Chapter 17

and feel assured from such a word that he who spoke, had he been where the battle raged, had left his stroke on many a shield; for his words have the crash of a Crusader's ax. What a loss it was to men that St. Simeon came not down from his pillar, clothed himself, made himself clean and wholesome, instead of filthy and revolting, and dwelt with people for whom Christ died. A religious recluse is a religious ignoramus, since he does not know that the one-syllable word in the vocabulary of Christ is, "Be of use." The problem of living, as Arthur saw vividly, was not how to get yourself through the world unhurt, but how to do the most for some one besides yourself while you are in the world; and this attitude is otherness, altruism. Nurture strength to use. Pass your might on. Knighthood was to serve everybody else first, after the fashion of the Founder of knighthood, even Christ, "who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister." King Arthur served. Play battles stung him not to prowess, but, as Lancelot saw, in the actual battle, the hero was not Lancelot, but Arthur. May be a too deep seriousness was in him. I think it probable. He had been more masterful in wielding men had he been colored more by laughter and jest. We must not take ourselves, nor yet the world, with too continuous seriousness. There are intervals between battles when warriors may rest, and intervals in the stress of deeds and sorrow where room is given for the caress and wholesome jest. That arch-jester, Jack Falstaff, had much reason with him. We like him, despite himself, and despite ourselves, because there was in him such comradery. Though he was boisterous, yet was he jovial. All characters, save Christ, have limitations. Arthur had his. Lack of sprightliness was his mistake and lack. But the work to be done fills him with might unapproachable, so that,

"Like fire, he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee."

He is no play soldier, and foemen mark his sword as a thing to fear. A mutilated herdsman, rushing into Caerlaen, and shaking bloody story from his hideous wounds, which, Arthur hearing, though a tourneyment would blow its bugles on the plain erelong, forgets the coming joust, remembering only a wrong to be avenged, and evil-doers to be punished or destroyed, so they may no longer be a noxious presence in the land, and goes, and at tourney's close comes back, through the dark night, wet with rain; but he has cleansed the hostile land of villains on that day. In human nature is a bias to escape the world, to get out of the turmoil, to seek cloisters of quiet, which bias "The Holy Grail" attacks. Arthur was no friend to the pursuit of the grail; not that he loves not, with a passion white as sun's flame, the good and pure, but that he has sagacity to see such quest will scatter the round table and its fellowship, and would dispeople his forces, whose presence makes for peace and sovereignty in all his realm and compels the sovereignty of law. Him, their king, these errant knights heeded not, so enticing and noble seemed the warfare they espoused, and thought their sovereign cold and calculating, while, in fact, he knew them for visionaries. He was right. Without them he was bankrupt in strength to compel social betterment. The visionary, in so far as he is simply visionary, is foe to progress; for progress comes by battle and by association in affairs, and he who would be helper to the better life of man must mix with the currents of his time. Snowdrifts in the mountains and on the northern slopes that hold snows in their shadows for the summer's use; and dark mountain meadows, where fogs and rains soak every particle of sod, and waters percolate through the spongy root and soil to form bubbling streams; and the pines, whose shadows make a cool retreat where streams may not be drained dry by the sun; the silver threads of tributary brooks; the sponge of mountain mosses, which squeezes its cup of water into a larger laver,--all these seem remote from the broad river on whose flood merchants' fleets are slumbering, nor seem participants with these floodgates to the sea; yet are they adjuncts, though so far removed, and pay their tribute to the flood.

Their service was as pronounced and valuable as if they had been huge as Orontes. There is an absence which is presence, and there is a presence which is absence; and what is asked of all men, near or far, is that they be helpers to the general good. They must not, by intent or mistake, escape their share of the public burden.

A poet seems apart, and is not, but is to be esteemed a portion of this world's most turbulent life. To intend to have a share in this world's business is important. To shun the taking up your load when need is, is to be coward when your honor bids you be courageous. This means, be a citizen, neglect no office in that worthy relation; be not wandering knights, pursuing fire-flies, supposing them to be stars; but be as Arthur, who found the Holy Grail, and drained its sacramental wine in truest fashion, in "staying by the stuff;" in being statesman, soldier, defender of the weak, reformer, liver of a clean life in public place, builder of a State, negotiator of schemes which make for the diminution of earth's ills and increase of earth's fairer provinces. Edward the Confessor was a monk, wearing a king's crown and refusing to discharge a king's offices, and thought himself a saint by such omission, when what God and the realm wanted and needed was a man to rule and suffer for the common weal. Arthur was not a thing "enskied and sainted;" rather a wholesome man, whose duty lay in working for men. Sir Percivale became a monk; other knights returned no mote, thus spilling the best blood of the table round. Meantime the king's enemies multiplied, and these visionaries decimated the ranks of opposition to the wrong; but come what would, King Arthur served. An appeal to him for help found answer, though treasons plotted at his back. As to his last battle, though his heart was breaking, he marched nor paused, perceiving, so long as he was king, he must uphold the order of the State. He was no dilettante. Great service called him, and he thought he heard the voice of God. Duty is a ponderous word in Arthur's lexicon. In "Lucretius," Tennyson shows the moral apathy of materialism by letting us look on at a suicidal death, and hear the cry, half-rage and half-despair, "What is duty?" and in that fated cry, atheism has run its course. Here it empties into its dead sea, and materialism finds its only possible outcome. This materialist of long ago is the mouthpiece for his fraters in these last days. There is one speech, and that a speech of dull despair, for those who say there is no God; and for them who have no God, there is no duty, for duty is born of hold on God. King Arthur, sure of God, therefore never asking, "What is duty?" but in its stead urges the nobler query, "Where is duty?" and so infused himself into the blood of empire; aye, and more, into the spiritual blood of uncalendared centuries.

And King Arthur was pure. Vice is so often glorified and offers such chromo tints to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, lust, envy, hate, debauchery,--which of these is not tainted? Penuriousness is vice unadorned, and who thinks it fair? Like Spenser's "false Duessa," it is revolting. Drunkenness, bestiality, spleen,--what roseate views shall you take of these? Who admires Caliban? And Caliban is vice, standing in its naked vileness and vulgarity. Man, meant for manhood, self-reduced to brutehood,--that is drunkenness. In an era when Dumas by fascinating fictions was making vice ingratiating, Tennyson was rendering virtue magnificent. Can any person of just judgment rise from reading "Idyls of the King" without feeling a repugnance toward vice, like a nausea, and a magnetism in virtue? An admiration for Arthur becomes intense. The poet draws no moral from his parable: doing what is better, he puts morals into one's blood. While never railing at Guinivere, he makes us ashamed of her and for her, and does the same with Lancelot. He makes virtue eloquent. King Arthur is neither drunkard nor libertine, therein contradicting the pet theories of many people's heroes. He loves cleanness and is clean. He demands in man a purity equal to woman's; setting up one standard of mortals and not two. The George Fourth style of king, happily, Arthur is not; for George was a shame to England and to men at large, while Arthur is a glory, burning on above the cliffs of Wales, like some brave sunrise whose colors never fade. To men and women, he is one law of virtue and one law of love. When the years have spent their strength, then vice shows itself hideous vice. The glamour vanished, no one can love or plead for wickedness. Virtue is wholly different; for to it the ages burn incense each year, rendering its loveliness more apparent and bountiful. Virtue grows in beauty, like some dear face we love. Heroism is virtue; manliness is virtue; devotion is virtue. Sum up those remembered deeds of which the centuries speak, and you will find them noble, virtuous. Seen as it is, and with the light of history on its face, vice is uncomely as a harlot's painted face. King Arthur is virile and he is noble, engaging and fascinating us like a romance written by a master, full of persuasive sweetness and enduring help.

Besides, King Arthur was a religious man. This is the transparent explanation of his career. He is an attempted incarnation of the precepts and love of Christ. This long-vanished prince knew that if a king might but repeat the miracle of Jesus' life in his own history, he would have achieved kingship indeed. "_Mea vita vota_" was Dempster's motto,--a sentiment Arthur knew by heart. His life was owed to God, and right manfully he paid his debt. Arthur exalted God in his heart and court and on hard-fought field. So intense and vivid his sense of God, he reminds us of the Puritan; but the Puritan touched to beatific beauty by the interpretation of love God's Christ came to give. Tennyson always made much of God, saw Him immanent in every hope of human betterment, saying, as we remember and can not forget:

"Our little systems have their day-- They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee; And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

"The Idyls of the King" and "In Memoriam" might felicitously be called treatises on theology written in verse. St. Augustine and Wesley were not more certainly theologians than this poet Laureate. The rest and help that come to men in prayer is burned into the soul in "Enoch Arden:"

"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug His fingers into the wet earth and prayed."

And

"He was not all unhappy. His resolve Upbore him, and firm faith and evermore Prayer from a living source within the will, And beating up through all the bitter world, Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, Kept him a living soul."

And Arthur, dying, whispers:

"More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise, like a fountain, for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, Both for themselves and those that call them friend? For so the whole round world is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

No wonder is there if King Arthur was upheld: such faith makes impotence giant-strengthed. He does not tremble. The earth may know perturbations, but not he. To tournament or battle, or to death, he goes with smiling face. His trust upholds him. So good is faith. "In Memoriam" is the biography of doubt and faith at war. The battle waxes sore, but the day is God's. The battle ebbs to quiet. Calm after tempest. Tennyson could not stay in doubt. 'T is not a goodly land. If trepidation has white lip and cheek, 't is not forever. Living through an age of doubt, Tennyson, so sensitive to every current of thought as that he felt them all, and in that feeling and interpretation and strife for mastery over the doubt that kills, made his book, as Milton has it, "The precious life-blood of a master spirit;" and ends with:

"Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me.

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face, When I have cross'd the bar."

"In Memoriam" is thought, King Arthur is action; and action is antidote for doubt. Charles Kingsley's advice,

"Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long,"

is always pertinent and reasonable. This is explanation of that profound saying of Jesus, "If any man will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine." Life is exegesis of Scripture. Who do God's will catch sight of God's face, and their hearts are helped. Lowell's "Sir Launfal" urges this same truth. He who, for weary and painful years, had haunted the world, seeking the Holy Grail and finding not the thing he sought, comes home discouraged to find in winter his castle had forgotten him, and he was left a wreck of what he had been in his better days; yet finds, in giving alms to a leprous beggar at his castle gate to whom he had denied alms in the spirit of alms when he set out to hunt the Holy Grail, that in so giving he found the Christ. Action helps God into the heart. Doubts are, many of them, brain-born and academical; and such, service helps to dispel. To Arthur, God was vital fact. To Him he held as tenaciously as to his sword; and he was comforted. All good things are included in religion, and all great things. If men become martyrs, they become at the same time functionaries in the palace of every worthy spirit. I suppose the hunger for discovery and knowledge are nothing other than the soul's hunger after God. He is the secret of great discontent. The soul wants God, and on the way to Him are astronomies, and literatures, and new-found hemispheres. Aspiration finds voice in Christianity. "Columbus," a poem of resonant music, speaks aspiration. Him--

"Who pushed his prows into the setting sun, And made West East, and sailed the dragon's mouth, And came upon the mountain of the world, And saw the rivers roll from paradise,"--

him, God-inspired as himself holds, saying:

"And more than once, in days Of doubt and cloud and storm, when drowning hope Sank all but out of sight, I heard His voice: Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand; Fear not,--and I shall hear his voice again-- I know that He has led me all my life, And I am not yet too old to work His will-- His voice again."

And King Arthur finds God helps him into all things worth while. Bravery, determination, kindness, purity, magnanimity, safe faith in God's supremacy,--all spring about him as he walks as flowers about a path in summer-time. Nothing good was foreign to him.

Christianity is the one philosophy of manhood in whose harness are no vulnerable parts. "The Palace of Art" presents the poet's perception of the failure of culture. Ethics, not aesthetics, compel manhood; and behind ethics, theology. God must live in life, if life shall put on goodness as a royal robe.

And such a man as Arthur has passed into the enduring substance of this world's best thought and purpose. We see him--not saw him. He is never past, but ever present. We see him dying, and with Sir Bedivere, who loved him, cry,

"Thy name and glory cling To all high places, like a golden cloud, Forever!"

X

The Story of the Pictures

A man and a woman were dreaming. Both were young; and one was strong and one was fair. They were lovers, and the world was very beautiful, and life as rhythmic as a poet's verse. Things which to some seem remote as heaven, to youth and love seem near enough to touch, if one do but stretch out the hand. This youth and maid were dreaming, and their hands were clasped, and sometimes they looked in each other's eyes--sometimes out across the fields, sloping toward sunset. The world seemed young as they, and the sky was fairly singing, with voices sweet as kisses from dear lips long absent,--those voices saying, saying always, "Life is fair--is fair;" and receding, as blown by on a gentle wind, drifted "Life is fair;" and the lovers looked at each other and were glad.

He was an artist, and his idle hand wrought pictures unconsciously. He did not think things, but saw things. His lips were not given to frequent speech, even with the woman he loved. He saw her, whether he sat thus beside her or whether he sat apart from her with seas between--he saw her always; for his was the gift of sight. He saw visions as rapt prophets do. Life was a pageant, and he saw it all.

His brush is part of his hand, and his palette is as his hand's palm. Painting is to him monologue. He is telling what he sees; talking to himself, as children and poets do. Now, he talks to the woman he loves and to himself in pictures, she saying nothing, save as her hand speaks in a caress, and that her eyes are dreamy sweet; and the artist's hand dreams over the paper with glancing touch, and this picture grows before their eyes: A man and a woman, young and fair, are on a hilltop alone, looking across a meadowland, lovely with spring and blossoms and love-making of the birds; and ponds where lily-pads shine in the sun, like metal patines, floating on the pool; and a flock lying in a quiet place; and a lad plowing in a field, the blackbirds following his furrow; and a blue sky, with dainty clouds of white faint against it, like breathing against a window-pane in winter; and a farmhouse, where early roses cluster, and little children are at play,--this, and his brush loiters, and the woman knows her artist has painted a picture of youth; and both look away as in a happy dream.

The artist paints again: and the landscape is in nothing changed. It might have been a reprint rather than a repainting. A morning land, where beauty and bounty courted like man and maid. No tints were lost. The sunlight was unfailing, and roses clustered with their spendthrift grace and loveliness; and the woman, looking at her lover, wondered why he painted the same landscape twice, but, waiting, saw the artist paint two figures, a man and woman at life's prime. She sees they are the youth and maid of the first picture, only older--and what besides? Then they were a promise, a possibility, now they are--what are they? They are the same; they are not the same. She is disappointed in them; not because their beauty has faded, but that their look has changed. Their faces are not haggard, nor cut with strange arabesques of pain and care, nor are they craven or vicious; but the artist speeds his hand as if at play, while every touch is bringing the faces out until they obliterate the former beauty utterly. The landscape is still dewy fresh and fair--the faces have no hint of morning in them. Faces, not bad, but lacking tenderness; expression, self-sufficient; eyes, frosty cold; and the woman's eyes light on the children, playing beside the white farmhouse, and in them is no inexpressible tenderness of mother-love, mute, like a caress; prosperous faces the world has gone quite well with, that is plain, but faces having no beckoning in them, no tender invitation, like a sweet voice, saying, "Enter and welcome." And she who looked at the pictures sobbed, scarcely knowing why, only the man and woman sorely disappointed her when they had grown to maturity; poetry and welcome and promise had faded from them as tints fade from a withered flower. So much was promised--so little was fulfilled.

Meantime, while these lovers sit on the hillside, and the artist has been talking in pictures as the clouds do, the sun has sloped far toward setting. The west is aflame, like a burning palace; the crows are flapping tired wings toward their nests; the swallows are sporting in the air, as children do in surf of the blue seas; smoke from the farm chimneys visible begins to lie level across the sky, and stays like a cloud at anchor. But the artist's hand is busy with another picture.

And the landscape is the same. Mayhap he is not versatile; and, think again, mayhap he has purpose in his reduplication. Like wise men, let us wait and see. A springtime-land as of old, and two figures; and the woman he loves watches, while her breathing is strangely like a sob. Now the figures are a man and a woman, stooped and gray. "Age," she says, "you paint age now, and age--is not beautiful;" and he, answering with neither lips nor eyes, paints swiftly on. The man is aged and leaning on a staff. His strength is gone. His staff is not for ornament, but need. The woman is wrinkled, and her hair is snowy white; and the girl at the artist's side tries vainly to suppress a sob. She, too, will soon be gray, and she loves not age and decrepitude; and the face in the picture is faded, no rose-tints in the cheeks. So old and weak--old age is very pitiful. But the picture is not finished yet. Wait! Wait a little, and give the artist time. It is not evening yet. Sunset lingers a little for him. His hand runs now like a hurrying tide. He is painting faces. Why linger over the face of age? If it were youth--but age? But he touches these aged faces lovingly, as a son might caress his aged father and mother with hand and with kiss; and beneath his touch the aged faces grow warm and tender, passing sweet. To look at them was rest. Their eyes were tender and brave. You remember they were old and feeble folk--young once, but long ago; but how noble the old man's face, scarred though it is with saber cut! To see him makes you valiant; and to see him longer, makes you valiant for goodness, which is best of all.

And the woman's face is lit with God's calm and God's comfort. A smile is in her eyes, and a smile lies, like sunlight, across her lips. Her hair is the silver frame that hems some precious picture in. She is a benediction, blessed as the restful night to weary toilers on a burning day. And the artist, with a touch quick as a happy thought, outlined a shadow, clad in tatters, and a child clad in tatters at her side; and the girl, leaning over the painting, thought the chief shadow was Death. But the artist hasted; and on a sudden, wings sprung from the shoulders of tattered mother and child, and they two lifted up their hands; the woman, lifting her hands above the dear forms of old age, spread them out in blessing, and the little child lifted her hands, clasped as in prayer; and these angels were Poverty, praying for and blessing the man and woman who had been their help.