Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
* * * * *
THE
ANGEL IN THE HOUSE.
* * * * *
BY
COVENTRY PATMORE.
* * * * *
“Par la grace infinie, Dieu les mist au monde ensemble.”
_Rousier des Dames_.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1891.
* * * * *
THIS POEM
IS INSCRIBED
TO
THE MEMORY OF HER
BY WHOM AND FOR WHOM I BECAME A POET.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
THERE could be but one answer to the suggestion of Mr. Coventry Patmore
that his “Angel in the House” might usefully have a place in this
“National Library.” The suggestion was made with the belief that wide
and cheap diffusion would not take from the value of a copyright library
edition, while the best use of writing is fulfilled by the spreading of
verse dedicated to the sacred love of home. The two parts of the Poem
appeared in 1854 and 1856, were afterwards elaborately revised, and have
since obtained a permanent place among the Home Books of the English
People. Our readers will join, surely, in thanks to the author for the
present he has made us.
H. M.
CONTENTS
BOOK I.
PAGE
THE PROLOGUE. 13
CANTO
I. THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE 17
Preludes:
1. The Impossibility 17
2. Love’s Really 17
3. The Poet’s Confidence 18
The Cathedral Close 19
II. MARY AND MILDRED 24
Preludes:
1. The Paragon 24
2. Love at Large 26
3. Love and Duty 27
4. A Distinction 28
Mary and Mildred 28
III. HONORIA 32
Preludes:
1. The Lover 32
2. Love a Virtue 34
3. The Attainment 34
Honoria 35
IV. THE MORNING CALL 39
Preludes:
1. The Rose of the World 39
2. The Tribute 41
3. Compensation 42
The Morning Call 42
V. THE VIOLETS 46
Preludes:
1. The Comparison 46
2. Love in Tears 48
3. Prospective Faith 48
4. Venus Victrix 49
The Violets 49
VI. THE DEAN 53
Preludes:
1. Perfect Love rare 53
2. Love Justified 54
3. Love Serviceable 55
4. A Riddle Solved 56
The Dean 56
VII. ÆTNA AND THE MOON 60
Preludes:
1. Love’s Immortality 60
2. Heaven and Earth 61
Ætna and the Moon 62
VIII. SARUM PLAIN 66
Preludes:
1. Life of Life 66
2. The Revelation 67
3. The Spirit’s Epochs 67
4. The Prototype 68
5. The Praise of Love 68
Sarum Plain 69
IX. SAHARA 74
Preludes:
1. The Wife’s Tragedy 74
2. Common Graces 75
3. The Zest of Life 76
4. Fool and Wise 76
Sahara 77
X. CHURCH TO CHURCH 81
Preludes:
1. The Joyful Wisdom 81
2. The Devices 84
Going to Church 84
XI. THE DANCE 89
Preludes:
1. The Daughter of Eve 89
2. Aurea Dicta 91
The Dance 93
XII. THE ABDICATION 97
Preludes:
1. The Chace 97
2. Denied 100
3. The Churl 101
The Abdication 102
BOOK II.
THE PROLOGUE 105
I. ACCEPTED 109
Preludes:
1. The Song of Songs 109
2. The Kites 110
3. Orpheus 111
4. Nearest the Dearest 111
5. Perspective 112
Accepted 112
II. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 116
Preludes:
1. The Changed Allegiance 116
2. Beauty 120
3. Lais and Lucretia 120
The Course of True Love 121
III. THE COUNTRY BALL 126
Preludes:
1. Love Ceremonious 126
2. The Rainbow 127
3. A Paradox 127
The County Ball 128
IV. LOVE IN IDLENESS 132
Preludes:
1. Honour and Desert 132
2. Love and Honour 133
3. Valour Misdirected 134
Love in Idleness 134
V. THE QUEEN’S ROOM 139
Preludes:
1. Rejected 139
2. Rachel 140
3. The Heart’s Prophecies 141
The Queen’s Room 141
VI. THE LOVE-LETTERS 145
Preludes:
1. Love’s Perversity 145
2. The Power of Love 147
The Love-Letters 148
VII. THE REVULSION 152
Preludes:
1. Joy and Use 152
2. ‘She was Mine’ 153
The Revulsion 153
VIII. THE KOH-I-NOOR 158
Preludes:
1. In Love 158
2. Love Thinking 160
3. The Kiss 161
The Koh-i-noor 161
IX. THE FRIENDS 165
Preludes:
1. The Nursling of Civility 165
2. The Foreign Land 166
3. Disappointment 166
The Friends 167
X. THE EPITAPH 170
Preludes:
1. Frost in Harvest 170
2. Felicity 171
3. Marriage Indissoluble 172
The Epitaph 172
XI. THE WEDDING 176
Preludes:
1. Platonic Love 176
2. A Demonstration 177
3. The Symbol 178
4. Constancy Rewarded 178
The Wedding 179
XII. HUSBAND AND WIFE 183
Preludes:
1. The Married Lover 183
2. The Amaranth 184
Husband and Wife 185
The Epilogue 189
Book I.
