Mrs . William Penman 
 
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APPRECIATIONS OF POETRY 
 
APPRECIATIONS 
 OF POETRY 
 
 BY 
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN 
 
 SELECTED AND EDITED WITH 
 AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 JOHN ERSKINE, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of English in Columbia University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
Copyright. 1916 
 
 Bt MITCHELL Mcdonald 
 
 
 C<({dCtA^^-^n^ i^-f^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I On Love in English Poetry i 
 
 II Studies in Tennyson (A Fragment) 30 
 
 III Studies in Rossetti 37 
 
 IV Studies in Swinburne 126 
 
 V Studies in Browning 172 
 
 VI William Morris 239 
 
 VII Charles Kingsley as Poet 280 
 
 VIII Matthew Arnold as Poet 298 
 
 IX A Note on Jean Ingelow 334 
 
 X "Three Silences" 349 
 
 XI A Note on Watson's Poems 352 
 
 XII A Note on Robert Buchanan 359 
 
 XIII A Note on Munby's "Dorothy" ...... 376 
 
 XIV Robert Bridges 385 
 
 Index 403 
 
 M126599 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 This volume contains a second selection from the lectures 
 which Lafcadio Hearn delivered at the University of 
 Tokyo between 1896 and 1902. An account of these lec- 
 tures and of the remarkable student notes in which they 
 were preserved, is given in the Introduction to the first selec- 
 tion, "Interpretations of Literature," 1915. The reader of 
 the present volume should be reminded at least that Laf- 
 cadio Hearn lectured without notes, but very slowly, choos- 
 ing simple words and constructions, in order to make the 
 foreign language as easy as possible to his Japanese stu- 
 dents ; and some of his students managed to take down many 
 of his lectures word for word. From their notes the present 
 volume, like the "Interpretations of Literature," is selected. 
 The fact that the lectures come to us indirectly, in places 
 perhaps inaccurately, without Hearn's revision and there- 
 fore without the exquisite surface of his style, may give us 
 at first a sense of loss; but second thoughts suggest rather 
 our good fortune in having the lectures as they are. The 
 best of Hearn's style, the man himself, is perhaps more 
 clearly revealed here than in any of his finished work. His 
 letters indicate that had he come back to lecture in the 
 United States, as in 1902 he thought of doing, he would 
 have used the substance of some of these classroom talks; and 
 he apparently thought of writing them out and publishing 
 them. He had made no beginning on them, however, when 
 he died. Even if he had lived to publish a volume or two, 
 it is not likely that he could have come before the public 
 as a critic with the same lack of self-consciousness with 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 which he addressed his classes, for he modestly undervalued 
 his wide and profound knowledge of the essentials of litera- 
 ture, and he was aware of the fault-finding abilities of pro- 
 fessional scholarship. It is doubtful also whether we 
 should have suspected from carefully written lectures his 
 extraordinary genius as an interpreter of the West to the 
 East, since he would have been writing for us rather than 
 for the Japanese. The complete range of his powers could 
 have been recorded only in a faithful report of what he said 
 in his classroom; and this his students have provided for us 
 in their notes. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to say that with few exceptions 
 these chapters were not composed in the order in which they 
 are here grouped. In fact, it is impossible to tell, save in 
 one case, just when the lectures were delivered. From a 
 date at the end of the Browning notes, it appears that the 
 course on Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Browning 
 was brought to a close in May, 1899. Since the notes of the 
 Tennyson lecture were hopelessly inadequate, a fragment on 
 that poet from a single, more elementary lecture on Vic- 
 torian literature is substituted. The editor believes that 
 this lecture gives in substance Hearn's interpretation of 
 Tennyson, though without the brilliant illustrations of the 
 elaborate study. 
 
 It seemed wise to omit from most of these chapters a 
 number of paraphrases, which Hearn employed to clarify 
 the English poems for his Japanese students, but which are 
 superfluous for the English reader. It also seemed best to 
 omit a sentence here and there, where the notes were hope- 
 lessly tangled; if the reader detects an occasional abrupt- 
 ness, he may attribute it to such an omission, and be thank- 
 ful that he was not invited to decipher the original. Such 
 places, however, are not many, and the lectures are suffi- 
 ciently coherent to encourage the hope that nothing impor- 
 tant has been thrown overboard. No attempt has been 
 made to reconcile an occasional contradiction, as when 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 Hearn seems to say, at different times, that Tennyson is the 
 greatest artist of the Victorian era, and so is Rossetti, and so 
 is Swinburne. The editor believes that such variations of 
 mood, so natural to all lecturers, and especially to lovers 
 of poetry, should stand untouched. He has imposed his 
 personal tastes upon Lafcadio Hearn only in the choice of 
 passages for publication. The further task he set himself 
 has been merely mechanical — the correction of spelling and 
 of punctuation, and the verification of facts, dates, and quo- 
 tations. In preparing this volume, as in preparing the 
 "Interpretations of Literature," he has enjoyed the advice 
 and the assistance of Pay Director Mitchell McDonald, 
 U. S. N., Lafcadio Heam's friend and literary executor. 
 
