Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun,—who (so they say) beholdest
Everything,—hast gazed, I tell thee, ne’er.
There she sat—so near me, yet remoter
Than a star—a blue-eyed bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
’Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.
And I loved her, and our troth we plighted
On the morrow by the shingly shore:
In a fortnight to be disunited
By a bitter fate for evermore.
O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed!
To be young once more, and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I’d
Give no inconsiderable sum.
Hand in hand we tramp’d the golden seaweed,
Soon as o’er the gray cliff peep’d the dawn:
Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we’d
Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:—
Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,
That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?
Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper,
That bright being who was always gay?
Yes—she has at least a dozen wee things!
Yes—I see her darning corduroys,
Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things
For a howling herd of hungry boys
In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil!
But at intervals she thinks, I know,
Of those days which we, afar from turmoil,
Spent together forty years ago.
O my earliest love, still unforgotten,
With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue!
Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton
To another as I did to you!
C. S. CALVERLEY.
* * * * *
ON A FLY DRINKING OUT OF A CUP OF ALE
Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
Drink with me, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short and wears away.
Both alike, both thine and mine,
Hasten quick to their decline;
Thine’s a summer, mine’s no more,
Though repeated to three-score:
Three-score summers, when they’re gone,
Will appear as short as one.
WILLIAM OLDYS (1696-1761).
This was first published in 1732 as “The Fly—An Anachreontick”
and Mr. Gosse in the _Encyc. Britt._ gave the first six lines
as an example of an Anacreontic. He attributed the poem to
Oldys, but the authorship is doubtful. (See _Notes and Queries,
3rd Ser., I, 21_). Vincent Bourne in a copy of his _Poematia_,
1734, in my possession, has written out _and signed_ the two
verses, entitling them “A Song,” the last line of each verse
being repeated as a refrain. From this it might appear that he
claimed the authorship. In 1743 he published a Latin version of
the poem. Vincent Bourne, a beautiful Latinist, was much loved
by his pupils, Charles Lamb and Cowper, who each translated
into English some of his fine Latin verses.
* * * * *
The Earth goeth on the Earth, glistening like gold,
The Earth goeth to the Earth, sooner than it wold,
The Earth builds on the Earth castles and towers—
The Earth says to the Earth, all shall be ours.
_Epitaph_, 17th Century.
An inscription on a tomb in Melrose Abbey, but said to be a
version of lines by a Fourteenth Century poet, William Billing.
* * * * *
She never found fault with you, never implied
Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer....
None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall;
They knelt more to God than they used—that was all.
E. B. BROWNING (_My Kate_).
* * * * *
It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish,
where it will find its world and paradise all in one, and never have a
presentiment of the dry bank. The fretted summer shade, and stillness,
and the gentle breathing of some loved life near—it would be paradise to
us all, if eager thought, the strong angel with the implacable brow, had
not long since closed the gates.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Romola_).
* * * * *
All true Work is religion; and whatsoever religion is not Work may go and
dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it
will; with me it shall have no harbour.
CARLYLE (_Reward_).
* * * * *
Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: ‘Here is a story book
Thy Father has written for thee.’
‘Come, wander with me,’ she said,
‘Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.’
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
LONGFELLOW (_Agassiz_).
* * * * *
Deep, deep are loving eyes,
Flowed with naptha fiery sweet;
And the point is paradise
Where their glances meet.
R. W. EMERSON (_The Daemonic and the Celestial
Love_).
* * * * *
... As I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth, straight as stone can point,
And let the bed-clothes, for a mortcloth, drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor’s work.
R. BROWNING (_The Bishop orders his Tomb_).
* * * * *
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
Led the lorn traveller up the path,
Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlour steps collected,
Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say,—
“Our master knows you—you’re expected.”
W. M. PRAED (_The Vicar_).
* * * * *
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by to towered Camelot.
TENNYSON (_The Lady of Shalott_).
The above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 167).
