Transcribed from the 1877 Chiswick Press edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
AULD LANG SYNE.
* * * * *
SELECTIONS FROM THE PAPERS
OF THE
“PEN AND PENCIL CLUB.”
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min’,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ lang syne!”
BURNS.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.
1877.
* * * * *
CHISWICK PRESS:—C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Cradle Feb. 1864 _Mentia Taylor_ 1
Bells March, 1864 _Marian James_ 3
Mirror June, 1864 _Lewis Morris_ 4
Shadows Nov. 1864 _Catherine 5
Taylor_
Shadows Nov. 1864 _Lewis 6
Sergeant_
Organ Boys Dec. 1864 _Frances Power 7
Cobbe_
Organ Boys Dec. 1864 _Lewis Morris_ 9
Stumbling Blocks March, 1865 _Professor 16
Seeley_
Witchcraft May, 1865 _Mentia Taylor_ 19
Chivalry Feb. 1866 _Marian James_ 22
Castles in the Air March, 1866 _Annie Keary_ 26
Autumn Leaves May, 1866 _Arthur Munby_ 28
Silence June, 1866 _Mentia Taylor_ 30
Lights and Shadows Dec. 1866 _Lewis Morris_ 31
Echoes Feb. 1867 _M. D. Conway_ 36
Expediency March, 1867 _Professor 40
Seeley_
Rest April, 1867 _Joseph 43
Mazzini_
Rest April, 1867 _Alice 45
Malleson_
Rest April, 1867 _Edwin Arnold_ 46
Gossip Nov. 1867 _Catherine 49
Taylor_
Chips May, 1868 _Austin Dobson_ 54
Chips May, 1868 _Joseph Biggs_ 57
Transformation Dec. 1868 _Caroline 62
Biggs_
Transformation Dec. 1868 _Eliza Keary_ 67
Surprise March, 1869 _Edwin Arnold_ 75
The Gloaming March, 1869 _Henry 78
Fellowes_
Sketches April, 1869 _Lewis 83
Sergeant_
Sketches April, 1869 _Annie Keary_ 84
Sketches April, 1869 _Austin Dobson_ 92
Things Gone By May, 1869 _Sheldon Amos_ 97
Things Gone By May, 1869 _P. A. Taylor_ 99
Things Gone By May, 1869 _Arthur Munby_ 102
No; or, the Little Goose May, 1869 _Eliza Keary_ 103
Girl
Exile Jan. 1870 _Caroline 108
Biggs_
Exile Jan. 1870 _Joseph Biggs_ 111
Tradition Feb. 1870 _H. W. Higgins_ 115
Regret March, 1870 _A. D. 117
Atkinson_
Realities Dec. 1870 _P. A. Taylor_ 118
Realities Dec. 1870 _Lewis 125
Sergeant_
Bark Feb. 1871 _Lewis 128
Sergeant_
Smoke April, 1871 _J. S. Babb_ 130
Wherefore Nov. 1871 _H. W. Higgins_ 132
Voices Nov. 1871 _M. J. 134
Ronniger_
Return of the Swallows March, 1874 _Agnes 135
Macdonell_
Return of the Swallows March, 1874 _William 137
Allingham_
Return of the Swallows March, 1874 _Edmund Gosse_ 142
Auld Lang Syne March, 1874 _Thomas 144
Webster_
Auld Lang Syne March, 1874 _Augusta 149
Webster_
River April, 1874 _Austin Dobson_ 151
River April, 1874 _Adelaide 156
Manning_
Footpath April, 1874 _Ashurst Biggs_ 158
Footpath April, 1874 _C. E. Maurice_ 162
Footpath April, 1874 _Edward 164
Carpenter_
Footpath April, 1874 _Edmund Gosse_ 165
Footpath April, 1874 _Austin Dobson_ 170
Turn of the Tide May, 1874 _Caroline 171
Biggs_
Turn of the Tide May, 1874 _A. M. 173
Stoddart_
Turn of the Tide May, 1874 _G. A. Simcox_ 174
Compromise May, 1874 _Thomas 175
Webster_
Farewell _Mentia Taylor_ 176
[Picture: Aubrey House (back view)]
[Picture: Aubrey House (front view)]
CRADLE.
THE human heart is cradle of deep love,
Which growing and expanding from its birth,
Ever finds space within that living cot;
Howe’er remotely o’er this beauteous earth
Its subtle influences may joy impart,
Whilst nestling in the human heart.
The human mind is cradle of high thought,
Ever aspiring to extend its sphere,
To penetrate those mysteries of life
Philosophy has fail’d to render clear.
Howe’er expansive, thought will ever find
Its cradle in the human mind.
The human soul is cradle of deep faith,
Of aspirations, and of purpose strong,
To kindle into life the seeds of truth—
Eradicate the germs of vice and wrong.
Howe’er these seeds develop and increase,
Within man’s soul they’ll find their place.
Three living cradles in one living form,
Expanding ever from their early birth;
High thought and sweet affection in ye dwell,
And Faith which hallows all things on this earth.
Each human being in himself may find
Three living cradles—soul, heart, mind.
THE SOUND OF BELLS.
O HAPPY bells that thrill the air
Of tranquil English summer-eves,
When stirless hang the aspen leaves,
And Silence listens everywhere.
And sinks and swells the tender chime,
Sad, as regret for buried fears,
Sweet, as repentant yearning tears—
The fit voice of the holy time.
O wond’rous voice! O mystic sound!
We listen, and our thoughts aspire
Like spiritual flame, from fire
That idly smoulders on the ground.
Forgotten longings have new birth
For better, purer, nobler life,
Lifted above the noisy strife
That drowns the music of this earth.
And human sorrow seems to be
A link unto diviner things,
The budding of the spirit’s wings
That only thus can soar—and see.
The twilight fades—the sweet bells cease,
The common world’s come back again,
But for a little space, its pain
And weariness are steep’d in peace.
