lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds.
Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble,
and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad
straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun,
and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across
her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow,
almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed,
befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might see
that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on
dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. Apparently she
found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her
mouth. Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite
proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully
have her scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries.
Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry
is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat: mouth, eye,
and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it was
with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her,
all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy
copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with
thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers:
a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude: a boat slipped
toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit,
and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories,
and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded
by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weirfall’s
thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a
bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The
Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles,
and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the
meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful, that though
he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then
one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and
saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather what it sought.
A stroke from his right brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up
dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang
from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she
had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself,
he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he
followed her....
To-morrow this place will have a memory—the river and the meadow, and
the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the
skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned
chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries.
GEORGE MEREDITH (_The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_).
* * * * *
LETTY’S GLOBE
When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a coloured sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peeped
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped
And laughed and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turned her sweet unlearnèd eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—
“Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!”
And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER.
Charles Tennyson, a brother of Lord Tennyson and author with
him of _Poems by Two Brothers_, took the name of Turner.
* * * * *
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world....
This is life to come,
Which martyr’d men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty—
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense,
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
GEORGE ELIOT.
There is an infinite pathos in these lines. Having lost her
faith in a future life, George Eliot tries to find consolation
in the thought that, when she has passed into nothingness—when
she “joins the choir invisible”—she will have done something to
ennoble the minds of those who come after her. But why should
generation after generation of insect-lives waste themselves in
raising and purifying the minds of the generations that follow,
if all in turn pass into nothingness? The higher and purer men
became, the more they would love their fellow-beings and the
more they would shudder at the insensate pain and cruelty in
the world—the physical torture they themselves endure, and the
mental torture both of losing for ever those they love and of
seeing the sufferings of others. One should act in conformity
with one’s belief. Instead of thus adding greater pain and
sorrow to each succeeding generation, the effort should be to
coarsen and brutalize our natures, so that love, duty, and
moral aspiration shall disappear, and we shall cease to be
saddened by the appalling cruelty of our existence. Our lives
should, in fact, correspond with the brutal, ugly and stupid
scheme of the universe.
This is the direct answer to George Eliot, allowing her very
important assumption _that we have a duty towards others_,
including those who come after us. But this assumption is
logically unwarranted, if at the end of our brief years we
pass into nothingness and have no further concern with any
living being. This brings us to a familiar train of argument.
Why should we be irresistibly impelled to sacrifice ourselves
for the good of others? And, apart from altruism, why should
we develop _our own_ higher attributes—why seek to ennoble
our own selves, since those selves disappear? Why fill with
jewels the hollow log that is to be thrown on the fire? Why
are we swayed by a sense of honour, a desire for justice, a
love of purity and truth and beauty, a craving for affection,
a thirst for knowledge, which persist up to the very gates of
death? To take an illustration of Edward Caird’s, is not the
path of life which is so traversed like the path of a star
to the astronomer, which enables him to prophesy its future
course—beyond the end which hides it from our eyes? Otherwise,
to use another simile, it is as though Pheidias spent his life
sculpturing in snow.
(This does not mean, as the sceptic usually sneers, that the
virtuous man merely desires a reward for his virtuous conduct.
It is an inquiry why he _is_ virtuous—what is a sane view of
the scheme of the universe.)
In forming the conclusion that there was no possible future for
man, George Eliot and an immense number of other thinkers of
her time made also the vast assumption that there was nothing
left to discover. Blanco White’s sonnet alone might have taught
them the folly of such premature judgments. Or we may take an
illustration, used by F. W. H. Myers, namely, the discovery
that, far beyond the red and the violet of the spectrum or the
rainbow, extend rays that have been (and will for ever be)
invisible to our eyes. Since George Eliot’s time the Society
for Psychical Research has during the last thirty-five years
accumulated unanswerable evidence of survival after death.
* * * * *
Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
“There is no joy but calm!”
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?...
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
TENNYSON (_The Lotos-Eaters_).
See preceding quotation.
* * * * *
We may well begin to doubt whether the known and the natural can suffice
for human life. No sooner do we try to think so than pessimism raises
its head. The more our thoughts widen and deepen, as the universe grows
upon us and we become accustomed to boundless space and time, the
more petrifying is the contrast of our own insignificance, the more
contemptible become the pettiness, shortness, fragility of the individual
life. A moral paralysis creeps upon us. For awhile we comfort ourselves
with the notion of self-sacrifice; we say, what matter if I pass, let me
think of others! But the _other_ has become contemptible no less than the
self; all human griefs alike seem little worth assuaging, human happiness
too paltry at the best to be worth increasing. The whole moral world is
reduced to a point; good and evil, right and wrong become infinitesimal
ephemeral matters, while eternity and infinity remain attributes of
that only which is outside the sphere of morality. Life becomes more
intolerable the more we know and discover, so long as everything widens
and deepens except our own duration, and that remains as pitiful as ever.
The affections die away in a world where everything great and enduring is
cold; they die of their own conscious feebleness and bootlessness.
SIR J. R. SEELEY (_Natural Religion_).
See the two preceding quotations.
* * * * *
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
W. S. LANDOR
* * * * *
LOVE-SWEETNESS
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair’s downfall
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded;
Her tremulous smiles; her glances’ sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth’s culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
What sweeter than these things, except the thing
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
The confident heart’s still fervour: the swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing,
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
D. G. ROSSETTI.
* * * * *
Jesus saith, Wherever there are two, they are not without God; and
wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him. _Raise the stone and
there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there am I._
(_Logia of Jesus_).
This is one of the Logia or Sayings of Jesus written on papyrus
in the third century and discovered in Egypt by Grenfell and
Hunt in 1897. The italics, of course, are mine.
* * * * *
The first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.
* * * * *
Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided
you do not handle it roughly.
* * * * *
There are quarrels in which even Satan, bringing help, were not
unwelcome; even Satan, fighting stiffly, might cover himself with
glory—of a temporary nature.
* * * * *
... Nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of
the drum species.
* * * * *
Thou art bound hastily for the City of _Nowhere_; and wilt arrive!
CARLYLE (_French Revolution_).
It is interesting to learn from a correspondent of _The
Spectator_ (Feb. 17, 1917) that Carlyle wrote two verses which
he combined with Shakespeare’s “Fear no more the heat o’ the
sun” (Cymbeline iv, 2) to make a requiem, of which he was very
fond:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Hurts thee now no harsh behest,
Toil, or shame, or sin, or danger;
Trouble’s storm has got to rest,
To his place the wayworn stranger.
Want is done, and grief and pain,
Done is all thy bitter weeping:
Thou art safe from wind and rain
In the Mother’s bosom sleeping.
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages:
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.
* * * * *
It takes two for a kiss,
Only one for a sigh;
Twain by twain we marry,
One by one we die.
Joy has its partnerships,
Grief weeps alone;
Cana had many guests,
Gethsemane had none.
FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES.
Byron in “Don Juan” says:
All who joy would win must share it,
Happiness was born a twin.
* * * * *
(Speaking of the rare and exalted nature of Dorothea, who has adopted the
normal, domestic married life) Her finely-touched spirit had still its
fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like
that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels
which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on
those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the
world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so
ill with you and me, as they might have been, is half owing to the number
who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).
This passage, which finely expresses an important truth, is
at the end of _Middlemarch_. The reference is to a story of
Herodotus. He says that Cyrus, the Persian, was angry with
the river Gyndes (Diyalah), because it had drowned one of the
white horses, which, as being sacred to the sun, accompanied
the expedition. He, therefore, employed his army to divert the
river into 360 channels (representing the number of days in the
year). The story was probably told to Herodotus as explaining
the great irrigation system that existed in Mesopotamia. The
Diyalah flows into the Tigris not far from Baghdad.
* * * * *
Any sort of meaning looks intense
When all beside itself means and looks nought.
R. BROWNING (_Fra Lippo Lippi_).
* * * * *
Hold, Time, a little while thy glass,
And, Youth, fold up those peacock wings!
More rapture fills the years that pass
Than any hope the future brings;
Some for to-morrow rashly pray,
And some desire to hold to-day.
But I am sick for yesterday....
Ah! who will give us back the past?
Ah! woe, that youth should love to be
Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,
And is so fain to find the sea,—
That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,
These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,
For breakers of the homeless deep.
EDMUND GOSSE (_Desiderium_).
* * * * *
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies,
When love is done.
F. W. BOURDILLON.
See reference to this poem in Preface.
* * * * *
But to come again unto Apelles, this was his manner and custom besides,
which he perpetually observed, that no day went over his head, but what
businesse soever he had otherwise to call him away, he would make one
draught or other (and never misse) for to exercise his hand and keepe it
in use, inasmuch as from him grew the proverbe, _Nulla dies sine linea_,
_i.e._ Be alwaies doing somewhat, though you doe but draw a line. His
order was when he had finished a piece of work or painted table, and layd
it out of his hand, to set it forth in some open gallerie or thorowfare,
to be seen of folke that passed by, and himselfe would lie close behind
it to hearken what faults were found therewith; preferring the judgment
of the common people before his owne, and imagining they would spy more
narrowly, and censure his doings sooner than himselfe: and as the tale
is told, it fell out upon a time, that a shoomaker as he went by seemed
to controlle his workmanship about the shoo or pantofle that he had made
to a picture, and namely, that there was one latchet fewer than there
should be: Apelles acknowledging that the man said true indeed, mended
that fault by the next morning, and set forth his table as his manner
was. The same shoomaker comming again the morrow after, and finding
the want supplied which he noted the day before, took some pride unto
himselfe, that his former admonition had sped so well, and was so bold as
to cavil at somewhat about the leg. Apelles could not endure that, but
putting forth his head from behind the painted table, and scorning thus
to be checked and reproved, Sirrha (quoth hee) remember you are but a
shoomaker, and therefore meddle no higher I advise you, than with shoos.
Which words also of his came afterwards to be a common proverbe, _Ne
sutor ultra crepidam_.
PLINY (_Natural History_).
_Apelles_, the greatest painter of antiquity. The two proverbs
mean: “No day without a line,” “A cobbler should stick to his
last.” _Pantofle_, sandal; _latchet_, the thong fastening the
sandal; _painted table_, panel picture; _controlle_, find fault
with.
* * * * *
Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall of the snow,
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver?
Or swan’s down ever?
Or have smelt o’ the bud of the briar,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O, so white! O, so soft! O, so sweet is she!
BEN JONSON (_A Celebration of Charis_).
* * * * *
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is
the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress
and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of
it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom—a third part bud; a
third part past, a third part in full bloom—is a type of the life of this
world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and
deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No
human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect
in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they
imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to
check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better,
lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely
appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human
judgment, Mercy.
JOHN RUSKIN (_Stones of Venice II_, vi, 25).
* * * * *
The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck: can we
feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed
by the waves?
GEORGE ELIOT (_Janet’s Repentance_).
* * * * *
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke. She did lie
In her pavilion: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans....
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereïdes,
So many mermaids tended her. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.
SHAKESPEARE (_Antony and Cleopatra_).
This and the next three quotations are word-pictures (see p.
85).
* * * * *
Little round Pepíta, blondest maid
In all Bedmar—Pepíta, fair yet flecked,
Saucy of lip and nose, of hair as red
As breasts of robins stepping on the snow—
Who stands in front with little tapping feet,
And baby-dimpled hands that hide enclosed
Those sleeping crickets, the dark castanets.
GEORGE ELIOT (_The Spanish Gypsy_).
* * * * *
And how then was the Devil drest?
Oh! he was in his Sunday’s best:
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.
Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain,
And backward and forward he swished his long tail,
As a gentleman swishes his cane.
S. T. COLERIDGE (_The Devil’s Thoughts_).
The stanzas are reversed in order.
* * * * *
We walked abreast all up the street,
Into the market up the street;
Our hair with marigolds was wound,
Our bodices with love-knots laced,
Our merchandise with tansy[48] bound....
And when our chaffering all was done,
All was paid for, sold and done,
We drew a glove on ilka hand,
We sweetly curtsied, each to each,
And deftly danced a saraband.
WILLIAM BELL SCOTT (_The Witch’s Ballad_).
The above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 85).
* * * * *
ON THE NONPAREIL
_Naught but himself can be his parallel._
With marble-coloured shoulders—and keen eyes
Protected by a forehead broad and white—
And hair cut close, lest it impede the sight,
And clenched hands, firm and of a punishing size,
Steadily held, or motioned wary-wise
To hit or stop—and kerchief, too, drawn tight
O’er the unyielding loins, to keep from flight
The inconstant wind, that all too often flies—
The Nonpareil stands! Fame, whose bright eyes run o’er
With joy to see a Chicken of her own,
Dips her rich pen in _claret_, and writes down
Under the letter R, first on the score,
“Randall—John—Irish Parents—age not known—
Good with both hands, and only ten stone four!”
PETER CORCORAN (_The Fancy, 1820_).
Randall was a pugilist of the time.
“None but himself can be his parallel” is a line from _The
Double Falsehood_ of Louis Theobald (1691-1744), but it comes
originally from Seneca (_Hercules Furens_, Act I, Sc. I):
Quaeris Alcidae parem?
Nemo est nisi ipse.
(Do you seek the equal of Alcides?
No one is except himself.)
I copied the above sonnet from _Gossip in a Library_ by Edmund
Gosse (1891), partly because Mr. Gosse said of it, “Anthologies
are not edited in a truly catholic spirit, or they would
contain this very remarkable sonnet.” I hardly think this, but
the lines seem sufficiently interesting to quote.
* * * * *
Le roi disait, en la voyant si belle,
A son neveu:
“Pour un baiser, pour un sourire d’elle,
Pour un cheveu,
Infant Don Ruy, je donnerais l’Espagne
Et le Pérou!”
_Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne_
_Me rendra fou._
(The King, seeing her so beautiful, said to his nephew, “For one kiss,
for a smile, for one hair of her head, Infante Don Ruy, I would give
Spain and Peru.” _The wind that blows over the mountain will drive me
mad._)
VICTOR HUGO (_Gastibelza_).
This charmingly extravagant praise of a lady’s beauty recalls
the story of another poet. The Eastern conqueror, Timur (or
Tamerlane), sent for the Persian poet Hafiz and very angrily
asked him, “Art thou he who offered to give my two great
cities, Samarkand and Bokhara, for the black mole on thy
mistress’s cheek?” Hafiz, however, cleverly escaped trouble by
replying, “Yes, sire, I always give freely, and in consequence
am now reduced to poverty. May I crave your kind assistance?”
Timur was amused at the reply and made the poet a present. The
story, however, is considered doubtful, because Timur did not
conquer Persia until some years after 1388, which is supposed
to be the date of the poet’s death.
* * * * *
Mere verbal insults (to a Roman Emperor) were not considered treason;
for, said the Emperors Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius, in language
that is a standing rebuke to pusillanimous tyrants, if the words are
uttered in a spirit of frivolity, the attack merits contempt; if from
madness, they excite pity; if from malice, they are to be forgiven.
WILLIAM A. HUNTER (1844-1898) (_Roman Law, Appendix_).
This recalls to mind the numerous cases of _lèse-majesté_
for words spoken against the Kaiser before the war. The
passage would make a pleasant retort to a rude opponent (a
“pusillanimous tyrant”) in a debate.
* * * * *
I have discovered that a feigned familiarity in great ones, is a note
of certain usurpation on the less. For great and popular men feign
themselves to be servants of others, to make these slaves to them. So the
fisher provides bait for the trout, roach, dace, etc., that they may be
food for him.
BEN JONSON (_Mores Aulici_).
* * * * *
Ci-gît ma femme, ah! qu’elle est bien,
Pour son repos—et pour le mien.
DU LORENS.
Paraphrased as:—
Here Abigail my wife doth lie;
She’s at peace and so am I.
* * * * *
GLADSTONE AND THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.