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 _theology_,
and saying to them peremptorily: ‘Believe or be damned,’ have
the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world.”
As I have read somewhere, “From all barren Orthodoxy, good
Lord, deliver us.”[10]
* * * * *
For while a youth is lost in soaring thought,
And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful,
And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth,
And while a child, and while a flower is born,
And while one wrong cries for redress and finds
A soul to answer, still the world is young!
LEWIS MORRIS (_Epic of Hades_).
* * * * *
Poems are painted window panes.
If one looks from the square into the church,
Dusk and dimness are his gains—
Sir Philistine is left in the lurch!
The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,
Nor anything henceforth assuage him.
But come just inside what conceals;
Cross the holy threshold quite—
All at once ’tis rainbow-bright,
Device and story flash to light,
A gracious splendour truth reveals.
This to God’s children is full measure,
It edifies and gives you pleasure!
GOETHE.
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.
* * * * *
DE TEA FABULA
Do I sleep? Do I dream?
Am I hoaxed by a scout?
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?
Which expressions like these
May be fairly applied
By a party who sees
A Society skied
Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.
’Twas November the third.
And I says to Bill Nye,
“Which it’s true what I’ve heard:
If you’re, so to speak, fly,
There’s a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as
High.”
Which I mentioned its name
And he ups and remarks:
“If dress-coats is the game
And pow-wow in the Parks,
Then I’m nuts on Sordello and Hohensteil-Schwangau and similar Snarks.”
Now the pride of Bill Nye
Cannot well be express’d;
For he wore a white tie
And a cut-away vest:
Says I: “Solomon’s lilies ain’t in it, and they was reputed well
dress’d.”
But not far did we wend,
When we saw Pippa pass
On the arm of a friend
—Dr. Furnivall ’twas,
And he wore in his hat two half-tickets for London, return, second-class.
“Well,” I thought, “this is odd.”
But we came pretty quick
To a sort of a quad
That was all of red brick,
And I says to the porter: “R. Browning: free passes and kindly look
slick.”
But says he, dripping tears
In his check handkerchief,
“That symposium’s career’s
Been regrettably brief,
For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gunpowder leaf!”
Then we tucked up the sleeves
Of our shirts (that were biled),
Which the reader perceives
That our feelings were riled,
And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her
child.
Which emotions like these
Must be freely indulged
By a party who sees
A Society bulged
On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.
But I ask: Do I dream?
_Has_ it gone up the spout;
Are things what they seem,
Or is Sophists about?
Is our τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.
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!
τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (pronounced _toe tee ane einai_). 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.
The title “De Tea fabula” is a pun on Horace’s “Quid rides?
Mutato nomine _de te Fabula_ 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 _te_
rhyme with _fee_, _see_, _bee_. It ought of course to rhyme
with _fay_, _say_, _bay_. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted
to the pronunciation of _ea_ which prevailed until the end of
the Eighteenth Century. See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”:
Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.
_Dr. Furnivall_ (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 _Pippa Passes_.
_Scout_ at Oxford is a (male) college servant.
* * * * *
One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat.
R. BROWNING (_Fra Lippo Lippi_).
The “cheekiest” line I know.
* * * * *
TO THE MOON
The wind is shrill on the hills, and the plover
Wheels up and down with a windy scream;
The birch has loosen’d her bright locks over
The nut-brown pools of the mountain stream:
Yet here I linger in London City,
Thinking of meadows where I was born—
And over the roofs, like a face of pity,
Up comes the Moon, with her dripping horn.
O Moon, pale Spirit, with dim eyes drinking
The sheen of the Sun as he sweepeth by,
I am looking long in those eyes, and thinking
Of one who hath loved thee longer than I;
I am asking my heart if ye Spirits cherish
The souls that ye witch with a harvest call?—
If the dreams must die when the dreamer perish?—
If it be idle to dream at all?
The waves of the world roll hither and thither,
The tumult deepens, the days go by,
The dead men vanish—we know not whither,
The live men anguish—we know not why;
The cry of the stricken is smothered never,
The Shadow passes from street to street;
And—o’er us fadeth, for ever and ever,
The still white gleam of thy constant feet.
