Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drift

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THE WORLD'S

BEST POETRY

I Home: Friendship VI Fancy: Sentiment

II Love VII Descriptive: Narrative

III Sorrow and Consolation VIII National Spirit

IV The Higher Life IX Tragedy: Humor

V Nature X Poetical Quotations

* * * * *

THE

WORLD'S

BEST POETRY

IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED

Editor-in-Chief

BLISS CARMAN

Associate Editors

John Vance Cheney

Charles G.D. Roberts

Charles F. Richardson

Francis H. Stoddard

Managing Editor

John R. Howard

J.D. Morris and Company

Philadelphia

COPYRIGHT, 1904, by

J.D. Morris & Company

The World's Best Poetry

Vol. III

SORROW AND

CONSOLATION

AN

INTERPRETER OF

LIFE

By

LYMAN ABBOTT

* * * * *

NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS.

I.

American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright

are used by the courteous permission of the owners,--either the

publishers named in the following list or the authors or their

representatives in the subsequent one,--who reserve all their rights. So

far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of

copyright.

PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.

Messrs. D. APPLETON & Co., New York.--_W.C. Bryant_: "Blessed are They

that Mourn," "The Conqueror's Grave," "Thanatopsis."

Messrs. E.P. DUTTON & Co., New York.--_Mary W. Howland_: "Rest."

The FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, New York.--_John W. Palmer_: "For Charlie's

Sake."

Messrs. HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.--_Will Carleton_: "Over the Hill to

the Poor House."

Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston.--_Margaret Deland_: "Love and

Death;" _John Hay_: "A Woman's Love;" _O.W. Holmes_: "The Last Leaf,"

"The Voiceless;" _Mary Clemmer A. Hudson_: "Something Beyond;" _H.W.

Longfellow_: "Death of Minnehaha," "Footsteps of Angels," "God's Acre,"

"The Rainy Day," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "Resignation;" _J.R.

Lowell_: "Auf Wiedersehen," "First Snow Fall," "Palinode;" _Harriet W.

Preston_: "Fidelity in Doubt;" _Margaret E. Sangster_: "Are the Children

at Home?" _E.R. Sill_: "A Morning Thought;" _Harriet E. Spofford_: "The

Nun and Harp;" _Harriet B. Stowe_: "Lines to the Memory of Annie." "Only

a Year;" _J.T. Trowbridge_: "Dorothy in the Garret;" _J.G. Whittier_:

"To Her Absent Sailor," "Angel of Patience," "Maud Muller."

Mr. JOHN LANE, New York.--_R. Le Gallienne_: "Song," "What of the

Darkness?"

Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston.--_J.W. Chadwick_: "The Two

Waitings;" _Helen Hunt Jackson_: "Habeas Corpus."

The LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.--_Paul H. Hayne_: "In Harbor."

Messrs. G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York.--_Elaine Goodale Eastman_: "Ashes

of Roses;" _R.C. Rogers_: "The Shadow Rose."

Messrs. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York.--_R. Bridges (Droch)_: "The

Unillumined Verge;" _Mary Mapes Dodge_: "The Two Mysteries;" _Julia C.R.

Dorr_: "Hush" (Afterglow).

II.

American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below

are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives

named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission,

which for the present work has been courteously granted.

PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.

_W.R. Alger; Mrs. Amelia E. Barr; Henry A. Blood_ (Mrs. R.E. Whitman);

_Robert J. Burdette; John Burroughs; Mary A. De Vere; Nathan H. Dole;

William C. Gannett; Dr. Silas W. Mitchell; Mrs. Sarah M. Piatt; Walt

Whitman_ (H. Traubel, Literary Executor).

* * * * *

AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE.

BY LYMAN ABBOTT.

Poetry, music, and painting are three correlated arts, connected not

merely by an accidental classification, but by their intrinsic nature.

For they all possess the same essential function, namely, to interpret

the uninterpretable, to reveal the undiscoverable, to express the

inexpressible. They all attempt, in different forms and through

different languages, to translate the invisible and eternal into

sensuous forms, and through sensuous forms to produce in other souls

experiences akin to those in the soul of the translator, be he poet,

musician, or painter. That they are three correlated arts, attempting,

each in its own way and by its own language, to express the same

essential life, is indicated by their co-operation in the musical drama.

