very old times there has been some belief in the kind of magic which
this poem describes. I have seen references to similar magic in
translations of Chinese books, and I imagine that it may have been
known in Japan. In India it is still practised. At one time or other
it was practised in every country of Europe. Indeed, it was only the
development of exact science that rendered such beliefs impossible.
During the Middle Ages they caused the misery of many thousands of
lives, and the fear born of them weighed upon men's minds like a
nightmare.
This superstition in its simplest form was that if you wished to kill
a hated person, it was only necessary to make a small statue or image
of that person in wax, or some other soft material, and to place the
image before a fire, after having repeated certain formulas. As the
wax began to melt before the fire, the person represented by the image
would become sick and grow weaker and weaker, until with the complete
melting of the image, he would die. Sometimes when the image was made
of material other than wax, it was differently treated. Also it was a
custom to stick needles into such images, for the purpose of injuring
rather than of killing. By putting the needles into the place of the
eyes, for example, the person would be made blind; or by putting them
into the place of the ears, he might be rendered deaf. A needle stuck
into the place of the heart would cause death, slow or quick according
to the slowness with which the needle was forced in.
But there were many penalties attaching to the exercise of such magic.
People convicted of having practised it were burned alive by law.
However, burning alive was not the worst consequence of the practice,
according to general belief; for the church taught that such a crime
was unpardonable, and that all guilty of it must go to hell for all
eternity. You might destroy your enemy by magic, but only at the
cost of your own soul. A soul for a life. And you must know that the
persons who did such things believed the magic was real, believed they
were killing, and believed they were condemned to lose their souls in
consequence. Can we conceive of hatred strong enough to satisfy itself
at this price? Certainly, there have been many examples in the history
of those courts in which trials for witchcraft were formerly held.
Now we have the general idea behind this awful ballad. The speakers in
the story are only two, a young woman and her brother, a little boy. We
may suppose the girl to be twenty and the boy about five years old or
even younger. The girl is apparently of good family, for she appears
to be living in a castle of her own--at least a fortified dwelling of
some sort. We must also suppose her to be an orphan, for she avenges
herself--as one having no male relative to fight for her. She has been
seduced under promise of marriage; but before the marriage day, her
faithless lover marries another woman. Then she determines to destroy
his life by magic. While her man of wax is melting before the fire,
the parents, relatives, and newly-wedded bride of her victim come on
horseback to beg that she will forgive. But forgive she will not, and
he dies, and at the last his ghost actually enters the room. This is
the story.
You will observe that the whole conversation is only between the girl
and this baby-brother. She talks to the child in child language, but
with a terrible meaning behind each simple word. She herself will not
answer the prayers of the relatives of the dying man; she makes the
little brother act as messenger. So all that is said in the poem is
said between the girl and the little boy. Even in the opening of the
ballad there is a terrible pathos in the presence of this little baby
brother. What does he know of horrible beliefs, hatred, lust, evil
passion of any sort? He only sees that his sister has made a kind of
wax-doll, and he thinks that it is a pretty doll, and would like to
play with it. But his sister, instead of giving him the doll, begins to
melt it before the fire, and he cannot understand why.
One more preliminary observation. What is the meaning of the refrain?
This refrain, in italics, always represents the secret thought of the
girl, what she cannot say to the little brother, but what she thinks
and suffers. The references to Mary refer to the Virgin Mary of course,
but with the special mediæval sense. God would not forgive certain
sins; but, during the Middle Ages at least, the Virgin Mary, the mother
of God, was a refuge even for the despairing magician or witch. We
could not expect one practising witchcraft to call upon the name of
Christ. But the same person, in moments of intense pain, might very
naturally ejaculate the name of Mary. And now we can begin the poem.
SISTER HELEN
"Why did you melt your waxen man,
Sister Helen?
To-day is the third since you began."
"The time was long, yet the time ran,
Little brother."
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"But if you have done your work aright,
Sister Helen,
You'll let me play, for you said I might."
"Be very still in your play to-night,
Little brother."
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
Sister Helen;
If now it be molten, all is well."
"Even so,--nay, peace! you cannot tell,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"Oh, the waxen knave was plump to-day,
Sister Helen;
How like dead folk he has dropped away!"
"Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
Sister Helen,
Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!"
"Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
Sister Helen,
And I'll play without the gallery door."
"Aye, let me rest,--I'll lie on the floor,
Little brother."
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"Here high up in the balcony,
Sister Helen,
The moon flies face to face with me."
"Aye, look and say whatever you see,
Little brother."
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"Outside, it's merry in the wind's wake,
Sister Helen;
In the shaken trees the chill stars shake."
"Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
Sister Helen,
Three horsemen that ride terribly."
"Little brother, whence come the three,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?_)
In this last stanza the repetition of the words "little brother"
indicates intense eagerness. The girl has been expecting that the
result of her enchantments would force the relatives of her victim to
come and beg for mercy. The child's words therefore bring to her a
shock of excitement.
"They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
Sister Helen,
And one draws nigh, but two are afar."
"Look, look, do you know them who they are,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Who should they he, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,
Sister Helen,
For I know the white mane on the blast."
"The hour has come, has come at last,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!_)
Those who come are knights, and the child can know them only by the
crest or by the horses; as they are very far he can distinguish only
the horses, but he knows the horse of Keith of Eastholm, because of its
white mane, floating in the wind. From this point the poem becomes very
terrible, because it shows us a play of terrible passion--passion all
the more terrible because it is that of a woman.
"He has made a sign and called Halloo!
Sister Helen,
And he says that he would speak with you."
"Oh, tell him I fear the frozen dew
Little brother."
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
Sister Helen,
That Keith of Ewern's like to die."
"And he and thou, and thou and I,
Little brother,"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Three days ago, on his marriage-morn,
Sister Helen,
He sickened, and lies since then forlorn."
"For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!_)
We now can surmise the story from the girl's own lips. There are wrongs
that a woman cannot forgive, unless she is of very weak character
indeed. But this woman is no weakling; she can kill, and laugh while
killing, because she is a daughter of warriors, and has been cruelly
injured. Notice the bitter mockery of every word she utters, especially
the exulting reference to the unhappy bride. We imagine that she might
be sorry for killing a man whom she once loved; but we may be perfectly
sure that she will feel no pity for the woman that he married.
"Three days and nights he has lain abed,
Sister Helen,
And he prays in torment to be dead."
"The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
Sister Helen,
That you should take your curse away."
"_My_ prayer was heard,--he need but pray,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"But he says till you take back your ban,
Sister Helen,
His soul would pass, yet never can."
"Nay then, shall I slay a living man,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"But he calls for ever on your name,
Sister Helen,
And says that he melts before a flame."
"My heart for his pleasure fared the same,
Little brother."
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,
Sister Helen,
For I know the white plume on the blast."
"The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
Sister Helen,
But his words are drowned in the wind's course."
"Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"Oh, he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,
Sister Helen,
Is ever to see you ere he die."
"In all that his soul sees, there am I,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_The soul's one sight, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"He sends a ring and a broken coin,
Sister Helen,
And bids you mind the banks of Boyne."