* * * * *
(Phantasy or imagination may be true and clear or may be disordered and
unsound) ... The phantastical part of men (if it be not disordered) is a
representer of the best, most comely and bewtifull images or appearances
of thinges to the soule and according to their very truth.... Of this
sort of Phantasie are all good Poets, notable Captaines stratagematique,
all cunning artificers and Engineers, all Legislators, Politiciens and
Counsellours of estate, in whose exercises the inventive part is most
employed and is to the sound and true judgement of man most needful.
GEORGE PUTTENHAM (_The Arte of English Poesie_, 1589).
Just as a poet, besides imagination, must have intellect or
judgment as a basis, so the higher imaginative faculty comes to
the aid of intellect in other departments of life. As Maudsley
says, “it performs the initial and essential functions in
every branch of human development” (_Body and Will_). Ehrlich,
seeking a substance that would destroy germs without injuring
the human tissues, plods through endless tedious processes,
and on his 606th experiment, discovers salvarsan, a cure for
syphilis. Here the higher faculty has had little to do—but
when, on the fall of an apple, Newton’s mind saw in a flash how
the world was balanced, intellect soared aloft on the wings of
imagination.
* * * * *
As well Poets as Poesie are despised, and the name become, of honourable
infamous, subject to scorne and derision, and rather a reproach than
a prayse to any that useth it: for commonly whoso is studious in the
Arte or shewes himselfe excellent in it, they call him in disdayne a
_phantasticall_: and a light-headed or phantasticall man (by conversion)
they call a Poet.... Of such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very
well seene in many laudable sciences, and especially in Poesie, it is
so come to passe that they have no courage to write and if they have,
yet are they loath to be a-known of their skill. So as I know very
many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and
suppressed it agayne, or else suffred it to be publisht without their
owne names to it: as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seeme
learned, and to shew himselfe amorous of any good Arte.
GEORGE PUTTENHAM (_The Arte of English Poesie_, 1589).
We do not always remember in what disheartening conditions the
great Elizabethan literature was produced—the inferior position
of the writer, his wretched remuneration and his dependence on
patrons. It is strange to think that it was considered beneath
the dignity of a gentleman to write poetry or to acknowledge
its authorship—or apparently to show proficiency in other arts
or sciences. Such men as Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter
Raleigh were exceptions. The curious fact is that Puttenham
himself (assuming, as is probable, that he was the author)
issued this important book anonymously. He had, however,
acknowledged his _Partheniades_ ten years before.
As Arber points out, the above passage, and another reference
by Puttenham to the same subject, indicate that, at least in
the earlier Elizabethan period, much talent must have been
lost and much literature never reached the printing press. The
same feeling that then existed is seen again in Locke’s time
(see p. 180), and, if we consider a moment, we shall find that
_it has persisted to some extent to the present day_. Think
how miserably inadequate is the attention paid to poetry in
our educational system, the methods employed being, indeed,
calculated to make the student _loathe_ the subject. (When I
was young (“Ah, woful When”[49]) we had as a school text-book
Palgrave’s Golden Treasury—a divine gift to us in those days.
As we had a sympathetic teacher, we read it _as poetry_,
and the consequence was that I and other boys knew the book
practically by heart from cover to cover.)
It is surprising that Englishmen neglect the one great
talent which they possess. What distinguishes them above all
other nations is their superiority in the higher imaginative
faculties.[50] This is shown in such a national characteristic
as the love of travel and adventure, which has created the
British Empire, and is _proved_ concretely by the fact that
England has produced the greatest wealth of poetry which the
world has ever seen. This great treasure, which should be
employed for encouraging the highest of all faculties, is
allowed to lie idle. The fact seems to be overlooked that
the study of poetry is not only of enormous intrinsic value
in knowledge, and culture, but that it is the finest of all
mental training. By analysis and paraphrase it gives knowledge
of language, appreciation of style, practice in literary
expression, and, above all things, precision of thought. In my
opinion, poetry should form an essential part of education,
beginning in childhood and continuing throughout the Arts
course. It may be found that there are intelligent persons who
are incapable of appreciating poetry, and the subject may,
therefore, not be made a compulsory one. But my conviction is
that, where men imagine themselves to be thus deficient, it is
the result of a bad system of education. There is great truth
in Stevenson’s fine essay, “The Lantern-Bearers.”