This is the principle which Wagner saw so clearly, and has used to such

effective purpose in his so-called operas, whose resemblance to the

Italian operas which preceded them is more superficial than real. In the

drama Wagner wishes you to consider neither the music apart from the

scenery, nor the scenery apart from the acting, nor the three apart from

the poetry. Poetry, music, and art combine with the actor to interpret

truths of life which transcend philosophic definition. Thus in the first

act of "Parsifal," innocence born of ignorance, remorse born of the

experience of temptation and sin, and reverence bred in an atmosphere

not innocent yet free from the experience of great temptation, mingle in

a drama which elevates all hearts, because in some one of these three

phases it touches every heart. And yet certain of the clergy condemned

the presentation as irreverent, because it expresses reverence in a

symbolism to which they were unaccustomed.

But while it is true that these three arts are correlative and

co-operative, they do not duplicate one another. Each not only speaks in

a language of its own, but expresses in that language a life which the

others cannot express. As color and fragrance combine to make the

flower, but the color expresses what the fragrance cannot express, and

the fragrance expresses what the color cannot express, so in the musical

drama, music, poetry, and painting combine, not by duplicating but by

supplementing each other. One may describe in language a symphony; but

no description will produce the effect which the symphony produces. One

may describe a painting; but no description will produce the effect

which the painting will produce. So neither music, nor painting, nor

both combined, can produce the same effect on the soul as poetry. The

"Midsummer Night's Dream" enacted in pantomime, with Mendelssohn's

music, would no more produce the same effect on the auditors which would

be produced by the interpretation of the play in spoken words, than

would the reading of the play at home produce the same effect as the

enacting of the play with what are miscalled the accessories of music

and scenery. The music and scenery are no more accessories to the words

than the words are accessories to the music and scenery. The three

combine in a triple language to express and produce one life, and it can

be expressed and produced in no other way than by the combination of the

three arts in harmonious action. This is the reason why no parlor

readings can ever take the place of the theatre, and no concert

performance can ever take the place of the opera. This is the reason why

all attempts to suppress the theatre and opera are and always will be in

vain. They are attempts to suppress the expression and awakening of a

life which can neither be expressed nor awakened in any other way; and

suppression of life, however successfully it may be accomplished for a

time, is never permanently possible.

These arts do not truly create, they interpret. Man is not a creator, he

is only a discoverer. The imagination is not creative, it is only

reportorial. Ideals are realities; imagination is seeing. The musician,

the artist, the poet, discover life which others have not discovered,

and each with his own instrument interprets that life to those less

sensitive than himself. Observe a musician composing. He writes; stops;

hesitates; meditates; perhaps hums softly to himself; perhaps goes to

the piano and strikes a chord or two. What is he doing? He is trying to

express to himself a beauty which he has heard in the world of infinite

phenomena, and to reproduce it as well as sensuous sounds can reproduce

it, that those with duller hearing than himself may hear it also.

Observe a painter before his easel. He paints; looks to see the effect;

erases; adds; modifies; reexamines; and repeats this operation over and

over again. What is he doing? He is copying a beauty which he has seen

in the invisible world, and which he is attempting to bring out from its

hiding so that the men who have no eyes except for the sensuous may also

see it. In my library is an original sonnet by John G. Whittier. In

almost every line are erasures and interlineations. In some cases the

careful poet has written a new line and pasted it over the rejected one.

What does this mean? It means that he has discovered a truth of moral

beauty and is attempting to interpret his discovery to the world. His

first interpretation of his vision did not suit him, nor his second, nor

his third, and he has revised and re-revised in the attempt to make his

verse a true interpretation of the truth which he had seen. He did not

make the truth; it eternally was. Neither did the musician make the

truth of harmony, nor the painter the truth of form and color. They also

eternally were. Poet, musician, painter, have seen, heard, felt,

realized in their own souls some experience of life, some potent reality

which philosophy cannot formulate, nor creed contain, nor eloquence

define; and each in his own way endeavors to give it to the world of

men; each in his own way endeavors to lift the gauzy curtain,

impenetrable to most souls, which hides the invisible, the inaudible,

the eternal, the divine from men; and he gives them a glimpse of that of

which he himself had but a glimpse.

In one sense and in one only can art be called creative: the artist,

whether he be painter, musician, or poet, so interprets to other men the

experience which has been created in him by his vision of the

supersensible and eternal, that he evokes in them a similar experience.

He is a creator only as he conveys to others the life which has been

created in himself. As the electric wire creates light in the home; as

the band creates the movement in the machinery; thus and only thus does

the artist create life in those that wait upon him. He is in truth an

interpreter and transmitter, not a creator. Nor can he interpret what he

has not first received, nor transmit what he has not first experienced.

The music, the painting, the poem are merely the instruments which he

uses for that purpose. The life must first be in him or the so-called

music, painting, poem are but dead simulacra; imitations of art, not

real art. This is the reason why no mechanical device, be it never so

skillfully contrived, can ever take the place of the living artist. The

pianola can never rival the living performer; nor the orchestrion the

orchestra; nor the chromo the painting. No mechanical device has yet

been invented to produce poetry; even if some shrewd Yankee should

invent a printing machine which would pick out rhymes as some printing

machines seem to pick out letters, the result would not be a poem. This

is the reason too why mere perfection of execution never really

satisfies. "She sings like a bird." Yes! and that is exactly the

difficulty with her. We want one who sings like a woman. The popular

criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound

and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the

orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is

also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best.

He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the

orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted

to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will be a

soulless performance.

Into each of these arts, therefore--music, painting, poetry--enter two

elements: the inner and the outer, the truth and the language, the

reality and the symbol, the life and the expression. Without the

electric current the carbon is a mere blank thread; the electric current

is not luminous if there be no carbon. The life and the form are alike

essential. So the painter must have something to express, but he must

also have skill to express it; the musician must have music in his soul,

but he must also have a power of instrumentation; the poet must feel the

truth, or he is no poet, but he must also have power to express what he

feels in such forms as will create a similar feeling in his readers, or

he is still no poet. Multitudes of women send to the newspapers poetical

effusions which, are not poems. The feeling of the writer is excellent,

but the expression is bad. The writer has seen, but she cannot tell what

she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as

to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of

inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic;

sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise

their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they

seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection

and entreaty for which he has no vocal expression. It is just as

essential that poetical feeling should have poetical expression in order

to constitute poetry as it is that musical feeling should have musical

expression in order to constitute music. And, on the other hand, as

splashes of color without artistic feeling which they interpret are not

art, as musical, sounds without musical feeling which they interpret are

not music, so poetical forms without poetical feeling are not poetry.

Poetical feeling in unpoetical forms may be poetical prose, but it is

still prose. And on the other hand, rhymes, however musical they may be

to the ear, are only rhymes, not poetry, unless they express a true

poetical life.

But these two elements are separable only in thought, not in reality.

Poetry is not common thought expressed in an uncommon manner; it is not

an artificial phrasing of even the higher emotions. The higher emotions

have a phrasing of their own; they fall naturally--whether as the result

of instinct or of habit need not here be considered--into fitting forms.

The form may be rhyme; it may be blank verse; it may be the old Hebrew

parallelism; it may even be the indescribable form which Walt Whitman

has adopted. What is noticeable is the fact that poetical thought, if it

is at its best, always takes on, by a kind of necessity, some poetical

form. To illustrate if not to demonstrate this, it is only necessary to

select from literature any fine piece of poetical expression of a higher

and nobler emotion, or of clear and inspiring vision, and attempt to put

it into prose form. The reader will find, if he be dealing with the

highest poetry, that translating it into prose impairs its power to

express the feeling, and makes the expression not less but more

artificial. If he doubt this statement, let him turn to any of the finer

specimens of verse in this volume and see whether he can express the

life in prose as truly, as naturally, as effectively, as it is there

expressed in rhythmical form.

These various considerations may help to explain why in all ages of the

world the arts have been the handmaidens of religion. Not to amplify

too much, I have confined these considerations to the three arts of

music, painting, and poetry; but they are also applicable to sculpture

and architecture. All are attempts by men of vision to interpret to the

men who are not equally endowed with vision, what the invisible world

about us and within us has for the enrichment of our lives. This is

exactly the function of religion: to enrich human lives by making them

acquainted with the infinite. It is true that at times the arts have

been sensualized, the emphasis has been put on the form of expression,

not on the life expressed; and then reformers, like the Puritans and the

Quakers, have endeavored to exclude the arts from religion, lest they

should contaminate it. But the exclusion has been accomplished with

difficulty, and to maintain it has been impossible. It is neither an

accident, nor a sign of decadence, that painting and sculpture are

creeping back into the Protestant churches, to combine with poetry and

music in expressing the religious life of man. For the intellect alone

is inadequate either to express that life as it exists, or to call it

into existence where it does not exist. The tendency to ritual in our

time is a tendency not to substitute æsthetic for spiritual life, though

there is probably always a danger that such a substitution may be

unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be

expressed without the aid of æsthetic symbols. The work of the intellect

is to analyze and define. But the infinite is in the nature of the case

indefinable, and it is with the infinite religion has to do. All that

theology can hope to accomplish is to define certain provinces in the

illimitable realm of truth; to analyze certain experiences in a life

which transcends all complete analysis. The Church must learn to regard

not with disfavor or suspicion, but with eager acceptance, the

co-operation of the arts in the interpretation of infinite truth and the

expression of infinite life. Certainly we are not to turn our churches

into concert rooms or picture and sculpture galleries, and imagine that

æsthetic enjoyment is synonymous with piety. But as surely we are not to

banish the arts from our churches, and think that we are religious

because we are barren. All language, whether of painting, sculpture,

architecture, music, poetry, or oratory, is legitimately used to express

the divine life, as all the faculties, whether of painter, sculptor,

architect, musician, poet, orator, and philosopher, are to be used in

reaching after a more perfect knowledge of Him who always transcends and

always will transcend our perfect knowing.

Thus the study of poetry is the study of life, because poetry is the

interpretation of life. Poetry is not a mere instrument for promoting

enjoyment; it does not merely dazzle the imagination and excite the

emotions. Through the emotions and the imagination it both interprets

life and ministers to life. When the critic attempts to express that

truth, that is, to interpret the interpreter, which he can do only by

translating the poetry into prose, and the language of imagination and

emotion into that of philosophy, he destroys the poem in the process,

much as the botanist destroys the flower in analyzing it, or the musical

critic the composition in disentangling its interwoven melodies and

explaining the mature of its harmonic structure. The analysis, whether

of music, art, or poetry, must be followed by a synthesis, which, in the

nature of the case, can be accomplished only by the hearer or reader for

himself. All that I can do here is to illustrate this revelatory

character of poetry by some references to the poems which this volume

contains. I do not attempt to explain the meaning of these poems; that

is a task quite impossible. I only attempt to show that they have a

meaning, that beneath their beauty of form is a depth of truth which

philosophical statement in prose cannot interpret, but the essence of

which such statement may serve to suggest. I do not wish to expound the

truth of life which is contained in the poet's verse; I only wish to

show that the poet by his verse reveals a truth of life which the critic

cannot express, and that it is for this reason pre-eminently that such a

collection of poetry as this is deserving of the reader's study.

If for example the student turns to such a volume as Newman Smyth's

"Christian Ethics," he will find there a careful though condensed

discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate,

philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the

man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide

or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his

mind:--the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless,

indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death

carries us, which makes him hesitate. If we would really understand the

mind of the suicide, not merely the mind of the philosopher coolly

debating suicide, we must turn to the poet.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin! Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourne

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action."

This first the poet does: he draws aside the veil which hides the

working of men's hearts, and lets us see their hidden life. But he does

more. Not merely does he afford us knowledge, he imparts life. For we

know feeling only by participating in the feeling; and the poet has the

art not merely to describe the experiences of men but so to describe

them that for the moment we share them, and so truly know them by the

only process by which they can be known. Who, for instance, can read

Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" and not, as he reads, stand by the

despairing one as she waits a moment upon the bridge just ready to take

her last leap out of the cruelty of this world into, let us hope, the

mercy of a more merciful world beyond?

"Where the lamps quiver

So far in the river,

With many a light

From window and casement,

From garret to basement,

She stood, with amazement,

Homeless by night.

"The bleak wind of March

Made her tremble and shiver;

But not the dark arch,

Or the black flowing river:

Mad from life's history,

Glad to death's mystery

Swift to be hurled--

Anywhere, anywhere

Out of the world.

"In she plunged boldly--

No matter how coldly

The rough river ran,--

Over the brink of it!

Picture it--think of it,

Dissolute man!

Lave in it, drink of it,

Then, if you can.

"Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;

Fashioned so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!"

No analysis of philosophy can make us acquainted with the tragedy of

this life as the poet can; no exhortation of preacher can so effectively

arouse in us the spirit of a Christian charity for the despairing

wanderer as the poet.