"What else he broke will he ever join,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_No, never joined, between Hell and Heaven!_)
It was a custom, and in some parts of England still is a custom, for
lovers not only to give each other rings, but also to divide something
between them--such as a coin or a ring, for pledge and remembrance.
Sometimes a ring would be cut in two, and each person would keep
one-half. Sometimes a thin coin, gold or silver money, was broken
into halves and each of the lovers would wear one-half round the neck
fastened to a string. Such pledges would be always recognised, and were
only to be sent back in time of terrible danger--in a matter of life
and death. There are many references to this custom in the old ballads.
"He yields you these, and craves full fain,
Sister Helen,
You pardon him in his mortal pain."
"What else he took will he give again,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"He calls your name in an agony,
Sister Helen,
That even dead Love must weep to see."
"Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast,
Sister Helen,
For I know the white hair on the blast."
"The short, short hour will soon be past,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"He looks at me and he tries to speak,
Sister Helen,
But oh! his voice is sad and weak!"
"What here should the mighty Baron seek,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
Sister Helen,
The body dies, but the soul shall live."
"Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!_)
This needs some explanation in reference to religious belief. The
witch, you will observe, has the power to destroy the soul as well
as the body, but on the condition of suffering the same loss herself.
Yet how can this be? It could happen thus: if the dying man could make
a confession before he dies, and sincerely repent of his sin before a
priest, his soul might be saved; but while he remains in the agony of
suffering caused by the enchantment, he cannot repent. Not to repent
means to go to Hell for ever and ever. If the woman would forgive him,
withdrawing the curse and pain for one instant, all might be well. But
she answers, "Fire shall forgive me as I forgive"--she means, "The fire
of Hell shall sooner forgive me when I go to Hell, than I shall forgive
him in this world." There will be other references to this horrible
belief later on. It was very common in the Middle Ages.
"Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
Sister Helen,
To save his dear son's soul alive."
"Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!_)
_Rive_ is seldom used now in prose, though we have "riven" very often.
To rive is to tear. The last line of this stanza is savage, for it
refers to the belief that the black fire of Hell preserves the body of
the damned person instead of consuming it.
"He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
Sister Helen,
To go with him for the love of God!"
"The way is long to his son's abode,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"A lady's here, by a dark steed brought,
Sister Helen,
So darkly clad, I saw her not."
"See her now or never see aught,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?_)
As the horse was black and the lady was all dressed in black, the
child could not at first notice either in the shadows of the road. On
announcing that he had seen her at last, the excitement of the sister
reaches its highest and wickedest; she says to him, "Nay, you will
never be able to see anything in this world, unless you can see that
woman's face and tell me all about it." For it is the other woman, who
has made forgiveness impossible; it is the other woman, the object of
her deepest hate.
"Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair,
Sister Helen,
On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair."
"Blest hour of my power and her despair,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Hour blessed and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow,
Sister Helen,
'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago."
"One morn for pride, and three days for woe.
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head,
Sister Helen;
With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed."
"What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?_)
You must remember that the word "strains" is, nearly always used in the
sense of musical tones, and that "wedding-strains" means the joyful
music played at a wedding. Thus the ferocity of Helen's mockery becomes
apparent, for it was upon the bridal night that the bridegroom was
first bewitched; and from the moment of his marriage, therefore, he has
been screaming in agony.
The climax of hatred is in the next stanza. After that the tone begins
to reverse, and gradually passes away in the melancholy of eternal
despair.
"She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,
Sister Helen,--
She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon."
"Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!_)
To "gasp" means to open the mouth in the effort to get breath, as one
does in a fit of hysterics, or in time of great agony. "Gasps on the
moon" means that she gasps with her face turned up toward the moon. In
the last line we have the words "blithe tune" used in the same tone of
terrible irony as that with which the word "wedding-strain" was used in
the preceding stanza. "Blithe" means "merry." Helen is angry because
the other woman has fainted; having fainted, she has become for the
moment physically incapable of suffering. But Helen thinks that her
soul must be conscious and suffering as much as ever; therefore she
wishes that she could hear the suffering of the soul, since she cannot
longer hear the outcries of the body.
"They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow,
Sister Helen,
And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow."
"Let it turn whiter than winter-snow,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!_)
The allusion is to the physiological fact that intense moral pain, or
terrible fear, sometimes turns the hair of a young person suddenly
white.
"O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
Sister Helen!
More loud than the vesper-chime it fell."
"No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Alas, but I fear the heavy sound,
Sister Helen;
Is it in the sky or in the ground?"
"Say, have they turned their horses round,
Little brother?"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?_)
"They have raised the old man from his knee,
Sister Helen,
And they ride in silence hastily."
"More fast the naked soul doth flee,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Flank to flank are the three steeds gone,
Sister Helen,
But the lady's dark steed goes alone."
"And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
Sister Helen,
And weary sad they look by the hill."
"But he and I are sadder still,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
Sister Helen,
And the flames are winning up apace!"
"Yet here they burn but for a space,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!_)
"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(_O Mother, Mary Mother_,
_Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!_)
Notice how the action naturally dies off into despair. From the
beginning until very nearly the close, we had an uninterrupted
crescendo, as we should say in music--that is, a gradual
intensification of the passion expressed. With the stroke of the
death-bell the passion subsides. The revenge is satisfied, the
irreparable wrong is done to avenge a wrong, and with the entrance of
the ghost the whole consequence of the act begins to appear within the
soul of the actor. I know of nothing more terrible in literature than
this poem, as expressing certain phases of human feeling, and nothing
more intensely true. The probability or improbability of the incidents
is of no more consequence than is the unreality of the witch-belief. It
is enough that such beliefs once existed to make us know that the rest
is not only possible but certain. For a time we are really subjected to
the spell of a mediæval nightmare.
As we have seen, the above poem is mainly a subjective study. As
an objective study, "The White Ship" shows us an equal degree of
power, appealing to the visual faculty. We cannot read it all, nor
is this necessary. A few examples will be sufficient. This ballad is
in distichs, and has a striking refrain. The story is founded upon
historical fact. The son and heir of the English king Henry I, together
with his sister and many knights and ladies, was drowned on a voyage
from France to England, and it is said that the king was never again
seen to smile after he had heard the news. Rossetti imagines the story
told by a survivor--a butcher employed on the ship, the lowest menial
on board. Such a man would naturally feel very differently toward the
prince from others of the train, and would criticise him honestly from
the standpoint of simple morality.
Eighteen years till then he had seen,
And the devil's dues in him were eighteen.
The peasant thus estimates the ruler who breaks the common laws of God
and man. Nevertheless he is just in his own way, and can appreciate
unselfishness even in a man whom he hates.
He was a Prince of lust and pride;
He showed no grace till the hour he died.
. . . . . . .
God only knows where his soul did wake,
But I saw him die for his sister's sake.
It is a simple mind of this sort that can best tell a tragical story;
and the butcher's story is about the most perfect thing imaginable of
its kind. Here also we have one admirable bit of subjective work, the
narration of the butcher's experience in the moment of drowning. I
suppose you all know that when one is just about to die, or in danger
of sudden death, the memory becomes extraordinarily vivid, and things
long forgotten flash into the mind as if painted by lightning, together
with voices of the past.
