Part 14
William James adopted much the same view as Myers (see, for example, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_). But much has been written of late about sub-consciousness and about dreams; and the tendency is rather to follow Martineau’s view of mental development—that the lower nervous centres are unconscious “habits” deposited from the old intelligence (see p. 304). Thus, for instance, memories of the past would be recorded in the sub-conscious, but there is nothing to be found there _of a higher character_ than in the conscious self. In sleep, the waking control being removed, our dreams reveal impulses and desires that have been inhibited or kept under in waking life, but do not reveal anything of the _higher_ indicated by Myers. However, although it is too large a subject to discuss here, there is a vast deal yet to be explained, as, for example, inspiration, and what we used to call “unconscious cerebration,” and the amazing results of hypnotism and suggestion. Also who or what is it that _composes_ the dream-story, or who or what _makes us_ act or dream the story?
* * * * *
Without good nature man is but a better kind of vermin.
* * * * *
Extreme self-lovers will set a man’s house on fire, though it were but to roast their eggs.
BACON.
* * * * *
Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face, Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace, Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go.
On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to hear, and scorns to wish it past.
Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
A. H. CLOUGH (_Songs in Absence_)
The Ship is the ship of life. The first line is taken from Wordsworth’s sonnet, “Where lies the land to which yon Ship must go.”
* * * * *
The brooding East with awe beheld Her impious younger world. The Roman tempest swell’d and swell’d, And on her head was hurled.
The East bowed low before the blast In patient, deep disdain; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again.
M. ARNOLD (_Obermann Once More_)
* * * * *
Learn to win a lady’s faith Nobly as the thing is high, Bravely as for life and death, With a loyal gravity.
E. B. BROWNING (_The Lady’s Yes_).
* * * * *
THE CORAL REEF
In my dreams I dreamt Of a coral reef— Far away, far, far away, Where seas were lulled and calm, A place of silver sand. Truly a lovely land, Truly a lovely dream, Truly a peaceful scene— When, like a flash, through all the sea There shone a gleam. Rising like Venus from her wat’ry bed Rose a young mermaid with her hair unkempt, Beautiful hair! light as a golden leaf, Shining like Phoebus at the break of day. And she tossed and shook her lovely head, Shook off drops more precious, far, than pearls. To a coral rock she slowly went, Slowly floated like a graceful swan; Combed her hair that hung in yellow curls Till the evening shadows ’gan to fall; Then she gave one look round, that was all, Rose—and then, her figure curved, arms bent Above her head—a flash! and she was gone; And ripples in wide circles rise and fall, Spreading and spreading still, where she has been.
BETTY BRAY, January 1918. Aged 11.
See Note on page 155.
* * * * *
BENEATH MY WINDOW
Beneath my window, roses red and white Nod like a host of flitting butterflies; But, faded by the day, one ev’ry night Shakes its soft petals to the ground, and dies. And that is why I see, when night doth pass, Tears in her sisters’ eyes, and on the grass.
BETTY BRAY, 1920. Aged 13.
* * * * *
MUSIC
Three wondrous things there are upon the earth, Three gentle spirits, that I love full well, Three glorious voices, which by far excel Even the silver-throated Philomel.
For not in sound alone lies music’s worth, But rather in the feeling that it brings, Whether of joy, or peace, or dreaminess.
And when I hear the rain soft, softly beat, Singing with low, sweet voice, and musical, I think of all the tears that ever fell In perfect happiness, or deep distress, And so it brings a pang, half sad, half sweet, Into my heart.
Then, when the sparkling rill Dances between the sunny banks, and sings For very joy, all dimpling with delight, O all the happy laughter ’neath the sky Rings sweet and clear, and makes the world more bright.
And, when the sun has sunk beneath the sea And vanished from the glory of the west, Leaving the peaceful eve to melt to night,— O then it is the loveliest voice of all, The gentle night-wind softly sings to me, Tender and low, as sweetest lullaby As ever hushed a weary head to rest: On, on it sings, until from drowsiness My tired eyes softly close, and all is still.