Would you know the tragedy of a careless and supercilious coquetry which

plays with the heart as the fisherman plays with the salmon? Read "Clara

Vere de Vere." Would you know the dull heartache of a loveless married

life, growing at times into an intolerable anguish which no marital

fidelity can do much to medicate? Read "Auld Robin Gray." Who but a poet

can interpret the pain of a parting between loving hearts, with its

remorseful recollections of the wholly innocent love's joys that are

past?

"Had we never loved sae kindly,

Had we never loved sae blindly,

Never met--or never parted,

We had ne'er been broken hearted."

Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drifting apart,

such as has destroyed many a friendship and wrecked many a married life,

as Clough has depicted it in "Qua Cursum Ventus"? If you would know the

life-long sorrow of the blind man at your side, would enter into his

life and for a brief moment share his captivity, read Milton's

interpretation of that sorrow in Samson's Lament. If you would find some

message to cheer the blind man in his darkness and illumine his

captivity, read the same poet's ode on his own blindness:

"God doth not need

Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

No prison statistics, no police reports, no reformer's documents, no

public discussions of the question, What to do with the tramp, will ever

so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of

the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life,

as Béranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no

psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give

the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly

causeless dejection, which because it seems to be causeless seems also

to be well-nigh incurable, as Percy Bysshe Shelley has given in his

"Stanzas written near Naples." No critical expounder of the Stoical

philosophy can interpret the stoical temper which interposes a sullen

but dauntless pride to attacking sorrow as William Ernest Henley has

done:

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

"In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed."

Nor can any preacher put in so vital a contrast to this despairing

defiance with which pride challenges sorrow, the joyous victory which a

trusting love wins over it by submitting to it, as John Greenleaf

Whittier has done in "The Eternal Goodness":

"I know not what the future hath

Of marvel or surprise,

Assured alone that life and death

His mercy underlies.

"I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air:

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care."

No philosophical treatise can interpret bereavement as the great poets

have interpreted it. The mystery of sorrow, the bewilderment it causes,

the wonder whether there is any God or any good, the silence that is the

only answer to our call for help, the tumult of emotion, the strange

perplexity of mind, the dull despair, the inexplicable paralysis of

feeling, intermingling in one wholly inconsistent and incongruous

experience: where, in all the literature of Philosophy can we find such

an exposition and echo and interpretation of this experience as in that

great Hebrew epic--the Book of Job? And where in all the literature of

Philosophy can we find such interpreters of the two great comforters of

the soul, faith and hope, as one finds in the poets? They do not argue;

they simply sing. And, as a note struck upon one of a chime of bells

will set the neighboring bell vibrating, so the strong note of faith and

hope sounded by the poet, sets a like note vibrating in the mourner's

heart. The mystery is not solved, but the silence is broken. First we

listen to the poet, then we listen to the same song sung in our own

hearts,--the same, for it is God who has sung to him and who sings to

us. And when the bereaved has found God, he has found light in his

darkness, peace in his tempest, a ray in his night.

"As a child,

Whose song-bird seeks the wood forevermore,

Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;

Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,

He sleep the faster that he wept before."

The visitor to the island of Catalina, off the coast of California, is

invited to go out in a glass-bottomed boat upon the sea. If he accepts

the invitation and looks about him with careless curiosity, he will

enjoy the blue of the summer sky and ocean wave, and the architectural

beauty of the island hills; but if he turns his gaze downward and looks

through the glass bottom of the boat in which he is sailing, he will

discover manifold phases of beauty in the life beneath the sea waves: in

goldfish darting hither and thither, in umbrella-shaped jellyfish lazily

swimming by, in starfish and anemones of infinite variety, in

sea-urchins brilliant in color, and in an endless forest of water-weeds

exquisitely delicate in their structure. Perhaps he will try to

photograph them; but in vain: his camera will render him no report of

the wealth of life which he has seen. So he who takes up such a volume

of poetry as this will find ample repayment in the successive pictures

which it presents to his imagination, and the transient emotions which

it will excite in him. But besides this there is a secret life which the

careless reader will fail to see, and which the critic cannot report,

but which will be revealed to the thoughtful, patient, meditative

student. In this power to reveal an otherwise unknown world, lies the

true glory of poetry. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the

poet has to say to him.

[Signature: Lyman Abbot]

* * * * *

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:

"AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE." By _Lyman Abbot_

POEMS OF SORROW AND CONSOLATION:

DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE

PARTING AND ABSENCE

ADVERSITY

COMFORT AND CHEER

DEATH AND BEREAVEMENT

CONSOLATION

INDEX: AUTHORS AND TITLES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW _Frontispiece_

_Photogravure from photograph by Hanfstaengl after portrait by Kramer_.