I Berold was down in the sea;
Passing strange though the thing may be,
Of dreams then known I remember me.
Not dreams in the sense of visions of sleep, but images of memory.
Blithe is the shout on Harfleur's strand
When morning lights the sails to land:
And blithe is Honfleur's echoing gloam
When mothers call the children home:
And high do the bells of Rouen beat
When the Body of Christ goes down the street.
These things and the like were heard and shown
In a moment's trance 'neath the sea alone;
And when I rose, 'twas the sea did seem,
And not these things, to be all a dream.
In the moment after the sinking of the ship, under the water, the man
remembers what he most loved at home--mornings in a fishing village,
seeing the ships return; evenings in a like village, and the sound of
his own mother's voice calling him home, as when he was a little child
at play; then the old Norman city that he knew well, and the church
processions of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ), the great event of the
year for the poorer classes. Why he remembered such things at such a
time he cannot say; it seemed to him a very ghostly experience, but not
more ghostly than the sight of the sea and the moon when he rose again.
The ship was gone and the crowd was gone,
And the deep shuddered and the moon shone;
And in a strait grasp my arms did span
The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran;
And on it with me was another man.
Where lands were none 'neath the dim sea-sky,
We told our names, that man and I.
"O I am Godefroy de l'Aigle hight,
And son I am to a belted knight."
"And I am Berold the butcher's son,
Who slays the beasts in Rouen town."
The touch here, fine as it is, is perfectly natural. The common butcher
finds himself not only for the moment in company with a nobleman, but
able to talk to him as a friend. There is no rank or wealth between sky
and sea--or, as a Japanese proverb says, "There is no king on the road
of death." The refrain of the ballad utters the same truth:
_Lands are swayed by a King on a throne_,
_The sea hath no King but God alone._
Both in its realism and in its emotion this ballad is a great
masterpiece. It is much superior to "The King's Tragedy," also founded
upon history. "The King's Tragedy" seems to us a little strained;
perhaps the poet attempted too much. I shall not quote from it, but
will only recommend a reading of it to students of English literature
because of its relation to a very beautiful story--the story of the
courtship of James I of Scotland, and of how he came to write his poem
called "The King's Quhair."
Another ballad demands some attention and explanation, though it is
not suitable for reading in the classroom. It is an expression of
passion--but not passion merely human; rather superhuman and evil. For
she who speaks in this poem is not a woman like "Sister Helen"; she is
a demon.
Not a drop of her blood was human,
But she was made like a soft sweet woman.
Perhaps the poet desired to show us here the extremest imaginative
force of hate and cruelty--not in a mortal being, because that would
repel us, but in an immortal being, in whom such emotion can only
inspire fear. Emotionally, the poet's conception is of the Middle
Ages, but the tradition is incomparably older; we can trace it back
to ancient Assyrian beliefs. Coming to us through Hebrew literature,
this strange story has inspired numberless European poets and painters,
besides the author of "Eden Bower." You should know the story,
because you will find a great many references to it in the different
literatures of Europe.
Briefly, Lilith is the name of an evil spirit believed by the ancient
Jews and by other Oriental nations to cause nightmare. But she did
other things much more evil, and there were curious legends about her.
The Jews said that before the first woman, Eve, was created, Adam had
a demon wife by whom he became the father of many evil spirits. When
Eve was created and given to him in marriage, Lilith was necessarily
jealous, and resolved to avenge herself upon the whole human race. It
is even to-day the custom among Jews to make a charm against Lilith on
their marriage night; for Lilith is especially the enemy of brides.
But the particular story about Lilith that mostly figures in poetry and
painting is this: If any young man sees Lilith, he must at once fall in
love with her, because she is much more beautiful than any human being;
and if he falls in love with her, he dies. After his death, if his body
is opened by the doctors, it will be found that a long golden hair, one
strand of woman's hair, is fastened round his heart. The particular
evil in which Lilith delights is the destruction of youth.
In Rossetti's poem Lilith is represented only as declaring to her demon
lover, the Serpent, how she will avenge herself upon Adam and upon Eve.
The ideas are in one way extremely interesting; they represent the
most tragical and terrible form of jealousy--that jealousy written of
in the Bible as being like the very fires of Hell. We might say that
in Victorian verse this is the unique poem of jealousy, in a female
personification. For the male personification we must go to Robert
Browning.
But there is a masterly phase of jealousy described in one of
Rossetti's modern poems, "A Last Confession." Here, however, the
jealousy is of the kind with which we can humanly sympathise; there
is nothing monstrous or distorted about it. The man has reason to
suspect unchastity, and he kills the woman on the instant. I should,
therefore, consider this poem rather as a simple and natural tragedy
than as a study of jealousy. It is to be remarked here that Rossetti
did not confine himself to mediæval or supernatural subjects. Three
of his very best poems are purely modern, belonging to the nineteenth
century. This "Last Confession," appropriately placed in Italy, is not
the most remarkable of the three, but it is very fine. I do not know
anything in even French literature to be compared with the pathos of
the murder scene, unless it be the terrible closing chapter of Prosper
Mérimée's "Carmen." The story of "Carmen" is also a confession; but
there is a great difference in the history of the tragedies. Carmen's
lover does not kill in a moment of passion. He kills only after having
done everything that a man could do in order to avoid killing. He
argues, prays, goes on his knees in supplication--all in vain. And
then we know that he must kill, that any man in the same terrible
situation must kill. He stabs her; then the two continue to look at
each other--she keeping her large black eyes fixed on the face of her
murderer, till suddenly they close, and she falls. No simpler fact
could occur in the history of an assassination; yet how marvellous the
power of that simple fact as the artist tells it. We always see those
eyes. In the case of Rossetti's murderer, the incidents of the tragedy
differ somewhat, because he is blind with passion at the moment that he
strikes, and does not see. When his vision clears again, he sees the
girl fall, and
--her stiff bodice scooped the sand
Into her bosom.
As long as he lived, he always saw that--the low stiff front of the
girl's dress with the sand and blood. In its way this description is
quite as terrible as the last chapter of "Carmen"; and it would be
difficult to say which victim of passion most excites our sympathies.
The other two poems of modern life to which I have referred are "The
Card-Dealer" and "Jenny." "The Card-Dealer" represents a singular
faculty on the poet's part of seeing ordinary facts in their largest
relations. In many European gambling houses of celebrity, the cards
used are dealt--that is, given to the players--by a beautiful woman,
usually a woman not of the virtuous kind. The poet, entering such a
place, watches the game for a time in silence, and utters his artistic
admiration of the beauty of the card-dealer, merely as he would admire
a costly picture or a statue of gold. Then suddenly comes to him the
thought that this woman, and the silent players, and the game, are
but symbols of eternal fact. The game is no longer to his eyes a mere
game of cards; it is the terrible game of Life, the struggle for
wealth and vain pleasures. The woman is no longer a woman, but Fate;
she plays the game of Death against Life, and those who play with her
must lose. However, the allusions in this poem would require for easy
understanding considerable familiarity with the terms of card-play and
the names of the cards. If you know these, I think you will find this
poem a very solemn and beautiful composition.