* * * * *
Go, wing thy flight from star to star,
From world to luminous world, as far
As the universe spreads its flaming wall:
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres,
And multiply each through endless years,
One minute of Heaven is worth them all.
THOMAS MOORE (_Lalla Rookh_).
A Celtic flight of imagination.
* * * * *
And on we roll—the year goes by
As year by year must ever go,
And castles built of bits of sky
Must fall and lose their wondrous glow;
But Hope with his wings is not yet old,
While every year like a summer day
Ends and begins with grey and gold,
Begins and ends with gold and grey.
RICHARD HODGSON.
* * * * *
When none need broken meat,
How can our cake be sweet?
When none want flannel and coals,
How shall we save our souls?
Oh dear! oh dear!
The Christian virtues will disappear.
CHARLOTTE STETSON.
* * * * *
Since we parted yester eve,
I do love thee, love, believe
Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer,
One dream deeper, one night stronger,
One sun surer—thus much more
Than I loved thee, love, before.
OWEN MEREDITH (EARL OF LYTTON) (_Love Fancies_).
* * * * *
The Dahlia you brought to our Isle
Your praises for ever shall speak
’Mid gardens as sweet as your smile
And colours as bright as your cheek.
LORD HOLLAND.
A pretty compliment to his wife who in 1814 had introduced the
dahlia into England from Spain. Previous attempts had failed
(Liechtenstein’s _Holland House_).
* * * * *
C’est imiter quelqu’un que de planter des choux.
A. DE MUSSET.
Quoted by Austin Dobson:—
... And you, whom we all so admire,
Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new!
One word in your ear: There were Critics before.
And _the man who plants cabbages imitates, too_!
* * * * *
... The great book of actual life, sad, diffuse, contradictory, yet
always full of depth and significance.
GEORGE SAND (_The Miller of Angibault_).
* * * * *
Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone:—
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
ADAM LINDSAY GORDON (1833-1870) (_Ye Weary
Wayfarer_).
* * * * *
A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect
them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
WALT WHITMAN (_Leaves of Grass_).
* * * * *
The Future, that bright land which swims
In western glory, isles and streams and bays,
Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Jubal_).
* * * * *
Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.
(The modest Nymph saw her God and blushed.)
The conscious water saw its God and blushed.
RICHARD CRASHAW (1616-1650).
Referring to the miracle of Cana. Both Latin and English
epigrams are by Crashaw. In the former the water is personified
by its Nymph.
* * * * *
Called on the W. Molesworths. He is threatened with total blindness,
and his excellent wife is learning to work in the dark in preparation
for a darkened chamber. What things wives are! What a spirit of joyous
suffering, confidence, and love was incarnated in Eve! ’Tis a pity they
should eat apples.
CAROLINE FOX’S JOURNALS.
* * * * *
... Earth and ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire.
SHELLEY (_Hellas_).
* * * * *
Vox, et praeterea nihil.
[Words (_literally voice_) and nothing more.]
PROVERB.
Plutarch, in his Apophthegm, Lacon. Incert. XIII, says that
a man after plucking a nightingale and finding little flesh
on it, said φωνὰ τύ τις ἐσσὶ, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο, “Thou art voice
and nothing more” (_King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations_).
No doubt this was the origin of the saying. It was applied to
the nightingale, and to Echo—and then used in Hamlet’s sense,
“Words, words, words.”
* * * * *
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
SHELLEY (_Adonaïs_ LII).