 II 
 
 In the Introduction to "Interpretations of Literature" 
 the editor stressed the significance of those lectures as inter- 
 pretations of the Western mind to the Eastern. Heam's 
 published works taught us to understand something of 
 Japan; in his classroom he performed a service as remark- 
 able, in helping the young men who now mould some part 
 of Japanese opinion, to think intelligently and kindly of our 
 civilisation. The unique position in world culture which 
 he thereby won for himself, appeals easily to the imagina- 
 tion, and it is not surprising that the first two volumes of 
 his lectures were accepted promptly and cordially as the 
 documents of this portion of his fame. In the same Intro- 
 duction, however, the editor tried to stress also what seems 
 to him Lafcadio Heam's very great genius as an interpre- 
 tative critic. He is glad of this opportunity to make the 
 attempt again, for a number of reviewers stumbled some- 
 what over his praise, denouncing it as extravagant and as 
 likely to react to Hearn's disadvantage. The editor persists 
 in thinking that what he said was not extravagant; if it is, 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 however, he wishes to turn it plainly to his own discredit 
 rather than to Hearn's. 
 
 The passage that bothered the reviewers was this: "In 
 substance if not in form they [the lectures] are criticism 
 of the finest kind, unmatched in English unless we return to 
 the best of Coleridge, and in some ways unequalled by any- 
 thing in Coleridge." The sentences immediately following 
 were intended to make clear what the editor meant by 
 "criticism of the finest kind" : "Most literary criticism dis- 
 cusses other things than the one matter in which the writer 
 and the reader are interested — that is, the effect of the writ- 
 ing upon the reader. It is hardly too severe to say that 
 most critics talk around a poem or a story or a play, without 
 risking a judgment on the centre of their subject; or else, like 
 even Coleridge at times, they tell you what you ought to 
 read into a given work, instead of showing you what is wait- 
 ing there to be seen. Lafcadio Hearn is remarkable among 
 critics for throwing a clear light on genuine literary experi- 
 ence — on the emotions which the books under discussion 
 actually give us." 
 
 Some of the objections to this praise of Hearn doubtless 
 were simply the expression of surprise that the great name 
 of Coleridge should be brought into comparison with any 
 contemporary name. Against those who think that to be 
 great a writer must have been dead a long time, the editor 
 is not eager to defend himself. He did not mean to suggest 
 that in creative genius Lafcadio Hearn is the equal of Sam- 
 uel Taylor Coleridge at his best. He did have in mind, 
 however, the fact that in his critical writings Coleridge for 
 the most part discusses philosophical principles rather than 
 particular books; that his criticism is studied chiefly for 
 those abstract discussions of poetry; and that he left us all 
 too few examples of the ability he undoubtedly had, the 
 ability which Lafcadio Hearn's lectures exhibit on so vast 
 a scale — the ability to explain to us our own feelings about 
 books, why we like this or are perplexed by that, and what 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 else there is in the book to fascinate or perplex us. This 
 kind of interpretation, though it looks simple, is extraordi- 
 narily rare; it is possible only to the critic who understands 
 human nature, and who approaches books from the poetic 
 or creative point of view. Coleridge had the knowledge 
 of human nature, and in dealing with the poetry of his own 
 school or age he had creative sympathy of the finest kind. 
 But he left us no evidence that his sympathy extended much 
 outside of the romantic period; what would he have said 
 of Zola or of de Maupassant or of Kipling or of Masefield*? 
 Later English critics, following Coleridge in their smaller 
 way, have discussed general principles of art, and in most 
 cases have shown creative sympathy with their own par- 
 ticular kind of art — the limits of their sympathy, it would 
 seem, becoming narrower and narrower, until in Arnold 
 and in Pater we find a certain estrangement even from the 
 best writers of their own day. The remarkable fact 
 about Lafcadio Hearn is that though his professed creed 
 was a somewhat narrow romanticism, he exhibits again and 
 again the most acute understanding of writers whose tem- 
 perament, training, and environment differed widely from 
 his. 
 