Much more modern is "Jenny," a poem which greatly startled the public
when it was first published. People were inclined for the moment
to be shocked; then they studied and admired; finally they praised
unlimitedly, and the poem deserved all praise. But the subject was
a very daring one to put before a public so prudish as the English.
For Jenny is a prostitute. Nevertheless the prudish public gladly
accepted this wonderful psychological study, which no other poet of the
nineteenth century, except perhaps Browning, could have attempted.
The plan of the poem is as follows: A young man, perhaps the poet
himself, finds at some public place of pleasure a woman of the town,
who pleases him, and he accompanies her to her residence. Although
the young man is perhaps imprudent in seeking the company of such a
person, he is only doing what tens of thousands of young men are apt
to do without thinking. He represents, we might say, youth in general.
But there is a difference between him and the average youth in one
respect--he thinks. On reaching the girl's room, he is already in
a thoughtful mood; and when she falls asleep upon his knees, tired
with the dancing and banqueting of the evening, he does not think of
awakening her. He begins to meditate. He looks about the room and
notices the various objects in it, simple enough in themselves, but
strangely significant by their relation to such a time and place--a
vase of flowers, a little clock ticking, a bird in a cage. The flowers
make him think of the symbolism of flowers--lilies they are, but faded.
Lilies, the symbol of purity, in Jenny's room! But once she herself
was a lily--now also morally faded. Then the clock, ticking out its
minutes, hours--what strange hours it has ticked out! He looks at the
sleeping girl again, but with infinite pity. She dreams; what is she
dreaming of? To wake her would be cruel, for in the interval of sleep
she forgets all the sorrows of the world. He thinks:
For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
You're thankful for a little rest,--
Glad from the crush to rest within,
From the heart-sickness and the din
Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
Mocks you because your gown is rich;
And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
Proclaims the strength that keeps her weak.
. . . . . . .
Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?--
But most from the hatefulness of man,
Who spares not to end what he began,
Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
Who, having used you at his will,
Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
I serve the dishes and the wine.
Then he begins to think of the terrible life of the prostitute, what
it means, the hideous and cruel part of it, and the end of it. Here
let me say that the condition of such a woman in England is infinitely
worse than it is in many other countries; in no place is she treated
with such merciless cruelty by society. He asks himself why this
should be so--how can men find pleasure in cruelty to so beautiful and
simple-hearted a creature? Then, suddenly looking at her asleep, he
is struck by a terrible resemblance which she bears to the sweetest
woman that he knows, the girl perhaps that he would marry. Seen asleep,
the two girls look exactly the same. Each is young, graceful, and
beautiful; yet one is a girl adored by society for all that makes a
woman lovable, and the other is--what? These lines best explain the
thought:
Just as another woman sleeps!
Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
Of doubt and horror,--what to say
Or think,--this awful secret sway,
The potter's power over the clay!
Of the same lump (it has been said)
For honour and dishonour made,
Two sister vessels. Here is one.
My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
So mere a woman in her ways:
And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
Are like her lips that tell the truth,
My cousin Nell is fond of love.
And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
Who does not prize her, guard her well?
The love of change, in cousin Nell,
Shall find the best and hold it dear:
The unconquered mirth turn quieter
Not through her own, through others' woe:
The conscious pride of beauty glow
Beside another's pride in her.
. . . . . .
Of the same lump (as it is said),
For honour and dishonour made,
Two sister vessels. Here is one.
It makes a goblin of the sun!
For, judging by the two faces, the two characters were originally the
same. Yet how terrible the difference now. This woman likes what all
women like; his cousin, the girl he most loves in the world, has the
very same love of nice dresses, pleasures, praise. There is nothing
wrong in liking these things. But in the case of the prostitute all
pleasure must turn for her to ashes and bitterness. The pure girl will
have in this world all the pretty dresses and pleasures and love that
she can wish for; and will never have reason to feel unhappy except
when she hears of the unhappiness of somebody else. And it seems a
monstrous thing under heaven that such a different destiny should be
portioned out to beings at first so much alike as those two women.
Even to think of his cousin looking like her, gives him a shudder of
pain--not because he cruelly despises the sleeping girl, but because
he thinks of what might have happened to his own dearest, under other
chances of life.
Yet again, who knows what may be in the future, any more than what has
been in the past? All this world is change. The fortunate of to-day may
be unfortunate in their descendants; the fortunate of long ago were
perhaps the ancestors of the miserable of to-day. And everything may in
the eternal order of change have to rise and sink alternately. Cousin
Nell is to-day a fortunate woman; he, the dreamer at the bed-side of
the nameless girl, is a fortunate man. But what might happen to their
children? He thinks again of the strange resemblance of the two women,
and murmurs:
So pure,--so fall'n! How dare to think
Of the first common kindred link?
Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
It seems that all things take their turn;
And who shall say but this fair tree
May need, in changes that may be,
Your children's children's charity?
Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
Till in the end, the Day of Days,
At Judgment, one of his own race,
As frail and lost as you, shall rise,--
His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
Then he begins to think more deeply on the great wrongs of this world,
the great misery caused by vice, the cruelty of lust in itself. The
ruined life of this girl represents but one fact of innumerable facts
of a like kind. Millions of beautiful and affectionate women have been,
and are being, and will be through all time to come, sacrificed in this
way to lust--selfish and foolish and cruel lust, that destroys mind and
body together. The mystery of the dark side of life comes to him in a
new way. He cannot explain it--who can explain the original meaning
of pain in this world? But he begins to get at least a new gleam of
truth--this great truth, that every one who seeks pleasure in the way
that he at first intended to seek it that night, adds a little to the
great sum of human misery. For vice exists only at the cost of misery.
The question is not, "Is it right for me or wrong for me to take what
is forbidden if I pay for it." The real question is, "Is it right
for me or wrong for me to help in any way to support that condition
of society which sacrifices lives, body, and soul, to cruelty and
selfishness." We all of us in youth think chiefly about right and wrong
in their immediate relations to ourselves and our friends. Only later
in life, after we have seen a great deal of the red of human pain, do
we begin to think of the consequences of an act in relation to the
happiness or unhappiness of humanity.
Suddenly the morning comes as he is thinking thus. At once he ceases to
be the philosopher, and becomes again the gentleman of the world. The
girl's head is still upon his knees; he looks at the sleeping face, and
wonders whether any painter could have painted a face more beautiful.
But the beauty does not appeal to his senses in any passional way; it
only fills him with unspeakable compassion. He does not awake her, but
lifts her into a more comfortable position for sleeping, and leaves
beside her pillow a present of gold coins, and then steals away without
bidding her good-bye. The night has not given him pleasure, but pain
only--yet a pain that has made his heart more kindly and his thoughts
more wise than they had been before.
IV
Our last lecture dealt with the shorter narrative poems of Rossetti,
including the ballads. There remain to be considered two other
narrative poems of a much more extended kind. They are quite unique in
English literature; and both of them deal with mediæval subjects. One,
again, is chiefly objective in its treatment; and the other chiefly
subjective--that is to say, psychological. One is a fragment, but
the most wonderful fragment of its kind in existence; more wonderful,
I think, than even the fragments of Coleridge, both as to volume and
finish. The other is complete, a story of magic and passion entitled
"Rose Mary." We may first deal with "Rose Mary," giving the general
plan of the poem, rather than extracts of any length; for this
narration cannot very well be illustrated by examples. We shall make
some quotations only in illustration of the finish and the beauty of
the work.
