And touch our eyelids and drink our breath?
The first, with a flower in his hand, is Sleep;
The next, with a star on his brow, is Death.
R. BUCHANAN (_Balder the Beautiful_).
* * * * *
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life—
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable life.
SHELLEY (_Adonaïs_ XXXIX).
* * * * *
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did—and does—smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fails me, I’ll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
R. BROWNING (_At the Mermaid_).
“My life did—and does—smack sweet”—see note p. 236.
* * * * *
THE LAMB
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bade thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
He is called by thy name.
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!
W. BLAKE (1757-1827).
* * * * *
Who can wrestle against Sleep? Yet is that giant very gentleness.
MARTIN TUPPER (_Of Beauty_).
* * * * *
ON A FINE MORNING
I.
Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the Gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.
II.
Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its iridized embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.
THOMAS HARDY.
This is not in the _Selected Poems_. It is interesting as
showing Mr. Hardy in an optimistic mood.
* * * * *
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh, what were man? a world without a sun!
THOMAS CAMPBELL (_Pleasures of Hope, Pt. II_).
* * * * *
Of two opposite methods of action, do you desire to know which should
have the preference? Calculate their effects in pleasures and pains, and
prefer that which promises the greater sum of pleasures.
* * * * *
Think not that a man will so much as lift up his little finger on your
behalf, unless he sees his advantage in it.
JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832).
These cold-blooded and repulsive aphorisms are typical of
Bentham’s Utilitarian philosophy, from which all sense of duty
and moral aspiration were excluded. It is strange that these
views should be held by a great thinker who was himself of
benevolent character. Such a doctrine could not have survived
to my time, had it not been supplemented by John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873), who gave a different place to the humanist
element. While still adhering to Bentham’s doctrine that there
is no good but pleasure and no evil but pain, he introduced as
the higher forms of pleasure those derived from the wish for
self-culture and the desire to satisfy our mental and moral
aims. He gave priority to all the sympathetic and altruistic
motives that govern our actions. Whereas Bentham held that all
pleasures were equal and could be counted in one column, Mill
said that they differed in quality, that they could no more be
added up in one column than pounds, shillings and pence; that,
in fact, there is no equivalent for a higher pleasure in any
quantity of a lower one. This was typical of Mill’s sincerity:
but he did not see that his additions were fatal to Bentham’s
doctrine and to hedonism generally. How, for instance, is a
higher pleasure to be known for a higher? In what respect is
an intellectual pleasure or the satisfaction of doing one’s
duty of higher quality than the gratification of the senses? To
ascertain this it is necessary to pass from the pleasure itself
to the thing that gives the pleasure or, in other words, to the
character that finds the pleasure. Many illustrations of this
might be given. In one of Sir Alfred Lyall’s poems, which is
founded on fact, an Englishman who has been captured by Arabs
has no religious belief; his loved ones are waiting his return;
he can save his life if he will only repeat the Mahomedan
formula; if he dies no one will know of his self-sacrifice: yet
he decides to die for the honour of England. However, Bentham’s
careful calculus of equal pleasures and pains, “push-pin” being
“worth as much as poetry,”[18] came to an end through Mill, and
Mill at once made way for Spencer on the one hand, and T. H.
Green on the other; both of these rejected the calculation of
pleasures or happiness as the standard of right either for the
individual or the greatest number. In all directions the low
moral stage of philosophic thought represented by Benthamism
has been passed through and forgotten. We no longer hold the
belief that the only sphere of Government is to protect our
persons and property, but follow loftier ideals; and in art and
poetry we look for higher aims than mere luxury and sensuous
pleasure.
* * * * *
LIFE
We are born; we laugh; we weep;
We love; we droop; we die!
Ah! wherefore do we laugh, or weep?
Why do we live, or die?
Who knows that secret deep?
Alas, not I!
Why doth the violet spring
Unseen by human eye?
Why do the radiant seasons bring
Sweet thoughts that quickly fly?
Why do our fond hearts cling
To things that die?
We toil,—through pain and wrong;
We fight,—and fly;
We love; we lose; and then, ere long,
Stone dead we lie.
Life! is _all_ thy song
Endure and—die?
B. W. PROCTER (_Barry Cornwall_).
* * * * *
Stop and consider! Life is but a day;
A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep
While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep
Of Montmorenci,—Why so sad a moan?
Life is the rose’s hope while yet unblown;
The reading of an ever-changing tale;
The light uplifting of a maiden’s veil;
A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
A laughing school boy, without grief or care,
Riding the springy branches of an elm.
KEATS (_Sleep and Poetry_).