 The point may be made more plainly. From Aristotle 
 down, the academic tradition of criticism has dealt with 
 principles which, if valid, would afford a basis for judging 
 literature, for classifying it, for deciding what is bad and 
 what is good. Fascinating, amusing, or distressing as the 
 tradition may be as a record of large ambition and of human 
 mistakes, it has often been a source of grief to creative writ- 
 ers, since it can be carried on — it sometimes has been carried 
 on — with authority by men who knew little about writing 
 and cared less, and it has therefore tended frequently to 
 degenerate into formulas of technique. A more radical ob- 
 jection, however, is that the principles in this tradition are 
 drawn from observations of established literature — a great 
 many plays, for example, being taken as the phenomena 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 from which the definitions of drama are deduced. In this 
 process criticism has never found a method to distinguish 
 safely between what is local and what is universal in the 
 phenomena before it, and the definitions so made have had 
 to be revised continually in a hopeless attempt to keep up 
 with a living and growing art. It would be more profitable 
 to examine the original terms on which art lives, studying, 
 for example, the effect of the play upon the audience, rather 
 than the theory of the action on the stage. If our logic is 
 resolute, we must come to that at last ; for when we examine 
 all the great plays of our time, as Aristotle did, to determine 
 what a great play is, an earlier verdict has already decided 
 for us which are the great plays; the most that our criticism 
 can hope to accomplish is a belated and elaborate restate- 
 ment of our own premises. Meanwhile there are curious 
 pitfalls for even the best of theoretical critics. Arnold, for 
 example, looking over the poems generally recognised as 
 great, concluded that they were so recognised because they 
 had the grand style; the grand style makes a poem great. 
 If there were any connection between poetic greatness and 
 the grand style, Arnold might have enjoyed peace of mind 
 thenceforth, knowing that the grand style would bring 
 about an automatic recognition of poetic greatness. But he 
 proceeded to preach the recognition of the grand style as a 
 cultured obligation rather than as a scientific fact, and we 
 cannot take his word for it that his own verse in the grand 
 style is greater poetry than some other verse we like better. 
 Over against the traditional criticism there has always 
 been the practical science, the shop-talk, of the artists them- 
 selves. The best critic of a wagon is probably the wagon- 
 builder, as the immortal shoe-maker was the best critic of 
 the shoe in the Greek picture. When he ventured to criti- 
 cise the painting further, the shoe-maker was told to stick 
 to his last. The creative artist might repeat the invitation 
 to the merely academic critic who cannot himself create. 
 The creator is not greatly concerned with pigeon-holing 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 his art; he is interested in the work before him for what it 
 is intended to accomplish, and he draws on his practical 
 experience for an opinion as to whether it will accomplish 
 its purpose. Therefore he is not afraid to give an opinion 
 about an entirely new work of art; he recognises immedi- 
 ately its essential usefulness, as Emerson foresaw at once the 
 great career of Walt Whitman's poetry. Traditional criti- 
 cism, on the contrary, is often unwilling to readjust itself 
 to new genius. If it is thought that the shop-talk of artists 
 would naturally be impressionistic or haphazard, it should 
 be remembered that they alone among critics work out the 
 illustrations of their principles, as the wagon maker illus- 
 trates his idea of a wagon. The basis of a real science is 
 here; these critics try to understand in order to practise the 
 art. 
 
 In literature, as distinguished from other arts, the wisest 
 talk of the creator has to do with life, with human na- 
 ture; for these are the materials he works in, and for his 
 knowledge of these his readers are best equipped to judge 
 him. In the letters and the memoirs of expert writers, 
 what incomparable criticism we often find I Witness the 
 various penetrating remarks of Tennyson recorded in his 
 memoirs, the superb insights of Charles Lamb in his letters, 
 especially to Wordsworth, and the equally remarkable ob- 
 servations in the journals of Emerson and of Hawthorne. 
 This wisdom shows no sign of deserting the contemporary 
 writer. A Broadway playwright remarks that nowadays 
 you cannot let your hero and heroine, in anything but 
 a farce, fall in love at first sight, because most of your 
 audience have fallen in love by the more deliberate modern 
 process. Professor Santayana expresses the same truth 
 when he says that wherever the sexes have been jealously 
 guarded from each other, with few opportunities for meet- 
 ing, they have fallen in love at first sight, since fall in love 
 they must. Similar knowledge of life, together with the 
 creative observation of that which lies under our eyes, 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 but which the average reader and the theoretical critic often 
 do not see, might be illustrated in several passages from 
 Professor Santayana's too inaccessible study of "Hamlet." 
 He says in effect, for example, that no one ever feels that 
 Hamlet is mad, but everybody feels that he is irrational. 
 Though we cannot all of us explain why we feel he is irra- 
 tional, our impression is correct. The impression is pro- 
 duced by such episodes as the performance of the play 
 before the king. Hamlet had no doubt that his uncle mur- 
 dered his father; his question was whether he should avenge 
 the murder by assassination. To clear his doubts, he set 
 a trap which merely confirmed the king's guilt, but gave no 
 advice as to taking revenge. To those of us who have 
 felt Hamlet's irrationality, without perceiving the slip in 
 his logic, this kind of criticism brings intelligence in under- 
 standing our old impressions, and increases our susceptibil- 
 ity to new ones. 
 
 This is what the editor meant by "criticism of the finest 
 kind" — the discussion of art by those who know how to 
 create it, the interpretation of books which opens our eyes 
 to life, which sets no gulf between the problem of how to 
 read and the problem of how to write. For this kind of 
 criticism, the editor believes, Lafcadio Heam's lectures have 
 a unique place in English literature, unmatched in quality 
 by any but the best of Coleridge, and in quantity quite with- 
 out parallel. 
 
APPRECIATIONS OF POETRY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 I OFTEN imagine that the longer he studies English litera- 
 ture the more the Japanese student must be astonished at 
 the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love 
 both in fiction and in poetry. Indeed, by this time I have 
 begun to feel a little astonished at it myself. Of course, 
 before I came to this country it seemed to me quite natural 
 that love should be the chief subject of literature; because 
 I did not know anything about any other kind of society ex- 
 cept Western society. But to-day it really seems to me a 
 little strange. If it seems strange to me, how much more 
 ought it to seem strange to you I Of course, the simple ex- 
 planation of the fact is that marriage is the most important 
 act of man's life in Europe or America, and that everything 
 depends upon it. It is quite different on this side of the 
 world. But the simple explanation of the difference is not 
 enough. There are many things to be explained. Why 
 should not only the novel writers but all the poets make love 
 the principal subject of their work^ I never knew, because 
 I never thought, how much English literature was saturated 
 with the subject of love until I attempted to make selections 
 of poetry and prose for class use — naturally endeavouring to 
 select such pages or poems as related to other subjects than 
 passion. Instead of finding a good deal of what I was 
 looking for, I could find scarcely anything. The great prose 
 writers, outside of the essay or history, are nearly all fa- 
 mous as tellers of love stories. And it is almost impossible 
 to select half a dozen stanzas of classic verse from Tennyson 
 or Rossetti or Browning or Shelley or Byron, which do not 
 contain anything about kissing, embracing, or longing for 
 some imaginary or real beloved. Wordsworth, indeed, is 
 
^ '• ' ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 'something of an exception; and Coleridge is most famous for 
 a poem which contains nothing at all about love. But ex- 
 ceptions do not affect the general rule that love is the theme 
 of English poetry, as it is also of French, Italian, Spanish, 
 or German poetry. It is the dominant motive. 
 
 So with the English novelists. There have been here also 
 a few exceptions — such as the late Robert Louis Stevenson, 
 most of whose novels contain little about women; they are 
 chiefly novels or romances of adventure. But the excep- 
 tions are very few. At the present time there are produced 
 almost every year in England about a thousand new novels, 
 and all of these or nearly all are love stories. To write a 
 novel without a woman in it would be a dangerous under- 
 taking; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the book would 
 not sell. 
 
 Of course all this means that the English people through- 
 out the world, as readers, are chiefly interested in the sub- 
 ject under discussion. When you find a whole race inter- 
 ested more in one thing than in anything else, you may be 
 sure that it is so because the subject is of paramount im- 
 portance in the life of the average person. You must try 
 to imagine then, a society in which every man must choose 
 his wife, and every woman must choose her husband, in- 
 dependent of all outside help, and not only choose but ob- 
 tain if possible. The great principle of Western society 
 is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. 
 The best man — that is to say, the strongest and cleverest — 
 is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most 
 beautiful person. The weak, the feeble, the poor, and the 
 ugly have little chance of being able to marry at all. Tens 
 of thousands of men and women cannot possibly marry. I 
 am speaking of the upper and middle classes. The work- 
 ing people, the peasants, the labourers, these marry young; 
 but the competition there is just the same — just as diflScult, 
 and only a little rougher. So it may be said that every 
 man has a struggle of some kind in order to marry, and that 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 3 
 
 there is a kind of fight or contest for the possession of every 
 woman worth having. Taking this view of Western society, 
 not only in England but throughout all Europe, you will 
 easily be able to see why the Western public have reason to 
 be more interested in literature which treats of love than 
 in any other kind of literature. 
 
 But although the conditions that I have been describing 
 are about the same in all Western countries, the tone of 
 the literature which deals with love is not at all the same. 
 There are very great differences. In prose they are much 
 more serious than in poetry; because in all countries a man 
 is allowed, by public opinion, more freedom in verse than 
 in prose. Now these differences in the way of treating the 
 subject in different countries really indicate national differ- 
 ences of character. Northern love stories and Northern 
 poetry about love are very serious; and these authors are 
 kept within fixed limits. Certain subjects are generally for- 
 bidden. For example, the English public wants novels 
 about love, but the love must be the love of a girl who is 
 to become somebody's wife. The rule in the English novel 
 is to describe the pains, fears, and struggles of the period 
 before marriage — the contest in the world for the right of 
 marriage. A man must not write a novel about any other 
 point of love. Of course there are plenty of authors who 
 have broken this rule, but the rule still exists. A man may 
 represent a contest between two women, one good and one 
 bad, but if the bad woman is allowed to conquer in the 
 story, the public will growl. This English fashion has ex- 
 isted since the eighteenth century, since the time of Richard- 
 son, and is likely to last for generations to come. 
 
 Now this is not the rule at all which governs the making 
 of novels in France. French novels generally treat of 
 the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after 
 marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French 
 novels about adultery, about improper relations between the 
 sexes, about many things which the English public would 
 
4 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 not allow. This does not mean that the English are mor- 
 ally a better people than the French or other Southern races. 
 But it does mean that there are great differences in the social 
 conditions. One such difference can be very briefly ex- 
 pressed. An English girl, an American girl, a Norwegian, 
 a Dane, a Swede, is allowed all possible liberty before mar- 
 riage. The girl is told, "You must be able to take care of 
 yourself, and not do wrong." After marriage there is no 
 more such liberty. After marriage in all Northern coun- 
 tries a woman's conduct is strictly watched. But in France, 
 and in Southern countries, the young girl has no liberty be- 
 fore marriage. She is always under the guard of her 
 brother, her father, her mother, or some experienced rela- 
 tion. She is accompanied wherever she walks. She is not 
 allowed to see her betrothed except in the presence of wit- 
 nesses. But after marriage her liberty begins. Then she is 
 told for the first time that she must take care of herself. 
 Well, you will see that the conditions which inspire the 
 novels, in treating of the subject of love and marriage, are 
 very different in Northern and in Southern Europe. For 
 this reason alone the character of the novel produced in 
 France and of the novel produced in England could not be 
 the same. 
 