The subject of "Rose Mary" was peculiarly adapted to Rossetti's genius.
In the Middle Ages there was a great belief in the virtue of jewels and
crystals of a precious kind. Belief in the magical power of rubies,
diamonds, emeralds, and opals was not confined either to Europe or
to modern civilisation; it had existed from great antiquity in the
Orient, and had been accepted by the Greeks and Romans. This belief
was perhaps forgotten after the destruction of the Roman Empire, for
a time at least, in Europe; but the Crusades revived it. Talismanic
stones were brought back from Palestine by many pilgrim-knights; and
as some of these were marked with Arabic characters, then supposed
by the ignorant to be characters of magic, supernatural legends were
invented to account for the history of not a few. Also there was a
certain magical use to which precious stones were put during the Middle
Ages, and to which they are still sometimes put in Oriental countries.
This is called crystallomancy. Crystallomancy is the art of seeing the
future in crystals, or glass, or transparent substances of jewels. The
same art can be practised even with ink--a drop of ink, held in the
hand, offering to the eye the same reflecting surface that a black
jewel would do. In Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and India divination is
still practised with ink. This is the same thing as crystallomancy.
Usually in those countries a young boy or a young girl is used by the
diviner. He mesmerises the boy or the girl, and bids him or her look
into the crystal or the ink-drop, as the case may be, and say what he
or she sees there. In this way, the future is supposed to be told.
Modern investigation has taught us how the whole thing is done, though
science has not been able yet to explain all that goes on in the mind
of the "subject." But in the Middle Ages, when the whole process was
absolutely mysterious, it was thought to be the work of spirits inside
the stone, or crystal, or ink-drop. And this is the superstition to
which Rossetti refers in his poem "Rose Mary."
Now there is one more fact which must be explained in connection with
crystallomancy. It has always been thought that the "subject"--that is,
the boy or girl who looks into the stone, crystal, or ink-drop--must
be absolutely innocent. The "subject" must be virtuous. In the
Catholic Middle Ages the same idea took form especially in relation
to the chastity of the "subject." Chastity was, in those centuries,
considered a magical virtue. A maiden, it was thought, could play
with lions or tigers, and not be hurt by them. A maiden--and the word
was then used for both sexes, as it is sometimes used by Tennyson in
his Idylls--could see ghosts or spirits, and could be made use of for
purposes of crystallomancy even by a very wicked person. But should the
subject have been secretly guilty of any fault, then the power to see
would be impaired. The tragedy of Rossetti's poem turns upon this fact.
In the poem a precious stone, of the description called beryl, is the
instrument of divination. This beryl is round, like a terrestrial
globe, and is supposed to be of the shape of the world. It is half
transparent, but there are cloudings inside of it. Hidden among these
cloudings are a number of evil spirits, who were enclosed in the jewel
by magic. These spirits make the future appear visible to any virtuous
person who looks into the stone; but they have power to deceive and to
injure any one coming to consult them who is not perfectly chaste. The
stone came from the East, and it was obtained only at the sacrifice of
the soul of the person who obtained it. Having been brought to England,
it became the property of a knightly family. This family consists only
of a widow and her daughter Rose Mary. The daughter is in a state of
great anxiety. She was to be married to a certain knight, who has not
kept his affectionate promises. The daughter and the mother both fear
that the knight may have been killed by some of his enemies. So they
resolve to consult the beryl-stone. The mother does not know that
her daughter has been too intimate with the absent knight. Believing
that Rose Mary is all purity, the mother makes her the subject of an
experiment in crystallomancy; and she looks into the beryl.
First she sees an old man with a broom, sweeping away dust and cobwebs;
that is always the first thing seen. Then the inside of the beryl
becomes perfectly clear, and the girl can see the open country, and
the road along which her lover is expected to travel. And she sees
him too. But there are perhaps enemies waiting for him. The mother
tells her to look for those enemies. She looks; she sees the points of
lances, in a hiding place by a roadside, and there is the evidence of
what the lover has to fear in that direction. "Now look in the other
direction," says the mother. The girl does so, and sees the whole road
clearly, except in one place, in a valley. There she says that there is
a mist; and she cannot see under the mist. This surprises the mother,
and she takes away the beryl. The presence of the mist indicates that
Rose Mary has committed some sin.
As a consequence the daughter confesses to the mother all that has
occurred. She is not severely blamed; she is only gently rebuked,
and forgiven with great love and tenderness. But it is probable that
the sin must be expiated. Both are afraid. Then the expiation comes.
The lover is killed by his enemies, and killed exactly on that part
of the road where the mist was in the image seen in the beryl-stone.
The mother goes to the dead knight's home, and examines the body.
Evidently the man had died fighting bravely. The woman at first is
all pity for him, as well as for her daughter. Suddenly she notices
something in the dead man's breast. She takes it out, and finds that
it is a package containing a love-letter, and a lock of hair. The hair
is bright gold--while the hair of Rose Mary is black. This makes the
mother suspicious, and she reads the letter. Then she no longer pities
but abhors the dead man; for the letter proves him to have had another
sweetheart, and that he had intended to betray Rose Mary.
When the daughter learns of her lover's death, she suffers terribly;
but she makes sincere repentance for her fault, and then in her
mother's absence she determines to destroy the beryl-stone, as a
devilish thing. This is another way of committing suicide, because
whoever breaks the stone is certain to be killed by the enraged spirits
cast out of it. By one blow of a sword the stone is broken, and Rose
Mary atones for all her faults by death. This is the whole of the story.
The extraordinary charm of the story is in its vividness--a vividness
perhaps without equal even in the best work of Tennyson (certainly
much finer than similar work in Coleridge), and in the attractive
characterisation of mother and daughter. There is this great difference
between the mediæval poems of Coleridge or Scott, and those of
Rossetti, that when you are reading "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" or
the wonderful "Christabel," you feel that you are reading a fairy-tale,
but when you read Rossetti you are looking at life and feeling human
passion. It is a great puzzle to critics how any man could make the
Middle Ages live as Rossetti did. One reason, I think, is that Rossetti
was a great painter as well as a great poet, and he studied the life of
the past in documents and in museums until it became to him as real as
the present. But we must also suppose that he inherited a great deal
of his peculiar power. This power never wearies. Although the romance
of Rose Mary is not very short, you do not get tired of wondering at
its beauty until you reach the end. It is divided into three parts,
which is a good thing for the student, as he can see the structure
of the composition at once. It is written in stanzas of five lines,
thus arranged--_a_, _a_, _b_, _b_, _b._ You would think this measure
monotonous, but it is not. I give two examples. The first is the
description of the magic jewel.
The lady unbound her jewelled zone
And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone.
Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere,--
World of our world, the sun's compeer,
That bears and buries the toiling year.
With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn
Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon:
Freaked it was as the bubble's ball,
Rainbow-hued through a misty pall,
Like the middle light of the waterfall.
Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth
Of the known and unknown things of earth;
The cloud above and the wave around,--
The central fire at the sphere's heart bound,
Like doomsday prisoned underground.
I feel quite sure that even Tennyson could not have done this. Only a
great painter, as well as a great observer, could have done it; and
the choice of words is astonishing in its exquisiteness. Most of them
have more than one meaning, and both meanings are equally implied by
their use. Take, for example, the word "shadowy"; it means cloudy and
it also means ghostly. Thus it is peculiarly appropriate to picture the
magic stone as full of moving shadows, themselves of ghostly character.
Or take the word "shuddering"; it means trembling with cold or fear,
and it means also a quick trembling, never a slow motion. Just such a
word might be used to describe the strange vibration of air-bubbles
enclosed in a volcanic crystal. But we have also the suggestion here of
a ghostly motion, a motion that gives a shiver of fear to the person
who sees it. Or take the word "freaked." "Freak" is commonly used to
signify a mischievous bit of play, a wild fancy. "Fancifully marked"
would be the exact meaning of "freaked" in the ordinary sense; but here
it is likewise appropriate as a description of the streams and streaks
of colour playing over the surface of a bubble without any apparent
law, as if they were made by some whimsical spirit. Now every verse
of the whole long poem is equally worthy of study for its astonishing
finish. I shall give a few more verses merely to show the application
of the same power to a description of pain. The girl has just been told
of her lover's murder; and the whole immediate consequence is told in
five lines.
Once she sprang as the heifer springs
With the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings:
First 'twas fire in her breast and brain,
And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain,
As she gave one shriek and sank again.
The first two lines might give you an undignified image unless you
understood the position of the girl when she received the news. She
was kneeling at her mother's feet, with her mother's arms around her.
On being told the terrible thing, she tries to spring up, because of
the shock of the pain--just as a young heifer would leap when the
wolf had seized it from underneath. A wolf snaps at the belly of the
animal, close to the heart. Therefore the comparison is admirable. As
for the rest of the verse, any physician can confirm its accuracy.
The up-rush of blood at the instant of a great shock of pain feels
like a great sudden heat, burning up toward the head. And in such a
time one realises that certain forms of pain, moral pain, are larger
than oneself--too great to be borne. Psychologically, great moral pain
depends upon nervous development; and this nervous susceptibility to
pain is greater than would seem fitted to the compass of one life.
Moral pain can kill. It is said that in such times we feel not only our
own pain, but the pain of all those among our ancestors who suffered
in like manner. Thus, by inheritance, individual pain is more than
individual. At all events the fourth line of the stanza I have quoted
will appear astonishingly true to anybody who knows the greater forms
of mental suffering.
Leaving this poem, which could not be too highly praised, we may turn
to "The Bride's Prelude," the greatest of the longer compositions,
therefore the greatest thing that Rossetti did. Unfortunately, perhaps,
it is unfinished. It is only a fragment; death overtook the writer
before he was able to complete it. Like "Rose Mary," it leads us back
to the Middle Ages. But here there is no magic, nothing ghostly,
nothing impossible; there is only truth, atrocious, terrible truth--a
tale of cruelty, treachery, and pain related by the victim. The victim
is a bride. She is just going to be married. But before her marriage,
she has a story to tell her sister--a story so sad and so frightful
that it requires strong nerves to read the thing without pain.
We may suppose that the incident occurred in old France, or--though
I doubt it--in Norman England. The scenery and the names remind us
rather of Southern France. All the facts belong to the life of the
feudal aristocracy. We are among princes and princesses; great lords of
territory and great lords of battle are introduced to us, with their
secret sorrows and shames. Great ladies, too, open their hearts to us,
and prove so intensely human that it is very hard to believe the whole
story is a dream. It rather seems as if we had known all these people,
and that our lives had at some time been mingled with theirs. The
eldest daughter of one great house, very beautiful, and very innocent,
is taken advantage of by a retainer in the castle. She is foolish and
unable to imagine that any gentleman could intend to do her a wrong.
The retainer, on the other hand, is a very cunning villain. His real
purpose is to bring shame upon the daughter of the house. Why? Because,
as he is only a poor knight, he could not hope to marry into a princely
family. But if he can seduce one of the girls, then perhaps the family
will be only too glad to have him marry his victim, because that will
hide their shame. Evidently he has plotted for this. But his plans, and
everybody's plans, are affected by unexpected results of civil war.
His masters, being defeated in a great battle, have to retreat to the
mountains for a time; and then he deserts them in the basest manner.
Meantime the unhappy girl is found to be with child. Death was the
rule in those days for such a case--burning alive. Her brothers wish
to kill her. But her father interferes and saves her. It is decided
only that the child shall be taken from her--to be killed, probably.
Everybody is forbidden to speak of the matter. Some retainers who did
speak of it are hanged for an example. Presently, by another battle,
the family return into their old possessions, and enormously increase
their ancient power. When this happens the scoundrel that seduced
the daughter of the house and then deserted the family returns. Why
does he return? Now is the time to fulfil his purpose. He has become
a great soldier and a nobleman in his own right. Now he can ask for
that young lady in marriage, and they dare not refuse. If they refuse,
he can revenge himself by telling the story of her disgrace. If they
accept him as a son-in-law, they will also be obliged to make him very
powerful; and he will know how to take every advantage. The girl is not
consulted at all. Her business is to obey. She thinks that it would be
better to die than to marry the wicked man that had wronged her; but
she must obey and she is ordered to marry him. He cares nothing about
her; she is only the tool by which he wishes to win his way into power.
But, cunning as he is, the brothers of the girl are even more cunning.
They wish for the marriage only for the purpose of getting the man into
their hands, just for one moment. He shall marry her, but immediately
afterwards he shall disappear forever from the sight of men. The bride
does not know the purpose of her terrible brothers; she thinks they are
cruel to her when she tells her story, but they only wish to avenge
her, and they are much too prudent to tell her what they are going
to do. The poem does not go any further than the moment before the
marriage. The first part is quite finished; but the second part was
never written.
The whole of this great composition is in verses of five lines,
curiously arranged. Rossetti adopts a different form of verse for
almost every one of his narrations. This is quite as unique a measure
in its way--that is, in nineteenth century poetry--as was the measure
of Tennyson's "In Memoriam" in elegiac poetry. Now we shall try to
illustrate the style of the poem.
Against the haloed lattice-panes
The bridesmaid sunned her breast;
Then to the glass turned tall and free,
And braced and shifted daintily
Her loin-belt through her côte-hardie.
The belt was silver, and the clasp
Of lozenged arm-bearings;
A world of mirrored tints minute
The rippling sunshine wrought into 't,
That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.
At least an hour had Aloyse,--
Her jewels in her hair,--
Her white gown, as became a bride,
Quartered in silver at each side,--
Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.
Over her bosom, that lay still,
The vest was rich in grain,
With close pearls wholly overset:
Around her throat the fastenings met
Of chevesayle and mantelet.
Absolutely real as this seems, we know that the details must have been
carefully studied in museums. Elsewhere, except perhaps in very old
pictures, these things no longer exist. There are no more loin-belts
of silver, no côte-hardies, no chevesayle or mantelet. I cannot
explain to you what they are without pictures--further than to say that
they were parts of the attire of a lady of rank about the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Brides do not now have their white robes
"quartered in silver"--that is, figured with the family crest or arms.