The hard men struggle, the students ponder,
The world rolls round on its westward way;
The gleam of the beautiful night up yonder
Is dim on the dreamer’s cheek all day;
The old earth’s voice is a sound of weeping,
Round her the waters wash wild and vast,
There is no calm, there is little sleeping,—
Yet nightly, brightly, thou glimmerest past!
Another summer, new dreams departed,
And yet we are lingering, thou and I;
I on the earth, with my hope proud-hearted,
Thou, in the void of a violet sky!
Thou art there! I am here! and the reaping and mowing
Of the harvest year is over and done,
And the hoary snow-drift will soon be blowing
Under the wheels of the whirling Sun.
While tower and turret lie silver’d under,
When eyes are closed and lips are dumb,
In the nightly pause of the human wonder,
From dusky portals I see thee come;
And whoso wakes and beholds thee yonder,
Is witch’d like me till his days shall cease,—
For in his eyes, wheresoever he wander,
Flashes the vision of God’s white Peace.
R. BUCHANAN.
* * * * *
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.
GEORGE ELIOT (_The Lifted Veil_).
* * * * *
Let us think less of men and more of God.
Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us,
Like a small bird winging the still blue air;
And then again, at other times, it rises
Slow, like a cloud, which scales the skies all breathless,
And just overhead lets itself down on us,
Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind
Rush like a rocket tearing up the sky,
That we should join with God, and give the world
The slip: but, while we wish, the world turns round
And peeps us in the face—the wanton world;
We feel it gently pressing down our arm—
The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;
We feel it softly bearing on our side—
We feel it touch and thrill us through the body,—
And we are fools, and there’s the end of us.
P. J. BAILEY (_Festus_).
* * * * *
It fell upon a merry May morn,
I’ the perfect prime of that sweet time
When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,—
The dear Babe Christabel was born.
...
Look how a star of glory swims
Down aching silences of space,
Flushing the Darkness till its face
With beating heart of light o’erbrims!
So brightening came Babe Christabel,
To touch the earth with fresh romance,
And light a Mother’s countenance
With looking on her miracle.
With hands so flower-like soft, and fair,
She caught at life, with words as sweet
As first spring violets, and feet
As faery-light as feet of air.
...
She grew, a sweet and sinless Child,
In shine and shower,—calm and strife;
A Rainbow on our dark of Life.
From Love’s own radiant heaven down-smiled!
In lonely loveliness she grew,—
A shape all music, light, and love,
With startling looks, so eloquent of
The spirit burning into view.
Such mystic lore was in her eyes,
And light of other worlds than ours,
She looked as she had fed on flowers,
And drunk the dews of Paradise[11]
...
Ah! she was one of those who come
With pledgèd promise not to stay
Long, ere the Angels let them stray
To nestle down in earthly home:
And, thro’ the windows of her eyes,
We often saw her saintly soul,
Serene, and sad, and beautiful,
Go sorrowing for lost Paradise.
She came—like music in the night
Floating as heaven in the brain,
A moment oped, and shut again,
And all is dark where all was light.
...
In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The Angels with us unawares.
Our beautiful Bird of light hath fled;
Awhile she sat with folded wings—
Sang round us a few hoverings—
Then straightway into glory sped.
And white-wing’d Angels nurture her;
With heaven’s white radiance robed and crown’d,
And all Love’s purple glory round,
She summers on the Hills of Myrrh.
Thro’ Childhood’s morning-land, serene
She walked betwixt us twain, like Love;
While, in a robe of light above,
Her better Angel walked unseen,—
Till Life’s highway broke bleak and wild;
Then, lest her starry garments trail
In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,
The Angel’s arms caught up the child.
Her wave of life hath backward roll’d
To the great ocean; on whose shore
We wander up and down, to store
Some treasures of the times of old:
And aye we seek and hunger on
For precious pearls and relics rare,
Strewn on the sands for us to wear
At heart, for love of her that’s gone.
GERALD MASSEY (_The Ballad of Babe Christabel_).
These exquisite verses appear to be forgotten.
* * * * *
If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
Make the low nature better by your throes!
