CHAPTER I

PRE-RAPHAELITE

AND OTHER POETS

_lectures by_

LAFCADIO HEARN

_Selected and Edited with an Introduction_

_by_

JOHN ERSKINE

_Professor of English

Columbia University_

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1922

INTRODUCTION

This volume is issued in response to a demand from students of

literature for the best lectures of Lafcadio Hearn in a more accessible

form than the library editions in which they first appeared. It seemed

advisable to bring together these chapters from "Interpretations of

Literature," 1915, "Appreciations of Poetry," 1916, and "Life and

Literature," 1917, in order to provide under one cover--and let us

hope, in spite of the cost of printing, at a lower price--a fair

example of Hearn's critical felicity in the field of modern poetry,

where perhaps he was at his best. The choice of lectures has been

governed largely by the manuscripts available; the studies of Rossetti,

Swinburne, Browning, Morris, and Meredith are among the longest and

clearest of the texts; the lecture on Robert Bridges is one of those

kindling analyses which Hearn gave only when he was most happy, and

only of the writers he loved; the brief notes on Rossetti's prose and

on the "Shaving of Shagpat" were added as naturally complementing

the verse-writings of their respective authors; and the account of

Buchanan's ballad not only helps to round out a portrait of the modern

muse, but it also illustrates Hearn's keen recognition of a great note

in minor poets, and his ability to make us feel the greatness.

Those who have not read the prefaces to the library editions of

Hearn's lectures should be reminded that he gave them before Japanese

students at the University of Tokyo, in the years between 1896 and

1902. He lectured without manuscript, and since he died before he had

the opportunity of formulating in writing for Western readers his

judgments of European literature, it is entirely to the devotion of his

students that we owe the present chapters. Out of consideration for

his audience, whose English was but recently acquired, Hearn lectured

slowly. Some dozen of his pupils were able, therefore, to write down

practically every word he said. After his death they presented the

manuscripts to Mrs. Hearn, who put them in the hands of her husband's

friend and literary executor, Mitchell McDonald, Pay Director U. S. N.,

who in turn brought them to the present publishers.

In editing these lectures for the volumes in which they first appeared,

I tried to make as few alterations as possible. Only those manuscripts

have been published which were fairly clear; all passages which were

so mangled as to call for a reconstruction of the text, I omitted, and

if the omission seemed to affect in any essential way what remained,

I rejected the whole lecture. No additions whatever were made to

the text; only the punctuation was made uniform, and the numerous

quotations verified. Undaunted by many misprints and many oversights

of my own in the citations of the four thick volumes, I have once more

verified the quotations in this present book, and dare hope that few

errors now survive.

Allowing, therefore, for such mistakes as are incident to proofreading,

the reader will find here a close record of Hearn's daily instruction

to his Japanese class in English literature. The record is unique.

I never read these chapters without marvelling at their simplicity,

at the volume, if I may say so, of Hearn's critical faculty, and at

the integrity of his character. The simplicity of the lectures is

deceptive. The jaded book reviewer, coming, for example, on these

transparent summaries or paraphrases of verse just quoted, feels

that such repetitions may have aided the Japanese boys, but are

only encumbrances for the reader born to the command of the English

language. Against a judgment so shallow or so blind, I am somewhat put

on my guard by my own experience with Hearn's lectures; for having been

a student of the English language and a devoted lover of English poetry

all my life, I am glad to acknowledge that Hearn's simple paraphrases

of well-known poems have taught me truths about the poems which I never

learned from the poems themselves, nor from critics of poetry to whom

simplicity seems a fault. In editing these lectures of Hearn's, in

this and the other volumes, I have had occasion to read every chapter

many times, and I have read at least once the manuscripts which have

not been printed. Simple as each lecture seems, the mass effect of

them all, delivered day in and day out, on all the great themes of

Western literature, is nothing short of titanic. In criticism as well

as in creation, volume counts. To have a sound reasoned opinion of

one book is beyond the power of the average reader. To be expert in

all the writings of one author is to be a more than average critic.

To know all the writers in one period is to be an authority. But to

have so mature a knowledge of life and of art, so wide an outlook on

experience and so philosophic a control of it, as to find consistently

the meaning of any book, classic or modern, is to be among the few

great critics, the few in whom criticism is a function and not an

event. Hearn is, I believe, among the greatest of critics. It should

be remembered also that his many lectures, all illustrating this high

discrimination, were delivered in a foreign land, before a group of

young men who could understand only the general drift of them, and

with no likelihood, as it seemed, that they would ever come under the

review of Western readers. Yet day in and day out Hearn lectured at

Tokyo before his boys with the same care and with the same elevation of

spirit as though he had been addressing an audience at the Sorbonne or

at Oxford--or better, as though he had been the official instead of the

accidental spokesman for Western letters, and as though the whole East,

and not only his limited classroom, were hanging on his words. This

consecration to work done in obscurity is as rare in teaching as in

other human activities. Observing it on every page of Hearn's lectures,

I marvel at the integrity of his character.

One is tempted to speak in detail of all the lectures in this book--of

the special merit of each, and of the relation of one to the other. It

will be sufficient, however, to say a word of the chapter on Rossetti,

which exhibits Hearn's method and his success. Rossetti usually

seems, even to his admirers, a poet of temperament and color, diffuse

temperament and exotic color; in so much sensuousness it has not been

easy for the casual critic to trace the intellectual fibre. But Hearn

observes that the plots of Rossetti's ballads, stripped somewhat

of their Rossetti decorations, are stirring plots, contrived by an

energetic mind. With this clue he undertakes to show us that Rossetti's

work is all of an intellectual architecture, however emotional the

surface of it may be. To read what Hearn says of the "Staff and Scrip,"

and then to read the ballad, is to discover a new poem, with the

conviction besides that the poem is what Hearn discovered it to be.

If the reader of Rossetti thinks this praise of Hearn's chapter is

excessive, let him run over at his leisure all the other criticism of

Rossetti he can find. He will agree at last that here is criticism of

the first order--the criticism which opens our eyes to things in books,

and thereby to the things in life of which books are only the mirror.

JOHN ERSKINE.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

STUDIES IN ROSSETTI

CHAPTER II

NOTE UPON ROSSETTI'S PROSE

CHAPTER III

STUDIES IN SWINBURNE

CHAPTER IV

STUDIES IN BROWNING

CHAPTER V

WILLIAM MORRIS

CHAPTER VI

THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH

CHAPTER VII

"THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT"

CHAPTER VIII

VIII A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN

CHAPTER IX

ROBERT BRIDGES

INDEX

PRE-RAPHAELITE

AND OTHER POETS

CHAPTER I

STUDIES IN ROSSETTI

I

We must rank Dante Gabriel Rossetti as not inferior to Tennyson in

workmanship--therefore as occupying the very first rank in nineteenth

century poetry. He was not inferior to Tennyson either as a thinker,

but his thinking was in totally different directions. He had no

sympathy with the ideas of his own century; he lived and thought in

the Middle Ages; and while one of our very greatest English poets, he

takes a place apart, for he does not reflect the century at all. He

had the dramatic gift, but it was a gift in his case much more limited

than that of Browning. Altogether we can safely give him a place in the

first rank as a maker of poetry, but in all other respects we cannot

classify him in any way. He remains a unique figure in the Victorian

age, a figure such as may not reappear for hundreds of years to come.

It was as if a man of the thirteenth century had been reborn into the

nineteenth century, and, in spite of modern culture, had continued to

think and to feel very much as men felt and thought in the time of the

great Italian poet Dante.

One reason for this extraordinary difference between himself and his

contemporaries was that Rossetti was not an Englishman but an Italian

by blood, religion, and feeling. In his verse we might expect to

find something that we cannot find in any other English poet; and

I think that we shall find it. The facts of his life--strange and

pathetic--need not occupy us now. You need only remember for the

present that he was a great painter before becoming a great poet, and

that his painting, like his poetry, was the painting of another century

than his own. Also it will be well to bear in mind that he detested

modern science and modern philosophy--which fact makes it all the more

remarkable that he uttered some great thoughts quite in harmony with

the most profound philosophy of the Orient.