PENELOPE AWAITING ULYSSES

_The patient grief and endurance of Absence: while the tapestry

woven by day stands on the frame to be unravelled by night, as the

loyal wife puts off her suitors. Painting by Rudolph von Deutsch_.

ABSENCE

"What shall I do with all the days and hours

That must be counted ere I see thy face?"

_From a photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co., after a painting by

R. Pötzelberger_.

WAIL OF PROMETHEUS BOUND

"Behold me, a god, what I endure from gods!

Behold, with throe on throe,

How, wasted by this woe,

I wrestle down the myriad years of Time!"

_From photograph after a painting by G. Graeff_.

PIERRE-JEAN DE BÉRANGER

_From lithograph after a crayon-drawing by H. Alophe_.

THOMAS HOOD

_After an engraving from contemporary portrait_.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

_After a photograph from life by Talfourd, London_.

THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."

_After an original drawing by Harry Fenn_.

LOVE AND DEATH

"Death comes in,

Though Love, with outstretched arms and wings outspread,

Would bar the way."

_From photogravure after the painting by George Fredeick Watts_.

WALT WHITMAN

_After a life-photograph by Rockwood, New York_.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

_From an engraving after the drawing by George Richmond_.

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD

_After a life-photograph by Elliott and Fry, London_.

* * * * *

POEMS OF SORROW AND CONSOLATION.

* * * * *

I. DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE.

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.

FROM "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," ACT I. SC. 1.

For aught that ever I could read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth:

But, either it was different in blood,

Or else misgraffèd in respect of years,

Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man hath power to say,--Behold!

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.

SHAKESPEARE.

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Of me you shall not win renown;

You thought to break a country heart

For pastime, ere you went to town.

At me you smiled, but unbeguiled

I saw the snare, and I retired:

The daughter of a hundred Earls,

You are not one to be desired.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

I know you proud to bear your name;

Your pride is yet no mate for mine,

Too proud to care from whence I came.

Nor would I break for your sweet sake

A heart that dotes on truer charms.

A simple maiden in her flower

Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Some meeker pupil you must find,

For were you queen of all that is,

I could not stoop to such a mind.

You sought to prove how I could love,

And my disdain is my reply.

The lion on your old stone gates

Is not more cold to you than I.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange memories in my head.

Not thrice your branching lines have blown

Since I beheld young Laurence dead.

O your sweet eyes, your low replies:

A great enchantress you may be;

But there was that across his throat

Which you had hardly cared to see.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

When thus he met his mother's view,

She had the passions of her kind,

She spake some certain truths of you.

Indeed I heard one bitter word

That scarce is fit for you to hear;

Her manners had not that repose

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

There stands a spectre in your hall:

The guilt of blood is at your door:

You changed a wholesome heart to gall.

You held your course without remorse,

To make him trust his modest worth,

And, last, you fixed a vacant stare,

And slew him with your noble birth.

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,

From yon blue heavens above us bent

The grand old gardener and his wife

Smile at the claims of long descent.

Howe'er it be, it seems to me,

'T is only noble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood.

I know you, Clara Vere de Vere:

You pine among your halls and towers:

The languid light of your proud eyes

Is wearied of the rolling hours.

In glowing health, with boundless wealth,

But sickening of a vague disease,

You know so ill to deal with time,

You needs must play such pranks as these.

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,

If Time be heavy on your hands,

Are there no beggars at your gate.

Nor any poor about your lands?

Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,

Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,

Pray Heaven for a human heart,

And let the foolish yeoman go.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

LINDA TO HAFED.

FROM "THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS."

"How sweetly," said the trembling maid,

Of her own gentle voice afraid,

So long had they in silence stood,

Looking upon that moonlight flood,--

"How sweetly does the moonbeam smile

To-night upon yon leafy isle!

Oft in my fancy's wanderings,

I've wished that little isle had wings,

And we, within its fairy bowers,

Were wafted off to seas unknown,

Where not a pulse should beat but ours,

And we might live, love, die alone!

Far from the cruel and the cold,--

Where the bright eyes of angels only

Should come around us, to behold

A paradise so pure and lonely!

Would this be world enough for thee?"--

Playful she turned, that he might see

The passing smile her cheek put on;

But when she marked how mournfully

His eyes met hers, that smile was gone;

And, bursting into heartfelt tears,

"Yes, yes," she cried, "my hourly fears,

My dreams, have boded all too right,--

We part--forever part--to-night!