Why silver instead of gold? Simply because of the rule that brides
should be all in white; therefore even the crest was worked in white
metal instead of gold. By the word vest, you must also understand an
ancient garment for women; the modern word signifies a garment worn
only by men. "Grain" is an old term for texture. The description of
the light playing on the belt-clasp of the bridesmaid, in the second
stanza, is a marvellous bit of work, the effect being given especially
by three words--"lozenged," "rippling," for the sunshine, and "minute,"
for the separate flushes or sparklings thrown off from the surface.
But all is wonderful; this is painting with words exactly as a painter
paints with colours. Sounds are treated with the same wonderful
vividness:
Although the lattice had dropped loose,
There was no wind; the heat
Being so at rest that Amelotte
Heard far beneath the plunge and float
Of a hound swimming in the moat.
Some minutes since, two rooks had toiled
Home to the nests that crowned
Ancestral ash-trees. Through the glare
Beating again, they seemed to tear
With that thick caw the woof o' the air.
One must have been in the tower of a castle to feel the full force of
the first stanza. The two girls are in a room perhaps one hundred and
fifty or two hundred feet above the water of the moat, so that except
in a time of extraordinary stillness they would not hear ordinary
sounds from so far below. And notice that the poet does not tell us
that this was because the air did not move; he says that the heat was
at rest. Very expressive--in great summer heat, without wind, the
air itself seems to our senses not air but fluid heat. And the same
impression of summer is given by the description of the two crows
flying to their nest and back again, and screaming as they fly. The
poet does not say that they flew; he says they toiled home--because
flying in that thick warm air is difficult for them. When they return
he uses another word, still more impressive; he says they beat again
through the glare. This makes you hear the heavy motion of the wings.
And he describes the crow as seeming to tear the air, because that air
is so heavy that it seems like a thing woven.
Here is a strangely powerful stanza describing the difficulty of
speaking about a painful subject that for many years one has tried to
forget:
Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
Gave her a sick recoil;
As, dip thy fingers through the green
That masks a pool,--where they have been
The naked depth is black between.
Any of you who as boys have played about a castle moat, and stirred the
green water weeds covering the still water, must have remarked that
the water looks black as ink underneath. Of course it is not black in
itself; but the weeds keep out the sun, so that it seems black because
of the shadow. The poet's comparison has a terrible exactness here.
The mind is compared to stagnant water covered with water-weeds. Weeds
grow upon water in this way only when there has been no wind for a long
time, and no current. The condition of a mind that does not think, that
dares not think, is like stagnant water in this way. Memory becomes
covered up with other things, matters not relating to the past.
Now we can take four stanzas from the scene of the secret family
meeting, after the shame has been confessed and is known. They are very
powerful.
"Time crept. Upon a day at length
My kinsfolk sat with me:
That which they asked was bare and plain:
I answered: the whole bitter strain
Was again said, and heard again.
"Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turned
The point against my breast.
I bared it, smiling: 'To the heart
Strike home,' I said; 'another dart
Wreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.'
"'Twas then my sire struck down the sword,
And said, with shaken lips:
'She from whom all of you receive
Your life, so smiled; and I forgive.'
Thus for my mother's sake, I live.
"But I, a mother even as she,
Turned shuddering to the wall:
For I said: 'Great God! and what would I do,
When to the sword, with the thing I knew,
I offered not one life but two!'"
This is now the most terrible part of the story; and it has a humanity
about it that almost makes us doubt. Fancy the situation. The daughter
of a prince unchaste with a common retainer. Now in princely families
chastity was of as much importance as physical strength and will;
it meant everything--honour, purity of race, the possibility of
alliance. And a great house is thus disgraced. We can sympathise
with the horrible mental suffering of the girl, but it is impossible
not to sympathise also even with the terrible brother that wishes to
kill her. He is right, she deserves death; but he is young, and cruel
because young. The father sorrows, and seeing the girl smiling, thinks
of the dead mother, and forgives. This is the only point at which we
feel inclined to lay down the book and ask questions. Would a father
in such a position have done this in those cruel ages? Would he have
allowed himself to pity?--or rather, could he have allowed himself to
pity? Tender-hearted men did not rule in those days. We have records of
husbands burning their wives, of fathers killing their sons. All we can
say is that an exception might have existed, just as Rossetti imagines.
Human nature was of course not different then from what it is now,
but it is quite certain that the gentle side of human nature seldom
displayed itself in the families of the feudal princes; a man who
was gentle could not rule. In Italy sons who did not show the ruling
character were apt to be killed or poisoned. One must understand that
feudal life was not much more moral than other life.
I think we can here turn to another department of Rossetti's verse.
I only hope that the examples given from the "Bride's Prelude" will
interest you sufficiently to make you at a later day turn to this
wonderful poem for a careful study of its beauty and power.
V
When we come to the study of the lives of the Victorian poets, we shall
find that Rossetti's whole existence was governed by his passion for
one woman, whom he loved in a strange mystical way, with a love that
was half art (art in the good sense) and half idolatry. To him she
was much more than a woman; she was a divinity, an angel, a model for
all things beautiful. You know that he was a great painter, and in a
multitude of beautiful pictures he painted the face of this woman. He
composed his poems also in order to please her. He lost her within a
little more than a year after winning her, and this nearly killed him.
I may say that throughout all his poems, speaking in a general way,
there are references to this great love of his life; but there is one
portion of his work that we must consider as especially illustrating
it, and that is the "House of Life," a collection of more than one
hundred sonnets upon the subject of love and its kindred emotions. But
the love of which Rossetti sings is not the love of a young man for a
girl--not the love of youth and maid. It is married love carried to the
utmost degree of worship. You will think this a strange subject; and
I confess that it is. Very few men could be praised for touching such
a subject. Coventry Patmore, you know, was an exception. He made the
subject of his own courtship, wedding, and married life the subject of
his poetry, and he did it so nicely and so tenderly that his book had a
great success. But Rossetti did his work in an entirely different way,
which I must try to explain.
Unlike Patmore, Rossetti did not openly declare that he took any
personal experience for the subject of his study; we only perceive,
through knowledge of his life, and through suggestions obtained from
other parts of his work, that personal love and personal loss were his
great inspiration. As a matter of fact, any man who sings about love
must draw upon his own personal experience of the passion. Every lover
thinks of love in his own way. But the value of a love poem is not
the personal part of it; the value of a love poem is according to the
degree in which it represents universal experience, or experience of a
very large kind. It must represent to some degree a general philosophy
of life. Even the commonest little love-song, such as a peasant might
sing in the streets of Tokyo, as he comes in from the country walking
beside his horse, will represent something of the philosophy of life
if it is a good and true composition, no matter how vulgar may be the
idiom of it. When we come to think about it, we shall find that all
great poetry is in this sense also philosophical poetry.
Rossetti, as I have already shown you, was a true philosopher in
certain directions; and he applied his philosophical powers, as
well as his artistic powers, to his own experiences, so as to adapt
them to the uses of great poetry. He is never narrowly personal. And
his sonnets are really very wonderful compositions--not reflecting
universal experience so as to be universally understood, but reflecting
universal experience so as to be understood by cultivated minds only.