In studying the best of his poetry, it will be well for us to consider

it by groups, taking a few specimens from each group as examples of the

rest; since we shall not have time to read even a quarter of all his

production. Taking the very simplest of his work to begin with, I shall

make a selection from what I might call the symbolic group, for want

of a better name. I mean those poems which are parables, or symbolic

illustrations of deep truths--poems which seem childishly simple, but

are nevertheless very deep indeed. We may begin with a little piece

called "The Mirror."

She knew it not,--most perfect pain

To learn: this too she knew not. Strife

For me, calm hers, as from the first.

'Twas but another bubble burst

Upon the curdling draught of life,--

My silent patience mine again.

As who, of forms that crowd unknown

Within a distant mirror's shade,

Deems such an one himself, and makes

Some sign; but when the image shakes

No whit, he finds his thought betray'd,

And must seek elsewhere for his own.

So far as the English goes, this verse is plain enough; but unless

you have met with the same idea in some other English writer, you

will find the meaning very obscure. The poet is speaking of a

universal, or almost universal, experience of misplaced love. A man

becomes passionately attached to a woman, who treats him with, cold

indifference. Finally the lover finds out his mistake; the woman

that he loved proves not to be what he imagined; she is not worthy

of his love. Then what was he in love with? With a shadow out of his

brain, with an imagination or ideal very pure and noble, but only an

imagination. Supposing that he was worshipping good qualities in a

noble woman, he deceived himself; the woman had no such qualities; they

existed only in his fancy. Thus he calls her his mirror, the human

being that seemed to be a reflection of all that was good in his own

heart. She never knows the truth as to why the man loved her and then

ceased to love her; he could not tell her, because it would have been

to her "most perfect pain to learn."

A less obscure but equally beautiful symbolism, in another metre, is

"The Honeysuckle."

I plucked a honeysuckle where

The hedge on high is quick with thorn,

And climbing for the prize, was torn,

And fouled my feet in quag-water;

And by the thorns and by the wind

The blossom that I took was thinn'd,

And yet I found it sweet and fair.

Thence to a richer growth I came,

Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,

The honeysuckles sprang by cores,

Not harried like my single stem,

All virgin lamps of scent and dew.

So from my hand that first I, threw,

Yet plucked not any more of them.

It often happens that a young man during his first struggle in life,

when all the world seems to be against him, meets with some poor girl

who love him. She is not educated as he has been; she is ignorant of

many things, and she has suffered herself a great deal of hardship, so

that although beautiful naturally and good-hearted, both her beauty

and her temper have been a little spoiled by the troubles of life.

The young man whom she loves is obliged to mix with a very poor and

vulgar class of people in order to become intimate with her. There are

plenty of rough common men who would like to get that girl; and the

young man has a good deal of trouble in winning her away from them.

With all her small faults she seems for the time very beautiful to her

lover, because he cannot get any finer woman while he remains poor. But

presently success comes to him, and he is able to enter a much higher

class of society, where he finds scores of beautiful girls, much more

accomplished than his poor sweetheart; and he becomes ashamed of her

and cruelly abandons her. But he does not marry any of the rich and

beautiful women. Perhaps he is tired of women; perhaps his heart has

been spoiled. The poet does not tell us why. He simply tells a story of

human ingratitude which is as old as the world.

One more simple poem before we take up the larger and more complicated

pieces of the group.

THE WOODSPURGE

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

Shaken out dead from tree and hill:

I had walked on at the wind's will,--

I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was,--

My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!

My hair was over in the grass,

My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run

Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

Among those few, out of the sun,

The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be

Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains to me,--

The woodspurge has a cup of three!

The phenomenon here described by the poet is unconsciously familiar to

most of us. Any person who has suffered some very great pain, moral

pain, is apt to observe during that instant of suffering things which

he never observed before, or to notice details never noticed before

in common things. One reason is that at such a time sense-impressions

are stimulated to a strange degree by the increase of circulation,

while the eyes and ears remain automatically active only. Whoever

among you can remember the pain of losing a parent or beloved friend,

will probably remember with extraordinary vividness all kinds of

little things seen or heard at the time, such as the cry of a bird or

a cricket, the sound of the dripping of water, the form of a sunbeam

upon a wall, the shapes of shadows in a garden. The personage of

this poem often before saw the woodspurge, without noticing anything

particular about it; but in a moment of great sorrow observing the

plant, he learns for the first time the peculiar form of its flower.

In a wonderful novel by Henry Kingsley, called "Ravenshoe," there is

a very striking example of the same thing. A cavalry-soldier, waiting

in the saddle for the order to charge the enemy, observes on the back

of the soldier before him a grease-spot which looks exactly like the

map of Sweden, and begins to think that if the outline of Norway were

beside it, the upper part of the map would go over the shoulder of the

man. This fancy comes to him in a moment when he believes himself going

to certain death.

Now we will take a longer poem, very celebrated, entitled "The Cloud

Confines."

The day is dark and the night

To him that would search their heart;

No lips of cloud that will part

Nor morning song in the light:

Only, gazing alone,

To him wild shadows are shown,

Deep under deep unknown,

And height above unknown height.

Still we say as we go,--

"Strange to think by the way,

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day."

The Past is over and fled;

Named new, we name it the old;

Thereof some tale hath been told,

But no word comes from the dead;

Whether at all they be,

Or whether as bond or free,

_Or whether they too were we_,

Or by what spell they have sped.

Still we say as we go,--

"Strange to think by the way,

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day."

What of the heart of hate

That beats in thy breast, O Time?--

Red strife from the furthest prime,

And anguish of fierce debate;

War that shatters her slain,

And peace that grinds them as grain,

And eyes fixed ever in vain

On the pitiless eyes of Fate.

Still we say as we go,--

"Strange to think by the way,

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day."

What of the heart of love

That bleeds in thy breast, O Man?--

Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban

Of fangs that mock them above;

Thy bells prolonged unto knells,

Thy hope that a breath dispels,

Thy bitter forlorn farewells

And the empty echoes thereof?

Still we say as we go,--

"Strange to think by the way,

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day."

The sky leans dumb on the sea,

Aweary with all its wings;

And oh! the song the sea sings

Is dark everlastingly.

Our past is clean forgot,

Our present is and is not,

Our future's a sealed seedplot,

And what betwixt them are we?

We who say as we go,--

"Strange to think by the way,

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day."

This dark poetry is very different from the optimism of Tennyson;

and we uncomfortably feel it to be much more true. In spite of all

its wonderful tenderness and caressing hopefulness, we feel that

Tennyson's poetry does not illuminate the sombre problems of life. But

Rossetti will not be found to be a pessimist. I shall presently show,

by examples, the difference between poetical pessimism and Rossetti's

thoughtful melancholy. He is simply communing with us about the

mystery of the universe--sadly enough, but always truthfully. We may

even suspect a slight mockery in the burthen of his poem:

Whatever there is to know,

That shall we know one day.

Suppose there is nothing to know? "Very well," the poet would answer,

"then we shall know nothing." Although by education and by ancestry

a Roman Catholic, Rossetti seems to have had just as little faith as

any of his great contemporaries; the artistic and emotional side of

Catholicism made strong appeal to his nature as an artist, but so far

as personal belief is concerned we may judge him by his own lines:

Would God I knew there were a God to thank

When thanks rise in me!

Nevertheless we have here no preacher of negation, but a sincere

doubter. We know nothing of the secret of the universe, the meaning

of its joy and pain and impermanency; we do not know anything of the

dead; we do not know the meaning of time or space or life. But just for

that reason there may be marvellous things to know. The dead do not

come back, but we do not know whether they could come back, nor even

the real meaning of death. Do we even know, he asks, whether the dead

were not ourselves? This thought, like the thought in the poem "Sudden

Light," is peculiar to Rossetti. You will find nothing of this thought

in any other Victorian poet of great rank--except, indeed, in some of

the work of O'Shaughnessy, who is now coming into a place of eminence

only second to that of the four great masters.

