Part 8

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.

ALEXANDER SMITH (_On the Writing of Essays_).

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It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.

SYDNEY SMITH.

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In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstances of their universal admission. Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Aids to Reflection_).

* * * * *

I have given no man of my fruit to eat, I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine. Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet, This wild new growth of the corn and vine, This wine and bread without lees or leaven, We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven, Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet, One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.

In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!

We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean, Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past; Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been.

SWINBURNE (_The Triumph of Time_).

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But she is far away Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door, The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day When we shall meet once more.

Oh sweet her bending grace Then when I kneel beside her feet; And sweet her eyes o’erhanging heaven; and sweet The gathering folds of her embrace; And her fall’n hair at last shed round my face When breaths and tears shall meet ...

Ah! by a colder wave On deathlier airs the hour must come Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home. Between the lips of the low cave Against that night the lapping waters lave, And the dark lips are dumb.

But there Love’s self doth stand, And with Life’s weary wings far-flown, And with Death’s eyes that make the water moan, Gathers the water in his hand: And they that drink know nought of sky or land But only love alone.

D. G. ROSSETTI (_The Stream’s Secret_).

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Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here, With Angels’ faces, and harmful, hellish hearts, With smiling looks, and deep deceitful thoughts, With tender skins, and stony cruel minds.... The younger sort come piping on apace In whistles made of fine enticing wood, Till they have caught the birds for whom they brided. The elder sort go stately stalking on, And on their backs they bear both land and fee, Castles and Towers, revénues and receipts, Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all. What should these be? (Speak you, my lovely lord!) They be not men: for why? they have no beards. They be no boys, which wear such side-long gowns. What be they? women, masking in men’s weeds, With dutchkin doublets and with jerkins jagged, With Spanish spangs and ruffs set out of France. They be so sure even _Wo_ to _Men_ indeed. High time it were for my poor muse to wink, Since all the hands, all paper, pen and ink, Which ever yet this wretched world possessed, Cannot describe this Sex in colours due.

GASCOIGNE (_The Steele Glas_, 1576).

* * * * *

I’m not denying the women are foolish: God Almighty made ’em to match the men.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Adam Bede_).

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They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

J. R. LOWELL (_Stanzas on Freedom_).

* * * * *

The Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the preacher’s awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse, over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak—the more shameful, because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private faith? Myths alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest farther than a laugh: if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.

W. M. THACKERAY (_Pendennis, XXIII_).

* * * * *

What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;—and yet looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God; an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop.

R. L. STEVENSON (_Pulvis et Umbra_).

* * * * *

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead’s most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

WORDSWORTH (_Ode to Duty_).

* * * * *

A CHARGE.

If thou has squander’d years to grave a gem Commission’d by thy absent Lord, and while ’Tis incomplete, Others would bribe thy needy skill to them— Dismiss them to the street!

Should’st thou at last discover Beauty’s grove, At last be panting on the fragrant verge, But in the track, Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love— Turn at her bidding back.

When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears, And every spectre mutters up more dire To snatch control And loose to madness thy deep-kennell’d Fears— Then to the helm, O Soul!

Last; if upon the cold green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway, And one must perish—let it not be he Whom thou art sworn to obey!

HERBERT TRENCH (_Born 1865_).

* * * * *

Human nature, trained in the School of Christianity, throws away as false the delineation of piety in the disguise of Hebe, and declares that there is something higher than happiness—that thought which is ever full of care and truth is better far—that all true and disinterested affection, which often is called to mourn, is better still—that the devoted allegiance of conscience to duty and to God—which ever has in it more of penitence than of joy—is noblest of all.

JAMES MARTINEAU (_Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 42_).

* * * * *

There is in man a _Higher_ than Love of Happiness; he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same _Higher_ that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! O thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain; thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated.... Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.... To the _Worship of Sorrow_, ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been generated? Is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion.... Do the Duty which liest nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty. The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. The Ideal is in thyself.

THOMAS CARLYLE (_Sartor Resartus_).

The belief that the sense of duty and moral aspiration arise from within ourselves, and are the cause rather than the result of sociological evolution is far more widespread to-day than in what Carlyle calls his “atheistical century.” The “Everlasting Yea” is opposed to the “Everlasting No” of nescience.

* * * * *

He that hath found some fledged bird’s nest may know At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair well or grove he sings in now That is to him unknown.