Two of the most marvellous lines in all literature. With them
as a text volumes might be written.
* * * * *
Campbell the poet, who had always a bad razor, I suppose, and was late of
rising, said he believed the man of civilization who lived to be sixty
had suffered more pain in littles in shaving every day than a woman with
a large family had from her lyings-in.
JOHN BROWN (_Horae Subsecivae_ I, 457).
* * * * *
Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and the
beholder.
J. G. ZIMMERMANN.
* * * * *
The maid (and thereby hangs a tale)
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce:
No grape, that’s kindly ripe, could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.
Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they fear’d the light:
But O, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison
(Who sees them is undone);
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Catherine pear,
The side that’s next the sun.
Her lips were red, and one was thin
Compar’d to that was next her chin,
(Some bee had stung it newly),
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face
I durst no more upon them gaze
Than on the sun in July.
SIR JOHN SUCKLING (_Ballad upon a Wedding_).
“Some bee had stung it.” _It_, of course, means the full
underlip, as against the less full upperlip.
* * * * *
Such is the ascendancy which the great works of the Greek imagination
have established over the mind of man that.... he is tempted to ignore
the real superiority of our own religion, morality, civilization, and to
re-shape in fancy an _adult_ world on an _adolescent_ ideal.
F. W. H. MYERS (Essay on _Greek Oracles_).
* * * * *
That early burst of admiration for Virgil of which I have already spoken
was followed by a growing passion for one after another of the Greek
and Latin poets. From ten to sixteen I lived much in the inward recital
of Homer, Æschylus, Lucretius, Horace, and Ovid. The reading of Plato’s
Gorgias at fourteen was a great event; but the study of the Phaedo at
sixteen affected upon me a kind of conversion. At that time, too, I
returned to my worship of Virgil, whom Homer had for some years thrust
into the background. I gradually wrote out Bucolics, Georgics, Aeneid
from memory....
The discovery at seventeen, in an old school book, of the poems of
Sappho, whom till then I had only known by name, brought an access of
intoxicating joy. Later on, the solitary decipherment of Pindar made
another epoch of the same kind. From the age of sixteen to twenty-three
there was no influence in my life comparable to _Hellenism_ in the
fullest sense of the word. That tone of thought came to me naturally; the
classics were but intensifications of my own being. They drew from me and
fostered evil as well as good; they might aid imaginative impulse and
detachment from sordid interests, but they had no check for pride.
When pushed thus far, the “Passion of the Past” must needs wear away
sooner or later into an unsatisfied pain. In 1864 I travelled in
Greece. I was mainly alone; nor were the traveller’s facts and feelings
mapped out for him then as now. Ignorant as I was, according to modern
standards, yet my emotions were all my own: and few men can have drunk
that departed loveliness into a more passionate heart. It was the life of
about the sixth century before Christ, on the isles of the Aegean, which
drew me most;—that intensest and most unconscious bloom of the Hellenic
spirit. Here alone in the Greek story do women play their due part with
men. What might the Greeks have made of the female sex had they continued
to care for it! Then it was that Mimnermus sang:—
τίς δε βιός, τί δε τερπνὸν ἄνευ χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης;
τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι.[51]
Then it was that Praxilla’s cry rang out across the narrow seas, that
call to fellowship, reckless and lovely with stirring joy. “Drink with
me!” she cried, “be young along with me! Love with me! wear with me the
garland crown! Mad be thou with my madness; be wise when I am wise!”
I looked through my open porthole close upon the Lesbian shore. There
rose the heathery promontories, and waves lapped upon the rocks in
dawning day:—lapped upon those rocks where Sappho’s feet had trodden;
broke beneath the heather on which had sat that girl unknown, _nearness
to whom made a man the equal of the gods_. I sat in Mytilene, to me a
sacred city, between the hill-crest and the sunny bay....