MIRROR.
I SEE myself reflected in thine eyes,
The dainty mirrors set in golden frame
Of eyelash, quiver with a sweet surprise,
And most ingenuous shame.
Like Eve, who hid her from the dread command
Deep in the dewy blooms of paradise;
So thy shy soul, love calling, fears to stand
Discover’d at thine eyes.
Or, like a tender little fawn, which lies
Asleep amid the fern, and waking, hears
Some careless footstep drawing near, and flies,
Yet knows not what she fears.
So shrinks thy soul, but, dearest, shrink not so;
Look thou into mine eyes as I in thine,
So our reflected souls shall meet and grow,
And each with each combine
In something nobler; as when one has laid
Opposite mirrors on a cottage wall;
And lo! the never-ending colonnade,
The vast palatial hall.
So our twin souls, by one sweet suicide,
Shall fade into an essence more sublime;
Living through death, and dying glorified,
Beyond the reach of time.
SHADOWS.
SHADOW gives to sunshine brightness,
And it gives to joy its lightness;
Shadow gives to honour meekness,
And imparts its strength to weakness;
Shadow deepens human kindness,
Draws the veil from mental blindness;
Shadow sweetens love’s own sweetness,
And gives to life its deep intenseness;
Shadow is earth’s sacredness,
And the heaven’s loveliness;
Shadow is day’s tenderness,
And the night’s calm holiness;
Shadow’s deepest night of darkness
Will break in day’s eternal brightness.
SHADOWS.
IN the band of noble workers,
Seems no place for such as I—
They have faith, where I have yearning,
They can speak where I but sigh,
They can point the way distinctly
Where for me the shadows lie.
Lofty purpose, strong endeavour,
These are not ordain’d for me—
Wayside flower might strive for ever,
Never could it grow a tree—
Yet a child may laugh to gather,
Or a sick man smile to see.
So I too in God’s creation
Have my own peculiar part,
He must have some purpose surely
For weak hand and timid heart,
Transient joys for my diffusing,
For my healing transient smart.
Just to fling a moment’s brightness
Over dreary down-trod ways,
Just to fan a better impulse
By a full and ready praise—
Pitying where I may not succour,
Loving where I cannot raise.
ORGAN-BOYS.
A LEGEND OF LONDON.
BY THOMAS INGOLDSBY, MINOR.
IN days—not old—a Demon lived,
And a terrible Fiend was he,
For he ground and he ground
All London around,
A huge barrel-organ of hideous sound,
Incessantly!
From morning’s light
Till the deep midnight,
In all sorts of streets and all sorts of squares.
Up the _cul-de-sacs_—down the thoroughfares,
Where Thames rolls his waters from Greenwich to Kew,
Not a lane could you find that he didn’t go through.
You heard him at all times when most unaware,
In quiet back-parlours up five flights of stair;
When you ate, when you drank, when you read morning prayer,
Or sat dozing awhile in an easy armchair,
Or read a new novel—or talk’d to a friend,
Or endeavour’d to settle accounts without end,
Or when grief (or champagne), caused an ache in your head,
Or you promised yourself to lie latish in bed,
It was all the same
That Demon came,
Grind! grind!
Peace there was none,
Under the sun;
That odious organ never had done.
Sick, sad, or sorry,
No end to the worry.
No sort of grief
Brought the slightest relief;
You might send out to say you were dying or dead,
The organ ground on as if nothing were said!
Grind! grind!
Till you lost your mind.
No use to scold, or draw down the blind,
The fiend only ground more loud and more fast,
Till you _had_ to give him a shilling at last.
So that having tormented you madly that day,
He would surely next morning come round the same way,
And grind and grind—till in frenzy of pain,
You should bribe him once more—just to come back again!
Know ye, my friends, who this Fiend may be?
Here is the key to the mystery—
It is TUBAL CAIN! who—the Bible says—
Invented organs in very old days,
And for that dread crime, so atrocious and black,
Was sentenced thenceforth to bear one on his back,
A heavier fate (as was justly his due),
Than befell his Papa when poor Abel he slew:
For Cain, killing _one_ man, was let off quite cheap—
Tubal murdered us _all_—at least “murder’d our sleep.”
THE ORGAN-BOY.
GREAT brown eyes,
Thick plumes of hair,
Old corduroys
The worse for wear.
A button’d jacket,
And peeping out
An ape’s grave poll,
Or a guinea-pig’s snout.
A sun-kiss’d face
And a dimpled mouth,
With the white flashing teeth,
And soft smile of the south.
A young back bent,
Not with age or care,
But the load of poor music
’Tis fated to bear.
But a common-place picture
To common-place eyes,
Yet full of a charm
Which the thinker will prize.
They were stern, cold rulers,
Those Romans of old,
Scorning art and letters
For conquest and gold;
Yet leavening mankind,
In mind and tongue,
With the laws that they made
And the songs that they sung.
Sitting, rose-crown’d,
With pleasure-choked breath,
As the nude young limbs crimson’d,
Then stiffen’d in death.
Piling up monuments
Greater than praise,
Thoughts and deeds that shall live
To the latest of days.
Adding province to province,
And sea to sea,
Till the idol fell down
And the world rose up free.
And this is the outcome,
This vagabond child
With that statue-like face
And eyes soft and mild;
This creature so humble,
So gay, yet so meek,
Whose sole strength is only
The strength of the weak.
Of those long cruel ages
Of lust and of guile,
Nought left us to-day
But an innocent smile.
For the labour’d appeal
Of the orator’s art,
A few foolish accents
That reach to the heart.
For those stern legions speeding
O’er sea and o’er land,
But a pitiful glance
And a suppliant hand.
I could moralize still
But the organ begins,
And the tired ape swings downward,
And capers and grins,
And away flies romance.
And yet, time after time,
As I dwell on days spent
In a sunnier clime,
Of blue lakes deep set
In the olive-clad mountains,
Of gleaming white palaces
Girt with cool fountains,
Of minsters where every
Carved stone is a treasure,
Of sweet music hovering
’Twixt pain and ’twixt pleasure;
Of chambers enrich’d
On all sides, overhead,
With the deathless creations
Of hands that are dead;
Of still cloisters holy,
And twilight arcade,
Where the lovers still saunter
Thro’ chequers of shade;
Of tomb and of temple,
Arena and column,
’Mid to-day’s garish splendours,
Sombre and solemn;
Of the marvellous town
With the salt-flowing street,
Where colour burns deepest,
And music most sweet;
Of her the great mother,
Who centuries sate
’Neath a black shadow blotting
The days she was great;
Who was plunged in such shame—
She, our source and our home—
That a foul spectre only
Was left us of Rome;
She who, seeming to sleep
Through all ages to be,
Was the priest’s, is mankind’s,—
Was a slave, and is free!
I turn with grave thought
To this child of the ages,
And to all that is writ
In Time’s hidden pages.
Shall young Howards or Guelphs,
In the days that shall come,
Wander forth, seeking bread,
Far from England and home?
Shall they sail to new continents,
English no more,
Or turn—strange reverse—
To the old classic shore?
Shall fair locks and blue eyes,
And the rose on the cheek,
Find a language of pity
The tongue cannot speak—
“Not English, but angels?”
Shall this tale be told
Of Romans to be
As of Romans of old?
Shall they too have monkeys
And music? Will any
Try their luck with an engine
Or toy spinning-jenny?
Shall we too be led
By that mirage of Art
Which saps the true strength
Of the national heart?
The sensuous glamour,
The dreamland of grace,
Which rot the strong manhood
They fail to replace;
Which at once are the glory,
The ruin, the shame,
Of the beautiful lands
And ripe souls whence they came?
Oh, my England! oh, Mother
Of Freemen! oh, sweet,
Sad toiler majestic,
With labour-worn feet!
Brave worker, girt round,
Inexpugnable, free,
With tumultuous sound
And salt spume of the sea,
Fenced off from the clamour
Of alien mankind
By the surf on the rock,
And the shriek of the wind,
Tho’ the hot Gaul shall envy,
The cold German flout thee,
Thy far children scorn thee,
Still thou shalt be great,
Still march on uncaring,
Thy perils unsharing,
Alone, and yet daring
Thy infinite fate.
Yet ever remembering
The precepts of gold
That were written in part
For the great ones of old—
“Let other hands fashion
The marvels of art;
To thee fate has given
A loftier part,
To rule the wide peoples,
To bind them to thee.”
By the sole bond of loving,
That bindeth the free,
To hold thy own place,
Neither lawless nor slave;
Not driven by the despot,
Nor trick’d by the knave.
But these thoughts are too solemn.
So play, my child, play,
Never heeding the connoisseur
Over the way,
The last dances of course;
Then with scant pause between,
“Home, sweet Home,” the “Old Hundredth,”
And “God Save the Queen.”
See the poor children swarm
From dark court and dull street,
As the gay music quickens
The lightsome young feet.
See them now whirl away,
Now insidiously come,
With a coy grace which conquers
The squalor of home.
See the pallid cheeks flushing
With innocent pleasure
At the hurry and haste
Of the quick-footed measure.
See the dull eyes now bright,
And now happily dim,
For some soft-dying cadence
Of love-song or hymn.
Dear souls, little joy
Of their young lives have they,
So thro’ hymn-tune and song-tune
Play on, my child, play.
For though dull pedants chatter
Of musical taste,
Talk of hindered researches
And hours run to waste;
Though they tell us of thoughts
To ennoble mankind,
Which your poor measures chase
From the labouring mind;
While your music rejoices
One joyless young heart,
Perish bookworms and books,
Perish learning and art—
Of my vagabond fancies
I’ll even take my fill.
“Qualche cosa, signor?”
Yes, my child, that I will.
STUMBLING-BLOCKS.
THINK when you blame the present age, my friends,
This age has one redeeming point—it _mends_.
With many monstrous ills we’re forced to cope;
But we have life and movement, we have hope.
Oh! this is much! Thrice pitiable they
Whose lot is cast in ages of decay,
Who watch a waning light, an ebbing tide,
Decline of energy and fall of pride,
Old glories disappearing unreplaced,
Receding culture and encroaching waste,
Art grown pedantic, manners waxing coarse,
The good thing still succeeded by the worse.
We see not what those latest Romans saw,
When o’er Italian cities, Latin law,
Greek beauty, swept the barbarizing tide,
And all fair things in slow succession died.
’Tis much that such defeat and blank despair,
Whate’er our trials, ’tis not ours to bear,
Much that the mass of foul abuse grows less,
Much that the injured have sometimes redress,
Wealth grows less haughty, misery less resigned,
That policy grows just, religion kind,
That all worst things towards some better tend,
And long endurance nears at last its end;
The ponderous cloud grows thin and pierced with bright,
And its wild edge is fused in blinding light.
Yet disappointment still with hope appears,
And with desires that strengthen, strengthen fears,
’Tis the swift-sailing ship that dreads the rocks,
The active foot must ’ware of stumbling-blocks.
Alas! along the way towards social good,
How many stones of dire offence lie strew’d.
Whence frequent failure, many shrewd mishaps
And dismal pause or helpless backward lapse.
Such was the hard reverse that Milton mourn’d,
An old man, when he saw the King returned
With right divine, and that fantastic train
Of banished fopperies come back again.
Thus France, too wildly clutching happiness.
Stumbled perplexed, and paid in long distress,
In carnage, where the bloody conduit runs,
And one whole generation of her sons
Devoted to the Power of Fratricide
For one great year, one eager onward stride.
From all these stumbling-blocks that strew the way
What wisest cautions may ensure us, say.
Cling to the present good with steadfast grip,
And for no fancied better let it slip,
Whether thy fancy in the future live
Or yearn to make the buried past revive.
The past is dead,—let the dead have his dues,
Remembrance of historian and of Muse;
But try no lawless magic on the urn,
It shocks to see the brightest past return.
Some good things linger when their date is fled,
These honour as you do the hoary head,
And treat them tenderly for what they were,
But dream not to detain them always there.
The living good the present moments bring
To this devote thyself and chiefly cling;
And for the novel schemes that round thee rise,
Watch them with hopeful and indulgent eyes,
Treat them as children, love them, mark their ways,
And blame their faults and dole out cautious praise,
And give them space, yet limit them with rule,
And hold them down and keep them long at school:
Yet know in these is life most fresh and strong,
And that to these at last shall all belong.
Be proved and present good thy safe-guard still,
And thy one quarrel be with present ill.
Learn by degrees a steady onward stride
With sleepless circumspection for thy guide.
And since so thick the stumbling-blocks are placed,
You are not safe but in renouncing haste;
Permit not so your zeal to be repressed,
But make the loss up by renouncing rest.
WITCHCRAFT.
I SPOSE ’tis I—and yet, so strange
I feel, I doubt if I’m all right.
Only since Tuesday last this change,
And this is Friday night.
On Monday, life was very drear,
My missus was _so_ cross,
’Cos how I’d spilt a jug of beer—
She, who calls money dross.
She thinks herself a very saint,
‘Cos she reads prayers to us;
But Sal the cook, and I, we ain’t
Imposed on by her fuss.
’Tis not the prayers I think is bad,
But those who are so good
Should act as if they feelings had
Towards we—who are flesh and blood.
But _now_ if missus ’gins to scold
I do not care a straw,
For Tom, on Tuesday morning, told
Me not to mind her jaw.
I now can dance, and laugh, and sing,
Altho’ I work all day.
_Surely_ it is a funny thing,
I’m all at once so gay.
All ’cos Tom’s in love with me,
And I’m sure he says what’s true.
_He_ says love’s a mystery
Which in Eden’s garden grew.
_I_ call love witchcraft, that I do;
It’s made me quite another;
Instead of being Mary Roe,
I may be any other.
Missus thinks I’m going mad,
I work with such good glee;
’Tis only that my heart is glad
’Cos Tom’s in love with me.
I wish some man would missus love;
She might be kinder then.
She says her ’fections are above,
’Cos sinful are all men.
If she but had the chance, I b’lieve,
She’d ’cept the first with glee,
And would not any longer grieve
O’er man’s depravity.
She’d be as different as I—
Oh, laws! what fun ’twould be;
For missus is a very guy,
’Twixt you and Tom and me.
P’rhaps love would make her young once more,
And change her temper too,
For certain, love has witchcraft’s power,
All things he likes, to do.
Tom says _so_, and _so_ ’tis true,
Tom never tells a lie;
And what Tom bids I’ll always do,
Until at last I die.
CHIVALRY.
CHIVALRY, ho yes, I have heerd of such a thing, but I don’t mind
owning—not allus having a Tomson’s Dixonary aside o’ me—as I never
rightly unnerstood the full meanin’ o’ the word until this very day, when
the subjick was suggested and my opinion arxed, which, why should I deny,
I _had_ supposed it strictly limited to the man in Brass ninth o’
November Lord Mayor’s Show, as they says it is to be abolished in future
times, and a great loss I’m sure to the rising generation, though apt to
be mostly all mud and squeeging and more pains than profit to grownups,
and likewise in Christmas pantomines and bur-lesks at theayters I have
seen Alls of Chivalry most georgius to beeold with young ladies in
uncountless troops coming out o’ shells and flowers and bells and stars
as made the rime of infancy seem quite reesnable, though why slugs and
snails only for the other sect is more than I can explain, and I don’t
blush to own free and frank as I believed the time for it in reel life
was past and gone these ages, though efforts made many a year back at the
Eglintown Turnamount rung through the country, and well I remember seeing
picters of queens o’ beauty and gentlemen done up in harmer and a
hossback as looked when once they was hup it was more than they could do
to save their lives to get down again without most competent assistance,
and far from comfortable or easy I should say them mettal dresses was, as
it stands to reesin, man being of a active character, was never intended
by nature to go about with a shell outside of him like snails, which is
both slow and useless, _I_ should say, unless making your palings slimy
and nibbling at your cabbage sprouts is useful acts, which much I doubt,
though how I’ve got from Chivalry to snails is most surpriging, only the
workings of the huming mind _is_ so surpriging as no one never need be
surpriged at nothing of the sort,—where was I, ho at harmer which, if you
arx my opinion, I do consider such a ill-conwenience as there ought to be
a deal to make up for it, and if you can’t have Chivalry without harmer I
must say I think we’re better as we are, fur what with crinnerlin the
world’s ardly big enough as it is, and if these coats of male was to come
in, made of steel likewise, you couldn’t walk in London, excep in
Portland Place, praps, and in quiet distrix like Islington and Upper
Baker Street, while as for omnibuses, my belief is they’re only kep going
as it is by the lightness and tightness of manly figgers and costoom, and
if _they_ took to harmer there’d be an end of twelve inside, much less of
thirteen out, and pit seats would have to be enlarged, as also pews in
church, and especially pulpits, likewise the Houses of Parliament and the
Corts of Lor, and everythink would be deranged together fur no particklar
good that I can see, but Mrs. Jones she ses it’s not the harmer, it’s not
the outside man as needs a haltering in this year age of ourn, it’s not
the costoom she ses, it’s the manners, she ses, which in ancient times
was so much superior to any think we know on in the presint day, she ses,
fur in them distant days there was galliant knights which wore a scarve
or a ribbing of the lady as they preferred, and went about the world with
long spears a defying all the other knights to say as that there lady of
theirs wasn’t the most beautifulest of all living ladies, and fight they
would with them spears, and sometimes got ard nox too, in spite of their
harmer, but got up again a hossback mostly, and went off to other parts a
doing the same thing, which, if that’s chivalry, why I arx you what on
erth is the good of such goings on as that, but ho Mrs. Jones ses, that’s
not all, she ses, and torx at me fur hours on end, she does, a trying to
show me what a deal more obliginger and politer was the manners of them
there knights to the manners of these year days, and how they was always
a helping of the helpless, and a succouring the distressed, and how they
thought it a honner and no trouble to put theirselves to all sorts of
inconvenience to oblige one of our sect which, especially the unprotected
female, was their joy and pride, never you mind how many bangboxes she
might have, nor how pouring of rain, outside of the omnibuses of the
period them knights would go immediate, and only count it a ordinary part
of what they called their devour to the fare, which I will own I _have_
met with quite contrairy condick from well drest pussons, as doubtless
calls theirselves gentlemen, and after standing hours, I may say, in
Regint Circus or corner of Tottenham Court Road, have been pushed from
getting of my place inside by the very harms that in other times Mrs.
