Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,
And waiteth at the door.
There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.
TENNYSON (_The Death of the Old Year_).
* * * * *
To see the soul as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by
communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her
with the eye of reason, in her original purity—and then her beauty
will be revealed.... We must remember that we have seen her only in a
condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose
original image can hardly be discerned because his natural members are
broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all sorts of ways, and
incrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and stones, so
that he is more like some monster than his own natural form. And the soul
which we behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand
ills. But not there, Glaucon, not there must we look.
Where then!
At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what society
and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal
and eternal and divine; also how different she would become if wholly
following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of
the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells
and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up around her
because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the good things of this
life as they are termed: then you would see her as she is, and know ...
what her nature is.
PLATO (_Republic_, Bk. 10, Jowett’s translation).
Apart from the intrinsic interest of such a passage, the
picture of the old sea-god, with long hair and long beard, his
body ending in a scaly tail, battered about by the waves, and
overgrown with seaweed and shells, is very curious. Without
discussing how far the great philosopher himself or some other
advanced thinkers believed in such divinities, it must be
remembered that to the Greeks generally the gods were very real
personages.
* * * * *
Youth’s quick and warm, old age is slow and tame,
And only Heaven can fairly halve their blame.
To-day the passionate roses breathe and blow
And ask no counsel from to-morrow’s snow,
Whose fretwork sparkles to the winter moon
White, as if roses never flushed in June.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me an old aunt—a maiden
aunt—an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage and a front of light,
coffee-coloured hair—how my children should work work-bags for her,
and my Julia and I would make her comfortable! Sweet—sweet vision!
Foolish—foolish dream!
THACKERAY (_Vanity Fair_).
* * * * *
IDENTITY.
Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—
In Twilight-land—in No-Man’s land—
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.
“And who are you?” cried one a-gape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
“I know not,” said the second Shape,
“I only died last night!”
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
* * * * *
Veil not thy mirror, sweet Amine,
Till night shall also veil each star!
Thou seeest a twofold marvel there:
The only face so fair as thine,
The only eyes that, near or far,
Can gaze on thine without despair.
J. C. MANGAN.
* * * * *
Has anyone ever pinched into its pillulous smallness the cobweb of
pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?
GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).
* * * * *
TO R.K.
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrendous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman’s latest piece of graphic.
BROWNING.
Will there never come a season
Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose which knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse:
When the world shall cease to wonder
At the genius of an Ass,
And a boy’s eccentric blunder
Shall not bring success to pass:
When mankind shall be delivered,
From the clash of magazines,
And the inkstand shall be shivered
Into countless smithereens:
When there stands a muzzled stripling,
Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more.
JAMES KENNETH STEPHEN.
“R.K.” is Rudyard Kipling, but what was the “boy’s eccentric
blunder” that brought him success I do not know. Stephen in
this instance showed a want of judgment. The books Kipling had
then produced, _Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Departmental
Ditties_, and the six little books, _Soldiers Three_, etc.,
all written before the age of twenty-four, should have been
sufficient to show that the author was certainly not a
stripling to be “muzzled.” Stephen’s misjudgment was, however,
trivial when we remember how many important writers have failed
to understand and appreciate the most beautiful poems. Jeffrey
(1773-1850) thought to the end of his days that of the poets of
his time Keats and Shelley would die and Campbell and Rogers
alone survive. Shelley was _very_ unfortunate in his critics.
Matthew Arnold and Carlyle also disparaged him, Theodore Hook
said “Prometheus Unbound” was properly named as no one would
think of binding it; and worst of all was Emerson. He said
Shelley was not a poet, had no imagination and his muse was
uniformly imitative (“Thoughts on Modern Literature”); his
poetry was ‘rhymed English’ which ‘had no charm’ (“Poetry
and Imagination”). Just as amazing was the article in _The
Edinburgh Review_, 1816, on Coleridge’s volume containing
“Christabel,” “Kubla Khan,” etc. This article, usually
attributed to Hazlitt, and certainly having Jeffrey’s sanction,
said: “We look upon this publication as one of the most notable
pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been
guilty; and one of the boldest experiments that have as yet
been made upon the patience or understanding of the public.” De
Quincey said the style of Keats “belonged essentially to the
vilest collections of waxwork filigree or gilt gingerbread.”
Other instances are Swinburne’s abuse of George Eliot and
Walt Whitman, Carlyle’s brutality towards Lamb, Jeffrey’s
savage attack on Wordsworth (the famous “This will never do”
article—although it was not so very inexcusable), Edward
Fitzgerald’s letter that Mrs. Browning’s death was a relief
to him (“No more Aurora Leighs, thank God!”), Samuel Rogers’
statement that he “could not relish Shakespeare’s sonnets,” and
Steevens’ far worse condemnation of them, and indeed the list
could be extended indefinitely. On the other hand, unmerited
praise was given by whole generations of writers to poems
which are now properly forgotten. In face of such facts it is
somewhat of a mystery why the best things _do_ survive. See
next quotation.
* * * * *
If it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing has been for
centuries consecrated by public admiration, without possessing in a high
degree some kind of sterling excellence, it is not because the average
intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are competent in any
way to distinguish what is really excellent, but because all erroneous
opinion is inconsistent, and all ungrounded opinion transitory; so that
while the fancies and feelings which deny deserved honour, and award
what is undue, have neither root nor strength sufficient to maintain
consistent testimony for a length of time, the opinions formed on
right grounds by those few who are in reality competent judges, being
necessarily stable, communicate themselves gradually from mind to mind,
descending lower as they extend wider, until they leaven the whole lump,
and rule by absolute authority, even where the grounds and reasons for
them cannot be understood. On this gradual victory of what is consistent
over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of all that is highest
in art and literature.
JOHN RUSKIN (_Modern Painters_, I, 1).
This is an excellent suggestion in explanation of the question
raised in the preceding note. It is also interesting because
of the youth of this great writer at the time. Ruskin was born
in 1819, and the volume was _published_ in 1843, when he was
twenty-four. Because of his youth, it was thought inadvisable
to give his name as author, and, therefore, the book was
published as “by an Oxford Graduate.”
* * * * *
The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth, who owed nothing to
fortune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure
quality of his nature, shed an epic splendour around the facts of his
death, which has transfigured every particular into an universal symbol
for the eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our highest fact.
EMERSON (_Essay on Character_).
* * * * *
The best of men
That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.
THOMAS DEKKER (1570-1641).
* * * * *
Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating
Willest be asked, and Thou shalt answer then,
Show the hid heart beneath creation beating,
Smile with kind eyes, and be a man with men.
Were it not thus, O King of my salvation,
Many would curse to Thee, and I for one,
Fling Thee thy bliss and snatch at thy damnation,
Scorn and abhor the shining of the sun.
Ring with a reckless shivering of laughter
Wroth at the woe which Thou hast seen so long;
Question if any recompense hereafter
Waits to atone the intolerable wrong.
F. W. H. MYERS (1843-1901.) (_Saint Paul_).
_Willest be asked_, “requirest to be asked,” as in “God willeth
Samuel to yield unto the importunity of the people” (1 Sam.
viii., in margin).
_Saint Paul_ was written for the Seatonian prize for religious
English verse, Cambridge, about 1866, but failed to secure the
prize!
* * * * *
(Speaking of future state) “Those who are neither good nor bad, or are
too insignificant for notice, will be dropt entirely. This is my opinion.
It is consistent with my idea of God’s justice, and with the reason that
God has given me, and I gratefully know that He has given me a large
share of that Divine gift”(!)
THOMAS PAINE (_Age of Reason_).
* * * * *
SIXTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF LOVE (ΑΓΑΠΗ).
1. It is long-suffering.
2. is kind.
3. envieth not.
4. vaunteth not itself.
5. is not puffed up.
6. doth not behave itself unseemly.
7. seeketh not its own.
8. is not easily provoked.
9. thinketh no evil.
10. rejoiceth not in iniquity.
11. rejoiceth in the truth.
12. beareth all things.
13. believeth all things.
14. hopeth all things.
15. endureth all things.
16. never faileth.
ST. PAUL (_1 Cor._ xiii.)
Ἀγάπη, brotherly love, “_Though I have all knowledge and all
faith, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and have not ἀγάπη, it
profiteth me nothing._” (1 Cor. xiii, 2).
* * * * *
In the Eighth Century B.C., in the heart of a world of idolatrous
polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion
which appears to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius as the art of
Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. “And what doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?”[20]
T. H. HUXLEY (_Essays_, IV, 161).
* * * * *
The best of all we do and are,
Just God, forgive.
WORDSWORTH (_Thoughts near the Residence of
Burns_).
* * * * *
LOST DAYS.
The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them there; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
“I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”
“And I—and I—thyself,” (lo! each one saith,)
“And thou thyself to all eternity!”
D. G. ROSSETTI.
* * * * *
Count that day lost, whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no worthy action done.
ANON.
* * * * *
BIRTHDAYS.
“Time is the stuff of life”—then spend not thy days while they last
In dreams of an idle future, regrets for a vanished past;
The tombstones lie thickly behind thee, but the stream still hurries
thee on,
New worlds of thought to be traversed, new fields to be fought and won.
Let work be thy measure of life—then only the end is well—
The birthdays we hail so blithely are strokes of the passing bell.
W. E. H. LECKY.
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that
is the stuff life is made of.” (Franklin, _Poor Richard’s
Almanack_, 1757.)
* * * * *
Nothing is of greater value than a single day.
GOETHE (_Spruche im Prosa_).
* * * * *
Tears for the passionate hearts I might have won,
Tears for the age with which I might have striven,
Tears for a hundred years of work undone,
Crying like blood to Heaven.
WM. ALEXANDER.
* * * * *
My life, my beautiful life, all wasted;
The gold days, the blue days, to darkness sunk;
The bread was here, and I have not tasted:
The wine was here, and I have not drunk.
RICHARD MIDDLETON.
I do not find these lines in Middleton’s collected works, but I
think they are his.
* * * * *
And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away.”
TENNYSON (_The Poet’s Song_).
This often-quoted verse does not give the highest view of
poetry, as Tennyson’s own poems show. The poet sings of a
Universe,
Which moves with light and life informed,
Actual, divine and true.
He sings of Nature, Man, God, Immortality. (This note is from
an early letter of Hodgson’s. His quotation is from _The
Prelude_, Bk. XIV.)
* * * * *
Why are Time’s feet so swift and ours so slow!
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth
all the rest in doing his office? It is the Devil. He is the most
diligent preacher of all other, he is never out of his diocese, ye shall
never find him unoccupied, ye shall never find him out of the way, call
for him when you will; he is ever at home, the diligentest preacher in
all the Realm; ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you.... He is no
lordly loiterer, but a busy ploughman, so that among all the pack of them
the Devil shall go for my money! Therefore, ye prelates, learn of the
Devil to be diligent in doing of your office. If you will not learn of
God nor good men: for shame learn of the Devil.
BISHOP LATIMER (_Sermon on the Ploughers_, 1549).
* * * * *
APPRECIATION.
To the sea-shell’s spiral round
’Tis your heart that brings the sound:
The soft sea-murmurs, that you hear
Within, are captured from your ear.
You do poets and their song
A grievous wrong,
If your own soul does not bring
To their high imagining
As much beauty as they sing.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our
more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the
whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of
the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment
of NO sin? Can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse?
Has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is
dying—measured the work it has done, and the reward it has got—put his
hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones are piercing, and
so looked up to Heaven with an entire understanding of Heaven’s ways
about the horse? Yet the horse is a fact—no dream—no revelation among
the myrtle trees by night; and the dust it dies upon, and the dogs
that eat it, are facts; and yonder happy person, whose the horse was,
till its knees were broken over the hurdles; who had an immortal soul
to begin with, and wealth and peace to help forward his immortality;
who has also devoted the powers of his soul, and body, and wealth, and
peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent, and the
oppression of the poor; and has, at this actual moment of his prosperous
life, as many curses waiting round about him in calm shadow, with their
death-eyes fixed upon him, biding their time, as ever the poor cab-horse
had launched at him in meaningless blasphemies, when his failing feet
stumbled at the stones,—this happy person shall have no stripes,—shall
have only the horse’s fate of annihilation! Or, if other things are
indeed reserved for him, Heaven’s kindness or omnipotence is to be
doubted therefore!
We cannot reason of these things. But this I know—and this may by all men
be known—that no good or lovely thing exists in this world without its
correspondent darkness; and that the universe presents itself continually
to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and
the evil set on the right hand and the left.
John Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, V, 19).
It is one of the arguments in Plato’s _Phaedo_ that the soul
must survive, since otherwise terribly wicked and cruel men
would escape retribution; annihilation would be a good thing
for them.
* * * * *
All creatures and all objects, in degree,
Are friends and patrons of humanity.
There are to whom the garden, grove and field
Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield;
Who would not lightly violate the grace
The lowliest flower possesses in its place,
Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive,
Which nothing less than Infinite Power could give.
WORDSWORTH (_Humanity_).
* * * * *
Every man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the
Gauntlet in the cause of Verity: many, from the ignorance of these
Maximes, and an inconsiderate Zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged
the troops of Error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth. A
man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City and yet be forced
to surrender; ’tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to
hazzard her on a battle.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE (_Religio Medici_).
* * * * *
“Very well,” cried I, “that’s a good girl; I find you are perfectly
qualified for making converts, and so go help your mother to make a
gooseberry pye.”
GOLDSMITH (_The Vicar of Wakefield_).
* * * * *
White-handed Hope,
Thou hovering Angel girt with golden wings.
MILTON (_Comus_).
* * * * *
Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became Regret.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Silas Marner_, ch. 15).
* * * * *
By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it
is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against
evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness
narrower.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_, ch. 39).
* * * * *
Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!
Here is custom come your way;
Take my brute, and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay....
I am old, but let me drink;
Bring me spices, bring me wine;
I remember, when I think,
That my youth was half divine....
Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born....
Chant me now some wicked stave,
Till thy drooping courage rise,
And the glow-worm of the grave
Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes....
Change, reverting to the years,
When thy nerves could understand
What there is in loving tears,
And the warmth of hand in hand....
Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy days of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
TENNYSON (_The Vision of Sin_).
_Change_—i.e., change the subject. Many verses are omitted for
the sake of brevity.
* * * * *
A world without a contingency or an agony could have no hero and no
saint, and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a Son of God. But
for the suspended plot, that is folded in every life, history is a dead
chronicle of what was known before as well as after; art sinks into the
photograph of a moment, that hints at nothing else; and poetry breaks the
cords and throws the lyre away. There is no Epic of the certainties; and
no lyric without the surprise of sorrow and the sigh of fear. Whatever
touches and ennobles us in the lives and in the voices of the past is a
divine birth from human doubt and pain. Let then the shadows lie, and
the perspective of the light still deepen beyond our view; else, while
we walk together, our hearts will never burn within us as we go, and the
darkness as it falls, will deliver us into no hand that is Divine.
JAS. MARTINEAU (_Hours of Thought_, 1, 328).
The subject of the sermon is the _uncertainties_ of life, the
perils and catastrophies that cannot be foreseen or provided
for, death, disease, and other ills which may fall upon us at
any moment, the crises that arise in the history of men and
nations. It is by reason of these that _character_ is formed.
If everything happened by known rule, and could be predicted
as surely as the movements of the stars, we should have no
affections or emotions and would be mere creatures of habit.
From a recent book of poems, _The Lily of Malud_, by J. C.
Squire, I take the following musical verse. (“The Stronghold”
is where pain, hate, and all unpleasant things are excluded and
peace only reigns.)
But O, if you find that castle,
Draw back your foot from the gateway,
Let not its peace invite you,
Let not its offerings tempt you,
For faded and decayed like a garment,
Love to a dust will have fallen,
And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,
And hope will have gone with pain;
And of all the throbbing heart’s high courage
Nothing will remain.
Martineau not only did important work in philosophy, but he
was also eminent as a moral teacher. Taking together his
originality, sublimity of soul, and beauty of expression,
the sermons in _Hours of Thought_ and other similar writings
are the finest product of modern religious thought. They
indeed stand among the best productions of our _literature_,
and should be read even by those (if there are any such
persons) who love literature and thought but are indifferent
to religion. To illustrate this, I choose—almost at random—a
passage where the thought itself has no interest outside
religion (_Hours of Thought_, II. 334):—
Worship is the free offering of ourselves to God; ever renewed,
because ever imperfect. It expresses the consciousness that
we are His by right, yet have not duly passed into His hand;
that the soul has no true rest but in Him, yet has wandered in
strange flights until her wing is tired. It is her effort to
return home, the surrender again of her narrow self-will, her
prayer to be merged in a life diviner than her own. It is at
once the lowliest and loftiest attitude of her nature: we never
hide ourselves in ravine so deep; yet overhead we never see the
stars so clear and high. The sense of saddest estrangement, yet
the sense also of eternal affinity between us and God meet and
mingle in the act; breaking into the strains, now penitential
and now jubilant, that, to the critic’s reason, may sound at
variance but melt into harmony in the ear of a higher love.
This twofold aspect devotion must ever have, pale with weeping,
flushed with joy; deploring the past, trusting for the future;
ashamed of what is, kindled by what is meant to be; shadow
behind, and light before. Were we haunted by no presence of sin
and want, we should only browse on the pasture of nature; were
we stirred by no instinct of a holier kindred, we should not be
drawn towards the life of God.
* * * * *
GROWN UP.
My son is straight and strong,
Ready of lip and limb;
’Twas the dream of my whole life long
To bear a son like him.
He has griefs I cannot guess,
He has joys I cannot know:
I love him none the less—
With a man it should be so.
But where, where, where
Is the child so dear to me,
With the silken-golden hair
Who sobbed upon my knee?
ELIZABETH WATERHOUSE.
* * * * *
For her alone the sea-breeze seemed to blow,
For her in music did the white surf fall,
For her alone the wheeling birds did call
Over the shallows, and the sky for her
Was set with white clouds far away and clear,
E’en as her love, this strong and lovely one,
Who held her hand, was but for her alone.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED (_Perseus and Andromeda_).
* * * * *
He cometh not a king to reign;
The world’s long hope is dim;
The weary centuries watch in vain
The clouds of heaven for Him.
And not for sign in heaven above
Or earth below they look,
Who know with John His smile of love,
With Peter His rebuke.
In joy of inward peace, or sense
Of sorrow over sin,
He is His own best evidence
His witness is within.
The healing of His seamless dress,
Is by our beds of pain;
We touch Him in life’s throng and press,
And we are whole again.