Gazing thence on Delos on the Cyclades, and on those straits and channels
of purple sea, I felt that nowise could I come closer still; never more
intimately than thus could embrace that vanished beauty. Alas for an
ideal which roots itself in the past! That longing cannot be allayed.
F. W. H. MYERS (_Fragments of Prose and Poetry_).
The wonderful record of Myers in classical study will first be
observed. If we did not know him to be absolutely trustworthy,
we would find it practically impossible to believe his
statement. Imagine, for instance, a boy of sixteen learning
by heart _the whole of Virgil_ for his own pleasure! However,
anything vouched for by Myers must be accepted as literally
true.
Extraordinary as this is, the above quotations introduce us to
a subject quite as extraordinary and far more interesting and
important, namely, the distortion of truth caused by extreme
classical enthusiasm.[52] It is perfectly easy to see how
such enthusiasm arises. Greek art and literature are not only
intrinsically wonderful and valuable but, seeing that they were
produced by a comparatively small population in a barbaric age,
they constitute the greatest (secular) marvel in the history
of the world. Everything tends to excite enthusiasm for this
remote, alien, primitive, but most remarkable people. I need
not speak of the art in which they stand unrivalled throughout
the ages. As regards their literature, apart from its
intrinsic excellence and the beauty of the language in which
it is written, it has an additional fascination and charm,
because it is the speech and song of the infancy of the world.
Through it we see into the mind and realize the life of the
most interesting race that ever lived. Possessing astounding
intellect and intense originality, they were nevertheless the
children of nature. Their earth was peopled with fauns and
nymphs, their gods lived and moved and had their being in
every natural object—and they had very little of our ideas of
right and wrong. They had nothing of our wide knowledge and
experience, yet they constructed a world of life and thought
for themselves. It is absorbingly interesting to read their
beautiful poetry, fine literature, and philosophic thought,
bearing in mind that it was produced in the ignorant childhood
and paganism of the human race, over two thousand years ago.
And one of the most astonishing things about them is that
essential product of civilization, a keen sense of humour. So
curiously “modern” is their literature that the writers speak
to us across the ages with as vivid a voice as if they were
still alive. No other primitive race has been able to leave us
any such adequate conception of its life and thought. Moreover,
we can never forget how the Greek arose out of the tomb, where
he had slept for many centuries, to preside at the re-birth of
our own modern world—that emergence of Europe from medieval
darkness which we call the Renaissance. It was largely Greek
art and literature that stimulated the mental activity of the
world and made us what we are to-day.
Very great enthusiasm is, therefore, warranted in the Greek
student—but there comes a point where enthusiasm may become
pure _fanaticism_, and lead to that most deadly of all things,
the perversion of the truth.
In the above quotations two Greek poems are quoted, and another
is referred to in the lines I have italicized. The first
two[53] refer to vice, which to us is revolting and criminal,
but to the whole Greek nation was natural, and recognised by
law. The third expresses even more revolting passion. It will
be seen, therefore, that Myers, in order to illustrate the
“departed loveliness” of Greek life made a strange choice of
quotations (which also, standing alone, would give a very false
notion of classic Greek poetry).
Seeing that Myers was one of the purest-minded of men, what is
the explanation of this very remarkable fact? The explanation
is simply that Myers was a _classical enthusiast_. He had
forgotten the warning he himself gave in the first quotation.
It is absolutely amazing how such an enthusiast, however
brilliant a scholar and capable a man in other respects, can
blind himself to the most obvious facts where anything Greek
is concerned. It is very certain that Myers read into each
poem a perfectly innocent meaning—and he would not be alone in
that respect. Take, for instance, the third quotation which is
from Sappho. In my youth the _great majority_ of classical men
appeared to have convinced themselves that a poem of terribly
fierce passion was an expression of mere friendship! Even our
leading reference-book, Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Biography_, gave the same absurd view until about 1877.[54]
However, we must get away from this ugly subject and seek
further illustrations elsewhere.