Such I pronounce Pompilia, then as now
Perfect in whiteness: stoop thou down, my child..
My rose, I gather for the breast of God..
And surely not so very much apart,
Need I place thee, my warrior-priest..
In thought, word and deed,
How throughout all thy warfare thou wast pure,
I find it easy to believe: and if
At any fateful moment of the strange
Adventure, the strong passion of that strait,
Fear and surprise may have revealed too much,—
As when a thundrous midnight, with black air
That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell,
Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed
Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides
Immensity of sweetness,—so, perchance,
Might the surprise and fear release too much
The perfect beauty of the body and soul
Thou savedst in thy passion for God’s sake,
He who is Pity. Was the trial sore?
Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!
Why comes temptation but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his feet,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?
R. BROWNING (_The Ring and the Book, X_).
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
Some sheathed
Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides
Immensity of sweetness.
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 _Letters, etc., of Coleridge_). 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 _without rain or
other moisture_.
The quotation is from the fine judgment which the Pope delivers.
* * * * *
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.
SWIFT (_Gulliver’s Travels_).
* * * * *
A child of our grandmother Eve, a female, or, for thy more sweet
understanding, a woman.
(_Love’s Labour Lost, I, 1._)
* * * * *
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.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682) (_Religio Medici_).
* * * * *
Give me but what this ribband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round!
EDMUND WALLER (1606-1687) (_On a Girdle_).
* * * * *
A woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice
that I am acquainted with.
J. P. F. RICHTER (_Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces_).
* * * * *
If she be made of white and red
Her faults will ne’er be known.
(_Love’s Labour Lost, I, 2_).
* * * * *
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.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me.
ROBERT HERRICK (_To Anthea_).
* * * * *
As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take:
Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,
And be his Image, or not his, but He.
JOHN DONNE (_The Cross_).
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 _image_, but _Himself_.
* * * * *
What is experience? A little cottage made with the _débris_ of those
palaces of gold and marble which we call our _illusions_.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain.
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
SHELLEY (_Adonaïs, an Elegy on Keats, XL_).
This verse is engraved on Shelley’s own monument in the Priory
Church at Christchurch, Hampshire.
* * * * *
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.
S. T. COLERIDGE (_Table Talk_).
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.
* * * * *
THE BALLAD OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
’Twas the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay in the Field of Blood;
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Beside the body stood.
Black was the earth by night,
And black was the sky;
Black, black were the broken clouds,
Tho’ the red Moon went by....
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,
So grim, and gaunt, and gray,
Raised the body of Judas Iscariot,
And carried it away.
...
For days and nights he wandered on
Upon an open plain,
And the days went by like blinding mist,
And the nights like rushing rain.
He wandered east, he wandered west,
And heard no human sound;
For months and years, in grief and tears,
He wandered round and round....
...
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,
Strange, and sad, and tall,
Stood all alone at dead of night
Before a lighted hall.
And the wold was white with snow,
And his foot-marks black and damp,
And the ghost of the silvern Moon arose,
Holding her yellow lamp.
And the icicles were on the eaves,
And the walls were deep with white,
And the shadows of the guests within
Pass’d on the window light.
The shadows of the wedding guests
Did strangely come and go,
And the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay stretch’d along the snow.
The body of Judas Iscariot
Lay stretched along the snow;
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Ran swiftly to and fro.
To and fro, and up and down,
He ran so swiftly there,
As round and round the frozen Pole
Glideth the lean white bear.
’Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head,
And the lights burnt bright and clear—
“Oh, who is that,” the Bridegroom said,
“Whose weary feet I hear?”
’Twas one look’d from the lighted hall,
And answered soft and slow,
“It is a wolf runs up and down
With a black track in the snow.”
The Bridegroom in his robe of white
Sat at the table-head—
“Oh, who is that who moans without?”
The blessed Bridegroom said.
’Twas one looked from the lighted hall,
And answered fierce and low
“’Tis the soul of Judas Iscariot
Gliding to and fro.”
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Did hush itself and stand.
And saw the Bridegroom at the door
With a light in his hand.
The Bridegroom stood in the open door,
And he was clad in white,
And far within the Lord’s Supper
Was spread so broad and bright.