 You must remember, however, that there are many other 
 reasons for this difference — reasons of literary sentiment. 
 The Southern or Latin races have been civilised for a much 
 longer time than the Northern races; they have inherited 
 the feelings of the ancient world, the old Greek and Roman 
 world, and they think still about the relation of the sexes 
 in very much the same way that the ancient poets and ro- 
 mance writers used to think. And they can do things which 
 English writers cannot do, because their language has power 
 of more delicate expression. 
 
 We may say that the Latin writers still speak of love in 
 very much the same way that it was considered before Chris- 
 tianity. But when I speak of Christianity I am only refer- 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 5 
 
 ring to an historical date. Before Christianity the North- 
 em races also thought about love very much in the same way 
 that their best poets do at this day. The ancient Scandi- 
 navian literature would show this. The Viking, the old 
 sea-pirate, felt very much as Tennyson or as Meredith 
 would feel upon this subject; he thought of only one kind 
 of love as real — that which ends in marriage, the affection 
 between husband and wife. Anything else was to him mere 
 folly and weakness. Christianity did not change his senti- 
 ment on this subject. The modern Englishman, Swede, 
 Dane, Norwegian, or German regards love in exactly that 
 deep, serious, noble way that his pagan ancestors did. I 
 think we can say that different races have differences of feel- 
 ing on sexual relations, which differences are very much 
 older than any written history. They are in the blood and 
 soul of a people, and neither religion nor civilisation can 
 utterly change them. 
 
 So far I have been speaking particularly about the differ- 
 ences in English and French novels; and a novel is espe- 
 cially a reflection of national life, a kind of dramatic narra- 
 tion of truth, in the form of a story. But in poetr}', which 
 is the highest form of literature, the difference is much more 
 observable. We find the Latin poets of to-day writing just 
 as freely on the subject of love as the old Latin poets of 
 the age of Augustus, while Northern poets observe with few 
 exceptions great restraint when treating of this theme. 
 Now where is the line to be drawn? Are the Latins right? 
 Are the English right? How are we to make a sharp dis- 
 tinction between what is moral and good and what is im- 
 moral and bad in treating love-subjects? 
 
 Some definition must be attempted. 
 
 What is meant by love? As used by Latin writers the 
 word has a range of meanings, from that of the sexual rela- 
 tion between insects or animals up to the highest form of 
 religious emotion, called "The love of God." I need 
 scarcely say that this definition is too loose for our use. The 
 
6 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 English word, by general consent, means both sexual passion 
 and deep friendship. This again is a meaning too wide for 
 our purpose. By putting the adjective "true" before love, 
 some definition is attempted in ordinary conversation. 
 When an Englishman speaks of "true love," he usually 
 means something that has no passion at all ; he means a per- 
 fect friendship which grows up between man and wife and 
 which has nothing to do with the passion which brought the 
 pair together. But when the English poet speaks of love, 
 he generally means passion, not friendship. I am only stat- 
 ing very general rules. You see how confusing the subject 
 is, how difficult to define the matter. Let us leave the defi- 
 nition alone for a moment, and consider the matter philo- 
 sophically. 
 
 Some very foolish persons have attempted even within 
 recent years to make a classification of different kinds of 
 love — love between the sexes. They talk about romantic 
 love, and other such things. All that is utter nonsense. In 
 the meaning of sexual affection there is only one kind of 
 love, the natural attraction of one sex for the other; and 
 the only difference in the highest form of this attraction and 
 the lowest is this, that in the nobler nature a vast number 
 of moral, aesthetic, and ethical sentiments are related to the 
 passion, and that in lower natures those sentiments are ab- 
 sent. Therefore we may say that even in the highest forms 
 of the sentiment there is only one dominant feeling, com- 
 plex though it be, the desire for possession. What follows 
 the possession we may call love if we please; but it might 
 better be called perfect friendship and sympathy. It is 
 altogether a different thing. The love that is the theme of 
 poets in all countries is really love, not the friendship that 
 grows out of it. 
 
 I suppose you know that the etymological meaning of 
 "passion" is "a state of suffering." In regard to love, the 
 word has particular signification to the Western mind, for 
 it refers to the time of struggle and doubt and longing be- 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 7 
 
 fore the object is attained. Now how much of this passion 
 is a legitimate subject of literary art"? 
 
