"The wandress raised her tenderly;
She touched her wet and fast-shut eyes;
'Look, sister; sister, look at me;
Look; can you see through my disguise?'
She looked and saw her own sad face,
And trembled, wondering, 'Who art thou?'
'God sent me down to fill your place;
I am the Virgin Mary now.'
And with the word, God's mother shone;
The wanderer whispered 'Mary, hail!'
The vision helped her to put on
Bracelet and fillet, ring and veil.
'You are sister to the mountains now,
And sister to the day and night;
Sister to God.' And on her brow
She kissed her thrice and left her sight."
The voice in each case is that of a prophet rather than that of a reed
shaken by the wind, or an Æolian harp played upon by the same.
* * * * *
March, 1895. Second Thoughts.
I have to add that, apart from the beautiful language in which they
are presented, Mr. Davidson's doctrines do not appeal to me. I cannot
accept his picture of the poet's as "a soulless life ... wherein the
foulest things may loll at ease beside the loveliest." It seems to me
at least as obligatory on a poet as on other men to keep his garden
weeded and his conscience active. Indeed, I believe some asceticism of
soul to be a condition of all really great poetry. Also Mr. Davidson
appears to be confusing charity with an approbation of things in the
strict sense damnable when he makes the Mother of Christ abet a Nun
whose wanderings have no nobler excuse than a carnal desire--_savoir
enfin ce que c'est un homme_. Between forgiving a lapsed man or woman
and abetting the lapse I now, in a cooler hour, see an immense, an
essential, moral difference. But I confess that the foregoing paper
was written while my sense of this difference was temporarily blinded
under the spell of Mr. Davidson's beautiful verse.
It may still be that his Nun had some nobler motive than I am able,
after two or three readings of the ballad, to discover. In that case I
can only ask pardon for my obtuseness.