The Bridegroom shaded his eyes and look’d,
And his face was bright to see—
“What dost thou here at the Lord’s Supper
With thy body’s sins?” said he.
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Stood black, and sad, and bare—
“I have wandered many nights and days;
There is no light elsewhere.”
’Twas the wedding guests cried out within,
And their eyes were fierce and bright—
“Scourge the soul of Judas Iscariot
Away into the night!”
The Bridegroom stood in the open door,
And he waved hands still and slow,
And the third time that he waved his hands
The air was thick with snow.
And of every flake of falling snow,
Before it touched the ground,
There came a dove, and a thousand doves
Made sweet sound.
’Twas the body of Judas Iscariot
Floated away full fleet,
And the wings of the doves that bare it off
Were like its winding-sheet.
’Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door,
And beckon’d, smiling sweet;
’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Stole in, and fell at his feet.
“The Holy Supper is spread within,
And the many candles shine,
And I have waited long for thee
Before I poured the wine!”
The supper wine is poured at last,
The lights burn bright and fair,
Iscariot washes the Bridegroom’s feet,
And dries them with his hair.
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
See reference to Buchanan in the Preface.
* * * * *
Now, as of old,
Man by himself is priced:
For thirty pieces Judas sold
Himself, not Christ.
HESTER CHOLMONDELEY.
I learn from the _New Statesman_ reviewer of the first English
Edition that these lines were by Hester, a gifted sister of
Mary Cholmondeley. She died at 22.
* * * * *
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.
ALEXANDER SMITH (_On the Writing of Essays_).
* * * * *
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.
SYDNEY SMITH.
* * * * *
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.
S. T. COLERIDGE (_Aids to Reflection_).
* * * * *
I have given no man of my fruit to eat,
I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.
Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,
This wild new growth of the corn and vine,
This wine and bread without lees or leaven,
We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,
Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,
One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.
In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
Death consume as a thing unclean,
Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast
Soul to soul while the years fell past;
Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;
Had the chance been with us that has not been.
SWINBURNE (_The Triumph of Time_).
* * * * *
But she is far away
Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar
Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey
And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day
When we shall meet once more.
Oh sweet her bending grace
Then when I kneel beside her feet;
And sweet her eyes o’erhanging heaven; and sweet
The gathering folds of her embrace;
And her fall’n hair at last shed round my face
When breaths and tears shall meet ...
Ah! by a colder wave
On deathlier airs the hour must come
Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
Between the lips of the low cave
Against that night the lapping waters lave,
And the dark lips are dumb.
But there Love’s self doth stand,
And with Life’s weary wings far-flown,
And with Death’s eyes that make the water moan,
Gathers the water in his hand:
And they that drink know nought of sky or land
But only love alone.
D. G. ROSSETTI (_The Stream’s Secret_).
* * * * *
Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here,
With Angels’ faces, and harmful, hellish hearts,
With smiling looks, and deep deceitful thoughts,
With tender skins, and stony cruel minds....
The younger sort come piping on apace
In whistles made of fine enticing wood,
Till they have caught the birds for whom they brided.
The elder sort go stately stalking on,
And on their backs they bear both land and fee,
Castles and Towers, revénues and receipts,
Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all.
What should these be? (Speak you, my lovely lord!)
They be not men: for why? they have no beards.
They be no boys, which wear such side-long gowns.
What be they? women, masking in men’s weeds,
With dutchkin doublets and with jerkins jagged,
With Spanish spangs and ruffs set out of France.
They be so sure even _Wo_ to _Men_ indeed.
High time it were for my poor muse to wink,
Since all the hands, all paper, pen and ink,
Which ever yet this wretched world possessed,
Cannot describe this Sex in colours due.
GASCOIGNE (_The Steele Glas_, 1576).
* * * * *
I’m not denying the women are foolish: God Almighty made ’em to match the
men.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Adam Bede_).
* * * * *
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
J. R. LOWELL (_Stanzas on Freedom_).
* * * * *
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.
W. M. THACKERAY (_Pendennis, XXIII_).
* * * * *
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 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.
R. L. STEVENSON (_Pulvis et Umbra_).
* * * * *
Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
WORDSWORTH (_Ode to Duty_).
* * * * *
A CHARGE.
If thou has squander’d years to grave a gem
Commission’d by thy absent Lord, and while
’Tis incomplete,
Others would bribe thy needy skill to them—
Dismiss them to the street!
Should’st thou at last discover Beauty’s grove,
At last be panting on the fragrant verge,
But in the track,
Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love—
Turn at her bidding back.
When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears,
And every spectre mutters up more dire
To snatch control
And loose to madness thy deep-kennell’d Fears—
Then to the helm, O Soul!
Last; if upon the cold green-mantling sea
Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar,
Both castaway,
And one must perish—let it not be he
Whom thou art sworn to obey!
HERBERT TRENCH (_Born 1865_).
* * * * *
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.
JAMES MARTINEAU (_Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 42_).
* * * * *
There is in man a _Higher_ than Love of Happiness; he can do without
Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach
forth this same _Higher_ 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
_Worship of Sorrow_, ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has
not that Worship originated, and been generated? Is it not _here_? 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.
THOMAS CARLYLE (_Sartor Resartus_).
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.
* * * * *
He that hath found some fledged bird’s nest may know
At first sight, if the bird be flown;
But what fair well or grove he sings in now
That is to him unknown.
HENRY VAUGHAN (_Friends Departed_).
For the subject of the verse see title of poem.
* * * * *
Must it last for ever,
The passionate endeavour,
Ah, have ye, there in heaven, hearts to throb and still aspire?
In the life you know now,
Rendered white as snow now,
Do fresher glory-heights arise, and beckon higher—higher?
Are you dreaming, dreaming,
Is your soul still roaming,
Still gazing upward as we gazed, of old in the autumn gloaming?
But ah, that pale moon roaming
Thro’ fleecy mists of gloaming,
Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powder’d sky,
And ah, the days departed
With your friendship gentle-hearted,
And ah, the dream we dreamt that night, together you and I!
Is it fashioned wisely,
To help us or to blind us,
That at each height we gain we turn, and behold a heaven behind us?
R. BUCHANAN (_To David in Heaven_).
David Gray was a young poet and a great friend of Buchanan’s.
Another verse in the poem is:
In some heaven star-lighted,
Are you now united
Unto the poet-spirits that you loved of English race?
Is Chatterton still dreaming?
And, to give it stately seeming,
Has the music of his last strong song passed into Keats’s face?
Is Wordsworth there? and Spenser?
Beyond the grave’s black portals,
Can the grand eye of Milton _see_ the glory he sang to mortals?
* * * * *
What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Angelo and me
To cover.
ROBERT BROWNING (_Andrea del Sarto_).
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.
* * * * *
Their noon-day never knows
What names immortal are:
’Tis night alone that shows
How star surpasseth star.
J. B. TABB (_Fame_).
* * * * *
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
S. T. COLERIDGE (_Kubla Khan_).
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.
* * * * *
Behold the Nereïds under the green sea,
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,
Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.
SHELLEY (_Prometheus Unbound_).
* * * * *
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square:
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
TENNYSON (_The Princess_).
* * * * *
“But show me the child thou callest mine,
Is she out to-night in the ghost’s sunshine?”
“In St. Peter’s Church she is playing on,
At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.
When the moonbeams right through the window go,
Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,
She says the rest of them do not stir,
But one comes down to play with her.”
G. MACDONALD (_Phantastes_).
It is a ghost-child who is playing in the great cathedral.
* * * * *
Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings,
They lay down in their curtained bed.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (_Goblin Market_).
* * * * *
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn;
The cow’s in the meadow, the sheep in the corn;
Is this the way you mind your sheep,
Under the haycock fast asleep?
_Nursery Rhyme._
Edward Fitzgerald, quoting this in “Euphranor,” says the
“meadow” is the grass reserved for meadowing, or mowing.
* * * * *
THE FEAST OF ADONIS.
_Gorgo._ Is Praxinoë at home?
_Praxinoë._ My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I am. Euno, find a
chair—get a cushion for it.
_Gorgo._ It will do beautifully as it is.
_Praxinoë._ Do sit down.
_Gorgo._ 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 _too_ far off.
_Praxinoë._ 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!
_Gorgo._ My dear, don’t talk so of your husband before the little fellow.
Just see how astonished he looks at you. (_Talking to the child._) Never
mind, Zopyrio my pet, she is not talking about papa. (Good heavens, the
child does really understand.) Pretty papa!
_Praxinoë._ 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!