Besides this remarkable line, which I have asked you to put in italics,

you should remember those two very splendid lines in the third stanza:

War that shatters her slain,

And peace that grinds them as grain.

These have become famous. The suggestion is that peace is more

cruel than war. In battle a man is dashed to pieces, and his pain

is immediately over. In the competition of civil life, the weak and

the stupid, no matter how good or moral they may be, are practically

crushed by the machinery of Western civilisation, as grain might be

crushed in a mill.

In the last stanza of the composition you will doubtless have observed

the pathetic reference to the meaning of the song of the sea,

mysterious and awful beyond all other sounds of nature. Rossetti has

not failed to consider this sound, philosophically and emotionally,

in one of his most beautiful poems. And now I want to show you, by

illustration, the difference between a really pessimistic treatment

of a subject and Rossetti's treatment of it. Perhaps the very finest

example of pessimism in Victorian poetry is a sonnet by Lee-Hamilton,

on the subject of a sea-shell. You know that if you take a large

sea-shell of a particular form, and hold it close to your ear, you

will hear a sound like the sound of the surf, as if the ghost of the

sea were in the shell. Nearly all English children have the experience

of listening to the sound of the sea in a shell; it startles them

at first; but nobody tells them what the sound really is, for that

would spoil their surprise and delight. You must not tell a child that

there are no ghosts or fairies. Well, Rossetti and Lee-Hamilton wrote

about this sound of the sea in a shell--but how differently! Here is

Lee-Hamilton's composition:

The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood

On dusty shelves, when held against the ear

Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear

The faint far murmur of the breaking flood.

We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood

In our own veins, impetuous and near,

And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear,

And with our feelings' ever-shifting mood.

Lo! in my heart I hear, as in a shell,

The murmur of a world beyond the grave,

Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be.

Thou fool; this echo is a cheat as well,--

The hum of earthly instincts; and we crave

A world unreal as the shell-heard sea.

Of course this is a very fine poem, so far as the poetry is concerned.

But it is pessimism absolute. Its author, a brilliant graduate of

Oxford University, entered the English diplomatic service as a young

man, and in the middle of a promising career was attacked by a disease

of the spine which left him a hopeless invalid. We might say that he

had some reason to look at the world in a dark light. But such poetry

is not healthy. It is morbid. It means retrogression. It brings a sharp

truth to the mind with a painful shock, and leaves an after-impression

of gloom unspeakable. As I said before, we must not spoil the happiness

of children by telling them that there are no ghosts or fairies. So

we must not tell the humanity which believes in happiness after death

that there is no heaven. All progress is through faith and hope in

something. The measure of a poet is in the largeness of the thought

which he can apply to any subject, however trifling. Bearing this in

mind, let us now see how the same subject of the sea-shell appeals to

the thought of Rossetti. You will then perceive the difference between

pessimism and philosophical humanitarianism.

THE SEA-LIMITS

Consider the sea's listless chime:

Time's self it is, made audible,--

The murmur of the earth's own shell.

Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass

No furlong further. Since time was,

This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's,--it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life,

Enduring always at dull strife.

As the world's heart of rest and wrath,

Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands,

Grey and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods;

Those voices of twin solitudes

Shall have one sound alike to thee:

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

Surge and sink back and surge again,--

Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach

And listen at its lips: they sigh

The same desire and mystery,

The echo of the whole sea's speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not anything but what thou art:

And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

In the last beautiful stanza we have a comparison as sublime as any

ever made by any poet--of the human heart, the human life, re-echoing

the murmur of the infinite Sea of Life. As the same sound of the sea

is heard in every shell, so in every human heart is the same ghostly

murmur of Universal Being. The sound of the sea, the sound of the

forest, the sound of men in cities, not only are the same to the ear,

but they tell the same story of pain. The sound of the sea is a sound

of perpetual strife, the sound of the woods in the wind is a sound of

ceaseless struggle, the tumult of a great city is also a tumult of

effort. In this sense all the three sounds are but one, and that one

is the sound of life everywhere. Life is pain, and therefore sadness.

The world itself is like a great shell full of this sound. But it is a

shell on the verge of the Infinite. The millions of suns, the millions

of planets and moons, are all of them but shells on the shore of the

everlasting sea of death and birth, and each would, if we could hear

it, convey to our ears and hearts the one same murmur of pain. This

is, to my thinking, a much vaster conception than anything to be found

in Tennyson; and such a poem as that of Lee-Hamilton dwindles into

nothingness beside it, for we have here all that man can know of our

relation to the universe, and the mystery of that universe brought

before us by a simile of incomparable sublimity.

Before leaving this important class of poems, let me cite another

instance of the comparative nearness of Rossetti at times to Oriental

thought. It is the fifteenth of that wonderful set of sonnets entitled

the "House of Life."

THE BIRTH-BOND

Have you not noted, in some family

Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,

How still they own their gracious bond, though fed

And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?--

How to their father's children they shall be

In act and thought of one goodwill; but each

Shall for the other have, in silence speech,

And in a word complete community?

Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,

That among souls allied to mine was yet

One nearer kindred than life hinted of.

O born with me somewhere that men forget,

And though in years of sight and sound unmet,

Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

This beautiful little thought of love is almost exactly the same as

that suggested in a well-known Japanese proverb about the relations

of a previous existence. We have here, in an English poet, who very

probably never read anything about Buddhism, the very idea of the

Buddhist _en._ The whole tendency of the poet's mind was toward larger

things than his early training had prepared him for.

Yet it would be a mistake to suppose Rossetti a pure mystic; he was

too much of an artist for that. No one felt the sensuous charm of life

more keenly, nor the attraction of plastic beauty and grace. By way of

an interlude, we may turn for a time to his more sensuous poetry. It

is by this that he is best known; for you need not suppose that the

general English public understands such poems as those which we have

been examining. Keep in mind that there is a good deal of difference

between the adjectives "sensuous" and "sensual." The former has no evil

meaning; it refers only to sense-impression--to sensations visual,

auditory, tactile. The other adjective is more commonly used in a bad

sense. At one time an attempt was made to injure Rossetti by applying

it to his work; but all good critics have severely condemned that

attempt, and Rossetti must not be regarded as in any sense an immoral

poet.

II

To the cultivated the very highest quality of emotional poetry is that

given by blending the artistically sensuous with the mystic. This very

rare quality colours the greater part of Rossetti's work. Perhaps one

may even say that it is never entirely absent. Only, the proportions

of the blending vary, like those mixtures of red and blue, crimson and

azure, which may give us either purple or violet of different shades

according to the wish of the dyer. The quality of mysticism dominates

in the symbolic poems; we might call those deep purple. The sensuous

element dominates in most of the ballads and narrative poems; we might

say that these have rather the tone of bright violet. But even in the

ballads there is a very great difference in the proportions of the two

qualities. The highest tone is in the "Blessed Damozel," and in the

beautiful narrative poem of the "Staff and Scrip"; while the lowest

tone is perhaps that of the ballad of "Eden Bower," which describes

the two passions of lust and hate at their greatest intensity. But

everything is beautifully finished as work, and unapproachably

exquisite, in feeling. I think the best example of what I have called

the violet style is the ballad of "Troy Town."

Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's Queen,

(O _Troy Town!_)

Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,

The sun and moon of the heart's desire:

All Love's lordship lay between.

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,

(O _Troy Town!_)

Saying, "A little gift is mine,

A little gift for a heart's desire.

Hear me speak and make me a sign!

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"Look! I bring thee a carven cup;

(O _Troy Town!_)

See it here as I hold it up,--

Shaped it is to the heart's desire,

Fit to fill when the gods would sup.

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"It was moulded like my breast;

(O _Troy Town!_)

He that sees it may not rest,

Rest at all for his heart's desire.

O give ear to my heart's behest!

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"See my breast, how like it is;

(O _Troy Town!_)

See it bare for the air to kiss!

Is the cup to thy heart's desire?

O for the breast, O make it his!

(_O Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"Yea, for my bosom here I sue;

(_O Troy Town!_)

Thou must give it where 'tis due,

Give it there to the heart's desire.

Whom do I give my bosom to?

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"Each twin breast is an apple sweet!

(O _Troy Town!_)

Once an apple stirred the beat

Of thy heart with the heart's desire:--

Say, who brought it then to thy feet?

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"They that claimed it then were three:

(O _Troy Town!_)

For thy sake two hearts did he

Make forlorn of the hearths desire.

Do for him as he did for thee!

(_O Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

"Mine are apples grown to the south,

(_O Troy Town!_)

Grown to taste in the days of drouth,

Taste and waste to the heart's desire:

Mine are apples meet for his mouth!"

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

Venus looked on Helen's gift,

(O _Troy Town!_)

Looked and smiled with subtle drift,

Saw the work of her heart's desire:--

"There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!"

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

Venus looked in Helen's face,

(O _Troy Town!_)

Knew far off an hour and place,

And fire lit from the heart's desire;

Laughed and said, "Thy gift hath grace!"

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

Cupid looked on Helen's breast,

(O _Troy Town!_)

Saw the heart within its nest,

Saw the flame of the heart's desire,--

Marked his arrow's burning crest.

(O _Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

Cupid took another dart,

(O _Troy Town!_)

Fledged it for another heart,

Winged the shaft with the heart's desire,

Drew the string, and said "Depart!"

(_O Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

Paris turned upon his bed,

(_O Troy Town!_)

Turned upon his bed, and said,

Dead at heart with the heart's desire,--

"O to clasp her golden head!"

(_O Troy's down!_

_Tall Troy's on fire!_)

This wonderful ballad, with its single and its double refrains,

represents Rossetti's nearest approach to earth, except the ballad of

"Eden Bower." Usually he seldom touches the ground, but moves at some

distance above it, just as one flies in dreams. But you will observe

that the mysticism here has almost vanished. There is just a little

ghostliness to remind you that the writer is no common singer, but a

poet able to give a thrill. The ghostliness is chiefly in the fact of

the supernatural elements involved; Helen with her warm breast we feel

to be a real woman, but Venus and love are phantoms, who speak and act

as figures in sleep. This is true art under the circumstances. We feel

nothing more human until we come to the last stanza; then we hear it in

the cry of Paris. But why do I say that this is high art to make the

gods as they are made here? The Greeks would have made Venus and Cupid

purely human. But Rossetti is not taking the Greek view of the subject

at all. He is taking the mediæval one. He is writing of Greek gods and

Greek legends as such subjects were felt by Chaucer and by the French

poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It would not be easy

to explain the mediæval tone of the poem to you; that would require a

comparison with the work of very much older poets. I only want now to

call your attention to the fact that even in a Greek subject of the

sensuous kind Rossetti always keeps the tone of the Middle Ages; and

that tone was mystical.

Having given this beautiful example of the least mystical class of

Rossetti's light poems, let us pass at once to the most mystical. These

are in all respects, I am not afraid to say, far superior. The poem by

which Rossetti became first widely known and admired was "The Blessed

Damozel." This and a lovely narrative poem entitled "Staff and Scrip"

form the most exquisite examples of the poet's treatment of mystical

love. You should know both of them; but we shall first take "The

Blessed Damozel."

This is the story of a woman in heaven, speaking of the man she loved

on earth. She is waiting for him. She watches every new soul that comes

to heaven, hoping that it may be the soul of her lover. While waiting

thus, she talks to herself about what she will do to make her lover

happy when he comes, how she will show him all the beautiful things in

heaven, and will introduce him to the holy saints and angels. That is

all. But it is very wonderful in its sweetness of simple pathos, and

in a peculiar, indescribable quaintness which is not of the nineteenth

century at all. It is of the Middle Ages, the Italian Middle Ages

before the time of Raphael. The heaven painted here is not the heaven

of modern Christianity--if modern Christianity can be said to have a

heaven; it is the heaven of Dante, a heaven almost as sharply defined

as if it were on earth.

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL

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.

_Damozel_. This is only a quaint form of the same word which in modern

French signifies a young lady--demoiselle. The suggestion is not simply

that it is a maiden that speaks, but a maiden of noble blood. The idea

of the poet is exactly that of Dante in speaking of Beatrice. Seven is

the mystical number of Christianity.

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.

_Clasp._ The ornamental fastening of the dress at the neck. "From

clasp to hem" thus signifies simply "from neck to feet," for the hem

of a garment means especially its lower edge. _Wrought-flowers_ here

means embroidered flowers. The dress has no ornament and no girdle; it

is a dress of the thirteenth century as to form; but it may interest

you to know that usually in religious pictures of angels and heavenly

souls (the French religious prints are incomparably the best) there is

no girdle, and the robe falls straight from neck to feet. _Service._

The maiden in heaven becomes a servant of the Mother of God. But the

mediæval idea was that the daughter of a very noble house, entering

heaven, might be honoured by being taken into the service of Mary, just

as in this world one might be honoured by being taken into the personal

service of a queen or emperor. A white rose is worn as the badge or

mark of this distinction, because white is the symbol of chastity, and

Mary is especially the patron of chastity. In heaven also--the heaven

of Dante--the white rose has many symbolic significations. _Yellow._

Compare "Elle est _blonde comme le blé._" (De Musset.)

Herseemed she scarce had been a day

One of God's choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone

From that still look of hers;

Albeit, to them she left, her day

Had counted as ten years.

_Herseemed._ This word is very unusual, even obsolete. Formerly

instead of saying "it seems to me," "it seems to him," English people

used to say meseems, him-seems, herseems. The word "meseems" is still

used, but only in the present, with rare exceptions. It is becoming

obsolete also. _Choristers._ Choir-singers. The daily duty of angels

and souls in heaven was supposed to be to sing the praises of God, just

as on earth hymns are sung in church. _Albeit._ An ancient form of

"although."

(To one, it is ten years of years,

...Yet now, and in this place,

Surely she leaned o'er me--her hair

Fell all about my face....

Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.

The whole year sets apace.)

_Ten years of years._ That is, years composed not of three hundred

and sixty-five days, but of three hundred and sixty-five years. To

the lover on earth, deprived of his beloved by death, the time passes

slowly so that a day seems as long as a year. Sometimes he imagines

that he feels the dead bending over him--that he feels her hair falling

over his face. When he looks, he finds that it is only the leaves of

the trees that have been falling upon him; and he knows that the autumn

has come, and that the year is slowly dying.

It was the rampart of God's house

That she was standing on;

By God built over the sheer depth

The which is Space begun;

So high, that looking downward thence

She scarce could see the sun.

_Rampart_, you know, means part of a fortification; all the nobility

of the Middle Ages lived in castles or fortresses, and their idea of

heaven was necessarily the idea of a splendid castle. In the "Song

of Roland" we find the angels and the saints spoken of as knights

and ladies, and the language they use is the language of chivalry.

_Sheer depth_, straight down, perpendicularly, absolute. God's castle

overlooks, not a landscape, but space; the sun and the stars lie far

below.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood

Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath, the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge

The void, as low as where this earth

Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims,

Spoke ever more among themselves

Their heart-remembered names;

And the souls mounting up to God

Went by her like thin flames.

_Ether._ This is not the modern word, the scientific ether, but the

Greek and also mediæval ether, the most spiritual form of matter. The

house of God, or heaven, rests upon nothing, but stretches out like a

bridge over the ether itself. Far below something like enormous waves

seem to be soundlessly passing, light and dark. Even in heaven, and

throughout the universe, it was supposed in the Middle Ages that there

were successions of day and night independent of the sun. These are the

"tides" described. _Ridge the void_ means, make ridges or wave-like

lines in the ether of space. _Midge_ is used in English just as the

word _kobai_ is used in Japanese. Fretful midge, a midge that moves

very quickly as if fretted or frightened.

And still she bowed herself and stooped

Out of the circling charm;

Until her bosom must have made

The bar she leaned on warm,

And the lilies lay as if asleep

Along her bended arm.

_Charm._ The circling charm is not merely the gold railing upon which

she leans, but the magical limits of heaven itself which holds the

souls back. She cannot pass beyond them. Otherwise her wish would take

her back to this world to watch by her living lover. But only the

angels, who are the messengers of heaven, can go beyond the boundaries.

From the fixed place of Heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce

Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove

Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when

The stars sang in their spheres.

_Shake._ Here in the sense of to beat like a heart or pulse. Heaven

about her is motionless, fixed; but looking down upon the universe she

sees a luminous motion, regular like a heart-beat; that is Time. _Its

path._ Her eyes tried to pierce a way or path for themselves through

space; that is, she made a desperate effort to see farther than she

could see. She is looking in vain for the coming of her lover. _Their

spheres._ This is an allusion to a Biblical verse, "when the morning

stars sang together." It was said that when the world was created the

stars sang for joy.

The sun was gone now; the curled moon

Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf; and now

She spoke through the still weather.

Her voice was like the voice the stars

Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,

Strove not her accents there,

Fain to be hearkened? When those bells

Possessed the mid-day air,

Strove not her steps to reach my side

Down all the echoing stair?)

_Stair._ We must suppose the lover to be in or near a church with a

steeple, or lofty bell tower. Outside he hears a bird singing; and in

the sweetness of its song he thinks that he hears the voice of the dead

girl speaking to him. Then, as the church bells send down to him great

sweet waves of sound from the tower, he imagines that he can hear, in

the volume of the sound, something like a whispering of robes and faint

steps as of a spirit trying to descend to his side.

"I wish that he were come to me,

For he will come," she said.

"Have I not prayed in Heaven?--on earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not prayed?

Are not two prayers a perfect strength?

And shall I fell afraid?

An allusion to a verse in the New Testament--"if two of you shall agree

on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done

for them." She is a little afraid that her lover may not get to heaven

after all, but she suddenly remembers this verse, and it gives her

encouragement. _Perfect strength_ means strength of prayer, the power

of the prayer to obtain what is prayed for. As she and he have both

been praying for reunion in heaven, and as Christ has promised that

whatever two people pray for, shall be granted, she feels consoled.

"When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is clothed in white,

I'll take his hand and go with him

To the deep wells of light;

As unto a stream we will step down,

And bathe there in God's sight.

The _aureole_ is the circle or disk of golden light round the head

of a saint. Sometimes it is called a "glory." In some respects the

aureole of Christian art much resembles that of Buddhist art, with this

exception, that some of the Oriental forms are much richer and more

elaborate. Three forms in Christian art are especially common--the

plain circle; the disk, like a moon or sun, usually made in art by

a solid plate of gilded material behind the head; the full "glory,"

enshrining the whole figure. There is only one curious fact to which I

need further refer here; it is that the Holy Ghost in Christian art has

a glory of a special kind--the triangle. _White._ This is a reference

to the description of heaven in the paradise of St. John's vision,

where all the saints are represented in white garments. _Deep wells of

light._ Another reference to St. John's vision, Rev. XXII, 1--"And he

showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding

out of the throne of God." In the heaven of the Middle Ages, as in the

Buddhist paradise, we find also lakes and fountains of light, or of

liquid jewels.

"We two will stand beside that shrine,

Occult, withheld, untrod,

Whose lamps are stirred continually

With prayer sent up to God;

And see our old prayers, granted, melt

Each like a little cloud.

_Shrine._ The Holy of Holies, or innermost sanctuary of heaven,

imagined by mediæval faith as a sort of reserved chapel. But the

origin of the fancy will be explained in the next note. _Lamps._ See

again St. John's vision, Rev. IV, 5--"And there were seven lamps of

fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God."

These mystical flames, representing special virtues and powers, would

be agitated according to the special virtues corresponding to them in

the ascending prayers of men. But now we come to another and stranger

thought. _A little cloud._ See again Rev. V, 8, in which reference is

made to "golden vials, full of incense, which are the prayers of the

saints." Here we see the evidence of a curious belief that prayers

in heaven actually become transformed into the substance of incense.

By the Talmudists it was said that they were turned into beautiful

flowers. Again, in Rev. VIII, 3, we have an allusion to this incense,

made of prayer, being burned in heaven--"And there was given unto him

much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints."

Now the poem can be better understood. The Blessed Damozel thinks

that her old prayers, that is to say, the prayers that she made on

earth, together with those of her lover, are in heaven in the shape

of incense. As long as prayer is not granted, it remains incense;

when granted it becomes perfume smoke and vanishes. Therefore she

says, "We shall see our old prayers, granted, melt each like a little

_cloud_"--that is, a cloud of smoke of incense.

"We two will lie i' the shadow of

That living mystic tree

Within whose secret growth the Dove

Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch

Saith His Name audibly.

The heavenly tree of life is described in Rev. XXVII, 2, as bearing

twelve different kinds of fruit, one for each of the twelve months of

the year, while its leaves heal all diseases or troubles of any kind.

The Dove is the Holy Ghost, who is commonly represented in Christian

art by this bird, when he is not represented by a tongue or flame of

fire. Every time that a leaf touches the body of the Dove, we are told

that the leaf repeats the name of the Holy Ghost. In what language?

Probably in Latin, and the sound of the Latin name would be like the

sound of the motion of leaves, stirred by a wind: _Sanctus Spiritus._

"And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice

Shall pause in, hushed and slow,

And find some knowledge at each pause,

Or some new thing to know."

(Alas! we two, we two, thou say'st!

Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift

To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul

Was but its love for thee?)

It is the lover who now speaks, commenting upon the imagined words

of the beloved in heaven. _Endless unity_ here has a double meaning,

signifying at once the mystical union of the soul with God, and the

reunion forever of lovers separated by death. The lover doubts whether

he can be found worthy to enter heaven, because his only likeness to

the beloved was in his love for her; that is to say, his merit was not

so much in being good as in loving good in another.

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is,

With her fine handmaidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret, and Rosalys.

Notice the mediæval method of speaking of the mother of God as "the

lady Mary"; such would have been the form of address for a princess

or queen in those times. So King Arthur's wife, in the old romance,

is called the lady Guinevere. _Symphonies_ here has only the simplest

meaning of a sweet sound, not of a combination of sounds; but the

use of the word nevertheless implies to a delicate ear that the five

names make harmony with each other. They are names of saints, but also

favourite names given to daughters of great families as Christian

names. The picture is simply that of the lady of a great castle,

surrounded by her waiting women, engaged in weaving and sewing.

"Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them

Who are just born, being dead.

_With bound locks_ means only with the hair tied up, not flowing loose,

as was usual in figures of saints and angels. They are weaving garments

for new souls received into heaven, just as mothers might weave cloth

for a child soon to be born. The description of the luminous white

cloth might be compared with descriptions in Revelation. _Being dead._

Christianity, like the Oriental religions, calls death a rebirth; but

the doctrinal idea is entirely different. You will remember that the

Greeks represented the soul under the form of a butterfly. Christianity

approaches the Greek fancy by considering the human body as a sort of

caterpillar, which enters the pupa-state at death; the soul is like

the butterfly leaving the chrysalis. So far everything is easy to

understand; but this rebirth of the soul is only half a rebirth in the

Christian sense. The body is also to be born again at a later day. At

present there are only souls in heaven; but after the judgment day the

same bodies which they used to have during life are to be given back

to them. Therefore Rossetti is not referring here to rebirth except

in the sense of spiritual rebirth, as Christ used it, in saying "Ye

must be born again"--that is, obtain new hearts, new feelings. What in

Oriental poetry would represent a fact of belief, here represents only

the symbol of a belief, a belief of a totally different kind.

"He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:

Then will I lay my cheek

To his, and tell about our love,

Not once abashed or weak:

And the dear Mother will approve

My pride, and let me speak.

"Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

To Him round whom all souls

Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads

Bowed with their aureoles:

And angels meeting us shall sing

To their citherns and citoles.

"There will I ask of Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me:--

Only to live as once on earth

With Love, only to be,

As then awhile, forever now

Together, I and he."

The Damozel's idea is that her lover will be ashamed and afraid to

speak to the mother of God when he is introduced to her; but she will

not be afraid to say how much she loves her lover, and she will cause

the lady Mary to bring them both into the presence of God himself,

identified here rather with the Son than with the Father. _Citherns and

citoles._ Both words are derived from the Latin _cithara_, a harp, and

both refer to long obsolete kinds of stringed instruments used during

the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.

She gazed and listened and then said,

Less sad of speech than mild,--

"All this is when he comes." She ceased.

The light thrilled toward her, filled

With angels in strong level flight.

Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path

Was vague in distant spheres:

And then she cast her arms along

The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept. (I heard her tears.)

In these beautiful lines we are reminded of the special duty of angels,

from which they take their name, "messenger"--the duty of communicating

between earth and heaven and bringing the souls of the dead to

paradise. The Damozel, waiting and watching for her lover, imagines,

whenever she sees the angels coming from the direction of the human

world, that her lover may be coming with them. At last she sees a band

of angels flying straight toward her through the luminous ether, which

shivers and flashes before their coming. "Her eyes prayed," that is,

expressed the prayerful desire that it might be her beloved; and she

feels almost sure that it is. Then comes her disappointment, for the

angels pass out of sight in another direction, and she cries--even in

heaven. At least her lover imagines that he saw and heard her weeping.

The use of the word Damozel needs a little more explanation, that you

may understand the great art with which the poem was arranged. The Old

French _damoisel_ (later _damoiseau_) signified a young lad of noble

birth or knightly parentage, employed in a noble house as page or

squire. Originally there was no feminine form; but afterwards the form

_damoselle_ came into use, signifying a young lady in the corresponding

capacity. Thus Rossetti in choosing the old English form _damozel_

selected perhaps the only possible word which could exactly express the

position of the Damozel in heaven, as well as the mediæval conception

of that heaven. Our English word "damsel," so common in the Bible, is a

much later form than damozel. There was, however, a Middle English form

spelled almost like the form used by Rossetti, except that there was an

"s" instead of a "z."

Now you will better see the meaning of Rossetti's mysticism. When you

make religion love, without ceasing to be religious, and make love

religion, without ceasing to be human and sensuous, in the good sense

of the word, then you have made a form of mysticism. The blending in

Rossetti is very remarkable, and has made this particular poem the most

famous thing which he wrote. We have here a picture of heaven, with

all its mysteries and splendours, suspended over an ocean of ether,

through which souls are passing like an upward showering of fire; and

all this is spiritual enough. But the Damozel, with her yellow hair,

and her bosom making warm what she leans upon, is very human; and her

thoughts are not of the immaterial kind. The suggestions about bathing

together, about embracing, cheek against cheek, and about being able

to love in heaven as on earth, have all the delightful innocence of

the Middle Ages, when the soul was thought of only as another body of

finer substance. Now it is altogether the human warmth of the poem that

makes its intense attraction. Rarely to-day can any Western poet write

satisfactorily about heavenly things, because we have lost the artless

feeling of the Middle Ages, and we cannot think of the old heaven as a

reality. In order to write such things, we should have to get back the

heart of our fathers; and Rossetti happened to be born with just such a

heart. He had probably little or no real faith in religion; but he was

able to understand exactly how religious people felt hundreds of years

ago.

Let us now turn to a more earthly phase of the same tone of love which

appears in "The Blessed Damozel." Now it is the lover himself on earth

who is speaking, while contemplating the portrait of the dead woman

whom he loved. We shall only make extracts, on account of the extremely

elaborate and difficult structure of the poem.

THE PORTRAIT

This is her picture as she was:

It seems a thing to wonder on,

As though mine image in the glass

Should tarry when myself am gone.

I gaze until she seems to stir,--

Until mine eyes almost aver

That now, even now, the sweet lips part

To breathe the words of the sweet heart:--

And yet the earth is over her.

. . . . . .

Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears

The beating heart of Love's own breast,--Where

round the secret of all spheres

All angels lay their wings to rest,--

How shall my soul stand rapt and awed.

When, by the new birth borne abroad

Throughout the music of the suns,

It enters in her soul at once

And knows the silence there for God!

Here is the very highest form of mystical love; for love is identified

with God, and the reunion in heaven is a blending, not with a mere

fellow soul, but with the Supreme Being. By "silence" here you must

understand rest, heavenly peace. The closing stanza of the poem

contains one of the most beautiful images of comparison ever made in

any language.

Here with her face doth memory sit

Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,

Till other eyes shall look from it,

Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,

Even than the old gaze tenderer:

While hopes and aims long lost with her

Stand round her image side by side,

Like tombs of pilgrims that have died

About the Holy Sepulchre.

What the poet means is this: "Now I sit, remembering the past, and

look at her face in the picture, as long as the light of day remains.

Presently, with twilight the stars will shine out like eyes in

heaven--heaven which is my Holy Land, because she is there. Those

stars will then seem to me even as her eyes, but more beautiful, more

loving than the living eyes. The hopes and the projects which I used to

entertain for her sake, and which died when she died--they come back

to mind, but like the graves ranged around the grave of Christ at

Jerusalem." The reference is of course to the great pilgrimages of the

Middle Ages made to Jerusalem.

More than the artist speaks here; and if there be not strong faith,

there is at least beautiful hope. A more tender feeling could not be

combined with a greater pathos; but Rossetti often reaches the very

same supreme quality of sentiment, even in poems of a character closely

allied to romance. We can take "The Staff and Scrip" as an example of

mediæval story of the highest emotional quality.

"Who rules these lands?" the Pilgrim said.

"Stranger, Queen Blanchelys."

"And who has thus harried them?" he said.

"It was Duke Luke did this;

God's ban be his!"

The Pilgrim said, "Where is your house?

I'll rest there, with your will."

"You've but to climb these blackened boughs

And you'll see it over the hill,

For it burns still."

"Which road, to seek your Queen?" said he.

"Nay, nay, but with some wound

You'll fly back hither, it may be,

And by your blood i' the ground

My place be found."

"Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,

And mine, where I will go;

For He is here and there," he said.

He passed the hillside, slow,

And stood below.

So far the poem is so simple that no one could expect anything very

beautiful in the sequence. We only have a conversation between a

pilgrim from the Holy Land, returned to his native country (probably

mediæval France), and a peasant or yeoman belonging to the estate of

a certain Queen. We may suspect, however, from the conversation, that

the pilgrim is a knight or noble, and probably has been a crusader. He

sees that the country has been ravaged by some merciless enemy; and

the peasant tells him that it was Duke Luke. The peasant's house is

burning; he himself is hiding in terror of his life. But the pilgrim is

not afraid, and goes to see the Queen in spite of all warning. One can

imagine very well that the purpose of the Duke in thus making war upon

a woman was to force a marriage as well as to acquire territory. Now it

was the duty of a true knight to help any woman unjustly oppressed or

attacked; therefore the pilgrim's wish to see the Queen is prompted by

this sense of duty. Hereafter the poem has an entirely different tone.

The Queen sat idle by her loom:

She heard the arras stir,

And looked up sadly: through the room

The sweetness sickened her

Of musk and myrrh.

Her women, standing two and two,

In silence combed the fleece.

The Pilgrim said, "Peace be with you,

Lady"; and bent his knees.

She answered, "Peace."

Her eyes were like the wave within;

Like water-reeds the poise

Of her soft body, dainty-thin;

And like the water's noise

Her plaintive voice.

The naked walls of rooms during the Middle Ages were covered with

drapery or tapestry, on which figures were embroidered or woven.

_Arras_ was the name given to a kind of tapestry made at the town of

Arras in France.

For him, the stream had never well'd

In desert tracts malign

So sweet; nor had he ever felt

So faint in the sunshine

Of Palestine.

Right so, he knew that he saw weep

Each night through every dream

The Queen's own face, confused in sleep

With visages supreme

Not known to him.

At this point the poem suddenly becomes mystical. It is not chance nor

will that has brought these two together, but some divine destiny. As

he sees the Queen's face for the first time with his eyes, he remembers

having seen the same face many times before in his dreams. And when he

saw it in dreams, it was also the face of a woman weeping; and there

were also other faces in the dream, not human but "supreme"--probably

angels or other heavenly beings.

"Lady," he said, "your lands lie burnt

And waste: to meet your foe

All fear: this I have seen and learnt.

Say that it shall be so,

And I will go."

She gazed at him. "Your cause is just,

For I have heard the same:"

He said: "God's strength shall be my trust.

Fall it to good or grame,

'Tis in His name."

"Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.

Why should you toil to break

A grave, and fall therein?" she said.

He did not pause but spake:

"For my vow's sake."

"Can such vows be, Sir--to God's ear,

Not to God's will?" "My vow

Remains: God heard me there as here,"

He said, with reverent brow,

"Both then and now."

They gazed together, he and she,

The minute while he spoke;

And when he ceased, she suddenly

Looked round upon her folk

As though she woke.

"Fight, Sir," she said; "my prayers in pain

Shall be your fellowship."

He whispered one among her train,--

"To-morrow bid her keep

This staff and scrip."

The scrip was a kind of wallet or bag carried by pilgrims. Now we

have a few sensuous touches, of the kind in which Rossetti excels all

other poets, because they always are kept within the extreme limits of

artistic taste.

She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt

About his body there

As sweet as her own arms he felt.

He kissed its blade, all bare,

Instead of her.

She sent him a green banner wrought

With one white lily stem,

To bind his lance with when he fought.

He writ upon the same

And kissed her name.

"Wrought" here signifies embroidered with the design of the white

lily. Remember that the Queen's name is white lily (Blanchelys), and

the flower is her crest. It was the custom for every knight to have

fastened to his lance a small flag or pennon--also called sometimes

"pennant."

She sent him a white shield, whereon

She bade that he should trace

His will. He blent fair hues that shone,

And in a golden space

He kissed her face.

Being appointed by the Queen her knight, it would have been more

customary that she should tell him what design he should put upon his

shield--heraldic privileges coming from the sovereign only. But she

tells him generously that he may choose any design that he pleases. He

returns the courtesy very beautifully by painting the Queen's face on

the shield upon a background of gold, and kissing the image. By "space"

here must be understood a quarter, or compartment, of the shield,

according to the rules of heraldry.

Born of the day that died, that eve

Now dying sank to rest;

As he, in likewise taking leave,

Once with a heaving breast

Looked to the west.

And there the sunset skies unseal'd,

Like lands he never knew,

Beyond to-morrow's battle-field

Lay open out of view

To ride into.

Here we have the suggestion of emotions known to us all, when looking

into a beautiful sunset sky in which there appeared to be landscapes

of gold and purple and other wonderful colours, like some glimpse of a

heavenly world. Notice the double suggestion of this verse. The knight,

having bidden the Queen good-bye, is riding home, looking, as he rides,

into the sunset and over the same plain where he must fight to-morrow.

Looking, he sees such landscapes--strangely beautiful, more beautiful

than anything in the real world. Then he thinks that heaven might be

like that. At the same time he has a premonition that he is going to be

killed the next day, and this thought comes to him: "Perhaps I shall

ride into that heaven to-morrow."

Next day till dark the women pray'd;

Nor any might know there

How the fight went; the Queen has bade

That there do come to her

No messenger.

The Queen is pale, her maidens ail;

And to the organ-tones

They sing but faintly, who sang well

The matin-orisons,

The lauds and nones.

_Orison_ means a prayer; _matin_ has the same meaning as the French

word, spelled in the same way, for morning. Matin-orisons are morning

prayers, but special prayers belonging to the ancient church services

are intended; these prayers are still called matins. _Lauds_ is also

the name of special prayers of the Roman morning service; the word

properly means "praises." _Nones_ is the name of a third special kind

of prayers, intended to be repeated or sung at the ninth hour of the

morning--hence, nones.

Lo, Father, is thine ear inclin'd,

And hath thine angel pass'd?

For these thy watchers now are blind

With vigil, and at last

Dizzy with fast.

Weak now to them the voice o' the priest

As any trance affords;

And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,

It seemed that the last chords

Still sang the words.

By _Father_ is here meant God--probably in the person of Christ. To

incline the ear means to listen. When this expression is used of God

it always means listening to prayer. In the second line angel has

the double signification of spirit and messenger, but especially the

latter. Why is the expression "at last" used here? It was the custom

when making special prayer both to remain without sleep, which was

called "keeping vigil" or watch, and to remain without food, or "to

fast." The evening has come and the women have not eaten anything all

day. At first they were too anxious to feel hungry, but _at last_ as

the night advances, they become too weak.

"Oh, what is the light that shines so red?

'Tis long since the sun set";

Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:

"'Twas dim but now, and yet

The light is great."

Quoth the other: "'Tis our sight is dazed

That we see flame i' the air."

But the Queen held her brows and gazed,

And said, "It is the glare

Of torches there."

_Held her brows_--that is, put her hand above her eyes so as to see

better by keeping off the light in the room. There is a very nice

suggestion here; the Queen hears and sees better than the young girls,

not simply because she has finer senses, or because she has more to

fear by the loss of her kingdom. It is the intensification of the

senses caused by love that makes her see and hear so well.

"Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?

All day it was so still;"

Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:

"Unto the furthest hill

The air they fill."

Quoth the other: "'Tis our sense is blurr'd

With all the chants gone by."

But the Queen held her breath and heard,

And said, "It is the cry

Of Victory."

The first of all the rout was sound,

The next were dust and flame,

And then the horses shook the ground;

And in the thick of them

A still band came.

I think that no poet in the world ever performed a greater feat than

this stanza, in which, and in three lines only, the whole effect of

the spectacle and sound of an army returning at night has been given.

We must suppose that the women have gone out to wait for the army. It

comes; but the night is dark, and they hear at first only the sound of

the coming, the tramp of black masses of men passing. Probably these

would be the light troops, archers and footmen. The lights are still

behind, with the cavalry. Then the first appearance is made in the

light of torches--foot soldiers still, covered with dust and carrying

lights with them. Then they feel the ground shake under the weight of

the feudal cavalry--the knights come. But where is the chief? No chief

is visible; but, surrounded by the mounted knights, there is a silent

company of men on foot carrying something. The Queen wants to know

what it is. It is covered with leaves and branches so that she cannot

see it.

"Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,

Thus hid beneath these boughs?"

"Thy conquering guest returns to-night,

And yet shall not carouse,

Queen, in thy house."

After a victory there was always in those days a great feast of

wine-drinking, or carousal. _To carouse_ means to take part in such

noisy festivity. When the Queen puts her question, she is kindly but

grimly answered, so that she knows the dead body of her knight must be

under the branches. But being a true woman and lover, her love conquers

her fear and pain; she must see him again, no matter how horribly his

body may have been wounded.

"Uncover ye his face," she said.

"O changed in little space!"

She cried, "O pale that was so red!

O God, O God of grace!

Cover his face!"

His sword was broken in his hand

Where he had kissed the blade.