HENRY VAUGHAN (_Friends Departed_).

For the subject of the verse see title of poem.

* * * * *

Must it last for ever, The passionate endeavour, Ah, have ye, there in heaven, hearts to throb and still aspire? In the life you know now, Rendered white as snow now, Do fresher glory-heights arise, and beckon higher—higher? Are you dreaming, dreaming, Is your soul still roaming, Still gazing upward as we gazed, of old in the autumn gloaming?

But ah, that pale moon roaming Thro’ fleecy mists of gloaming, Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powder’d sky, And ah, the days departed With your friendship gentle-hearted, And ah, the dream we dreamt that night, together you and I! Is it fashioned wisely, To help us or to blind us, That at each height we gain we turn, and behold a heaven behind us?

R. BUCHANAN (_To David in Heaven_).

David Gray was a young poet and a great friend of Buchanan’s. Another verse in the poem is:

In some heaven star-lighted, Are you now united Unto the poet-spirits that you loved of English race? Is Chatterton still dreaming? And, to give it stately seeming, Has the music of his last strong song passed into Keats’s face? Is Wordsworth there? and Spenser? Beyond the grave’s black portals, Can the grand eye of Milton _see_ the glory he sang to mortals?

* * * * *

What would one have? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance— Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Angelo and me To cover.

ROBERT BROWNING (_Andrea del Sarto_).

Andrea del Sarto says that, but for certain unfortunate circumstances, he might have reached the high eminence of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. In heaven he may have another chance to compete with them.

* * * * *

Their noon-day never knows What names immortal are: ’Tis night alone that shows How star surpasseth star.

J. B. TABB (_Fame_).

* * * * *

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Kubla Khan_).

This and the five following quotations and others through the book are from a small collection of word-pictures, that I had begun to put together. They are mostly well-known.

* * * * *

Behold the Nereïds under the green sea, Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream, Their white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.

SHELLEY (_Prometheus Unbound_).

* * * * *

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square: So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

TENNYSON (_The Princess_).

* * * * *

“But show me the child thou callest mine, Is she out to-night in the ghost’s sunshine?”

“In St. Peter’s Church she is playing on, At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.

When the moonbeams right through the window go, Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,

She says the rest of them do not stir, But one comes down to play with her.”

G. MACDONALD (_Phantastes_).

It is a ghost-child who is playing in the great cathedral.

* * * * *

Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other’s wings, They lay down in their curtained bed.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (_Goblin Market_).

* * * * *

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn; The cow’s in the meadow, the sheep in the corn; Is this the way you mind your sheep, Under the haycock fast asleep?

_Nursery Rhyme._

Edward Fitzgerald, quoting this in “Euphranor,” says the “meadow” is the grass reserved for meadowing, or mowing.

* * * * *

THE FEAST OF ADONIS.

_Gorgo._ Is Praxinoë at home?

_Praxinoë._ My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I am. Euno, find a chair—get a cushion for it.

_Gorgo._ It will do beautifully as it is.

_Praxinoë._ Do sit down.

_Gorgo._ Oh, this gad-about spirit! I could hardly get to you, Praxinoë, through all the crowd and all the carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but men in uniform. And what a journey it is! My dear child, you really live _too_ far off.

_Praxinoë._ It is all that insane husband of mine. He has chosen to come out here to the end of the world, and take a hole of a place—for a house it is not—on purpose that you and I might not be neighbours. He is always just the same—anything to quarrel with one! anything for spite!

_Gorgo._ My dear, don’t talk so of your husband before the little fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. (_Talking to the child._) Never mind, Zopyrio my pet, she is not talking about papa. (Good heavens, the child does really understand.) Pretty papa!

_Praxinoë._ That “pretty papa” of his the other day (though I told him beforehand to mind what he was about), when I sent him to a shop to buy soap and rouge, brought me home salt instead; stupid, great, big, interminable animal!

_Gorgo._ Mine is just the fellow to him. But never mind now, get on your things and let us be off to the palace to see the Adonis. I hear the Queen’s decorations are something splendid.

_Praxinoë._ “In grand people’s houses everything is grand.” What things you have seen in Alexandria! What a deal you will have to tell to anybody who has never been there!

_Gorgo._ Come, we ought to be going.

_Praxinoë._ “Every day is a holiday to people who have nothing to do.” Eunoë, pick up your work; and take care, you lazy girl, how you leave it lying about again; the cats find it just the bed they like. Come, stir yourself, fetch me some water, quick! I wanted the water first, and the girl brings me the soap. Never mind; give it me. Not all that, extravagant! Now pour out the water—stupid! Why don’t you take care of my dress? That will do. I have got my hands washed as it pleased God. Where is the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here—quick!

_Gorgo._ Praxinoë, you can’t think how well that dress, made full, as you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how much did it cost—the dress by itself, I mean?

_Praxinoë._ Don’t talk of it, Gorgo: more than eight guineas of good hard money. And about the work on it, I have almost worn my life out.

_Gorgo._ Well, you couldn’t have done better.

_Praxinoë._ Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put my hat properly on my head—_properly_. No, child (_to her little boy_,) I am not going to take you; there’s a bogey on horseback who bites. Cry as much as you like; I’m not going to have you lamed for life. Now we’ll start. Nurse take the little one and amuse him; call the dog in, and shut the street door. (_They go out._) Good heavens! what a crowd of people! How on earth are we ever to get through all this? They are like ants: you can’t count them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become of us? Here are the Royal Horse Guards. My good man, don’t ride over me! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt upright; what a vicious one! Eunoë, you mad girl, do take care!—that horse will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How glad I am now, that I left the child safe at home.

_Gorgo._ All right, Praxinoë, we are safe behind them; and they have gone on to where they are stationed.

_Praxinoë._ Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From the time I was a little girl I have had more horror of horses and snakes than of anything else in the world. Let us get on; here’s a great crowd coming this way upon us.

_Gorgo_ (_to an old woman_). Mother, are you from the palace?

_Old woman._ Yes, my dears.

_Gorgo._ Has one a tolerable chance of getting there?

_Old woman._ My pretty young lady, the Greeks got to Troy by dint of trying hard; trying will do anything in this world.

_Gorgo._ The old creature has delivered an oracle and disappeared.

_Praxinoë._ Women can tell you everything about everything, even about Jupiter’s marriage with Juno!

_Gorgo._ Look, Praxinoë, what a squeeze at the palace gates.

_Praxinoë._ Tremendous! Take hold of me, Gorgo; and you, Eunoë, take hold of Eutychis!—tight hold, or you’ll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold tight to us, Eunoë! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Gorgo, there’s my scarf torn right in two. For heaven’s sake, my good man, as you hope to be saved, take care of my dress!

_Stranger._ I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t depend upon me.

_Praxinoë._ What heaps of people! They push like a drove of pigs.

_Stranger._ Don’t be frightened, ma’am, we are all right.

_Praxinoë._ May you be all right, my dear sir, to the last day you live, for the care you have taken of us! What a kind, considerate man! There is Eunoë jammed in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push! Capital! We are all of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom said when he had locked himself in with the bride.

_Gorgo._ Praxinoë, come this way. Do but look at that work, how delicate it is!—how exquisite! Why, the gods might wear it in heaven.

_Praxinoë._ Goddess of Spinning, what hands were hired to do that work? Who designed those beautiful patterns? They seem to stand up and move about, as if they were real—as if they were living things, and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature! And look, look, how charming _he_ lies there on his silver couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, that beloved Adonis—Adonis, whom one loves even though he is dead!

_Another stranger._ You wretched women, do stop your incessant chatter! Like turtles, you go on for ever.

_Gorgo._ Lord, where does the man come from? What is it to you if we _are_ chatterboxes? Order about your own servants!

_Praxinoë._ Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than the one we’ve got! We don’t the least care for _you_; pray don’t trouble yourself for nothing.

_Gorgo._ Be quiet, Praxinoë! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman’s daughter, is going to sing the _Adonis_ hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something first-rate from _her_. She is going through her airs and graces ready to begin.

THEOCRITUS (_Fifteenth Idyll_).

This is Matthew Arnold’s translation of a _poem_ by Theocritus, who lived in the Third Century B.C., 2,200 years ago, (see Arnold’s Essay on _Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment_). I have altered a few words and also omitted part because of its length.

Gorgo, a lady of Alexandria, calls on her friend Praxinoë, to take her to the Festival of Adonis. Greek ladies were allowed to go out on Festival days if veiled and attended, and, therefore, Gorgo and Praxinoë take with them their respective maids, Eutychis and Eunoë, who would no doubt be slave-girls.