THE PROLOGUE.
1
‘MINE is no horse with wings, to gain
The region of the spheral chime;
He does but drag a rumbling wain,
Cheer’d by the coupled bells of rhyme;
And if at Fame’s bewitching note
My homely Pegasus pricks an ear,
The world’s cart-collar hugs his throat,
And he’s too wise to prance or rear.’
2
Thus ever answer’d Vaughan his Wife,
Who, more than he, desired his fame;
But, in his heart, his thoughts were rife
How for her sake to earn a name.
With bays poetic three times crown’d,
And other college honours won,
He, if he chose, might be renown’d,
He had but little doubt, she none;
And in a loftier phrase he talk’d
With her, upon their Wedding-Day,
(The eighth), while through the fields they walk’d,
Their children shouting by the way.
3
‘Not careless of the gift of song,
Nor out of love with noble fame,
I, meditating much and long
What I should sing, how win a name,
Considering well what theme unsung,
What reason worth the cost of rhyme,
Remains to loose the poet’s tongue
In these last days, the dregs of time,
Learn that to me, though born so late,
There does, beyond desert, befall
(May my great fortune make me great!)
The first of themes, sung last of all.
In green and undiscover’d ground,
Yet near where many others sing,
I have the very well-head found
Whence gushes the Pierian Spring.’
4
Then she: ‘What is it, Dear? The Life
Of Arthur, or Jerusalem’s Fall?’
‘Neither: your gentle self, my Wife,
And love, that grows from one to all.
And if I faithfully proclaim
Of these the exceeding worthiness,
Surely the sweetest wreath of Fame
Shall, to your hope, my brows caress;
And if, by virtue of my choice
Of this, the most heart-touching theme
That ever tuned a poet’s voice,
I live, as I am bold to dream,
To be delight to many days,
And into silence only cease
When those are still, who shared their bays
With Laura and with Beatrice,
Imagine, Love, how learned men
Will deep-conceiv’d devices find,
Beyond my purpose and my ken,
An ancient bard of simple mind.
You, Sweet, his Mistress, Wife, and Muse,
Were you for mortal woman meant?
Your praises give a hundred clues
To mythological intent!
And, severing thus the truth from trope,
In you the Commentators see
Outlines occult of abstract scope,
A future for philosophy!
Your arm’s on mine! these are the meads
In which we pass our living days;
There Avon runs, now hid with reeds,
Now brightly brimming pebbly bays;
Those are our children’s songs that come
With bells and bleatings of the sheep;
And there, in yonder English home,
We thrive on mortal food and sleep!’
She laugh’d. How proud she always was
To feel how proud he was of her!
But he had grown distraught, because
The Muse’s mood began to stir.
5
His purpose with performance crown’d,
He to his well-pleased Wife rehears’d,
When next their Wedding-Day came round,
His leisure’s labour, ‘Book the First.’
CANTO I
The Cathedral Close.
PRELUDES.
I.
_The Impossibility_.
Lo, love’s obey’d by all. ’Tis right
That all should know what they obey,
Lest erring conscience damp delight,
And folly laugh our joys away.
Thou Primal Love, who grantest wings
And voices to the woodland birds,
Grant me the power of saying things
Too simple and too sweet for words!
II.
_Love’s Really_.
I walk, I trust, with open eyes;
I’ve travell’d half my worldly course;
And in the way behind me lies
Much vanity and some remorse;
I’ve lived to feel how pride may part
Spirits, tho’ match’d like hand and glove;
I’ve blush’d for love’s abode, the heart;
But have not disbelieved in love;
Nor unto love, sole mortal thing
Of worth immortal, done the wrong
To count it, with the rest that sing,
Unworthy of a serious song;
And love is my reward; for now,
When most of dead’ning time complain,
The myrtle blooms upon my brow,
Its odour quickens all my brain.
III.
_The Poet’s Confidence_.