I knew, I knew it _could_ not last,--

'T was bright, 't was heavenly, but 't is past!

O, ever thus, from childhood's hour,

I've seen my fondest hopes decay;

I never loved a tree or flower

But 't was the first to fade away.

I never nursed a dear gazelle,

To glad me with its soft black eye,

But when it came to know me well,

And love me, it was sure to die!

Now, too, the joy most like divine

Of all I ever dreamt or knew,

To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine,--

O misery! must I lose _that_ too?"

THOMAS MOORE.

LOVE NOT.

Love not, love not, ye hapless sons of clay!

Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers,--

Things that are made to fade and fall away

Ere they have blossomed for a few short hours.

Love not!

Love not! the thing ye love may change;

The rosy lip may cease to smile on you,

The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange,

The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true.

Love not!

Love not! the thing you love may die,--

May perish from the gay and gladsome earth;

The silent stars, the blue and smiling sky,

Beam o'er its grave, as once upon its birth.

Love not!

Love not! O warning vainly said

In present hours as in years gone by!

Love flings a halo round the dear one's head,

Faultless, immortal, till they change or die.

Love not!

CAROLINE ELIZABETH SHERIDAN. (HON. MRS. NORTON.)

THE PRINCESS.

The Princess sat lone in her maiden bower,

The lad blew his horn at the foot of the tower.

"Why playest thou alway? Be silent, I pray,

It fetters my thoughts that would flee far away.

As the sun goes down."

In her maiden bower sat the Princess forlorn,

The lad had ceased to play on his horn.

"Oh, why art thou silent? I beg thee to play!

It gives wings to my thought that would flee far away,

As the sun goes down."

In her maiden bower sat the Princess forlorn,

Once more with delight played the lad on his horn.

She wept as the shadows grew long, and she sighed:

"Oh, tell me, my God, what my heart doth betide,

Now the sun has gone down."

From the Norwegian of BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON.

Translation of NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

UNREQUITED LOVE.

FROM "TWELFTH NIGHT," ACT I. SC. 4.

VIOLA.--Ay, but I know,--

DUKE. What dost thou know?

VIOLA.--Too well what love women to men may owe:

In faith, they are as true of heart as we.

My father had a daughter loved a man,

As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,

I should your lordship.

DUKE.--And what's her history?

VIOLA.--A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought;

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed?

We men may say more, swear more: but, indeed,

Our shows are more than will; for still we prove

Much in our vows, but little in our love.

SHAKESPEARE.

FAIR INES.

O saw ye not fair Ines? she's gone into the west,

To dazzle when the sun is down, and rob the world of rest;

She took our daylight with her, the smiles that we love best,

With morning blushes on her cheek, and pearls upon her breast.

O turn again, fair Ines, before the fall of night,

For fear the moon should shine alone, and stars unrivalled bright;

And blessèd will the lover be that walks beneath their light,

And breathes the love against thy cheek I dare not even write!

Would I had been, fair Ines, that gallant cavalier

Who rode so gayly by thy side and whispered thee so near!

Were there no bonny dames at home, or no true lovers here,

That he should cross the seas to win the dearest of the dear?

I saw thee, lovely Ines, descend along the shore,

With bands of noble gentlemen, and banners waved before;

And gentle youth and maidens gay, and snowy plumes they wore;--

It would have been a beauteous dream--if it had been no more!

Alas! alas! fair Ines! she went away with song,

With music waiting on her steps, and shoutings of the throng;

But some were sad, and felt no mirth, but only Music's wrong,

In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell to her you've loved so long.

Farewell, farewell, fair Ines! that vessel never bore

So fair a lady on its deck, nor danced so light before--

Alas for pleasure on the sea, and sorrow on the shore!

The smile that blest one lover's heart has broken many more!

THOMAS HOOD.

THE BANKS O' DOON.

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary, fu' o' care?

Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,

That wantons through the flowering thorn;

Thou minds me o' departed joys,

Departed--never to return.

Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird,

That sings beside thy mate;

For sae I sat, and sae I sang,

And wistna o' my fate.

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon,

To see the rose and woodbine twine;

And ilka bird sang o' its luve,

And, fondly, sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pou'd a rose,

Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;

And my fause luver stole my rose,

But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.

ROBERT BURNS.

SONNET.

FROM "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA."