Jones ses would have been lifted to my haid, but lor! I ses to her,
though this may appen occasional, I ses, what can you expeck in London in
the midst of millions of snobs as thinks only of theirselves, and has
never learned any better, poor deers, which I’m sorry fur ’em, fur sure I
am as the feelins is much more comfortabler of a reel and right down
_gentle_ man, which the word explains itself, don’t it, and we don’t want
no knights in harmer while there’s men left, and proud I am to say I know
a many such, and have met with kindness from a many more as I don’t know
the names on, which if they’d had harmer on twice over couldn’t be more
ready to lend their strength to the weak, and their elp to the elpless,
and chivalry can’t mean no more than that, so let alone the harmer, we
can’t have too much of it, _I_ ses, and Mrs. Jones she ses so too, and we
ses it not as wimming only but as humane beings as likes to see their
feller creeturs a growing in good arts and appiness, not forgetting as
wimming likewise has _our_ duties, which is seldom done as well as one
could wish, and so has no manner of rite to preech, which much I fear
I’ve been a running on most unconscionable, and took up a deal too much
of your time, but umbly arx your parding and won’t intrude no further.
CHILDHOOD’S CASTLES IN THE AIR.
GENTLY, no pushing; there’s room to sit
All three without grumbling,
One in front, two behind, well you fit,
And mamma to hold you from tumbling.
Rock, rock, old rocking chair,
You’ll last us a long time with care,
And still without balking
Of us four any one,
From rocking and talking—
That is what we call fun.
Curtains drawn, and no candles lit,
Great red caves in the fire,
This is the time for us four to sit
Rocking and talking all till we tire.
Rock, rock, old rocking chair,
How the fire-light glows up there,
Red on the white ceiling;
The shadows every one
Might be giants, reeling
On their great heads, for fun.
Shall we call this a boat out at sea,
We, four sailors rowing?
Can you fancy it well? As for me
I feel the salt wind blowing.
Up, up and down, lazy boat,
On the top of a wave we float,
Down we go with a rush;
Far off I see a strand
Glimmer; our boat we’ll push
Ashore on Fairy-land.
The fairy people come running
To meet us down on the sand,
Each holding out toward us the very thing
We’ve long wished for, held in his hand.
Up, up again; one wave more
Holds us back from the fairy shore;
Let’s pull all together,
Then with it, up we’ll climb,
To the always fine weather
That makes up fairy time.
Come to us through the dark, children,
Hark! the fairy people call,
But a step between us and you, children,
And in Fairy-land room for us all.
Climb the main and you will be
Landed safe in gay Fairie,
Sporting, feasting, both night and noon,
No pause in fairy pleasures;
Silver ships that sail to the moon,
Magic toys for treasures.
Ah! the tide sweeps us out of our track,
The glimmer dies in the fire,
There’s no climbing the wave that holds back
Just the things that we all most desire!
Never mind, rock, rocking-chair;
While there’s room for us four there,
To sit by fire-light swinging,
Till some one open the door,
Birds in their own nest singing
Ain’t happier than we four.
AUTUMN LEAVES.
I.
WHO cares to think of autumn leaves in spring?
When the birds sing,
And buds are new, and every tree is seen
Veil’d in a mist of tender gradual green;
And every bole and bough
Makes ready for the soft low-brooding wings
Of nested ones to settle there and prove
How sweet is love;
Alas, who then will notice or avow
Such bygone things?
II.
For, hath not spring the promise of the year?
Is she not always dear
To those who can look forward and forget?
Her woods do nurse the violet;
With cowslips fair her fragrant fields are set;
And freckled butterflies
Gleam in her gleaming skies;
And life looks larger, as each lengthening day
Withdraws the shadow, and drinks up the tear:
Youth shall be youth for ever; and the gay
High-hearted summer with her pomps is near.
III.
Yes; but the soul that meditates and grieves,
And guards a precious past,
And feels that neither joy nor loveliness can last—
To her, the fervid flutter of our Spring
Is like the warmth of that barbarian hall
To the scared bird, whose wet and wearied wing
Shot through it once, and came not back at all.
Poor shrunken soul! she knows her fate too well;
Too surely she can tell
That each most delicate toy her fancy made,
And she herself, and what she prized and knew,
And all her loved ones too,
Shall soon lie low, forgotten and decay’d,
Like autumn leaves.
SILENCE.
(OF A DEAF PERSON.)
I SEE the small birds fluttering on the trees,
And _know_ the sweet notes they are softly singing;
I see the green leaves trembling in the breeze,
And _know_ the rustling that such breeze is bringing;
I see the waters rippling as they flow,
And _know_ the soothing murmur of their noise;
I see the children in the fire-light’s glow,
Laughing and playing with their varied toys;
I see the signs of merriment and mirth;
I see the music of God’s lovely earth;
I see the earnest talk of friend with friend,
And wish my earnest thoughts with theirs could blend;
But oh! to my deaf ears there comes no sound,
I live a life of silence most profound.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.
DEAR heart! what a little time it is, since Francis and I used to walk
From church in the still June evenings together, busy with loving
talk;
And now he is gone far away over seas, to some strange foreign
country,—and I
Shall never rise from my bed any more, till the day when I come to
die.
I tried not to think of him during the prayers; but when his dear
voice I heard
I fail’d to take part in the hymns, for my heart flutter’d up to my
throat like a bird;
And scarcely a word of the sermon I caught. I doubt ’twas a grievous
sin;
But ’twas only one poor little hour in the week that I had to be happy
in.
When the blessing was given, and we left the dim aisles for the light
of the evening star,
Though I durst not lift up my eyes from the ground, yet I knew that he
was not far;
And I hurried on, though I fain would have stayed, till I heard his
footstep draw near,
And love rising up in my breast like a flame, cast out every shadow of
fear.
Ah me! ’twas a pleasant pathway home, a pleasant pathway and sweet,
Ankle deep through the purple clover, breast high ’mid the blossoming
wheat:
I can hear the landrails call through the dew, and the night-jars’
tremulous thrill,
And the nightingale pouring her passionate song from the hawthorn
under the hill.
One day, when we came to the wicket gate, ’neath the elms, where we
used to part,
His voice began to falter and break as he told me I had his heart;
And I whisper’d that mine was his; we knew what we felt long ago:
Six weeks are as long as a lifetime almost when you love each other
so.
So we put up the banns, and were man and wife in the sweet fading time
of the year,
And till Christmas was over and past I knew neither sorrow nor fear.
It seems like a dream already, a sweet dream vanished and gone;
So hurried and brief while passing away, so long to look back upon.
I had only had him three months, and the world lay frozen and dead,
When the summons came which we feared and hoped, and he sail’d over
sea for our bread.
Ah well! it is fine to be wealthy and grand, and never to need to
part;
But ’tis better to love and be poor, than be rich with an empty heart.
Though I thought ’twould have kill’d me to lose him at first, yet was
he not going for me?
So I hid all the grief in my breast which I knew it would pain him to
see.
He’d be back by the autumn, he said; and since his last passionate
kiss
He has scarcely been out of my thoughts, day or night, for a moment,
from that day to this.
When I wrote to him how I thought it would be, and he answered so full
of love;
Ah! there was no angel happier than I, in all the bright chorus above;
And I seem’d to be lonely no longer, the days slipp’d so swiftly away;
And the March winds died, and the sweet April showers gave place to
the blossoms of May.
And then came the sad summer eve, when I sat with the little frock in
the sun,
And Annie ran in with the news of the ship. Ah, well! may His will be
done!
They said that all hands were lost, and I swoon’d away like a stone,
And another life came ere I knew he was safe, and that mine was over
and gone.
So now I lie helpless here, and shall never rise up again,
I grow weaker and weaker, day by day, till my weakness itself is a
pain.
Every morning the creeping dawn, every evening I see from my bed
The orange-gold fade into lifeless grey, and the old evening star
overhead.
Sometimes in the twilight dim, or the awful birth of the day,
As I lie, not asleep nor awake, my soul seems to flutter away,
And I seem to be floating beyond the stars, till I thrill with an
exquisite pain,
And the feeble touch of a tiny hand recalls me to life again.
And the doctor says she will live. Ah! ’tis hard to leave her alone,
And to think she will never know in the world the love of the mother
who’s gone!
He will tell her of me, by and by,—she will shed me a childish tear;
But if I should stoop to her bed in the night, she would start with a
horrible fear.
She will grow into girlhood, I trust, and will bask in the light of
love,
And I, if I see her at all, shall only look on from above—
I shall see her, and cannot help, though she fall into evil and woe.
Ah! how can the angels find heart to rejoice when they think of their
loved ones below?
And Francis, he too, will forget me, and will go on the journey of
life,
And I hope, though I dare not think of it yet, will take him another
wife.
It will scarcely be Annie, I think, though she liked him in days gone
by;
Was that why she came?—but what thoughts are these for one who is
going to die?
I hope he will come ere I go, though I feel no longer the thirst
For the sound of his voice, and the light of his eye, that I used to
feel at first:
’Tis not that I love him less, but death dries, like a whirlwind of
fire,
The tender springs of innocent love, and the torrents of strong
desire.
And I know we shall meet again. I have done many things that are
wrong,
But, surely, the Lord of Life and of Love, cannot bear to be angry
long.
I am only a girl of eighteen, and have had no teacher but love;
And, it may be, the sorrow and pain I have known will be counted for
me, above;
For I doubt if the minister knows all the depths of the goodness of
God,
When he says He is jealous of earthly love, and bids me bow down
’neath the rod.
He is learnèd and wise, I know, but, somehow, to dying eyes
God opens the secret doors of the shrine that are closed to the
learnèd and wise.
So now I am ready to go, for I know He will do what is best,
Though he call me away while the sun is on high, like a child sent
early to rest.
I should like to see Francis look on our child, though the longing is
over and past—
But what is that footstep upon the stair? Oh! my darling—at last! at
last!
ECHOES.
ON Thursday I sat in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral and watched the
Bishops, Deans, Canons, and other clergy as they walked up in procession,
leading the new Archbishop. The Archbishop seemed, I thought, to look
with sheepish glances at two young men in full ball-room dress, who
walked behind, holding up his long train; and I am satisfied that nothing
but the proprieties of the place prevented his Grace from kicking them
both, and carrying his tail in his own hands. The clergy, in their white
gowns, with their various University colours, presented a rather pleasant
appearance in the aggregate, and, with the environment of the old
Cathedral arches, I thought they must have appeared to the best
advantage. But while I gazed upon the old Archbishop and those who were
doing him homage, the first notes of a distant chant broke faintly
through the air. The choristers had just entered the western door far
away, and as they slowly moved at the end of the long procession, they
uttered a sweet old Gregorian chant. At first, as I listened, I thought
how very sweet it was; then I thought it was in danger of becoming
monotonous; nevertheless, the little cherubs had not consulted me about
the length of it, and so continued their chant. But then the old music
began to strike me with subtle effects, like the strain of some long
sound-seasoned Cremona violin. And at length it began to work some
strange spell upon me, and weave for my ear echoes caught up as it were
from the dead past which before had seemed sleeping in its many tombs
around. The echoes of wild pagan song, uttered with the tramp of mystic
dances, gathering at last to the dying groan of some poor wretch
perishing on a rude altar that a complacent smile may be won to the face
of his god. The echo of the voice of a monk who finds that altar, and
raises the crucifix above it. His voice blends with the outcry of the
people for their old gods, and the loud command of the baptized King.
What wild echoes are these hiding under that outburst of young voices?
The echoes of a thousand savage martyrs who will not bow down to the
Pope. Their protest is stifled with their blood; they pass to Valhalla
for whose All-Father they have died; and the howling tempest marks his
passage over the scene. Echoes again; the sounds of war. Hark! a
tumult—words of anger—a hoarse cry—an Archbishop’s last sigh as his life
ebbs away on the floor—there on the spot near the choir’s gate, where
Archbishop Tait now gazes as if he could see the stark form of à-Becket
lying there. Yes, plainly I heard that groan in the Gregorian chant.
Then there were the echoes of stripes. A King in the dark crypt, beneath
the shrine of the murdered Archbishop, now canonized, is being scourged
in penance for his sins. Blended with these, the echoes of the voices of
the great prelates and princes of many kingdoms, who have come to build a
shrine for the martyr: their exclamations before the shrine decked with
all the gleaming gems owned by the monarchs of Europe. One of them,
Louis of France, has refused to offer a diamond, the finest in the world,
but when the shrine is uncovered, the stone leaps from his ring and sets
itself in the centre of the brilliants. The people shout, nay, weep with
excitement at this miracle. All these I heard again in the chant. Then
came pathetic echoes out of many ages: the tones of mourners as they
followed here their honoured dead; the prayers of souls here aspiring
towards the mysteries of existence; voices of hearts that found peace;
the sobs of those who found it not; the low-toned benediction or
exhortation of confessors. The voices of priests from pulpits, and of
those who responded. All are hushed in death; but I heard their awakened
echoes. The echoes of tolling bells, of marriage chimes. The tones of
marriage vows. The startled cry of the infant wondering at the holy
water sprinkled upon it. The echoes of Chaucer’s merry or sad pilgrims
with their gracious or wanton stories, beguiling their way to the old inn
near Christ Church Gate, which one seeks now only to find it has been
burnt down. The echoes of their prayers for health at St. Dunstan’s or
St. Thomas’s Shrine, and that other shrine where the stones are worn
deepest with the knees of pilgrims, but whose saint is unknown. All
these echoes were awakened for my ear by the sweet chant of the boys in
Canterbury Cathedral; and unreal as they were, I confess they still seem
to me more real than the actual prayers for the confusion of Dr. Tait’s
imaginary enemies, or the ceremony of his enthronement. To sit upon
fourteen centuries and see a London gentleman in a coat so much too large
for him that his friends have to hold up its skirts for him, and to see
plethoric Englishmen, suggestive of sirloins, on their knees praying that
the snares set for their feet shall be broken,—produced in me feelings,
to say the least, of a mixed character; such as those which may have been
experienced by the landlady in the Strand, when she found that her lodger
Mr. Taylor (the Platonist) had sacrificed a bull to Jupiter in her back
parlour. There is something not undignified in an old Greek sacrificing
a heifer, laurel-crowned, to Zeus; and there is something not
unimpressive in old missionaries of the Cross struggling with pagan foes,
and symbolizing their faith in their vesture and in their candles which
lit up the caves to which they often had to fly. But to the crowd that
went down between business and business, to see so long as a
return-ticket permitted this effigy of a real past, there must have been
more absurdity than impressiveness in it. From the whole pageant I
recall with pleasure only the long sweet chant,—a theme ensouled by
genius and piety,—which, between the doorway and the altar, filled the
old Cathedral and made it a vast organ, with historic tones breathing the
echoes of millions of heaven-seeking pilgrims whose prayers and hymns
began at that spot before the advent of Christianity, and may perhaps
remain there after it has passed away.
EXPEDIENCY.
THUS to his scholars once Confucius said:
Better to die than not be rich: get wealth.
He who has nothing, trust me, nothing is;
Nay, tenfold worse than nothing. Not to be
Is neither good nor bad; but to be poor!—
’Tis to be nothing with an envious wish,
A zero conscious of nonentity.
To get wealth, and to keep it—this is all,
And the one rule of life, expediency.
This was the lesson that the master taught,
And then he gave some rules for getting wealth:
Happy, who once can say, I have a thing.
All things are given us, all things to be had,
Except, alas! the faculty of having.
If you are sated with one dish of fruit,
Why, no more fruit have you, to call it having,
Though a whole Autumn lay in heaps about you.
How to _have_, this, my scholars, would I teach.
Yet who can teach it? it is great and hard.
This one thing dare I say. Be not deceived,
Nor dream that those called rich _have_ anything;
Who think that what the pocket treasures up,
And jealous foldings of the robe, is theirs;
Theirs all the plate the burglar cannot reach,
Theirs all the land they warn the traveller off:
Fools! Because we are poorer, are they rich?
What is none other’s, is it therefore theirs?
Endeavour, O my scholars, to be rich,
Scheme to get riches when you wake from sleep,
All day pursue them, pray for them at night.