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!
R. BROWNING (_James Lee’s Wife_).
* * * * *
... He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.
Hereditary bent
That hedges in intent
He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain.
He loves the souls He made,
He knows His own hand laid
On each the mark of some ancestral stain.
ANNA REEVE ALDRICH.
* * * * *
I have lost the dream of Doing,
And the other dream of Done,
The first spring in the pursuing,
The first pride in the Begun,—
First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won.
E. B. BROWNING (_The Lost Bower_).
It is the saddest of things that we lose our early enthusiasms.
* * * * *
The other (maiden) up arose[12]
And her fair lockes, which formerly were bound
Up in one knot, she low adowne did loose:
Which, flowing long and thick her clothed around.
And the ivorie in golden mantle gowned:
So that fair spectacle from him was reft,
Yet that, which reft it, no less faire was found:
So, hid in lockes and waves from looker’s theft,
Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.
Withall she laughèd, and she blushed withall,
That blushing to her laughter gave more grace,
And laughter to her blushing.
SPENSER (_Faerie Queene 2_, XII, 67).
* * * * *
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.
R. W. EMERSON (_Spiritual Laws_).
* * * * *
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 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 _shall_ be
their _complice_—_shall_ share their dangers—_shall_ 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 again
like deer they wheel round, and return, and stand, and gaze upon the
danger, until they grow brave once more.
A. W. KINGLAKE (_Eothen_).
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.
* * * * *
Discedant nunc amores; maneat Amor.
(Loves, farewell; let Love, the sole, remain.)
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Compare Shakespeare’s sonnet LXXI:
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
... for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
* * * * *
I saw a son weep o’er a mother’s grave:
“Ay, weep, poor boy—weep thy most bitter tears
That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love,
Forgetfulness grows over it like grass;
_That_ is the thing to weep for, not the dead.”
ALEXANDER SMITH (_A Boy’s Poem_)
* * * * *
UNTIL DEATH
If thou canst love another, be it so.
I would not reach out of my quiet grave
To bind thy heart, if it should choose to go.
Love shall not be a slave....
It would not make me sleep more peacefully,
That thou wert waiting all thy life in woe
For my poor sake. What love thou hast for me
Bestow it ere I go....
Forget me when I die. The violets
Above my rest will blossom just as blue
Nor miss thy tears—E’en Nature’s self forgets—
But while I live be true.
F. A. WESTBURY.
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:
If thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
As regards the latter poem, the curious fact is that it is
read as an exquisite piece of _music_, and not for any poetic
thought it contains. If it _has_ 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
_Britannica_ 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”:
Long ago and long ago,
And long ago still,
There dwelt three merry maidens
Upon a distant hill.
One was tall Meggan,
And one was dainty May,
But one was fair Margaret,
More fair than I can say,
Long ago and long ago.
* * * * *
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust for me?
And while in life’s long afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (_Snow-Bound_).
* * * * *
I have a dream—that some day I shall go
At break of dawn adown a rainy street,
A grey old street, and I shall come in the end
To the little house I have known, and stand; and you,
Mother of mine, who watch and wait for me.
Will you not hear my footstep in the street,
And, as of old, be ready at the door,
To give me rest again?... I shall come home.
H. D. LOWRY.
* * * * *
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
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.” _Forty years
after_ 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.
* * * * *
DEATH
It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life’s ruddy springs forget to flow;
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright
Be lapp’d in alien clay and laid below;
It is not death to know this,—but to know
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go
So duly and so oft—and when grass waves
Over the passed-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.
THOMAS HOOD.
* * * * *
A little pain, a little fond regret,
A little shame, and we are living yet,
While love, that should outlive us, lieth dead.
W. MORRIS.
* * * * *
O never rudely will I blame his faith
In the might of stars and angels!...
... For the stricken heart of Love
This visible nature, and this common world,
Is all too narrow: yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn,
For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birth-place:
Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays and talismans,
And spirits; and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
’Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.
S. T. COLERIDGE (_Wallenstein—The Piccolomini_).
_His faith._—Wallenstein, the great German soldier and
statesman (1583-1634) believed in astrology.
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.