Life is compared to the brief fall of a dewdrop, the Indian’s
unconscious sleep while his boat hastens to destruction; but
life also is Hope, Intellect, Beauty, and Physical Enjoyment.
* * * * *
When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay—
To-morrow’s falser than the former day;
Lies worse and, while it says we shall be blessed
With some new joys, cuts off what we possesst.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And, from the dregs of life, think to receive
What the first sprightly running would not give,
I’m tired with waiting for this chymic gold,
Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.
JOHN DRYDEN (_Aureng-zebe_).
* * * * *
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
R. BROWNING (_Home-Thoughts from Abroad_).
* * * * *
PEU DE CHOSE ET PRESQUE TROP.
La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de haine ...
Et puis—bonjour!
La vie est brève:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de rêve ...
Et puis—bonsoir!
(Life is vain: A little love, A little hate, ... And then—good-day!)
(Life is short: A little hope, A little dream, ... And then—good night!)
LEON MONTENAEKEN.
This haunting little lyric is a literary curiosity from one
point of view. In spite of expostulations from the author (a
Belgian poet), and repeated public statements by others from
time to time, the poem is constantly being wrongly attributed
to one or another of the French poets. It appeared in _Le
Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique_, 1887, but had probably been
written and published some years before that date. In the
_Nineteenth Century_, September, 1893, William Sharp pointed
out that the poem was always being attributed to the wrong
author—even Andrew Lang being one of the culprits. The author
himself wrote to _The Literary World_ of June 3, 1904, to
the same effect. The subject was again spoken of in _Notes
and Queries_, January 5, 1907, when the author’s letter was
republished. London _Truth_ also brought the matter up at one
time, and probably the same fact has been publicly pointed
out elsewhere a hundred times—but the poem continues to be
attributed to the wrong author! In the _Dictionary of Foreign
Phrases and Classical Quotations_, by H. P. Jones, published so
recently as 1913, the verses are ascribed to Alfred de Musset.
There is a third verse, which reads like an answer or retort to
the other two:
La vie est telle,
Que Dieu la fit;
Et telle, quelle,
Elle suffit!
(Life is such As God made it, And, just as it is, ... It
suffices!)
One of the writers to _Notes and Queries_ quotes the following
lines:
On entre, on crie,
Et c’est la vie!
On baîlle, on sort,
Et c’est la mort!
(_Ausone de Chancel_, 1836)
(You enter, you cry, and that is life: you yawn, you go out,
and that is death.)
* * * * *
A very strange, fantastic world—where each one pursues his own golden
bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing the same. I have been
thinking how a moral Linnæus would classify our race.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
TWO LOVERS
Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They leaned soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair.
And heard the wooing thrushes sing,
O budding time!
O love’s blest prime!
Two wedded from the portal stept:
The bells made happy carollings,
The air was soft as fanning wings,
White petals on the pathway slept.
O pure-eyed bride!
O tender pride!
Two faces o’er a cradle bent:
Two hands above the head were locked;
These pressed each other while they rocked.
Those watched a life that love had sent.
O solemn hour!
O hidden power!
Two parents by the evening fire:
The red light fell about their knees
On heads that rose by slow degrees
Like buds upon the lily spire.
O patient life!
O tender strife
The two still sat together there,
The red light shone about their knees:
But all the heads by slow degrees
Had gone and left that lonely pair.
O voyage fast!
O vanished past!
The red light shone upon the floor
And made the space between them wide;
They drew their chairs up side by side,
Their pale cheeks joined, and said, “Once more!”
O memories!
O past that is!
GEORGE ELIOT.
* * * * *
Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived;
But what torments of pain you endured
From evils that never arrived!
R. W. EMERSON (_From the French_).
This sentiment has been expressed by many different authors.
Some friends of mine have as their favourite motto, “I have had
many troubles in my life, and most of them never happened.”
* * * * *
With him ther was his son, a yong Squyer,[19] Squire
A lovyere and a lusty bachelor, lover
With lokkès crulle, as they were leyd in presse. curly locks
Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse....
Singinge he was, or floytinge, al the day; playing the flute
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his goune, with slevès long and wide,
Well coude he sitte on hors and fairè ride.
CHAUCER (_Canterbury Tales—Prologue_).
* * * * *
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held her goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid.
KEATS (_Fancy_).
* * * * *
Like Angels stopped upon the wing by sound
Of harmony from heaven’s remotest spheres.
WORDSWORTH (_The Prelude, Bk. XIV._)
* * * * *
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,
Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,
Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess’d.
G. MEREDITH (_Love in the Valley_).
* * * * *
The blessed Damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary’s gift,
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
D. G. ROSSETTI (_The Blessed Damozel_).
* * * * *
When as in silk my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes!