As when one leans long time upon his hand,
Then, moving it, finds all its strength is gone
And it can now grasp nothing, so the soul
Loses in listlessness the grasping power,
And in the midst of wealth, _has_ nothing still.
I know not, O my scholars, how to bring
The tingling blood through the soul’s palsied limbs,
But when ’tis done how rich the soul may be
How royal in possessions, I can tell,—
One half of wisdom—seek elsewhere the other.
The gods divorce knowledge of good from good.
He who is happy and rich does seldom know it,
And he who knows the true wealth seldom has it.
Not only all this world of eye and ear
Becomes his house and palace of delights
Whose soul has grasping power; so that each form
To him becomes a picture that is his,
The light-stream as a fountain in his court,
The murmur of all movement music to him,
And time’s mere lapse rhythmical in his heart.
Not only so; a greater treasure still,
The lives of other men, by sympathy
Incorporated with his own, are his.
Get wealth, my scholars, this wealth first of all.
One life is beggary; live a thousand lives.
In those about you live and those remote;
Live many lives at once and call it country,
And call it kind; in the great future live
And make it in your life rehearse its life,
And make the pallid past repeat its life.
Be public-hearted and be myriad-soul’d,
So shall you noble be as well as rich,
And as a king watch for the general good.
Raised to a higher level, you shall find
With large enjoyments vast constraints, vast cares.
Be swayed by wider interests, be touched
By wiser instincts of the experienced heart,
And, since all greatness is a ponderous weight,
Be capable of vaster sufferance.
Your joys shall be as heaven, your griefs as hell.
Rise early, O my scholars, to be rich,
And make Expediency your rule of life.
Then, when the utmost scale of wealth is gain’d,
And other lives are to your own annex’d
By the soul’s grasping power, this guide of life,
This sure Expediency, shall suffer change.
When appetites shall tame to prudences
And Prudence purge herself to Sacred Law,
When lusts shall sweeten into sympathies,
And royal Justice out of Anger spring,
When the expanding Self grows infinite,
Then shall Expediency, the guide of life,
In Virtue die, in Virtue rise again.
REST. {43}
DEAREST FRIEND,
THE subject of your meeting of to-morrow is so suggestive that I would
gladly join you all, and write an essay on it, if I had health and time.
I have neither, and, perhaps, better so. My essay, I candidly avow,
would tend to prove that no essay ought to be written on the subject. It
has no reality. A sort of intuitive instinct led you to couple “Ghosts
and Rest” together.
There is, here down, and there ought to be, no Rest. Life is an _aim_;
an aim which can be _approached_, not _reached_, here down. There is,
therefore, no rest. Rest is immoral.
It is not mine now to give a definition of the _aim_; whatever it is,
there is one, there _must_ be one. Without it, Life has no sense. It is
atheistical; and, moreover, an irony and a deception.
I entertain all possible respect for the members of your Club; but I
venture to say that any contribution on Rest which will not exhibit at
the top a definition of Life will wander sadly between wild arbitrary
intellectual display and commonplaces.
Life is no sinecure, no “_recherche du bonheur_” to be secured, as the
promulgators of the theory had it, by guillotine, or, as their less
energetic followers have it, by railway shares, selfishness, or
contemplation. Life is, as Schiller said, “a battle and a march;” a
battle for Good against Evil, for Justice against arbitrary privileges,
for Liberty against Oppression, for associated Love against
Individualism; a march onwards to Self, through collective Perfecting, to
the progressive realization of an Ideal, which is only dawning to our
mind and soul. Shall the battle be finally won during life-time? Shall
it on Earth? are we believing in a Millennium? Don’t we feel that the
spiral curve through which we ascend had its beginning elsewhere, and has
its end, if any, beyond this terrestrial world of ours? Where is then a
possible foundation for your essays and sketches?
Goethe’s “Contemplation” has created a multitude of little sects aiming
at Rest, where is no Rest, falsifying art, the element of which is
evolution, not re-production, transformation, not contemplation, and
enervating the soul in self-abdicating Brahmanic attempts. For God’s
sake let not your Club add one little sect to the fatally existing
hundreds!
There is nothing to be looked for in life except the uninterrupted
fulfilment of Duty, and, not Rest, but consolation and strengthening from
Love. There is, not rest, but a promise, a shadowing forth of Rest in
Love. Only there must be in Love absolute _trust_; and it is very seldom
that this blessing depends on us. The child goes to sleep, a dreamless
sleep, with unbounded trust, on the mother’s bosom; but _our_ sleep is a
restless one, agitated by sad dreams and alarms.
You will smile at my lugubrious turn of mind; but if I was one of _your_
Artists, I would sketch a man on the scaffold going to die for a great
Idea, for the cause of Truth, with his eye looking trustfully on a loving
woman, whose finger would trustfully and smilingly point out to him the
unbounded. Under the sketch I would write, not Rest, but “a Promise of
Rest.” Addio: tell me one word about the point of view of your
contributors.
Ever affectionately yours,
JOSEPH MAZZINI.
REST.
POOR restless heart! still thy lament,
Crave not for rest, refusèd still,
There is some struggle,—discontent,
That stays thy will.
Be brave to meet unrest,
Nor seek from work release,
Clasp struggle close unto thy breast,
Until it brings thee peace.
Seek not in creed a resting-place
From problems that around thee surge,
But look doubt bravely in the face,
Till truth emerge.
Work out the problem of thy life,
To no convention chainèd be,
Against self-love wage ceaseless strife,
And thus be free.
Then, if in harmony thou livest,
With all that’s in thy nature best,
Who “Sleep to his beloved giveth,”
Will give thee rest.
REST.
HIS Mother was a Prince’s child,
His Father was a King;
There wanted not to that proud lot
What power or wealth could bring;
Great nobles served him, bending low,
Strong captains wrought his will;
Fair fortune!—but it wearied him,
His spirit thirsted still!