"O soft steel that could not withstand!

O my hard heart unstayed,

That prayed and prayed!"

Why does she call her heart hard? Because she naturally reproaches

herself with his death. _Unstayed_ means uncomforted, unsupported.

There is a suggestion that she prayed and prayed in vain because her

heart had suffered her to send that man to battle.

His bloodied banner crossed his mouth

Where he had kissed her name.

"O east, and west, and north, and south,

Fair flew my web, for shame,

To guide Death's aim!"

The tints were shredded from his shield

Where he had kissed her face.

"Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,

Death only keeps its place,

My gift and grace!"

The expression "_my_ web" implies that the Queen had herself woven the

material of the flag. The word "web" is not now often used in modern

prose in this sense--we say texture, stuff, material instead. _A shred_

especially means a small _torn_ piece. "To shred from" would therefore

mean to remove in small torn pieces--or, more simply expressed, to

scratch off, or rend away. Of course the rich thick painting upon the

shield is referred to. Repeated blows upon the surface would remove the

painting in small shreds. This is very pathetic when rightly studied.

She sees that all the presents she made to him, banner, sword, shield,

have been destroyed in the battle; and with bitter irony, the irony of

grief, she exclaims, "The only present I made him that could not be

taken back or broken was death. Death was my grace, my one kindness!"

Then stepped a damsel to her side,

And spoke, and needs must weep;

"For his sake, lady, if he died,

He prayed of thee to keep

This staff and scrip."

That night they hung above her bed,

Till morning wet with tears.

Year after year above her head

Her bed his token wears,

Five years, ten years.

That night the passion of her grief

Shook them as there they hung

Each year the wind that shed the leaf

Shook them and in its tongue

A message flung.

We must suppose the Queen's bed to have been one of the great beds

used in the Middle Ages and long afterwards, with four great pillars

supporting a kind of little roof or ceiling above it, and also

supporting curtains, which would be drawn around the bed at night. The

staff and scrip and the token would have been hung to the ceiling, or

as the French call it _ciel_, of the bed; and therefore they might be

shaken by a passion of grief--because a woman sobbing in the bed would

shake the bed, and therefore anything hung to the awning above it.

And once she woke with a clear mind

That letters writ to calm

Her soul lay in the scrip; to find

Only a torpid balm

And dust of palm.

Sometimes when we are very unhappy, we dream that what we really wish

for has happened, and that the sorrow is taken away. And in such dreams

we are very sure that what we were dreaming is true. Then we wake up to

find the misery come back again. The Queen has been greatly sorrowing

for this man, and wishing she could have some news from his spirit,

some message from him. One night she dreams that somebody tells her,

"If you will open that scrip, you will find in it the message which you

want." Then she wakes up and finds only some palm-dust, and some balm

so old that it no longer has any perfume--but no letter.

They shook far off with palace sport

When joust and dance were rife;

And the hunt shook them from the court;

For hers, in peace or strife,

Was a Queen's life.

A Queen's death now: as now they shake

To gusts in chapel dim,--

Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake

(Carved lovely white and slim),

With them by him.

It would be for her, as for any one in great sorrow, a consolation to

be alone with her grief. But this she cannot be, nor can she show her

grief to any one, because she is a Queen. Only when in her chamber,

at certain moments, can she think of the dead knight, and see the

staff and scrip shaking in their place, as the castle itself shakes to

the sound of the tournaments, dances, and the gathering of the great

hunting parties in the court below.

In that age it was the custom when a knight died to carve an image of

him, lying asleep in his armour, and this image was laid upon his long

tomb. When his wife died, or the lady to whom he had been pledged,

she was represented as lying beside him, with her hands joined, as

if in prayer. You will see plenty of these figures upon old tombs

in England. Usually a nobleman was not buried in the main body of a

large church, but in a chapel--which is a kind of little side-church,

opening into the great church. Such is the case in many cathedrals; and

some cathedrals, like Westminster, have many chapels used as places

of burial and places of worship. On the altar in these little chapels

special services are performed for the souls of the dead buried in the

chapel. It is not uncommon to see, in such a chapel, some relics of the

dead suspended to the wall, such as a shield or a flag. In this poem,

by the Queen's own wish, the staff and scrip of the dead knight are

hung on the wall above her tomb, where they are sometimes shaken by the

wind.

Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,

Good knight, before His brow

Who then as now was here and there,

Who had in mind thy vow

Then even as now.

The lists are set in Heaven to-day,

The bright pavilions shine;

Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;

The trumpets sound in sign

That she is thine.

Not tithed with days' and years' decease

He pays thy wage He owed,

But with imperishable peace

Here in His own abode,

Thy jealous God.

_Still armed_ refers to the representation of the dead knight in full

armour. Mediæval faith imagined the warrior armed in the spiritual

world as he was in this life; and the ghosts of dead knights used to

appear in armour. The general meaning of these stanzas is, "God now

gives you the reward which he owed to you; and unlike rewards given

to men in this world, your heavenly reward is not diminished by the

certainty that you cannot enjoy it except for a certain number of

days or years. God does not keep anything back out of his servants'

wages--no tithe or tenth. You will be with her forever." The adjective

"jealous" applied to God is a Hebrew use of the term; but it has here

a slightly different meaning. The idea is this, that Heaven is jealous

of human love when human love alone is a motive of duty. Therefore the

reward of duty need not be expected in this world but only in Heaven.

Outside of the sonnets, which we must consider separately, I do not

know any more beautiful example of the mystical feeling of love in

Rossetti than this. It will not be necessary to search any further for

examples in this special direction; I think you will now perfectly

understand one of the peculiar qualities distinguishing Rossetti from

all the other Victorian poets--the mingling of religious with amatory

emotion in the highest form of which the language is capable.

III

While we are discussing the ballads and shorter narrative poems, let us

now consider Rossetti simply as a story-teller, and see how wonderful

he is in some of those lighter productions in which he brought the

art of the refrain to a perfection which nobody else, except perhaps

Swinburne, has equalled. Among the ballads there is but one, "Stratton

Water," conceived altogether after the old English fashion; and this

has no refrain. I do not know that any higher praise can be given to

it than the simple statement that it is a perfect imitation of the

old ballad--at least so far as a perfect imitation is possible in the

nineteenth century. Should there be any criticism allowable, it could

be only this, that the tenderness and pathos are somewhat deeper, and

somewhat less rough in utterance, than we expect in a ballad of the

fourteenth or fifteenth century. Yet there is no stanza in it for which

some parallel might not be found in ballads of the old time. It is

nothing more than the story of a country girl seduced by a nobleman,

who nevertheless has no intention of being cruel or unfaithful. Just as

she is about to drown herself, or rather to let herself be drowned, he

rescues her from the danger, marries her in haste to save appearances,

and makes her his wife. There is nothing more of narrative, and no

narrative could be more simple. But as the great pains and great joys

of life are really in simple things, the simplest is capable of almost

infinite expansion when handled by a true artist. Certainly in English

poetry there is no ballad more beautiful than this; nor can we imagine

it possible to do anything more with so slight a theme. It contains

nothing, however, calling for elaborate explanation or comment; I need

only recommend you to read it and to feel it.

It is otherwise in the case of such ballads as "Sister Helen" and

"The White Ship."--"The White Ship" is a little too long for full

reproduction in the lecture; but we can point out its special beauties.

"Sister Helen," although rather long also, we must study the whole

of, partly because it has become so very famous, and partly because

it deals with emotions and facts of the Middle Ages requiring careful

interpretation. Perhaps it is the best example of story telling in

the shorter pieces of Rossetti--not because its pictures are more

objectively vivid than the themes of the "White Ship," but because it

is more subjectively vivid, dealing with the extremes of human passion,

hate, love, revenge, and religious despair. All these are passions

peculiarly coloured by the age in which the story is supposed to

happen, the age of belief in magic, in ghosts, and in hell-fire.