These productions are altogether above the range of the common mind;
they are extremely subtle and elaborate, both as to thought and as to
form. But their subject is not at all special. Rossetti had the idea
that every phase of happiness and sorrow belonging to married life,
from the hour of the wedding night to the hour of death, was worthy
of poetical treatment, because married life is related to the deepest
human emotions. And in the space of one hundred sonnets he treats every
phase. This series of sonnets is divided into two groups. The first
contains poems relating to the early conditions of love in marriage;
the second group treats especially of the more sorrowful aspects of a
married life--the trials of death, the pains of memory, and the hopes
and fears of reuniting after death. The second part does not, however,
contain all the sad pieces; there are very sad ones in the first group
of fifty-nine. We have already studied one of the first group, the
piece called "The Birth-Bond." There is another piece in this group,
the first of four sonnets, which is exquisite as a bit of fancy. It is
entitled "Willow-wood."
I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.
This is a dream of the dead woman loved. The lover finds himself seated
with the god of love, the little naked boy with wings, as the ancients
represented him, at the edge of a spring near the forest. He does
not look at the god of love, neither does the god look at him; they
were friends long ago, but now--what is the use? She is dead. By the
reflection in the water only he knows that Love is looking down, and
he does not wish to speak to him. But Love will not leave him alone.
He hears the tone of a musical instrument, and that music makes him
suddenly very sad, for it seems like the voice of the dead for whom
he mourns. It makes his tears fall into the water; and immediately,
magically, the reflection of the eyes of Love in the water become like
the eyes of the woman he loved. Then while he looks in wonder, the
little god stirs the surface of the water with wings and feet, and the
ripples become like the hair of the dead woman, and as the lover bends
down, her lips rise up through the water to kiss him. You may ask, what
does all this mean? Well, it means as much as any dream means; it is
all impossible, no doubt, but the impossible in dreams often makes us
very sad indeed--especially if the dead appear to come back in them.
Another example of regret, very beautiful, is the sonnet numbered
ninety-one in this collection. It is called "Lost on Both Sides."
As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell:--
So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since:
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
The comparison is of the hopes and aims of the artist to a couple
of men in love with the same woman--bitter enemies while she lives,
because of their natural rivalry, but loving each other after her
death, simply because each can understand better than anybody else
in the world the pain of the other. Afterward the men, once rivals,
passed all their time together, wandering about at night in search of
some quiet place, where they can sit down and drink and talk together.
In Rossetti's time such quiet places were not to be found in the main
streets, but in the little side streets called bye-streets. After
this explanation, the comparison should not be obscure. The artist who
loves does all his work with the thought of the woman that he loves
before him; his hope to win fame is that he may make her proud of him;
his aims are in all cases to please her. After he has lost her, these
hopes and aims, which might have been antagonists to each other in
former days, are now reconciled within him; her memory alone is now
the inspiration and the theme. I hope you will notice the curious and
exquisite value of certain words here: "Stark," meaning stiff, nearly
always refers to the rigidness of death; it is especially used of the
appearance and attitude of corpses, and its application in this poem
to the cover of the marriage bed is quite enough to convey the sense
of death without any more definite observation. Again the expression
"long pauses," referring to the sound of the church bells, makes us
understand that the bells are really ringing a funeral knell; for the
ringing of wedding bells ought to be quick and joyous. It might seem
a strange contradiction, this simile, but the poet has in his mind an
old expression about the death of a maiden: "She became the bride of
Death." Thus the effect is greatly intensified by the sombre irony of
the simile itself.
We might extract a great many beauties from this wonderful collection
of sonnets; but time is precious, and we shall have room for only
another quotation or two. The following is one to which I should like
especially to invite your attention--not only because of its strange
charm, but also because of the curious legend which it recalls--a
legend which we have already studied:
BODY'S BEAUTY
Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
The reference to the rose and the poppy may need some explanation. The
rose has been for many centuries in Western countries a symbol of love;
and the poppy has been a symbol of death and sleep from the time of the
Greeks. It is from the seeds of the poppy that opium is extracted. The
Greeks did not know the use of opium; but they knew that the seeds of
the flower produced sleep, and might, in certain quantities, produce
death. We have the expression "poppied sleep" to express the sleep of
death.
A final word must be said about Rossetti's genius as a translator. He
has given us, in one large volume, the most precious anthology of the
Italian poets of the Middle Ages that ever has been made--the poets of
the time of Dante, under the title of "Dante and his Circle." This
magnificent work would alone be sufficient to establish his supreme
excellence as a translator of poetry; but the material is mostly of
a sort that can appeal to scholars only. Rossetti is better known as
a translator through a very few short pieces translated from French
poets, chiefly. Such is the wonderful rendering of Villon's "Ballad of
Dead Ladies," beginning
Tell me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora, the lovely Roman?
Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere,--
She whose beauty was more than human?--
But where are the snows of yester-year?
Even Swinburne, when making his splendid translations from Villon,
refrained from attempting to translate this ballad, saying that no man
could surpass, even if he could equal, Rossetti's version. The burthen
is said to be especially successful as a rendering of the difficult
French refrain:
_Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?_
You will find this matchless translation almost anywhere, so we need
not occupy the time further with it; but I doubt whether you have
noticed as yet other wonderful translations made by this master from
the French. Such is the song from Victor Hugo's drama "Les Burgraves";
you will not forget Rossetti's translation after having once read it.
Through the long winter the rough wind tears;
With their white garments the hills look wan.
Love on: who cares?
Who cares? Love on!
My mother is dead; God's patience wears;
It seems my chaplain will not have done!
Love on: who cares?
Who cares? Love on!
The Devil, hobbling up the stairs,
Comes for me with his ugly throng.
Love on: who cares?
Who cares? Love on.
Another remarkable translation from the same drama is that of the song
beginning:
In the time of the civil broils
Our swords are stubborn things.
A fig for all the cities!
A fig for all the kings!
and ending:
Right well we hold our own
With the brand and the iron rod.
A fig for Satan, Burgraves;
Burgraves, a fig for God!
But even more wonderful Rossetti seems when we go back to the old
French, as in the translation which has been called "My Father's Close."
Inside my father's close
(_Fly away O my heart away!_)
Sweet apple-blossom blows
_So sweet._
Three kings' daughters fair,
(_Fly away O my heart away!_)
They lie below it there
_So sweet!_
Now the Old French of the first stanza will show you the astonishing
faithfulness of the rendering:
Au jardin de mon père,
(_Vole, mon cœur, vole!_)
Il y a un pommier doux,
_Tout doux._
Besides the small exquisite things, there are long translations from
mediæval writers, French and Italian, of wonderful beauty. Compare,
for example, the celebrated episode of Francesca da Rimini in Dante
(which Carlyle so beautifully called "a lily in the mouth of Hell"),
as translated by Byron, and as translated by Rossetti, and observe the
immeasurable superiority of the latter. It would be very pleasant,
if we had time, to examine Rossetti's translations more in detail;
but the year advances and we must turn to an even greater master of
verse--Swinburne.