 The difficulty may, I think, be met by remembering the 
 extraordinary character of the mental phenomena which 
 manifest themselves in the time of passion. There is dur- 
 ing that time a strange illusion, an illusion so wonderful 
 that it has engaged the attention of great philosophers for 
 thousands of years; Plato, you know, tried to explain it in 
 a very famous theory. I mean the illusion that seems to 
 change, or rather, actually does change the senses of a man 
 at a certain time. To his eye a certain face has suddenly 
 become the most beautiful object in the world. To his ears 
 the accents of one voice become the sweetest of all music. 
 Reason has nothing to do with this, and reason has no power 
 against the enchantment. Out of Nature's mystery, some- 
 how or other, this strange magic suddenly illuminates the 
 senses of a man; then vanishes again, as noiselessly as it 
 came. It is a very ghostly thing, and cannot be explained 
 by any theory not of a very ghostly kind. Even Herbert 
 Spencer has devoted his reasoning to a new theory about it. 
 I need not go further in this particular than to tell you that 
 in a certain way passion is now thought to have somethin^g 
 to do with other lives than the present; in short, it is a kind 
 of organic memory of relations that existed in thousands and 
 tens of thousands of former states of being. Right or 
 wrong though the theories may be, this mysterious moment 
 of love, the period of this illusion, is properly the subject 
 of high poetry, simply because it is the most beautiful and 
 the most wonderful experience of a human life. And why? 
 
 Because in the brief time of such passion the very highest 
 and finest emotions of which human nature is capable are 
 brought into play. In that time more than at any other 
 hour in life do men become unselfish, unselfish at least to- 
 ward one human being. Not only unselfishness but self- 
 sacrifice is a desire peculiar to the period. The young man 
 in love is not merely willing to give away everything that 
 
8 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 he possesses to the person beloved; he wishes to suffer pain, 
 to meet danger, to risk his life for her sake. Therefore 
 Tennyson, in speaking of that time, beautifully said : 
 
 Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with 
 
 might. 
 Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. 
 
 Unselfishness is, of course, a very noble feeling, inde- 
 pendently of the cause. But this is only one of the emo- 
 tions of a higher class when powerfully aroused. There is 
 pity, tenderness — the same kind of tenderness that one feels 
 toward a child — the love of the helpless, the desire to pro- 
 tect. And a third sentiment felt at such a time more 
 strongly than at any other, is the sentiment of duty ; respon- 
 sibilities moral and social are then comprehended in a totally 
 new way. Surely none can dispute these facts nor the 
 beauty of them. 
 
 Moral sentiments are the highest of all ; but next to them 
 the sentiment of beauty in itself, the artistic feeling, is also 
 a very high form of intellectual and even of secondary moral 
 experience. Scientifically there is a relation between the 
 beautiful and the good, between the physically perfect and 
 the ethically perfect. Of course it is not absolute. There 
 is nothing absolute in this world. But the relation exists. 
 Whoever can comprehend the highest form of one kind of 
 beauty must be able to comprehend something of the other. 
 I know very well that the ideal of the love-season is an 
 illusion; in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the 
 thousand the beauty of the woman is only imagined. But 
 does that make any possible difference? I do not think that 
 it does. To imagine beauty is really to see it — not ob- 
 jectively, perhaps, but subjectively beyond all possibility of 
 doubt. Though you see the beauty only in your mind, in 
 your mind it is; and in your mind its ethical influence must 
 operate. During the time that a man worships even imag- 
 inary bodily beauty, he receives some secret glimpse of a 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 9 
 
 higher kind of beauty — beauty of heart and mind. Was 
 there ever in this world a real lover who did not believe the 
 woman of his choice to be not only the most beautiful of 
 mortals, but also the best in a moral sense"? I do not think 
 that there ever was. 
 
 The moral and the ethical sentiments of a being thus 
 aroused call into sudden action all the finer energies of the 
 man — the capacities for effort, for heroism, for high pressure 
 work of any sort, mental or physical, for all that requires 
 quickness in thought and exactitude in act. There is for 
 the time being a sense of new power. Anything that makes 
 strong appeal to the best exercise of one's faculties is benefi- 
 cent and, in most cases, worthy of reverence. Indeed, it is 
 in the short season of which I am speaking that we always 
 discover the best of everything in the character of woman 
 or of man. In that period the evil qualities, the ungenerous 
 side, is usually kept as much out of sight as possible. 
 
 Now for all these suggested reasons, as for many others 
 which might be suggested, the period of illusion in love is 
 really the period which poets and writers of romance are 
 naturally justified in describing. Can they go beyond it 
 with safety, with propriety? That depends very much upon 
 whether they go up or down. By going up I mean keeping 
 within the region of moral idealism. By going down I 
 mean descending to the level of merely animal realism. In 
 this realism there is nothing deserving the highest effort of 
 art of any sort. 
 
 What is the object of art? Is it not, or should it not 
 be, to make us imagine better conditions than that which 
 at present exist in the world, and by so imagining to prepare 
 the way for the coming of such conditions? I think that 
 all great art has done this. Do you remember the old story 
 about Greek mothers keeping in their rooms the statue of a 
 god or a man, more beautiful than anything real, so that 
 their imagination might be constantly influenced by the 
 sight of beauty, and that they might perhaps be able to 
 
10 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 bring more beautiful children into the worlds Among the 
 Arabs, mothers also do something of this kind, only, as they 
 have no art of imagery, they go to nature herself for the 
 living image. Black luminous eyes are beautiful, and 
 wives keep in their tents a little deer, the gazelle, which is 
 famous for the brilliancy and beauty of its eyes. By con- 
 stantly looking at this charming pet the Arab wife hopes to 
 bring into the world some day a child with eyes as beautiful 
 as the eyes of the gazelle. Well, the highest function of 
 art ought to do for us, or at least for the world, what the 
 statue and the gazelle were expected to do ior Grecian and 
 Arab mothers — to make possible higher conditions than the 
 existing ones. 
 