With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies,

How silently, and with how wan a face!

What may it be, that even in heavenly place

That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries?

Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;

I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace

To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,

Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?

Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be loved, and yet

Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?

Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

AGATHA.

She wanders in the April woods,

That glisten with the fallen shower;

She leans her face against the buds,

She stops, she stoops, she plucks a flower.

She feels the ferment of the hour:

She broodeth when the ringdove broods;

The sun and flying clouds have power

Upon her cheek and changing moods.

She cannot think she is alone,

As over her senses warmly steal

Floods of unrest she fears to own

And almost dreads to feel.

Among the summer woodlands wide

Anew she roams, no more alone;

The joy she feared is at her side,

Spring's blushing secret now is known.

The primrose and its mates have flown,

The thrush's ringing note hath died;

But glancing eye and glowing tone

Fall on her from her god, her guide.

She knows not, asks not, what the goal,

She only feels she moves towards bliss,

And yields her pure unquestioning soul

To touch and fondling kiss.

And still she haunts those woodland ways,

Though all fond fancy finds there now

To mind of spring or summer days,

Are sodden trunk and songless bough.

The past sits widowed on her brow,

Homeward she wends with wintry gaze,

To walls that house a hollow vow,

To hearth where love hath ceased to blaze;

Watches the clammy twilight wane,

With grief too fixed for woe or tear;

And, with her forehead 'gainst the pane,

Envies the dying year.

ALFRED AUSTIN.

THE SUN-DIAL.

'T is an old dial, dark with many a stain;

In summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom,

Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain,

And white in winter like a marble tomb.

And round about its gray, time-eaten brow

Lean letters speak,--a worn and shattered row:

=I am a Shade; a Shadowe too art thou:

I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?=

Here would the ring-doves linger, head to head;

And here the snail a silver course would run,

Beating old Time; and here the peacock spread

His gold-green glory, shutting out the sun.

The tardy shade moved forward to the noon;

Betwixt the paths a dainty Beauty stept,

That swung a flower, and, smiling hummed a tune,--

Before whose feet a barking spaniel leapt.

O'er her blue dress an endless blossom strayed;

About her tendril-curls the sunlight shone;

And round her train the tiger-lilies swayed,

Like courtiers bowing till the queen be gone.

She leaned upon the slab a little while,

Then drew a jewelled pencil from her zone,

Scribbled a something with a frolic smile,

Folded, inscribed, and niched it in the stone.

The shade slipped on, no swifter than the snail;

There came a second lady to the place,

Dove-eyed, dove-robed, and something wan and pale,--

An inner beauty shining from her face.

She, as if listless with a lonely love,

Straying among the alleys with a book,--

Herrick or Herbert,--watched the circling dove,

And spied the tiny letter in the nook.

Then, like to one who confirmation found

Of some dread secret half-accounted true,--

Who knew what hearts and hands the letter bound,

And argued loving commerce 'twixt the two,--

She bent her fair young forehead on the stone;

The dark shade gloomed an instant on her head;

And 'twixt her taper fingers pearled and shone

The single tear that tear-worn eyes will shed.

The shade slipped onward to the falling gloom;

Then came a soldier gallant in her stead,

Swinging a beaver with a swaling plume,

A ribboned love-lock rippling from his head.

Blue-eyed, frank-faced, with clear and open brow,

Scar-seamed a little, as the women love;

So kindly fronted that you marvelled how

The frequent sword-hilt had so frayed his glove;

Who switched at Psyche plunging in the sun;

Uncrowned three lilies with a backward swinge;

And standing somewhat widely, like to one

More used to "Boot and Saddle" than to cringe

As courtiers do, but gentleman withal,

Took out the note;--held it as one who feared

The fragile thing he held would slip and fall;

Read and re-read, pulling his tawny beard;

Kissed it, I think, and hid it in his breast;

Laughed softly in a flattered, happy way,

Arranged the broidered baldrick on his crest,

And sauntered past, singing a roundelay.

* * * * *

The shade crept forward through the dying glow;

There came no more nor dame nor cavalier;

But for a little time the brass will show

A small gray spot,--the record of a tear.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

LOCKSLEY HALL.

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn,--

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall:

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,--

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;

In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me;

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turned,--her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs;

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes,--

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the spring.

Many an evening by the water did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,--

Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?--having known me; to decline

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy,--think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him; it is thy duty,--kiss him; take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is over wrought,--

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand,--

Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand.