander, but confined him home!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>God is present by His essence; which, because it is infinite, -cannot be contained within the limits of any place; and because -He is of an essential purity and spiritual nature, He cannot -be undervalued by being supposed present in the places of -unnatural uncleanness: because, as the sun, reflecting upon the -mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in its beams, so is God -not dishonoured when we suppose Him in every one of His -creatures, and in every part of every one of them.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Jeremy Taylor</span> (<i>Holy Living</i>, Ch. 1, Sec. 3).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>There is an old Scottish proverb, “The sun is no waur for shining -on the midden.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I dare say Alexander the Great was somewhat staggered in -his plans of conquest by Parmenio’s way of putting things. -“After you have conquered Persia what will you do?” “Then -I shall conquer India.” “After you have conquered India, -what will you do?” “Conquer Scythia.” “And after you have -conquered Scythia, what will you do?” “Sit down and rest.” -“Well,” said Parmenio to the conqueror, “why not sit down -and rest now?”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. K. H. Boyd</span> (<i>The Recreations of a Country Parson</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I include this because it is a good short paraphrase of the actual story -of Pyrrhus and Cineas (<i>Plutarch’s Lives</i>—“<i>Pyrrhus</i>”) and because of the -curious absurdity of attributing such philosophic advice to the warrior, -Parmenio. This general was the only one of Alexander’s old advisers who -urged him to invade Asia! (<i>Plutarch’s Lives</i>—“<i>Alexander</i>”).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Sorrow and care and anxiety may quite well live in -Elizabethan cottages, grown over with honeysuckle and jasmine; -and very sad eyes may look forth from windows around which -roses twine.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. K. H. Boyd</span> (<i>The Recreations of a Country Parson</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This book had a great vogue, but not sufficient merit to preserve it -from oblivion.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">CANADIAN BOAT-SONG</p> - -<p class="center"><i>From the Gaelic.</i></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Listen to me, as when ye heard our father</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sing long ago the song of other shores—</div> -<div class="verse">Listen to me, and then in chorus gather</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All your deep voices, as ye pull your oars:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">CHORUS.</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>But we are exiles from our father’s land.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">From the lone sheiling of the misty island</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas—</div> -<div class="verse">Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And we in dreams behold the Hebrides:</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Fair these broad meads, etc.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We ne’er shall tread the fancy-haunted valley,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where ’tween the dark hills creeps the small clear stream,</div> -<div class="verse">In arms around the patriarch banner rally,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam:</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Fair these broad meads, etc.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When the bold kindred, in the time long vanish’d,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Conquered the soil and fortified the keep,—</div> -<div class="verse">No seer foretold the children would be banish’d,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep;</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Fair these broad meads, etc.</i></div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Come foreign rage—let Discord burst in slaughter!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O then for clansmen true, and stern claymore—</div> -<div class="verse">The hearts that would have given their blood like water,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar.</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand;</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.</i></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The authorship of these verses is uncertain, but it probably lies between -John Galt, author of <i>Annals of the Parish</i>, and Lockhart, son-in-law of -Sir Walter Scott. The verses were quoted by Professor Wilson (Christopher -North) in his <i>Noctes Ambrosianae</i> in <i>Blackwood</i>, Sept., 1829, but, because -Wilson was not the author, they are not reproduced in his collected works -(<i>Blackwood</i>, 1855).</p> - -<p><i>A degenerate Lord</i>, &c. This refers to the eviction of the Highland -crofters and cottars. In 1829 the Duke of Hamilton had just cleared the -population out of the Isle of Arran.</p> - -<p><i>Sheiling</i> or <i>Shealing</i>, a hut used by shepherds, fishermen, or others -for shelter when at work at a distance from home.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;</div> -<div class="verse">Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>Locksley Hall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If thou wouldst have high God thy soul assure</div> -<div class="verse">That she herself shall as herself endure,</div> -<div class="verse">Shall in no alien semblance, thine and wise,</div> -<div class="verse">Fulfil her and be young in Paradise,</div> -<div class="verse">One way I know; forget, forswear, disdain</div> -<div class="verse">Thine own best hopes, thine utmost loss and gain,</div> -<div class="verse">Till when at last thou scarce rememberest now</div> -<div class="verse">If on the earth be such a man as thou,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor hast one thought of self-surrender,—no,</div> -<div class="verse">For self is none remaining to forego,—</div> -<div class="verse">If ever, then shall strong persuasion fall</div> -<div class="verse">That in thy giving thou hast gained thine all,</div> -<div class="verse">Given the poor present, gained the boundless scope,</div> -<div class="verse">And kept thee virgin for the further hope....</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> -<div class="verse">When all base thoughts like frighted harpies flown</div> -<div class="verse">In her own beauty leave the soul alone;</div> -<div class="verse">When Love,—not rosy-flushed as he began,</div> -<div class="verse">But Love, still Love, the prisoned God in man,—</div> -<div class="verse">Shows his face glorious, shakes his banner free,</div> -<div class="verse">Cries like a captain for Eternity:—</div> -<div class="verse">O halcyon air across the storms of youth,</div> -<div class="verse">O trust him, he is true, he is one with Truth!</div> -<div class="verse">Nay, is he Christ? I know not; no man knows</div> -<div class="verse">The right name of the heavenly Anterôs,—</div> -<div class="verse">But here is God, whatever God may be,</div> -<div class="verse">And whomsoe’er we worship, this is He.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. Myers</span> (<i>The Implicit Promise of Immortality</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Anterôs is the god of mutual love, who punishes those who do not -return the love of others, as otherwise his brother Erôs, god of love, will -be unhappy.</p> - -<p>The fine poem from which this is quoted represents one of the phases of -Myers’ experience. It was published in 1882, but written about ten -years before. He had then lost his faith in Christianity, but believed in -a future life on grounds based partly upon philosophy and partly on -“vision.” He had those moments of exaltation when, as he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The open secret flashes on the brain,</div> -<div class="verse">As if one almost guessed it, almost knew</div> -<div class="verse">Whence we have sailed and voyage whereunto.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>For entrance into the future life, Love and complete Self-surrender -are the best equipment for the soul.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But all through life I see a Cross,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where sons of God yield up their breath:</div> -<div class="verse">There is no gain except by loss,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There is no life except by death,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There is no vision but by Faith.</div> -<div class="verse">Nor glory but by bearing shame,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor Justice but by taking blame;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And that Eternal Passion saith,</div> -<div class="verse">“Be emptied of glory and right and name.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. C. Smith</span> (<i>Olrig Grange</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Life is short, and we have not too much time for gladdening -the lives of those who are travelling the dark road with us. Oh, -be swift to love, make haste to be kind.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Amiel’s</span> <i>Journal</i>.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SELF-SACRIFICE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What though thine arm hath conquered in the fight,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What though the vanquished yield unto thy sway,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or riches garnered pave thy golden way,—</div> -<div class="verse">Not therefore hast thou gained the sovran height</div> -<div class="verse">Of man’s nobility! No halo’s light</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From these shall round thee shed its sacred ray;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">If these be all thy joy,—then dark thy day,</div> -<div class="verse">And darker still thy swift approaching night!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But if in thee more truly than in others</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hath dwelt Love’s charity;—if by thine aid</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Others have passed above thee, and if thou,</div> -<div class="verse">Though victor, yieldest victory to thy brothers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Though conquering conquered, and a vassal made—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then take thy crown, well mayst thou wear it now.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Samuel Waddington.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing; -we feed it with offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it -that is not clean; it gives us back life and beauty.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dudley Warner</span> (<i>My Summer in a Garden</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SOUL’S BEAUTY</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Under the arch of Life, where love and death,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Terror and mystery guard her shrine, I saw</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,</div> -<div class="verse">I drew it in as simply as my breath.</div> -<div class="verse">Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By sea or sky or woman, to one law,</div> -<div class="verse">The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -<div class="verse">This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee</div> -<div class="verse indent2">By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Following her daily of thy heart and feet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How passionately and irretrievably,</div> -<div class="verse">In what fond flight, how many ways and days!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Although Rossetti was not a classical student, he seems here to have -arrived at the Platonic idea of an abstract Beauty, of whose essence are all -beautiful things, “sea or sky or woman.” Love and death, terror and -mystery guard her, as a goddess on her throne, and all lovers of the beautiful -are worshippers at her shrine.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Thinking is only a dream of feeling; a dead feeling; a pale-grey, -feeble life.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Novalis.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A whetstone cannot cut, but it makes iron sharp, and -gives it a keen edge.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Isocrates</span> (436-338 <span class="smcap">B.C.</span>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is quoted in Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i>. Isocrates was asked why he taught -rhetoric so much and yet spoke so rarely; and this was his reply. Horace -(<i>Ars Poetica</i> 304) playfully says that he is no longer able to write verses -but he will teach others to write, adding “a whetstone is not used for cutting, -but is used for sharpening steel nevertheless.”</p> - -<p>The career of Isocrates, “that old man eloquent,”<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> is extremely -interesting. He preserved his energy and his influence to the end of his -long life of 98 years.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">From too much love of living,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From hope and fear set free,</div> -<div class="verse">We thank with brief thanksgiving</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Whatever gods there be</div> -<div class="verse">That no life lives for ever;</div> -<div class="verse">That dead men rise up never;</div> -<div class="verse">That even the weariest river</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Winds somewhere safe to sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>The Garden of Proserpine</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A very musical expression of a very ugly thought.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Women never betray themselves to men as they do to -each other.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE RETREAT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Happy those early days, when I</div> -<div class="verse">Shined in my Angel-infancy!</div> -<div class="verse">Before I understood this place</div> -<div class="verse">Appointed for my second race,</div> -<div class="verse">Or taught my soul to fancy aught</div> -<div class="verse">But a white celestial thought:</div> -<div class="verse">When yet I had not walk’d above</div> -<div class="verse">A mile or two from my first Love,</div> -<div class="verse">And looking back, at that short space,</div> -<div class="verse">Could see a glimpse of His bright face:</div> -<div class="verse">When on some gilded cloud or flower</div> -<div class="verse">My gazing soul would dwell an hour,</div> -<div class="verse">And in those weaker glories spy</div> -<div class="verse">Some shadows of eternity:</div> -<div class="verse">Before I taught my tongue to wound</div> -<div class="verse">My Conscience with a sinful sound,</div> -<div class="verse">Or had the black art to dispense</div> -<div class="verse">A several sin to ev’ry sense,</div> -<div class="verse">But felt through all this fleshly dress</div> -<div class="verse">Bright shoots of everlastingness.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O how I long to travel back,</div> -<div class="verse">And tread again that ancient track!</div> -<div class="verse">That I might once more reach that plain</div> -<div class="verse">Where first I left my glorious train;</div> -<div class="verse">From whence th’ enlighten’d spirit sees</div> -<div class="verse">That shady City of Palm-trees!</div> -<div class="verse">But ah! my soul with too much stay</div> -<div class="verse">Is drunk, and staggers in the way!</div> -<div class="verse">Some men a forward motion love,</div> -<div class="verse">But I by backward steps would move;</div> -<div class="verse">And when this dust falls to the urn,</div> -<div class="verse">In that state I came, return.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Henry Vaughan</span> (1621-1695).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I include this poem, although it is in the anthologies, because from my -own experience a young reader will not see its beauty without some words -of explanation. It is the precursor of the greatest ode ever written, Wordsworth’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> -<i>Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood</i>. -Wordsworth, Vaughan, and many others believe that we had a -separate existence before we came into this world (and there is much in -the experience of each of us to warrant that belief). Wordsworth says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;</div> -<div class="verse">The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hath had elsewhere its setting,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And cometh from afar.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But in order to appreciate either Wordsworth’s or Vaughan’s poem -it is not necessary to have this belief in a past separate existence—it is -enough to realize that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Trailing clouds of glory do we come</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From God, who is our home.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>One may see the small value God has for riches by the people -He gives them to.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There’s a fancy some lean to and others hate—</div> -<div class="verse">That, when this life is ended, begins</div> -<div class="verse">New work for the soul in another state,</div> -<div class="verse">Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins:</div> -<div class="verse">Where the strong and the weak, this world’s congeries,</div> -<div class="verse">Repeat in large what they practised in small,</div> -<div class="verse">Through life after life in unlimited series;</div> -<div class="verse">Only the scale’s to be changed, that’s all.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen</div> -<div class="verse">By the means of Evil that Good is best,</div> -<div class="verse">And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven’s serene,—</div> -<div class="verse">When our faith in the same has stood the test—</div> -<div class="verse">Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,</div> -<div class="verse">The uses of labour are surely done;</div> -<div class="verse">There remaineth a rest for the people of God:</div> -<div class="verse">And I have had troubles enough, for one.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Old Pictures in Florence</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Browning in his last poem, the well-known “Epilogue,” speaks with -another voice. He wishes his friends to think of him after death as he -was when alive:—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">One who never turned his back but marched breast-forward.</div> -<div class="verse">Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Sleep to wake.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Greet the unseen with a cheer!</div> -<div class="verse">Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,</div> -<div class="verse">“Strive and thrive!” cry, “Speed,—fight on, fare ever,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">There as here!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>F. W. H. Myers wrote:—</p> - -<p>We need a summons to no houri-haunted paradise, no passionless -contemplation, no monotony of prayer and praise; but to endless -advance by endless effort, and, if need be, by endless pain. Be it -mine, then, to plunge among the unknown Destinies—to dare and still -to dare!</p> - -<p>Emerson’s heaven also was</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Built of furtherance and pursuing,</div> -<div class="verse">Not of spent deeds, but of doing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution">(“Threnody.”)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In life, Love comes first. Indeed, <i>we</i> only come because -Love calls for us. We find it waiting with outstretched arms -on arrival. Love is the beginning of everything.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. Boreham</span> (<i>Faces in the Fire</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Our daies are full of dolor and disease,</div> -<div class="verse">Our life afflicted with incessant paine,</div> -<div class="verse">That nought on earth may lessen or appease.</div> -<div class="verse">Why then should I desire here to remaine?</div> -<div class="verse">Or why should he that loves me, sorie bee</div> -<div class="verse">For my deliverence, or at all complaine</div> -<div class="verse">My good to hear, and tóward joyes to see?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Edmund Spenser</span> (<i>Daphnaïda</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Tóward</i>, “approaching.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>My closing remark is as to avoiding debates that are in their -very nature interminable.... There is a certain intensity of -emotion, interest, bias or prejudice if you will, that can neither<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> -reason nor be reasoned with. On the purely intellectual side, -the disqualifying circumstances are complexity and vagueness. -If a topic necessarily hauls in numerous other topics of difficulty, -the essay may do something for it, but not the debate. Worst -of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, and unsettled -terms. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several -defects, each, perhaps, in a small degree. A tinge of predilection -or party, a double or triple complication of doctrines, and one -or two hazy terms will make a debate that is pretty sure to end -as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to appearance, -may contain within it capacities of misunderstanding, cross-purposes, -and pointless issues, sufficient to occupy the long -night of Pandemonium, or beguile the journey to the nearest -fixed star.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Bain</span> (<i>Contemporary Review, April, 1877</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>From an address to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Diogenes, seeing Neptune’s temple with votive pictures of -those saved from wreck, says, “Yea, but where are they painted, -that have been drowned?”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bacon.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I saw her at the County Ball:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle</div> -<div class="verse">Gave signal sweet in that old hall</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of hands across and down the middle,</div> -<div class="verse">Hers was the subtlest spell by far</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of all that set young hearts romancing;</div> -<div class="verse">She was our queen, our rose, our star;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Through sunny May, through sultry June,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I loved her with a love eternal;</div> -<div class="verse">I spoke her praises to the moon,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I wrote them to the Sunday Journal:</div> -<div class="verse">My mother laugh’d: I soon found out</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That ancient ladies have no feeling;</div> -<div class="verse">My father frown’d: but how should gout</div> -<div class="verse indent1">See any happiness in kneeling?...</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She smiled on many, just for fun,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I knew that there was nothing in it;</div> -<div class="verse">I was the first—the only one</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Her heart had thought of for a minute.—</div> -<div class="verse">I knew it, for she told me so,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In phrase which was divinely moulded;</div> -<div class="verse">She wrote a charming hand,—and oh!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How sweetly all her notes were folded!</div> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -<div class="verse">We parted; months and years roll’d by</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We met again four summers after:</div> -<div class="verse">Our parting was all sob and sigh;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our meeting was all mirth and laughter:</div> -<div class="verse">For in my heart’s most secret cell</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There had been many other lodgers;</div> -<div class="verse">And she was not the ball-room’s Belle,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But only—Mrs. Something Rogers!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. M. Praed.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A canon of my own in judging verses is that no man has a -right to put into metre what he can as well say out of metre. To -which I may add, as a corollary, that <i>a fortiore</i> he has no right -to put into metre what he can better say out of metre.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. S. Lilly</span> (<i>Essay on George Eliot</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Aujourd’hui, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le -chante.</p> - -<p>(Now-a-days when a thing is not worth saying they sing it—<i>i.e.</i> put it in -a song.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Beaumarchais</span> (<i>Le Barbier de Séville</i>, Act I. Sc. I.)</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I do not know whether I gave you at any time the details of -my work here, or the principles upon which I have been proceeding.... -Some of the work set down includes Ancient Ethics—which -is almost entirely grossly wrong and great rubbish also. -This part I have persistently refused to get up, not because I -disliked it, but because it is decidedly injurious to warp and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> -twist the brain by impressing it with wrong thoughts and systems—just -as it would be insane in the polisher of a mirror to think it -would reflect the external world more truly, if he gave it a dint -here, a scratch there, a bulge in another place, and so forth. -It would take me too long to describe the details. Suffice it to -say that one of the examiners in Mental Philosophy and in Moral -and Political Philosophy is an old, <i>blind</i> (literally) man of the old -school, who gave a very abnormally large amount of questions -relating to Ancient Ethics, and an abnormally large amount -to the <i>early</i> part of English Ethics—leaving hardly any marks -to be scored by thorough understanding and ability to use the -principles of the subjects.</p> - -<p>The consequence was that those, who had crammed up the -earlier text-books and could reproduce them, had an enormous -advantage. This old fogey moreover is strongly anti-Spencerian. -Indeed I heard that he had objected to my answers because -“there was too much of Spencer and myself!” So that instead -of <i>criticism and originality</i>, he avowedly preferred <i>mere reproduction</i>, -a good example of the slavishness of that method of -examination predominant mostly, which, as Spencer wrote -to me some time ago, is devised for testing a man’s “power -of acquisition instead of using that which has been acquired.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Hodgson</span> (1855-1905) (<i>Letter, Dec., 1881</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This letter was written to me from Cambridge, when Hodgson (<a href="#PREFACE">see -Preface</a>) had found his immediate prospects blasted by the results of the -Moral Science Tripos. No one was placed in the First Class and he -(although at the head of the Tripos) only in the Second Class. This meant -that he had no hope of a Fellowship, which would have enabled him to go -on with original work in philosophy, and he would have to employ his -time in earning a livelihood. Added to this was the cruel disappointment -to his family and friends.</p> - -<p>Hodgson was one of the most gifted men that Australia has produced. -He had completed his M.A. and LL.D. courses in Melbourne by 1877, -when he was twenty-two years of age, and then, discarding the profession -of the law, left for Cambridge to read Mental and Moral Science. While -still an undergraduate there he had written an article in reply to T. H. -Green, and submitted it to Herbert Spencer, who highly approved of it, -and sent it to the <i>Contemporary</i>. However, as stated above, Hodgson’s -immediate future depended on the result of the examination. (He was at -the time preparing one of the articles he contributed to <i>Mind</i>, and had in -view further original work.)</p> - -<p>When the result of the Tripos appeared, Henry Sidgwick and Venn -who were then Lecturers and by far the best Moral Science men in Cambridge, -came to sympathize with Hodgson, on the unfair result. They -urged him to go to Germany so that he might acquire that perfect -command of the German language which was necessary for his philosophic -work. On learning that he was not in a position to do this, Sidgwick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> -insisted—as he said, “in the interests of philosophy”—on defraying <i>the -whole of the expenses</i> of Hodgson’s residence in Germany. As he insisted -strongly, Hodgson accepted the offer, and went to Jena, armed with a very -flattering letter of introduction from Herbert Spencer to Haeckel.</p> - -<p>Almost immediately after his return from Germany the Society for -Psychical Research was founded, and Hodgson joined it. He came to the -conclusion that the work of this Society was more important than any -other study, while probably it would also be of fundamental assistance -to philosophy. He went out to India in 1884, and thoroughly exposed -Madame Blavatsky and her “Theosophy,” and, from about 1886, devoted -the rest of his life to Psychical Research. Although maintaining his -reading and his intimacy with Henry Sidgwick, William James, and others, -his services practically became lost to philosophy. This, however, does -not affect the important fact illustrated by the Tripos incident. We -learn what ineptitude can exist in a great university, and what grave results -must necessarily follow therefrom.</p> - -<p>Although Hodgson was writing under stress of a grievous calamity -(yet with a dauntless heart—see verse on Dedication page), his remarks -on Ancient Ethics are not, in my opinion, exaggerated.</p> - -<p>Herbert Spencer’s remark to Hodgson about examinations may also -be noted.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Prometheus.</i> And thou, O Mother Earth!</div> -<div class="verse indent1"><i>Earth.</i> I hear, I feel</div> -<div class="verse">Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down</div> -<div class="verse">Even to the adamantine central gloom</div> -<div class="verse">Along these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy,</div> -<div class="verse">And, through my withered, old, and icy frame</div> -<div class="verse">The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down</div> -<div class="verse">Circling. Henceforth the many children fair</div> -<div class="verse">Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,</div> -<div class="verse">And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,</div> -<div class="verse">And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,</div> -<div class="verse">Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom</div> -<div class="verse">Draining the poison of despair, shall take</div> -<div class="verse">And interchange sweet nutriment.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Prometheus Unbound</i>, III, 3).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In Shelley’s great poem, Prometheus is not merely the Titan who, -having stolen fire from heaven to benefit man, was chained to a pillar while -an eagle tore at his vitals, he is the spirit of humanity. Man has (through -superstition) given the god, Zeus, great powers which he uses to enslave -and oppress man’s own mind and body. Ultimately the god is overthrown, -Prometheus, the spirit of man, is released, and the world enters upon its -progress towards perfection.</p> - -<p>This and the following quotations are from a collection of references to -Mother-Earth.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess,</div> -<div class="verse">Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,</div> -<div class="verse">Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won thee!...</div> -<div class="verse">Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement.</div> -<div class="verse">Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold instincts.</div> -<div class="verse">Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their channels;</div> -<div class="verse">Laughed on their shores the wide seas; the yearning ocean swelled upward;</div> -<div class="verse">Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains,</div> -<div class="verse">Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Hymn to the Earth</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>An imitation of Stolberg’s <i>Hymne an die Erde</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">From my wings are shaken the dews that waken</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sweet buds every one,</div> -<div class="verse">When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As she dances about the sun.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>The Cloud</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For Nature ever faithful is</div> -<div class="verse">To such as trust her faithfulness.</div> -<div class="verse">When the forest shall mislead me,</div> -<div class="verse">When the night and morning lie,</div> -<div class="verse">When sea and land refuse to feed me,</div> -<div class="verse">’Twill be time enough to die.</div> -<div class="verse">Then will yet my mother yield</div> -<div class="verse">A pillow in her greenest field</div> -<div class="verse">Nor the June flowers scorn to cover</div> -<div class="verse">The clay of their departed lover.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Emerson</span> (<i>Woodnotes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Long have I loved what I behold,</div> -<div class="verse">The night that calms, the day that cheers;</div> -<div class="verse">The common growth of mother-earth</div> -<div class="verse">Suffices me—her tears, her mirth,</div> -<div class="verse">Her humblest mirth and tears.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>Peter Bell</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop</div> -<div class="verse">Into thy mother’s lap.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Milton</span> (<i>Paradise Lost</i>, XI, 535).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SONG OF PROSERPINE.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou from whose immortal bosom</div> -<div class="verse">Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,</div> -<div class="verse">Breathe thine influence most divine</div> -<div class="verse">On thine own child, Proserpine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If with mists of evening dew</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou dost nourish these young flowers</div> -<div class="verse">Till they grow, in scent and hue,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Fairest children of the Hours,</div> -<div class="verse">Breathe thine influence most divine</div> -<div class="verse">On thine own child, Proserpine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, whilst gathering flowers with her playmates -at Enna in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, also called Dis, god of -the dead. (For two-thirds, or, according to later writers, one-half of -each year, she returns to the earth, bringing spring and summer.)</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent6">That fair field</div> -<div class="verse">Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,</div> -<div class="verse">Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis</div> -<div class="verse">Was gathered; which cost Ceres all that pain</div> -<div class="verse">To seek her through the world.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution">(<i>Paradise Lost</i>, IV, 269).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And ... the rich winds blow,</div> -<div class="verse">And ... the waters go,</div> -<div class="verse">And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,</div> -<div class="verse">Bowing their heads in the sunny air....</div> -<div class="verse">All make a music, gentle and strong,</div> -<div class="verse">Bound by the heart into one sweet song;</div> -<div class="verse">And amidst them all, the mother Earth</div> -<div class="verse">Sits with the children of her birth....</div> -<div class="verse">Go forth to her from the dark and the dust</div> -<div class="verse">And weep beside her, if weep thou must;</div> -<div class="verse">If she may not hold thee to her breast,</div> -<div class="verse">Like a weary infant, that cries for rest;</div> -<div class="verse">At least she will press thee to her knee</div> -<div class="verse">And tell a low, sweet tale to thee,</div> -<div class="verse">Till the hue to thy cheek, and the light to thine eye</div> -<div class="verse">Strength to thy limbs, and courage high</div> -<div class="verse">To thy fainting heart return amain.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Phantastes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Hold thee to her breast</i>, give rest in death.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ne deeth, allas; ne wol nat han my life; <span class="linenote">will not take</span></div> -<div class="verse">Thus walke I, lyk a restèlees caityf, <span class="linenote">restless wretch</span></div> -<div class="verse">And on the ground, which is my modres gate, <span class="linenote">mother’s</span></div> -<div class="verse">I knokke with my staf, both erly and late,</div> -<div class="verse">And seyè, “levè moder, leet me in! <span class="linenote">say, “Dear mother</span></div> -<div class="verse">Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin! <span class="linenote">waste away”</span></div> -<div class="verse">Allas! whan shul my bonès be at reste?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Chaucer</span> (1340-1400) (<i>The Pardoner’s Tale</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">Like a shadow thrown</div> -<div class="verse">Softly and lightly from a passing cloud,</div> -<div class="verse">Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay</div> -<div class="verse">For noontide solace on the summer grass,</div> -<div class="verse">The warm lap of his mother earth.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>Excursion</i> VII, 286).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">And O green bounteous Earth!</div> -<div class="verse">Bacchante Mother! stern to those</div> -<div class="verse">Who live not in thy heart of mirth;</div> -<div class="verse">Death shall I shrink from, loving thee?</div> -<div class="verse">Into the breast that gives the rose</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Shall I with shuddering fall?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. Meredith</span> (<i>Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From the deep cool bed of the river:</div> -<div class="verse">The limpid water turbidly ran,</div> -<div class="verse">And the broken lilies a-dying lay,</div> -<div class="verse">And the dragon-fly had fled away,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ere he brought it out of the river.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">High on the shore sat the great god Pan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">While turbidly flowed the river;</div> -<div class="verse">And hacked and hewed as a great god can,</div> -<div class="verse">With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,</div> -<div class="verse">Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To prove it fresh from the river....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan,</div> -<div class="verse">(Laughed while he sat by the river,)</div> -<div class="verse">“The only way, since gods began</div> -<div class="verse">To make sweet music, they could succeed.”</div> -<div class="verse">Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He blew in power by the river.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Piercing sweet by the river!</div> -<div class="verse">Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!</div> -<div class="verse">The sun on the hill forgot to die,</div> -<div class="verse">And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Came back to dream on the river.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To laugh as he sits by the river,</div> -<div class="verse">Making a poet out of a man:</div> -<div class="verse">The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—</div> -<div class="verse">For the reed which grows nevermore again</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As a reed with the reeds in the river.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There is little merit in inventing a happy idea, or attractive -situation, so long as it is only the author’s voice which we hear. -As a being whom we have called into life by magic arts, as soon -as it has received existence, acts independently of the master’s -impulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and -relates what they do and say. Such creation is poetry in the -literal sense of the term, and its possibility is an unfathomable -enigma. The gushing fullness of speech belongs to the poet, -and it flows from the lips of each of his magic beings in the -thoughts and words peculiar to its nature.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Niebuhr</span> (<i>Letters</i>, &c., Vol. III, 196).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according -to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will -compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for -the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible -influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; -this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower -which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious -portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its -departure. Could this influence be durable in its original -purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the -results; but, when composition begins, inspiration is already -on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been -communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the -original conceptions of the poet.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>A Defence of Poetry</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">Who would loose,</div> -<div class="verse">Though full of pain, this intellectual being,</div> -<div class="verse">Those thoughts that wander through eternity,</div> -<div class="verse">To perish rather, swallowed up and lost</div> -<div class="verse">In the wide womb of uncreated night?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Milton</span> (<i>Paradise Lost</i> ii., 146)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Loose”—by committing suicide.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When the white block of marble shines so solid and so costly, -who remembers that it was once made up of decaying shell -and rotting bones and millions of dying insect-lives, pressed -to ashes ere the rare stone was?</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Chandos</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, -scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful—except -to the future. And for the future, who cares—save -those madmen themselves?</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>... The gods that most of all have pity on man, the gods -of the Night and of the Grave.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Our eyes are set to the light, but our feet are fixed in the mire.</p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Folle-Farine</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“If the cucumber be bitter, throw it away,” says Antoninus: -do the same with a thought.... There is no cucumber -so heavy that one cannot throw it over some wall.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Ouida</span> (<i>Tricotrin</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Antoninus, 120-180 A.D., the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, -usually known by his first two names Marcus Aurelius, is the author of the -well-known <i>Meditations</i>. The quotation is from Bk. VIII., “The gourd -is bitter; drop it, then! There are brambles in the path; then turn aside! -It is enough. Do not go on to argue, Why pray have these things a place -in the world?” etc.</p> - -<p>These quotations from Ouida may serve to illustrate the saying of -Pliny the Elder, “No book is so bad but some good may be got out of it” -(Pliny’s Letters, III., 10)—a saying which was no doubt true until printing -let loose on the world such a multitude of worthless writers.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WHEN WE ALL ARE ASLEEP</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When He returns, and finds the World so drear—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All sleeping,—young and old, unfair and fair,</div> -<div class="verse">Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Awaken!” or for pity’s sake forbear,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Saying, “How shall I meet their frozen stare</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Of wonder, and their eyes so full of fear?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How shall I comfort them in their despair,</div> -<div class="verse">If they cry out, ‘Too late! let us sleep here’?”</div> -<div class="verse">Perchance He will not wake us up, but when</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He sees us look so happy in our rest,</div> -<div class="verse">Will murmur, “Poor dead women and dead men!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest.</div> -<div class="verse">Wherefore awake them into life again?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Let them sleep on untroubled—it is best.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">CHORUS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Before the beginning of years</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There came to the making of man</div> -<div class="verse">Time, with a gift of tears;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Grief, with a glass that ran;</div> -<div class="verse">Pleasure, with pain for leaven;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Summer, with flowers that fell;</div> -<div class="verse">Remembrance fallen from heaven,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And madness risen from hell;</div> -<div class="verse">Strength without hands to smite;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Love that endures for a breath;</div> -<div class="verse">Night, the shadow of light,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And life, the shadow of death.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And the high gods took in hand</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Fire, and the falling of tears,</div> -<div class="verse">And a measure of sliding sand</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From under the feet of the years;</div> -<div class="verse">And froth and drift of the sea;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And dust of the labouring earth;</div> -<div class="verse">And bodies of things to be</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the houses of death and of birth;</div> -<div class="verse">And wrought with weeping and laughter,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And fashioned with loathing and love,</div> -<div class="verse">With life before and after</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And death beneath and above,</div> -<div class="verse">For a day and a night and a morrow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That his strength might endure for a span</div> -<div class="verse">With travail and heavy sorrow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The holy spirit of man.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> -<div class="verse">From the winds of the north and the south</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They gathered as unto strife;</div> -<div class="verse">They breathed upon his mouth,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They filled his body with life;</div> -<div class="verse">Eyesight and speech they wrought</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For the veils of the soul therein,</div> -<div class="verse">A time for labour and thought,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A time to serve and to sin;</div> -<div class="verse">They gave him light in his ways,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And love, and a space for delight,</div> -<div class="verse">And beauty and length of days,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And night, and sleep in the night.</div> -<div class="verse">His speech is a burning fire;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With his lips he travaileth;</div> -<div class="verse">In his heart is a blind desire,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In his eyes foreknowledge of death;</div> -<div class="verse">He weaves, and is clothed with derision;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sows, and he shall not reap;</div> -<div class="verse">His life is a watch or a vision</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Between a sleep and a sleep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>Atalanta in Calydon</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She (the ship of Odysseus) came to the limits of the world, -to the deep flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city -of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does -the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he -climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward -from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable -mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took -out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the -stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had -declared to us.</p> - -<p>There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew -my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit -in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering -to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine -and for the third time with water.... When I had besought -the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and -cut their throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth, -and lo, the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them -from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men -of many and evil days, and tender maidens with griefs yet fresh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> -at heart; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod -spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them. -And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about -the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me.... -I drew the sharp sword from my thigh and sat there, suffering -not the strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood, -ere I had word of Teiresias....</p> - -<p>Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the -daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive -when I departed for sacred Ilios. At the sight of her I wept, -and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore -grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had -word of Teiresias.</p> - -<p>Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden sceptre -in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me: “Son of Laertes -of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what seekest -thou <i>now</i>, wretched man—wherefore hast thou left the sunlight -and come hither to behold the dead and a land desolate of joy? -Nay, hold off from the ditch and draw back thy sharp sword, -that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.” So spake he, -and I put up my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and -when he had drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble -seer speak unto me....</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Odyssey</span>, Bk. XI. (<i>Butcher & Lang’s translation</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias -from the under-world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits, -including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted—and -the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.</p> - -<p>What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks -this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. It will -be observed that the dead live in a dark land, “desolate of joy.”</p> - -<p>To the little-travelled Greeks the ocean was a <i>river</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For—see your cellarage!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There are forty barrels with Shakespeare’s brand</div> -<div class="verse">Some five or six are abroach: the rest</div> -<div class="verse">Stand spigoted, fauceted. Try and test</div> -<div class="verse">What yourselves call best of the very best!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How comes it that still untouched they stand?</div> -<div class="verse">Why don’t you try tap, advance a stage</div> -<div class="verse">With the rest in cellarage?</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> -<div class="verse">For—see your cellarage!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There are four big butts of Milton’s brew,</div> -<div class="verse">How comes it you make old drips and drops</div> -<div class="verse">Do duty, and there devotion stops?</div> -<div class="verse">Leave such an abyss of malt and hops</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Embellied in butts which bungs still glue?</div> -<div class="verse">You hate your bard! A fig for your rage!</div> -<div class="verse">Free him from cellarage!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Epilogue to Pacchiarotto and other Poems</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though the seasons of man full of losses</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Make empty the years full of youth,</div> -<div class="verse">If but one thing be constant in crosses,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Change lays not her hand upon truth;</div> -<div class="verse">Hopes die, and their tombs are for token</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That the grief as the joy of them ends</div> -<div class="verse">Ere time that breaks all men has broken</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The faith between friends.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though the many lights dwindle to one light,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There is help if the heaven has one;</div> -<div class="verse">Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the earth dispossessed of the sun,</div> -<div class="verse">They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When, refreshed as a bride and set free,</div> -<div class="verse">With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Night sinks on the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>Dedication, 1865</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is hardly possible for a younger generation to realize the almost -intoxicating effect produced upon us by Swinburne’s new melodies. -Although the <i>Poems and Ballads</i> were largely erotic, the curious fact is -that we were too much carried away by the beauty and swing of his verse -to trouble about the sensual element in it. That element was in itself an -<i>artificial</i> production and not a reflection of the poet’s own emotions, for -he was free from sensuality. It was with us more a question of <i>music</i>. -Swinburne himself preferred a musical word or line to one that would more -aptly express his meaning; and in the “Dedication,” from which the -above verses are quoted, several lines will not bear analysis. However, -this was one of our favourites among his poems.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O daughters of dreams and of stories</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That life is not wearied of yet,</div> -<div class="verse">Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Félise and Yolande and Juliette,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When sleep, that is true or that seems,</div> -<div class="verse">Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O daughters of dreams?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They are past as a slumber that passes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As the dew of a dawn of old time;</div> -<div class="verse">More frail than the shadows on glasses,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.</div> -<div class="verse">As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When their hollows are full of the night,</div> -<div class="verse">So the birds that flew singing to me-ward</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Recede out of sight.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He asks that his wild “storm-birds of passion” may find a home in -our calmer world:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Will you spare not a space for them there</div> -<div class="verse">Made green with the running of rivers</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And gracious with temperate air;</div> -<div class="verse">In the fields and the turreted cities,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That cover from sunshine and rain</div> -<div class="verse">Fair passions and bountiful pities</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And loves without stain?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In a land of clear colours and stories,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In a region of shadowless hours,</div> -<div class="verse">Where earth has a garment of glories</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And a murmur of musical flowers;</div> -<div class="verse">In woods where the spring half uncovers</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The flush of her amorous face,</div> -<div class="verse">By the waters that listen for lovers</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For these is there place?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though the world of your hands be more gracious</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And lovelier in lordship of things</div> -<div class="verse">Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Warm heaven of her imminent wings,</div> -<div class="verse">Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For the love of old loves and lost times;</div> -<div class="verse">And receive in your palace of painting</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This revel of rhymes.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Then come the final verses quoted above. These are somewhat detached -in meaning from the rest, and form a sort of <i>Envoi</i>: “Whatever -changes or passes, there is always some beautiful thing that survives.”</p> - -<p>As might be expected Swinburne was much parodied (and indeed in -the <i>Heptalogia</i> and in the poems lately published he parodied himself). -The above poem has been cleverly parodied by a lawyer, Sir Frederick -Pollock. (Although parodies go as far back as the Fifth Century B.C.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> -I know of no other lawyer who, <i>qua</i> lawyer, has successfully taken a hand -in the game.) In his parody Pollock’s subject was the great changes effected -by the Judicature Act, when the old Courts of Common Law, Chancery, -and others were consolidated into one Supreme Court, and the various -classes of business assigned to different “Divisions.” Also owing to changes -in procedure, much of the old technical learning became obsolete. His -last verse is as follows (compare with the second verse quoted above):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To divers Divisions of one,</div> -<div class="verse">And no fire from your face may rekindle</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The light of old learning undone,</div> -<div class="verse">We have suitors and briefs for our payment,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas,</div> -<div class="verse">We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Not sinking the fees.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Wulf died, as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved -him well, as she loved all righteous and noble souls, had succeeded -once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself -acted as one of his sponsors; and the old warrior was in the act -of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop -and asked, ‘Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors?’ -“In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from -the font, and threw his bearskin cloak around him—“He would -prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people.” And -so he died unbaptized, and went to his own place.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley</span> (<i>Hypatia</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This story appears in several old chronicles (<i>Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. X, -33</i>), but the name should be Radbod. He was Duke or Chief of the Frisians, -and the episode probably occurred in Heligoland, from which island he -ruled his people.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one -of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is -disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found -that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am -always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> -I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord -and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old -devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no -questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts -are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (Essay on <i>Experience</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The bee draws forth from fruit and flower</div> -<div class="verse">Sweet dews, that swell his golden dower;</div> -<div class="verse">But never injures by his kiss</div> -<div class="verse">Those who have made him rich in bliss.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The moth, though tortured by the flame,</div> -<div class="verse">Still hovers round and loves the same:</div> -<div class="verse">Nor is his fond attachment less:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Alas!” he whispers, “can it be,</div> -<div class="verse">Spite of my ceaseless tenderness,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That I am doomed to death by thee?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Azy Eddin Elmogadessi</span> (<i>L. S. Costello’s translation</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A pine-tree stands all lonely</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On a northern hill-top bare,</div> -<div class="verse">And, wrapped in its snowy mantle,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It slumbers peacefully there.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Its dreams are of a palm-tree,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Far-off in the morning land,</div> -<div class="verse">Which in lone silence sorrows</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On a burning, rocky strand.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Heinrich Heine</span> (1797-1856)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">Many a time</div> -<div class="verse">At evening, when the earliest stars began</div> -<div class="verse">To move along the edges of the hills,</div> -<div class="verse">Rising or setting, would he stand alone</div> -<div class="verse">Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> -<div class="verse">... Then in that silence, while he hung</div> -<div class="verse">Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise</div> -<div class="verse">Has carried far into his heart the voice</div> -<div class="verse">Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene</div> -<div class="verse">Would enter unawares into his mind,</div> -<div class="verse">With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,</div> -<div class="verse">Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received</div> -<div class="verse">Into the bosom of the steady lake.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Prelude</i>, Bk. V).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE -GRINDER</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">FRIEND OF HUMANITY.</div> -<div class="verse">“Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going?</div> -<div class="verse">Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order;</div> -<div class="verse">Bleak blows the blast—your hat has got a hole in’t,</div> -<div class="verse indent9">So have your breeches!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,</div> -<div class="verse">Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road,</div> -<div class="verse">what hard work ’tis crying all day ‘Knives and</div> -<div class="verse indent9">Scissors to grind O!’”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?</div> -<div class="verse">Did some rich man tyrannically use you?</div> -<div class="verse">Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?</div> -<div class="verse indent9">Or the attorney?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or</div> -<div class="verse">Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?</div> -<div class="verse">Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little</div> -<div class="verse indent9">All in a lawsuit?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?)</div> -<div class="verse">Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,</div> -<div class="verse">Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your</div> -<div class="verse indent9">Pitiful story.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">KNIFE-GRINDER.</div> -<div class="verse">“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,</div> -<div class="verse">Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,</div> -<div class="verse">This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were</div> -<div class="verse indent9">Torn in a scuffle.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Constables came up, for to take me into</div> -<div class="verse">Custody; they took me before the justice;</div> -<div class="verse">Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-</div> -<div class="verse indent9">-stocks for a vagrant.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I should be glad to drink your Honour’s health in</div> -<div class="verse">A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;</div> -<div class="verse">But for my part, I never love to meddle</div> -<div class="verse indent9">With politics, sir.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="stanza-title">FRIEND OF HUMANITY.</div> -<div class="verse">“<i>I</i> give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn’d first—</div> -<div class="verse">Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance—</div> -<div class="verse">Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,</div> -<div class="verse indent9">Spiritless outcast!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution">(<i>Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel,<br /> -and exit in a transport of Republican<br /> -enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.</i>)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Canning</span> (<i>The Anti-Jacobin</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Written in Sapphics and said to be a parody of a poem of Southey’s, -which was afterwards suppressed.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I loved him, but my reason bade prefer</div> -<div class="verse">Duty to love, reject the tempter’s bribe</div> -<div class="verse">Of rose and lily when each path diverged,</div> -<div class="verse">And either I must pace to life’s far end</div> -<div class="verse">As love should lead me, or, as duty urged,</div> -<div class="verse">Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend....</div> -<div class="verse">But deep within my heart of hearts there hid</div> -<div class="verse">Ever the confidence, amends for all,</div> -<div class="verse">That heaven repairs what wrong earth’s journey did,</div> -<div class="verse">When love from life-long exile comes at call.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Bifurcation</i>, 1876)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The lady prefers Duty to Love, but she will remain constant to her -lover, and reunion with him in heaven will make amends for all. (In the -remainder of the poem Browning puts the case of the lover who, although -deserted, is expected to remain constant through life—and who falls. The -lady had disobeyed Love, because of the hardship and trouble that would -follow, and Browning, whose own married life had been a most happy one, -says this was no excuse.)</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We are scratched, or we are bitten</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By the pets to whom we cling;</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, my Love she is a kitten,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And my heart’s a ball of string.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent4">Some man of quality</div> -<div class="verse">Who—breathing musk from lace-work and brocade,</div> -<div class="verse">His solitaire amid the flow of frill,</div> -<div class="verse">Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back,</div> -<div class="verse">And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist.—</div> -<div class="verse">Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase,</div> -<div class="verse">’Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon</div> -<div class="verse">Where mirrors multiply the girandole.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Ring and the Book, I</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This and the next five quotations are word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Oh, what are you waiting for here, young man?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What are you looking for over the bridge?”</div> -<div class="verse">A little straw hat with streaming blue ribbons;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">—And here it comes dancing over the bridge!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span> (B.V.) (<i>Sunday up the River</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Down in yonder greenè field</div> -<div class="verse">There lies a knight slain under his shield;</div> -<div class="verse">His hounds they lie down at his feet,</div> -<div class="verse">So well do they their master keep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span> (<i>The Three Ravens</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When we cam’ in by Glasgow toun,</div> -<div class="verse">We were a comely sight to see;</div> -<div class="verse">My Love was clad in the black velvet,</div> -<div class="verse">And I mysel’ in cramasie. <span class="linenote">crimson</span></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span> (<i>O waly, waly, up the bank</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They see the Heroes</div> -<div class="verse">Sitting in the dark ship</div> -<div class="verse">On the foamless, long-heaving,</div> -<div class="verse">Violet sea,</div> -<div class="verse">At sunset nearing</div> -<div class="verse">The Happy Islands.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">M. Arnold</span> (<i>The Strayed Reveller</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Like one, that on a lonesome road</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Doth walk in fear and dread,</div> -<div class="verse">And having once turned round, walks on</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And turns no more his head;</div> -<div class="verse">Because he knows a frightful fiend</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Doth close behind him tread.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Coleridge</span> (<i>The Ancient Mariner</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The above are from a series of word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom; and certainly -there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise -man—not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bacon.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cunning, being the ape of wisdom, is the most distant from -it that can be. And as an ape for the likeness it has to a man—wanting -what really should make him so—is by so much the uglier, -cunning is only the want of understanding, which, because it -cannot compass its ends by direct ways, would do it by a trick -and circumvention.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Locke</span> (<i>Some Thoughts Concerning Education</i>, 1693).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A rogue is a roundabout fool; a fool <i>in circumbendibus</i>.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown -men can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal -thunder.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Mill on the Floss</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Let its teaching (the teaching of scientific and other books -of information, the “literature of knowledge”) be even -partially revised, let it be expanded, nay, even let its teaching -be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. -Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of power (poetry -and what is generally known as <i>literature</i>), surviving at all, -survive as finished and unalterable amongst men.... The -Iliad, the Prometheus of Æschylus—the Othello or King Lear—the -Hamlet or Macbeth—and the Paradise Lost, are triumphant -for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or -can be taught to speak. They never <i>can</i> transmigrate into new -incarnations. To reproduce <i>these</i> in new forms, or variations, even -if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. -A good steam engine is properly superseded by a better. But -one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a -statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">De Quincey</span> (<i>Alexander Pope</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>De Quincey’s division of literature into “literature of power” and -“literature of knowledge” still remains a useful classification.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is -in him.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sydney Smith.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">How brew the brave drink, Life?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Take of the herb hight morning joy,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Take of the herb hight evening rest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Pour in pain, lest bliss should cloy,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Shake in sin to give it zest—</div> -<div class="verse">Then down with the brave drink, Life!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I had this attributed to Robert Burton, but cannot find it in the -<i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>. It may possibly be from Richard Brathwaite, -whose works I think were at one time attributed to Burton; but I have -no opportunity of consulting them.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good work, -therefore, I can do or show to any fellow creature, let me do it -now! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this -way again.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William Penn.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I find that there has been much discussion in <i>Notes and Queries</i> and -elsewhere as to the origin of this quotation, and it is now usually attributed -to the French-American Quaker, Stephen Grellet. As, however, Bartlett’s -<i>Familiar Quotations</i> gives “I shall not pass this way again” as a favourite -saying of William Penn’s, it seems more reasonable to consider him the -author of the above.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Youth is a blunder, Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Disraeli</span> (<i>Coningsby</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple -pie. Just then, a great she-bear coming down the street poked -its nose into the shop-window. “What! no soap?” So -he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And -there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, -and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the -little button on top. So they all set to playing Catch-who-catch-can, -till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Samuel Foote</span>, 1720-1777.</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Charles Macklin (1699-1797), actor and playwright, said in a lecture -on oratory that by practice he had brought his memory to such perfection -that he could learn anything by rote on once hearing or reading it. Foote -(a more important dramatist and actor) wrote out the above and handed -it up to Macklin to read and then repeat from memory! The passage was -very familiar to us from Miss Edgeworth’s <i>Harry and Lucy</i>; and also from -<i>Verdant Green</i>, by Cuthbert Bede (Edward Bradley) where it was set in -the bogus examination paper “To be turned into Latin after the manner -of the Animals of Tacitus.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">You feel o’er you stealing</div> -<div class="verse">The old familiar, warm, champagny, brandy-punchy, feeling.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>Old College Rooms</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat</div> -<div class="verse">One’s self.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">P. J. Bailey</span> (<i>Festus</i>, “<i>Anywhere</i>”).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, -and should be regarded as their most serious actions.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Montaigne.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable -to man; so that tops and marbles reappear in their -due season, regular like the sun and moon; and the harmless -art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the Roman Empire and -the rise of the United States.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. L. Stevenson</span> (<i>The Lantern-Bearers</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Says Chloe, “Though tears it may cost,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It is time we should part, my dear Sue;</div> -<div class="verse">For <i>your</i> character’s totally lost,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And <i>I’ve</i> not sufficient for two!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was taken from a poor collection of epigrams by C. S. Carey -(1872), no author being given. Andrew Lang quoted it in his Presidential -address to the Society for Psychical Research, and it was duly inscribed -in the Proceedings. I, with some diffidence, follow an illustrious example.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I cannot say, in Eastern style,</div> -<div class="verse">Where’er she treads the pansy blows;</div> -<div class="verse">Nor call her eyes twin-stars, her smile</div> -<div class="verse">A sunbeam, and her mouth a rose.</div> -<div class="verse">Nor can I, as your bridegrooms do,</div> -<div class="verse">Talk of my raptures. Oh, how sore</div> -<div class="verse">The fond romance of twenty-two</div> -<div class="verse">Is parodied ere thirty-four!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To-night I shake hands with the past,—</div> -<div class="verse">Familiar years, adieu, adieu!</div> -<div class="verse">An unknown door is open cast,</div> -<div class="verse">An empty future wide and new</div> -<div class="verse">Stands waiting. O ye naked rooms,</div> -<div class="verse">Void, desolate, without a charm,</div> -<div class="verse">Will Love’s smile chase your lonely glooms,</div> -<div class="verse">And drape your walls, and make them warm?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (1830-1867) (<i>The Night before the Wedding</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In my notes, this strange poem is stated to have been actually written -by Smith on the night before his wedding; but it is difficult to believe -this. In the poem, the poet sits until dawn on his wedding-eve thinking -of the “long-lost passions of his youth,” and comparing them with his -calm and unimpassioned love, “pale blossom of the snow,” for the bride -of the morrow. He even fears that his wife’s tenderness will keep alive -the memories of his youthful loves:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It may be that your loving wiles</div> -<div class="verse">Will call a sigh from far-off years;</div> -<div class="verse">It may be that your happiest smiles</div> -<div class="verse">Will brim my eyes with hopeless tears;</div> -<div class="verse">It may be that my sleeping breath</div> -<div class="verse">Will shake with painful visions wrung;</div> -<div class="verse">And, in the awful trance of death,</div> -<div class="verse">A stranger’s name be on my tongue.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This is sufficiently gruesome. However he finally comes to the conclusion -(although it seems dragged in to save a very difficult situation) that his -love for his future bride may become more satisfactory to him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For, as the dawning sweet and fast</div> -<div class="verse">Through all the heaven spreads and flows,</div> -<div class="verse">Within life’s discord rude and vast</div> -<div class="verse">Love’s subtle music grows and grows.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My love, pale blossom of the snow,</div> -<div class="verse">Has pierced earth, wet with wintry showers—</div> -<div class="verse">O may it drink the sun, and blow,</div> -<div class="verse">And be followed by all the year of flowers!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p> - -<p>Smith, with P. J. Bailey, Sydney Dobell and others, belonged to what -was called the “Spasmodic” school which the <i>Britannica</i> says is “now -fallen into oblivion.” I do not know what this means. Smith, Bailey, -and Dobell no doubt wrote extravagantly, but they have all written good -verses. Take for example the following from Smith’s first poem, “<i>A -Life Drama</i>,” written at twenty-two years of age:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All things have something more than barren use;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There is a scent upon the brier,</div> -<div class="verse">A tremulous splendour in the autumn dews,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Cold morns are fringed with fire;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The clodded earth goes up in sweet-breath’d flowers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In music dies poor human speech,</div> -<div class="verse">And into beauty blow those hearts of ours,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When Love is born in each.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Smith was also a charming essayist. See quotations elsewhere.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And so on to the end (and the end draws nearer)</div> -<div class="verse">When our souls may be freer, our senses clearer,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">(’Tis an old-world creed which is nigh forgot),</div> -<div class="verse">When the eyes of the sleepers may waken in wonder,</div> -<div class="verse">And hearts may be joined that were riven asunder,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And Time and Love shall be merged—in what?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Soft music came to mine ear. It was like the rising breeze, -that whirls, at first, the thistle’s beard; then flies, dark-shadowy, -over the grass. It was the maid of Füarfed wild: she raised the -nightly song; for she knew that my soul was a stream, that flowed -at pleasant sounds.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Macpherson</span> (1736-1796).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Macpherson alleged that he had discovered poems by the Gaelic bard, -Ossian, who lived in the Third Century, and he published translations of -them. Actually the poems were his own, but they were beautiful and had -a considerable effect upon literature.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I dare not guess: but in this life</div> -<div class="verse">Of error, ignorance, and strife,</div> -<div class="verse">Where nothing is, but all things seem,</div> -<div class="verse">And we the shadows of the dream.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It is a modest creed, and yet</div> -<div class="verse">Pleasant if one considers it,</div> -<div class="verse">To own that death itself must be,</div> -<div class="verse">Like all the rest, a mockery.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>The Sensitive Plant</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I should like to make every man, woman, and child discontented -with themselves, even as I am discontented with myself. I should -like to waken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, -their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, -first of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, -effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented -with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble -shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Kingsley</span> (<i>The Science of Health</i>, 1872).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The origin of the expression “divine discontent.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He first deceas’d; she for a little tried</div> -<div class="verse">To live without him: liked it not, and died.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Henry Wotton</span> (<i>Reliquiae Wottonianae</i>, 1685).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Is the yellow bird dead?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Lay your dear little head</div> -<div class="verse">Close, close to my heart, and weep, precious one, there,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">While your beautiful hair</div> -<div class="verse">On my bosom lies light, like a sun-lighted cloud;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">No, you need not keep still,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You may sob as you will;</div> -<div class="verse">There is some little comfort in crying aloud.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">But the days they must come,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When your grief will be dumb;</div> -<div class="verse">Grown women like me must take care how they cry.</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You will learn by and by</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis a womanly art to hide pain out of sight,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To look round with a smile,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Though your heart aches the while</div> -<div class="verse">And to keep back your tears till you’ve blown out the light.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Marian Douglas</span> (<i>Picture Poems for Young Folks</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>My Lord St. Albans said that wise nature did never put her -precious jewels into a garret four stories high; and, therefore, -that exceeding tall men had ever empty heads.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bacon</span> (<i>Apothegms</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That low man seeks a little thing to do,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sees it and does it:</div> -<div class="verse">This high man, with a great thing to pursue,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dies ere he knows it.</div> -<div class="verse">That low man goes on adding one to one,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His hundred’s soon hit:</div> -<div class="verse">This high man, aiming at a million.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Misses a unit.</div> -<div class="verse">That, has the world here—should he need the next,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Let the world mind him!</div> -<div class="verse">This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Seeking shall find Him.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>A Grammarian’s Funeral</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See <i>The Inn Album</i> (IV) where Browning makes his heroine say:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Better have failed in the high aim, as I,</div> -<div class="verse">Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed</div> -<div class="verse">As, God be thanked, I do not!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There is a secret belief among some men that God is displeased -with man’s happiness; and in consequence they slink about -creation, ashamed and afraid to enjoy anything.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir A. Helps</span> (<i>Companions of my Solitude</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>O eloquent, just, and mightie Death! whom none could advise, -thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; -and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out -of the world and despised. Thou hast drawne together all the -farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition -of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, <i>Hic -jacet!</i></p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Raleigh</span> (<i>Historie of the World</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A REQUIEM</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou hast lived in pain and woe,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou hast lived in grief and fear;</div> -<div class="verse">Now thine heart can dread no blow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Now thine eyes can shed no tear:</div> -<div class="verse">Storms round us shall beat and rave;</div> -<div class="verse">Thou art sheltered in the grave.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou for long, long years hast borne,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Bleeding through Life’s wilderness,</div> -<div class="verse">Heavy loss and wounding scorn;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Now thine heart is burdenless:</div> -<div class="verse">Vainly rest for ours we crave;</div> -<div class="verse">Thine is quiet in the grave.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Thomson</span> (“B.V.”).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">AMPHIBIAN</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The fancy I had to-day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Fancy which turned a fear!</div> -<div class="verse">I swam far out in the bay,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Since waves laughed warm and clear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I lay and looked at the sun,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The noon-sun looked at me:</div> -<div class="verse">Between us two, no one</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Live creature, that I could see.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yes! There came floating by</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Me, who lay floating too,</div> -<div class="verse">Such a strange butterfly!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Creature as dear as new:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Because the membraned wings</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So wonderful, so wide,</div> -<div class="verse">So sun-suffused, were things</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like soul and nought beside....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What if a certain soul</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which early slipped its sheath,</div> -<div class="verse">And has for its home the whole</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of heaven, thus look beneath.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thus watch one who, in the world,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But lives and likes life’s way,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor wishes the wings unfurled</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That sleep in the worm, they say?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But sometimes when the weather</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is blue, and warm waves tempt</div> -<div class="verse">To free oneself of tether,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And try a life exempt</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">From worldly noise and dust,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the sphere which overbrims</div> -<div class="verse">With passion and thought,—why, just</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unable to fly, one swims!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Emancipate through passion</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And thought, with sea for sky,</div> -<div class="verse">We substitute, in a fashion,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For heaven—poetry:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Which sea, to all intent,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gives flesh such noon-disport</div> -<div class="verse">As a finer element</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Affords the spirit sort.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Whatever they are, we seem:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Imagine the thing they know;</div> -<div class="verse">All deeds they do, we dream;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Can heaven be else but so?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And meantime, yonder streak</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Meets the horizon’s verge;</div> -<div class="verse">That is the land, to seek</div> -<div class="verse indent1">If we tire or dread the surge:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Land the solid and safe—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To welcome again (confess!)</div> -<div class="verse">When, high and dry, we chafe</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The body, and don the dress.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Does she look, pity, wonder</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At one who mimics flight,</div> -<div class="verse">Swims—heaven above, sea under,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yet always earth in sight?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (Prologue to <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is not one of Browning’s best poems, but it is interesting. The -butterfly in the air over the poet swimming is compared to a ‘certain soul,’ -Mrs. Browning, looking down upon him from heaven. The ‘flying,’ free -and entirely released from the earth, is the life of the soul, to which the -poet cannot attain; but during periods of inspiration he lives a life free -of ‘worldly noise and dust,’ which approaches that of the soul. Such -periods of inspiration are likened to ‘swimming’ with the land always -in sight, as compared with the ‘flying’ of the soul in the far-removed -celestial regions. “We substitute, in a fashion, For heaven—poetry.”</p> - -<p><i>Whatever they are we seem</i>: during inspiration the poet’s life is a reflex -of or approach to the heavenly life.</p> - -<p><i>Amphibian</i>, because the poet is of earth and yet can “swim” in the -sea of imagination. Charles Lamb speaks of his charming Child Angel, -half-angel, half-human, as Amphibium. Browning’s poem may have been -an unconscious development of a passage from Sir Thomas Browne’s -<i>Religio Medici</i>:—“Thus is Man that great and true <i>Amphibium</i>, whose -nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers elements, -but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to -sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.”</p> - -<p>The sixth and last verses are interesting. Browning, while in the -world “Both lives and likes life’s way,” nor is anxious that his “wings” -should be “unfurled”; and he wonders how his angel-wife regards him, -content with his “mimic flight.”—<a href="#Page_114">See p. 114.</a></p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We work so hard, we age so soon,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We live so swiftly, one and all,</div> -<div class="verse">That ere our day be fairly noon,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The shadows eastward seem to fall.</div> -<div class="verse">Some tender light may gild them yet,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As yet, ’tis not so <i>very</i> cold,</div> -<div class="verse">And, on the whole, I <i>won’t</i> regret</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My slender chance of growing old.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. J. Prowse</span> (1836-1870) (<i>My Lost Old Age</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Prowse wrote excellent verses before he was 20 and he died at 34.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Calm Soul of all things! make it mine</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To feel, amid the city’s jar,</div> -<div class="verse">That there abides a peace of thine</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Man did not make, and cannot mar.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold</span> (<i>Lines written in Kensington Gardens</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A woman needs to be wooed long after she is won, and the -husband who ceases to court his wife is courting disaster.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">TO A GIPSY CHILD BY THE SEASHORE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Who taught this pleading to unpractised eyes?</div> -<div class="verse">Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom?</div> -<div class="verse">Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?</div> -<div class="verse">Who mass’d, round that slight brow, these clouds of doom?...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known:</div> -<div class="verse">Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.</div> -<div class="verse">Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own:</div> -<div class="verse">Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What mood wears like complexion to thy woe?</div> -<div class="verse">His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,</div> -<div class="verse">Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below?</div> -<div class="verse">—Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Some exile’s, mindful how the past was glad?</div> -<div class="verse">Some angel’s, in an alien planet born?</div> -<div class="verse">—No exile’s dream was ever half so sad,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh</div> -<div class="verse">Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore;</div> -<div class="verse">But in disdainful silence turn away,</div> -<div class="verse">Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope,</div> -<div class="verse">Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give</div> -<div class="verse">—Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,</div> -<div class="verse">Forseen thy harvest, yet proceed’st to live....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star,</div> -<div class="verse">Match that funereal aspect with her pall,</div> -<div class="verse">I think, thou wilt have fathom’d life too far,</div> -<div class="verse">Have known too much—or else forgotten all.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil</div> -<div class="verse">Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps;</div> -<div class="verse">Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale</div> -<div class="verse">Of grief, and eased us with a thousand sleeps.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,</div> -<div class="verse">Not daily labour’s dull, Lethaean spring,</div> -<div class="verse">Oblivion in lost angels can infuse</div> -<div class="verse">Of the soil’d glory, and the trailing wing;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may.</div> -<div class="verse">In the throng’d fields where winning comes by strife;</div> -<div class="verse">And though the just sun gild, as mortals pray,</div> -<div class="verse">Some reaches of thy storm-vext stream of life; ...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Once, ere thy day go down, thou shalt discern,</div> -<div class="verse">Oh once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain!</div> -<div class="verse">Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return,</div> -<div class="verse">And wear this majesty of grief again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Animula, vagula, blandula.</div> -<div class="verse">Hospes, comesque corporis,</div> -<div class="verse">Quae nunc abibis in loca,</div> -<div class="verse">Pallidula, frigida, nudula;</div> -<div class="verse">Nec, ut soles, dabis joca!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Spartianus</span> (<i>Life of Hadrian</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>These lines, put into the mouth of the dying Emperor, have been -translated by Vaughan, Prior, Byron and others. Mr. Clodd (<i>The -Question—If a Man Die</i>) gives this version, without naming the -translator:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Soul of mine, thou fleeting, clinging thing,</div> -<div class="verse">Long my body’s mate and guest,</div> -<div class="verse">Ah! now whither wilt thou wing,</div> -<div class="verse">Pallid, naked, shivering,</div> -<div class="verse">Never more to speak and jest.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In all these versions <i>pallidula</i>, etc., are applied to <i>animula</i>, but, as -Mr. Alfred S. West points out to me, they appear to be epithets of <i>loca</i> -thus:—“Fleeting, winsome soul, my body’s guest and comrade, that art -now about to set out for regions wan, cold and bare, no more to jest -according to thy wont.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">This wretched Inn, where we scarce stay to bait,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We call our Dwelling-place:</div> -<div class="verse">But angels in their full enlightened state,</div> -<div class="verse">Angels, who Live, and know what ’tis to Be,</div> -<div class="verse">Who all the nonsense of our language see,</div> -<div class="verse">Who speak <i>things</i>, and our <i>words</i>—their ill-drawn pictures—scorn,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When we, by a foolish figure, say,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Behold an old man dead!” then they</div> -<div class="verse">Speak properly, and cry, “Behold a man-child born!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Abraham Cowley</span>, 1618-1667 (<i>Life</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here now I am: the house is fast;</div> -<div class="verse">I am shut in from all but Thee;</div> -<div class="verse">Great witness of my privacy,</div> -<div class="verse">Dare I unshamed my soul undress,</div> -<div class="verse">And, like a child, seek Thy caress,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou Ruler of a realm so vast?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. T. Lynch.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The dog walked off to play with a black beetle. The beetle -was hard at work trying to roll home a great ball of dung it had -been collecting all the morning; but Doss broke the ball, and ate -the beetle’s hind legs, and then bit off its head. And it was all -play, and no one could tell what it had lived and worked for. -A striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Olive Schreiner</span> (<i>The Story of an African Farm</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The author is depicting the sadness of life.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">GRACE FOR A CHILD</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here a little child I stand,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Heaving up my either hand;</div> -<div class="verse">Cold as Paddocks though they be, frogs</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Here I lift them up to Thee,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">For a benison to fall blessing</div> -<div class="verse indent2">On our meat, and on us all. <i>Amen.</i></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Herrick</span> (1591-1674).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">As the moon’s soft splendour</div> -<div class="verse">O’er the faint cold starlight of Heaven</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Is thrown,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">So your voice most tender</div> -<div class="verse">To the strings without soul had then given</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Its own....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Though the sound overpowers,</div> -<div class="verse">Sing again, with your dear voice revealing</div> -<div class="verse indent4">A tone</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of some world far from ours,</div> -<div class="verse">Where music and moonlight and feeling</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Are one.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>To Jane</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">While I listen to thy voice,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Chloris! I feel my life decay:</div> -<div class="verse indent2">That pow’rful noise</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Calls my fleeting soul away.</div> -<div class="verse">Oh! suppress that magic sound,</div> -<div class="verse">Which destroys without a wound.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Peace, Chloris, peace! or singing die;</div> -<div class="verse">That, together, you and I</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To heaven may go:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For all we know</div> -<div class="verse">Of what the Blessèd do above</div> -<div class="verse">Is, that they sing, and that they love.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Edmund Waller</span> (1606-1687).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful -and hopeful than to be forty years old.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">O. W. Holmes.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>From letter to Julia Ward Howe in 1889 on her seventieth birthday. -Mrs. Howe wrote the fine “Battle Hymn of the American Republic,” -beginning:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:</div> -<div class="verse">He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:</div> -<div class="verse">He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:</div> -<div class="verse indent4">His truth is marching on.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">INSOMNIA</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A house of sleepers, I alone unblest</div> -<div class="verse">Am still awake and empty vigil keep:</div> -<div class="verse">When those who share Life’s day with me find rest,</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, let me not be last to fall, asleep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anna Reeve Aldrich.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>She did “fall asleep” at the early age of twenty-six in June, 1892.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, -and the rest willing to let them.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">“THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What we, when face to face we see</div> -<div class="verse">The Father of our souls, shall be,</div> -<div class="verse">John tells us, doth not yet appear;</div> -<div class="verse">Ah! did he tell what we are here!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A mind for thoughts to pass into,</div> -<div class="verse">A heart for loves to travel through,</div> -<div class="verse">Five senses to detect things near,</div> -<div class="verse">Is this the whole that we are here?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah yet, when all is thought and said</div> -<div class="verse">The heart still overrules the head;</div> -<div class="verse">Still what we hope we must believe,</div> -<div class="verse">And what is given us receive;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Must still believe, for still we hope</div> -<div class="verse">That in a world of larger scope,</div> -<div class="verse">What here is faithfully begun</div> -<div class="verse">Will be completed, not undone.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My child, we still must think, when we</div> -<div class="verse">That ampler life together see,</div> -<div class="verse">Some true result will yet appear</div> -<div class="verse">Of what we are, together, here.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. H. Clough.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Plus je vois les hommes, plus j’admire les chiens.</p> - -<p>(The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or -refuseth himself the softest consolation next to that which cometh -from heaven. “What, softer than woman?” whispers the young -reader. Young reader, woman teases as well as consoles. Woman -makes half the sorrows which she boasts the privilege of soothing. -On the whole, then, woman in this scale, the weed in that—Jupiter!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> -hang out thy balance and weigh them both; and, if thou give the -preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno -ruffles thee, O Jupiter, <i>try the weed</i>!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bulwer Lytton</span> (<i>What will He do with It?</i>)</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Compare Kipling in “The Betrothed”:—</p> - -<p class="hanging">A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Il y a toujours l’un qui baise, et l’autre qui tend la joue.</p> - -<p>(There is always one who kisses and the other who offers the cheek.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah, wasteful woman, she who may</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On her sweet self set her own price,</div> -<div class="verse">Knowing he cannot choose but pay,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How has she cheapen’d paradise;</div> -<div class="verse">How given for nought her priceless gift,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine,</div> -<div class="verse">Which, spent with due respective thrift,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Had made brutes men, and men divine!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">C. Patmore</span> (<i>The Angel in the House</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think—</div> -<div class="verse">More than I merit, yes, by many times.</div> -<div class="verse">But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow,</div> -<div class="verse">And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,</div> -<div class="verse">And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird</div> -<div class="verse">The fowler’s pipe and follows to the snare—</div> -<div class="verse">Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!</div> -<div class="verse">Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged</div> -<div class="verse">“God and the glory! never care for gain.”</div> -<div class="verse">I might have done it for you.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Andrea del Sarto</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The painter says that his wife, instead of urging him to work for -immediate gain, might have incited him to nobler efforts.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Once on a time, when sunny May</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Was kissing up the April showers,</div> -<div class="verse">I saw fair Childhood hard at play</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Upon a bank of blushing flowers;</div> -<div class="verse">Happy—he knew not whence or how—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And smiling,—who could choose but love him?</div> -<div class="verse">For not more glad than Childhood’s brow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Was the blue heaven that beamed above him.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Old Time, in most appalling wrath,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That valley’s green repose invaded;</div> -<div class="verse">The brooks grew dry upon his path,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The birds were mute, the lilies faded.</div> -<div class="verse">But Time so swiftly winged his flight,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In haste a Grecian tomb to batter,</div> -<div class="verse">That Childhood watched his paper kite,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And knew just nothing of the matter....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then stepped a gloomy phantom up,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Pale, cypress-crowned, Night’s awful daughter,</div> -<div class="verse">And proffered him a fearful cup</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Full to the brim of bitter water:</div> -<div class="verse">Poor Childhood bade her tell her name;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And when the beldame muttered, “Sorrow,”</div> -<div class="verse">He said, “Don’t interrupt my game;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I’ll taste it, if I must, to-morrow.” ...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then Wisdom stole his bat and ball,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And taught him with most sage endeavour,</div> -<div class="verse">Why bubbles rise and acorns fall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And why no toy may last for ever.</div> -<div class="verse">She talked of all the wondrous laws</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which Nature’s open book discloses,</div> -<div class="verse">And Childhood, ere she made a pause</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Was fast asleep among the roses.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sleep on, sleep on! Oh! Manhood’s dreams</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are all of earthly pain or pleasure,</div> -<div class="verse">Of Glory’s toils, Ambition’s schemes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of cherished love, or hoarded treasure:</div> -<div class="verse">But to the couch where Childhood lies</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A more delicious trance is given,</div> -<div class="verse">Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And glimpses of remembered Heaven!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. M. Praed.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Alas, how easily things go wrong!</div> -<div class="verse">A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,</div> -<div class="verse">And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,</div> -<div class="verse">And life is never the same again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Phantastes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">L’ENVOI</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the ricks stand grey to the sun,</div> -<div class="verse">Singing:—“Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And your English summer’s done.”</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You have heard the song—how long! how long!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Pull out on the trail again!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ha’ done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse">We’ve seen the seasons through,</div> -<div class="verse">And it’s time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse">Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It’s North you may run to the rime-ringed sun</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or South to the blind Horn’s hate;</div> -<div class="verse">Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or West to the Golden Gate;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the wildest tales are true,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And life runs large on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The days are sick and cold, and the skies are grey and old,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the twice-breathed airs blow damp;</div> -<div class="verse">And I’d sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of a black Bilboa tramp;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And a drunken Dago crew,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail</div> -<div class="verse indent2">From Cadiz Bar on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or the way of a man with a maid;</div> -<div class="verse">But the sweetest way to me is a ship’s upon the sea</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the heel of the North-East trade,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Can you hear the crash on her bows, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the drum of the racing screw,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As she ships it green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As she lifts and ’scends on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">See the shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the fenders grind and heave,</div> -<div class="verse">And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the fall-rope whines through the sheave;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">It’s “Gang-plank up and in,” dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">It’s “Hawsers warp her through!”</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And it’s “All clear aft” on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">We’re backing down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O the mutter overside, when the port-fog holds us tied,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the sirens hoot their dread!</div> -<div class="verse">When foot by foot we creep o’er the hueless viewless deep</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To the sob of the questing lead!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">It’s down by the Lower Hope, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With the Gunfleet Sands in view,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Till the Mouse swings green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the Gull Light lifts on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That holds the hot sky tame,</div> -<div class="verse">And the steady fore-foot snores through the planet-powder’d floors</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where the scared whale flukes in flame!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Her plates are scarr’d by the sun, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And her ropes are taut with the dew,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">We’re sagging south on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then home, get her home, when the drunken rollers comb,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the shouting seas drive by,</div> -<div class="verse">And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the Southern Cross rides high!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">That blaze in the velvet blue,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">They’re all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">They’re God’s own guides on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We’re steaming all too slow,</div> -<div class="verse">And it’s twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where the trumpet-orchids blow!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You have heard the call of the off-shore wind</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the voice of the deep-sea rain:</div> -<div class="verse indent2">You have heard the song—how long! how long!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Pull out on the trail again!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And the deuce knows what we may do—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">But we’re back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">We’re down, hull down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A great sea-song; we are on board passing through scene after scene -and feeling the very movement of the ship and its gear.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!</div> -<div class="verse">Thou soul that art the eternity of thought</div> -<div class="verse">That givest to forms and images a breath</div> -<div class="verse">And everlasting motion, not in vain</div> -<div class="verse">By day or star-light thus from my first dawn</div> -<div class="verse">Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me</div> -<div class="verse">The passions that build up our human soul;</div> -<div class="verse">Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,</div> -<div class="verse">But with high objects, with enduring things—</div> -<div class="verse">With life and nature—purifying thus</div> -<div class="verse">The elements of feeling and of thought,</div> -<div class="verse">And sanctifying, by such discipline,</div> -<div class="verse">Both pain and fear, until we recognize</div> -<div class="verse">A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Prelude</i>, Bk. I).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Quakers have contracted themselves too much by leaving -the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their -philanthropy, I can not help smiling at the conceit, that, if the -taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, -what a silent and drab-coloured creation it would have been! -Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been -permitted to sing.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Paine</span> (<i>The Age of Reason</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This quotation reminds me of an interesting passage in Professor -Bateson’s Presidential Address to the British Association at Melbourne -in 1914. Although it has not a very close connection with the quotation -the reader will not object to my giving it a place here:—</p> - -<p>“Everyone must have a preliminary sympathy with the aims of -eugenists both abroad and at home. Their efforts at the least are doing -something to discover and spread truth as to the physiological structure -of society. The spread of such organizations, however, almost of necessity -suffers from a bias towards the accepted and the ordinary, and if they -had power it would go hard with many ingredients of society that could -be ill-spared. I notice an ominous passage in which even Galton, the -founder of eugenics, feeling perhaps some twinge of his Quaker ancestry, -remarks that ‘as the Bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to -perish, the sooner it goes, the happier for mankind.’ It is not the eugenists -who will give us what Plato has called ‘divine releases from the common -ways.’ If some fancier with the catholicity of Shakespeare would take -us in hand, well and good; but I would not trust Shakespeares, <i>meeting -as a committee</i>. Let us remember that Beethoven’s father was an habitual -drunkard and that his mother died of consumption. From the genealogy -of the patriarchs also we learn—what may very well be the truth—that -the fathers of such as dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp -or organ, and the instructor of every artificer in brass or iron—the founders, -that is to say, of the arts and the sciences—came in direct descent from Cain, -and not in the posterity of the irreproachable Seth, who is to us, as he -probably was also in the narrow circle of his own contemporaries, what -naturalists call a <i>nomen nudum</i>.”</p> - -<p><i>Nomen nudum</i> is a bare name without further particulars, but Donne, -no doubt on the authority of Josephus (I. 2.3), attributes Astronomy to -Seth (“The Progresse of the Soule”):—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Wonder with mee</div> -<div class="verse">Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,</div> -<div class="verse">Or most of those Arts whence our lives are blest,</div> -<div class="verse">By cursed Cain’s race invented be,</div> -<div class="verse">And blest Seth vext us with Astronomie.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Donne (1573-1631) is “vext” with Astronomy, presumably because -at that time Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642) were affirming the -Copernican system and making other discoveries supposed to be dangerous -to religion.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they</div> -<div class="verse">Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday</div> -<div class="verse">And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span> (<i>Love’s Lovers</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A SONNET</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Two voices are there: one is of the deep;</div> -<div class="verse">It learns the storm-cloud’s thunderous melody,</div> -<div class="verse">Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,</div> -<div class="verse">Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:</div> -<div class="verse">And one is of an old half-witted sheep</div> -<div class="verse">Which bleats articulate monotony,</div> -<div class="verse">And indicates that two and one are three,</div> -<div class="verse">That grass is green, lakes damp and mountains steep:</div> -<div class="verse">And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times</div> -<div class="verse">Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,</div> -<div class="verse">The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:</div> -<div class="verse">At other times—good Lord! I’d rather be</div> -<div class="verse">Quite unacquainted with the A.B.C.</div> -<div class="verse">Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Kenneth Stephen</span> (1859-1893).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,” is Wordsworth’s fine -sonnet on the subjugation of Switzerland.</p> - -<p>It is certainly extraordinary how the great poet at times dropped -into the most prosaic language and commonplace verse. This, however, -was only in his earlier poems and only in a few of those poems. His theory -at that time was that poetic language should be natural, such as used by -ordinary men, and not essentially different from prose. Actually, however, -at the root of the matter was his want of any sense of humour. Only so -can we account for his beginning a poem “Spade! with which Wilkinson -hath tilled his lands,” or writing absurdly babyish verses. The one instance -on record in which he did apparently exhibit a grotesque kind of humour -was in a verse of <i>Peter Bell</i>:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">Is it a party in a parlour?</div> -<div class="verse">Cramm’d just as they on earth were cramm’d—</div> -<div class="verse">Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,</div> -<div class="verse">But, as you by their faces see,</div> -<div class="verse">All silent and all damn’d.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But this he no doubt wrote quite seriously and without any idea that the -verse was humorous. Shelley placed this verse at the head of his parody -of <i>Peter Bell</i>, and Wordsworth omitted it from the poem after 1819.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And, were I not, as a man may say, cautious</div> -<div class="verse">How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,</div> -<div class="verse">I could favour you with sundry touches</div> -<div class="verse">Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess</div> -<div class="verse">Heightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness</div> -<div class="verse">(To get on faster) until at last her</div> -<div class="verse">Cheek grew to be one master-plaster</div> -<div class="verse">Of mucus and fucus from mere use of ceruse;</div> -<div class="verse">In short, she grew from scalp to udder</div> -<div class="verse">Just the object to make you shudder.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Flight of the Duchess</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Day is dying! Float, O Song,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Down the westward river,</div> -<div class="verse">Requiem chanting to the Day—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Day, the mighty Giver.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Pierced by shafts of Time he bleeds,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Melted rubies sending</div> -<div class="verse">Through the river and the sky,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Earth and heaven blending;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All the long-drawn earthy banks</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Up to cloud-land lifting:</div> -<div class="verse">Slow between them drifts the swan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Twixt two heavens drifting.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wings half open, like a flow’r</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Inly deeper flushing,</div> -<div class="verse">Neck and breast as virgin’s pure—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Virgin proudly blushing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Day is dying! Float, O swan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Down the ruby river;</div> -<div class="verse">Follow, song, in requiem</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To the mighty Giver.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>The Spanish Gypsy</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Nature, and nature’s laws, lay hid in night:</div> -<div class="verse">God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Pope</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Whatever crazy sorrow saith,</div> -<div class="verse">No life that breathes with human breath</div> -<div class="verse">Has ever truly longed for death.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, life, not death, for which we pant;</div> -<div class="verse">More life, and fuller, that we want.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Two Voices</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is, perhaps, true that no one at any time longs for death; and -that our desire is for “more life <i>and fuller</i>.” But men have for various -reasons longed <i>to die</i>, though they may not have longed for <i>death</i>. There -are those to whom the remainder of life will be one torment of pain to themselves -and a continuous mental distress to their friends; and there have -been men of firm religious belief who desired to pass into a nobler <i>life</i> -beyond the grave. Again, Richard Hodgson definitely assured me in -1897 that he <i>wished to die</i>. He was absolutely satisfied with the evidence -of survival after death, which he had had in connection with the Society -for Psychical Research; and his desire was to “pass over” and be with -the friends with whom for years he had been in communication. Hodgson -was incapable of saying anything insincere.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Remember what Simonides said—that he never repented -that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Plutarch</span> (<i>Morals</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Not the truth of which a man is or believes himself to be possessed, -but the earnest efforts which he has made to attain truth, -make the worth of the man. For it is not through the possession -of, but through the search for truth, that he develops those -powers in which alone consists his ever-growing perfection. -Possession makes the mind stagnant, indolent, proud.</p> - -<p>If God held in His right hand all truth, and in His left the ever-living -desire for truth—although with the condition that I should -remain in error for ever—and if He said to me “Choose,” I should -humbly bow before His left hand, and say “Father, give; pure -truth is for Thee alone.”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lessing</span> (1729-1781) <i>Wolfenbüttel Fragments</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>When Lessing wrote this famous passage he was contending that -criticism should be absolutely free in regard to religious, as to all other, -subjects. “The argument on which he chiefly relies is that the Bible -cannot be considered necessary to a belief in Christianity, since Christianity -was a living and conquering power before the New Testament in its present -form was recognised by the church. The true evidence for what is essential -in Christianity, he contends, is its adaptation to the wants of human -nature; hence the religious spirit is undisturbed by the speculations of the -boldest thinkers.” (<i>Encyclopaedia Britannica</i>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The light of every soul burns upward. Let us allow for atmospheric -disturbance.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. Meredith</span> (<i>Diana of the Crossways</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Human life may be painted according to two methods. There -is the stage method. According to that, each character is duly -marshalled at first, and ticketed; we know with an immutable -certainty that, at the right crises, each one will reappear and act -his part, and, when the curtain falls, all will stand before it -bowing. There is a sense of satisfaction in this—and of completeness. -But there is another method—the method of the life -we all lead. Here nothing can be prophesied. There is a strange -coming and going of feet. Men appear, act and re-act upon each -other, and pass away. When the crisis comes, the man who -would fit it does not return. When the curtain falls, no one is -ready. When the footlights are brightest they are blown out; -and what the name of the play is no one knows. If there sits -a spectator who knows, he sits so high that the players in the -gaslight cannot hear his breathing.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Olive Schreiner</span> (<i>The Story of an African Farm</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is from the preface to the second edition. This book must be -unique, for surely no other girl in her teens has written a book so brilliant -in itself and indicating such originality and genius. It is a great loss to -literature that the writer became entirely absorbed in South African politics -and controversy.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s -misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">NIGHT AND DEATH</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,</div> -<div class="verse">This glorious canopy of light and blue?</div> -<div class="verse">Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent dew,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hesperus with the host of heaven came,</div> -<div class="verse">And lo! creation widened in man’s view.</div> -<div class="verse">Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,</div> -<div class="verse">Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That to such countless orbs thou mad’st us blind!</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Blanco White</span> (1775-1841).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>(<a href="#PREFACE">See preface.</a>) This sonnet, apart from its great excellence, is a remarkable -literary curiosity. By this one poem alone Blanco White achieved -a lasting reputation as a poet. The point is that this is <i>his only -poem</i>. He certainly had previously written a sonnet of little merit -on survival after death, but “<i>Night and Death</i>” was apparently an -inspired transfiguration of his earlier effort. It is a startling instance of -inspiration coming to a man once only in his life—and then coming -in its very highest form. There are other poets, whose work is generally -of poor quality, but who have each produced one surprisingly good poem -which alone keeps their memory alive. An instance of this is Christopher -Smart (1722-1771), who wrote several volumes of verse but only one fine -poem, the “Song of David.” Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) is also known -only by his “Burial of Sir John Moore,” but his other poems, though -forgotten, are said to have had some merit.</p> - -<p>The sonnet is also interesting for another reason. White’s family -had settled in Spain for two generations, his grandfather having changed -his name to Blanco. His mother was Spanish, he was educated in Spain, -and became a Spanish priest, and he did not leave for England until 1810, -when thirty-five years of age. Yet White’s beautiful thought could hardly -be expressed in finer language. There is, however, one defect in the words -“fly and leaf and insect.” (William Sharp courageously altered “fly” -into “flower.”)</p> - -<p>Coleridge thought this “the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet -in our language.” Leigh Hunt said that in point of thought it “stands -supreme, perhaps, above all in any language: nor can we ponder it too -deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I sleep, I eat and drink, I read and meditate, I walk in my -neighbour’s pleasant fields and see the varieties of natural beauties, -and delight in all that in which God delights—that is, in virtue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> -and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God Himself. And he, -that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love -with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and -chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Jeremy Taylor.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In my Progress travelling Northward,</div> -<div class="verse">Taking farewell of the Southward,</div> -<div class="verse">To Banbury came I, O prophane-One!</div> -<div class="verse">Where I saw a Puritane-One</div> -<div class="verse">Hanging of his Cat on Monday,</div> -<div class="verse">For killing of a Mouse on Sunday.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Brathwaite</span> (1638) (<i>Drunken Barnaby</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent10">O the Spring will come,</div> -<div class="verse">And once again the wind be in the West,</div> -<div class="verse">Breathing the odour of the sea; and life,</div> -<div class="verse">Life that was ugly, and work that grew a curse,</div> -<div class="verse">Be God’s best gifts again, and in your heart</div> -<div class="verse">You’ll find once more the dreams you thought were dead.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">H. D. Lowry</span> (<i>In Covent Garden</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Of such as he was, there be few on Earth;</div> -<div class="verse">Of such as he is, there are many in Heaven;</div> -<div class="verse">And Life is all the sweeter that he lived,</div> -<div class="verse">And all he loved more sacred for his sake:</div> -<div class="verse">And Death is all the brighter that he died,</div> -<div class="verse">And Heaven is all the happier that he’s there.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gerald Massey</span> (<i>In Memoriam</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ONLY SEVEN</p> - -<p class="center">(<i>A Pastoral Story, after Wordsworth.</i>)</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I marvelled why a simple child</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That lightly draws its breath</div> -<div class="verse">Should utter groans so very wild,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And look as pale as Death.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Adopting a parental tone,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I asked her why she cried;</div> -<div class="verse">The damsel answered, with a groan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“I’ve got a pain inside.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I thought it would have sent me mad</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Last night about eleven.”</div> -<div class="verse">Said I, “What is it makes you bad?</div> -<div class="verse">How many apples have you had?”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She answered, “Only seven!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“And are you sure you took no more,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My little maid?” quoth I.</div> -<div class="verse">“Oh! please sir, mother gave me four,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But <i>they</i> were in a pie!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“If that’s the case,” I stammered out,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Of course you’ve had eleven.”</div> -<div class="verse">The maiden answered, with a pout,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“I ain’t had more nor seven!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I wondered hugely what she meant,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And said, “I’m bad at riddles,</div> -<div class="verse">But I know where little girls are sent</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For telling tarrididdles.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Now, if you don’t reform,” said I,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“You’ll never go to heaven.”</div> -<div class="verse">But all in vain; each time I try,</div> -<div class="verse">That little idiot makes reply,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“I ain’t had more nor seven”!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="center">POSTSCRIPT.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To borrow Wordsworth’s name was wrong,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or slightly misapplied;</div> -<div class="verse">And so I’d better call my song,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Lines after <i>Ache-inside</i>.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Henry Sambrooke Leigh.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It seems wicked to travesty Wordsworth’s tender little poem, but -Leigh’s verses amused us greatly when they appeared. Mark Akenside -(1721-1770) is a poet now almost forgotten.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The hour, which might have been, yet might not be,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which man’s and woman’s heart conceived and bore</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore</div> -<div class="verse">Bides it the breaking of Time’s weary sea?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span> (<i>Stillborn Love</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day -might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, -if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in those far-off -days which live in us, and transform our perception into love.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Mill on the Floss</i>).</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The firmaments of daisies since to me</div> -<div class="verse">Have had those mornings in their opening eyes;</div> -<div class="verse">The bunched cowslip’s pale transparency</div> -<div class="verse">Carries that sunshine of sweet memories,</div> -<div class="verse">And wild-rose branches take their finest scent</div> -<div class="verse">From those blest hours of infantine content.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Brother and Sister</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It will be observed that the thought is the same in both passages.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Get thee behind the man I am now,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">You man that I used to be.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Martin Relph</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>For my own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect -on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine -had begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the -other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never -had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a -long-past antiquity. They walk the earth with us, but it seems -they must be of different clay. They hear the clock strike the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> -same hour, yet surely of a different epoch. They travel by steam -conveyance, yet with such baggage of old Asiatic thoughts and -superstitions as might check the locomotive in its course. Whatever -is thought within the circuit of the Great Wall; what the -wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches in the hamlets round -Pekin; religions so old that our language looks a halfling boy -alongside; philosophy so wise that our best philosophers find -things therein to wonder at; all this travelled alongside of me -for thousands of miles over plain and mountain. Heaven -knows if we had one common thought or fancy all that way, -or whether our eyes, which yet were formed upon the same -design, beheld the same world out of the railway windows. And -when either of us turned his thoughts to home and childhood, -what a strange dissimilarity must there not have been in these -pictures of the mind—when I beheld that old, gray, castled city, -high throned above the firth, with the flag of Britain flying, and -the red-coat sentry pacing over all; and the man in the next car -to me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a fort -of porcelain, and call it, with the same affection, home.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. L. Stevenson</span> (<i>Across the Plains</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I always wanted to make a clean breast of it;</div> -<div class="verse">And now it is made—why, my heart’s blood, that went trickle,</div> -<div class="verse">Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,</div> -<div class="verse">Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,</div> -<div class="verse">And genially floats me about the giblets.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Flight of the Duchess</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in -the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser to-day than he -was yesterday.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We have all of us considerable regard for our past self, and -are not fond of casting reflections on that respected individual -by a total negation of his opinions.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Scenes from Clerical Life</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Say not, the struggle nought availeth,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The labour and the wounds are vain,</div> -<div class="verse">The enemy faints not, nor faileth,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And as things have been they remain.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It may be, in yon smoke concealed,</div> -<div class="verse">Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And, but for you, possess the field.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Seem here no painful inch to gain,</div> -<div class="verse">Far back, through creeks and inlets making,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Comes silent, flooding in, the main;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And not by eastern windows only,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When daylight comes; comes in the light;</div> -<div class="verse">In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But westward, look, the land is bright!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. H. Clough.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The gravest fish is an oyster,</div> -<div class="verse">The gravest bird is an owl,</div> -<div class="verse">The gravest beast is a donkey,</div> -<div class="verse">And the gravest man is a fool.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Scotch Proverb.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent10">... Fear</div> -<div class="verse">No petty customs nor appearances;</div> -<div class="verse">But think what others only dreamed about;</div> -<div class="verse">And say what others did but think; and do</div> -<div class="verse">What others did but say; and glory in</div> -<div class="verse">What others dared but do.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Philip J. Bailey</span> (<i>My Lady</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Cynic in society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The -large embrace of sympathy, which fails him as interpreter of human -life, will no less be wanting when he reads the meaning of the -universe. The harmony of the great whole escapes him in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> -hunt for little discords here and there. He is blind to the -august balance of nature, in his preoccupation with some -creaking show of defect. He misses the comprehensive march -of advancing purpose, because while he himself is in it, he has -found some halting member that seems to lag behind. He picks -holes in the universal order; he winds through its tracks as a -detective, and makes scandals of all that is not to his mind; -trusts nothing that he cannot see: and he sees chiefly the exceptional, -the dubious, the harsh. The glory of the midnight -heavens affects him not, for thinking of a shattered planet or -the uninhabitable moon. He makes more of the flood which -sweeps the crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds -it year by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills, peering -through the young green woods, does but dress up a stony -desert with deceitful beauty; and in the new birth of summer, -he cannot yield himself to the exuberance of glad existence for -wonder why insects tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, -nothing so imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope.... -In selfish minds the same temper resorts to the pettiest reasons -for the most desolating thoughts: “If God were good, why -should I be born with a club-foot? If the world were justly -governed how could my merits be so long overlooked?”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. Martineau</span> (<i>Hours of Thought</i>, I, 97).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Reverting to this subject later, Martineau says (<i>Hours of Thought II.</i>, -354) “Wherever he moves, he empties the space around him of its purest -elements; with his low thought he roofs it over from the heavenly light -and the sweet air; and then complains of the world as a close-breathed -and stifling place.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb’s -feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in -making the world as barren to others as they have made it for -themselves.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Meredith</span> (<i>The Egoist</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And there’s none of them, but would as soon</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Criticize the Almighty as not,</div> -<div class="verse">And see that the angels kept tune</div> -<div class="verse">And watch that the sun and the moon</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Did not squander the light they have got.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. C. Smith</span> (<i>Borland Hall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Love, that is first and last of all things made,</div> -<div class="verse">The light that has the living world for shade,</div> -<div class="verse">The spirit that for temporal veil has on</div> -<div class="verse">The souls of all men woven in unison,</div> -<div class="verse">One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought</div> -<div class="verse">And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought ...</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that is blood within the veins of time....</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that sounds loud or light in all men’s ears,</div> -<div class="verse">Whence all men’s eyes take fire from sparks of tears,</div> -<div class="verse">That binds on all men’s feet or chains or wings;</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that is root and fruit of terrene things;</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that the whole world’s waters shall not drown,</div> -<div class="verse">The whole world’s fiery forces not burn down;</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that what time his own hands guard his head</div> -<div class="verse">The whole world’s wrath and strength shall not strike dead;</div> -<div class="verse">Love, that if once his own hands make his grave</div> -<div class="verse">The whole world’s pity and sorrow shall not save ...</div> -<div class="verse">Love that is fire within thee and light above,</div> -<div class="verse">And lives by grace of nothing but of love.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>Tristram of Lyonesse</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My tantalized spirit</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Here blandly reposes,</div> -<div class="verse">Forgetting, or never</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Regretting, its roses.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. A. Poe</span> (<i>For Annie</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Now, for myself, when once the wick is crushed,</div> -<div class="verse">I ask not where the light is, which is not,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor where the music, when the harp is hushed,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor where the memory, which is clean forgot.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. C. Smith</span> (<i>Borland Hall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Goethe says somewhere there is something in every man -for which, if we only knew it, we would hate him. I would prefer -to say that there is something in every man for which, if we only -knew it, we would <i>love</i> him.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Hodgson</span> (<i>Letter</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For us no shadow on life’s solemn dial</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Goes back to give us peace;</div> -<div class="verse">There is no resting-place in the stern trial</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Until the heart-throbs cease;</div> -<div class="verse">We cannot hold Time fast, and bid him bless us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And not for us the sun,</div> -<div class="verse">When shades fall fast, and doubts and woes oppress us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stands still in Gibeon.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. H. Sears.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him</div> -<div class="verse indent1">This same unseen friend, before I knew:</div> -<div class="verse">Dream there was none like him, none above him,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wake to hope and trust my dream was true....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For that dream’s sake! How forget the thrill</div> -<div class="verse">Through and through me as I thought “The gladlier</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lives my friend because I love him still!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Fears and Scruples</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The “Friend” is God. The lines “All my days, I’ll go the softlier, -sadlier, For that dream’s sake,” seem to me very beautiful. In so few -words Browning, with dramatic insight, expresses the feeling of a Renan -or George Eliot after they had lost their faith in Christianity.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What -deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you -behold, is there only by sufferance—by your sufferance. See -it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow....</p> - -<p>In proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament -flows before him and takes his signet and form. Not -he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state -of mind. They are the kings of the world who give the colour of -their present thought to all nature and all art.... The great -man makes the great thing.... Linnæus makes botany the most -alluring of studies, and wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman; -Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is always -his, who works in it with serenity and great aims. The unstable -estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, -as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Emerson</span> (<i>The American Scholar</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cantat Deo, qui vivit Deo.</p> - -<p>(He sings to God, who lives to God.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Jenny Lind used to say, “I sing to God.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A CONSERVATIVE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The garden beds I wandered by</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One bright and cheerful morn,</div> -<div class="verse">When I found a new-fledged butterfly,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A-sitting on a thorn,</div> -<div class="verse">A black and crimson butterfly,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All doleful and forlorn.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I thought that life could have no sting</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To infant butterflies,</div> -<div class="verse">So I gazed on this unhappy thing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With wonder and surprise,</div> -<div class="verse">While sadly with his waving wing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He wiped his weeping eyes.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Said I, “What can the matter be?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Why weepest thou so sore,</div> -<div class="verse">With garden fair and sunlight free</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And flowers in goodly store?”—</div> -<div class="verse">But he only turned away from me</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And burst into a roar.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Cried he, “My legs are thin and few</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where once I had a swarm!</div> -<div class="verse">Soft fuzzy fur—a joy to view—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Once kept my body warm,</div> -<div class="verse">Before these flapping wing-things grew,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To hamper and deform!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">At that outrageous bug I shot</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The fury of mine eye;</div> -<div class="verse">Said I, in scorn all burning hot,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In rage and anger high,</div> -<div class="verse">“You ignominious idiot!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Those wings are made to fly!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I do not want to fly,” said he,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“I only want to squirm!”</div> -<div class="verse">And he dropped his wings dejectedly,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But still his voice was firm:</div> -<div class="verse">“I do not want to be a fly!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I want to be a worm!”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O yesterday of unknown lack!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To-day of unknown bliss!</div> -<div class="verse">I left my fool in red and black,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The last I saw was this,—</div> -<div class="verse">The creature madly climbing back</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Into his chrysalis.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charlotte Perkins Stetson.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The very fiends weave ropes of sand</div> -<div class="verse">Rather than taste pure hell in idleness.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>A Forgiveness</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He had formed several ingenious plans by which he meant to -circumvent people of large fortune and small capacity; but -then he never met with exactly the right people under exactly -the right circumstances.... It is possible to pass a great -many bad half-pennies and bad half-crowns, but I believe there -has no instance been known of passing a half-penny or a half-crown -for a sovereign.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Brother Jacob</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In the old times Death was a feverish sleep,</div> -<div class="verse">In which men walked. The other world was cold</div> -<div class="verse">And thinly-peopled, so life’s emigrants</div> -<div class="verse">Came back to mingle with the crowds of earth:</div> -<div class="verse">But now great cities are transplanted thither,</div> -<div class="verse">Memphis, and Babylon, and either Thebes,</div> -<div class="verse">And Priam’s towery town with its one beech.</div> -<div class="verse">The dead are most and merriest: so be sure</div> -<div class="verse">There will be no more haunting, till their towns</div> -<div class="verse">Are full to the garret; then they’ll shut their gates,</div> -<div class="verse">To keep the living out, and perhaps leave</div> -<div class="verse">A dead or two between both kingdoms.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. L. Beddoes</span> (<i>Death’s Jest-Book</i>, III, 3).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is one of the queer fancies in a curious poem.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. -Embark and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every -other sail in the horizon.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Emerson</span> (<i>Essay on Experience</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.</p> - -<p>(We make for ourselves a ladder of our vices, when we tread under -foot the vices themselves.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">St. Augustine</span> (<i>De Ascensione</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I held it truth, with him who sings</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To one clear harp in divers tones,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That men may rise on stepping-stones</div> -<div class="verse">Of their dead selves to higher things.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>In Memoriam</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That of our vices we can frame</div> -<div class="verse">A ladder, if we will but tread</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Beneath our feet each deed of shame!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Longfellow</span> (<i>The Ladder of St. Augustine</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The trials that beset you,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sorrows ye endure,</div> -<div class="verse">The manifold temptations</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That death alone can cure,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">What are they but His jewels</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of right celestial worth?</div> -<div class="verse">What are they but the ladder</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Set up to Heav’n on earth?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. M. Neale</span> (<i>O Happy Band of Pilgrims</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I can bear it no longer—this diabolical invention of gentility, -which kills natural kindliness and honest friendship. Proper -pride, indeed! Rank and precedence, forsooth! The table -of ranks and degrees is a lie, and should be flung into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> -fire. Organize rank and precedence! That was well for the -masters of ceremonies of former ages. Come forward, some -great marshal, and organize Equality in society.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span> (<i>Book of Snobs</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,</div> -<div class="verse">The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We bargain for the graves we lie in;</div> -<div class="verse">At the devil’s booth are all things sold,</div> -<div class="verse">Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For a cap and bells our lives we pay,</div> -<div class="verse">Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Tis heaven alone that is given away,</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis only God may be had for the asking.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>The Vision of Sir Launfal</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>... The too susceptible Tupman, who, to the wisdom and -experience of maturer years, superadded the enthusiasm and -ardour of a boy, in the most interesting and pardonable of human -weaknesses, love. Time and feeding had expanded that once -romantic form; the black silk waistcoat had become more and -more developed; inch by inch had the gold watch-chain beneath -it disappeared from within the range of Tupman’s vision; and -gradually had the capacious chin encroached upon the borders -of the white cravat; but the soul of Tupman had known no -change.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span> (<i>Pickwick Papers</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; -you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all -the <i>savants</i> in the world could not produce a reliable map of the -poorest human personality. And the worst of all this is, that love -and friendship may be the outcome of a certain condition of knowledge; -increase the knowledge, and love and friendship beat their -wings and go. Every man’s road in life is marked by the graves -of his personal likings. Intimacy is frequently the road to -indifference; and marriage a parricide.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (<i>The Importance of a Man to Himself</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I think sometimes how good it were had I some one by me to -listen when I am tempted to read a passage aloud. Yes, but is -there any mortal in the whole world upon whom I could invariably -depend for sympathetic understanding—nay, who would even -generally be at one with me in my appreciation? Such harmony -of intelligences is the rarest thing. All through life we long for -it ... and, after all, we learn that the vision is illusory. To -every man is it decreed: Thou shalt live alone.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Gissing</span> (<i>The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ISOLATION</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yes! in the sea of life enisled,</div> -<div class="verse">With echoing straits between us thrown,</div> -<div class="verse">Dotting the shoreless watery wild,</div> -<div class="verse">We mortal millions live <i>alone</i>.</div> -<div class="verse">The islands feel the enclasping flow,</div> -<div class="verse">And then their endless bounds they know.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But when the moon their hollows lights,</div> -<div class="verse">And they are swept by balms of spring,</div> -<div class="verse">And in their glens, on starry nights,</div> -<div class="verse">The nightingales divinely sing;</div> -<div class="verse">And lovely notes, from shore to shore,</div> -<div class="verse">Across the sounds and channels pour—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh! then a longing like despair</div> -<div class="verse">Is to their farthest caverns sent;</div> -<div class="verse">For surely once, they feel, we were</div> -<div class="verse">Parts of a single continent!</div> -<div class="verse">Now round us spreads the watery plain—</div> -<div class="verse">Oh might our marges meet again!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Who ordered, that their longing’s fire</div> -<div class="verse">Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?</div> -<div class="verse">Who renders vain their deep desire?</div> -<div class="verse">A God, a God their severance ruled!</div> -<div class="verse">And bade betwixt their shores to be</div> -<div class="verse">The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This fine poem is one of a series called “Switzerland,” which was -written as the result of Arnold’s meeting and falling in love with a lady at -Berne. The poem immediately preceding it in the series is entitled “Isolation: -To Marguerite,” while this is called “To Marguerite, Continued” -but as it is now quoted separately, it is better entitled “Isolation.”</p> - -<p>In the preceding poems the lady has lost her affection while her lover -is still devoted; and this leads to the subject of our isolation from each other -in our inner lives. In the second verse the poet describes the moments -when we most crave for love, sympathy, and mutual spiritual understanding -and union.</p> - -<p>For an interesting fact connected with this poem, see next quotation -and note.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Thackeray has been describing how husband, wife, mother, -son—each of the inmates of a household—is interested in his -or her own separate world and looking at the same things from -a different point of view.) How lonely we are in the world! -You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty years -and fancy yourselves united: pshaw! does she cry out when -you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the tooth-ache?... -As for your wife—O philosophic reader, answer -and say, Do you tell <i>her</i> all? Ah, sir, a distinct universe walks -about under your hat and under mine—all things in nature -are different to each—the woman we look at has not the same -features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste to the one -and the other—you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with -some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span> (<i>Pendennis</i>, ch. XVI).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The similarity between this passage and the preceding poem, written -at about the same time, is very curious. Arnold’s poem appeared in 1852 -but was composed ten years earlier, while <i>Pendennis</i> was published in -monthly parts in 1849-50. Therefore, neither author would consciously -know at the time what the other had written.</p> - -<p>The incident is probably an illustration of the mysterious way in -which minds influence one another and create the spirit of the particular -age. There is, I believe, a Chinese proverb to the effect that we are more -the product of our age than of our parents. This permeating quality of -thought and feeling is, no doubt, the explanation why the highest art and -literature, though often unappreciated at the time, become ultimately -recognized. It appears not to be sufficiently taken into account in other -directions. For instance, it is repeatedly stated that Blake, because of -the limited circulation of his poems, exercised <i>no</i> influence on the Romantic -Revival—see for example <i>The Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, -Vol. XI, 201. Yet we know that his work was known to and appreciated -by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Southey, and Hayley. (Although little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> -regarded now, Hayley’s fame was then so great that he was offered and -refused the poet-laureateship. He appears to be the one man who was an -intimate friend of both Blake and Cowper.) While a very long period -went by before Blake’s poems became generally known, their influence -may well have been very great, permeating unconsciously through other -minds. <a href="#Page_194">See reference on p. 194</a> to the similar case of Fitzgerald’s “Omar -Khayyam.”</p> - -<p>Even if a poem were read by <i>only one person</i>, it might conceivably -influence a generation of authors. Suppose, if that had been possible, a -page of Swinburne’s “Tristram of Lyonesse” or F. W. H. Myers’ “Implicit -Promise” (both quoted elsewhere) had been read by Pope or Dryden; -how the monotonous heroic couplet of their time might have been transformed!</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A child was playing on a summer strand</div> -<div class="verse">That fringed the wavelets of a sunny sea;</div> -<div class="verse">The mother looked in love. “Now build,” said she,</div> -<div class="verse">“Your splendid golden castles where you stand;</div> -<div class="verse">But when the wave has beaten all to sand,</div> -<div class="verse">You must go home.” “Ah, not so soon,” said he.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And now the night has darkened out his glee,</div> -<div class="verse">And sad-eyed Grief has grasped him by the hand.</div> -<div class="verse">No more the years shall find him free and wild</div> -<div class="verse">And madly merry as a bright brave bird:</div> -<div class="verse">For earth has nothing like the home he craves</div> -<div class="verse">And pauseless Time is beating bitter waves</div> -<div class="verse">On all his palaces. He waits the word</div> -<div class="verse">Away beyond the blue, “Come home, my child.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Hodgson</span>, 1879.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>An impromptu written when the mother and child incident happened -and not revised.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Humanity is neither a love for the whole human race, nor a love -for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal -of man, in each individual. In other and less pedantic words, -he who is truly humane considers every human being <i>as such</i> -interesting and important, and without waiting to criticize each -individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of -good wishes and sympathy.... If some human beings are -abject and contemptible, if it be incredible to us that they can -have any high dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great -a height as Christ? Are we likely to be more pained by their -faults and deficiencies than he was? Is our standard higher than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> -his? And yet he associated by preference with these meanest -of the race; no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion -that they might be less dear than the best and wisest to -the common Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable -of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing -of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most hopeful -and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what was wanting -to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An eternal glory -has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ bore to it.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir J. R. Seeley</span> (<i>Ecce Homo</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">On parent knees, a naked, new-born child,</div> -<div class="verse">Weeping thou sat’st while all around thee smiled:</div> -<div class="verse">So live, that sinking to thy life’s last sleep</div> -<div class="verse">Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir William Jones</span> (1746-1794) (<i>From the Persian</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Can the earth where the harrow is driven</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sheaf of the furrow foresee?</div> -<div class="verse">Or thou guess the harvest for heaven</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When iron has entered in thee?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was quoted by Lord Lytton in an essay on <i>The Influence of Love -upon Literature and Real Life</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;</div> -<div class="verse">The diver, Omar, plucked them from their bed,</div> -<div class="verse">Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. R. Lowell</span> (<i>On Omar Khayyam</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and keep -pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid -earth and are liable to heavy dining.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Daniel Deronda</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever -have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught -else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there -abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mine out of -the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps -of the light treadeth the darkness; yea, springeth in fountains -and wells amidst it, from the secret channels of its mighty sea. -Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid -the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could not -be, and whereof he is in part compounded.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>Phantastes</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In the story an ogre is reading this passage from a book. <i>Phantastes</i> -is MacDonald’s finest work.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">There, on the fields around,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All men shall till the ground,</div> -<div class="verse">Corn shall wave yellow, and bright rivers stream;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Daily, at set of sun,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All, when their work is done,</div> -<div class="verse">Shall watch the heavens yearn down and the strange starlight gleam.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>The City of Man</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is the poet’s vision of the city of the future, and will be interesting -to the allotment-holders in English cities to-day.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold</div> -<div class="verse">Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>A Toccata of Galuppi’s</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Quand on n’a pas ce que l’on aime,</div> -<div class="verse">Il faut aimer ce que l’on a.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(When you have not what you love</div> -<div class="verse">You must love what you have.)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Corneille</span> (<i>L’Inconnu</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">At last methought that I had wandered far</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In an old wood: fresh-washed in coolest dew</div> -<div class="verse">The maiden splendours of the morning star</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shook in the steadfast blue....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">At length I saw a lady within call,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Stiller than chiselled marble, standing there;</div> -<div class="verse">A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And most divinely fair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled;</div> -<div class="verse">A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Brow-bound with burning gold....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Me lying dead, my crown about my brows,</div> -<div class="verse">A name for ever!—lying robed and crowned,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Worthy a Roman spouse.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>A Dream of Fair Women</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Helen of Troy and Cleopatra—but, as Peacock mentioned in <i>Gryll -Grange</i>, Cleopatra was of pure Greek descent and could not have been a -“swarthy” lady.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">One pond of water gleams;</div> -<div class="verse">... the trees bend</div> -<div class="verse">O’er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Pauline</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I met a lady in the meads,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Full beautiful, a faery’s child;</div> -<div class="verse">Her hair was long, her foot was light,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And her eyes were wild.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I set her on my pacing steed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And nothing else saw all day long;</div> -<div class="verse">For sideways would she lean, and sing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A faery’s song.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Keats</span> (<i>La Belle Dame sans Merci</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He put the hawthorn twigs apart,</div> -<div class="verse">And yet saw no more wondrous thing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Than seven white swans, who on wide wing</div> -<div class="verse">Went circling round, till one by one</div> -<div class="verse">They dropped the dewy grass upon.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Morris</span> (<i>The Earthly Paradise, the Land East of the Sun</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Quoth Christabel.—So let it be!</div> -<div class="verse">And, as the lady bade, did she.</div> -<div class="verse">Her gentle limbs did she undress</div> -<div class="verse">And lay down in her loveliness.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Christabel</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The six quotations above are word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see note p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is a mistake into which spiritually-minded men have fallen, -that God is apprehended and known by a special faculty. The -fact is that every faculty is serviceable in this noble work. -We reach the Divine through our aesthetic faculties when our -soul is stirred by a grand burst of music, or by the contemplation -of a magnificent landscape. We reach the Divine through our -purely intellectual faculties, when, by true reasoning, founded -on sound observation, we master any great law by which -God governs the world. We reach the Divine through our -emotional nature when pure grief or pure love, holy longing, -unselfish hope, righteous indignation, elevate us above the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> -prosaic level of customary equanimity, and help us to realize -the incomparable beauty of holiness.</p> - -<hr class="r15" /> - -<p>Just as the weeping Magdalene<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> stood bewailing the loss -of what even to her was only sacred clay, all unconscious that -her Saviour had been given back to her without seeing corruption, -in a glorified and eternal form, not dead, but alive for evermore, -whom she could love with ever increasing ardour of devotion: -so, we say, there are not a few in our time whose lot it is to wring -their hands over the grave of lost ideas, which they loved and their -fathers loved, but for which God himself is substituting ideas -nobler and better far, which earlier ages failed to grasp only -because they were not in circumstances to feel their higher worth.</p> - -<hr class="r15" /> - -<p>One cannot demonstrate on any physical or visible basis -whatever, that it is a nobler thing to suffer injustice than -to commit it, that truth-speaking is honourable, forgiveness of -injuries magnanimous, and loving self-sacrifice for others sublime. -Honour, purity, humility, reverence, tenderness, courtesy, -patience, these things cannot be weighed on physical scales, -cannot be handled or touched, or melted or frozen in any mechanical -or chemical laboratory. They belong to a different order -of realities from acids and vapours: they are denizens of what, -for want of any more definite or accurate expression, we are -accustomed to call the spiritual world.</p> - -<hr class="r15" /> - -<p>One can see how religion should, to a young person, be -associated with repressive and prohibitive laws. Youth is the -time for the luxuriating of newborn, and, therefore, delicious vital -forces. But its very luxuriance is disorderly, and religion cannot coexist -with disorder. Therefore, that which is so continually warning -the young against impulse, and passion, and irregularity, ought -not to be too greatly displeased if it should, by and by, come -to be regarded by the young as a synonym for mere repressive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> -force, and, therefore, as an unpleasant and unpopular thing. -I believe, too, that there is no exception to the uniformity of the -experience, that all young countries adopt freer systems of -religion, and divest religious bodies more completely of all political -and properly coercive power than older countries. It is all an -illustration of the same thing. Young life, which most needs -regulation, most dislikes it.<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> - -<hr class="r15" /> - -<p>As the genius of the bard is in the poem, as the wisdom of the -legislator is in the law, as the skill of the mechanician is in the -engine, as the soul of the musician is in the harmony and melody, -as the words of a man’s lips issue from the inner world of his -mental and spiritual character—so every work of God, and conspicuously -man, as the noblest of God’s works, may truly be said -to shadow forth a portion of the mind of God.</p> - -<hr class="r15" /> - -<p>We talk of creation as a past thing. But the truth is, creation -is eternal. Creation never ceases. Every time the clouds -drop in rain, every time the waters freeze into new ice, every -time the juices of nature gather into another violet, every time -a new wail of life is heard upon a mother’s breast, every time you -breathe another sigh, or shed another tear, there is God as truly -present in His miraculous creative capacity as on the day when -He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">P. S. Menzies</span> (<i>Sermons</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Apart from their intrinsic value, the above extracts are given because -this book of sermons is of special interest to Australians and because it -has passed into oblivion. There are very few copies in existence.</p> - -<p>Menzies came from Glasgow to Scots Church, Melbourne, in 1868 and -died at the early age of thirty-four in 1874. At the Glasgow University -he had been largely influenced mentally and spiritually by Principal Caird.</p> - -<p>The sermons published in this book were selected by his widow after -his death. Although not revised by their gifted young author, the fine -thoughts expressed in chaste and beautiful language remind one of James -Martineau.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions—like -effects of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel, broken -glass, and rags.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>The Lifted Veil</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My <i>Galligaskins</i> that have long withstood</div> -<div class="verse">The Winter’s Fury, and incroaching Frosts,</div> -<div class="verse">By Time subdued, (what will not Time subdue!)</div> -<div class="verse">An horrid Chasm disclose, with Orifice</div> -<div class="verse">Wide, discontinuous.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Phillips</span> (1676-1709) (<i>The Splendid Shilling</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Galligaskins</i>, trunk-hose. “The Splendid Shilling” is a famous parody -on Milton.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We would not pray that sorrow ne’er may shed</div> -<div class="verse">Her dews along the pathway they must tread;</div> -<div class="verse">The sweetest flowers would never bloom at all,</div> -<div class="verse">If no least rain of tears did ever fall.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gerald Massey</span> (<i>Via Crucis, Via Lucis</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But his wings will not rest and his feet will not stay for us;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Morning is here in the joy of its might;</div> -<div class="verse">With his breath has he sweetened a night and a day for us;</div> -<div class="verse">Now let him pass and the myrtles make way for us;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Love can but last in us here at his height</div> -<div class="verse indent6">For a day and a night.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>At Parting</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, -has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; -and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had -a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be -like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we -should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. -As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In the story Dorothea has found her husband to be a man of narrow -mind and unsympathetic nature. Such a disillusionment after marriage -frequently happens, and we are not deeply moved by what is not unusual, -although it may mean a real life-tragedy. Ruskin says “God gives the -disposition to every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or -even harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too great -to be borne” (<i>Modern Painters</i> v., xix., 32). Only thus could we have lived -through the horrors of the present war.</p> - -<p>George Eliot’s analogy between intensity of the emotions and acuteness -of the senses reminds one of Pope’s lines (“Essay on Man,” Ep. I.) where -he says life would be insupportable, if we had the acute hearing, smell and -other senses of insects and other animals; we should</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Die of a rose in aromatic pain.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">Man that passes by</div> -<div class="verse">So like to God, so like the beasts that die.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Morris</span> (<i>The Earthly Paradise</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;</div> -<div class="verse">What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Not in semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.</div> -<div class="verse">The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,</div> -<div class="verse">Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and bye.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Abt Vogler</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Abt—or Abbé—Georg Joseph Vogler, 1749-1814, a German organist -and composer, is probably chosen by Browning because, although an -important musician, his compositions have perished. In this fine poem -Vogler has been extemporizing, and his inspired music has lifted him in -ecstasy to heaven. The sounds are his slaves who have built palaces of -music, as in the Arab legends angels and demons built magic structures for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> -Solomon. He grieves that this wonderful music should apparently have -vanished for ever; but is comforted by the thought that no good thing, -no fine aspiration, no great effort or noble impulse can really die, but -must exist for ever in the mind of God.</p> - -<p>If Browning had known the evidence now afforded scientifically by -hypnotism and otherwise, he might have come to the conclusion that all -our thoughts and feelings, <i>both good and bad</i>, are recorded deep down in -our own consciousness. Moreover, the existence of thought-transference -leads to the somewhat dreadful suggestion that this record of all our inmost -thoughts and feelings may possibly become open to the inspection of -every one.</p> - -<p>The quotation reminds one of Wordsworth’s sonnet on the “Inside -of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent5">Where music dwells</div> -<div class="verse">Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;</div> -<div class="verse">Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof</div> -<div class="verse">That they were born for immortality.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">... Had I painted the whole,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth;</div> -<div class="verse">Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;</div> -<div class="verse">It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!</div> -<div class="verse">And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.</div> -<div class="verse">Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:</div> -<div class="verse">Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span> (<i>Abt Vogler</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See the preceding note. The poet says that Painting and Poetry are -“art in obedience to laws,” but the musician exerts a higher <i>creative</i> will -akin to that of God. The painter has before him the pictures he reproduces,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> -the poet borrows his imagery from visible things and has apt words -in which to express his thoughts: the musician has nothing visible, nothing -outside his own soul, to assist him, and can use only the meaningless sounds -which we hear everywhere around us. By combining, however, three of -those empty sounds (in a chord) he evolves a fourth sound, which so transcends -all that other arts can do in expressing emotion that Browning -compares it to a “star.”</p> - -<p>But this expresses only part of the poet’s meaning. In using this -tremendous comparison to a <i>star</i>, as also in enthroning music supreme -above art and poetry, he means that it transcends their loftiest flights and -rises <i>above our world</i> to the heavens above. In the earlier part of the poem -the “pinnacled glory” built by the slaves of sound at the bidding of the -musician’s soul is based “broad on the roots of things” and ascends until -it “attains to heaven.”</p> - -<p>F. W. H. Myers, in “The Renewal of Youth,” has a passage on music. -His theme is that while music (as in Mozart’s operas) may express human -passion, it also (as in Beethoven) rises to greater heights and appears to -voice the emotions of a world beyond our senses. In the lines I have -italicized in the following passage he no doubt refers to Browning’s line, -“That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star!”—the -“star” meaning that music ascends to a higher world than our own:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">... Music is a creature bound,</div> -<div class="verse">A voice not ours, the imprisoned soul of sound,—</div> -<div class="verse">Who fain would bend down hither and find her part</div> -<div class="verse">In the strong passion of a hero’s heart,</div> -<div class="verse">Or one great hour constrains herself to sing</div> -<div class="verse">Pastoral peace and waters wandering;—</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Then hark how on a chord she is rapt and flown</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>To that true world thou seest not nor hast known</i>,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor speech of thine can her strange thought unfold,</div> -<div class="verse">The bars’ wild beat, and ripple of running gold.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Not only does Browning unselfishly assert that the sister-art -is superior to his own, but he goes further, and doubts if music is not the -greatest of all man’s gifts. I do not discuss either contention—leaving -musicians to rejoice in the tribute of a great poet.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Although a gem be cast away,</div> -<div class="verse">And lie obscured in heaps of clay,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Its precious worth is still the same;</div> -<div class="verse">Although vile dust be whirled to heaven,</div> -<div class="verse">To it no dignity is given,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Still base as when from earth it came.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sadi</span> (<i>L. S. Costello’s translation</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Death closes all: but something ere the end,</div> -<div class="verse">Some work of noble note, may yet be done....</div> -<div class="verse">Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’</div> -<div class="verse">We are not now that strength which in old days</div> -<div class="verse">Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;</div> -<div class="verse">One equal temper of heroic hearts,</div> -<div class="verse">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will</div> -<div class="verse">To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>Ulysses</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Jenny kissed me when we met,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Jumping from the chair she sat in;</div> -<div class="verse">Time, you thief, who love to get</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sweets into your list, put that in!</div> -<div class="verse">Say I’m weary, say I’m sad.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Say that health and wealth have missed me,</div> -<div class="verse">Say I’m growing old, but add</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Jenny kissed me.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Leigh Hunt.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Jenny” was Mrs. Carlyle.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A gracious spirit o’er this earth presides</div> -<div class="verse">And o’er the heart of man: invisibly</div> -<div class="verse">It comes, to works of unreproved delight</div> -<div class="verse">And tendency benign, directing those</div> -<div class="verse">Who care not, know not, think not what they do.</div> -<div class="verse">The tales that charm away the wakeful night</div> -<div class="verse">In Araby; romances; legends penned</div> -<div class="verse">For solace by dim light of monkish lamps;</div> -<div class="verse">Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised</div> -<div class="verse">By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun</div> -<div class="verse">By the dismantled warrior in old age,</div> -<div class="verse">Out of the bowels of those very schemes</div> -<div class="verse">In which his youth did first extravagate;</div> -<div class="verse">These spread like day, and something in the shape</div> -<div class="verse">Of these will live till man shall be no more.</div> -<div class="verse">Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours,</div> -<div class="verse">And <i>they must</i> have their food. Our childhood sits,</div> -<div class="verse">Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne</div> -<div class="verse">That hath more power than all the elements.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Prelude</i>, Bk. V.)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The world is so inconveniently constituted, that the vague -consciousness of being a fine fellow is no guarantee of success -in any line of business.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Brother Jacob</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Wasted, weary,—wherefore stay</div> -<div class="verse">Wrestling thus with earth and clay!</div> -<div class="verse">From the body pass away!—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hark! the mass is singing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">From thee doff thy mortal weed,</div> -<div class="verse">Mary Mother be thy speed,</div> -<div class="verse">Saints to help thee at thy need!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hark! the knell is ringing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fear not snow-drift driving past,</div> -<div class="verse">Sleet, or hail, or levin blast;</div> -<div class="verse">Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,</div> -<div class="verse">And the sleep be on thee cast</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That shall know no waking.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Haste thee, haste thee to be gone,</div> -<div class="verse">Earth flits past, and time draws on,—</div> -<div class="verse">Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Day is near the breaking.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>From <i>Guy Mannering</i>. Scott says it is a prayer or spell, which was -used in Scotland or Northern England to speed the passage of a parting -spirit, like the tolling of a bell in Catholic days.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The world is full of Woodmen who expel</div> -<div class="verse">Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,</div> -<div class="verse">And vex the nightingales in every dell.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>The Woodman and the Nightingale</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Evil of every kind, being familiar to us as an <i>object</i> of apprehension, -appears to be external to ourselves. And yet it is invested -with the greater part of its severity by the mind: it acts upon us -by the ideas it awakens, the affections it wounds, the aspirations -it disappoints. If its outward pressure were all, and it dealt -with us as beings of sense alone, it would lose most of its -poignancy and would dwindle down into a few animal pangs.... -It is our higher nature that creates immeasurably the greater -part of the ills we endure: they are ideal, not sensible: and it -is the privilege of reason to have tears instead of groans; of love -to know grief instead of pain; of conscience to replace uneasiness -with remorse.... Penury, disgrace, bereavement, -guilt, are evils which we must be human in order to feel; and it -is the penalty of our nobleness, not only to be weighed down by -their occasional burthen, but to be perpetually haunted by the -phantom of their approach.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (<i>Hours of Thought</i>, II, 150).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Two or three of them got round me, and begged me for the -twentieth time to tell them the name of my country. Then, -as they could not pronounce it satisfactorily, they insisted that -I was deceiving them, and that it was a name of my own invention. -One funny old man, who bore a ludicrous resemblance to a friend -of mine at home, was almost indignant. “Unglung!” said -he, “who ever heard of such a name?—anglang, angerlang—<i>that</i> -can’t be the name of your country; you are playing with us.” -Then he tried to give a convincing illustration. “My country -is Wanumbai—anybody can say Wanumbai. I’m an orang-Wanumbai; -but N-glung! who ever heard of such a name? -Do tell us the real name of your country, and when you are gone -we shall know how to talk about you.” To this luminous argument -and remonstrance I could oppose nothing but assertion, and the -whole party remained firmly convinced that I was for some -reason or other deceiving them.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. R. Wallace</span> (<i>The Malay Archipelago</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,</div> -<div class="verse">Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;</div> -<div class="verse">So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,</div> -<div class="verse">Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Longfellow</span> (<i>Tales of a Wayside Inn</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was written in 1863, but ten years earlier Alexander Smith, in -“A Life Drama,” had written:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,</div> -<div class="verse">Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;</div> -<div class="verse">One little hour! and then away they speed</div> -<div class="verse">On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,</div> -<div class="verse">To meet no more.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Other writers have also used the same simile. See next poem.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">QUA CURSUM VENTUS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With canvas drooping, side by side,</div> -<div class="verse">Two towers of sail at dawn of day</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are scarce long leagues apart descried;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And all the darkling hours they plied,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By each was cleaving, side by side:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">E’en so—but why the tale reveal</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of those, whom year by year unchanged,</div> -<div class="verse">Brief absence joined anew to feel</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Astounded, soul from soul estranged?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">At dead of night their sails were filled,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And onward each rejoicing steered—</div> -<div class="verse">Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,</div> -<div class="verse">Through winds and tides one compass guides—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To that, and your own selves, be true.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But O blithe breeze! and O great seas,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Though ne’er, that earliest parting past,</div> -<div class="verse">On your wide plain they join again,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Together lead them home at last.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">One port, methought, alike they sought,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One purpose hold where’er they fare,—</div> -<div class="verse">O bounding breeze, O rushing seas!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">At last, at last, unite them there!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. H. Clough.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Two friends, who through absence have become “soul from soul -estranged,” are compared to two ships, which unconsciously draw apart -during the night and must continue a diverging course; but, being both -bound for the same port, will at the end of their life-voyage be re-united.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Speak to Him thou, for He hears—and Spirit with Spirit can meet—</div> -<div class="verse">Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Higher Pantheism</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Tennyson, here and elsewhere (see, for example, the king’s beautiful -speech in “The Passing of Arthur”) urges us to <i>prayer</i>, and adds his belief -in a personal intercourse with an ever-present and loving God. Innumerable -men of the highest character during nineteen centuries have testified to -the same direct communion with the Almighty.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A third in sugar with unscriptural hand</div> -<div class="verse">Traffics and builds a lasting house on sand.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alfred Austin</span> (<i>The Golden Age</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thou canst not in life’s city</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Rule thy course as in a cell:</div> -<div class="verse">There are others, all thy brothers,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Who have work to do as well.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Some events that mar thy purpose</div> -<div class="verse indent1">May light <i>them</i> upon their way;</div> -<div class="verse">Our sun-shining in declining</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gives earth’s other side the day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. A. Vaughan</span> (<i>Hours with the Mystics</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My little craft sails not alone;</div> -<div class="verse">A thousand fleets from every zone</div> -<div class="verse">Are out upon a thousand seas;</div> -<div class="verse">And what for me were favouring breeze</div> -<div class="verse">Might dash another, with the shock</div> -<div class="verse">Of doom, upon some hidden rock.</div> -<div class="verse">And so I do not dare to pray</div> -<div class="verse">For winds to waft me on my way.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Catherine Atherton Mason.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A man’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both -I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin’s lining: rumple -the one, you rumple the other.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sterne</span> (<i>Tristram Shandy</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Il (Boucher) trouvait la nature trop verte et mal éclairée. Et -son ami, Lancret, le peintre des salons à la mode, lui répondait: -“Je suis de votre sentiment, la nature manque d’harmonie -et de séduction.”</p> - -<p>(He, Boucher, found nature too green and badly lit. And his friend, -Lancret, the fashionable painter of the day, replied to him, “I am of your -opinion, nature is wanting in harmony and seductiveness.”)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Blanc.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See following quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If you examine the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, -you will find that nearly all its expressions, having reference -to the country, show ... either a foolish sentimentality, or a -morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. -Nothing is more remarkable than the general conception -of the country merely as a series of green fields, and the combined -ignorance and dread of more sublime scenery. The love of -fresh air and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures -of men; but that of the sublimer features of scenery had no -place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed by the -formalisms of the age. And although in the second-rate writers -continually, and in the first-rate ones occasionally, you find -an affectation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests, yet -whenever they write from their heart, you will find an utter -absence of feeling respecting anything beyond gardens and -grass. Examine, for instance, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, -and Sterne, the comedies of Molière, and the writings of Johnson -and Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expression -of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them. Perhaps -Sterne’s <i>Sentimental Journey</i>, in its total absence of sentiment -on any subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice of -anything at Geneva which might not as well have been seen at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> -Coxwold, is the most striking instance I could give you; and if -you compare with this negation of feeling on one side, the interludes -of Molière, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced -in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception -of the general spirit of the age.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Ruskin</span> (<i>Architecture and Painting</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, -“you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure -nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty -pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result -misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God -of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short, -you are for ever floored. As I am!”</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span> (<i>David Copperfield</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Call to the soul, when man doth sleep,</div> -<div class="verse">So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">And into glory peep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Henry Vaughan</span> (<i>Friends Departed</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is Vision.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent13">... The trial-test</div> -<div class="verse">Appointed to all flesh at some one stage</div> -<div class="verse">Of soul’s achievement—when the strong man doubts</div> -<div class="verse">His strength, the good man whether goodness be,</div> -<div class="verse">The artist in the dark seeks, fails to find</div> -<div class="verse">Vocation, and the saint forswears his shrine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Inn Album</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I sits with my toes in a brook;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">If anyone asks me for why,</div> -<div class="verse">I hits him a rap with my crook—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Tis sentiment kills me, says I.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Horace Walpole.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was written in a game of <i>bouts rimés</i> (rhymed ends). Four lines -had to be composed ending with “brook,” “why,” “crook,” “I.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.</div> -<div class="verse">And I said in underbreath,—all our life is mixed with death,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">And who knoweth which is best?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,</div> -<div class="verse">And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness—</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Round our restlessness, His rest.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>Rhyme of the Duchess May</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent10">I go to prove my soul!</div> -<div class="verse">I see my way as birds their trackless way.</div> -<div class="verse">I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,</div> -<div class="verse">I ask not: but unless God send his hail</div> -<div class="verse">Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,</div> -<div class="verse">In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:</div> -<div class="verse">He guides me and the bird. In his good time!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Paracelsus</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Referring to Bryant’s poem, “To a Waterfowl”:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">He who from zone to zone</div> -<div class="verse">Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In the long way that I must tread alone,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Will lead my steps aright.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Souvent femme varie,</div> -<div class="verse">Bien fol est qui s’y fie!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(Woman is very fickle,</div> -<div class="verse">Great fool he who trusts in her!)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Victor Hugo</span> (<i>Le Roi s’amuse</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In the play Francis I (1494-1547) enters singing these lines. (Francis -wrote on the walls of the royal apartments at Chambord <i>Toute femme -varie</i>, “Every woman is fickle.”) One finds this never-ending theme -of poets and cynics in Virgil’s <i>Varium et mutabile semper Femina</i>, “Woman -is a fickle and changeable thing” (<i>Aeneid</i> iv, 569), <i>La donna è mobile</i> (<i>Rigoletto</i>), -and countless other passages.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Crowned with flowers I saw fair Amaryllis</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By Thyrsis sit, hard by a fount of Chrystal,</div> -<div class="verse">And with her hand more white than snow or lilies,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On sand she wrote “My faith shall be immortal”:</div> -<div class="verse">And suddenly a storm of wind and weather</div> -<div class="verse">Blew all her faith and sand away together.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,</div> -<div class="verse">Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,</div> -<div class="verse">More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,</div> -<div class="verse">Than women’s are.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><i>Twelfth Night</i>, II, 4.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If Thou be’st born to strange sights,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Things invisible to see,</div> -<div class="verse">Ride ten thousand days and nights</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Till Age snow white hairs on thee;</div> -<div class="verse">Thou, when thou return’st, will tell me</div> -<div class="verse">All strange wonders that befell thee,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And swear</div> -<div class="verse indent2">No where</div> -<div class="verse">Lives a woman true, and fair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If thou find’st one, let me know:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Such a pilgrimage were sweet.</div> -<div class="verse">Yet do not; I would not go,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Though at next door we might meet.</div> -<div class="verse">Though she were true when you met her,</div> -<div class="verse">And last till you write your letter,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Yet she</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Will be</div> -<div class="verse">False, ere I come, to two or three.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Donne</span> (<i>Song</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In his broken fashion Queequeg gave me to understand that, -in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, -the king, chiefs and great people generally were in the custom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> -of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish -a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight -or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. -Besides it was very convenient on an excursion—much better than -those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks. -Upon occasion a chief would call his attendant, and desire him -to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree—perhaps -in some damp marshy place.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Herman Melville</span> (<i>Moby Dick</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde:</div> -<div class="verse">Hae mercy o’ my soul, Lord God;</div> -<div class="verse">As I wad do, were I Lord God,</div> -<div class="verse">And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. MacDonald</span> (<i>David Elginbrod</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Dieu me pardonnera; c’est son métier.</p> - -<p>(God will pardon me; that is His business.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Heine.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O Lord, it broke my heart to see his pain!</div> -<div class="verse">I thought—I dared to think—if <i>I</i> were God,</div> -<div class="verse">Poor Caird should never gang so dark a road;</div> -<div class="verse">I thought—ay, dared to think, the Lord forgie!—</div> -<div class="verse">The Lord was crueller than I could be;</div> -<div class="verse">Forgetting God is just and knoweth best</div> -<div class="verse">What folk should burn in fire, what folk be blest.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span> (<i>A Scottish Eclogue</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thoughts and tears as I turn away,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Tears for a long ago:</div> -<div class="verse">She looks out on a summer day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I on a night of snow.</div> -<div class="verse">But I see some ferns and a rushing rill</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And my love that promised me,</div> -<div class="verse">And a day we spent on God’s great hill</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the other side of the sea,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">My heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the other side of the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ay! the hill was green and the sky was blue,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the path was dappled fair,</div> -<div class="verse">But a light from loving eyes shone through</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Beyond the sunlight there.</div> -<div class="verse">And I gave my life—and who’s to blame?—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As over the hill went we:</div> -<div class="verse">But the sky and the hill and the way we came</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are the other side of the sea,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Sad heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Are the other side of the sea....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Mid trees and grass and a tangled wall</div> -<div class="verse indent1">We wandered merrily down,</div> -<div class="verse">Through the homeless boughs and the forest fall</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of the dead leaves thick and brown.</div> -<div class="verse">But faith is broken and life is pain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And oh! it can never be</div> -<div class="verse">That I gather those golden hours again</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the other side of the sea,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Poor heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the other side of the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Though the sea is wild and the sea is dark,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It will sink and slip away</div> -<div class="verse">At the bounding scorn of my speeding bark</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To the land of that dear day;</div> -<div class="verse">But never the Love of my soul be seen,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The light of that day to me,</div> -<div class="verse">For I know there is lying our hearts between</div> -<div class="verse indent1">A wilder and darker sea,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">O God!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The depth of a bitterer sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Hodgson.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was written in March, 1879, after Hodgson had left Australia -for England. The love-episode is imaginary.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And go to church on Sunday;</div> -<div class="verse">And many are afraid of God—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And more of Mrs. Grundy.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. Locker-Lampson</span> (<i>The Jester’s Plea</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Greece and her foundations are</div> -<div class="verse">Built below the tide of war,</div> -<div class="verse">Based on the crystalline sea</div> -<div class="verse">Of thought and its eternity.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Hellas</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is very true that the amazing intellectual power of the Greeks -in a primitive age ensures them an immortality of fame; and this is finely -expressed <i>in the last two lines</i>. But those two splendid lines are utterly -spoilt by the two that precede them. One asks, Why “Greece <i>and</i> her foundations”? -One does not say “a house <i>and</i> its foundations” are built -somewhere or other. This by itself would be trivial, but next comes the -question, What is the meaning of the second line? We know what Shelley -intended—that the memory and influence of Greece will withstand its -destruction by war—but why in that case should she not be built <i>above</i>, -instead of submerged <i>below</i> the tide of war? Later on, in lines 836-7, -the Emperor Palæologus, at the siege of Constantinople, is said to have cast -himself “<i>beneath</i> the stream of war”; that is to say, he was overwhelmed -and killed. The words, in fact, do not express the poet’s meaning. The -third and fatal defect of the lines is the juxtaposition of “tide” and “sea” -—the city is <i>built below a tide</i>, and also <i>based on a sea</i>. Not only is this -combination absurd in itself, but it also destroys the beauty of the last -two magnificent lines. The moving unstable water is scarcely a foundation -to build upon, yet this meaning is forcibly impressed upon the word “sea” -by the previous mention of a “tide.” What Shelley meant was an immense -broad, deep, expanse of <i>solid crystal</i>—the “sea of glass like unto crystal” -of Revelations (iv, 6) and the <i>Mer de Glace</i> (“sea of ice”), the great Alpine -glacier.<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Therefore, anyone who had exactness of thought or perception -of poetry would omit the first two lines and give only the last two as a -quotation.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Shelley in her note on “Hellas” specially refers to this verse -as a beautiful example of Shelley’s style, and she quotes <i>all four</i> lines. -We may assume, therefore, that Shelley himself thought highly of the verse, -and we thus have an illustration of the curious fact that a great poet is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> -often a poor judge of his own poetry. (Almost certainly Shakespeare -himself did not realize how god-like he stood above all other poets.) However, -it is not only for this reason that I have included the above quotation, -but because with it I propose to make a flank attack upon Mr. R. W. Livingstone, -the author of <i>The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us</i>. I do this, -of course, with a special object in view.</p> - -<p>Mr. Livingstone’s book is important, valuable, and highly interesting—and -is especially admirable because the author does not envelope his -subject in the usual glamour, born of enthusiasm. He is, indeed, most -exceptional in this respect, that he endeavours to look at the Greeks from -an ordinary commonsense point of view. But he makes the mistake, -not unusual with classical men, of supposing that he is a qualified critic -of poetry; and he, therefore, gives us a special dissertation upon the comparative -values of English and Greek poetry.</p> - -<p>Apart from this dissertation, he quotes three or four passages from -English poets in the course of the book. Of these the most prominent -is the above verse of Shelley’s, and he quotes <i>all four</i> lines without comment. -Thus we see an able man, in whom classical study should have induced -exactness of thought, failing to analyse and understand what he is quoting. -But, more than this, the question is one of poetic perception. The imagery -in the last <i>two</i> lines is sublime—in the <i>four</i> lines it is ludicrous. Therefore, -we begin with the fact that our literary critic was unable to see palpable -and grave defects in one of the few verses he himself quotes. (I might give -other illustrations, as where he admires poor verse of Dryden’s, but I must -be brief.)</p> - -<p>Mr. Livingstone’s point is that the “direct” and “truthful” character -of Greek poetry is superior to the “imaginative” quality of English -verse. He goes so far as to say that “Sappho and Simonides <i>with four -words</i> make him see a nightingale and give him a greater and far saner -pleasure” than Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark.” I take his quotation -from Simonides, as it involves less discussion than that from Sappho.<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> -It is (Fr, 73) ἀὴδονες πολυκώτιλοι χλωραύχενες εἰαριναί, “The warbling -nightingales with olive necks, the birds of spring.”</p> - -<p>As Mr. Livingstone is not discussing beauty of expression we can leave -this out of consideration.<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> He is discussing the <i>substance</i> of poetry, comparing -the “directness” and “truthfulness” of Simonides (in this case) -with the imaginative element in Shelley’s poem. He would apparently -discard the latter element altogether, and prefers a simple description -of the nightingale—that it sings, has an olive neck, and appears in spring. -The first suggestion that occurs to one is that if, say, an auctioneer’s catalogue -of farm stock—without any addition whatever to its contents—could be -worded prettily and made metrical, it would afford huge enjoyment to our -literary critic.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p> - -<p>The whole question is as to the value of the imaginative element which -to our minds makes Shelley’s poem one of the most beautiful lyrics—possibly -the most beautiful—in all literature. In sweeping away this element, -Mr. Livingstone tells us how much of English poetry must be cast aside. -But he does not realize that much else has also to be flung on the scrap-heap. -Imagination, in its true sense, includes all those aesthetic, moral, and spiritual -faculties which are higher than the intellect—all, in fact, that raises man above -his material existence. (See pp. <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.) With the immense deal of -English poetry which Mr. Livingstone proposes to “scrap” must go all -our most beautiful music, all that is great in painting (which is never “direct” -and “truthful” in this sense, or it would not be great), <i>all Greek statuary</i>, -and all that expresses high moral and spiritual truths in our literature. I do -not think that Mr. Livingstone will find many adherents to his new creed.</p> - -<p>This critic also discusses <i>style</i>, and we find that he speaks of Pope -as a “great poet,” and apparently revels in his monotonous verse! -When pointing out that English verse, unlike what we have left of Greek -poetry, includes much unequal and ill-finished work, he says, “Of all our -great poets, perhaps only Milton and Pope can boast unfailing excellence -of style.”</p> - -<p>As regards this inequality in the work of English poets the answer -is very simple. Mr. Livingstone forgets the fact—a very important fact -in any speculation upon the scheme of the universe—that only the good -things ultimately survive. How very little we have left of many Greek -poets! Of Sophocles only seven plays remain out of one hundred and -twenty-seven, <i>and the Fragments collected are said to be very poor</i> (many, -of course, are only grammatical illustrations)—and more than half of Homer -must have been dropped. We probably still have everything that is <i>best</i> -in Greek literature. Again, it is not in fact <i>desirable</i> to restrict publication -to work of the highest importance, and the facilities afforded by printing -have made it <i>unnecessary</i> thus to restrict it—so that even <i>My Commonplace -Book</i> is now, at least temporarily, part of English literature!</p> - -<p>Greatly as I admire Mr. Livingstone’s book, I feel bound to call attention -to a view of poetry that must do great harm to University students -and others. I am also bound to mention him as an illustration of the fact -that classical men usually imagine that their study of the Greek and Latin -languages and literature qualifies them to become literary critics.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> This -fact has impressed itself upon me from youth upwards. One of my teachers, -a man of some weight in the classical world, was in the habit of saying -that only through study of Latin and Greek could a man learn to write good -English!<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> His own English was simply execrable.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p> - -<p>I will now give another instance where the classical enthusiast, as in -Mr. Livingstone’s case, tends to exaggerate the value of his favourite literature—truly -wonderful as it is. Gissing’s <i>Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft</i> -is an interesting book of wide circulation, in which the author displays -great admiration for and familiarity with the classics. Speaking of Xenophon’s -<i>Anabasis</i>, he says “Were it the sole book existing in Greek, it would -be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order to read it.” That -is to say, it would be worth while expending, out of our short lives, some -years of study for the sole purpose of reading in the original an extremely -<i>simple</i>, <i>prose</i> historical narrative, which has been excellently translated! -(If Gissing had said <i>Homer</i> instead of Xenophon, no one would have quarrelled -with him.) Again, he says, “Many a single line presents a picture which -deeply stirs the emotions”; and he gives us what he calls “a good instance -of such a line.” A guide, who has led the Greeks through hostile country, -has to return through the same perilous district, and the wonderful -line is Ἐπεὶ ἑσπέρα ἐγένετο, ᾤχετο τῆς νυκτὸς ἀπιών. This line Gissing -translates, “When evening came he took leave of us and went away by -night”—a sentence which only by inadvertence could have appeared in, -say, a <i>Times</i> leader, seeing that the words “by night” are redundant. -As a matter of fact, the translation is incorrect; there is nothing about -“taking leave of us,” and the meaning is, “As soon as evening came, he -had slipped away into the darkness.”</p> - -<p>(Professor Naylor points out to me that the word ᾤχετο in this line is -interesting. It conveys the idea of a swift or abrupt departure or disappearance. -It is used in connection with that most interesting man Alcibiades -(Xen, <i>Hell.</i>, 2. I. 26) and gives a fine impression of his quick insolent temper. -The Greek admirals had put themselves in a position of extreme danger -and he came to warn them of their peril. Their reply was the usual expression -of ineptitude, “We are the admirals, not you”; and immediately -follows the one word ᾤχετο, “he turned on his heels and left”—and with -this word Alcibiades disappears from contemporary history.)</p> - -<hr class="r15" /> - -<p>In referring to Mr. Livingstone’s remarks above I could not use the -Sappho quotation, because there are certain initial questions that need to -be first settled. (In briefly discussing these I must speak as though I were -expressing <i>definite opinions</i>, since otherwise the note could not be compressed -sufficiently, but I mean the following rather as <i>suggestions</i> which -may possibly be found useful.)</p> - -<p>Sappho’s line is (Fr, 39) Ἦρος ἄγγελος ἱμερόφωνος ἀήδων, which Mr. -Livingstone translates “The messenger of spring, the lovely-voiced nightingale.” -Now ἱμερος (<i>himeros</i>) means animal passion, so that ἱμερόφωνος -(<i>himerophonos</i>) is a strong word meaning singing of, or with, passion—in -this case the passion of the pairing-time. Why then does Mr. Livingstone, -following Liddell and Scott, give the totally different meaning -“lovely-voiced”? Apparently it is because Theocritus (XXVIII, 7) applies -the expression “himerophonos” to the Charites, and, according to the -current conception, those deities were pure unimpassionate beings.<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p> - -<p>In questions of this character, seeing that the Greek gods were guilty -of every form of immorality and the Greeks themselves were one of the most -sensual nations that ever existed, the presumption is in favour of impurity: -the onus of proof is on those who allege purity. I have not undertaken -the heavy work of looking up the innumerable references to the Charites -in Greek literature, but I know of nothing that supports the prevalent -conception of those deities. Apart from the fact that Theocritus uses the -word <i>himerophonos</i>, Meleager (Anth. Pal, V, 195) speaks of <i>himeros</i> as conferred -by the Charites. There is nothing in the meaning of <i>charis</i>, or the -verb <i>charizesthai</i> to support the current idea (both being even used in an -immodest sense); Homer identifies Charis with Aphrodite, with whom -Hesiod also identifies Aglaia, since each is made the wife of Hephaestus; -the Charites are constantly associated with Aphrodite and Erôs (and consequently -with Himeros, the personification of passion) so that the maxim -<i>Noscitur a sociis</i> applies; Sappho repeatedly claims them as her patrons; -as regards the representation of the Charites in art, girl friendship would -be a subject quite alien to the Greek mind.</p> - -<p>If the view suggested is correct our authorities with their preconceived -ideas <i>presume to correct Theocritus and Sappho</i>! They not only -give a wrong view of the Charites, but also hide the coarseness of the compliment -paid by Theocritus to his lady friend—in each case <i>distorting -the truth</i>.</p> - -<p>Mr. Livingstone may have another reason for altering the meaning of -“himerophonos.” He appears to hold the opinion that a Greek writer -would not ascribe intelligence or emotion to a bird, as Mrs. Browning does in -“To a Seamew.” (I quite agree with him as to the false, feminine sentiment -in this poem. It is mainly the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” that raise -Mrs. Browning above the minor poets.) Mr. Livingstone, for example, -translates ἡμερόφων’ ἀλέκτωρ, “O cock that criest <i>at</i> dawn.” This should -surely mean “that announceth the dawn;” the attitude and the very <i>crow</i> -of the bird would suggest this to the Greeks; and the fowl did, as a matter -of fact, serve in place of an alarm-clock to them (see, for instance, Aristophanes’ -<i>Birds</i>, 488). Does not Mr. Livingstone forget that the Greeks -attributed not only intelligence but also miraculous powers to animals (<a href="#Page_370">see p. -370</a>)? If so, this illustrates another fact noticeable among classical authorities. -They often fail to consider <i>all the premises</i> before arriving at a conclusion. -Taking another illustration from Mr. Livingstone, he says that the Greeks -had little of the feeling of wonder, did not “muse on the strangeness of the -world,” and would not have experienced the emotion Pascal felt when viewing -the starry heavens, “The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies -me.” The premise he appears to omit here is the fact of the intense ignorance -of the Greeks. Their world was a very limited one, with its flat earth -and solid lid, certain bright objects conceived as gods or otherwise moving -in the intermediate space. To illustrate this, Herodotus (II, 24) believes -that the sun-god is forced by the cold winds in winter to move to the warm -sky above Libya; and in 434 B.C. (about the same time) the great advanced -thinker, Anaxagoras, is arrested for blasphemy and exiled because he taught -that the sun must be a mass of blazing metal larger than the Peloponnesus! -Everything in nature had its god, whose action explained whatever happened. -If the Greeks had once realized the awful infinity of the universe their whole -outlook on nature would have changed, and I cannot think that so highly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> -intellectual a people would not have been moved by wonder. I cannot -see any element in “the Greek genius” that would indicate this. (Observe -Ptolemy’s epigram on <a href="#Page_10">p. 10</a>.)</p> - -<p>Returning to the Sappho quotation, Mr. Livingstone translates -ἦρος ἄγγελος literally as “the messenger of spring.” Does he mean the -messenger “sent by spring” or “announcing spring”? Presumably he does -not mean the latter, as it would impute intelligence or emotion to the bird. -But, if we accept the former interpretation, it leads to the curious result -that the poet, not content with a Goddess of Spring and the Hours who -represent the seasons, intends still further to personify spring. Is not -the true meaning of Sappho’s words “the nightingale with its passionate -song sent (by Proserpine) to let men know that spring is approaching”? -This is not mere captious criticism. To Sappho the goddess Proserpine -was a concrete being with some sort of corporeal form, who brings a <i>thing</i> -called spring, and who actually <i>does</i> send the nightingale ahead to sing -of the passion of the pairing-time, and thus let men know that spring is -coming. There is no poetic imagery, no imaginative picture in the poet’s -mind, but the statement of an <i>actual fact</i>. See also the reference to the -halcyon, <a href="#Page_370">p. 370</a>. It seems to me that, in this as in other cases, our classical -authorities <i>fail to place themselves in the position of the Greeks</i>. Here they -interpret as imagination what was meant as reality. (However, as I have -said before, the above are merely suggestions which I myself hope to consider -further; but, until we knew exactly what Sappho’s verse meant, -it could not be brought into the discussion of Mr. Livingstone’s views.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah! the weariness and weight of tears,</div> -<div class="verse">The crying out to God, the wish for slumber,</div> -<div class="verse">They lay so deep, so deep! God heard them all;</div> -<div class="verse">He set them unto music of his own.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Buchanan</span>, 1866 (<i>Bexhill</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Buchanan is speaking of the sad lives in the poor quarters of London.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent</div> -<div class="verse">Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe:</div> -<div class="verse">Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,</div> -<div class="verse">Is always watching with a wondering hate.</div> -<div class="verse">Not till the fire is dying in the grate</div> -<div class="verse">Look we for any kinship with the stars.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. Meredith</span> (<i>Modern Love IV.</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A fine expression of a familiar fact. Under the influence of love, -anger, or other strong passion, a man becomes an unreasoning animal, -and actually <i>hates</i> to be told the truth. Wild passion glares through the -bars of its self-constituted cage at philosophy standing calm, lofty, and -serene. Only “when the fire is dying in the grate” do we again become -akin to cold, dispassionate, star-like Philosophy.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The triumph of machinery is when man wonders at his own -works; thus, says Derwent Coleridge, all science begins in wonder -and ends in wonder, but the first is the wonder of ignorance, the -last that of adoration.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Caroline Fox’s Journals.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Evidently a comment on S. T. Coleridge’s Aphorism IV. on “Spiritual -Religion” (<i>Aids to Reflection</i>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>No one of himself can rise out of the depths, but must clasp -some outstretched hand.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Seneca</span> (? 3 B.C.-65 A.D.) (<i>Epistle 52</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE RIME OF REDEMPTION</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The ways are white in the moon’s light,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Under the leafless trees:</div> -<div class="verse">Strange shadows go across the snow</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Before the tossing breeze.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The burg stands grim upon the rim</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of the low wooded hill:</div> -<div class="verse">Sir Loibich sits beside the hearth,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Fill’d with a thought of ill.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The knight sits bent with eyes intent</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Upon the dying fire;</div> -<div class="verse">Sad dreams and strange in sooth do range</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Before the troubled sire.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He sees the maid the past years laid</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Upon his breast to sleep,</div> -<div class="verse">Long dead in sin, laid low within</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The grave unblest and deep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He hears her wail, with lips that fail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To him to save her soul:</div> -<div class="verse">He sees her laid, unhouselèd,<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></div> -<div class="verse indent2">Under the crossless knoll.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Ah! would, dear Christ, my tears sufficed</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To ransom her!” he cries:</div> -<div class="verse">“Sweet Heaven, to win her back from sin,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">I would renounce the skies.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Could I but bring her suffering</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To pardon and to peace,</div> -<div class="verse">I for my own sin would atone,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Where never pain doth cease!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“I for my part would gnaw my heart,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Chain’d in the flames of hell;</div> -<div class="verse">I would abide, unterrified,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">More than a man shall tell.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The moon is pale, the night winds wail,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Weird whispers fill the night:</div> -<div class="verse">“Dear heart, what word was that I heard</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Ring out in the moonlight?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">’Twas but the blast that hurried past,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Shrieking among the pines:</div> -<div class="verse">The souls that wail upon the gale,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">When the dim starlight shines.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Great God! the name! once more it came</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Ringing across the dark!</div> -<div class="verse">“Loibich!” it cried. The night is wide,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The dim pines stand and hark.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Loibich! Loibich! my soul is sick</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With hungering for thee!</div> -<div class="verse">The night fades fast, the hours fly past;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Stay not, come forth to me!”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The cloudwrack grey did break away,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Out shone the ghostly moon;</div> -<div class="verse">Down slid the haze from off the ways</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Before her silver shoon.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Pale silver-ray’d, out shone the glade,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Before the castle wall,</div> -<div class="verse">And on the lea the knight could see</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A maid both fair and tall.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Gold was her hair, her face was fair,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As fair as fair can be;</div> -<div class="verse">But through the night the blue corpse-light</div> -<div class="verse indent2">About her could he see.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She raised her face towards the place</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Where Loibich stood adread;</div> -<div class="verse">There was a sheen in her two een,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As one that long is dead.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She look’d at him in the light dim,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And beckon’d with her hand:</div> -<div class="verse">“Dear Knight,” she said, “thy prayer hath sped</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Unto the heavenly land.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Come forth with me: the night is free</div> -<div class="verse indent2">For us to work the thing</div> -<div class="verse">That is to do, before we two</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Shall hear the dawn-bird sing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Saddle thy steed, Sir Knight, with speed,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Thy faithfullest,” quoth she,</div> -<div class="verse">“For many a tide we twain must ride</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Before the end shall be.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The steed is girt, black Dagobert,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Swift-footed as the wind;</div> -<div class="verse">The knight leapt up upon his croup,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The maid sprang up behind.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The wind screams past; they ride so fast,—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Like troops of souls in pain</div> -<div class="verse">The snowdrifts spin, but none may win</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To rest upon the twain.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">So fast they ride, the blasts divide</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To let them hurry on;</div> -<div class="verse">The wandering ghosts troop past in hosts</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Across the moonlight wan.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A singing light did cleave the night,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">High up a hill rode they;</div> -<div class="verse">The veils of Heaven for them were riven,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And all the skies pour’d day.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The golden gate did stand await,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The golden town did lie</div> -<div class="verse">Before their sight, the realms of light</div> -<div class="verse indent2">God builded in the sky.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The steed did wait before the gate,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Sheer up the street looked they.</div> -<div class="verse">They saw the bliss in Heaven that is,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">They saw the saints’ array.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">They saw the hosts upon the coasts</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of the clear crystal sea;</div> -<div class="verse">They saw the blest, that in the rest</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of Christ for ever be.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The choirs of God pulsed full and broad</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Upon the ravish’d twain;</div> -<div class="verse">The angels’ feet upon the street</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Rang out like golden rain.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then said the maid, “Be not afraid,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">God giveth heaven to thee;</div> -<div class="verse">Light down and rest with Christ His blest,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And think no more of me!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sir Loibich gazed, as one sore dazed,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Awhile upon the place:</div> -<div class="verse">Then, with a sigh, he turned his eye</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Upon the maiden’s face.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“No heaven for me shall be,</div> -<div class="verse">Unless God give that thou shalt live</div> -<div class="verse indent2">In heaven for aye with me.”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Ah, curst am I!” the maid did cry;</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“My place thou knowest well;</div> -<div class="verse">I must begone before the dawn,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To harbour me in hell.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“By Christ His rest!” he beat his breast,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“Then be it even so;</div> -<div class="verse">With thee in hell I choose to dwell</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And share with thee thy woe!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Thy sin was mine,—By Christ His wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Mine too shall be thy doom;</div> -<div class="verse">What part have I within the sky,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And thou in Hell’s red gloom?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The vision broke, as thus he spoke,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The city waned away:</div> -<div class="verse">O’er hill and brake, o’er wood and lake</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Once more the darkness lay.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O’er hill and plain they ride again,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Under the night’s black spell,</div> -<div class="verse">Until there rise against the skies</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The lurid lights of hell.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The dreadful cries they rend the skies,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The plain is ceil’d with fire:</div> -<div class="verse">The flames burst out, around, about,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The heats of hell draw nigher.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Unfear’d they ride; against the side</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of the red flameful sky</div> -<div class="verse">Grim forms are thrown, strange shapes upgrown</div> -<div class="verse indent2">From out Hell’s treasury.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fast rode the twain across the plain,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With hearts all undismay’d,</div> -<div class="verse">Until they came where all a-flame</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Hell’s gates were open laid.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The awful stead gaped wide and red,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">To gulph them in its womb:</div> -<div class="verse">There could they see the fiery sea</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And all the souls in doom.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There came a breath, like living death,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Out of the gated way:</div> -<div class="verse">It scorched his face with its embrace,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">It turn’d his hair to grey.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then said the maid, “Art not dismay’d?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Here is our course fulfill’d:</div> -<div class="verse">Wilt thou not turn, nor rest to burn</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With me, as God hath will’d?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">“Thy doom with thee dree I!</div> -<div class="verse">Here will we dwell, hand-link’d in hell,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Unseverèd for aye!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He spurr’d his steed; the gates of dread</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Gaped open for his course;</div> -<div class="verse">Sudden outrang a trumpet’s clang,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">And backwards fell the horse.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The ghostly maid did wane and fade,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The lights of hell did flee;</div> -<div class="verse">Alone in night the mazèd wight</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Stood on the frozen lea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Out shone the moon; the mists were blown</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Away before his sight</div> -<div class="verse">And through the dark he saw a spark,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A welcoming of light.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thither he fared, with falchion bared,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Toward the friendly shine;</div> -<div class="verse">Eftsoon he came to where a flame</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Did burn within a shrine.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Down on his knee low louted he</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Before the cross of wood,</div> -<div class="verse">And for her spright he saw that night</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Long pray’d he to the Rood.<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And as he pray’d, with heart down-weigh’d,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A wondrous thing befell:</div> -<div class="verse">He saw a light, and through the night</div> -<div class="verse indent2">There rang a silver bell.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The earth-mists drew from off his view,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He saw God’s golden town;</div> -<div class="verse">He saw the street, he saw the seat</div> -<div class="verse indent2">From whence God looketh down.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He saw the gate transfigurate,—</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He saw the street of pearl,</div> -<div class="verse">And in the throng, the saints among,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">He saw a gold-hair’d girl.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He saw a girl as white as pearl,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">With hair as red as gold:</div> -<div class="verse">He saw her stand among the band</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of angels manifold.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">He heard her smite the harp’s delight,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Singing most joyfully,</div> -<div class="verse">And knew his love prevail’d above</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Judgment and destiny.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Gone is the night, the morn breaks white</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Across the eastward hill;</div> -<div class="verse">The knightly sire by the dead fire</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Sits in the dawning chill.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">By the hearth white, there sits the knight,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Dead as the sunken fire;</div> -<div class="verse">But on his face is writ the grace</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Of his fulfill’d desire.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Payne</span> (b. 1841).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This poem is cut down one-half and thereby loses much of its effect. -Two adventures, in which the Knight refuses temptation and adheres -to his oath, are entirely omitted.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Alas! they had been friends in youth;</div> -<div class="verse">But whispering tongues can poison truth;</div> -<div class="verse">And constancy lives in realms above;</div> -<div class="verse">And life is thorny; and youth is vain;</div> -<div class="verse">And to be wroth with one we love</div> -<div class="verse">Doth work like madness in the brain.</div> -<div class="verse">They parted—ne’er to meet again!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> -<div class="verse">But never either found another</div> -<div class="verse">To free the hollow heart from paining—</div> -<div class="verse">They stood aloof, the scars remaining,</div> -<div class="verse">Like cliffs which had been reft asunder;</div> -<div class="verse">A dreary sea now flows between,</div> -<div class="verse">But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,</div> -<div class="verse">Shall wholly do away, I ween,</div> -<div class="verse">The marks of that which once hath been.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Christabel</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,</div> -<div class="verse">So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,</div> -<div class="verse">Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,</div> -<div class="verse">And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (<i>2 Henry IV.</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This and the next five quotations are word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">That strange song I heard Apollo sing,</div> -<div class="verse">While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>Tithonus</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,</div> -<div class="verse">Cricketing below, rush’d brown and red with sunshine;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!</div> -<div class="verse">Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.</div> -<div class="verse">Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Said, “I will kiss you:” she laughed and lean’d her cheek.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. Meredith</span> (<i>Love in the Valley</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">One there is, the loveliest of them all,</div> -<div class="verse">Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out</div> -<div class="verse">For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?</div> -<div class="verse">Fruits of her father’s orchard are her wares,</div> -<div class="verse">And with the ruddy produce she walks round</div> -<div class="verse">Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed</div> -<div class="verse">Of her new office, blushing restlessly.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Prelude, Bk. VIII.</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Out came the children running—</div> -<div class="verse">All the little boys and girls,</div> -<div class="verse">With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls</div> -<div class="verse">And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls</div> -<div class="verse">Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after</div> -<div class="verse">The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Pied Piper of Hamelin</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,</div> -<div class="verse">And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,</div> -<div class="verse">As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon:</div> -<div class="verse">Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,</div> -<div class="verse">And on her silver cross soft amethyst,</div> -<div class="verse">And on her hair a glory, like a saint.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Keats</span> (<i>The Eve of St. Agnes</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The above are from a series of word-pictures (see pp. <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If the collective energies of the universe are identified with -Divine Will, and the system is thus animate with an eternal -consciousness as its moulding life, the conception we frame of -its history will conform itself to our experience of intellectual -volition. It is in origination, in disposing of new conditions, -in setting up order by differentiation, that the mind exercises<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> -its highest function. When the product has been obtained, -and a definite method of procedure established, the strain upon -us is relaxed, habit relieves the constant demand for creation, -and at length the rules of a practised art almost execute themselves. -As the intensely voluntary thus works itself off into the automatic, -thought, liberated from this reclaimed and settled province -breaks into new regions, and ascends to ever higher problems: -its supreme life being beyond the conquered and legislated -realm, while a lower consciousness, if any at all, suffices for the -maintenance of its ordered mechanism. Yet all the while it -is one and the same mind that, under different modes of activity, -thinks the fresh thoughts and carries on the old usages. Does -anything forbid us to conceive similarly of the cosmical development; -that it started from the freedom of indefinite possibilities -and the ubiquity of universal consciousness; that, as intellectual -exclusions narrowed the field, and traced the definite lines of -admitted movement, the tension of purpose, less needed on these, -left them as the habits of the universe, and operated rather for -higher and ever higher ends not yet provided for; that the more -mechanical, therefore, a natural law may be, the further is it -from its source; and that the inorganic and unconscious portion -of the world, instead of being the potentiality of the organic -and conscious, is rather its residual precipitate, formed as the -Indwelling Mind of all concentrates an intenser aim on the upper -margin of the ordered whole, and especially on the inner life -of natures that can resemble him?</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (1805-1900) (<i>Modern Materialism</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The remarkably fine and suggestive essay in which this passage occurs -was written in 1876, in the course of a discussion raised by Tyndall’s Belfast -Address. It is not easy to appreciate the speculation that Martineau -offers in direct opposition to the theory of Darwinism without reading his -preceding argument.</p> - -<p>It may be well to begin with a quotation from his sermon, “Perfection, -Divine and Human”: “However vast and majestic the uniformities of -nature, they are nevertheless finite: science counts them one by one; a -completed science would count them all. God, however, is not finite; -He lives out beyond the legislation He has made; and His thought, which -defines the rules of matter, does not transmigrate into them and cease -else-how to be; <i>but merely flings out the law as an emanating act, and Himself -abides behind as Thinking Power</i>.”</p> - -<p>In the present essay Martineau first develops the argument that -there is only one Power that exercises all the forces in the universe, whether -mechanical, chemical, or vital. That power is God, the Indwelling Mind -of the world. He is of like nature to (although infinitely higher than) -His highest product, which is conscious, thinking, and willing man. Seeing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> -that God and man are alike in their natures, Martineau proceeds to draw -an analogy between the history of the world and the history of man’s own -development. The Divine Mind at first <i>consciously</i> exercises the forces -that we know as gravitation, cohesion, chemical attraction, etc.; just as, -to take a simple example, a baby has at first consciously to use its muscles -and balance its body in the process of walking. Later the baby, having -formed the <i>habit</i>, does all this <i>unconsciously</i> and, while walking, can pay -attention to other matters. So the Indwelling Mind of the world forms its -<i>habits</i> which we know as the laws of gravitation, etc., and is free to attend -to higher and higher objects. In this progress there is no evolution of the -organic from the inorganic, or of the higher from the lower forms of life. -Inorganic matter, having become subject to fixed laws, is precipitated and -dropped out of further conscious effort; also each lower form of life is similarly -laid aside as the Indwelling Mind proceeds to the higher forms, until -finally man is reached. The highest result thus arrived at is the production -of conscious <i>Mind</i>. All this involves what is usually known as Special -Creation, and the idea of “God at His working-bench” creating one -species after another is regarded as absurd. But it is not absurd on Martineau’s -argument, because the Indwelling Mind is constantly doing the whole -work of the world (and also because a fact to be accounted for by any -theory is that a higher form of existence <i>appears</i> whenever the environment -is suitable). In the present state of our knowledge Martineau’s speculation -cannot be proved or disproved, but it may contain the germ of a true scheme -of the universe—which scheme is yet far to seek. In any case, he makes -the important point that the nature of <i>power</i> in the world must be judged -from the best thing it has done—namely, the <i>minds</i> it has produced. The -idea of a blind, unconscious force is incompatible with the fact that <i>that -force has produced conscious mind</i>. It is the same argument as the Psalmist -uses, “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed -the eye, shall He not see? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not He -know?” (Ps. xciv, 9, 10.) The following (by whom written I do not know) -has the same idea: “Every thing is a thought, and bears a relation to -the thought that placed it there, and the thought that finds it there.” It -is interesting to consider Martineau’s suggestion with that of William -James on <a href="#Page_165">p. 165</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There’s lifeless matter; add the power of shaping,</div> -<div class="verse">And you’ve the crystal: add again the organs,</div> -<div class="verse">Wherewith to subdue sustenance to the form</div> -<div class="verse">And manner of one’s self, and you’ve the plant:</div> -<div class="verse">Add power of motion, senses, and so forth,</div> -<div class="verse">And you’ve all kind of beasts; suppose a pig:</div> -<div class="verse">To pig add reason, foresight, and such stuff,</div> -<div class="verse">Then you have man. What shall we add to man,</div> -<div class="verse">To bring him higher?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">T. L. Beddoes (1803-1849)</span> (<i>Death’s Jest-Book</i>, V. 2).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Death’s Jest-Book</i> was published in 1850, after Beddoes’ death; <i>The -Origin of Species</i> appeared in 1859: the passage is, therefore, curious. In -suggesting, however, development by the addition of faculties, it affords -no explanation how those faculties came to be added.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">“OUTLANDISH PROVERBS”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Love rules his kingdom without a sword.</div> -<div class="verse">He plays well that wins.</div> -<div class="verse">The offender never pardons.</div> -<div class="verse">Nothing dries sooner than a tear.</div> -<div class="verse">Three women can hold their peace—if two are away.</div> -<div class="verse">A woman conceals what she knows not.</div> -<div class="verse">Saint Luke was a Saint and a Physician, yet is dead.<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></div> -<div class="verse">Were there no hearers, there would be no backbiters.</div> -<div class="verse">He will burn his house to warm his hands.</div> -<div class="verse">The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one.</div> -<div class="verse">Ill ware is never cheap.</div> -<div class="verse">Punishment is lame—but it comes.</div> -<div class="verse">Gluttony kills more than the sword.<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></div> -<div class="verse">The filth under the white snow the sun discovers.</div> -<div class="verse">You cannot know wine by the barrel.</div> -<div class="verse">At length the fox is brought to the furrier.</div> -<div class="verse">Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge.</div> -<div class="verse">None is a fool always, every one sometimes.<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></div> -<div class="verse">In a great river great fish are found, but take heed lest you be drowned.</div> -<div class="verse">I wept when I was born, and every day shows why.</div> -<div class="verse">The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.</div> -<div class="verse">Gossips are frogs, they drink and talk.</div> -<div class="verse">He is a fool that thinks not that another thinks.</div> -<div class="verse">He that sows, trusts in God.</div> -<div class="verse">He that hath one hog makes him fat, and he that hath one son makes him a fool.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where your will is ready, your feet are light.</div> -<div class="verse">A fair death honours the whole life.</div> -<div class="verse">To a good spender God is the treasurer.</div> -<div class="verse">The choleric man never wants woe.</div> -<div class="verse">Love makes a good eye squint.</div> -<div class="verse">He that would have what he hath not should do what he doth not.</div> -<div class="verse">A wise man cares not for what he cannot have.</div> -<div class="verse">The fat man knoweth not what the lean thinketh.</div> -<div class="verse">In every country dogs bite.</div> -<div class="verse">None says his garner is full.</div> -<div class="verse">To a close-shorn sheep, God gives wind by measure.<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></div> -<div class="verse">Silks and satins put out the fire in the chimney.</div> -<div class="verse">Lawyers’ houses are built on the heads of fools.</div> -<div class="verse">It is better to have wings than horns.</div> -<div class="verse">We have more to do when we die than we have done.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Herbert’s</span> <i>Jacula Prudentum</i>.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The reader may not know of the “saintly Herbert’s” collection of -“Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc.” from which the few examples -above are taken.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">AVALON.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We seek a land beneath the early beams</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of stars that rise beyond the sunset gate,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where all the year the twilight lingers late,</div> -<div class="verse">Athwart whose coast the last-born sunray gleams.</div> -<div class="verse">Fair are the fields and full of pleasant streams,</div> -<div class="verse">Far sound the hedge-rows with the burgher bees,</div> -<div class="verse">Soft are the winds and taste of southern seas,</div> -<div class="verse">Night brings no longing there, and sleep no dreams.</div> -<div class="verse">O tillerman, steer true, while we, who bow</div> -<div class="verse">Above the oar-shafts, sing the land we seek,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Land of the past, its rapture and its ruth;</div> -<div class="verse">Future we ask none, we are memories now,</div> -<div class="verse">We bear the years whose lips no longer speak,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And round our galley’s prow the name is Youth.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Cameron Rogers</span> (b. 1862).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>An American author who wrote the well-known song, “The Rosary.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">IF I COULD HOLD YOUR HANDS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If I could hold your hands to-night,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Just for a little while, and know</div> -<div class="verse">That only I, of all the world,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Possessed them so:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A slender shape in that old chair,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">If I could see you here to-night,</div> -<div class="verse">Between me and the twilight pale—</div> -<div class="verse indent4">So light and frail,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Your cool white dress, its folding lost</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In one broad sweep of shadow grey;</div> -<div class="verse">Your weary head just drooped aside,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">That sweet old way,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Bowed like a flower-cup dashed with rain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The darkness crossing half your face,</div> -<div class="verse">And just the glimmer of a smile</div> -<div class="verse indent4">For one to trace:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If I could see your eyes that reach</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Far out into the farthest sky,</div> -<div class="verse">Where past the trail of dying suns</div> -<div class="verse indent4">The old years lie:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Or touch your silent lips to-night,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And steal the sadness from their smile,</div> -<div class="verse">And find the last kiss they have kept</div> -<div class="verse indent4">This weary while:</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">If it could be—Oh, all in vain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The restless trouble of my soul</div> -<div class="verse">Sets, as the great tides of the moon,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">Toward your control!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In vain the longings of the lips,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The eye’s desire and the pain;</div> -<div class="verse">The hunger of the heart—O love,</div> -<div class="verse indent4"><i>Is</i> it in vain?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A Cibo biscocto,</div> -<div class="verse">A medico indocto,</div> -<div class="verse">Ab inimico reconciliato,</div> -<div class="verse">A mala muliere</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Libera nos, Domine.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>(From twice-cooked food, from an ignorant doctor, from a reconciled -enemy, from a wicked woman, Lord, deliver us.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><i>Old Monkish Litany.</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">CONSTANCY REWARDED</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I vowed unvarying faith, and she,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To whom in full I pay that vow,</div> -<div class="verse">Rewards me with variety</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which men who change can never know.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Coventry Patmore</span> (<i>The Angel in the House</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards -the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager -observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand -or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; -some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement -is irresistibly real and attractive for us—for that moment only. -Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. -A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, -dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen -in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly -from point to point, and be present always at the focus where -the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?</p> - -<p>To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain -this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be -said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit -is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the -roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, -seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may catch -at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that -seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, -or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and -curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s -friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> -attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts -some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short -day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening....</p> - -<p>We are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite -reprieve: we have an interval, and then our place knows -us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in -high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this -world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding -that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the -given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense -of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic -activity, disinterested or otherwise which come naturally to many -of us. Only be sure it is passion—that it does yield you this -fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom, -the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love for art’s sake, -has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing -but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply -for those moments’ sake.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Walter Pater (1839-1894)</span> (<i>The Renaissance</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>In the Adelaide edition of this book this famous “pulsation” passage -appeared as originally written; it is now given as Pater afterwards altered -it.</p> - -<p>Pater was a Hellenist and preached the new paganism of last century. -The Greek ideal life was supposed to be one of purely aesthetic enjoyment, -divorced from religious problems or from any sense of the <i>higher</i> in our -nature. Pater, however, altered his views, <i>Marius, the Epicurean</i>, being -intended as a recantation, and he became in effect an Anglo-Catholic. -(<a href="#Page_343">See p. 343 note.</a>)</p> - -<p>Pater was “Rose” in Mallock’s <i>New Republic</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A CHILD</p> - -<p>Is a man in a small Letter, yet the best copy of Adam before -he tasted of the Apple.... He is nature’s fresh picture, newly -drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. -His soul is yet a white paper, unscribbled with observations of -the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred note-book. -He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means -by sin to be acquainted with misery. He kisses and loves all, -and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater.... -His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loth to use so deceitful -an organ.... We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> -is our earnest: and his drums, rattles and hobby-horses but the -emblems and mocking of man’s business. His father hath writ -him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life -that he cannot remember; and sighs to see what innocence he -has outlived. The older he grows, he is a stair lower from God; -and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.... Could -he put off his body with his little Coat, he had got eternity -without a burthen, and exchanged but one Heaven for another.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Earle</span> (<i>Micro-Cosmographie</i>, 1628).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">As when a Gryphon through the wilderness</div> -<div class="verse">With wingèd course, o’er hill and moory dale,</div> -<div class="verse">Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth</div> -<div class="verse">Had from his wakeful custody purloined</div> -<div class="verse">The guarded gold.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Milton</span> (<i>Paradise Lost</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The Griffin, with head and wings of a bird and body of a lion, is pursuing, -“half on foot, half flying,” the one-eyed Arimaspian, who is fleeing -on horseback with the purloined gold. The Griffins guarded mines of gold -and hidden treasure. (<i>Herodotus</i>, iv, 27.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A WOMAN’S THOUGHT</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I am a woman—therefore I may not</div> -<div class="verse">Call to him, cry to him,</div> -<div class="verse">Fly to him,</div> -<div class="verse">Bid him delay not!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Then when he comes to me, I must sit quiet;</div> -<div class="verse">Still as a stone—</div> -<div class="verse">All silent and cold.</div> -<div class="verse">If my heart riot—</div> -<div class="verse">Crush and defy it!</div> -<div class="verse">Should I grow bold,</div> -<div class="verse">Say one dear thing to him,</div> -<div class="verse">All my life fling to him,</div> -<div class="verse">Cling to him—</div> -<div class="verse">What to atone</div> -<div class="verse">Is enough for my sinning?</div> -<div class="verse">This were the cost to me,</div> -<div class="verse">This were my winning—</div> -<div class="verse">That he were lost to me.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Not as a lover</div> -<div class="verse">At last if he part from me,</div> -<div class="verse">Tearing my heart from me,</div> -<div class="verse">Hurt beyond cure—</div> -<div class="verse">Calm and demure</div> -<div class="verse">Then must I hold me,</div> -<div class="verse">In myself fold me,</div> -<div class="verse">Lest he discover;</div> -<div class="verse">Showing no sign to him</div> -<div class="verse">By look of mine to him</div> -<div class="verse">What he has been to me—</div> -<div class="verse">How my heart turns to him,</div> -<div class="verse">Follows him, yearns to him,</div> -<div class="verse">Prays him to love me.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Pity me, lean to me,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou God above me!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909).</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, -and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Macaulay</span> (<i>On Niccolo Machiavelli</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A wonderful record, if it were correct, but “Old Nick” is said to be -derived from Scandinavian mythology.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I -dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Montaigne</span> (Essay, <i>Of Repentance</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Coleridge was holding forth on the effects produced by his -preaching, and appealed to Lamb: “You have heard me preach, -I think?” “I have never heard you do anything else,” was the -urbane reply.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p> - -<p>(John Sterling said) Coleridge is best described in his -own words:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">His flashing eyes, his floating hair!</div> -<div class="verse">Weave a circle round him thrice,</div> -<div class="verse">And close your eyes with holy dread.</div> -<div class="verse">For he on honey-dew hath fed,</div> -<div class="verse">And drunk the milk of Paradise.<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Madame de Staël was by no means pleased with her intercourse -with him, saying spitefully and feelingly, “M. Coleridge a un -grand talent pour le monologue” (“Mr. Coleridge has a great -talent for monologue”).</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Caroline Fox’s Journals.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Here we have different views of Coleridge’s monologues. Mme. de -Staël objected to his monopolizing the conversation, but his friends loved -to hear him. Lamb, of course, had to have his joke.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where is the use of the lip’s red charm,</div> -<div class="verse">The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,</div> -<div class="verse">And the blood that blues the inside arm—</div> -<div class="verse">Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,</div> -<div class="verse">The earthly gift to an end divine?</div> -<div class="verse">A lady of clay is as good, I trow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent7">What things have we seen</div> -<div class="verse">Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been</div> -<div class="verse">So nimble and so full of subtle flame,</div> -<div class="verse">As if that every one from whence they came</div> -<div class="verse">Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,</div> -<div class="verse">And had resolved to live a fool the rest</div> -<div class="verse">Of his dull life.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Francis Beaumont</span> (<i>Epistle to Ben Jonson</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>What would one not give to have been present at the Mermaid Tavern -with the wonderful Elizabethans who met there? Among them were -Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne, -Carew, and John Selden. One is reminded of the <i>Symposium</i> of Plato.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p> - -<p>The poem of Keats is well known:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Souls of Poets dead and gone,</div> -<div class="verse">What Elysium have ye known,</div> -<div class="verse">Happy field or mossy cavern,</div> -<div class="verse">Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">On a day like this, when the sun is hid,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And you and your heart are housed together,</div> -<div class="verse">If memories come to you all unbid,</div> -<div class="verse">And something suddenly wets your lid,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Like a gust of the out-door weather,</div> -<div class="verse">Why, who is in fault but the dim old day,</div> -<div class="verse">Too dark for labour, too dull for play?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Author not traced.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. -He carries with him the germ of his most exceptional actions; -and, if we wise people make fools of ourselves on any particular -occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry -a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I understand those women who say they don’t want the -ballot. They purpose to hold the real power, while we go -through the mockery of making laws. They want the power -without the responsibility.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dudley Warner</span> (<i>My Summer in a Garden</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>If we cannot find God in your house or in mine; upon the roadside -or the margin of the sea; in the bursting seed or opening -flower; in the day duty or the night musing; in the general -laugh and the secret grief; in the procession of life, ever entering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> -afresh, and solemnly passing by and dropping off; I do not think -we should discern Him any more on the grass of Eden, -or beneath the moonlight of Gethsemane. Depend upon it, -it is not the want of greater miracles, but of the soul to perceive -such as are allowed us still, that makes us push all the sanctities -into the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that wherever -God’s hand is, <i>there</i> is miracle; and it is simply undevoutness -which imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real -hand of God. The customs of Heaven ought to be more sacred -in our eyes than its anomalies; the dear old ways, of which the -Most High is never tired, than the strange things which He does -not love well enough ever to repeat. And he who will but -discern beneath the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting -finger of the Almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent -surprise with which Adam gazed on the first dawn in Paradise.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">James Martineau</span> (<i>Endeavours after the Christian Life</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Advice, like snow, the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon -and the deeper it sinks into the mind.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">My burden bows me to the knee;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O Lord, ’tis more than I can bear.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Didst Thou not come our load to share?</div> -<div class="verse">My burden bows me to the knee:</div> -<div class="verse">Dear Jesus, let me lean on Thee!...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Far off, so far, the Heavens be,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With their wide arms! and I would prove</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The close, warm-beating heart of Love.</div> -<div class="verse">But so far-off the Heavens be:</div> -<div class="verse">Dear Jesus, let me lean on Thee!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Gerald Massey</span> (<i>Out of the Depths</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This poem is omitted from <i>My Lyrical Life</i>, Massey’s collected -poems.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Night dreams of day, and winter seems</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In sleep to breathe the balm of May,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Their dreams are true anon; but they,</div> -<div class="verse">The dreamers, then, alas, are dreams.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Thus, while our days the dreams renew</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of some forgotten sleeper, we,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The dreamers of futurity,</div> -<div class="verse">Shall vanish when our own are true.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. B. Tabb.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">THE MOTHER WHO DIED TOO</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She was so little—little in her grave,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The wide earth all around so hard and cold—</div> -<div class="verse">She was so little! therefore did I crave</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My arms might still her tender form enfold.</div> -<div class="verse">She was so little, and her cry so weak</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When she among the heavenly children came—</div> -<div class="verse">She was so little—I alone might speak</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For her who knew no word nor her own name.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Edith Matilda Thomas.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The economy of Heaven is dark;</div> -<div class="verse">And wisest clerks have miss’d the mark,</div> -<div class="verse">Why human buds, like this, should fall,</div> -<div class="verse">More brief than fly ephemeral</div> -<div class="verse">That has his day; while shrivell’d crones</div> -<div class="verse">Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;</div> -<div class="verse">And crabbed use the conscience sears</div> -<div class="verse">In sinners of an hundred years.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span> (<i>On an infant dying as soon as born</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Oh dreadful thought, if all our sires and we</div> -<div class="verse">Are but foundations of a race to be,—</div> -<div class="verse">Stones which one thrusts in earth, and builds thereon</div> -<div class="verse">A write delight, a Parian Parthenon,</div> -<div class="verse">And thither, long thereafter, youth and maid</div> -<div class="verse">Seek with glad brows the alabaster shade.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And in processions’ pomp together bent</div> -<div class="verse">Still interchange their sweet words innocent,—</div> -<div class="verse">Not caring that those mighty columns rest</div> -<div class="verse">Each on the ruin of a human breast,—</div> -<div class="verse">That to the shrine the victor’s chariot rolls</div> -<div class="verse">Across the anguish of ten thousand souls!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Well was it that our fathers suffered thus,”</div> -<div class="verse">I hear them say, “that all might end in us;</div> -<div class="verse">Well was it here and there a bard should feel</div> -<div class="verse">Pains premature and hurt that none could heal;</div> -<div class="verse">These were their preludes, thus the race began;</div> -<div class="verse">So hard a matter was the birth of Man.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And yet these too shall pass and fade and flee,</div> -<div class="verse">And in their death shall be as vile as we,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor much shall profit with their perfect powers</div> -<div class="verse">To have lived a so much sweeter life than ours,</div> -<div class="verse">When at the last, with all their bliss gone by,</div> -<div class="verse">Like us those glorious creatures come to die,</div> -<div class="verse">With far worse woe, far more rebellious strife</div> -<div class="verse">Those mighty spirits drink the dregs of life.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (<i>The Implicit Promise of Immortality</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It will be observed that Myers, like Swinburne, handled the old heroic -couplet in a masterly manner, undreamt of by Pope, Dryden, and their -generation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">God’s works—paint any one, and count it crime</div> -<div class="verse">To let a truth slip. Don’t object, “His works</div> -<div class="verse">Are here already; nature is complete:</div> -<div class="verse">Suppose you reproduce her (which you can’t)</div> -<div class="verse">There’s no advantage! You must beat her then.”</div> -<div class="verse">For, don’t you mark? we’re made so that we love</div> -<div class="verse">First when we see them painted, things we have passed</div> -<div class="verse">Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;</div> -<div class="verse">And so they are better, <i>painted</i>—better to us</div> -<div class="verse">Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;</div> -<div class="verse">God uses us to help each other so,</div> -<div class="verse">Lending our minds out.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For the folk through the fretful hours are hurled</div> -<div class="verse">On the ruthless rush of the wondrous world,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And none has leisure to lie and cull</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The blossoms, that made life beautiful</div> -<div class="verse">In that old season when men could sing</div> -<div class="verse">For dear delight in the risen Spring</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And Summer ripening fruit and flower.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Now carefulness cankers every hour;</div> -<div class="verse">We are too weary and sad to sing;</div> -<div class="verse">Our pastime’s poisoned with thought-taking.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Payne</span> (<i>Tournesol</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I am much engaged, an old man and out of health, and I cannot -spare time to answer your questions fully,—nor indeed can -they be answered. Science has nothing to do with Christ, except -in so far as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious -in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there -ever has been any Revelation. As for a future life every man -must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. -Wishing you happiness, I remain, &c.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Darwin</span> (<i>Letter to von Müller, June 5, 1879</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This letter is reproduced in the <i>Life and Letters</i>, but evidently Francis -Darwin did not know that the “German youth” to whom he says it was -written was Baron Ferdinand von Müller, K.C.M.G. (1825-1896), then -fifty-three years of age! Von Müller was director of the Melbourne Botanical -Gardens from 1857 to 1873, and died in Melbourne in 1896. He did -important work in Australian botany.</p> - -<p>As regards Darwin’s letter, it seems to me that a sufficient reason -why a great and lovable man, who was at first a convinced believer in the -immortality of the soul, became an agnostic is given in the next quotation. -The higher aesthetic part of his brain had become atrophied.</p> - -<p>Darwin himself thought that he had not given sufficient consideration -to religious questions and was exceedingly anxious that his own agnostic -views should not influence others,</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during -the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or -beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, -Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> -pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, -especially in the historical plays. I have also said that -formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great -delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line -of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it -so intolerably dull that it nauseates me. I have also almost lost -my taste for pictures or music.... My mind seems to have -become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large -collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy -of that (aesthetic) part of the brain alone, on which the higher -tastes depend, I cannot conceive.... The loss of these tastes -is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, -and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling -the emotional part of our nature.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Darwin.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is from autobiographical notes made by Darwin for his children, -and not intended for publication.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures</div> -<div class="verse">Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,</div> -<div class="verse">One to show a woman when he loves her!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>One Word More</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">CHILDREN’S HYMN ON THE COAST OF BRITTANY.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">At length has come the twilight dim.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sun has set, the day has died;</div> -<div class="verse">And now we sing Thy holy hymn,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O Mary maid, at eventide.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">To Jewry, to that far-off land,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Erstwhile there came a little Child;</div> -<div class="verse">You led Him softly by the hand,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">He was so very small and mild.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Like us, He could not find his way,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Although He was Our Lord, the King;</div> -<div class="verse">And so we beg we may not stray,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor do a sad or foolish thing.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Teach us the prayer that Jesus said,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The words you sang and murmured low,</div> -<div class="verse">When He was in His tiny bed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And all the earth was dark and slow.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hushed are the trees, and the small wise bees,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our fathers are on the deep,—</div> -<div class="verse">Little Mother, be good to us, please!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It is time to go asleep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Vincent O’Sullivan.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">WESLEY’S MEDICAL PRESCRIPTIONS</p> - -<p>For an Ague:—Make six middling pills of cobwebs. Take -one a little before the cold fit; two a little before the next fit -(suppose the next day); the other three, if need be, a little before -the third fit. This seldom fails.</p> - -<p>A Cut:—Bind on toasted cheese. This will cure a deep cut.</p> - -<p>A Fistula:—Grind an ounce of sublimate mercury as fine as -possible.... (Two quarts of water to be added, then half a -spoonful with two spoonfuls of water to be taken fasting every -other day), ... In forty days this will also cure any cancer, any -old sore or King’s evil.</p> - -<p><i>The Iliac Passion</i>:—Hold a live puppy constantly on the belly.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Wesley</span> (<i>Primitive Physic.</i> Ed. 1780).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The iliac passion, now known as <i>ileus</i>, is a severe colic due to intestinal -obstruction.</p> - -<p>It seems strange that so eminent a man should have believed in these -absurd prescriptions, but as a matter of fact the book generally is much -more sane and sound than one would expect from the habits and state of -knowledge of the time. For example, in his rules of health Wesley strongly -advises the practice of <i>cold bathing</i>, cleanliness, open-air exercise, moderation -of food, etc. Also these prescriptions are chosen for their absurdity—in -each case other more sensible remedies are offered. But Wesley in his -preface says that he has omitted altogether from his book Cinchona bark, -because it is “extremely dangerous.” This means that in regard to ague -he omitted the only efficient remedy—which was much more unfortunate -than his prescribing cobweb pills.</p> - -<p>This book went to <i>thirty-six</i> editions between 1747 and 1840.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent3">“When shall our prayers end?”</div> -<div class="verse">I tell thee, priest, when shoemakers make shoes,</div> -<div class="verse">That are well sewed, with never a stitch amiss,</div> -<div class="verse">And use no craft in uttering of the same;</div> -<div class="verse">When tinkers make no more holes than they found,</div> -<div class="verse">When thatchers think their wages worth their work,</div> -<div class="verse">When Davie Diker digs and dallies not,</div> -<div class="verse">When horsecorsers beguile no friends with jades,</div> -<div class="verse">When printers pass no errors in their books,</div> -<div class="verse">When pewterers infect no tin with lead,</div> -<div class="verse">When silver sticks not on the Teller’s fingers,</div> -<div class="verse">When sycophants can find no place in Court, ...</div> -<div class="verse">When Laïs lives not like a lady’s peer</div> -<div class="verse">Nor useth art in dyeing of her hair....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Gascoigne</span> (1525?-1577) (<i>The Steele Glas</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>All our life is a meeting of cross-roads, where the choice of -directions is perilous.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Victor Hugo.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Rose-cheeked Laura, come;</div> -<div class="verse">Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty’s</div> -<div class="verse">Silent music, either other</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sweetly gracing.</div> -<div class="verse">Lovely forms do flow</div> -<div class="verse">From concent divinely framed;</div> -<div class="verse">Heaven is music, and thy beauty’s</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Birth is heavenly.</div> -<div class="verse">These dull notes we sing</div> -<div class="verse">Discords need for helps to grace them,</div> -<div class="verse">Only beauty purely loving</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Knows no discord,</div> -<div class="verse">But still moves delight,</div> -<div class="verse">Like clear springs renewed by flowing,</div> -<div class="verse">Ever perfect, ever in them-</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Selves eternal.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Campion</span> (died 1619).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Richard Lovelace (1618-1655) subsequently wrote (<i>Orpheus to Beasts</i>):</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O, could you view the melodie</div> -<div class="verse">Of ev’ry grace,</div> -<div class="verse">And musick of her face,</div> -<div class="verse">You’d drop a teare,</div> -<div class="verse">Seeing more harmonie</div> -<div class="verse">In her bright eye,</div> -<div class="verse">Then now you heare.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Then = <i>than</i>. See next quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded blossom-like -dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very -ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature, and not out -of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be -wrought on by exquisite music?—to feel its wondrous harmonies -searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres -of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together -your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration; -melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love -that has been scattered through the toilsome years; concentrating -in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt -lessons of self-renouncing sympathy; blending your present -joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past -joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought -upon by the exquisite curves of a woman’s cheek and neck and -arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet -childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is -like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression -beyond and far above the one woman’s soul that it clothes, -as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought -that prompted them; it is more than a woman’s love that moves -us in a woman’s eyes—it seems to be a far-off mighty love that -has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded -neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their -prettiness—by their close kinship with all we have known of -tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this -<i>impersonal</i> expression in beauty, and for this reason, the noblest -nature is often the most blinded to the character of the -woman’s soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the -tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time to -come in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the -best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Adam Bede</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>George Eliot would not know the preceding poem by Campion, whose -lyrics had been forgotten until A. H. Bullen revived them in 1889; and -most probably also she did not know Lovelace’s poem, as it is not one of the -two or three lyrics by which alone he is remembered.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Alas, how soon the hours are over</div> -<div class="verse">Counted us out to play the lover!</div> -<div class="verse">And how much narrower is the stage</div> -<div class="verse">Allotted us to play the sage!</div> -<div class="verse">But when we play the fool, how wide</div> -<div class="verse">The theatre expands! beside,</div> -<div class="verse">How long the audience sits before us!</div> -<div class="verse">How many prompters! What a chorus!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. S. Landor.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure -of the man. If called to define Shakespeare’s faculty, I should -say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all -under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties -as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, -imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet, and arms. That -is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man’s “intellectual -nature,” and of his “moral nature,” as if these again were divisible -and existed apart.... We ought to know, and to keep forever -in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but <i>names</i>; that man’s -spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially -one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, -and so forth, are but different figures of the same -Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, -physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might -know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality -of a man, what is this but another <i>side</i> of the one vital -Force whereby he is and works?.... Without hands a man -might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider it,—without -morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly <i>immoral</i> -man could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what -we can call knowing, a man must first <i>love</i> the thing, sympathize -with it; that is, be <i>virtuously</i> related to it.... Nature, with -her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous -forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, -superficial, small.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Carlyle</span> (<i>Heroes and Hero Worship, III</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A little I will speak. I love thee then</div> -<div class="verse">Not only for thy body packed with sweet</div> -<div class="verse">Of all this world....</div> -<div class="verse">Not for this only do I love thee, but</div> -<div class="verse">Because Infinity upon thee broods;</div> -<div class="verse">And thou art full of whispers and of shadows.</div> -<div class="verse">Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say</div> -<div class="verse">So long, and yearnèd up the cliffs to tell;</div> -<div class="verse">Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,</div> -<div class="verse">What the still night suggesteth to the heart.</div> -<div class="verse">Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,</div> -<div class="verse">Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;</div> -<div class="verse">Thy face remembered is from other worlds,</div> -<div class="verse">It has been died for, though I know not when,</div> -<div class="verse">It has been sung of, though I know not where.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Stephen Phillips</span> (<i>Marpessa</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sometimes thou seem’st not as thyself alone,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But as the meaning of all things that are.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti</span> (<i>Heart’s Compass</i>)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">“IMBUTA”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The new wine, the new wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old,</div> -<div class="verse">The heart is all athirst again,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The drops are all of gold;</div> -<div class="verse">We thought the cup was broken,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And we thought the tale was told,</div> -<div class="verse">But the new wine, the new wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The flower of life had faded,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The leaf was in its fall,</div> -<div class="verse">The winter seemed so early</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To have reached us, once for all;</div> -<div class="verse">But now the buds are breaking,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">There is grass above the mould,</div> -<div class="verse">And the new wine, the new wine.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The earth had grown so dreary,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sky so dull and grey;</div> -<div class="verse">One was weeping in the darkness,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One was sorrowing through the day:</div> -<div class="verse">But a light from heaven gleams again,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On water, wood, and wold,</div> -<div class="verse">And the new wine, the new wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For the loving lips are laughing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the loving face is fair,</div> -<div class="verse">Though a phantom hand is on the board,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And phantom eyes are there;</div> -<div class="verse">The phantom eyes are soft and sad,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The phantom hand is cold,</div> -<div class="verse">But the new wine, the new wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We dare not look, we turn away,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The precious draught to drain,</div> -<div class="verse">’Twere worse than madness, surely now,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To lose it all again;</div> -<div class="verse">To quivering lip, with clinging grasp,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The fatal cup we hold,</div> -<div class="verse">For the new wine, the new wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old!</div> -<div class="verse">And life is short, and love is life,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And so the tale is told,</div> -<div class="verse">Though the new wine, the new wine,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It tasteth like the old.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">G. J. Whyte-Melville.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The title evidently refers to <i>Horace</i> Ep. 1, 2, 69, 70, Quo semel est -<i>Imbuta</i> recens servabit odorem testa diu. “The scent which once has -flavoured the fresh jar will be preserved in it for many a day.” Moore -no doubt had the same passage in his mind when, speaking of the memories -of past joys, he wrote:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,</div> -<div class="verse">But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>So Whyte-Melville says that when love is poured again into the heart of a -man who has lost his first love, “The new wine, the new wine, It tasteth -like the old.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:</div> -<div class="verse">I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It sinks, and I am ready to depart.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. S. Landor.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Toucan has an enormous bill, makes a noise like a puppy -dog, and lays his eggs in hollow trees. How astonishing are the -freaks and fancies of nature! To what purpose, we say, is a bird -placed in the woods of Cayenne with a bill a yard long, making -a noise like a puppy dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees? The -Toucans, to be sure, might retort, to what purpose were gentlemen -in Bond Street created? To what purpose were certain -foolish prating Members of Parliament created?—pestering -the House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and impeding -the business of the country? There is no end of such questions. -So we will not enter into the metaphysics of the Toucan.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sydney Smith</span> (<i>Review of “Waterton’s Travels in South America”</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the -thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor -among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick -with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a daughter -of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible -brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and, sometimes nodding, -sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and -behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost golden -where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed, befitting -decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might -see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was -regaling on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. -Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for her hand was -making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastidious youth, which -revolts at woman plumping her exquisite proportions on bread-and-butter, -and would (we must suppose) joyfully have her -scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries. -Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. -The dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. -You eat: mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged -mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt -there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the -smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse -dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her -with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of -green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude: -a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still -she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were -invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew -not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, -the pastoral summer buzz, the weirfall’s thundering white, -amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of -lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The -Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, -and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, -as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so -graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he dared -not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. -He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched -low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his -right brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, -and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang -from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her -foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of -the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance, -and gain safe earth, whither he followed her....</p> - -<p>To-morrow this place will have a memory—the river and -the meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will build a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> -temple here; and the skylark will be its high-priest, and the -old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a -sacred repast of dewberries.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Meredith</span> (<i>The Ordeal of Richard Feverel</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LETTY’S GLOBE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And her young artless words began to flow,</div> -<div class="verse">One day we gave the child a coloured sphere</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,</div> -<div class="verse">By tint and outline, all its sea and land.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">She patted all the world; old empires peeped</div> -<div class="verse">Between her baby fingers; her soft hand</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And laughed and prattled in her world-wide bliss;</div> -<div class="verse">But when we turned her sweet unlearnèd eye</div> -<div class="verse">On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—</div> -<div class="verse">“Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And, while she hid all England with a kiss,</div> -<div class="verse">Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson Turner.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Charles Tennyson, a brother of Lord Tennyson and author with him -of <i>Poems by Two Brothers</i>, took the name of Turner.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O may I join the choir invisible</div> -<div class="verse">Of those immortal dead who live again</div> -<div class="verse">In minds made better by their presence: live</div> -<div class="verse">In pulses stirred to generosity,</div> -<div class="verse">In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn</div> -<div class="verse">For miserable aims that end with self,</div> -<div class="verse">In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,</div> -<div class="verse">And with their mild persistence urge man’s search</div> -<div class="verse">To vaster issues.</div> -<div class="verse indent7">So to live is heaven:</div> -<div class="verse">To make undying music in the world....</div> -<div class="verse indent7">This is life to come,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Which martyr’d men have made more glorious</div> -<div class="verse">For us who strive to follow. May I reach</div> -<div class="verse">That purest heaven, be to other souls</div> -<div class="verse">The cup of strength in some great agony,</div> -<div class="verse">Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,</div> -<div class="verse">Beget the smiles that have no cruelty—</div> -<div class="verse">Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,</div> -<div class="verse">And in diffusion ever more intense,</div> -<div class="verse">So shall I join the choir invisible</div> -<div class="verse">Whose music is the gladness of the world.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>There is an infinite pathos in these lines. Having lost her faith in a -future life, George Eliot tries to find consolation in the thought that, when -she has passed into nothingness—when she “joins the choir invisible”—she -will have done something to ennoble the minds of those who come after -her. But why should generation after generation of insect-lives waste -themselves in raising and purifying the minds of the generations that follow, -if all in turn pass into nothingness? The higher and purer men became, -the more they would love their fellow-beings and the more they would -shudder at the insensate pain and cruelty in the world—the physical -torture they themselves endure, and the mental torture both of losing for -ever those they love and of seeing the sufferings of others. One should -act in conformity with one’s belief. Instead of thus adding greater pain -and sorrow to each succeeding generation, the effort should be to coarsen -and brutalize our natures, so that love, duty, and moral aspiration shall -disappear, and we shall cease to be saddened by the appalling cruelty of -our existence. Our lives should, in fact, correspond with the brutal, ugly -and stupid scheme of the universe.</p> - -<p>This is the direct answer to George Eliot, allowing her very important -assumption <i>that we have a duty towards others</i>, including those who come -after us. But this assumption is logically unwarranted, if at the end of -our brief years we pass into nothingness and have no further concern with -any living being. This brings us to a familiar train of argument. Why -should we be irresistibly impelled to sacrifice ourselves for the good of -others? And, apart from altruism, why should we develop <i>our own</i> -higher attributes—why seek to ennoble our own selves, since those selves -disappear? Why fill with jewels the hollow log that is to be thrown on the -fire? Why are we swayed by a sense of honour, a desire for justice, a love -of purity and truth and beauty, a craving for affection, a thirst for knowledge, -which persist up to the very gates of death? To take an illustration -of Edward Caird’s, is not the path of life which is so traversed like the -path of a star to the astronomer, which enables him to prophesy its future -course—beyond the end which hides it from our eyes? Otherwise, to use -another simile, it is as though Pheidias spent his life sculpturing in snow.</p> - -<p>(This does not mean, as the sceptic usually sneers, that the virtuous -man merely desires a reward for his virtuous conduct. It is an inquiry -why he <i>is</i> virtuous—what is a sane view of the scheme of the universe.)</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></p> - -<p>In forming the conclusion that there was no possible future for man, -George Eliot and an immense number of other thinkers of her time made -also the vast assumption that there was nothing left to discover. Blanco -White’s sonnet alone might have taught them the folly of such premature -judgments. Or we may take an illustration, used by F. W. H. Myers, -namely, the discovery that, far beyond the red and the violet of the spectrum -or the rainbow, extend rays that have been (and will for ever be) invisible -to our eyes. Since George Eliot’s time the Society for Psychical Research -has during the last thirty-five years accumulated unanswerable evidence -of survival after death.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,</div> -<div class="verse">And utterly consumed with sharp distress,</div> -<div class="verse">While all things else have rest from weariness?</div> -<div class="verse">All things have rest: why should we toil alone,</div> -<div class="verse">We only toil, who are the first of things,</div> -<div class="verse">And make perpetual moan,</div> -<div class="verse">Still from one sorrow to another thrown:</div> -<div class="verse">Nor ever fold our wings,</div> -<div class="verse">And cease from wanderings,</div> -<div class="verse">Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;</div> -<div class="verse">Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,</div> -<div class="verse">“There is no joy but calm!”</div> -<div class="verse">Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hateful is the dark-blue sky,</div> -<div class="verse">Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.</div> -<div class="verse">Death is the end of life; ah, why</div> -<div class="verse">Should life all labour be?</div> -<div class="verse">Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,</div> -<div class="verse">And in a little while our lips are dumb.</div> -<div class="verse">Let us alone. What is it that will last?</div> -<div class="verse">All things are taken from us, and become</div> -<div class="verse">Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.</div> -<div class="verse">Let us alone. What pleasure can we have</div> -<div class="verse">To war with evil? Is there any peace</div> -<div class="verse">In ever climbing up the climbing wave?</div> -<div class="verse">All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave</div> -<div class="verse">In silence; ripen, fall and cease:</div> -<div class="verse">Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See preceding quotation.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We may well begin to doubt whether the known and the natural -can suffice for human life. No sooner do we try to think so than -pessimism raises its head. The more our thoughts widen and -deepen, as the universe grows upon us and we become accustomed -to boundless space and time, the more petrifying is the contrast -of our own insignificance, the more contemptible become the pettiness, -shortness, fragility of the individual life. A moral paralysis -creeps upon us. For awhile we comfort ourselves with the -notion of self-sacrifice; we say, what matter if I pass, let me -think of others! But the <i>other</i> has become contemptible no less -than the self; all human griefs alike seem little worth assuaging, -human happiness too paltry at the best to be worth increasing. -The whole moral world is reduced to a point; good and evil, -right and wrong become infinitesimal ephemeral matters, while -eternity and infinity remain attributes of that only which is -outside the sphere of morality. Life becomes more intolerable -the more we know and discover, so long as everything widens -and deepens except our own duration, and that remains as pitiful -as ever. The affections die away in a world where everything -great and enduring is cold; they die of their own conscious -feebleness and bootlessness.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir J. R. Seeley</span> (<i>Natural Religion</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See the two preceding quotations.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Death stands above me, whispering low</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I know not what into my ear;</div> -<div class="verse">Of his strange language all I know</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is, there is not a word of fear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. S. Landor</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">LOVE-SWEETNESS</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sweet dimness of her loosened hair’s downfall</div> -<div class="verse indent1">About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In gracious fostering union garlanded;</div> -<div class="verse">Her tremulous smiles; her glances’ sweet recall</div> -<div class="verse">Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Her mouth’s culled sweetness by thy kisses shed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led</div> -<div class="verse">Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> -<div class="verse">What sweeter than these things, except the thing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The confident heart’s still fervour: the swift beat</div> -<div class="verse">And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing,</div> -<div class="verse">Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">D. G. Rossetti.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Jesus saith, Wherever there are two, they are not without God; -and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him. <i>Raise -the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there -am I.</i></p> - -<p class="attribution">(<i>Logia of Jesus</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is one of the Logia or Sayings of Jesus written on papyrus in the -third century and discovered in Egypt by Grenfell and Hunt in 1897. The -italics, of course, are mine.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold -together, provided you do not handle it roughly.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There are quarrels in which even Satan, bringing help, were -not unwelcome; even Satan, fighting stiffly, might cover himself -with glory—of a temporary nature.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>... Nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head -vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Thou art bound hastily for the City of <i>Nowhere</i>; and wilt -arrive!</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Carlyle</span> (<i>French Revolution</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>It is interesting to learn from a correspondent of <i>The Spectator</i> (Feb. -17, 1917) that Carlyle wrote two verses which he combined with Shakespeare’s -“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” (Cymbeline iv, 2) to make a -requiem, of which he was very fond:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor the furious winter’s rages;</div> -<div class="verse">Thou thy worldly task hast done,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hurts thee now no harsh behest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Toil, or shame, or sin, or danger;</div> -<div class="verse">Trouble’s storm has got to rest,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To his place the wayworn stranger.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Want is done, and grief and pain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Done is all thy bitter weeping:</div> -<div class="verse">Thou art safe from wind and rain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the Mother’s bosom sleeping.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor the furious winter’s rages:</div> -<div class="verse">Thou thy worldly task hast done,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It takes two for a kiss,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Only one for a sigh;</div> -<div class="verse">Twain by twain we marry,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One by one we die.</div> -<div class="verse">Joy has its partnerships,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Grief weeps alone;</div> -<div class="verse">Cana had many guests,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gethsemane had none.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Frederic Lawrence Knowles.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Byron in “Don Juan” says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">All who joy would win must share it,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Happiness was born a twin.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Speaking of the rare and exalted nature of Dorothea, who -has adopted the normal, domestic married life) Her finely-touched -spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely -visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the -strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on -the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was -incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly -dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with -you and me, as they might have been, is half owing to the -number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited -tombs.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Middlemarch</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This passage, which finely expresses an important truth, is at the -end of <i>Middlemarch</i>. The reference is to a story of Herodotus. He says -that Cyrus, the Persian, was angry with the river Gyndes (Diyalah), because -it had drowned one of the white horses, which, as being sacred to the sun, -accompanied the expedition. He, therefore, employed his army to divert -the river into 360 channels (representing the number of days in the year). -The story was probably told to Herodotus as explaining the great irrigation -system that existed in Mesopotamia. The Diyalah flows into the Tigris -not far from Baghdad.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Any sort of meaning looks intense</div> -<div class="verse">When all beside itself means and looks nought.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hold, Time, a little while thy glass,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And, Youth, fold up those peacock wings!</div> -<div class="verse">More rapture fills the years that pass</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Than any hope the future brings;</div> -<div class="verse">Some for to-morrow rashly pray,</div> -<div class="verse">And some desire to hold to-day.</div> -<div class="verse">But I am sick for yesterday....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah! who will give us back the past?</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ah! woe, that youth should love to be</div> -<div class="verse">Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And is so fain to find the sea,—</div> -<div class="verse">That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,</div> -<div class="verse">These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,</div> -<div class="verse">For breakers of the homeless deep.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Edmund Gosse</span> (<i>Desiderium</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The night has a thousand eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the day but one;</div> -<div class="verse">Yet the light of the bright world dies</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With the dying sun.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The mind has a thousand eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the heart but one;</div> -<div class="verse">Yet the light of a whole life dies,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When love is done.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. Bourdillon.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>See reference to this poem in <a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>But to come again unto Apelles, this was his manner and custom -besides, which he perpetually observed, that no day went over his -head, but what businesse soever he had otherwise to call him away, -he would make one draught or other (and never misse) for to -exercise his hand and keepe it in use, inasmuch as from him -grew the proverbe, <i>Nulla dies sine linea</i>, <i>i.e.</i> Be alwaies doing -somewhat, though you doe but draw a line. His order was when he -had finished a piece of work or painted table, and layd it out of his -hand, to set it forth in some open gallerie or thorowfare, to be -seen of folke that passed by, and himselfe would lie close behind -it to hearken what faults were found therewith; preferring the -judgment of the common people before his owne, and imagining -they would spy more narrowly, and censure his doings sooner -than himselfe: and as the tale is told, it fell out upon a time, -that a shoomaker as he went by seemed to controlle his workmanship -about the shoo or pantofle that he had made to a picture, -and namely, that there was one latchet fewer than there should -be: Apelles acknowledging that the man said true indeed, -mended that fault by the next morning, and set forth his table -as his manner was. The same shoomaker comming again -the morrow after, and finding the want supplied which he noted -the day before, took some pride unto himselfe, that his former -admonition had sped so well, and was so bold as to cavil at somewhat -about the leg. Apelles could not endure that, but putting -forth his head from behind the painted table, and scorning thus -to be checked and reproved, Sirrha (quoth hee) remember you -are but a shoomaker, and therefore meddle no higher I advise you, -than with shoos. Which words also of his came afterwards -to be a common proverbe, <i>Ne sutor ultra crepidam</i>.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Pliny</span> (<i>Natural History</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p><i>Apelles</i>, the greatest painter of antiquity. The two proverbs mean: -“No day without a line,” “A cobbler should stick to his last.” <i>Pantofle</i>, -sandal; <i>latchet</i>, the thong fastening the sandal; <i>painted table</i>, panel picture; -<i>controlle</i>, find fault with.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent2">Have you seen but a bright lily grow,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Before rude hands have touched it?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Have you marked but the fall of the snow,</div> -<div class="verse indent3">Before the soil hath smutched it?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Have you felt the wool of the beaver?</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Or swan’s down ever?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Or have smelt o’ the bud of the briar,</div> -<div class="verse indent6">Or the nard in the fire?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Or have tasted the bag of the bee?</div> -<div class="verse">O, so white! O, so soft! O, so sweet is she!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson</span> (<i>A Celebration of Charis</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of -life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state -of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly -perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove -blossom—a third part bud; a third part past, a third part in -full bloom—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things -that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are -not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face -is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its -lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they -imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, -to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally -better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which -have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be -Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Ruskin</span> (<i>Stones of Venice II</i>, vi, 25).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: -can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a -fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Janet’s Repentance</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,</div> -<div class="verse">Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;</div> -<div class="verse">Purple the sails, and so perfumed that</div> -<div class="verse">The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,</div> -<div class="verse">Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke. She did lie</div> -<div class="verse">In her pavilion: on each side her</div> -<div class="verse">Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,</div> -<div class="verse">With divers-coloured fans....</div> -<div class="verse">Her gentlewomen, like the Nereïdes,</div> -<div class="verse">So many mermaids tended her. At the helm</div> -<div class="verse">A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle</div> -<div class="verse">Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span> (<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This and the next three quotations are word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Little round Pepíta, blondest maid</div> -<div class="verse">In all Bedmar—Pepíta, fair yet flecked,</div> -<div class="verse">Saucy of lip and nose, of hair as red</div> -<div class="verse">As breasts of robins stepping on the snow—</div> -<div class="verse">Who stands in front with little tapping feet,</div> -<div class="verse">And baby-dimpled hands that hide enclosed</div> -<div class="verse">Those sleeping crickets, the dark castanets.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>The Spanish Gypsy</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And how then was the Devil drest?</div> -<div class="verse">Oh! he was in his Sunday’s best:</div> -<div class="verse">His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,</div> -<div class="verse">And there was a hole where the tail came through.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Over the hill and over the dale,</div> -<div class="verse">And he went over the plain,</div> -<div class="verse">And backward and forward he swished his long tail,</div> -<div class="verse">As a gentleman swishes his cane.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>The Devil’s Thoughts</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The stanzas are reversed in order.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We walked abreast all up the street,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Into the market up the street;</div> -<div class="verse">Our hair with marigolds was wound,</div> -<div class="verse">Our bodices with love-knots laced,</div> -<div class="verse">Our merchandise with tansy<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> bound....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And when our chaffering all was done,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All was paid for, sold and done,</div> -<div class="verse">We drew a glove on ilka hand,</div> -<div class="verse">We sweetly curtsied, each to each,</div> -<div class="verse">And deftly danced a saraband.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William Bell Scott</span> (<i>The Witch’s Ballad</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The above are from a series of word-pictures (<a href="#Page_85">see p. 85</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ON THE NONPAREIL</p> - -<p class="center"><i>Naught but himself can be his parallel.</i></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">With marble-coloured shoulders—and keen eyes</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Protected by a forehead broad and white—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And hair cut close, lest it impede the sight,</div> -<div class="verse">And clenched hands, firm and of a punishing size,</div> -<div class="verse">Steadily held, or motioned wary-wise</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To hit or stop—and kerchief, too, drawn tight</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O’er the unyielding loins, to keep from flight</div> -<div class="verse">The inconstant wind, that all too often flies—</div> -<div class="verse">The Nonpareil stands! Fame, whose bright eyes run o’er</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With joy to see a Chicken of her own,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dips her rich pen in <i>claret</i>, and writes down</div> -<div class="verse">Under the letter R, first on the score,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Randall—John—Irish Parents—age not known—</div> -<div class="verse">Good with both hands, and only ten stone four!”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Peter Corcoran</span> (<i>The Fancy, 1820</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Randall was a pugilist of the time.</p> - -<p>“None but himself can be his parallel” is a line from <i>The Double -Falsehood</i> of Louis Theobald (1691-1744), but it comes originally from -Seneca (<i>Hercules Furens</i>, Act I, Sc. I):</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Quaeris Alcidae parem?</div> -<div class="verse">Nemo est nisi ipse.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(Do you seek the equal of Alcides?</div> -<div class="verse">No one is except himself.)</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I copied the above sonnet from <i>Gossip in a Library</i> by Edmund Gosse -(1891), partly because Mr. Gosse said of it, “Anthologies are not edited in -a truly catholic spirit, or they would contain this very remarkable sonnet.” -I hardly think this, but the lines seem sufficiently interesting to quote.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Le roi disait, en la voyant si belle,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">A son neveu:</div> -<div class="verse">“Pour un baiser, pour un sourire d’elle,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Pour un cheveu,</div> -<div class="verse">Infant Don Ruy, je donnerais l’Espagne</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Et le Pérou!”</div> -<div class="verse"><i>Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne</i></div> -<div class="verse indent2"><i>Me rendra fou.</i></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>(The King, seeing her so beautiful, said to his nephew, “For one kiss, -for a smile, for one hair of her head, Infante Don Ruy, I would give Spain -and Peru.” <i>The wind that blows over the mountain will drive me mad.</i>)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Victor Hugo</span> (<i>Gastibelza</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This charmingly extravagant praise of a lady’s beauty recalls the -story of another poet. The Eastern conqueror, Timur (or Tamerlane), -sent for the Persian poet Hafiz and very angrily asked him, “Art thou -he who offered to give my two great cities, Samarkand and Bokhara, -for the black mole on thy mistress’s cheek?” Hafiz, however, cleverly -escaped trouble by replying, “Yes, sire, I always give freely, and in consequence -am now reduced to poverty. May I crave your kind assistance?” -Timur was amused at the reply and made the poet a present. The story, -however, is considered doubtful, because Timur did not conquer Persia -until some years after 1388, which is supposed to be the date of the poet’s -death.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Mere verbal insults (to a Roman Emperor) were not considered -treason; for, said the Emperors Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius, -in language that is a standing rebuke to pusillanimous -tyrants, if the words are uttered in a spirit of frivolity, the attack -merits contempt; if from madness, they excite pity; if from -malice, they are to be forgiven.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William A. Hunter</span> (1844-1898) (<i>Roman Law, Appendix</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This recalls to mind the numerous cases of <i>lèse-majesté</i> for words -spoken against the Kaiser before the war. The passage would make a -pleasant retort to a rude opponent (a “pusillanimous tyrant”) in a debate.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I have discovered that a feigned familiarity in great ones, -is a note of certain usurpation on the less. For great and popular -men feign themselves to be servants of others, to make these -slaves to them. So the fisher provides bait for the trout, roach, -dace, etc., that they may be food for him.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Ben Jonson</span> (<i>Mores Aulici</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ci-gît ma femme, ah! qu’elle est bien,</div> -<div class="verse">Pour son repos—et pour le mien.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Du Lorens.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Paraphrased as:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here Abigail my wife doth lie;</div> -<div class="verse">She’s at peace and so am I.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">GLADSTONE AND THE SOCIETY FOR -PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.</p> - -<p>Mr. Gladstone’s relation to Psychical Research affords one -more illustration of the width and force of his intellectual sympathies. -Many men, even of high ability, if convinced as Mr. Gladstone -was of the truth and sufficiency of the Christian revelation, -permit themselves to ignore these experimental approaches to -spiritual knowledge, as at best superfluous. They do not realize -how profoundly the evidence, the knowledge, which we seek -and which in some measure we find, must ultimately influence -men’s views as to both the credibility and the adequacy of all -forms of faith. Mr. Gladstone’s broad intellectual purview,—aided -perhaps in this instance by something of the practical foresight -of the statesman,—placed him in a quite different attitude -towards our quest. “It is the most important work which is -being done in the world,” he said in a conversation in 1885. -“By far the most important,” he repeated, with a grave emphasis -which suggested previous trains of thought, to which he did not -care to give expression. He went on to apologize, in his courteous -fashion, for his inability to render active help; and ended by saying -“If you will accept sympathy without service, I shall be glad -to join your ranks.” He became an Honorary Member, and -followed with attention,—I know not with how much of study—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> -successive issues of our <i>Proceedings</i>. Towards the close of his -life he desired that the <i>Proceedings</i> should be sent to St. Deiniol’s -Library, which he had founded at Hawarden; thus giving -final testimony to his sense of the salutary nature of our work. -From a man so immersed in other thought and labour that work -could assuredly claim no more; from men profoundly and -primarily interested in the spiritual world it ought, I think, to -claim no less.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (<i>S.P.R. Journal, June, 1898</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Apart from this interesting glimpse of Gladstone, it shows the importance -he attached to the work of the Society for Psychical Research. To the -severely orthodox, who think no evidence of life after death should be -sought outside “Revelation,” his opinion should appeal. Every increase -of knowledge is a further “Revelation.” In the Bible we are told of one -resurrection, and there is certainly no reason why we should not seek the -evidence of others. We should not shut our eyes and close our ears to new -<i>Revelation</i>.</p> - -<p>The Society has been thirty-eight years in existence and is still insufficiently -appreciated. Hodgson said in <i>The Forum</i>, 1896 “There are -so many ways of looking at the world. It may be a speck in space, or a -huge cauldron with a graveyard for its crust, a place in which to get a -hunger and satisfy it, the fighting ground for a while of dragon or ape, of -Trojan or Turk, an evolutionary drama that must end in ice or fire. Many -things it means to different men. One is busy with earthworms, another -with stars, another with the splendour of the day or the strivings of the -human soul. Numerous investigators are hunting for further proofs -that we came out of the mud, but very few are seeking indications, in any -scientific spirit, of what may follow the toil and turmoil of our individual -existence here.”</p> - -<p>Myers says: “The question of the survival of man is a branch of -experimental psychology. Is there, or is there not, evidence in the actual -observed phenomena of automatism, apparitions and the like, for a transcendental -energy in living men, or for an influence emanating from personalities -which have overpassed the tomb? This is the definite question, -which we can at least intelligibly discuss, and which either we or our descendants -may some day hope to answer.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,</div> -<div class="verse">Or waves that own no curbing hand,</div> -<div class="verse">How fast has brother followed brother,</div> -<div class="verse">From sunshine to the sunless land!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> (<i>On the Death of James Hogg</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Car, voyez-vous, la femme est, comme on dit, mon maître,</div> -<div class="verse">Un certain animal difficile à connoitre,</div> -<div class="verse">Et de qui la nature est fort encline au mal.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>(A woman, look you, is a certain animal hard to understand and -much inclined to mischief.)</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Molière</span> (<i>Le Dépit Amoureux</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm,</div> -<div class="verse">Rose triumphal, crowning all a city,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm,</div> -<div class="verse">Built of holy hands for holy pity,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime,</div> -<div class="verse">Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime,</div> -<div class="verse">Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hailed a God more merciful than Time.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his nod,</div> -<div class="verse">Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lies he, stricken by his master’s rod.</div> -<div class="verse">“Where is man?” the cloister murmurs wailing;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Back the mute shrine thunders—“Where is God?”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Here is all the end of all his glory—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones.</div> -<div class="verse">Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans,</div> -<div class="verse">Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Here, where earth is dense with dead men’s bones.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Low and loud and long, a voice for ever,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sounds the wind’s clear story like a song.</div> -<div class="verse">Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dust from dust as years relapse along;</div> -<div class="verse">Graves where men made sure to rest and never</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lie dismantled by the seasons’ wrong.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Now displaced, devoured and desecrated,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Now by Time’s hands darkly disinterred,</div> -<div class="verse">These poor dead that sleeping here awaited</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Long the archangel’s re-creating word,</div> -<div class="verse">Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Till the blast of judgment should be heard,</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves,</div> -<div class="verse">Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like slaves,</div> -<div class="verse">Desolate beyond man’s desolation,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shrink and sink into the waste of waves.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Shroudless, down the loose collapsing banks,</div> -<div class="verse">Crumble, from their constant place detruded,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That the sea devours and gives not thanks.</div> -<div class="verse">Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Rows on rows and line by line they crumble,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">They that thought for all time through to be.</div> -<div class="verse">Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Breaks the grim field paced alone of me.</div> -<div class="verse">Earth, and man, and all their gods wax humble</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse center">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But afar on the headland exalted,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But beyond in the curl of the bay,</div> -<div class="verse">From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our father is lord of the day.</div> -<div class="verse">Our father and lord that we follow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For deathless and ageless is he;</div> -<div class="verse">And his robe is the whole sky’s hollow,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His sandal the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where the horn of the headland is sharper,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And her green floor glitters with fire,</div> -<div class="verse">The sea has the sun for a harper,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The sun has the sea for a lyre.</div> -<div class="verse">The waves are a pavement of amber,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By the feet of the sea-winds trod</div> -<div class="verse">To receive in a god’s presence-chamber</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Our father, the God.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Time, haggard and changeful and hoary,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is master and god of the land:</div> -<div class="verse">But the air is fulfilled of the glory</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That is shed from our lord’s right hand.</div> -<div class="verse">O father of all of us ever,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">All glory be only to thee</div> -<div class="verse">From heaven, that is void of thee never,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And earth, and the sea....</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>By the North Sea</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Swinburne introduced the new Hellenism or paganism, which was followed -by Pater and J. A. Symonds and ended with Oscar Wilde (<a href="#Page_310">see p. 310 note</a>.) -Here Time is the supreme god who wrecks Christian Churches, etc.</p> - -<p>Although Swinburne had no important message to deliver, yet by his -wonderful mastery of metre and language he was of tremendous service in -transforming English Poetry (<a href="#Page_219">see p. 219</a>.) But in spite of the magical -effect of his new melodies, he was wanting in the art (of which Milton -is the supreme example) of varying his rhythm and accents. His extreme -regularity, notwithstanding the fine language and the splendid swing of his -verses, produces in his longer poems a certain effect of monotony. Swinburne -spoke of the “spavined and spur-galled Pegasus” of George Eliot, -but although she lacked his wonderful lyric melody, she was more artistic -and effective than he in varying the rhythm of her verse. However, the -immense influence of Swinburne on all subsequent poetry can never be -forgotten. Even the dreary Iambic couplet in his hands was transformed -into music.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There is the love of the good for the good’s sake, and the love -of the truth for the truth’s sake. I have known many, especially -women, love the good for the good’s sake; but very few, indeed—and -scarcely one woman—love the truth for the truth’s sake. -Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand -times been, the source of the persecution of the truth—the pretext -and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To -see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately -identical is given only to those who love both sincerely and -without any foreign ends.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Table Talk</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The old creeds grew out of human nature as genuinely as -weeds and flowers out of the earth. It is well enough that the -gardener, whose business it is to pull them up, should despise -them as pigweed, wormwood, chickweed, shadblossom: so they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> -are, out of their place; but the botanist picks up the same and -recognizes them as Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchier, Amaranth. -<i>Natura nihil agit frustra.</i> Let us coax each to yield its last bud.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Moncure D. Conway.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>I have not Conway’s book <i>An Earthward Pilgrimage</i> to refer to. The -latter part of the above is apparently a quotation from Thoreau, as I remember -it is so quoted by Emerson.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>God is my witness, what hours of wretchedness I have spent -at times, while reading the Bible devoutly from day to day, -and reverencing every word of it as the Word of God, when petty -contradictions met me which seemed to my reason to conflict -with the notion of the absolute historical veracity of every part -of Scripture, and which, as I felt, <i>in the study of any other book</i> -we should honestly treat as errors or mis-statements, without in -the least detracting from the real value of the book! But in those -days, I was taught that it was my duty to fling the suggestion -from me at once, “as if it were a loaded shell shot into the fortress -of my soul,” or to stamp out desperately, as with an iron heel, -each spark of honest doubt, which God’s own gift, the love of -truth, had kindled in my bosom.... I thank God that I was not -able long to throw dust in the eyes of my own mind, and do -violence to the love of truth in this way.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Bishop Colenso</span> (1814-1883) (<i>Pentateuch</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>(See G. W. Cox’s <i>Life of Colenso</i>, I, 493.) Colenso’s quotation, “as -if it were a loaded shell,” etc., is from Bishop Wilberforce. Cox mentions -elsewhere that in one of Wilberforce’s published sermons he speaks of a -young man of great promise dying in darkness and despair, because he had -indulged in doubt as to whether the sun and moon stood still at Joshua’s -bidding! Who, that went through the experiences of those days, can ever -forget them? We had been taught that we “must believe” every word -of the Bible to be divinely inspired or else be eternally damned. And yet -we realized that such belief was absolutely impossible!</p> - -<p>The horror with which Bishop Colenso’s revelations were received in -orthodox circles would to-day be scarcely credible, and not until after -the eighties were the results of the Higher Criticism generally accepted.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Let a man be once fully persuaded that there is no difference -between the two positions, “The Bible contains the religion -revealed by God,” and “Whatever is contained in the Bible -is religion, and was revealed by God”; and that whatever can -be said of the Bible, collectively taken, may and must be said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> -of each and every sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself,—and -I no longer wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the -inconsistency of those who profess the same belief, and yet affect -to look down with a contemptuous or compassionate smile on John -Wesley for rejecting the Copernican system as incompatible -therewith; or who exclaim, “Wonderful!” when they hear -that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old woman to the gallows -in honour of the Witch of Endor.... I challenge these divines -and their adherents to establish the compatibility of a belief -in the modern astronomy and natural philosophy with their -and Wesley’s doctrine respecting the inspired Scriptures.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">For the Parsons are dumb dogs, turning round,</div> -<div class="verse">And scratching their hole in the warmest ground,</div> -<div class="verse">And laying them down in the sun to wink,</div> -<div class="verse">Drowsing, and dreaming, and thinking they think.</div> -<div class="verse">As they mumble the marrowless bones of morals,</div> -<div class="verse">Like toothless children gnawing their corals,</div> -<div class="verse">Gnawing their corals to soothe their gums</div> -<div class="verse">With a kind of watery thought that comes.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. C. Smith</span> (<i>Borland Hall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others? -The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never -can put beans in poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. Corn—which, -in my garden, grows alongside the bean, and, so far -as I can see, with no affectation of superiority—is, however, the -child of song. It “waves” in all literature.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charles Dudley Warner</span> (<i>My Summer in a Garden</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Mr. Yeats has, however, rescued the bean from its invidious position -(<i>The Lake Isle of Innisfree</i>):—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,</div> -<div class="verse">And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;</div> -<div class="verse">Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,</div> -<div class="verse">And live alone in the bee-loud glade.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Lady Middleton, a friend of old days in Adelaide and now in England, -reminded me of these lines.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yet in my hid soul must a voice reply</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which knows not which may seem the viler gain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To sleep for ever or be born again.</div> -<div class="verse">The blank repose or drear eternity.</div> -<div class="verse">A solitary thing it were to die</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So late begotten and so early slain,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With sweet life withered to a passing pain</div> -<div class="verse">Till nothing anywhere should still be I.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yet if for evermore I must convey</div> -<div class="verse indent1">These weary senses thro’ an endless day</div> -<div class="verse">And gaze on God with these exhausted eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I fear that howsoe’er the seraphs play</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My life shall not be theirs nor I as they,</div> -<div class="verse">But homeless in the heart of Paradise.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (1843-1901) (<i>Immortality</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This is from Myers’ <i>Poems</i>, 1870, and is one of a pair of sonnets. I do -not quote the first in full because its meaning seems obscure, but the last -six lines on the shortness of life as compared with eternity are as follow:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Lo, all that age is as a speck of sand</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Lost on the long beach where the tides are free,</div> -<div class="verse">And no man metes it in his hollow hand</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be;</div> -<div class="verse">At ebb it lies forgotten on the land</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And at full tide forgotten in the sea.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In the second sonnet quoted above, Myers is not merely referring to -the Biblical account of the future life in heaven as consisting in endless -worship—which, if taken literally instead of symbolically, would certainly -mean a “drear eternity.” The suggestion is that there must be some -equivalent to work, thought, activity, progress, and definite aims to make -eternal life preferable to annihilation. (I am reminded here of a curious -statement made by the great Adam Smith, “What can be added to the -happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear -conscience!”) Myers ultimately came to the definite conclusion that the -future life will be one of continued progress.</p> - -<p>His name, Myers, is purely English, not Jewish. This gifted man was -not only a fine poet, but also an important essayist and a remarkable classical -scholar. He, Hodgson, and others formed the small band of able men who -threw everything else aside and devoted their lives to Psychical Research. -Myers’ best poems appeared in <i>The Renewal of Youth and other Poems</i>, -1882, and it was no doubt a loss to poetry that during the remaining eighteen -years of his life he added little, if anything, more. However, he and Hodgson -considered that the work to which they had devoted themselves was of -the very highest importance. <i>Human Personality and its Survival of -Bodily Death</i>, the important work in which Myers embodied his conclusions, -was left incomplete at his death, but Hodgson, with Miss Alice Johnson’s -assistance, completed and edited it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p> - -<p>Myers was quite satisfied before his death, in 1901, that the evidence -collected by the Society for Psychical Research had already established in -itself the fact of survival after death. But the interesting fact is that -during the nineteen years since he “passed over to the other side” he has -apparently been the principal agent in adding greatly to that evidence. -There is every reason to believe that Myers has personally been communicating -and arranging and directing much of the evidence that has since -been given.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It is not the essayist’s duty to inform, to build pathways -through metaphysical morasses, to cancel abuses, any more than -it is the duty of the poet to do these things. Incidentally he may -do something in that way, just as the poet may, but it is not his -duty, and should not be expected of him. Skylarks are primarily -created to sing, although a whole choir of them may be baked -in pies and brought to table; they were born to make music, -although they may incidentally stay the pangs of vulgar hunger.... -The essay should be pure literature as the poem is pure -literature.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Alexander Smith</span> (<i>On the Writing of Essays</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death;</div> -<div class="verse">But the flower of their souls he shall not take away to shame us,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath;</div> -<div class="verse">For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell,</div> -<div class="verse">Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span> (<i>In Memory of Barry Cornwall</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You promise heavens free from strife,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Pure truth, and perfect change of will;</div> -<div class="verse">But sweet, sweet is this human life,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;</div> -<div class="verse">Your chilly stars I can forego,</div> -<div class="verse">This warm kind world is all I know.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You say there is no substance here,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">One great reality above:</div> -<div class="verse">Back from that void I shrink in fear,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And child-like hide myself in love:</div> -<div class="verse">Show me what angels feel. Till then,</div> -<div class="verse">I cling, a mere weak man, to men.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">You bid me lift my mean desires</div> -<div class="verse indent1">From faltering lips and fitful veins</div> -<div class="verse">To sexless souls, ideal quires,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Unwearied voices, wordless strains:</div> -<div class="verse">My mind with fonder welcome owns</div> -<div class="verse">One dear dead friend’s remembered tones.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Forsooth the present we must give</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To that which cannot pass away;</div> -<div class="verse">All beauteous things for which we live</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By laws of time and space decay.</div> -<div class="verse">But oh, the very reason why</div> -<div class="verse">I clasp them, is because they die.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William (Johnson) Cory</span> (1823-1892).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Mimnermus was a fine Greek elegiac poet—about 630-600 B.C.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">MORS ET VITA</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">We know not yet what life shall be,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">What shore beyond earth’s shore be set;</div> -<div class="verse">What grief awaits us, or what glee,</div> -<div class="verse indent4">We know not yet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Still, somewhere in sweet converse met,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Old friends, we say, beyond death’s sea</div> -<div class="verse">Shall meet and greet us, nor forget</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Those days of yore, those years when we</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Were loved and true—but will death let</div> -<div class="verse">Our eyes the longed-for vision see?</div> -<div class="verse indent6">We know not yet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Samuel Waddington.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research indicates -that friends do certainly meet. See the remarkably convincing <i>Ear of -Dionysius</i>, lately published, where Dr. Verrall and Professor Butcher are -clearly having a great time together on the other side.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Art—which I may style the love of loving, rage</div> -<div class="verse">Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things</div> -<div class="verse">For truth’s sake, whole and sole,—nor any good, truth brings</div> -<div class="verse">The knower, seer, feeler beside.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>Fifine at the Fair</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">De par le Roy dèfense à Dieu</div> -<div class="verse">De faire miracle en ce lieu.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">(By order of the King, God is forbidden</div> -<div class="verse">To work miracles in this place.)</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Anon.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The teaching of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) led to an important -evangelical movement in the Roman Catholic Church. When, however, -the Jansenists became subjected to persecution, the usual result followed -that numbers of them became fanatics. The more corrupt the French -Court and Society became, the more frenzied became this fanaticism. -In 1727 the Jansenist deacon, Pâris, a man of very holy life, was buried -in the St. Médard churchyard, and shortly afterwards miracles were said -to take place at his tomb. In consequence large crowds of <i>convulsionnaires</i> -assembled there and very shocking scenes were enacted, men and women in -hysterical and epileptic fits and ecstatic delirium, eating the earth of the -grave and inflicting frightful tortures on themselves and each other. When -in 1732 the Court interposed and closed the churchyard some wit wrote -the above couplet on the gate.</p> - -<p>Mr. King in his <i>Classical and Foreign Quotations</i> has “De faire <i>des -miracles</i>,” but the above version seems correct (See <i>Larousse</i>.)</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And Christians love in the turf to lie,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Not in watery graves to be—</div> -<div class="verse">Nay, the very fishes would <i>sooner</i> die</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the land than in the sea.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hood.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There are two things that fill my soul with a holy reverence -and an ever-growing wonder: the spectacle of the starry sky, -that virtually annihilates us as physical beings; and the moral -law which raises us to infinite dignity as intelligent agents.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The <i>ought</i> expresses a kind of necessity, a kind of connection -of actions with their grounds or reasons, such as is to be found -nowhere else in the whole natural world. For of the natural -world our understanding can know nothing except what is, -what has been, or what will be. We cannot say that anything -in it ought to be other than it actually was, is, or will be. In fact, -so long as we are considering the course of nature, the <i>ought</i> -has no meaning whatever. We can as little inquire what ought -to happen in nature as we can inquire what properties a circle -ought to have.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Immanuel Kant.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The first quotation (from the <i>Kritik of Practical Reason</i>) appears to -be the same passage that is often rendered in such words as these: “Two -things fill my soul with awe—the starry heavens in the still night, and -the sense of duty in man.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent9">The whole earth</div> -<div class="verse">The beauty wore of promise—that which sets</div> -<div class="verse">The budding rose above the rose full-blown.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. Wordsworth</span> (<i>The Prelude, Bk. XI</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(——) is one of those men who go far to shake my faith -in a future state of existence; I mean, on account of the difficulty -of knowing where to place him. I could not bear to roast him; -he is not so bad as that comes to: but then, on the other hand, -to have to sit down with such a fellow in the very lowest pothouse -of heaven is utterly inconsistent with the belief of that place being -a place of happiness for me.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">S. T. Coleridge</span> (<i>Table Talk</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">It isn’t raining rain to me,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It’s raining daffodils.</div> -<div class="verse">In every dimpled drop I see</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Wild flowers on the hills.</div> -<div class="verse">The clouds of grey engulf the day</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And overwhelm the town:</div> -<div class="verse">It isn’t raining rain to me,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It’s raining roses down.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Robert Loveman.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure -Ideal of those, who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, -may never look so high again.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">N. Hawthorne</span> (<i>Transformation</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>One summer evening sitting by my window I watched for the -first star to appear, knowing the position of the brightest in the -southern sky. The dusk came on, grew deeper, but the star -did not shine. By and by, other stars less bright appeared, so -that it could not be the sunset which obscured the expected -one. Finally, I considered that I must have mistaken its position, -when suddenly a puff of air blew through the branch of a pear -tree which overhung the window, a leaf moved, and there was the -star behind the leaf.</p> - -<p>At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gazing -at the sky up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful -star shines clearly; here a constellation is hidden by a branch; -a universe by a leaf. Some mental instrument or organon is -required to enable us to distinguish between the leaf which -may be removed and a real void; when to cease to look in one -direction, and to work in another.... There are infinities -to be known, but they are hidden by a leaf.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Jefferies</span> (<i>The Story of My Heart</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Over the winter glaciers</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I see the summer glow,</div> -<div class="verse">And through the wild-piled snowdrift</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The warm rosebuds below.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (<i>The World-Soul</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Emerson is always an optimist.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Place thyself, oh, lovely fair!</div> -<div class="verse">Where a thousand mirrors are;</div> -<div class="verse">Though a thousand faces shine,</div> -<div class="verse">’Tis but one—and that is thine.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Then the Painter’s skill allow,</div> -<div class="verse">Who could frame so fair a brow.</div> -<div class="verse">What are lustrous eyes of flame,</div> -<div class="verse">What are cheeks, the rose that shame,</div> -<div class="verse">What are glances wild and free,</div> -<div class="verse">Speech, and shape, and voice—but He?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Moasi</span> (<i>L. S. Costello’s translation</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And here the Singer for his Art</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Not all in vain may plead</div> -<div class="verse">‘The song that nerves a nation’s heart</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Is in itself a deed.’</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>Charge of the Heavy Brigade</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>I knew a very wise man that believed that, if a man were permitted -to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make -the laws of a nation.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Fletcher</span> of Saltoun (<i>Letter to Montrose and others</i>).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>What would the wise man have said of “It’s a long, long way to -Tipperary”?</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">FIRST LOVE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O my earliest love, who, ere I number’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!</div> -<div class="verse">Will a swallow—or a swift, or some bird—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Fly to her and say, I love her still?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Say my life’s a desert drear and arid,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To its one green spot I aye recur:</div> -<div class="verse">Never, never—although three times married—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Have I cared a jot for aught but her.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">No, mine-own! though early forced to leave you,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Still my heart was there where first we met;</div> -<div class="verse">In those “Lodgings with an ample sea-view,”</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Which were, forty years ago, “To let.”</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There I saw her first, our landlord’s oldest</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Little daughter. On a thing so fair</div> -<div class="verse">Thou, O Sun,—who (so they say) beholdest</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Everything,—hast gazed, I tell thee, ne’er.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">There she sat—so near me, yet remoter</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Than a star—a blue-eyed bashful imp:</div> -<div class="verse">On her lap she held a happy bloater,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">’Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And I loved her, and our troth we plighted</div> -<div class="verse indent1">On the morrow by the shingly shore:</div> -<div class="verse">In a fortnight to be disunited</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By a bitter fate for evermore.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To be young once more, and bite my thumb</div> -<div class="verse">At the world and all its cares with you, I’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Give no inconsiderable sum.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Hand in hand we tramp’d the golden seaweed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Soon as o’er the gray cliff peep’d the dawn:</div> -<div class="verse">Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:—</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?</div> -<div class="verse">Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">That bright being who was always gay?</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yes—she has at least a dozen wee things!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Yes—I see her darning corduroys,</div> -<div class="verse">Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For a howling herd of hungry boys</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">But at intervals she thinks, I know,</div> -<div class="verse">Of those days which we, afar from turmoil,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Spent together forty years ago.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">O my earliest love, still unforgotten,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue!</div> -<div class="verse">Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To another as I did to you!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">C. S. Calverley.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">ON A FLY DRINKING OUT OF A CUP OF ALE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Busy, curious, thirsty fly,</div> -<div class="verse">Drink with me, and drink as I;</div> -<div class="verse">Freely welcome to my cup,</div> -<div class="verse">Couldst thou sip and sip it up.</div> -<div class="verse">Make the most of life you may,</div> -<div class="verse">Life is short and wears away.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Both alike, both thine and mine,</div> -<div class="verse">Hasten quick to their decline;</div> -<div class="verse">Thine’s a summer, mine’s no more,</div> -<div class="verse">Though repeated to three-score:</div> -<div class="verse">Three-score summers, when they’re gone,</div> -<div class="verse">Will appear as short as one.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">William Oldys</span> (1696-1761).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>This was first published in 1732 as “The Fly—An Anachreontick” and -Mr. Gosse in the <i>Encyc. Britt.</i> gave the first six lines as an example of an -Anacreontic. He attributed the poem to Oldys, but the authorship is -doubtful. (See <i>Notes and Queries, 3rd Ser., I, 21</i>). Vincent Bourne in a copy -of his <i>Poematia</i>, 1734, in my possession, has written out <i>and signed</i> the two -verses, entitling them “A Song,” the last line of each verse being repeated -as a refrain. From this it might appear that he claimed the authorship. -In 1743 he published a Latin version of the poem. Vincent Bourne, a -beautiful Latinist, was much loved by his pupils, Charles Lamb and -Cowper, who each translated into English some of his fine Latin verses.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Earth goeth on the Earth, glistening like gold,</div> -<div class="verse">The Earth goeth to the Earth, sooner than it wold,</div> -<div class="verse">The Earth builds on the Earth castles and towers—</div> -<div class="verse">The Earth says to the Earth, all shall be ours.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><i>Epitaph</i>, 17th Century.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>An inscription on a tomb in Melrose Abbey, but said to be a version -of lines by a Fourteenth Century poet, William Billing.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">She never found fault with you, never implied</div> -<div class="verse">Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side</div> -<div class="verse">Grew nobler, girls purer....</div> -<div class="verse">None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall;</div> -<div class="verse">They knelt more to God than they used—that was all.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">E. B. Browning</span> (<i>My Kate</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish, -where it will find its world and paradise all in one, and never -have a presentiment of the dry bank. The fretted summer shade, -and stillness, and the gentle breathing of some loved life near—it -would be paradise to us all, if eager thought, the strong -angel with the implacable brow, had not long since closed the gates.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Romola</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>All true Work is religion; and whatsoever religion is not -Work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, -Spinning Dervishes, or where it will; with me it shall have no -harbour.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Carlyle</span> (<i>Reward</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Nature, the old nurse, took</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The child upon her knee,</div> -<div class="verse">Saying: ‘Here is a story book</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thy Father has written for thee.’</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">‘Come, wander with me,’ she said,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">‘Into regions yet untrod;</div> -<div class="verse">And read what is still unread</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In the manuscripts of God.’</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And he wandered away and away</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With Nature, the dear old nurse,</div> -<div class="verse">Who sang to him night and day</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The rhymes of the universe.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And whenever the way seemed long,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or his heart began to fail,</div> -<div class="verse">She would sing a more wonderful song,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Or tell a more marvellous tale.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Longfellow</span> (<i>Agassiz</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Deep, deep are loving eyes,</div> -<div class="verse">Flowed with naptha fiery sweet;</div> -<div class="verse">And the point is paradise</div> -<div class="verse">Where their glances meet.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span> (<i>The Daemonic and the Celestial Love</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">... As I lie here, hours of the dead night,</div> -<div class="verse">Dying in state and by such slow degrees,</div> -<div class="verse">I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,</div> -<div class="verse">And stretch my feet forth, straight as stone can point,</div> -<div class="verse">And let the bed-clothes, for a mortcloth, drop</div> -<div class="verse">Into great laps and folds of sculptor’s work.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">R. Browning</span> (<i>The Bishop orders his Tomb</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,</div> -<div class="verse">Led the lorn traveller up the path,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;</div> -<div class="verse">And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Upon the parlour steps collected,</div> -<div class="verse">Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say,—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">“Our master knows you—you’re expected.”</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">W. M. Praed</span> (<i>The Vicar</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,</div> -<div class="verse">An abbot on an ambling pad,</div> -<div class="verse">Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,</div> -<div class="verse">Or long-haired page in crimson clad,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Goes by to towered Camelot.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span> (<i>The Lady of Shalott</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The above are from a series of word-pictures (<a href="#Page_167">see p. 167</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>(Phantasy or imagination may be true and clear or may be -disordered and unsound) ... The phantastical part of men -(if it be not disordered) is a representer of the best, most comely -and bewtifull images or appearances of thinges to the soule -and according to their very truth.... Of this sort of Phantasie -are all good Poets, notable Captaines stratagematique, all cunning -artificers and Engineers, all Legislators, Politiciens and Counsellours -of estate, in whose exercises the inventive part is most employed -and is to the sound and true judgement of man most needful.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Puttenham</span> (<i>The Arte of English Poesie</i>, 1589).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Just as a poet, besides imagination, must have intellect or judgment -as a basis, so the higher imaginative faculty comes to the aid of intellect -in other departments of life. As Maudsley says, “it performs the initial -and essential functions in every branch of human development” (<i>Body -and Will</i>). Ehrlich, seeking a substance that would destroy germs without -injuring the human tissues, plods through endless tedious processes, and -on his 606th experiment, discovers salvarsan, a cure for syphilis. Here -the higher faculty has had little to do—but when, on the fall of an apple, -Newton’s mind saw in a flash how the world was balanced, intellect soared -aloft on the wings of imagination.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As well Poets as Poesie are despised, and the name become, -of honourable infamous, subject to scorne and derision, and rather -a reproach than a prayse to any that useth it: for commonly -whoso is studious in the Arte or shewes himselfe excellent in it, -they call him in disdayne a <i>phantasticall</i>: and a light-headed -or phantasticall man (by conversion) they call a Poet.... Of -such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very well seene in many -laudable sciences, and especially in Poesie, it is so come to passe -that they have no courage to write and if they have, yet are they -loath to be a-known of their skill. So as I know very many notable -Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and -suppressed it agayne, or else suffred it to be publisht without -their owne names to it: as if it were a discredit for a gentleman -to seeme learned, and to shew himselfe amorous of any good Arte.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Puttenham</span> (<i>The Arte of English Poesie</i>, 1589).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>We do not always remember in what disheartening conditions the -great Elizabethan literature was produced—the inferior position of the -writer, his wretched remuneration and his dependence on patrons. It is -strange to think that it was considered beneath the dignity of a gentleman -to write poetry or to acknowledge its authorship—or apparently to show -proficiency in other arts or sciences. Such men as Sir Philip Sidney and -Sir Walter Raleigh were exceptions. The curious fact is that Puttenham -himself (assuming, as is probable, that he was the author) issued this -important book anonymously. He had, however, acknowledged his -<i>Partheniades</i> ten years before.</p> - -<p>As Arber points out, the above passage, and another reference by -Puttenham to the same subject, indicate that, at least in the earlier Elizabethan -period, much talent must have been lost and much literature -never reached the printing press. The same feeling that then existed is -seen again in Locke’s time (<a href="#Page_180">see p. 180</a>), and, if we consider a moment, we -shall find that <i>it has persisted to some extent to the present day</i>. Think how -miserably inadequate is the attention paid to poetry in our educational -system, the methods employed being, indeed, calculated to make the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> -student <i>loathe</i> the subject. (When I was young (“Ah, woful When”<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>) -we had as a school text-book Palgrave’s Golden Treasury—a divine gift -to us in those days. As we had a sympathetic teacher, we read it <i>as poetry</i>, -and the consequence was that I and other boys knew the book practically -by heart from cover to cover.)</p> - -<p>It is surprising that Englishmen neglect the one great talent which -they possess. What distinguishes them above all other nations is their -superiority in the higher imaginative faculties.<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> This is shown in such a -national characteristic as the love of travel and adventure, which has -created the British Empire, and is <i>proved</i> concretely by the fact that England -has produced the greatest wealth of poetry which the world has ever seen. -This great treasure, which should be employed for encouraging the highest -of all faculties, is allowed to lie idle. The fact seems to be overlooked -that the study of poetry is not only of enormous intrinsic value in knowledge, -and culture, but that it is the finest of all mental training. By analysis -and paraphrase it gives knowledge of language, appreciation of style, -practice in literary expression, and, above all things, precision of thought. -In my opinion, poetry should form an essential part of education, beginning -in childhood and continuing throughout the Arts course. It may be found -that there are intelligent persons who are incapable of appreciating poetry, -and the subject may, therefore, not be made a compulsory one. But my -conviction is that, where men imagine themselves to be thus deficient, -it is the result of a bad system of education. There is great truth in Stevenson’s -fine essay, “The Lantern-Bearers.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Go, wing thy flight from star to star,</div> -<div class="verse">From world to luminous world, as far</div> -<div class="verse">As the universe spreads its flaming wall:</div> -<div class="verse">Take all the pleasures of all the spheres,</div> -<div class="verse">And multiply each through endless years,</div> -<div class="verse">One minute of Heaven is worth them all.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Thomas Moore</span> (<i>Lalla Rookh</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A Celtic flight of imagination.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And on we roll—the year goes by</div> -<div class="verse indent1">As year by year must ever go,</div> -<div class="verse">And castles built of bits of sky</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Must fall and lose their wondrous glow;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">But Hope with his wings is not yet old,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">While every year like a summer day</div> -<div class="verse">Ends and begins with grey and gold,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Begins and ends with gold and grey.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Hodgson.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">When none need broken meat,</div> -<div class="verse">How can our cake be sweet?</div> -<div class="verse">When none want flannel and coals,</div> -<div class="verse">How shall we save our souls?</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Oh dear! oh dear!</div> -<div class="verse">The Christian virtues will disappear.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Charlotte Stetson.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">Since we parted yester eve,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I do love thee, love, believe</div> -<div class="verse">Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer,</div> -<div class="verse">One dream deeper, one night stronger,</div> -<div class="verse">One sun surer—thus much more</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Than I loved thee, love, before.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Owen Meredith (Earl of Lytton)</span> (<i>Love Fancies</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Dahlia you brought to our Isle</div> -<div class="verse">Your praises for ever shall speak</div> -<div class="verse">’Mid gardens as sweet as your smile</div> -<div class="verse">And colours as bright as your cheek.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Lord Holland.</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>A pretty compliment to his wife who in 1814 had introduced the dahlia -into England from Spain. Previous attempts had failed (Liechtenstein’s -<i>Holland House</i>).</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>C’est imiter quelqu’un que de planter des choux.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">A. de Musset.</span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Quoted by Austin Dobson:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">... And you, whom we all so admire,</div> -<div class="verse">Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new!</div> -<div class="verse">One word in your ear: There were Critics before.</div> -<div class="verse">And <i>the man who plants cabbages imitates, too</i>!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>... The great book of actual life, sad, diffuse, contradictory, -yet always full of depth and significance.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Sand</span> (<i>The Miller of Angibault</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Life is mostly froth and bubble;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Two things stand like stone:—</div> -<div class="verse">Kindness in another’s trouble,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Courage in your own.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Adam Lindsay Gordon</span> (1833-1870) (<i>Ye Weary Wayfarer</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p class="center">A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">A noiseless, patient spider,</div> -<div class="verse">I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;</div> -<div class="verse">Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,</div> -<div class="verse">It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;</div> -<div class="verse">Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">And you, O my Soul, where you stand,</div> -<div class="verse">Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,</div> -<div class="verse">Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;</div> -<div class="verse">Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;</div> -<div class="verse">Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman</span> (<i>Leaves of Grass</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The Future, that bright land which swims</div> -<div class="verse">In western glory, isles and streams and bays,</div> -<div class="verse">Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">George Eliot</span> (<i>Jubal</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.</p> - -<p>(The modest Nymph saw her God and blushed.)</p> - -<p>The conscious water saw its God and blushed.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Richard Crashaw</span> (1616-1650).</p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Referring to the miracle of Cana. Both Latin and English epigrams -are by Crashaw. In the former the water is personified by its Nymph.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Called on the W. Molesworths. He is threatened with total -blindness, and his excellent wife is learning to work in the dark -in preparation for a darkened chamber. What things wives are! -What a spirit of joyous suffering, confidence, and love was -incarnated in Eve! ’Tis a pity they should eat apples.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Caroline Fox’s Journals.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent8">... Earth and ocean,</div> -<div class="verse">Space, and the isles of life or light that gem</div> -<div class="verse">The sapphire floods of interstellar air,</div> -<div class="verse">This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,</div> -<div class="verse">With all its cressets of immortal fire.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Hellas</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Vox, et praeterea nihil.</p> - -<p>[Words (<i>literally voice</i>) and nothing more.]</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Proverb.</span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Plutarch, in his Apophthegm, Lacon. Incert. XIII, says that a man -after plucking a nightingale and finding little flesh on it, said -φωνὰ τύ τις ἐσσὶ, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο, “Thou art voice and nothing more” -(<i>King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations</i>). No doubt this was the origin -of the saying. It was applied to the nightingale, and to Echo—and then -used in Hamlet’s sense, “Words, words, words.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,</div> -<div class="verse">Stains the white radiance of Eternity.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Adonaïs</i> LII).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>Two of the most marvellous lines in all literature. With them as a -text volumes might be written.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Campbell the poet, who had always a bad razor, I suppose, -and was late of rising, said he believed the man of civilization -who lived to be sixty had suffered more pain in littles in shaving -every day than a woman with a large family had from her lyings-in.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">John Brown</span> (<i>Horae Subsecivae</i> I, 457).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder -and the beholder.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">J. G. Zimmermann.</span></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The maid (and thereby hangs a tale)</div> -<div class="verse">For such a maid no Whitsun-ale</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Could ever yet produce:</div> -<div class="verse">No grape, that’s kindly ripe, could be</div> -<div class="verse">So round, so plump, so soft as she,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Nor half so full of juice.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her feet beneath her petticoat</div> -<div class="verse">Like little mice stole in and out,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">As if they fear’d the light:</div> -<div class="verse">But O, she dances such a way!</div> -<div class="verse">No sun upon an Easter-day</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Is half so fine a sight.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her cheeks so rare a white was on,</div> -<div class="verse">No daisy makes comparison</div> -<div class="verse indent2">(Who sees them is undone);</div> -<div class="verse">For streaks of red were mingled there,</div> -<div class="verse">Such as are on a Catherine pear,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">The side that’s next the sun.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Her lips were red, and one was thin</div> -<div class="verse">Compar’d to that was next her chin,</div> -<div class="verse indent2">(Some bee had stung it newly),</div> -<div class="verse">But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face</div> -<div class="verse">I durst no more upon them gaze</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Than on the sun in July.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="attribution"><span class="smcap">Sir John Suckling</span> (<i>Ballad upon a Wedding</i>).</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>“Some bee had stung it.” <i>It</i>, of course, means the full underlip, as -against the less full upperlip.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Such is the ascendancy which the great works of the Greek -imagination have established over the mind of man that.... -he is tempted to ignore the real superiority of our own religion, -morality, civilization, and to re-shape in fancy an <i>adult</i> world -on an <i>adolescent</i> ideal.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (Essay on <i>Greek Oracles</i>).</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>That early burst of admiration for Virgil of which I have already -spoken was followed by a growing passion for one after another of -the Greek and Latin poets. From ten to sixteen I lived much -in the inward recital of Homer, Æschylus, Lucretius, Horace, -and Ovid. The reading of Plato’s Gorgias at fourteen was a -great event; but the study of the Phaedo at sixteen affected -upon me a kind of conversion. At that time, too, I returned -to my worship of Virgil, whom Homer had for some years thrust -into the background. I gradually wrote out Bucolics, Georgics, -Aeneid from memory....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span></p> - -<p>The discovery at seventeen, in an old school book, of the poems -of Sappho, whom till then I had only known by name, brought an -access of intoxicating joy. Later on, the solitary decipherment -of Pindar made another epoch of the same kind. From the age -of sixteen to twenty-three there was no influence in my life -comparable to <i>Hellenism</i> in the fullest sense of the word. That -tone of thought came to me naturally; the classics were but -intensifications of my own being. They drew from me and -fostered evil as well as good; they might aid imaginative -impulse and detachment from sordid interests, but they had -no check for pride.</p> - -<p>When pushed thus far, the “Passion of the Past” must -needs wear away sooner or later into an unsatisfied pain. In -1864 I travelled in Greece. I was mainly alone; nor were the -traveller’s facts and feelings mapped out for him then as now. -Ignorant as I was, according to modern standards, yet my -emotions were all my own: and few men can have drunk that departed -loveliness into a more passionate heart. It was the life -of about the sixth century before Christ, on the isles of the Aegean, -which drew me most;—that intensest and most unconscious -bloom of the Hellenic spirit. Here alone in the Greek story -do women play their due part with men. What might the Greeks -have made of the female sex had they continued to care for it! -Then it was that Mimnermus sang:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">τίς δε βιός, τί δε τερπνὸν ἄνευ χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης;</div> -<div class="verse">τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι.<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Then it was that Praxilla’s cry rang out across the narrow -seas, that call to fellowship, reckless and lovely with stirring -joy. “Drink with me!” she cried, “be young along with me! -Love with me! wear with me the garland crown! Mad be thou -with my madness; be wise when I am wise!”</p> - -<p>I looked through my open porthole close upon the Lesbian -shore. There rose the heathery promontories, and waves lapped -upon the rocks in dawning day:—lapped upon those rocks -where Sappho’s feet had trodden; broke beneath the heather on -which had sat that girl unknown, <i>nearness to whom made a -man the equal of the gods</i>. I sat in Mytilene, to me a sacred city, -between the hill-crest and the sunny bay....</p> - -<p>Gazing thence on Delos on the Cyclades, and on those straits -and channels of purple sea, I felt that nowise could I come -closer still; never more intimately than thus could embrace that -vanished beauty. Alas for an ideal which roots itself in the -past! That longing cannot be allayed.</p> - -<p class="attribution"><span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span> (<i>Fragments of Prose and Poetry</i>).</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span></p> - -<div class="notes"> - -<p>The wonderful record of Myers in classical study will first be observed. -If we did not know him to be absolutely trustworthy, we would find it -practically impossible to believe his statement. Imagine, for instance, -a boy of sixteen learning by heart <i>the whole of Virgil</i> for his own pleasure! -However, anything vouched for by Myers must be accepted as literally -true.</p> - -<p>Extraordinary as this is, the above quotations introduce us to a subject -quite as extraordinary and far more interesting and important, namely, -the distortion of truth caused by extreme classical enthusiasm.<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> It is -perfectly easy to see how such enthusiasm arises. Greek art and literature -are not only intrinsically wonderful and valuable but, seeing that they -were produced by a comparatively small population in a barbaric age, they -constitute the greatest (secular) marvel in the history of the world. Everything -tends to excite enthusiasm for this remote, alien, primitive, but -most remarkable people. I need not speak of the art in which they stand -unrivalled throughout the ages. As regards their literature, apart from its -intrinsic excellence and the beauty of the language in which it is written, -it has an additional fascination and charm, because it is the speech and song -of the infancy of the world. Through it we see into the mind and realize -the life of the most interesting race that ever lived. Possessing astounding -intellect and intense originality, they were nevertheless the children of -nature. Their earth was peopled with fauns and nymphs, their gods lived -and moved and had their being in every natural object—and they had -very little of our ideas of right and wrong. They had nothing of our wide -knowledge and experience, yet they constructed a world of life and thought -for themselves. It is absorbingly interesting to read their beautiful poetry, -fine literature, and philosophic thought, bearing in mind that it was produced -in the ignorant childhood and paganism of the human race, over two thousand -years ago. And one of the most astonishing things about them is -that essential product of civilization, a keen sense of humour. So curiously -“modern” is their literature that the writers speak to us across the ages -with as vivid a voice as if they were still alive. No other primitive race has -been able to leave us any such adequate conception of its life and thought. -Moreover, we can never forget how the Greek arose out of the tomb, where -he had slept for many centuries, to preside at the re-birth of our own modern -world—that emergence of Europe from medieval darkness which we call -the Renaissance. It was largely Greek art and literature that stimulated -the mental activity of the world and made us what we are to-day.</p> - -<p>Very great enthusiasm is, therefore, warranted in the Greek student—but -there comes a point where enthusiasm may become pure <i>fanaticism</i>, -and lead to that most deadly of all things, the perversion of the truth.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span></p> - -<p>In the above quotations two Greek poems are quoted, and another is -referred to in the lines I have italicized. The first two<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> refer to vice, which -to us is revolting and criminal, but to the whole Greek nation was natural, -and recognised by law. The third expresses even more revolting passion. -It will be seen, therefore, that Myers, in order to illustrate the “departed -loveliness” of Greek life made a strange choice of quotations (which also, -standing alone, would give a very false notion of classic Greek poetry).</p> - -<p>Seeing that Myers was one of the purest-minded of men, what is the -explanation of this very remarkable fact? The explanation is simply -that Myers was a <i>classical enthusiast</i>. He had forgotten the warning -he himself gave in the first quotation. It is absolutely amazing how such -an enthusiast, however brilliant a scholar and capable a man in other -respects, can blind himself to the most obvious facts where anything -Greek is concerned. It is very certain that Myers read into each poem a -perfectly innocent meaning—and he would not be alone in that respect. -Take, for instance, the third quotation which is from Sappho. In my -youth the <i>great majority</i> of classical men appeared to have convinced -themselves that a poem of terribly fierce passion was an expression of -mere friendship! Even our leading reference-book, Smith’s <i>Dictionary -of Greek and Roman Biography</i>, gave the same absurd view until about -1877.<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> However, we must get away from this ugly subject and seek -further illustrations elsewhere.</p> - -<p>This perverted enthusiasm seems to permeate all books of the last -fifty or sixty years dealing with Greek life, art and literature that I have -met with. This is a very large statement to make, and, of course, I do not -mean that such flagrant instances as those above referred to are the rule. -But to me there seems always to be <i>some</i> bias which tends to exaggerate -or falsify the facts to <i>some</i> extent. We can trace this tendency back more -than eighteen hundred years to Plutarch. (<i>On the Malice of Herodotus</i>). -He, as Mr. Livingstone<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> says, “took the view that the Greeks of the great -age could do no wrong, and rates the historian for ‘needlessly describing -evil actions.’” And it is largely in this way that the enthusiast works—by -<i>omitting facts</i>. I should think few readers unfamiliar with the classics -will have known all the facts already put before them in these notes—because -such facts, although known to all classical scholars, are kept in -the background as much as possible. Again the tendency is to judge the -Greeks by their greatest men—to imagine every Greek to have been a Plato!</p> - -<p>I might add greatly to what I have already said about the Greeks, -but I must confine myself to a few matters, repeating nothing that has -been said in previous notes. The Greeks had very little regard for truthfulness. -An <i>oath</i> was a matter of religion and was supposed to be binding -upon them, but it was excusable to twist out of it. They also saw nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> -immoral in theft. Hermes was the god of thieves, and “the wily Odysseus” -was a favourite hero of the Greeks. Autolycus, the grandfather of Odysseus, -was taught by Hermes himself to surpass all men in stealing and perjury. -(<i>Od.</i> XIX, 395.) Hence it was thought quite a proper thing to make war -for the purpose of robbing neighbours of territory or property. I need -quote only the truly “German” opinions of <i>Socrates</i> and <i>Aristotle</i> placed -by Mr. Zimmern at the head of his chapter on Warfare in <i>The Greek Commonwealth</i>. -“But, Socrates, it is possible to procure wealth for the State -from our foreign enemies.” “Yes, certainly you may, if you are the stronger -power” (Xen. <i>Mem.</i>, III, 6, 7). “War is strictly a means of acquisition, -to be employed against wild animals and against inferior races of men who, -though intended by nature to be in subjection to us, are unwilling to submit[!], -for war of such a kind is just by nature” (Aristotle, <i>Politics</i>, 1256). -On considering that such sentiments are expressed by their greatest philosophers, -we are not surprised to find that <i>the history of the Greeks is one of -lies, perfidy, and cruelty</i>.<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> It further illustrates their unsympathetic -pagan character when we find the Greek mother mourning for her dead -son because he will not “feed her old age,” and Socrates valuing friendship -because friends were useful.<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> When the enthusiast is confronted with -the debased Greek religion he tells us, or leads us to think, that the people -did not believe in their dissolute gods. As regards this I cannot do better -than quote the terse statement of Mr. Livingstone. After pointing out that -there were some advanced thinkers among the Greeks who were more or -less sceptics (and that there were also some small sects who are said to have -had higher <i>moral</i> beliefs than their countrymen<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>) he says, “We are concerned -with the state religion, which Athenians learnt to reverence as children, -which permeated the national literature, which crowned the high places -of the city with its temples, which consecrated peace and war and everything -solemn and ceremonial in civil life, which by its intimate connection -with these things acquired that support of instinctive sentiment which is -stronger than any moral or intellectual sanction.”<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Something may be -added to this. Why was the Greek so greatly concerned about his tomb -and his burial rites? The main reason why he burdened himself with a -wife and household was that a son should be left to see to those rites and -look after his tomb. He did not see his wife before marriage, and, however -beautiful he found her to be, the uneducated girl would be no companion -for him; and her beauty would soon fade in the unwholesome confined life -she led. Her office was fulfilled when she had borne him sons—and he -looked for his pleasures elsewhere. Surely this one fact alone proves that -the Greeks had a very real belief in their religion. Again why do we find -that only Socrates and a few other thinkers appear to have been charged -with impiety? Mr. Livingstone, curiously enough, argues from this that -there was greater freedom of thought among the Greeks. Surely the simple -and natural explanation is far preferable, namely, that there were <i>no -other pronounced sceptics</i> than those few advanced thinkers. Imagine the -danger of declaring anything against the gods which would throw in doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span> -the divinity of the patron goddess Athena!<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> It is often argued that the -intelligent Greeks could no more have believed the monstrous stories of -their gods, than we believe some of the Old Testament stories of Jehovah. -But the position is entirely different. We disbelieve stories that offend -our moral sense: the gods of the Greeks had a character similar to their -own, and acted as they themselves would have acted if they had been gods. -Also they had no ethnology, no knowledge of purer religions to teach them -the falsity and depravity of their own—nor, indeed, would the proud -Greeks have condescended to learn from barbarians (especially as they -believed themselves descended from heroes who were sprung from the gods). -Finally one has only to read the accounts of travellers in Greece to learn -that the religion <i>even lingers on to-day</i>—see, for instance, S. C. Kaines -Smith’s <i>Greek Art and National Life</i> (pp. 153, 172), where the woodcutters, -when a tree is falling, throw themselves on the ground and hide their faces -in deadly fear of the Dryads,<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> and an <i>eminent Greek gentleman</i> crosses -himself at the name of the Nereïds. (See also W. H. D. Rouse’s <i>Tales -from the Isles of Greece</i>. I learn from the <i>Spectator</i> review of a book just -published, <i>Balkan Home Life</i>, by Lucy M. J. Garnett, that the religion -has a very strong hold on the people.)</p> - -<p>My statement has been very one-sided so far, as I have said very little -of the virtues of the Greeks. These virtues were those of intelligent -primitive people, love of freedom, justice, and equality (<i>but confined to -their own nation and not including their own women and slaves</i>), personal -courage, great patriotism, fidelity to kinsfolk and guests; they showed -at times generosity to a valiant enemy and recognized some such duties -as burying the dead. While I do not think we can carry the national -virtues much further than this, there would be gradations of character -among the Greeks, and probably many would be more or less kindly, -others have a true affection for their wives, others show private virtues -in various directions—we can only conjecture as to something of which -there is very little evidence in their literature. On the one hand, we know -that Socrates suffered martyrdom for the truth,<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> and we may surmise that -there were other fine characters; on the other hand, we know that this -highly intellectual <i>nation</i> put the philosopher to death as a blasphemer -against their profligate gods.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span></p> - -<p>But while we can give the Greeks credit for little of the morality of -modern civilization, on the other hand we would be thinking very absurdly -if we regarded their vices as though the people were on the same moral -plane as ourselves. (This is the fact to be recognised. The ridiculous -tendency of the modern enthusiast is to depict the Greeks as a highly -moral nation striving for righteousness!) Strictly speaking, the Greek -practices and habits should not be called vices, because the Greeks had no -reason to believe that they were doing anything wrong. Their virtues -and their vices were those of ordinary primitive life.<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> The moral principle, -that highest product of creation, had not yet developed itself among the -people to any appreciable extent, but we see it gradually emerging in the -growing disbelief in the national religion among thinking men, and reaching -an advanced stage in Plato, the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But -to the average Greek, apart from religion (including respect for parents), -the patriotism which they had learnt from Homer, their one great book, -covered much of what they meant by “virtue”.<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Whatever was good -for the State was a virtue, whatever bad for the State a vice. We can -hardly realize what Athens stood for in the Greek mind. For instance, -Æschylus tells us that the patron goddess Athena came to Athens to preside -over the balloting of the jurors and conduct the trial of Orestes, and also -that the Furies lived among the citizens in a sacred grotto. The Greeks -saw that they were immensely superior to the surrounding “barbarians,” -and they regarded their State practically as an object of <i>worship</i> (as Rome -was also regarded by the Romans).</p> - -<p>It would have been interesting to discuss here the ethical views of -the philosophers, but the subject is far too intricate for this note—and -in any case they and their followers formed only a few exceptions among -the Greeks. It will be seen later that the use of such words as “virtue,” -“holiness,” etc., causes a vast deal of meaning to be read into Plato which -never entered that philosopher’s mind.</p> - -<p>The great outstanding fact about the Greeks is their astonishing -intellect, combined with sound commonsense (σωφροσύνη) and a quite -modern gift of humour. Their powerful intellect, however, had very poor -material to work upon. In a previous note I have mentioned their remarkably -limited idea of the world—but, while knowing this to be a fact, we -still cannot realize the <i>mental attitude</i> of men who had even <i>one</i> false conception -of such magnitude as regards their general outlook and thought. -Let us take an instance of a different kind from the great philosopher -Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who came after Plato—bearing in mind that the -average Greeks would be vastly more ignorant and superstitious than -their greatest thinkers. In his <i>Mechanica</i> Aristotle explains the power -of a lever to make a small weight lift a larger one. His explanation is that -a <i>circle has a certain magical character</i>. A very wonderful thing is a circle, -because it is both <i>convex</i> and <i>concave</i>; it is made by a <i>fixed</i> point and a -<i>moving</i> line, which are contradictory to each other; and whatever has a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> -circular movement moves <i>in opposite directions</i>. Also, Aristotle says, -movement in a circle is the most <i>natural</i> movement! Hence we get the -result: the long arm of the lever moves in the <i>larger circle</i> and has the -greater amount of this magical <i>natural motion</i>, and so requires the lesser -force! Again, let us take a story which was as firmly believed by Aristotle -as the most ignorant of his countrymen. Our word halcyon is the Greek -word <i>Alkuon</i>, meaning a bird, probably of the Kingfisher species. The -Greeks supposed the word to be formed of two words, <i>hals kuon</i>, meaning -“conceived in the sea”—therefore they believed the bird <i>was</i> so conceived -and that it was bred in a nest floating on the sea—and, as the sea must -then be smooth, they further believed that a period of fourteen days’ calm -necessarily occurred about Christmas—finding there was no such period -of calm around their own coasts they either thought that it must occur -(and the birds breed) elsewhere, or, like Theocritus, that the bird could -<i>charm</i> the sea into tranquillity.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p> - -<p>The Greeks believed queer things about animals. I take the following -instances of birds alone from Mr. Rogers’ Introduction to his <i>Birds of -Aristophanes</i>, so that I need not give references. By looking at a plover, -who returns the look, a man is cured of jaundice. Penelope, the wife of -Odysseus, was said to have been so named because, having been cast into -the sea, she was rescued by widgeons (Greek, <i>penelops</i>). The song of the -dying swan was a belief of the Greeks. The raven was the bird of augury -and had mysterious knowledge. The cranes fought the pygmies and -swallowed stones for ballast. The young storks fed their aged parents. -The sisken foresees the winter and snowstorms. Mr. Rogers has no need -to discuss the yet more extravagant stories of the phœnix, sirens, harpies, -etc. Plutarch (<i>De Is. and Os.</i> LXXI) tells us how the Greeks regarded -birds and other animals in relation to the gods; he says that while they did -not, like the Egyptians, <i>worship</i> animals, “they said and believed rightly -that the dove was the sacred animal of Aphrodite, the raven of Apollo, -the dog of Artemis, and so on.” (Possibly Aristophanes’ comedy did not -win the prize, because the audience saw little humour in exaggerating the -powers which they really believed the birds to have. To the Greeks -the birds were <i>greater</i> and the gods <i>smaller</i> than we ourselves picture them. -Ruskin’s translation of Od. V. 67,<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> the seabirds which “have care of the -works of the sea,” seems much more likely to be correct than the accepted -version that the birds live by diving and fishing. Consider how the Greeks -would regard the birds that flew round and over their ships or fishing-nets -and over the waves and rocks, where the sea-gods lay beneath—and compare -<i>Il.</i> II, 614.)<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span></p> - -<p>All that has been said about the Greeks in this and previous notes is -intended, not so much to exhibit the character of that nation—a matter -which does not greatly concern me—but for other reasons. In one instance -the intention was to indicate how vast a gulf exists between Christianity -and the ancient world. Many classical enthusiasts do not seem to realize -this, and a definitely <i>pagan</i> tendency is very apparent in their habits of -thought.</p> - -<p>But the main object of pointing out the inferior state of civilization -among the Greeks, their non-moral character in certain respects, their -ignorance and superstition, and their low standard of morality generally, -has to do with the important question of interpreting Greek literature and -philosophy. It would matter very little that the enthusiast should picture -the Greeks as a race of saints and demigods, if there were no beautiful and -valuable literature to be coloured and falsified by reason of such views. -It is only by realizing the actual life and thought of this primitive race that -<i>we can understand their language</i>, that is to say, we can learn what meanings -should be attached to the words they use. Only thus can we <i>interpret -their literature</i>. We have already had two simple illustrations of this. -In one case what appears to be a poetic fancy in Theocritus, when the -voyager hopes the halcyons will calm the sea for him, is seen to be a wish -that the birds <i>will actually exercise the power that they possess</i>. The other -instance appears on page 294. But much more important is it that, in -reading words of knowledge such as references to the starry heavens or -the constitution of matter, or mental or moral phenomena, we should not -attribute to the Greek writer conceptions far larger and higher than he -had in his mind. To amplify what I have said in a previous note, let -us take the words in Plato, Aristotle or, say, Euripides which are translated -by such English words as “morality,” “purity,” “virtue,” “honour,” -“religion,” etc. It is clear that the original Greek expressions cannot -signify, for instance, either purity as we know it, or even abstention from -unnatural vice or from infanticide.<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> We are, therefore, mistranslating -when we use such English words (because they are the nearest equivalent -to the Greek expressions), and this fact needs to be steadily borne in mind. -Again when interpreting, say, a Greek play, it is necessary to bear in mind, -not only the <i>supposed</i> character of the <i>dramatist</i>, but also the <i>actual</i>, <i>known</i> -character of the <i>audience</i> to whom the play was addressed. I now propose -to give an illustration which will bring me on dangerous ground.</p> - -<p>Is it reasonable to ask if the Athenians, some few of whose characteristics -have been outlined in these notes, would have flocked to hear, and -have greatly enjoyed, a play replete with high moral teaching, and containing -hymns that might have come out of a Church Hymnal? Now the <i>Bacchae</i> -of Euripides, one of the most popular of Greek plays, and the <i>Hippolytus</i> -of the same dramatist, have been translated by one great Greek scholar, -Professor Gilbert Murray, in a manner that (at any rate, as regards the -<i>Bacchae</i>) received the “hearty admiration and approval” of another great -Greek scholar, Dr. Verrall. In this version, one after another of the debased -Greek gods is called “God.” We also find such expressions as (note the -capitals) “God’s grace,” “Virgin of God,” “Babe of God,” “God’s son,” -and even “God’s true son” (who is Dionysus or Bacchus), “Spirit of God,” -“Child of the Highest,” “Heaven,” “Purity,” “Saints” (who are the -Maenads!), “righteous,” “divine,” “holy,” and so on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span></p> - -<p>Professor Murray is put in a difficulty when two or more gods are -referred to. In some cases he becomes illogical (and reminds us of the -Kaiser), as when Dionysus has to say “God and me.” In others he has -to use the Greek name for one god, and then the words sound blasphemous, -as when he speaks of Dionysus who was “born from the thigh of Zeus -and now is God.” These instances are taken quite at random and there -must be many others.</p> - -<p>Take the following two lines as a short illustration of Professor Murray’s -version:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where a voice of living waters never ceaseth</div> -<div class="verse indent1">In God’s quiet garden by the sea.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The original reads: “Where the ambrosial fountains stream forth by -the couches of the palaces of Zeus,” or, to give them a more musical turn, -Mr. A. S. Way’s version is:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Where the fountains ambrosial sunward are leaping</div> -<div class="verse indent1">By the couches where Zeus in his halls lieth sleeping.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In Professor Murray’s two lines Zeus becomes “God,” “living waters” -is taken from the Song of Solomon, and “God’s quiet garden” from -Isaiah and Ezekiel. Such expressions, with their tender and beautiful -associations, do not in the least convey the sense of the original. -Used to describe the palace of a vicious, barbaric deity, they -are a <i>mistranslation</i>. Also every one of the expressions referred -to above is, wherever used, another mistranslation (although some -may be necessitated by the limitation of language). Again there are other -more pronounced mistranslations, some of which are pointed out by -Verrall (<i>Bacchants of Euripides</i>). Thus where the very old man Cadmus, -setting out on an unusual journey, merely says to his ancient comrade, -“We have pleasantly forgotten that we are old” (<i>Bacchae</i> 184-9). -Professor Murray interpolates a stage direction, “<i>A mysterious strength -and exaltation</i>” (from the god Dionysus) “<i>enters into him</i>”—and he alters -the words of Cadmus to conform with the miracle:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Sweetly and forgetfully</div> -<div class="verse">The dim years fall from off me!</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Here, therefore, we find <i>an important episode</i> deliberately introduced -into the play.</p> - -<p>Take another instance which Verrall does not mention. In the very -enthusiastic “Introductory Essay,” Professor Murray tells us that Euripides -longed to escape from the bad, hard, irreligious Athenians<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> of that day, -and proceeds as follows:</p> - -<p>“What else is wisdom?” he asks, in a marvellous passage:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent1">What else is wisdom? What of man’s endeavour</div> -<div class="verse">Or God’s high grace so lovely and so great?</div> -<div class="verse">To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;</div> -<div class="verse">To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And shall not loveliness be loved for ever?</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span></p> - -<p>There is nothing here, nor in the translation that follows, to indicate -that there has been any interference with the text. It is only upon turning -to the notes <i>at the end of the translation</i> (which the average reader would -hardly study) that we find the third line is “<i>practically interpolated.</i>” -He gives reasons for this that are not easy to follow, and says “If I am -wrong, the refrain is probably a mere cry for revenge;” I add that the latter -is the generally accepted meaning, and the only meaning I can see in the -original Greek.</p> - -<p>Now Professor Murray’s object in all this is to convey in words that appeal -to our minds his conception of the devout, religious and, therefore, <i>highly -moral</i> attitude of, not only Euripides, <i>but also his Athenian audience</i>. The -attitude of mind must be that of the <i>audience</i>, as well as the dramatist, -because none but devout, religious people go to a “Service of Song,” -and, as stated above, the <i>Bacchae</i> was a very popular play among the Greeks. -If, however, Professor Murray thought that, by colouring, altering, and -adding to the play, he gave a more correct impression of it as it appeared -to the Greeks, he was perfectly at liberty with that object to mistranslate -as much as he pleased—<i>provided he told his readers and hearers that they -were not reading or hearing the words that Euripides wrote</i>.</p> - -<p>Has he told them this? The book is entitled “Euripides <i>translated</i> -into English rhyming verse.” In the Preface he also begins by telling us -definitely that it is a translation; later on he says: “As to the method -of this translation ... my aim has been to build up something as like the -original as I possibly could, in form and what one calls ‘Spirit.’ To -do this, the first thing needed was a work of painstaking scholarship, a work -in which there should be <i>no neglect of the letter</i> in an attempt to snatch at -the spirit.” He then goes on to tell us that “The remaining task” was to -reproduce the poetry of the original and (here is the only admission that he -has varied from the text) he ‘has often changed metaphors, altered the shapes -of sentences, and the like.... On one occasion he has even omitted -a line and a half’ (because unnecessary) and he says, he ‘has added, of course -by conjecture, a few stage directions.’ Let the non-classical reader look -back over what has been said above and ask himself whether such words—however -carefully studied—would have given him the least impression of -what this “<i>translation</i>” actually amounts to.</p> - -<p>Without entering into any long discussion as to the so called “purity -choruses” of the <i>Bacchae</i>, let us simply ask the question, Does this pious, -fervently-religious version represent the actual play that the cruel, lying, -treacherous and unspeakably sensual Greeks flocked to see and enjoy? -Further comes a much more important question, Would such a “translation,” -put before English readers, or staged before an English audience, -give them a <i>true</i> or a <i>false</i> idea of the character of the Greeks?</p> - -<p>I might compare with this Ruskin’s view of the Greek character -(<i>The Crown of Wild Olive.</i>). This is what he says the Greeks won from -their lives: “Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed -trust, and <i>requited love</i>, and <i>the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry -to their pain</i>.” (Italics mine.) This is truly amazing! I am tempted -to go back again to Professor Murray’s <i>Euripides</i> (p. lxiii) and quote a like -passage:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Love thou the day and the night,” he (Euripides) says in another place. -“It is only so that Life can be made what it really is, a Joy: <i>by loving -not only your neighbour</i>—he is so vivid an element in life that, unless you do -love him, he will spoil all the rest!—but the actual details and processes of -living, etc., etc.”</p> - -<p>The italics are again mine—but here it will be seen that Euripides -has, <i>as a matter of course</i>, anticipated the great evangel of Christ! He has -even gone a step further—but I must leave Professor Murray to his love -of the “details and processes of living,” whatever that may mean.</p> - -<p>Finally, in this extraordinary essay, I come to something which is -absolutely <i>repulsive</i>. I must first briefly premise that the Dionysiac -mystery cult was not sectarian. It was orthodox, believing in the plurality -and the profligacy of the gods. Its adherents had no more idea of morality -or purity than other Greeks. Its rites were indecent. The so-called -“purification rites,” including regulations regarding continence, were simply -<i>training rules</i> preparatory to their hideous orgies. The essential rite of the -cult was practised by the Maenads or Bacchantes. They tore to pieces live -animals (and at one time human beings) and devoured their raw, quivering -flesh. As stated above, these horrible women are Professor Murray’s -“Saints.” He now proceeds to <i>draw an analogy between their loathsome god -Dionysus and Jesus Christ</i>! Thus Dionysus is born of God (Zeus) and a -human mother. He is the “twice-born”—having been hidden in Zeus’s -thigh after birth! He “<i>comes to his own</i> people of Thebes, <i>and—his -own receive him not</i>.” Again “It seemed to Euripides in that favourite -metaphor of his, which was always a little more than a metaphor, that a -<i>God had been rejected by the world</i> that he came from.” Dionysus “<i>gives -his Wine to all men</i>.... It is a mysticism which includes democracy, as it -includes <i>the love of your neighbour</i>.” Dionysus “<i>has given man Wine, -which is his Blood and a religious symbol</i>.” In the translation Dionysus -is called “<i>God’s son</i>” and even “<i>God’s true son</i>.” Reading this and -such statements as Miss Jane Harrison’s (<a href="#Page_292">see p. 292, n.</a>), one stands amazed. -Apparently this fanatical enthusiasm destroys the critical faculties, so that -the enthusiast becomes utterly incapable of appreciating the beauty and -value of Our Lord’s ethical teaching and its exemplification in His life.</p> - -<p>For my last illustration of how enthusiasm affects our leading classical -authorities (and, therefore, leads to <i>perversion of the truth</i>) I take Mr. A. E. -Zimmern’s <i>Greek Commonwealth</i>. This, like Mr. Livingstone’s work, is a -very excellent book, which should be in all libraries.</p> - -<p>Mr. Zimmern quotes and <i>definitely endorses</i> the well-known statement -in Galton’s <i>Hereditary Genius</i> (1869), which is as follows:—“The average -ability of the Athenian race is, <i>on the lowest possible estimate</i>, very nearly -two grades higher than our own, that is, <i>about as much as our race is above -that of the African Negro</i>.” (The italics are mine.) Here I have happened -by chance<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> upon an excellent illustration of classical enthusiasm, which is -worth while dwelling upon at some length. In the first place Galton’s -statement is perhaps the most absurd utterance ever made by an important -thinker; in the second place <i>it appears to have been accepted by English and -European authorities for nearly half a century</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span></p> - -<p>Galton bases his argument on the number of great men produced by -a nation in proportion to its population. He states that between 530 and -430 B.C. the Athenian Greeks produced fourteen highly illustrious men:—Themistocles, -Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles (statesmen and -commanders), Thucydides, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato (literary and -scientific men), Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes -(poets), and Pheidias (sculptor). I take the minor objections to his statement -first.</p> - -<p>He estimates the population of free-born Greeks in Attica at 90,000. -In this instance he was misled by the authorities of his time and is not to -blame; <i>but I take Mr. Zimmern’s own figures, as he endorses Galton’s statement</i>. -The 90,000 should have been, according to Mr. Zimmern’s more correct -figures, 180,000 to 200,000. <i>This alone cuts down Galton’s estimate of -the “average ability” of the Greeks to at least one-half.</i> Galton also excludes -the resident aliens who, according to him, numbered 40,000, but according -to Mr. Zimmern 96,000. Yet both these and the outside aliens must be -considered, for there were intermarriages. Themistocles and Cimon had -alien mothers, Thucydides also probably had an alien mother, or at any -rate was partly of Thracian descent, and there would be <i>some</i> ground for -the charge of usurping citizenship repeatedly made by Cleon against Aristophanes. -Galton also takes no account of the slaves, the number of whom -he estimates at 400,000, but Zimmern at about 112,000. These cannot -be entirely omitted when we consider the life of the Greek women and the -habits of the men. It should be remembered that the slaves were often -Greeks of other States and also by reason of the practice of exposing children -some would be Athenians and even of the best families (Plato’s <i>Laws</i>, 930, -deals with children of slaves and Greek men and women). However, on these -figures, it will be seen that Galton’s estimate has to be enormously reduced.</p> - -<p>Next, the <i>greatest</i> of all the names in his list, Plato, has to be <i>struck -out</i>. There can be no reasonable doubt that he was not born until 428 or -427 B.C. (This appears to have been well recognised in 1869 and it is -unaccountable that Galton and his reviewers should not have known it.) -However, there is <i>some</i> evidence that he was born in 430, and let us assume -that this is so. But, if we are to include in the 100 (or rather 101) years -everyone who <i>is born</i> or <i>died</i> in that time, we are actually taking a period -of 200, not 100, years, and <i>doubling</i> the proper estimate! Besides Plato, -I may mention that Aristophanes and Xenophon could have been only -about fourteen years of age in 430, Thucydides had not then begun to write, -and of the eighteen plays extant of Euripides two only were written before -430. Here again is another enormous reduction of Galton’s estimate.</p> - -<p>Again let us take Galton’s opinion of the ability of these fourteen men. -It is amazingly high. It will be seen that there are only <i>two grades</i> between -ourselves and the African negro. Again, in Galton’s table, “eminent men” -are <i>two grades</i> above “the mass of men who obtain the ordinary prizes of -life.” <i>He now places the whole of these fourteen Greeks two grades above -the eminent men!</i> To what starry height he means to raise them, it is -impossible to say, for the whole statement is exceedingly vague; but he -tells us that two of the fourteen, Socrates and Pheidias, <i>stand alone as -the greatest men that ever lived</i>.</p> - -<p>It is clear then that the fourteen Greeks have to be placed at a tremendous -height in our estimation. It is impossible here to take each man and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> -discuss his ability, but let us inquire what qualifications Galton had <i>as -a critic</i>. We turn to his list of great modern English and European literary -men. Although he goes back as far as the Fifteenth Century and his list -comprises <i>only fifty-two</i> writers, he finds room among them for such names -as John Aikin and Maria Edgeworth! Again his ten great English poets are -Milton, Byron, Chaucer, <i>Milman</i>, Cowper, <i>Dibdin</i>(!), Dryden, <i>Hook</i>, -Coleridge, and Wordsworth. (Some names would no doubt be omitted -because they did not throw light on questions of heredity, but these lists -in any case are highly absurd.)</p> - -<p>We need not greatly prolong this part of the discussion. We might -ask, however, what ground had Galton, for example, to place such men as -Miltiades, Aristides, or Cimon even <i>on an equality with</i>, say, Cæsar, Alexander, -or Marlborough. How can he class Xenophon as even <i>equal</i> to -our great writers? It is the interesting <i>facts</i> he tells us of, not his literary -ability, that makes this somewhat monotonous writer so very interesting. -(The important point to remember is that Greek literature has a very special -interest and value for us, quite apart from its great intrinsic <i>literary</i> value. -Taking De Quincey’s classification, <a href="#Page_227">see p. 227</a>, it is both “literature of -power” and “literature of knowledge.”)</p> - -<p>Now take another point which I might illustrate from Galton’s own -pages. He tells us (in another connection) that about sixty years before -the time he is writing (1869) there were Senior Wranglers in Cambridge -who also obtained first classes in the Classical Tripos—and even at a later -date men could take high rank in both departments. Is it then to be -argued that the earlier men were the greater? Not so, but, as Galton says, -knowledge had become so far advanced that it was no longer possible for -a man to gain such a distinction in more than one of the two subjects. -Here we have the point—the world of knowledge and activity is infinitely -wider to-day than when it formed the subject of Greek speculation. Their -great men were very original thinkers—but <i>in a very few subjects</i>. Moreover, -they had no books to read, no foreign languages to learn. Even -their social and political life was far less complicated and involved than -our own.</p> - -<p>Again, where we speak of “average ability,” it is not correct to compare -large populous countries, where great talents are often submerged (see -Gray’s “Elegy”) with smaller communities that afford far ampler scope. -Take my own State, South Australia, with its huge territory and a population -of under half a million, less than that of one of the larger English -towns. We have our Premier, Government, Parliament, Town Councils, -Heads of Departments, University, schools, judges, lawyers, journalists -and literary men, financiers, merchants, men who design and construct -railways, irrigation and other important works, mining men, heads of -institutions and so on—which means a large number of men of ability -and resource in all departments of life. If we compare ourselves with an -average half-million of Englishmen, how great our superiority would -apparently be! And yet, we know that we are not actually more capable—our -ability has been simply brought into play. Mr. W. M. Hughes might -himself have been a “flower to blush unseen,” if he had not emigrated to -Australia.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span></p> - -<p>We have so far dealt with minor matters, which have nevertheless -reduced Galton’s arithmetical estimate by, say, 75 per cent. at the very -least. Let us now take the one great misrepresentation that must have -immediately flashed upon the minds of all reviewers of Galton’s book, -if they had not been blinded by classical enthusiasm. It is truly remarkable -that not a single one of them seems to have called attention to the -obvious fact that Galton takes the one great Athenian period, <i>as though -it were an average period in their history</i>! From Homer’s time to the Fifth -Century, B.C., would probably be about as long as from the Norman -Conquest to the present time, or from King Alfred to Shakespeare—and -there are again the many centuries that followed. Is the “average ability” -of the Greeks during hundreds or thousands of years to be estimated on -their one most brilliant period? The question needs no discussion. Galton -might in the same way have taken our Elizabethan period when London -had a population of 150,000, and Great Britain of about three millions—and -proved <i>that our own ancestors</i> were as far above ourselves as we are -above the negro.<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> - -<p>Mr. C. T. Whiting, of the Adelaide Public Library, knowing how -my time was limited, very kindly volunteered to make an extensive search -for references to Galton’s statement in such of the literature of the time as -is available in Adelaide. In addition to a number of books, he has searched -through <i>thirty-eight</i> journals. He finds reviews of Galton’s book in the -following:—<i>Athenæum</i>, <i>British Quarterly</i>, <i>Saturday Review</i>, <i>Edinburgh -Review</i>, <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, <i>Chambers’ Journal</i>, <i>Journal of Anthropology</i>, -<i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, <i>Frazer’s Magazine</i>, <i>Nature</i>, <i>Times</i>, <i>and Westminster Review</i>. -The first seven do not refer at all to the statement—they apparently accept -it as a matter of course. Of the last five <i>Frazer’s</i> mentions the statement, -and says vaguely that the chapter in which it is contained “offers several -vulnerable points to the critic;” the <i>Westminster</i> states the fact without -taking any exception to it; the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> raises the question whether -Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon, and Xenophon were so very illustrious, and -enters into an argument on Galton’s figures; the <i>Times</i> considers that we -have had other men in different fields of human effort, who could be named -with Socrates and Pheidias, and lays stress on the enormous increase of -knowledge and activity in modern life; in <i>Nature</i> A. R. Wallace, misreading -Galton as referring only to the age of Pericles<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> admits the truth of the -statement as applied to the Athenians of that time. None of them refer -to the fact that Galton takes the most brilliant period of Greek history -as a normal period—and the arguments, taken together, amount to very -little. As regards the twenty-six journals which appear to have taken -no notice of so startling a statement in an important book, the fact seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span> -to indicate that to the writers for those journals the statement contained -nothing of a remarkable or dubious character! (Even <i>Punch</i> missed the -chance of an amusing cartoon!)</p> - -<p>It may be objected that the reviewers of the book would not be classical -men. But <i>first</i> it must be remembered that the writers of 1869 would -practically all have had a classical education and <i>secondly</i> it needed no -special classical knowledge to see the absurdity of the statement. Every -one without exception would know, for example, that the period taken -by Galton was the one great Greek period. The statement must also have -excited interest on all sides. I myself remember how it was talked of when -I was a boy in Melbourne, and I have heard it repeated as an acknowledged -fact up to the present time—and, therefore, comment would have been -expected <i>in every direction</i>. But apparently the statement was generally -accepted. Mr. Whiting finds that in 1892, twenty-three years after, -Galton calmly repeated the statement word for word, <i>without reference -to any criticisms</i>. Again we find Mr. Zimmern accepting it as a matter of -course in his <i>second</i> edition in 1915. As it was in his first edition, which -would be reviewed in the classical journals, it must presumably have met -with no adverse comments.</p> - -<p>But we have to go even further than this. Galton’s was one of those -important books that are studied by <i>all Europe</i>. Seeing that he makes -no mention of adverse criticism in his second edition, and Mr. Zimmern -sees no reason to qualify the statement, it is fair to assume that no serious -objection has been made in England or Europe during nearly half a century. -So amazingly does classical enthusiasm pervade the thought of the world! -I do not think I need say anything further on this subject.<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p> - -<p>Mr. Zimmern heads one of his chapters “Happiness or <i>the Rule of -Love</i>,” the “Rule of Love” being his translation of εὐδαιμονία! This -chapter is occupied exclusively by the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles. -I invite the reader to look through that terribly hard speech, and see -how much <i>love</i> it contains! Again to another chapter the heading is -“Gentleness or the Rule of Religion,” followed by two quotations which -are evidently intended to be read as parallel passages:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">στέργοι δέ με σωφροσύνα</div> -<div class="verse">δώρημα κάλλιστον θεῶν.<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a>—Eur. <i>Medea</i>, 638.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Give unto us made lowly wise</div> -<div class="verse">The spirit of self-sacrifice.—Wordsworth.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span></p> - -<p>Apart from the question whether the proud Greek could ever by any -possibility have become “lowly wise,” the word σωφροσύνη “temperance,” -“moderation”—or perhaps better still, “commonsense”—becomes -not only a “Rule of <i>Religion</i>” but even the highest conception -of Christianity, self-sacrifice. It is very extraordinary. Imagine the -<i>Greeks</i>—as we know them, and as Mr. Zimmern knows them—having the -faintest conception of what we mean by self-sacrifice! It reminds one -very much of Humpty Dumpty in <i>Through the Looking Glass</i>: “When <i>I</i> -use a word” (εὐδαιμονία or σωφροσύνη) “it means just what I choose it -to mean—neither more nor less.”</p> - -<p>As this is my last note I am giving myself great latitude, but I must -not prolong it into a treatise. I shall, as briefly as I can, refer to only one -other matter, the Greek sense of beauty. I do not think it is an exaggeration -to say that we are given to believe that in this respect the Greeks are -exalted high as gods above the rest of mankind. What is the fact? <i>They -saw beauty in only one natural object, the human body.</i> In a land of clear -skies, wonderful sunsets, starry nights, remarkable for its ranges of mountains -and extent of sea-coast, they were (with some tiny exceptions not -worth mentioning) absolutely blind to any beauty in inanimate nature. Nor -did any bird or beast or insect, tree or flower appeal to them to any appreciable -extent as a thing of beauty. They admired only what was useful -or added to their comfort—the laden fruit tree, the shady grove, the clear -spring, the soft water-meadows.</p> - -<p>Various explanations have been given for the Greek failure to appreciate -beauty in nature. Ruskin’s theory is most often quoted, that the Greeks -were <i>so familiar</i> with beautiful scenes that they could not appreciate them. -In the first place he forgot that it was not always the bright tourist-season -in Greece; they had their dark and wintry times. In the second place, -I have lived all my life in the southern part of Australia, which has much -the same climate as Greece, and I do not think there are any greater lovers -of nature than the Australians.</p> - -<p>Is not the love of nature, as it came later,<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> also <i>higher</i> than love of the -human form (omitting that facial expression which is an index of the soul)? -Our ideals of human beauty appear to be purely <i>relative</i> and depend on our -surroundings, while the same beauty in nature appeals to the most diverse -nations. Take for example the Japanese and Dutch artists who both loved -nature much as we do—yet they admired very different types of the human -figure. I understand that the Japanese, originally at least, regarded with -positive disgust our tall English beauties.</p> - -<p>The beauty the Greeks saw in one object only, the human body, they -reproduced in statues which have never been equalled in grace and charm, -and are the admiration of the world. Their pure white marble statues -and temples seem to be always present in our minds and to transfigure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> -our conceptions of the Greeks. We unconsciously picture them as a -race of glorious men and beautiful women moving in a city of marble.<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> -We find ourselves forgetting what we know of their character and habits—and -also forgetting the fact that both statues and temples were <i>painted</i>.</p> - -<p>With the disappearance of colour through the effect of time, the flesh -effect has disappeared from their statues, and the chaste white marble -gives an idealized and spiritual conception of the utmost purity. As -stated before, this would be a conception quite alien to the Greek mind, -which saw no beauty in physical purity. If, when we stand in admiring -awe before that calm, majestic and exceedingly graceful and beautiful -Venus of Milo, we imagine her as the Greeks saw her, how different is the -picture! To begin with, the Greeks had little sense of colour, as is seen -from their limited colour-vocabulary. For example, one word <i>porphureos</i> -was used for dark-purple, red, rose, sea-blue, violet, and other shades even -to a shimmery white. Their colours were harsh, glaring, and put together -in shockingly bad taste (from our point of view). In temples and sculpture -reds and blues were the main colours used. In the Venus of Milo we must, -therefore, picture the hair painted red or red-brown, the lips a hard red, -eyebrows black, the eyes red or red-brown with black pupils, the dress -with borders and patterns of crude reds and greens or reds and blues. As -regards the flesh surfaces, we know they were wax-polished, but there -is no literary record or actual trace of any tinting or colouring. The effect -of the white marble would have been so horrible to us against the living -eyes and face, that Mr. Kaines Smith (being one of our enthusiasts) suggests -that the artist “might quite well” have used some colouring matter for -the nude parts of the figure! We must further picture the statue -standing in a temple, which must of course also have been painted. The -structure would have its borders generally of harsh reds and blues, and the -decorative sculpture of the pediments, metopes and friezes would be painted -in most inconceivable colours. Thus in the metope relief of the slaying -of the Hydra at Olympia, the hydra is blue, the background red, and the hair, -lips, and eyes of Hercules are coloured. I might go on to the Elgin marbles, -the greatest sculptures that we possess in the world, and show them gorgeous -in bronze and colour. (Armour, horse-trappings, etc., were attached to -the marble in bronze or other metal.) The two masterpieces of Pheidias, -forty and sixty feet high respectively, which have not survived to us, were -much more admired by the Greeks than the sculptures of the Parthenon. -These were in barbaric ivory and gold, with the same living eyes, red lips, -and so on. The fact is that the Greek, “builded better than he knew.” -He unintentionally produced objects whose <i>spiritual</i> beauty he was incapable -of appreciating and, therefore, he gave them a grosser form that appealed -to his own primitive sensual nature.</p> - -<p>(Apart from this the Greek sculptor was very limited by the paucity -of his subjects. How tiresome are the never-ending Centaurs and Amazons!)<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span></p> - -<p>As regards Greek architecture, its ornament is a question of sculpture, -its structure is the result of intellect combined with a certain amount of -design due to their artistic sense of proportion. The Greeks did great -service to humanity in working out the principles of building—but, thereafter, -there was no scope for originality. Apart from its sculptural ornament, -nothing more monotonous could well be imagined than a series of Greek -temples, all of the same type and subject to definite, rigid rules of measurement.<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p> - -<p>Finally there are two matters I am bound to refer to in connection with -these rough notes. First, in merely enumerating the salient features -of a nation’s character, one gives no picture whatever of the <i>life</i> they led. -The Greek <i>men</i> led a highly intellectual, artistic, and on the whole a very -gay life. If we look around us to-day, we shall find among ourselves -Greeks, intellectual men who are moral sceptics, who simply do not understand -that moral motives exist, who do no act in their lives from a sense -of principle, and who live a purely material life (unless perhaps some great -crisis, the arrival of the angel of Death or some other overwhelming event, -awakens them to a sense of higher things). We can see something like a -parallel to the Greeks in the gay, immoral, artistic French aristocracy who -lived in the midst of a starving peasantry before the Revolution—or in George -Eliot’s fascinating renaissance story in <i>Romola</i> of the young Greek Tito -Melema. A man may be cruel, faithless and immoral, and yet live a gay -artistic and intellectual life—but it is not such a life as would have appealed -to Myers or to ourselves. Secondly, a clear knowledge of the truth about -the Greek character does in no way detract from the miracle of their literature -or of their art. It <i>adds</i> to the wonder of it all. (If one may with the -utmost reverence make another comparison, how can we fully appreciate -the wonder and beauty of Christ’s teaching, if we forget the conditions -of the time?) To find most beautiful poetry, fine literature, deep philosophic -thought, amazing grace and charm in art emanating from this primitive -race is purely astounding in itself. And it needs to be borne in mind that -even the men who took part in Plato’s <i>Symposium</i> lived in a different atmosphere -from our own, and had a very different conception of the physical -universe and the moral law. But this should <i>add</i> to our admiration, our -<i>veneration</i>, for a Plato who could rise to so great a sublimity of thought -in spite of such semi-barbarous conditions and surroundings. These men -also looked upon the world with younger and fresher eyes. We are two -thousand three hundred years older than they are. They knew very -little of the past history of the world and had only an insignificant fraction -of our scientific knowledge. If any religious doubts had begun to arise -in their minds, they still could not possibly have rid themselves of the belief -instilled into them since childhood—and they lived among Nymphs and -Fauns, and saw a god in every star and under every wave. Never had they -heard or dreamt of any Love of God, or Love of Man. It is only the -enthusiast who, by picturing the Greeks as a modern moral nation, detracts -from our real interest in them and robs their literature of its fascination. -If knowledge of the true Greek character were to destroy all our enjoyment -in their art and literature, even then truth must prevail “though the heavens -fall”; but the fact is far otherwise. The fuller our knowledge the more -we shall enjoy the greatness and beauty of their art and poetry and the more -absorbing will be our interest in their literature.</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span></p> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> From Richard Hodgson’s Christmas Card, 1904, the Christmas before his death.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> To the readers of the Adelaide edition (which was issued only in Australia) I -should explain why the book is now so much enlarged. The first issue was prepared -hastily and without sufficient care. (The proceeds were to go to the Australian Repatriation -Fund, and the book was hurriedly put together and printed to be ready for a -Repatriation Day which was announced but actually was never held.) It was my first -experience in publishing, and I did not realize the care and consideration required in -issuing a book even of this character. Hence (1) part of my manuscript was entirely -overlooked; (2) I failed to see that many quotations would be improved by adding their -context; (3) I did not go properly through the great mass of Hodgson’s correspondence; -and (4) I, wrongly, as I now think, excluded many quotations because I thought certain -subjects were unsuitable for the book. Besides extending the scope of the collection -by including those subjects I now have no longer restricted myself to the seventy-eighty -period. The notes also add materially to the size of this volume.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Tennyson’s “Princess”:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail</div> -<div class="verse">That brings our friends up from the underworld</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> I occasionally thought I had hit on something new, but usually discovered that I -had been anticipated—and then deeply sympathized with St. Jerome’s old tutor, Donatus. -It will be remembered that Jerome, in his commentary on “There is no new thing under -the sun,” tells us that Donatus used to say, Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt, “Confound -the fellows who anticipated us!”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The flippancy is at times amusing, as when he says: “The account of the whale -swallowing Jonah, though the whale may have been large enough to do so, borders greatly -on the marvellous; but it would have approached nearer to the just idea of a miracle -if Jonah had swallowed the whale.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Altered from “That,” which may be a misprint. “Thou” gives the same -meaning and runs more smoothly.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Compare “I never nursed a dear gazelle” (<a href="#Page_181">p. 181</a>).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> See Milton’s imitation of a fugue. <i>Par. Lost XI.</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> “I take the risk,” or “Mine the risk.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The above is a concrete illustration of Browning’s meaning in the preceding quotation, -but a far wider illustration is seen in the terrible cruelties inflicted on the one side -by the Inquisition and on the other by the Protestants. This was again due to the introduction -of <i>intellectualism</i>, which distorted the Religion of Love into a Religion of Hate.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Cf. Coleridge, <a href="#Page_313">p. 313</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The girls are bathing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> The information in this note comes partly from <i>Notes and Queries</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <a href="#Page_40">See p. 40.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> It is unfortunate that this word is often used in the sense of something unreal -as mere idle fancy instead of an <i>active creative</i> faculty, see pp. <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> In 1843 Mrs. Browning’s fine appeal, “The Cry of the Children.” appeared in -“Blackwood,” but I presume had little effect. So also Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” -“Bridge of Sighs,” and “Song of the Labourer,” were written about the same time, -but could have made little real impression.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The family name is now apparently pronounced as it is spelt (see “An English -Pronouncing Dictionary,” by Daniel Jones, and the “Century” and “Webster”). Such -a change must often happen. I have cousins named Colclough, who in Australia became -so tired of correcting people that they finally resigned themselves to the loss of the old -pronunciation “Cokely” and accepted the less euphonious “Colclo.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Was a phrase of Cowper’s in Bentham’s mind? The latter wrote to Christopher -Rowley, “We are strange creatures, my little friend; everything that we do is in reality -important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> “Squyer” is a dissyllable. The final <i>e</i> at the end of a line is always sounded -like <i>a</i> in “China.” “Lokkes,” “sleves” and “faire” are also dissyllables, because -<i>e</i>, <i>ed</i>, <i>en</i>, <i>es</i> are sounded as syllables, except before vowels and certain words beginning -with <i>h</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Micah vi. 8.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> One certainly protests. There is a great mass of medical and other evidence to the -contrary. Sir William Osler made notes of about 500 cases, and says, “To the great -majority their death, like their birth, was a sleep and a forgetting.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The “Summit,” completion or end.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The eyes, smile, etc., referred to in the intermediate verses.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> No doubt one reason would be that given by the Australian black woman for -leaving her baby in the bush, “him too much cry.” The Greeks had numerous slaves, -and were fond of comfort; and their houses were, of course, small and cramped compared -with our own.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Black care, Horace, Od. 3, 1, 40.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Water-clocks, used like an hour-glass.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> When “Balder the Beautiful” was published in the <i>Contemporary</i> (March-May, -1877), Buchanan had the following note, which he has not repeated in his collected -works: “Balder (in this poem) is the divine spirit of earthly beauty and joy, and the only -one of the gods who loves and pities men. Sick of the darkness of heaven, he returns -to the earth which fostered him, and of which he is beloved, and now for the first time he -becomes conscious of that Shadow of Death, which darkens the lot of all mortal things.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Quoted in E. Clodd’s <i>Story of Creation</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Italics mine.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See, for instance, Kipling’s beautiful poem “A Dedication”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">The depth and dream of my desire,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The bitter paths wherein I stray,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Milton’s sonnet, “To the Lady Margaret Ley.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> “They say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because -they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him” (John xx. -13). The sermon is on the subject of the growth of religious ideas.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> This standing by itself may give a somewhat wrong impression of Menzies’ thought. -As a matter of fact, the text of the sermon is: “I am come that they might have life, -and that they might have it more abundantly” (John x. 10).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> So we speak of a “sea of heads”, “sea of faces,” “sea of sand,” “sea of clouds,” -“sea of vegetation,” etc.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> See sub-note at the end of this note.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> We can, however, agree that the language of all three poets, Shelley, Sappho, and -Simonides, is exquisitely beautiful. Professor Naylor points out that it is a characteristic -of the early Greek poets to compress a description into a series of epithets full of expression, -without connecting words—compare Tennyson (“The Passing of Arthur”).</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse indent15">But it lies</div> -<div class="verse">Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns</div> -<div class="verse">And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> As Professor Darnley Naylor’s name appears at times in this book it is necessary -to mention that <i>he is so qualified</i> and, therefore, is not one of the gentlemen referred to.</p> - -<p>I may mention here that Mr. Livingstone deserves censure for not giving us an -index to his valuable book. This neglect, being greatly provocative of profanity, is an -<i>offence against morality</i>. Much loss of time and irritation have been caused to me in -looking up passages I remembered in his book—and I have at times given up the search -in despair.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> See interesting remarks on Matthew Arnold and Addison in Herbert Spencer’s -“Study of Sociology,” Note 20 to Ch. 10. Professor Naylor also in the preface to his -<i>Latin and English Idiom</i>, points out that <i>verbally accurate</i> translation of the Classics tends -to <i>ruin</i> the English of a student.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> For example: Miss Jane Harrison (<i>Mythology of Ancient Athens</i>) says “all sweetness -and love” come to mortals from the “holy” Charites who “were in the fullest sense -‘givers of all grace.’” (That is to say, these deities have the attributes of <i>God</i>, who is, -of course, the sole giver of all grace! Compare with this Professor Gilbert Murray on -the god Dionysus, <a href="#Page_374">p. 374</a>.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Unshriven, without having received the sacrament.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Crucifix.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Homer tells us that Apollo and Poseidon “built” the walls of Troy; the legend -that Apollo moved stones into their places by music is of a later date. See Ovid, <i>Heroid</i>, 16, -181; Propertius 3, 9, 39. See also Tennyson’s “Oenone.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> “Physician, heal thyself,” Luke iv, 23. Also, although it is not very apropos, -see the following from Nicharchus in the Greek Anthology (G. B. Grundy’s translation):—</p> - -<p class="center">MEDICAL ATTENDANCE</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">Yesterday the Zeus of stone from the doctor had a call:</div> -<div class="verse">Though he’s Zeus, and though he’s stone, yet to-day’s his funeral.</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> This probably came from Erasmus. Compare:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Lincoln is alleged to have said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, -and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the -time.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Showing that Sterne’s “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb” (<i>Sentimental -Journey</i>) was his rendering of an older saying.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> “Kubla Khan.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> An aromatic herb with yellow flowers.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <a href="#Page_xviii">See p. XVIII.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Curiously enough, they do not recognize this, but rather pride themselves upon -being shrewd, commonsense, practical business-men, “a nation of shopkeepers”—although -their entire history shows the contrary. That history is epitomized in such an -expression as “England the Unready,” or, in the King’s appeal, “Wake up, England!” -That they are idealists and dreamers can be shown by numberless facts. For example, -what have they supported in the sacred name of Liberty? The laissez-faire doctrine, -that law is an infringement of freedom, and, therefore, that cruelty, abuses, and absurdities -must not be interfered with; the theory that England should be the home of freedom, -and, therefore, that the scum of Europe shall infect the nation; the “Palladium of English -Liberty,” Trial by Jury, which means the appointment of inexperienced, irresponsible, -and easily-biassed judges; the economic policy, which, because it is falsely labelled Free -Trade, becomes a fetish against which no practical objection must be urged and no lesson -learned from the experience of other countries. On the other hand, our experience -in the present war is a proof that the imaginative faculties are more powerful than mere -intellect: for, when the Englishman bends his energies to the business of war, he soon -surpasses the German for all his fifty years’ preparation. <a href="#Page_39">See p. 39.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> “What is life, what gladness without the golden Aphrodite? May death be -mine when these joys no longer please me!”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> In the notes on the Greeks in this book it was necessary to keep to one State -and a particular period. Greece consisted of a number of States of which Attica was -one, with Athens as its centre. It comprised only seven hundred square miles, and, -allowing for its colonies, would be about half the size of Lancashire. Its great and brilliant -period corresponded roughly with the middle half of the Fifth Century B.C. A large -proportion of the finest Greek art and literature was produced by this tiny state in that -short period. This is the miracle of antiquity. It is to Attica during this period that my -remarks mainly refer.</p> - -<p>The reader will not be able to follow this note properly, unless he has read the other -notes on the same subject (see Index of Subjects).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> The second is not by Praxilla. It is to be found in Athenaeus (XV. 695), and is -<i>written in the masculine</i>. Most curiously the same mistake is made in the <i>Parnasse des -Dames</i>, an 18th Century French book in which Myers would not have been interested.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> One at least of the Sappho enthusiasts still survives. See Professor T. G. Tucker’s -<i>Sappho</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> “<i>The Greek Genius and its meaning to us.</i>”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> It should be remembered, however, that this is largely the history of Prussia also.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> See Mr. Livingstone’s book.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> But <a href="#Page_374">see p. 374</a> as to Dionysiac sect.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> See an interesting passage in Plato’s Republic, I, 330. See also <a href="#Page_173">p. 173</a> as -to Herodotus.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> This should be taken into account in interpreting the plays of Euripides, who was -probably a sceptic. The case of Aristophanes was different—he was known to be orthodox -and almost any licence was permitted on the Comic Stage.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Perhaps these woodcutters would not have entirely appreciated what Mr. G. -Lowes Dickinson (<i>The Greek View of Life</i>) says of the Greek divinities. He tells us -that the Greek originally felt “bewilderment and terror in the presence of the powers -of nature,” but his religion developed “till at last from the womb of the dark enigma -that haunted him in the beginning <i>there emerged into the charmed light of a world of -ideal grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities</i>.” (The italics are mine). The -classical enthusiast always pictures the Greeks as <i>living in fairyland</i>: actually the gods -and lesser divinities were to them for the most part objects of awe and dread. In this -“world of ideal grace” there would be, for example, the horrible Furies who dwelt in -their grotto in Athens!</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> I think it correct to say this, although there were political reasons also for prosecuting -Socrates and, if he had shown less contempt for his judges, he might have been -acquitted.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> I do not know how far unnatural vice extended among other peoples; but the -statement in Plato’s “Symposium” that the Ionians and most of the barbarians held -it in evil repute is strongly condemnatory of the Greeks.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> See how this idea pervades the whole of the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles, -and how he defines what is “the good life” of a citizen.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> See Theoc. VII, 57, and what the Scholiast says. As to the subject generally -see the references given by Mr. Rogers in <i>The Birds of Aristophanes</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>Modern Painters</i>, IV, XIII, 17.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> A few days after writing the above I was walking along the sea-beach with friends, -and we came to a man and boy who were drawing in a net. It was a beautifully clear day, -and no seagull or other bird could be seen anywhere. I pointed this out to my friends, -and said, “You’ll see the patrol-bird arrive presently.” In a few minutes a gull appeared -from nowhere, flew round the net, and then, as though the business was unimportant, -flew away. The net when drawn in was empty! This is how the bird probably appeared -to the Greeks. When the net brought in a haul, and the birds clamoured round it for -their share, how very reasonable would this again appear to the Greeks.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> See also as to the so-called “purification rites” in the mysteries, <a href="#Page_374">p. 374</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <i>The same pious Athenians who so enjoyed the Bacchae!</i></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> It is necessary to emphasize this, lest the reader should think that these illustrations -are exceptional and the result of prolonged research. Actually I had no -memoranda or other material when I began the many notes to this book, and those notes -were all completed in ten months. For this note I simply took two books, Professor -Murray’s and Mr. Zimmern’s, to illustrate my thesis. I might have chosen far more -“enthusiastic” works than Mr. Zimmern’s excellent book.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The whole argument seems to have little foundation. Are we to assume, for -example, that the “average ability” of the Greeks before and after their great period, -or of the English before and after the Elizabethan age, was enormously inferior because -the proportion of very illustrious men was so much less? Why should not the average -be higher, the ability (through intermarriage) being more equally distributed?</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> If Galton had referred only to the Athenians of the great period, as Wallace -imagined, the statement would have been even more absurd. It would then mean that -an African tribe of blacks might suddenly become as intelligent as ourselves, continue -so for two generations, and then relapse at once into their old barbarism. Yet Dr. -Verrall went some distance in this direction, for he says the Athenians of the great period -“had plainly an immense superiority of mind in comparison with their predecessors.” -(<i>The Bacchants of Euripides</i>, <i>p. 168</i>).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> I may add, however, one personal remark. I am quite well aware—and my -friends persistently and painfully impress the fact upon me—that this book will be reviewed -by gentlemen who have been imbued from youth with even greater enthusiasm, -seeing that the tendency has grown stronger and stronger since that time. Those reviewers -will probably feel shocked that the naked facts should be set before the general -public. I can quite understand this feeling, but I do not sympathize with it. Truth -comes first, and I have no sympathy with the feminine view of truth (<a href="#Page_343">see p. 343</a>), which -is the same as the Jesuitical view. I do, however, sympathize with them in one respect, -that the truth should be stated at an unfortunate time, when the beautiful Greek language -and its glorious literature seem likely to be put on a back shelf with Hebrew and Sanskrit. -It will be a sad thing if this should happen (I would much prefer to sacrifice the inferior -Latin, in spite of the special reasons for its study), but the first and last word always is—<i>Truth</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> “May moderation befriend me, the finest gift of the gods.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> It would be interesting to trace the earliest references to love of Nature. They -may, perhaps, be found in the Bible. In the Song of Solomon (which, however, in its -present form is now supposed to date back only to the Fourth Century, B.C., and, therefore -not to be by Solomon) we have the spring-song of love, with flowers and budding trees and -vines and the singing of birds (II, 10-13). Professor Naylor also reminds me of our -Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, “Consider the lilies, etc.”</p> - -<p>I repeat here what I say in the <a href="#PREFACE">Preface</a> that Professor Naylor takes no responsibility -for any of the views I express in my notes on the Greeks.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Their actual life was of course indescribably squalid and filthy, as could only be -expected in a primitive race.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Even as regards the human form Greek art is limited, as is seen in the Laocoon -where the boys are simply miniature men. (The Laocoon, although of very late date, is -nevertheless Greek with all the traditions of the art behind it.) I know very little on this -subject, but it seems to me that something of much importance yet remains to be discovered -about Greek sculpture.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> An excessive importance is attached to the cold conventional foliated designs.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span></p> - -<h2>INDEX OF SUBJECTS</h2> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst">Ability, Average. <a href="#Page_374">374-78</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Absurd Prescriptions. <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Abt Vogler. <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Acquaintanceship, Pre-matrimonial. <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Acquiring and Using. <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Action and Inaction. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Adelaide Edition. <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Adelaide Libraries. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Adonis, Feast of. <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Advance, the Age’s. <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Adventure, Created Empire. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Advice, like Snow. <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Advice, Micawber’s. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aestheticism. <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Age, Men Product of Their. <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Age, Old. <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Age, Old, over Cautious. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Age, Spirit of The. <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Agnostic. <a href="#Page_110">110-12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Agnosticism. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aims, Great. <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alcibiades. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alexander and Parmenio. <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alice in Wonderland. <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Allotment Holders. <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Altruism. <a href="#Page_116">116-7</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ambition. <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">America. <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Amphibium. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anacreontic. <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ancestral Stain. <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ancient and Modern World. <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ancients, Cruelty of. <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ancients, Ethics of The. <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Angels. <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Animal Intelligence. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Animals, Greeks and. <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anthology, Greek, <a href="#Page_8">8-11</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anthropomorphism. <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anticipated Thoughts. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anticipating Trouble. <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Apelles. <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Apelles, Proverbs of. <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Apollo’s Song. <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Apothegms. <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-5</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249-51</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256-7</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272-4</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279-80</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282-5</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-7</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-15</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331-2</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arcadia. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arnold, Matthew. <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Art. <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ascendancy, Greek, Misleading. <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aspiration, Moral. <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Astrology. <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Athenian Ability. <a href="#Page_374">374-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Athenian Religion. <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Athens. <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Audience, the Poet’s. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aunt, an Old Maiden. <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Australia and England. <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Australia and Literature. <a href="#Page_x">x</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Avalon.” <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Babe Christabel. <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Babies. <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span>Bacchus and Neptune. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Backbiters. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bait. <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Balder and Death. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ballad upon a Wedding. <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ballads and Legislation. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Banbury Puritans. <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Baptism. <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Barren Orthodoxy.” <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Battle Hymn, America’s. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beans, Corn and Poetry. <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauties, Proud. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Divinity of. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Divine use of. <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Invisible. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Inward. <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Is Truth. <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Necessity of. <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Praise of. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Sense of. <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty, Worse than Wine. <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beauty’s Silent Music. <a href="#Page_321">321-22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bee, The. <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beef and Beer. <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Belief. <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Belief, Loss of. <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-29</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Belfast Address, The. <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bell, The Dinner. <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Belle of the Ballroom. <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beloved Die. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beneath My Window. <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Benefactor, A. <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bentham, Jeremy. <a href="#Page_116">116-7</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bereavement. <a href="#Page_29">29-30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Best, Imperfect. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Best People Slandered. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bethlehem. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bible, Literal Interpretation of. <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Birth. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Birth, Death As. <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Birthdays. <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bishop, Most Diligent, The. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blackstone. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blake, William. <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blanco, White J. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blindness. <a href="#Page_53">53-4</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Body and Mind. <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Book of Snobs. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bourdillon, F. W. <a href="#Page_x">x</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bouts Rimés. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boys’ Pastimes. <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brain, Atrophied. <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> - -<li class="indx">British Dominions and “Home.” <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">British Empire Created by Adventure. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, E. B. <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, R. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, R., Heaven of. <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brownings’ Love Story, The. <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning Society, The. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Buchanan, R. <a href="#Page_x">x</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bulwark, England A. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burial. <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Butcher, Professor. <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Butterfly, The Doleful. <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Buyer and Seller. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Byronic Gloom. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“By the North Sea.” <a href="#Page_341">341-3</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Cabbages, Critics And. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cain, Father of Art and Science. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cambridge Examinations. <a href="#Page_153">153-5</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cana, Miracle of. <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Canadian Boat Song. <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carlyle’s French Revolution. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carlyle’s Requiem. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carnivorous. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carpe Diem. <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cat, Sabbatarian’s. <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Catholic and Protestant. <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cato and Public Honours. <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Causality. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Causes Small, Events Great. <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Celtic Imagination. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cerebration, Unconscious. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Chamouni and Rydal.” <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Champions, Incompetent. <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Changeless. <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Character. <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Character and Reputation. <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Charge, A.” <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Charites, The. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Charitie, An Excelente Balade of.” <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chatterton. <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Child, A. <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Child, Eyes of a. <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Child, Grace for a. <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Child, Mother and. <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Child Slaves. <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Childhood and his Visitors.” <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children. <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146-7</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169-70</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children, Cruelty to. <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children, Death of. <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children, Employment of. <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span>Children, Games of. <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children, Sufferings of. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children’s Hymn. <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Child’s Outlook, The. <a href="#Page_146">146-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chinese, The. <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chivalry. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Christ. <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Christ, Has He Failed? <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Christ’s Love for Man. <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Christianity, Evidence for. <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Church of England. <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cigar Preferred to Woman. <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx">City Ideal, The. <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Civilization and Shambles. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Classical Enthusiasm. <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Classical Men as Critics. <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Classics and English. <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cleopatra. <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cleon. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clifford. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Coleridge, S. T. <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Colenso. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Committee of Shakespeares. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Communication from the Dead. <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Compensation. <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Compliment, A Pretty. <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Composition, Inspiration and. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Conceit. <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Confession a Relief. <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Conservative, A. <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Conservatism. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Consolation, Tobacco’s. <a href="#Page_241">241-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Constancy. <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Constitution, English, The. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Contemplation, Time for. <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Content. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Contentedness. <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Convulsionnaires. <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Contingencies. <a href="#Page_140">140-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Coral Reef, The. <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cosmical Development. <a href="#Page_303">303-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Courage. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Courtin’, The.” <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Courting after Marriage. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Courts, Law, Satan’s Home. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cowardice. <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cowper. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Creation,” Story of, The. <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Creation, Continuous. <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Creeds, Beauty in Old. <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Crisis, The Present.” <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Critics and Cabbages. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Critics’ Misjudgments. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Criticism, The Higher. <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Crofter Exiles, The. <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Crossing the Bar.” <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cruelty. <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Culture, Speculative. <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cunning. <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cupid, Bust of. <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cyclades, The. <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cynic, The. <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cyrus in Mesopotamia. <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Dahlia, The. <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Dark Companion, The.” <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Darwin, Charles. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Darwinism. <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dauntlessness. <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Day. <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Day is Dying. <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Days Lost. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dead, Communication from The. <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dead, Most and Merriest. <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death, A Mockery. <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death and Fear. <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death as Birth. <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death as Sleep. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death awakens. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death, Painless. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death, Shadow of. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death, Survival after. <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346-48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Death’s Jest Book.” <a href="#Page_305">305-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Debate. <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Decisions in Life. <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Deeds, Indestructible. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Deities. <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Deification of Man. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Democracy and Empire. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Democracy, Greeks and. <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dependence, Man’s. <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">De Quincey. <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Desert, London A. <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Despair. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“De Tea Fabula.” <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Devil, The. <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dickinson, G. Lowes. <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Die, Longing to. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dining. <a href="#Page_69">69-71</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Disciple, The. <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divine Birth. <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divine Discontent. <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divine Love. <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divine, The. <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divine Will, The. <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span>Divinities, Pleasing. <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divinity. <a href="#Page_351">351-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divinity and Harmony. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Divorce, Law of. <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dogs before Men. <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Do it Now. <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Doubt. <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Downward Path, The. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drama. <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dream, A Child’s. <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Dream of Fair Women, A.” <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dreams, Analysis of. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dreams, Unrealised in his Life. <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dreamthorp. <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drift, Letting Ourselves. <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drink. <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Drink to me only with thine Eyes.” <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drinking, Five Reasons for. <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Duchess, Painted, The. <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Duty. <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80-3</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349-50</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Duty of Delight. <a href="#Page_192">192-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dying Day. <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dying Emperor. <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dying, On. <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Each for Each. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Each Man Three Personalities. <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Ear of Dionysius.” <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Earth Dear, Heaven Free. <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Earth Goeth to Earth. <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Earth made for Man. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Earth, Mother. <a href="#Page_209">209-12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Earth, Presiding Spirit of the. <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Earth, The Wholesome. <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> - -<li class="indx">East, The Unchanging. <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Ecce Homo.” <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Economy. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Education. <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Effective Literature. <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Effort. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Electricity and Plant Life. <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eliot, George. <a href="#Page_327">327-8</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Elizabethan Authors. <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Emerson’s Heaven. <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Emotion and Intellect. <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Emotions, The Blunting of. <a href="#Page_274">274-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Empire and Adventure. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Empire and Democracy. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Empty Heads. <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Enduring Literature. <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> - -<li class="indx">England. <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English and Classics. <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English as Dreamers and Idealists. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Characteristics. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Conservatism. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Constitution. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Delusions. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Faults. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Superiority. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Visitors. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">English Wealth of Poetry. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Enough. <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Enthusiasm, Early. <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Epigrams. <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226-28</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Epitaphs. <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Epitaphs, Exaggeration In. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Equality. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Error dies. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Essays. <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Estrangement. <a href="#Page_280">280-1</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eternal Life. <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eternal Love. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eternal Punishment. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eternity. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ethics, Ancient. <a href="#Page_207">207-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Et in Arcadia Ego. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eugenics. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Events Great, Cause Small. <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Everlasting Yea,” The. <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Every Tale Told. <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Evil chiefly Mental. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Evolution. <a href="#Page_64">64-8</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303-5</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Evolution, A Speculation Opposed to. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Exaggeration. <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Examinations. <a href="#Page_153">153-55</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Example to Others. <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Excuses for Drinking. <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Exemplary Life. <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Exiles, Highland. <a href="#Page_198">198-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Existence, Previous. <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Experience. <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149-50</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eyes, Infants’, Solemnity of. <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Faculties. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fair Spectacle, A. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Faith. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Falsities, Rooted. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fame. <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Familiarity destroys Romance, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Faust. <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fear and Death. <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fearlessness. <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fear of Mrs. Grundy. <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fellow Feeling. <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span>“Feast of Adonis, The.” <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Few Wise. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fickleness. <a href="#Page_285">285-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fidelity. <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fight On. <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">First Love. <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam. <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Flowers. <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Folly, Proof of Our. <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fool, Gravest Man a. <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fools, One makes Many. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fool, Playing The. <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fooling the People. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fools, Majority Are. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fools, We are. <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Foresight. <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Forestalled. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Forethought. <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Forgeries, Literary. <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Forget Me. <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Forgiveness. <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Franchise, Women and The. <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fraud, The Worst. <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Freaks of Nature. <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Freedom. <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Free Trade” Fetish. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Friend and Foe. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Friend of Humanity, The.” <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Friends. <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Friends, Breach Between. <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Friends, Death of. <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Friendship, Temporary. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fugue. <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Furnivall, Dr. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Future Life. <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-9</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346-8</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Future, The. <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gains. <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Galton, Sir F. <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Game of Chance Clergy Favour. <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gem, The. <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Genealogy. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Genius and Thought. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Genius, Prerogative, of. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Genius, The Greek. <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gentleman, The First. <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> - -<li class="indx">German Illusions. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">German, Sword, The. <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">German Teaching. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Germans Surpassed. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gethsemane, Solitude Of. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Giant, Sleep as a Gentle. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gifts, Man’s. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Gipsy Child,” To a. <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gissing’s “Henry Ryecroft.” <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Giving and Having. <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Giving is Receiving. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gladstone, W. E. <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glaucus the Sea God. <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Globe, Letty’s.” <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gluttony. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God. <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God ever Present. <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Evolution of. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Forgiveness Of. <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Forgotten. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Guidance of. <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Living To. <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Man Like. <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God, Man’s Reflex. <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God Watching. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gods and Spectres. <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gods are Brethren. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gods are Dumb. <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gods, Greek. <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gods, The on the side of the Strongest. <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">God’s Rest. <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gods that Pity. <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Good, Doing. <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Good in every Man. <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Good Nature. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Good never Lost. <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gorham Case, The. <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grace for a Child. <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gravest Man a Fool. <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gray’s Elegy. <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Great Man, The. <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Great Men. <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greece, Foundations of. <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greece, Influence of. <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Anthology, The. <a href="#Page_8">8-11</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Civilization. <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Greek Genius, The.” by R. W. Livingstone. <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366-7</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Glamour. <a href="#Page_363">363-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Gods. <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Infanticide. <a href="#Page_172">172-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek, Incorrect Translation from The. <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292-3</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Intellect. <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Life. <a href="#Page_381">381</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Plays. <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Poetry. <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span>Greek Religion. <a href="#Page_217">217-18</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366-8</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Sense of Beauty. <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Sense of Colour. <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Sense of Humour. <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Statesmen. <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Statues and Temples. <a href="#Page_380">380-81</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Vice. <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Virtues. <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Want of Humanity. <a href="#Page_173">173-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Women. <a href="#Page_86">86-90</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greeks, Falsehood, Theft, etc. <a href="#Page_366">366-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greeks and Equality. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greeks, Ignorance of The. <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369-71</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greeks or Germans? <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greeks, Shelley on the. <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grief, Nation’s. <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grief, Dry-eyed and Silent. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grief, Solitary. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Griffin, The. <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grocer, The Fraudulent. <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grown Up. <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grundy, Mrs. <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Habit. <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Haeckel. <a href="#Page_65">65-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hafiz and Tamerlane. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Happiness. <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harmony and Divinity. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harrison, F. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harrison, Jane. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harvard University Men. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harvest of Pain. <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harvests, The Two. <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Head, Heart Rules The. <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heart, A Wounded. <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heart’s Compass. <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven. <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven alone Free. <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven and Hell. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven, Browning’s. <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven, Emerson’s. <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven, Myers’. <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heaven Remembered. <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hebrides. <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hebrew Prophets. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hegel’s Philosophy. <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Helen of Troy. <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hell. <a href="#Page_123">123-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hellenism. <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herbert’s Collection of Proverbs. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herodotus. <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hero Worship. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hidden, What Can’t Be. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">High Failure, Low Success. <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Higher Criticism, The. <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Higher Mountain, The.” <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Highland Evictions. <a href="#Page_198">198-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hilton, A. C. <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> - -<li class="indx">History’s Record. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hodgson, Richard. <a href="#Page_vii">vii</a>, <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a>, <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-9</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hogg, James. <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Home is Homely. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Home, Satan At. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Home Thoughts. <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hope. <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Homer. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Horrors. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Human Life. <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Human Personality. <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Human Settees. <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Humanity. <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Humanity, The Spirit of. <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Humour, Sense of. <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Huxley, T. H. <a href="#Page_64">64-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hymn. <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Hymn to God the Father, A.” <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hypnotism. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hysteria. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">“I am Sick for Yesterday.” <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ideal City. <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ideal Ills. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ideals. <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ideals dragged to Earth. <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ideas Outgrown. <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ideas Superseded. <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Idleness. <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Identity.” <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ills. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Illusions. <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Imagination. <a href="#Page_36">36-9</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146-7</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Imagination aids Intellect. <a href="#Page_357">357-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Imagination, Characteristic of the English. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Imagination, Practical Utility of, The. <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Imbuta.” <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Immortality. <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Immortality, Promise of. <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Immortality, Song and. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span>Imperfection, Essential to Life. <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Impudence. <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Inaction. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Independent Thinkers. <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Indexes, Want Of. <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Industry, Satan’s. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Infant, Dead. <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Infanticide. <a href="#Page_172">172-74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Influence of undistinguished Lives. <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Influence of Women. <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Influence of Wordsworth. <a href="#Page_176">176-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ingratitude, Public. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“In Memoriam.” <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Innocence, Lost. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Insight. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Insomnia. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Inspiration. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Insults, Emperors and. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Intellect and Morality. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Intention, Counts with God. <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Interests, Conflicting. <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Interests, Vested. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Intimacy and Indifference. <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Inventors. <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Invisible, Tidings of the. <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Inquisition, The. <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Irony. <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Irrevocable. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Iscariot, Judas. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Isocrates. <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Isolation. <a href="#Page_265">265-66</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280-1</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">I, What Am? <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jansenists, The. <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jennie Kissed Me. <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Jest Book, Death’s.” <a href="#Page_305">305-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jester’s Plea, The. <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jesus, Logia Of. <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, Dr., and the Scots. <a href="#Page_196">196-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jonah and the Whale. <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Judas Iscariot. <a href="#Page_74">74-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Judges, Competent. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Justice and Empire. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Justice and Money. <a href="#Page_182">182-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Justice and Power. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Justice of God, The. <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kaiser. <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Keats. <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kind, Make Haste to Be. <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kindred Souls, Failure to Recognise. <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kipling, Rudyard. <a href="#Page_131">131-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Know, What do the Wisest? <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Knowledge. <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110-11</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Knowledge, Obstacles To. <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Kritik of Practical Reason.” <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">“La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Labour, Loftiness of. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Labour, Uses of. <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ladder, Sorrows The. <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ladder, Vices as a. <a href="#Page_262">262-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Lady’s ‘Yes’, The.” <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lamb, Charles and Mary. <a href="#Page_159">159-60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Lamb, The.” <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Land Crabs. <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Land, Silent The. <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Laissez-Faire. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Laocoon, The. <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Late, Too. <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Latin, Pronunciation of. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Law, Court of, Satan’s Home. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Law, English. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Law, Money and. <a href="#Page_182">182-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Law Reform. <a href="#Page_181">181-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Law Making, Ballad Making Before. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lead, The. <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ledgers, Men change Swords for. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“L’Envoi.” <a href="#Page_244">244-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lése-majesté. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Let it be There. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Letty’s Globe.” <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life. <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117-21</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227-8</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238-9</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267-9</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life and Death. <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Cruelty of. <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, is it Worth Living? <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Memories of a Previous. <a href="#Page_91">91-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Perilous. <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Prized. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Sadness of. <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Secret of. <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Short. <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Struggle. <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Sweet. <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Tragedies of. <a href="#Page_274">274-5</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Life, Uncertain. <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Light, a Point in the Darkness. <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Light and Life. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>Light, the Speech between the Stars. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lincoln, President. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Litany, Old Monkish. <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Literature, Classification of. <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Literature, Effective. <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries. <a href="#Page_283">283-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Literature Superseded and Surviving. <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Literature, why the best Survives. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Literary Circles, Australia and English. <a href="#Page_x">x</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lives, Sad. <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Living Past, The. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Living, Sympathy with the. <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Locke, John, on Education. <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Logia of Jesus. <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> - -<li class="indx">London a Desert. <a href="#Page_105">105-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Long Expected. <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lost Days. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Lotos Eaters, The.” <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love. <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164-5</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Analysis of. <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love and a Cough. <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love and Duty. <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love and Life. <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love and Self. <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Brevity of. <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162-3</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Brotherly. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Characteristics of. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love Divine. <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love Ennobles. <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love Episode, A. <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Eternal. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, First. <a href="#Page_324">324-5</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Love in the Valley.” <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Mortal. <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Quest of. <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Second. <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Herbert Spencer, on. <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Stillborn. <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Love Sweetness.” <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, The meaning of the World. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, Wakes Men Once. <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love, What is? <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Loved Things Die. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love’s Cruelty. <a href="#Page_126">126-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love’s Delay. <a href="#Page_57">57-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Love’s Last Messages.” <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Love’s Lovers. <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lover, Role of, Brief. <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lunacy. <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Machiavelli. <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Maiden Aunt, A. <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Maiden’s Heart, A. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Make Haste. <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Making of Man, The. <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Malays. <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mallock’s “New Republic.” <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man. <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man, Loveable. <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man, Stereotyped. <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Dependence. <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Gains Remain his Own. <a href="#Page_149">149-50</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Gifts. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Greatness. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Importance to Himself. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Life. <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Perdition. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Price. <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Vision. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Man’s Work can help God. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Many Fools. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marcus Aurelius. <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marriage. <a href="#Page_90">90-1</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marriage, only Game of Chance Clergy Favour. <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marriage, Wife Requires to be Courted, after. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Martineau, James. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Martyr, The. <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Master of All. <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Master, Our. <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marvel, A Two-fold. <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Materialism. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64-6</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303-5</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Materialism, Modern. <a href="#Page_303">303-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Matter. <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Matter, Mind and. <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Medical Prescriptions, Wesley’s. <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Meditations. <a href="#Page_110">110-113</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Melrose Abbey. <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Memories. <a href="#Page_161">161-2</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Memories of This Life Hereafter. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Memories, Sweet. <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Memory. <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Men and Beasts. <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Men and Dogs. <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Men before Angels. <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span>Men, Great. <a href="#Page_51">51-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Men, Sameness of. <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Men, Tall. <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Men, Women made Foolish to Match. <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Menzies, P. S. Sermons of. <a href="#Page_271">271-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mercy. <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mercies, Small. <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mermaid Tavern, The. <a href="#Page_313">313-14</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Micawber’s Advice. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Milk of Paradise.” <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mill, James. <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mill, John Stuart. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Milton. <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Milton, Parody on. <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miltons, Mute. <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mimnermus in Church. <a href="#Page_347">347-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mind Affected by Age. <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mind and Body. <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mind and Matter. <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miracles. <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miscellaneous. <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62-3</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182-4</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196-8</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-70</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294-5</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332-5</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Misfortunes of Others. <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mistakes. <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Modern Religious Thought. <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Molière. <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Money and Innocence. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Money and Law. <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Money, God’s Estimate of. <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Monica’s Vision. <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Monkey, Man’s Descent from. <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moon, The. <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Morality and Intellect. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mors et Vita. <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moslem Rule. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moth, The. <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mother Earth. <a href="#Page_209">209-13</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mother who Died Too, The. <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Müller, F. Von. <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Multiplex Personality. <a href="#Page_150">150-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Murder. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Murray’s, Gilbert, Euripides. <a href="#Page_371">371-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Music. <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Music. <a href="#Page_13">13-14</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-77</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Music, Beauty like. <a href="#Page_321">321-22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Music in their Heart.” <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Muttons, Return to our. <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“My Commonplace Book.” <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Myers, F. W. H. <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316-17</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346-7</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363-81</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mythology, Greek. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Nakedness. <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nation’s Ballads and Legislation. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nation’s Heart, Song that Nerves a. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Natural Religion.” <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature. <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature, Contrary to. <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature Echoes and Reflects. <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature, Freaks of. <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature, Good. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature, Intellectual and Moral Inseparable. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature, Love of. <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175-8</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222-3</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature, Love of, in 18th Century and Earlier. <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nature the Old Nurse. <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Necessity of Lovely Things. <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Neither Good nor Bad. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nescience. <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">New and Old Systems. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">New Gospel, The. <a href="#Page_66">66-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Newton, Sir Isaac. <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Night and Death. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Night, Death and Woman. <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Night has a Thousand Eyes. <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Night, Mysterious. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Night, Ships that Pass in the. <a href="#Page_280">280-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nightingale, The. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nobleness. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Noblesse Oblige. <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nonsense Lines. <a href="#Page_152">152-3</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nostalgia. <a href="#Page_203">203-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Not One Christian. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Notes, The need for Author’s. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Oblivion. <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Object, A Common. <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Objects, Good. <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Obscurity, Browning’s. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Octopus, The. <a href="#Page_49">49-51</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Odysseus, Ship of. <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old Age. <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old College Rooms. <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old Creeds. <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old Monkish Litany. <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old World Creed, An. <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old Year, The. <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Omar Khayyam. <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>“O May I Join the Choir Invisible.” <a href="#Page_327">327-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">On a Fine Morning. <a href="#Page_115">115-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">One Loves, the Other Submits. <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx">One Poem, Fame for. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">One Port Alike they Sought. <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Opinion. <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Opinion, Private, Income Necessary to. <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Opinion, Change of. <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Opportunities, Lost. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Opportunity. <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Optimism. <a href="#Page_350">350-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“O, so White! O, so Soft! O, so Sweet is She!” <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ossian. <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Ordeal of Richard Feverel.” <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Orthodoxy. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Others’ Misfortunes. <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Ought.” <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ouida. <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ovid. <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Owen, Professor. <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Oxford. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Pace that Kills,” The. <a href="#Page_174">174-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pagan and Christian. <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pain, The Harvest of. <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paine, Thomas. <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paradise, Milk of. <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paradise, Spirit of. <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paradise, Woman and. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pardon, is God’s Business. <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pardons, Offender Never. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Parnassus and Poverty. <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Parodies. <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220-1</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-4</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paronomasia. <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Parsons. <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Passion and Philosophy. <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Passions of Youth. <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Past Self. <a href="#Page_255">255-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Past, The Living. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pater’s Philosophy. <a href="#Page_309">309-10</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Path to Wisdom, Thorny. <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paul, St. <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Peace and War. <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Peacefulness. <a href="#Page_259">259-60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pearls of Thought. <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pegasus, George Eliot’s. <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Penalty of Nobleness. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">People, Plenty of Willing. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Perdition, Safety as. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pericles. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Persian, From the. <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Personalities, each Man has Three. <a href="#Page_59">59-60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Personality, Human. <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pessimist. <a href="#Page_257">257-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pets. <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pheidias. <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Philosophy, Various. <a href="#Page_101">101-5</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Photography. <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Physician. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pictures, Word. <a href="#Page_85">85-6</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121-2</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166-7</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225-6</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270-1</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302-3</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336-7</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pickwick Papers. <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Plagiarism. <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pleasure, Love Not. <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poem, Famous for One. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poet alone Sees. <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poet and His Audience. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poet, Autobiography of A. <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poet, Song of the. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poet, The. <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetic Imagination. <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetic Passion. <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poets Condemned. <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poets Known for One Production. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poets, poor Critics of their Own Work. <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289-90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry. <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry and Poverty. <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry Creates. <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry Despised. <a href="#Page_357">357-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, England’s Wealth of. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry Immortal. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Important to Education. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Insight into. <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Legislation less Vital than. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Neglect of. <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Potent. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Scope of. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Subjects of, Alleged Exhaustion. <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry Survives the Poet. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Swinburne’s. <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poetry, Treasure-houses of. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Points of View. <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265-6</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span>“Political Precepts.” <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pollock, Sir F., Parodies by. <a href="#Page_220">220-21</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pope Pius IX. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Popularity, Deferred. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Popularity, Seeking. <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Possession Stagnates. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Positivism. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Posterity’s Verdict. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Post-nuptial Courting. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Potter’s Clay, The. <a href="#Page_193">193-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poverty and Parnassus. <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Power and Justice. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Practical.” <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Praise of Beauty. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Praise of Tobacco. <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prayer. <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pre-matrimonial Acquaintanceship. <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prescriptions, Absurd Medical. <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Presiding Spirit, Earth’s. <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pretence and Reality. <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Price, The. <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Price, Man’s. <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Price, Wisdom’s. <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pride. <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prize Fighter, The. <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Progress or Lethargy. <a href="#Page_125">125-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Progress, Slow but Sure. <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prometheus. <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Promise. <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pronunciation. <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prophets, The Hebrew. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prosaic Person, The. <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Proserpine. <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Proverbs. <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-7</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prudent Scot, A. <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Psychical Research, Society for. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Psychology. <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Public Servants. <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Pulley,” The. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pulsation Passage, Pater’s. <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Punishment, Eternal. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Puns. <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Purification. <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Puritan’s Cat that broke the Sabbath. <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pursuit more than Prize. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Puttenham, George. <a href="#Page_356">356-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pyrrhus and Cineas. <a href="#Page_197">197-8</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Quakers. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Queen, My, Sequel to.” <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Query. <a href="#Page_215">215-16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Quest. <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Question, A.” <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Questions. <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328-9</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Quixotism, One of Satan’s Pet Words. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Raleigh, Sir Walter. <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rank and Precedence. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reapers, Sowers and. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reason and Tradition. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reasoning, The Art of. <a href="#Page_34">34-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Receptivity. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Record, History’s. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reform. <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Regret. <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Reinforcements,” Children as. <a href="#Page_52">52-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rejuvenation. <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Religio Medici.” <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Religion. <a href="#Page_122">122-4</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Religion and Love, Heralds of Heaven. <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Religion and Reason. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Religion and Science, Conflict Between. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Remember Me. <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Remember or Forget. <a href="#Page_27">27-30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reminiscence of Past Existence. <a href="#Page_203">203-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Renaissance, The. <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Repentance. <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reputation, and Character. <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Requiem, A.” <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Requiem, Carlyle’s. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Research, Society for Psychical. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rest. <a href="#Page_63">63-4</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reticence, Safety in. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Retribution. <a href="#Page_137">137-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reunion after Death. <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Revelation, The.” <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reverence. <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rhymed Ends. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riches. <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Rights of Man, The.” <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Rime of Redemption, The.” <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rival, The. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rogue, The, a Fool. <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Roman Hardness. <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span>Romance. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Romance, To the True.” <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Romantic Revival. <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Rose and the Wind, The.” <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rossetti, Christina. <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rothschild, Lord. <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rowley Forgeries, The. <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ruskin, John. <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sabbatarian Puritan, The. <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sacrifice.” <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sacrifice-Self. <a href="#Page_199">199-201</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sacrifice-Self, Woman’s. <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sacrifice, Supreme. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sad Old Age. <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sad Lines. <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Safety as Perdition. <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sage, Narrow Stage for The. <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sand and Sugar. <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sand, Traced on. <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. Augustine’s Ladder. <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. Monica’s Vision. <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. Jerome’s Tutor. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sappho. <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Satan and Pardon. <a href="#Page_41">41-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Satan at Home. <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Satan’s Diligence. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Satan’s Pet Words. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sayce, A. H. <a href="#Page_66">66-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Saying Nothing. <a href="#Page_183">183-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scaffold, Truth for Ever on the. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scepticism. <a href="#Page_64">64-8</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110-12</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Science and Wonder. <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Science, Religion and. xi., <a href="#Page_64">64-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scientist’s Analysis of Love. <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scot, The Prudent. <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scotland, Dr. Johnson and. <a href="#Page_196">196-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scotsman, Potentiality of The. <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scott, Sir Walter. <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69-70</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scottish Crofters, Song of The. <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scottish Washerwomen. <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scribes, The. <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scriptures, Veracity of the. <a href="#Page_344">344-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Search Perfects. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sea-song, A Great. <a href="#Page_244">244-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sea, The Other Side of the.” <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sea, The Purifying. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Secret, Life’s. <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Security of Death. <a href="#Page_73">73-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Seeley’s “Ecce Homo.” <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Self-Deception. <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Selfishness. <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Self-Reliance. <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Self-Sacrifice. <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Self-Surrender. <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sentiment Kills, ’Tis.” <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sermons, P.S. Menzie’s. <a href="#Page_271">271-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Seth and Astronomy. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Settees, Human. <a href="#Page_286">286-7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Seventies and Eighties, The. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Seventy Years Young. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sex in Souls. <a href="#Page_93">93-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sexes, Qualities of the. <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shade and Silence. <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shakespeare. <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shambles, Civilization and the. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shallow but Clear. <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shaving. <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shelley. <a href="#Page_73">73-4</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ship of Life. <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ships, all Romantic except our Own. <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ships Bound to same Port. <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ships that pass in the Night. <a href="#Page_280">280-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sic vos non Vobis. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sidgwick, Henry. <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sigurd, the Volsung.” <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Silence Safe. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Silence Terrifying. <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Silent Land, The. <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sin, Original. <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sin, Vision of, The.” <a href="#Page_139">139-40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Singer’s Plea, The. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Singing. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Skylark, Shelley’s. <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Slander. <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Slaves. <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sleep. <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150-1</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sleep and Death. <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sleep, He Giveth His Beloved. <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sleep, Vigilance and. <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Small Things, Neglect of. <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smile, Beauty’s. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Snobbery, Social. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Soapy Sam.” <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Society, the Browning. <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Society for Psychical Research. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Solace. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soldiers Slighted. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Solitude, a City’s. <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Solitude of Grief. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Somnambulism. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span>Song that Nerves a Nation’s Heart, is a Deed. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Songs, A Nation’s. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sonnet, which Coleridge thought the Finest. <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sonnet, Scorn not the.” <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sonnets from the Portuguese.” <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sorrow. <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sorrow, The Worship of. <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sorrows, Light, Speak. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soul, The. <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165-6</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soul’s Aspiration. <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soul’s Beauty. <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soul, Not the Eye, Sees. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soul, The Crisis of the. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Soul, The Journey of the. <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sowing and Reaping. <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Space, Terror of Infinite. <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Spasmodic School.” <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Special Creation. <a href="#Page_303">303-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spell, for the Dying, A. <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spencer, Herbert. <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103-4</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Spider, Noiseless Patient, A.” <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spirit, Adventurous, Created Empire. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spirit, A Parting. <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spirit of Paradise. <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spirit of the Age. <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spirit of the Universe. <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spiritualism. <a href="#Page_171">171-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Spiritual Laws.” <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spiritual World. <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spiritual World’s Realities. <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spring. <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Star, My.” <a href="#Page_8">8-10</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Star to Star. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stars and Duty, The. <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stars and Fates. <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stars, Silence of. <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stars, Speech of. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stars, Tasks of the. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">State and Man. <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stephen, Sir Leslie. <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey.” <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Strange Verses. <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Struggle, The, Availeth. <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Struggle, Life’s. <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stupidity, as Protection. <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Style. <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Success, Wisdom and. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sunshine to us is Darkness to others. <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Superstition. <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Supreme Power Produces Mind, The. <a href="#Page_304">304-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Surroundings, Familiar. <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Survival after Death. <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Swinburne. xi., <a href="#Page_49">49-51</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219-21</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341-3</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Swiveller, Dick. <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Sword, Apotheosis of the.” <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Swords and Ledgers. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sydney, Sir Philip. <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sympathy with the Living, not the Dead. <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Symposium, Plato’s. <a href="#Page_381">381</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Systems, Old and New. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Talent, Lost. <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tall Men. <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Taking Thought. <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tasks. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tastes Differ. <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tavern, The Mermaid. <a href="#Page_313">313-4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Teachers. <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tear Dries Soon. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tearless Grief. <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tears, Harvest of. <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tears, Women’s Secret. <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Temptation. <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tennyson. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Teuton, God of the. <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“The Night has a Thousand Eyes.” <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“The Other Side of the Sea.” <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Theosophy. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Thought, A Woman’s.” <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thought and Happiness. <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thought, Independence in. <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thought, Modern Religious. <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thoughts Anticipated, Our. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thoughts, Revivifying Old. <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Three Personalities, Each Man has. <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Throne, Wrong for ever on the. <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Through a Glass Darkly. <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thrush, The Wise. <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thy Beauty’s Silent Music. <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tidings of the Invisible. <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Time, Allotted. <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Time, All-powerful. <a href="#Page_341">341-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Time Swift and We Slow. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Time Wasted. <a href="#Page_135">135-7</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tobacco. <a href="#Page_241">241-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tongue, Holding One’s, Never Repented. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span>Too Late. <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Torpor. <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Toucan, The. <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Trade, Free,” Fetish. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tradition. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Training, Mental. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Travel and Empire. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Treason, Roman and German. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trial by Jury. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trial Test. <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trinidad, Island of. <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trivial Causes, and Great Events. <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Trouble, Anticipating. <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Troy, Helen of. <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Troy, The Walls of. <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truth. <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truth, Champions of. <a href="#Page_138">138-9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truth, Daring to Speak the. <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truth for Truth’s Sake, Love of. <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truth, Marching on. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truth, Pursuit of. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Truths. <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tucker, T. C., on Sappho. <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tupman, The Susceptible. <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Twilight, In the.” <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Twin, Happiness born a. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Two for a Kiss. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Two Lovers. <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Ulysses.” <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Unconscious Cerebration. <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Under-world, The. <a href="#Page_x">x</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Universe, The Infinity of the. <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Up-hill. <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Utilitarianism. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Utility, Practical, of Imagination. <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Utopianism,” one of Satan’s Pet Words. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Venus of Milo, The. <a href="#Page_380">380</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Veracity of the Scriptures, The. <a href="#Page_344">344-5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Verrall, Dr. <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Verses, Judging. <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Verses, Strange Wedding Eve. <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vices as Ladders. <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vigilance and Sleep. <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">View, Points of. <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265-6</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Virtue and Slander. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Virtue, Varying standards of. <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Virtues, Christian. <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vision. <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vision of Sin, The. <a href="#Page_139">139-40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vision, Man’s Degree of. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Visits made to Boast of. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Voice, Merely. <a href="#Page_361">361-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Voices, Two. <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Von Müller, Baron F. <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vox et Praeterea Nihil. <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Waking, State Of. <a href="#Page_150">150-1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Washerwomen, Scottish. <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Washington and Thomas Paine. <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">War. <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wars, Effect Of. <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wealth and Worth. <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wealth of Poetry, England’s. <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Wedding, The Night before The.” <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wesley’s Character. <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wesley’s Medical Prescriptions. <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> - -<li class="indx">What am I? <a href="#Page_103">103-4</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> - -<li class="indx">What do the Wisest Know? <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“What of the Darkness?” <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“When shall our Prayers End?” <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">When we are all Asleep. <a href="#Page_215">215-16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Whence and Whither? <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Whetstone cannot cut but Sharpens, A. <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">White, J. Blanco. <a href="#Page_xi">xi</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Why not now? <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wife must be Courted. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wife, The Troublesome. <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wilberforce, Bishop. <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Will, Strong in. <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Willing People. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Wind and the Rose, The.” <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wisdom. <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wisdom and Cunning. <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wisdom and Folly. <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wisdom and Success. <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wisdom, The Path Of. <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wise, Few. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Woman, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72-3</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Woman and Tobacco. <a href="#Page_241">241-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Woman, Fickle. <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285-6</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Woman, Paradise and. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Woman, Wasteful. <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span>Woman’s Influence. <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">“Woman’s Thought, A.” <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Cunning of. <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women Foolish, made to match Men. <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Greek. <a href="#Page_86">86-90</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Jesuistical. <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Obstinate. <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Painted. <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Paradise and. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women Riddles. <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women’s Chatter not changed in Two Thousand Years. <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women’s Self Sacrifice. <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wooing and Winning. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Words, Mere. <a href="#Page_361">361-2</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth. <a href="#Page_29">29-30</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108-9</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175-8</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203-4</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, Defects of. <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, Influence of. <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177-8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, Parodies on. <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Work. <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Work and Worship. <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Work Neglected, Remorse for. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World, Ancient and Modern, The. <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World Creed, An Old. <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World is Young, The. <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World, Realities of the Spiritual. <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World, Seduction of. <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World, The Unjust. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World, The Wanton. <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Worlds, Visible and Invisible. <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Worship. <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Worth, Intrinsic. <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Xenophon. <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Yea, The Everlasting. <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Young Life. <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Young Seventy Years. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Youth and Age. <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Youth and Prohibition. <a href="#Page_272">272-3</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Youth, Ardent. <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Youth, Heroic. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Zimmern, A. E. <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> - -</ul> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span></p> - -<h2>INDEX OF AUTHORS</h2> - -<ul> - -<li class="ifrst">Aldrich, A. R. <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aldrich, H. <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aldrich, T. B. <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alexander, W. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Amiel. <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> - -<li class="indx" id="anon">Anonymous. <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a> <a href="#untraced">(See also Authors not traced).</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aristotle. <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arnold, E., Sir <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arnold, M. <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aurelius, Marcus. <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Augustine, St. <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Austin, A. <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx" id="untraced">Authors not traced. <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a> <a href="#anon">(See also Anonymous).</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bacon. <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bailey, P. J. <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bain, A. <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Balzac. <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bateson, W. <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beaumont, F. <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beddoes, T. L. <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bentham, Jeremy. <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Billing, W. <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blackstone. <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blake, W. <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blanc, C. <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boreham, F. W. <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bossuet. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boswell. <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bourdillon, F. W. <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boyd, A. K. H. <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brathwaite, R. <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bray. <a href="#Page_153">153-155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bromfield, J. <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brougham. <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, John. <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, T. E. <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, B. <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browne, Sir T. <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, E. B. <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, R. <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bryant, W. C. <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Buchanan, R. <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, R. <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bunyan. <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Byron. <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Calverley, C. S. <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Campbell, T. <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Campion, T. <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Canning, G. <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carlyle, T. <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carroll, Lewis. <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chatterton, T. <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chaucer. <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Choerilus. <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cholmondeley, Hester. <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cleveland, John. <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clough, A. H. <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Colenso, Bishop. <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Coleridge, D. <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span>Coleridge, S. T. <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Collins, M. <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Congreve. <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Conway, M. D. <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Corcoran, P. <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Corneille, T. <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cory, W. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cowley, A. <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cowper, W. <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Crashaw, Richard. <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Darwin, C. <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dekker, T. <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> - -<li class="indx">De Musset, A. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">De Quincey. <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> - -<li class="indx">De Rabutin. <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">De Staël, Mme. <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dickens, Chas. <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dickinson, G. Lowes. <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Disraeli. <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dobson, A. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Donatus. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Donne, J. <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas, M. <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dryden, J. <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Du Lorens. <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Earle, J. <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Edmunds, A. J. <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eliot, George. <a href="#Page_iii">iii</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Elmogadessi, A. E. <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Emerson, R. W. <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Epitaphs. <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Euripides. <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Fitzgerald, E. <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fletcher of Saltoun. <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Foote, S. <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fox, Caroline. <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Franklin. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fuller, T. <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Galton, Sir F. <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gascoigne, G. <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gibbon. <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gilder, R. W. <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gissing, G. <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glover, T, R. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Goethe. <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Goldsmith, O. <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gordon, A. L. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gosse, E. <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greek Anthology. <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gray, T. <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hafiz. <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hardinge, W. M. <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hardy, T. <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harrison, Jane. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hawthorne, N. <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heine, H. <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Helps, A. <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herbert, G. <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herodotus. <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herrick, R. <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hilton, A. C. <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hobhouse, Professor. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hodgson, R. <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Holland, Lord. <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Holmes, O. W. <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Homer. <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hood, T. <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Horace. <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Howe, Mrs. J. W. <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hugo, Victor. <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hunt, Leigh. <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hunter, W. A. <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Huxley, T. H. <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Irving, W. <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Isocrates. <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">James, W. <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jefferies, R. <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jeffrey, Lord. <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jerome, St. <a href="#Page_xii">xii</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, Dr. <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jones, Sir W. <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jonson, Ben. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kant, I. <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Keats, J. <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Keble, J. <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kinglake, A. W. <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kingsley, Chas. <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kipling, R. <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Knight, E. F. <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span>Knowles, F. L. <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lamb, Chas. <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Landor, W. S. <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lang, A. <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Latimer, Bishop. <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lecky, W. E. H. <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Le Gallienne, R. <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Leigh, H. S. <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lessing. <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lichtenberg. <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lilly, W. S. <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lincoln, Abraham. <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lind, Jenny. <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Litany, Monkish. <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Littledale, R. F. <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Livingstone, R. W. <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Locke, J. <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Locker-Lampson, F. <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Logia of Jesus. <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Longfellow. <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lovelace, R. <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Loveman, R. <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lowell, J. R. <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lowry, H. D. <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lyall, Sir A. <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lynch, T. 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B. <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Martial. <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Martineau, J. <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Masnair. <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mason, C. A. <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Massey, G. <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Maule, W. H. <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Melville, H. <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Melville, G. S. Whyte-. <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Menzies, P. S. <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Meredith, George. <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Meredith, Owen. <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Middleton, R. <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mill, J. 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D. <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Neale, J. M. <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nicharchus. <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Niebuhr. <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Noel, Roden. <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Novalis. <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Oldys, W. <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Oliphant, L. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Osler, W. <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx">O’Sullivan, V. <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ouida. <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Paine, Thomas. <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pascal. <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pater, W. <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Patmore, Coventry. <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paul, St. <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Payne, J. <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Percy. <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Penn, William. <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Phillips, J. <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Phillips, S. <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Piozzi, Mrs. <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Plato. <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pliny. <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Plutarch. <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poe, E. 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J. <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Puttenham, G. <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Quarles, Francis. <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Quiller-Couch, Sir A. <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Raleigh, Sir W. <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Renan. <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Richter, J. P. F. <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rogers, R. C. <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rogers, Samuel. <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rossetti, C. <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rossetti, D. G. <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ruskin, J. <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sadi. <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sand, George. <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sappho. <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sayce, A. 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B. <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Younghusband, Sir F. <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Zimmermann, J. G. <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Zimmern, A. E. <a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> - -</ul> - -<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Printed by Balding and Mansell, London and Wisbech.</span></p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Commonplace Book, by Various - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY COMMONPLACE BOOK *** - -***** This file should be named 60637-h.htm or 60637-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/3/60637/ - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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