ROBERT HERRICK (_Upon Julia’s Clothes_),
The six quotations above are from a series of word-pictures
(see p. 85).
* * * * *
Whatever else may or may not work on through eternity, we are bound to
believe that the love, which moved the Father to redeem the world at such
infinite cost, must work on, while there is one pang in the universe,
born of sin, which can touch the Divine pity, or one wretched prodigal in
rags and hunger far from the home and the heart of God.
REV. BALDWIN BROWN.
Canon Farrar is not happy in his rejoinder to the argument that to cast a
doubt on the endlessness of punishment is to invalidate the argument for
the endlessness of bliss, since both rest on exactly the same Biblical
sanction. There are three replies, cumulatively exhaustive, which he has
failed to adduce.... (Firstly, evil and temptation are banished from
heaven; Second, the two arguments do _not_ rest on the same Biblical
sanction) ... Thirdly, the difference of the two eternities, heaven and
hell, consists in the presence or absence of God. Let us put α for each
of those eternities or aeons, and θ to denote Him. The assertion of the
equality of the two, then, is that α + θ = α - θ, which can stand only if
θ = 0, the postulate of atheism.
REV. R. F. LITTLEDALE, D.C.L.
Both these passages come from an Article in the _Contemporary_
for April, 1878.
As this book is partly intended to revive the memories of
forty years ago, I include these out of the passages in my
commonplace book which refer to the intense struggle that then
raged over the question of Eternal Punishment. Surely no other
word, since the world began, raised so tremendous an issue,
created such conflict and caused so much heart-burning as the
one word αἰώνιος.
(Liddell and Scott, 1901, gives the following meanings for
αἰώνιος: _lasting for an age_, _perpetual_, _everlasting_,
_eternal_.)
* * * * *
I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of Hell, nor
never grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed my
contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and
am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure the misery of
the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs, methinks,
no addition to compleat our afflictions. That terrible term hath never
detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof.
I fear GOD, yet am not afraid of Him: His Mercies make me ashamed of my
sins, before His Judgments afraid thereof.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682) (_Religio Medici_).
* * * * *
Ne nous imaginons pas que l’enfer consiste dans ces étangs de feu et de
soufre, dans ces flammes éternellement dévorantes, dans cette rage, dans
ce désespoir, dans cet horrible grincement de dents. L’enfer, si nous
l’entendons, c’est péché même: l’enfer, c’est d’être éloigné de Dieu.
BOSSUET (1627-1704).
(Let us not imagine that hell consists in those lakes of fire
and brimstone, in those eternally-devouring flames, in that
rage, in that despair, in that horrible gnashing of teeth.
Hell, if we understand it aright, is sin itself: hell consists
in being banished from God.)
* * * * *
... Sir Henry Wotton’s celebrated answer to a priest in Italy, who asked
him, “Where was your religion to be found before Luther?” “My religion
was to be found there—where yours is not to be found now—in the written
word of God.” In Selden’s _Table Talk_ we have the following more witty
reply made to the same question: “Where was America an hundred or six
score years ago?”
BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_, VIII, 176.
I do not wish to introduce sectarian questions, but these
answers are interesting and clever. The next quotation is
pro-Catholic.
* * * * *
During the horrible time of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, a French
priest and a Jew became very intimate friends. The priest, very anxious
for the future welfare of his friend, urged him to be received into the
church: and the Jew promised to earnestly consider this advice. The
priest, however, gave up all hope on learning that the Jew was called by
his business to Rome, where he would see the unutterably monstrous life
of the Pope and clergy. To his surprise the Jew on his return announced
that he wished to be baptized, saying that a religion, which could still
exist in spite of such abominations, must be the true religion.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
I noted this from an old French book, but the real story must
be the earlier one of Boccaccio (1315-1375). Alexander Borgia
was Pope, 1492-1503.
* * * * *
I verily believe that, if the knife were put into my hand, I should not
have strength and energy enough to stick it into a Dissenter.
SYDNEY SMITH.
Shortly before his death in 1844 he gave this as a singular
proof of his declining strength! (See _Memoir_ by his daughter,
Lady Holland).
* * * * *
A hundred times when, roving high and low,
I have been harassed with the toil of verse,
Much pains and little progress, and at once
Some lovely Image in the song rose up
Full-formed like Venus rising from the sea.
W. WORDSWORTH (_Prelude, Bk. IV_).
The “Prelude” is extremely interesting as a poet’s
autobiography.
* * * * *
LONG EXPECTED
O many and many a day before we met,
I knew some spirit walked the world alone,
Awaiting the Belovèd from afar;
And I was the anointed chosen one
Of all the world to crown her queenly brows
With the imperial crown of human love.