The richest realm of all the earth
Is counted still a heathen land:
Lo, I, like Joshua, now go forth
To give it into Israel’s hand.
I will not hearken blame or praise;
For so should I dishonour do
To that sweet Power by which these Lays
Alone are lovely, good, and true;
Nor credence to the world’s cries give,
Which ever preach and still prevent
Pure passion’s high prerogative
To make, not follow, precedent.
From love’s abysmal ether rare
If I to men have here made known
New truths, they, like new stars, were there
Before, though not yet written down.
Moving but as the feelings move,
I run, or loiter with delight,
Or pause to mark where gentle Love
Persuades the soul from height to height.
Yet, know ye, though my words are gay
As David’s dance, which Michal scorn’d.
If kindly you receive the Lay,
You shall be sweetly help’d and warn’d.
THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE.
1
Once more I came to Sarum Close,
With joy half memory, half desire,
And breathed the sunny wind that rose
And blew the shadows o’er the Spire,
And toss’d the lilac’s scented plumes,
And sway’d the chestnut’s thousand cones,
And fill’d my nostrils with perfumes,
And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones,
And wafted down the serious strain
Of Sarum bells, when, true to time,
I reach’d the Dean’s, with heart and brain
That trembled to the trembling chime.
2
’Twas half my home, six years ago.
The six years had not alter’d it:
Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,
With dormers and with oriels lit.
Geranium, lychnis, rose array’d
The windows, all wide open thrown;
And some one in the Study play’d
The Wedding-March of Mendelssohn.
And there it was I last took leave:
’Twas Christmas: I remember’d now
The cruel girls, who feign’d to grieve,
Took down the evergreens; and how
The holly into blazes woke
The fire, lighting the large, low room,
A dim, rich lustre of old oak
And crimson velvet’s glowing gloom.
No change had touch’d Dean Churchill: kind,
By widowhood more than winters bent,
And settled in a cheerful mind,
As still forecasting heaven’s content.
Well might his thoughts be fix’d on high,
Now she was there! Within her face
Humility and dignity
Were met in a most sweet embrace.
She seem’d expressly sent below
To teach our erring minds to see
The rhythmic change of time’s swift flow
As part of still eternity.
Her life, all honour, observed, with awe
Which cross experience could not mar,
The fiction of the Christian law
That all men honourable are;
And so her smile at once conferr’d
High flattery and benign reproof;
And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr’d,
Grew courtly in my own behoof.
The years, so far from doing her wrong,
Anointed her with gracious balm,
And made her brows more and more young
With wreaths of amaranth and palm.
4
Was this her eldest, Honor; prude,
Who would not let me pull the swing;
Who, kiss’d at Christmas, call’d me rude,
And, sobbing low, refused to sing?
How changed! In shape no slender Grace,
But Venus; milder than the dove;
Her mother’s air; her Norman face;
Her large sweet eyes, clear lakes of love.
Mary I knew. In former time
Ailing and pale, she thought that bliss
Was only for a better clime,
And, heavenly overmuch, scorn’d this.
I, rash with theories of the right,
Which stretch’d the tether of my Creed,
But did not break it, held delight
Half discipline. We disagreed.
She told the Dean I wanted grace.
Now she was kindest of the three,
And soft wild roses deck’d her face.
And, what, was this my Mildred, she
To herself and all a sweet surprise?
My Pet, who romp’d and roll’d a hoop?
I wonder’d where those daisy eyes
Had found their touching curve and droop.
5
Unmannerly times! But now we sat
Stranger than strangers; till I caught
And answer’d Mildred’s smile; and that
Spread to the rest, and freedom brought.
The Dean talk’d little, looking on,
Of three such daughters justly vain.
What letters they had had from Bonn,
Said Mildred, and what plums from Spain!
By Honor I was kindly task’d
To excuse my never coming down
From Cambridge; Mary smiled and ask’d
Were Kant and Goethe yet outgrown?
And, pleased, we talk’d the old days o’er;
And, parting, I for pleasure sigh’d.
To be there as a friend, (since more),
Seem’d then, seems still, excuse for pride;
For something that abode endued
With temple-like repose, an air
Of life’s kind purposes pursued
With order’d freedom sweet and fair.
A tent pitch’d in a world not right
It seem’d, whose inmates, every one,
On tranquil faces bore the light
Of duties beautifully done,
And humbly, though they had few peers,
Kept their own laws, which seem’d to be
The fair sum of six thousand years’
Traditions of civility.