BETTY BRAY, 1920 Aged 13.
See Note on page 155.
* * * * *
THE MARTYR
When night fell softly on the silent city, A little white moth thro’ my window came Out of the darkness and the shadows dim, Seeking the brightness of my candle’s flame. Around and round the lighted wick he flew, Winging his wonderful and curious flight; And near, and still more near, the circles grew.... And then—the flame no more was bright for him. Then all my heart went out in sudden pity To that small martyr, who had sought for light, And found—his death. O he was fair to die. I rose and snuffed the candle with a sigh.
BETTY BRAY, September 26, 1920. Aged 14 years.
These fresh, clear, spontaneous verses have a special value. They bring us a promise of Spring—the message that we may still hope for a revival of English Poetry.
Therefore, I have included them (in this third edition) although they are outside the general scope of my book.
Miss Betty Bray has been writing since she was seven years of age. She writes with great facility and has already filled two manuscript books. Her verses are entirely her own, no defects being pointed out or other assistance or guidance given her.
She was born on June 11th, 1906. She is the daughter of Mr. Denys de Saumarez Bray, C.S.I., and the grand-niece of my late partner the Hon. Sir John Bray, K.C.M.G., who was Premier of South Australia. Her grandfather was born in Adelaide.
* * * * *
Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
MILTON (_Paradise Lost_).
Milton refers to his blindness in this and other passages—as in the well known sonnet.
* * * * *
THE ATTAINMENT
You love? That’s high as you shall go; For ’tis as true as Gospel text, Not noble then is never so, Either in this world or the next.
COVENTRY PATMORE (_The Angel in the House_).
* * * * *
For one fair Vision ever fled Down the waste waters day and night, And still we follow where she led, In hope to gain upon her flight. Her face was evermore unseen, And fixt upon the far sea-line; But each man murmured, “O my Queen, I follow till I make thee mine!”
And now we lost her, now she gleamed Like Fancy made of golden air. Now nearer to the prow she seemed Like Virtue firm, like Knowledge fair, Now high on waves that idly burst Like Heavenly Hope she crowned the sea, And now, the bloodless point reversed, She bore the blade of Liberty.
TENNYSON (_The Voyage_).
* * * * *
King Stephen was a worthy peere, His breeches cost him but a crowne; He held them sixpence all too deare Therefore he called the taylor lowne, rascal He was a wight of high renowne And thouse but of a low degree, thou art It’s pride that putts the countrye downe, Man, take thine old cloake about thee.
PERCY’S _Reliques_.
The poor man wants a new cloak, but his wife objects.
The verse is sung by Iago (_Othello_, Act II., Sc. 3), the words being a little different.
* * * * *
LOVE’S LAST MESSAGES
Merry, merry little stream, Tell me, hast thou seen my dear? I left him with an azure dream, Calmly sleeping on his bier— But he has fled!
“I passed him in his churchyard bed— A yew is sighing o’er his head, And grass-roots mingle with his hair.”
What doth he there? O cruel, can he lie alone? Or in the arms of one more dear? Or hides he in that bower of stone, To cause, and kiss away my fear?
“He doth not speak, he doth not moan— Blind, motionless, he lies alone; But, ere the grave-snake fleshed his sting, This one warm tear he bade me bring And lay it at thy feet Among the daisies sweet.”
Moonlight whisperer, summer air, Songster of the groves above, Tell the maiden rose I wear Whether thou hast seen my love.
“This night in heaven I saw him lie, Discontented with his bliss; And on my lips he left this kiss, For thee to taste and then to die.”
T. L. BEDDOES (1803-1849).
Beddoes intended to destroy this poem, but it was published without his knowledge. This is one of the cases where artists have shown themselves incapable critics of their own work.
* * * * *
O Earth so full of dreary noises! O men with wailing in your voices! O delvèd gold, the wailers heap! O strife, O curse that o’er it fall! God strikes a silence through you all And giveth His beloved sleep.
E. B. BROWNING (_The Sleep_).
* * * * *
Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good-fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,— Nothing refuse ... Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go The gods arrive.
R. W. EMERSON (_Give all to Love_).
* * * * *
On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more trace than have last winter’s snowflakes. This commonplace sequence and flowing on of life is immeasurably affecting. That winter morning when Charles lost his head in front of the banqueting-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung from the eaves of the houses here, and the clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted shoon, and thought but of his supper when, at three o’clock, the red sun set in the purple mist.... Battles have been fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself; but, all unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched apples-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and smoked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, and rejoiced over its newborn children, and with proper solemnity carried its dead to the churchyard.
ALEXANDER SMITH (_Dreamthorp_).
* * * * *
O moon, tell me, Is constant love deemed there but want of wit? Are beauties there as proud as here they be? Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess? Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?
SIR P. SIDNEY.
“Do they call ungratefulness a virtue?”
* * * * *
Quixotism, or Utopianism: that is another of the devil’s pet words. I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready to make, that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is “Utopian,” beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.
JOHN RUSKIN (_Lectures on Architecture and Painting_).
* * * * *
Two angels guide The path of man, both aged and yet young, As angels are, ripening through endless years. On one he leans: some call her Memory, And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet, With deep mysterious accord: the other, Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams A light divine and searching on the earth, Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked But for Tradition; we walk evermore To higher paths, by brightening Reason’s lamp.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Spanish Gypsy_).
* * * * *
Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance: not one Christian: not one but undervalues Christianity—singly, what am I to do? Wesley (have you read his life?) was he not an elevated character? Wesley has said “Religion is not a solitary thing.” Alas! it necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary.
CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) (_Letter to S. T. Coleridge, Jan. 10, 1797_).
Poor lovable Charles Lamb! When he wrote this he was only twenty-one years of age, he had already been himself confined in an asylum, and now his sister in a moment of madness had killed her mother. When afterwards he was allowed to take care of Mary, he had still to take her back to the asylum from time to time, as a fresh attack of mania began to manifest itself. The picture of the weeping brother and sister on their way to the asylum is dreadfully sad. The passage seems interesting because of Lamb’s reference to Wesley.
* * * * *
Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain: Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain: As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
KEATS (_The Eve of St. Agnes_).
Madeline is lying asleep in bed—but the last line could be used in quite another sense as prettily expressing _rejuvenation_.
* * * * *
Beneath the moonlight and the snow Lies dead my latest year; The winter winds are wailing low Its dirges in my ear.
I grieve not with the moaning wind As if a loss befell; Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well!
J. G. WHITTIER (_My Birthday_).
* * * * *
If on my theme I rightly think, There are five reasons why men drink:— Good wine; a friend; or being dry; Or lest we should be by and by; Or—any other reason why.
HENRY ALDRICH (1647-1710).
_Autres temps, autres moeurs!_ Aldrich was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, when he wrote these lines.
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INSCRIPTION FOR A BUST OF CUPID
Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître; Il l’est, le fut, ou le doit être.
(Whatso’er thou art, thy master see! He was, or is, or is to be.)
VOLTAIRE.
* * * * *
UP-HILL
Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum[22] Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
* * * * *
A pebble in the streamlet scant Has turned the course of many a river, A dewdrop in the baby plant Has warped the giant oak for ever.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
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But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes’ his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, “They are gone.”
The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said— Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago,— That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow.
But now his nose is thin. And it rests upon his chin Like a staff. And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh....
O. W. HOLMES (_The Last Leaf_).
* * * * *
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know!
JOHN KEATS (_Ode on a Grecian Urn_).
Matthew Arnold says of this: “No, it is not all; but it is true, deeply true, and we have deep need to know it.... To see things in their beauty is to see things in their truth, and Keats knew it. ‘What the Imagination seizes on as Beauty must be Truth,’ he says in prose.”
* * * * *
Were it not sadder, in the years to come, To feel the hand-clasp slacken for long use, The untuned heart-strings for long stress refuse To yield old harmonies, the songs grow dumb For weariness, and all the old spells lose The first enchantment? Yet this they must be: Love is but mortal, save in memory.
JOHN PAYNE (_A Farewell_).
* * * * *
Aux coeurs blessés—l’ombre et le silence.
(For the wounded heart—shade and silence.)
BALZAC (_Le Médecin de Campagne_).
* * * * *
The huge mass of black crags that towered at the head of the gloomy defile was exactly what one would picture as the enchanted castle of the evil magician, within sight of which all vegetation withered, looking from over the desolate valley of ruins to the barren shore strewed with its sad wreckage, and the wild ocean beyond....
The land-crabs certainly looked their part of goblin guardians of the approaches to the wicked magician’s fastness. They were fearful as the firelight fell on their yellow cynical faces, fixed as that of the sphinx, but fixed in a horrid grin. Those who have observed this foulest species of crab will know my meaning. Smelling the fish we were cooking they came down the mountains in thousands upon us. We threw them lumps of fish, which they devoured with crab-like slowness, yet perseverance.
It is a ghastly sight, a land-crab at his dinner. A huge beast was standing a yard from me; I gave him a portion of fish, and watched him. He looked at me straight in the face with his outstarting eyes, and proceeded with his two front claws to tear up his food, bringing bits of it to his mouth with one claw, as with a fork. But all this while he never looked at what he was doing; his face was fixed in one position, staring at me. And when I looked around, lo! there were half a dozen others all steadily feeding, but with immovable heads turned to me with that fixed basilisk stare. It was indeed horrible, and the effect was nightmarish in the extreme. While we slept that night they attacked us, and would certainly have devoured us, had we not awoke; and did eat holes in our clothes. One of us had to keep watch, so as to drive them from the other two, otherwise we should have had no sleep.
Imagine a sailor cast alone on this coast, weary, yet unable to sleep a moment on account of these ferocious creatures. After a few days of an existence full of horror he would die raving mad, and then be consumed in an hour by his foes. In all Dante’s Inferno there is no more horrible a suggestion of punishment than this.
E. F. KNIGHT (_The Cruise of the “Falcon”_).
The scene is in the Island of Trinidad, off the coast of Brazil.
* * * * *
... Nor the end of love is sure, (Alas! how much less sure than anything!) Whether the little love-light shall endure In the clear eyes of her we loved in Spring.
Or if the faint flowers of remembering Shall blow, we know not: only this we know,— Afar Death comes with silent steps and slow.
JOHN PAYNE (_Salvestra_).
* * * * *
The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
W. WORDSWORTH (_Three Years She Grew_).
* * * * *
As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary: the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle: because man doth not live by bread alone, but also by the desert manna; by every wondrous word and unknowable work of God.
JOHN RUSKIN.
* * * * *
Alas! the long gray years have vanquished me, The shadow of the inexorable days! I am grown sad and silent: for the sea Of Time has swallowed all my pleasant ways. I am grown weary of the years that flee And bring no light to set my bound hope free, No sun to fill the promise of old Mays.
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
* * * * *
LOVE
Cet égoisme à deux.
DE STAËL.
* * * * *
It is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
WASHINGTON IRVING.
* * * * *
I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. For my own part, I do not know what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it _feels_ like a real fight,—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and fears. For such a half-wild, half-saved universe our nature is adapted. The deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears.... In these depths of personality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise. Here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature of things; and compared with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract statements and scientific arguments—the veto, for example, which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith—sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth.
WILLIAM JAMES (_Is Life Worth Living?_).