I knew my sunshine somewhere warmed the world,
And I should reach it, in His own good time
Who sendeth sun, and dew, and love for all....
Earth, with her thousand voices, talked of thee—
Sweet winds, and whispering leaves, and piping birds,
The hum of happiness in summer woods,
And the light dropping of the silver rain;
And standing as in God’s own presence-chamber.
When silence lay like sleep upon the world,
And it seemed rich to die, alone with Night,
Like Moses ’neath the kisses of God’s lips,
The stars have trembled thro’ the holy hush,
And smiled down tenderly, and read to me
The love hid for me in a budding breast,
Like incense folded in a young flower’s heart.
GERALD MASSEY
“Rich to die” is reminiscent of Keats’ _Ode to a Nightingale_:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.
* * * * *
“Come back, come back”; behold with straining mast
And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast;
With one new sun to see her voyage o’er,
With morning light to touch her native shore,
“Come back, come back.”
“Come back, come back”; across the flying foam,
We hear faint far-off voices call us home,
“Come back,” ye seem to say; “Ye seek in vain;
We went, we sought, and homeward turned again.
Come back, come back.”
“Come back, come back”; and whither back or why?
To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try;
Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street;
Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.
“Come back, come back.”
“Come back, come back”; and whither and for what?
To finger idly some old Gordian knot,
Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,
And with much toil attain to half-believe.
“Come back, come back.”
“Come back, come back”; yea back, indeed, do go
Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;
Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,
And wishes idly struggle in the strings;
“Come back, come back.”...
“Come back, come back!”
Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back;
The long smoke wavers on the homeward track,
Back fly with winds things which the winds obey—
The strong ship follows its appointed way.
A. H. CLOUGH (_Songs in Absence_).
I have ventured to put quotation marks in the above to make
the meaning clear at first view. Also—but that italics seldom
look well in a poem—I would have written the last two lines as
follows:
_Back_ fly with winds _things which the winds obey_—
The _strong_ ship follows its appointed way.
* * * * *
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move
Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,
Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,
And all these triumphs for thy beauty’s sake:
When thou hast told these honours done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
THOMAS CAMPION.
* * * * *
A QUESTION
To Fausta.
Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
Like the wave;
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles; and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.
Dreams dawn and fly, friends smile and die
Like spring flowers;
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves with bitter tears
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts and sick with fears,
Count the hours.
We count the hours! These dreams of ours,
False and hollow,
Do we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smiled and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow?
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
* * * * *
Dead! that is the word
That rings through my brain till it crazes!
Dead, while the mayflowers bud and blow,
While the green creeps over the white of the snow,
While the wild woods ring with the song of the bird,
And the fields are a-bloom with daisies.
See! even the clod
Thrills, with life’s glad passion shaken!
The vagabond weeds, with their vagrant train,
Laugh in the sun, and weep in the rain,
The blue sky smiles like the eye of God,
Only my dead do not waken.
Dead! There is the word
That I sit in the darkness and ponder!
Why should the river, the sky and the sea
Babble of summer and joy to me,
While a strong, true heart, with its pulse unstirred,
Lies hushed in the silence yonder?
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
Our voices one by one
Fail in the hymn begun;
Our last sad song of Life is done,
Our first sweet song of Death.
EDMUND GOSSE (_Encomium Mortis_).
This poem appeared in early editions of _On viol and Flute_,
but is now omitted from Mr. Gosse’s poems.
* * * * *
There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,
Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten,
With human sensations and voice and corporeal members;
So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man’s fashion,
And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead,
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.
XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON (About 570 B.C.).
I do not know whose paraphrase this is; it was prefixed by
Tyndall to his Belfast Address, 1874. He probably imagined that
these lines contained an argument in favour of materialism; but
on the contrary the Greek philosopher affirms the existence of
a supreme God. All that he says is that the conception of him
as resembling a mortal in his physical attributes is wrong.
At the back of Tyndall’s mind was no doubt the prevalent idea
that any “anthropomorphic” conception of the _nature_ of the
Deity is necessarily absurd. But there is nothing unreasonable
in believing that His nature, though immeasurably superior,
is nevertheless _akin_ to our own. The argument is that the
source or power of the world must be greater than the highest
thing it has produced, the mind of man; and that it must more
nearly resemble the higher than the lower of its products. In
particular it is impossible for us to believe that our moral
ideas of truth, justice, right and wrong, etc., can differ at
all in _kind_, however much in _degree_, from those of God.
So also our _reason_ must be akin to His _insight_. Such a
belief should be regarded, not as “anthropomorphic,” but as
(in a sense different from that of Clifford and Harrison) a
“deification of man”—the recognition of the Divine that is in
him.
* * * * *
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying....