Chapter 5

To know the elm-tree you must not come too near, for it too is wild and does not reveal its nature lightly; you may be cooler in the shadow of the beech or stand drier beneath the red-stemmed leaves of the sycamore. Yet it suffers the clinging ivy; it was beloved of poets in old days, and painters love it still. It has not the walnut's vivid green nor the rare flush that lights up the pine-stem. Its leaves are rough and of no brilliance; its bark is rugged also. But in life the familiar guardian of home meadows, it has stood by our fathers' landmarks from generation to generation, and when fallen and hewn and stacked it sheds a fragrance which, wherever perceived in after years, brings back memories of wanderings in deep lanes and of the great dim barns where we played in childhood. In the dull winter days when only yews and cypresses wear their leaves, I sometimes wander to a place whose walls are hung with the works of many a seer and lover of elms; there seated before a few small frames I give them thanks for having read the dear trees truly, and glorified a close and barren gallery with all the breezes and colours of the fields: I am beyond all noise and murkiness, walking in the peace and spaciousness of unsullied air.

To a mind now happily reverted to the primitive confidence in souls everywhere indwelling and creating sympathies between all things, the bonds of kinship between man and nature were drawn ever closer, and it seemed a wholly natural belief that the changes of the visible universe, affecting things which lived an almost personal existence, should be instinct with the deeper meaning of events in the drama of human existence.

Like the every-day life of men with its imperceptible attritions was the insensible growth and decay of things; as the tumult of his emotions were the storms and catastrophes that convulse the face of nature. The movement never ceased; the transforming power was never wearied; the spectator had but to give rapt attention, to be carried beyond his poor solicitudes to a participation in elemental processes of change in which the fates of humanity were mysteriously involved. The thought of this indissoluble union kept alive the sense of brotherhood within me, of responsibility in life, of interest in all that happens; and whether it was the daily contraction of a pond in drought, or a battle of ants by the wayside, or the first tinge of autumn upon the woods, all was ennobled by symbolic relationships to man's experience, which in the unceasing flow of their perception were lustral to a solitary heart, without them choked and stagnant.

There was a certain heath-clad ridge which like a watch-tower set above a city never failed to bring before the ranging eye some vision pregnant of those emotions by which the sense of humanity is quickened to a deeper consciousness of itself. The witchery of space was there always, and seemed to draw from the soul the clinging mists of her indifference. It was there that I saw nature in all her moods, and felt that to each my own moods responded; there that despondency, imagining her monotony of woe, was confuted by the saving changefulness of created things. I remember one day, when a summer storm was spending its fury, I stood upon this ridge and looked across the low lands that stretched away beneath me. They lay with all their boundaries confused by a pall of purple gloom, then darkly transparent, and dissolving before the returning sun, whose penetrative influence was felt rather than actually perceived. As I gazed, high in the veil of cloud there began faintly to gleam a spot of palest gold, so high that it seemed to belong to the sky and to have no part in an earthly landscape. Gradually it expanded, grew more vivid, and assumed form, other forms and tints emerged beside it, until at last it was revealed as a ripe corn-field on the high slopes across the valley, and before many moments had passed, a long line of downs stood out in the pure air with a sculptural clearness, as if during the storm all had been uprooted and moved a whole league towards the spot where I stood. While the rainbow spanned the plain, and the thunder still rolled in the distance, all the opposite heaven cleared almost to the furthest horizon; but there a remoter range yet lay half-covered by a billowy mass of clouds, like the hull of a dismasted ship in the folds of her fallen sails. At last even this trace of the battle was gone; the sun shone unopposed; the wet lands and clear sky were lit with an intenser brightness for their transient eclipse.

Then the humanity of all these things was borne in upon my mind, and I was affected by these vicissitudes shadowing forth the destiny of man, and reminding him in their beautiful and majestic procession that nature endures no perpetual gloom. The sudden ruin of a bright day in deluge and darkness and sonorous thunder, the timid reappearance of faint light, the natural forms strangely emerging from the perplexed wrack infesting the heaven, and at last seen as never before through leagues of pellucid air; the thunder's silence, the final and supreme triumph of light;--these swift yet utter revolutions of the visible world, by very grace of mutability, were rich with instant consolations for the soul's misgiving. They served to remind me that the fears, the spiritual conflicts, the darkness that seems eternal, are mere incidents of a summer noon and leave behind them a purer and serener day. Through all this close intercourse with nature my mind was being prepared for a healthier relation to my fellow-man, and my heart saved from the petrification of melancholy self-regard. The ever-growing delight in these inanimate things, the constant discovery of new charms as knowledge widened with experience, united to prevent stagnation and despair; they kept heart and mind alert for the perception of new glories; and it is from a clear sense of their salutary power that I dwell upon them in this record of a self-tormented life. How should he find life colourless whose eyes are often fixed upon the sky, who sees grey zones of cloud flush crimson before the sunrise, and at evening the wide air richly glowing, moted as with the bloom of plums and the golden pollen of all flowers?

At the end of that summer I returned to the occupations of life, appeased and almost happy in this inheritance of new sympathies. And before long I found that these were themselves but precursors of that which was to come, and that like the paranymphs who escort the bride, they did but apparel the heart for a deeper and more abiding joy. They were busied about me in tranquil hours, and speaking not, but seeming to wait in gladness for another, they made me serenely expectant also. They destroyed all sadness of retrospect; they led me always forward; with faces transparent with the light of an inward happiness they seemed to promise a vision at each near bending of the way. From glad looks and gestures assuring imminent joy, I too was charmed into a like faith, and went on blithely in the confidence of a coming illumination. Nor was that hope vain, for at length the mystery was made plain, and one day they brought me exulting into the presence of the Ideal Love.

There is a place in every heart which must be filled by adoration, or else the whole will grow hard and wither like a garden whose central fountain is grown dry. And though the affection of mortal man or woman may abandon it, there remains yet this other love which by pure and strenuous invocation may be drawn to it, and dwell in it, to the ennoblement of life; so great is the care of providence for mortal need. Love is our need, and it is given, if we despair not of it, even to such as have rarely felt the glow of earthly passion. For love is of many kinds; yet the palest and most subtle of its forms are made real to those who believe, and may become the guiding influences of their lives. Such are the visions of the ideal love to which those glad natural sympathies now led me, leaving me alone awhile that I might worship the orient light. And when I came out from that presence I rejoiced indeed, for the path was clear for my return, and life was now glad with promise like an orchard burgeoning with white blossoms. Old memories crowded back on me of hours beneath the cedars with the Phaedrus and the Vita Nuova, hours made happy with intellectual and austere delights. But now the joy was other than intellectual, though significant tenfold, for then in untried youth I had wondered at the beauty of an imaginary world; now with eyes that had looked on desolation I perceived that these visions were true. For had they been no more than airy fancies, they surely had not endured throughout these long ages in our laden and mortal air.

It was not merely the beauty of a literary setting which had preserved them: the craftsman's skill might indeed have enhanced their natural splendour, but it could not have alone inspired them with this perennial life. The gem with fire in its heart outlives the delicate setting; though it may be maltreated and buried for centuries by the wayside, it will come to light when the gold that framed it is long battered or lost, and will be desired by new generations for its inherent and unalterable beauty.

Not Plato's or Dante's creative power, but truth surviving all incarnations of genius, has kept this celestial gem aglow: they have but celebrated that which was never mortal, and guided wandering eyes to heaven's most beautiful star. This intangible and unincarnate vision exacts more from its votaries than the love which walks the earth: holding the lover ever in the strain of apprehension, it inures him to unwearying worship, and itself moving in regions incorruptible, never loses the glory of its first hour. The years may pass, but one face, like a hallowed thing, abides continually; years may fret and corrode other ideals, but to this they add beauties of ever fresh significance. The auroral glow is always round it, brightening the world, until it becomes an emblem of illumination and the symbol of eternal truths. This visionary presence wakes aspiration to new effort and touches the intellect with passion; beleaguered thought sallies out with new strength, and the frontiers of darkness recede before it. From this comes the quickening of the heart without which hope wanes and the mind is barren: the deep pure joy of contemplation awakens all that is best in the soul, which goes towards it on tense wings of desire. And as with time it draws further from the earth, and, following, the soul essays ever higher flights, it is often poised at a great height as in a trance of motion, whence it looks back upon the world it has left, and round it upon other worlds. Then, its love-range being wondrously expanded, it sees beyond that visionary countenance, which dissolves and forms again like a delicate wreath of mist; and clear starlight falls upon it from every side, so that all shadow is destroyed. And when it returns to earth again, and is forced to contemplate meaner things, it is now aware that the very soil is compacted of dust of stars, and that he who looks listlessly upon creation is unworthy of the human name. And so continually flying forth and returning, it weaves endless bonds between the infinitesimal and the infinite, forgetting how to despise, which is the heavenly science.

All this ardour is awakened and sustained by love, which began in sense and is now transformed. Through each succeeding change it is known for the same divine power which has so attuned the body that it vibrates no more to desire alone, but is now become resonant beneath a faint and spiritual breath.

It is an old story that love is sightless, but that is the love which romps among the roses and is blinded by their thorns. There is another and a better tradition that love's eyes pierce heaven, and this is a great truth; for infinity is cold and vaporous until man projects upon it his mortal ideal, his conception of an earthly love transfigured. When this beloved guide appears throned above him as in the clouds, he dares to lift his eyes, and there he reads through its light the divine purports of his existence. Is it a small thing to stand, though but for a moment, searching infinity undismayed? This is the celestial ocean to whose shore he is come; and now "drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom, until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere ... beauty absolute, separate, simple, everlasting, which without diminution, without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever growing and perishing beauties of all other things."

To some the great perception comes but late, rising from the ashes of love's common furnace. But they whose hearts have never been consumed in these roaring flames may find it earlier; and purged from all taints of jealousy and covetousness, may pass straightway into the bliss of a higher union. This is that supreme affiance and espousal of the soul wherein they may be released into a larger air, undelayed by the earthward longings and gradual initiations of seemingly happier men. Thus its servants do not decline into slothful service, but are strenuous always; raised above the acquiescence of use, they never know the cloying of fruition or suffer the barbarian conquest of indifference. Their soul is unaffected by material circumstance or misfortune, and illuminates their lives as often as in the silent hour of meditation they concentrate their thoughts upon its grace. The cup of earthly love, even the noblest, is often dipped in Pyriphlegethon, and the draught it offers scathes the palate until its finest sensibility is for ever dulled. Those who have quaffed this liquid fire can no longer understand his mood who leaves the roses and the wine to toil through deserts in search of limpid water. They think him madly ungrateful for God's good gifts, a fool abandoning joy proved and present for a shadow far and incomprehensible. But they who have not denied themselves are no longer fit judges of him who has renounced. They cannot know that by this renunciation the senses are thrice refined, and receive as a vital influence the stellar beam which falls chill and ineffectual upon a grosser frame. They cannot believe that this love from the infinite distance wields as mighty a force over renunciant lives as the near flame of passion over their own. But, for all their denial, it lives and puissantly reigns. It reigns in very truth predominant, this ideal love to which space exists not and propinquity is nothing; and it will have none for its subjects but those who by bereavement or aspiration or intense purity are inly prepared for its dominion.

Happy therefore are the shy if in the midst of their tribulation they are guided to the gateway of so bright a kingdom. It may well be that we must first be led thither by some dear-remembered and virgin form once almost ours through earthly love, but now joined to us only by an imperishable and mystic union. Our sight may at first need the embodied beauty to give it the finer powers by which the revelation of the ideal grows familiar to us, but is at last attainable without mortal intervention by an immediate flight of the soul. Until that late day of enlightenment we must still be set upon the celestial path by a touch of human tenderness; a pure yet sensuous yearning must be ours when we are first girded to the ascent. If there are beings which attain the fulness of the ideal love without the first inspiration of a fair earthly form I know nothing in creation to which they may be likened, nor had I ever part in so rare an enfranchisement. The vision that now entrances my soul first arose from a living, breathing form radiant with earthly brightness and instinct with every charm which brings men fawning to the feet of women. The sensuous frenzy which lovers sing was also mine, the tremor of the heart, the vibration of the very life; the deep seventh wave of passion rioted through me also. But from the first amazement of the shaken being it was not given me to pass through satisfaction into tranquillity; I was held long in a whirl of trouble; in the anguish of denial I learned initiation into the mystery which is eternal and supreme.

It is good for some of earth's children that passion should be stayed before it makes ashes of the fancy; for if it does but touch for a moment only to be withdrawn for ever, it does not destroy, but by its meteoric passage kindles the imagination with the glow of an incorruptible flame. It is with them long enough to brand upon memory the image which, though never renewed before their bodily eyes, by its very severance from perception puts on an immortality of virginal grace. Love is understanding, said the poet of Heaven and Hell, and love ennobled through renunciant years shall at the last encompass the world. The sensuous glow that first quickened the heart of youth is transmuted into a purer fire akin to that which moves the spheres.

To know this truth is their compensation who are swiftly withdrawn from the warm radiance of earthly love. They are stricken, but before passion blinds them are rapt into a high solitude, whence, if they truly love, an infinite prospect is unrolled before them. They know desire; but as their passion was hopeless in this world, their steps were mercifully set upon a new path, whereby the bodily semblance of the beloved became the symbol of spiritual comeliness, alluring the beholder into the peace of a serene and unworldly mood. A thin and rarefied ideal, you say, a mirage which no wayfarer can approach: experience rejects these subtleties, and to these creations of a dream human affection was never given. True, to hearts established and content in happy unions, to minds preoccupied with the near cares and pleasures of a home, our distant visions may appear frail structures wrought in mist by homeless fancy. But for the exiled heart they are not such, but verities of abiding inspiration. For the ideal love did not die with Plato, but came again in mediaeval Italy, and who shall say that even our material age has banished it from the earth?

No indeed it is not dead, the ideal love, but indwells, a redeeming power, wherever there are desolate hearts and minds to be updrawn and united by its ministry; a power so lustral in its nature, that no abject and despairing thought creeps into its presence but is purified and exalted by its regard. This love brings hope and cheerful constancy; with a shining falchion it affrights into their natal darkness the monstrous forms of despair, and lends to all work a secret charm of chivalry. It sustains that high anticipatory mood to which life is but a preparation, and the bees buzzing round the honey-flowers seem poor things toiling for an inessential gain. Because it is mystic and transcendental it is the predestined guide of all whom fate holds removed from earthly love. This is the old device of the world's failures, you say, to trick themselves out in Plato's mantle or the schoolman's cowl, and conceal their spite beneath the pretensions of the mystic. But I answer that the causes which moved the Greek and the Florentine are still at work among mankind to-day; they have never ceased, however much obscured by the glare of triumphant luxury or the stress of miserable toil. Often when disillusion has laid bare a soul, this love which did but slumber awakes to contest with envy or despair the possession of a wounded heart. I aver that any exile from the happier earth whose heart is pure, if he invokes this love with ardent faith, may unbar his door and feel that it has passed his threshold. Let us never be persuaded that the ideal world is far from this earth of ours, or that the way to it may not be daily traversed by him who has submitted to the heavenly guide. Not even the close entanglement of common cares can avail to keep such an one from his love; but as Bishop Berkeley is said to have been able to pass in a moment from the consideration of trifling things to the throne of thrones and the seats of the Trinity, so this lover shall overpass with easy and habitual flight the barriers that hold most men life-long prisoners.

For to the Spirit that is chastened and endures there is given a power of flight and poise, by which, if it abandon itself to the celestial wind, it may instantly remove from the deeper planes of life, as a bird by the mere slanting of its wings is carried in proud quiescence into an upper region of the air. He shall know instant release from the leaguer of disillusion and vain solicitudes; in the light of one beautiful and compassionate countenance the unquiet memories of failure shall give up their exceeding bitterness.

And though the style and instinct of modern life are hostile to such love, though in prosperity it is ignored and in adversity often overborne by a vain uproar of lamentation, yet even in a self-indulgent and furious world it still draws many to the severe exaltation of its service. We cannot approach the heights where a Plato and a Dante walked with ease, but far beneath upon the lower slopes we can draw a breath of new life as we fix our weaker eyes upon the glory which they saw so near. Although the men who have there ascended are a supreme company, we may yet presume to follow; for let it never be said that the gods have reserved for surpassing genius the consolation of which lesser men have so much deeper need. But he who would reach a serener air must press forward strenuously; for as a mountain may have one bare and northern slope, and another sunlit and clothed with verdure, and yet there may be a path on each side to the summit, so it is with the ascent to this felicity. One lingers amid pleasant groves and laughing waters; another, undistracted by the beauty of any lower zone, but fixing his eyes upon the far summit, crosses the chill rocky slopes, never feeling the warmth of the sun and only seeing his brightness reflected from the highest peak. Though the ways of the two travellers lie far apart until the end, their endurance may be crowned with the same reward; but he who knew no dalliance and plucked no fruit has from the beginning seen the goal clearly, and lived steadfastly in its distant promise. And do you tell me that this is not love or joy, you who saunter in the verdant southern valleys breathing a present happiness with the perfume of a thousand flowers? Your way may lead you upward after long vicissitudes, but endurance will more swiftly fail you for the last most arduous ascent. Very love is of the heights, and he whose thoughts have long been thither exalted will breathe with least pain the attenuate upper air.

To this pilgrimage the diffident are foreordained; it is their happiest hour when they take staff and scrip and set out in earnest for the shrine built among the mountains. The gardens of Armida are not for them, nor the warm breezes fragrant of fruit and flowers; but the vision of a far peak flushed at sundawn draws them onward, and strength and peace are increased upon them throughout the great ascent. He is still too rich for pity to whom renunciation brings these high and enviable hours.