 So much being said, consider again the place and the 
 meaning of the passion of love in any human life. It is 
 essentially a period of idealism, of imagining better things 
 and conditions than are possible in this world. For every- 
 body who has been in love has imagined something higher 
 than the possible and the present. Any idealism is a proper 
 subject for art. It is not at all the same in the case of real- 
 ism. Grant that all this passion, imagination, and fine 
 sentiment is based upon a very simple animal impulse. 
 That does not make the least difference in the value of the 
 highest results of that passion. We might say the very 
 same thing about any human emotion; every emotion can 
 be evolutionally traced back to simple and selfish impulses 
 shared by man with the lower animals. But because an 
 apple tree or a pear tree happens to have its roots in the 
 ground, does that mean that its fruits are not beautiful and 
 wholesome'? Most assuredly we must not judge the fruit 
 of the tree from the unseen roots; but what about turning 
 up the ground to look at the roots? What becomes of the 
 beauty of the tree when you do that'? The realist — at least 
 the French realist — likes to do that. He likes to bring back 
 the attention of his reader to the lowest rather than to the 
 highest, to that which should be kept hidden, for the very- 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 11 
 
 same reason that the roots of a tree should be kept under- 
 ground if the tree is to live. 
 
 The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of 
 passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or 
 romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he 
 can. He may go beyond that zone; but then he has only 
 two directions in which he can travel. Above it there is 
 religion, and an artist may, like Dante, succeed in trans- 
 forming love into a sentiment of religious ecstasy. I do not 
 think that any artist could do that to-day; this is not an 
 age of religious ecstasy. But upwards there is no other way 
 to go. Downwards the artist may travel until he finds him- 
 self in hell. Between the zone of idealism and the brutal- 
 ity of realism there are no doubt many gradations. I am 
 only indicating what I think to be an absolute truth, that 
 in treating of love the literary master should keep to the 
 period of illusion, and that to go below it is a dangerous 
 undertaking. And now, having tried to make what are be- 
 lieved to be proper distinctions between great literature on 
 this subject and all that is not great, we may begin to study 
 a few examples. I am going to select at random passages 
 from English poets and others, illustrating my meaning. 
 
 Tennyson is perhaps the most familiar to you among 
 poets of our own time; and he has given a few exquisite ex- 
 amples of the ideal sentiment in passion. One is a con- 
 cluding verse in the beautiful song that occurs in the mono- 
 drama of "Maud," where the lover, listening in the garden, 
 hears the steps of his beloved approaching. 
 
 She is coming, my own, my sweet, 
 
 Were it ever so airy a tread, 
 My heart would hear her and beat, 
 
 Were it earth in an earthy bed ; 
 My dust would hear her and beat, 
 
 Had I lain for a century dead ; 
 Would start and tremble under her feet, 
 
 And blossom in purple and red. 
 
12 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 This is a very fine instance of the purely ideal emotion — 
 extravagant, if you like, in the force of the imagery used, 
 but absolutely sincere and true; for the imagination of love 
 is necessarily extravagant. It would be quite useless to ask 
 whether the sound of a girl's footsteps could really waken 
 a dead man; we know that love can fancy such things quite 
 naturally, not in one country only but everywhere. An 
 Arabian poem written long before the time of Mohammed 
 contains exactly the same thought in simpler words; and I 
 think that there are some old Japanese songs containing 
 something similar. All that the statement really means is 
 that the voice, the look, the touch, even the footstep of the 
 woman beloved have come to possess for the lover a signifi- 
 cance as great as life and death. For the moment he knows 
 no other divinity ; she is his god, in the sense that her power 
 over him has become infinite and iriesistible. 
 
 The second example may be furnished from another part 
 of the same composition — the little song of exaltation after 
 the promise to marry has been given. 
 
 let the solid ground 
 Not fail beneath my feet 
 
 Before my life has found 
 
 What some have found so sweet ; 
 Then let come what come may, 
 What matter if I go mad, 
 
 1 shall have had my day. 
 
 Let the sweet heavens endure, 
 Not close and darken above me 
 
 Before I am quite, quite sure 
 That there is one to love me ; 
 
 Then let come what come may 
 
 To a life that has been so sad, 
 
 I shall have had my day. 
 
 The feeling of the lover is that no matter what happens 
 afterwards, the winning of the woman is enough to pay for 
 life, death, pain, or anything else. One of the most re- 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 13 
 
 markable phenomena of the illusion is the supreme indif- 
 ference to consequences — at least to any consequences which 
 would not signify moral shame or loss of honour. Of 
 course the poet is supposed to consider the emotion only in 
 generous natures. But the subject of this splendid indiffer- 
 ence has been more wonderfully treated by Victor Hugo 
 than by Tennyson — as we shall see later on, when consider- 
 ing another phase of the emotion. Before doing that, I 
 want to call your attention to a very charming treatment of 
 love's romance by an American. It is one of the most deli- 
 cate of modem compositions, and it is likely to become a 
 classic, as it has already been printed in four or five different 
 anthologies. The title is "Atalanta's Race." 
 
 First let me tell you the story of Atalanta, so that you 
 will be better able to see the fine symbolism of the poem. 
 Atalanta, the daughter of a Greek king, was not only the 
 most beautiful of maidens, but the swiftest runner in the 
 world. She passed her time in hunting, and did not wish 
 to marry. But as many men wanted to marry her, a law 
 was passed that any one who desired to win her must run 
 a race with her. If he could beat her in running, then she 
 promised to marry him, but if he lost the race, he was to be 
 killed. Some say that the man was allowed to run first, 
 and that the girl followed with a spear in her hand and 
 killed him when she overtook him. There are different ac- 
 counts of the contest. Many suitors lost the race and were 
 killed. But finally a young man called Hippomenes ob- 
 tained from the Goddess of Love three golden apples, and 
 he was told that if he dropped these apples while running, 
 the girl would stop to pick them up, and that in this way 
 he might be able to win the race. So he ran, and when he 
 found himself about to be beaten, he dropped one apple. 
 She stopped to pick it up and thus he gained a little. In 
 this way he won the race and married Atalanta. Greek 
 mythology says that afterwards she and her husband were 
 turned into lions because they offended the gods; however, 
 
14* ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 that need not concern us here. There is a very beautiful 
 moral in the old Greek story, and the merit of the American 
 composition is that its author, Maurice Thompson, perceived 
 this moral and used it to illustrate a great philosophical 
 truth. 
 
 When Spring grows old, and sleepy winds 
 
 Set from the South with odours sweet, 
 I see my love, in green, cool groves, 
 
 Speed down dusk aisles on shining feet. 
 
 She throws a kiss and bids me run, 
 
 In whispers sweet as roses' breath; 
 I know I cannot win the race. 
 
 And at the end, I know, is death. 
 
 But joyfully I bare my limbs. 
 
 Anoint me with the tropic breeze, 
 And feel through every sinew run 
 
 The vigour of Hippomenes. 
 
 O race of love! we all have run 
 
 Thy happy course through groves of Spring, 
 
 And cared not, when at last we lost, 
 For life or death, or anything ! 
 
 There are a few thoughts here requiring a little comment. 
 You know that the Greek games and athletic contests were 
 held in the fairest season, and that the contestants were 
 stripped. They were also anointed with oil, partly to pro- 
 tect the skin against sun and temperature and partly to make 
 the body more supple. The poet speaks of the young man 
 as being anointed by the warm wind of Spring, the tropic 
 season of life. It is a very pretty fancy. What he is really 
 telling us is this : 
 
 "There are no more Greek games, but the race of love is 
 still run to-day as in times gone by; youth is the season, and 
 the atmosphere of youth is the anointing of the contestant." 
 
 But the moral of the piece is its great charm, the poetical 
 statement of a beautiful and a wonderful fact. In almost 
 every life there is a time when we care for only one person. 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 15 
 
 and suffer much for that person's sake; yet in that period 
 we do not care whether we suffer or die, and in after life, 
 when we look back at those hours of youth, we wonder at 
 the way in which we then felt. In European life of to-day 
 the old Greek fable is still true ; almost everybody must run 
 Atalanta's race and abide by the result. 
 
 One of the delightful phases of the illusion of love is 
 the sense of old acquaintance, the feeling as if the person 
 loved had been known and loved long ago in some time and 
 place forgotten. I think you must have observed, many of 
 you, that when the senses of sight and hearing happen to be 
 strongly stirred by some new and most pleasurable experi- 
 ence, the feeling of novelty is absent, or almost absent. 
 You do not feel as if you were seeing or hearing something 
 new, but as if you saw or heard something that you knew 
 all about very long ago. I remember once travelling with 
 a Japanese boy into a charming little country town in 
 Shikoku — and scarcely had we entered the main street, than 
 he cried out: "Oh, I have seen this place before I" Of 
 course he had not seen it before; he was from Osaka and had 
 never left the great city until then. But the pleasure of 
 his new experience had given him this feeling of familiarity 
 with the unfamiliar. I do not pretend to explain this fa- 
 miliarity with the new — it is a great mystery still, just as 
 it was a great mystery to the Roman Cicero. But almost 
 everybody that has been in love has probably had the same 
 feeling during a moment or two — the feeling "I have known 
 that woman before," though the where and the when are 
 mysteries. Some of the modern poets have beautifully 
 treated this feeling. The best example that I can give you 
 is the exquisite lyric by Rossetti entitled "Sudden Light." 
 
 I have been here before. 
 
 But when or how I cannot tell : 
 I know the grass beyond the door, 
 
 The sweet keen smell, 
 The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. 
 
16 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 You have been mine before, — 
 
 How long ago I may not know : 
 But just when at that swallow's soar 
 
 Your neck turn'd so. 
 Some veil did fall, — I knew it all of yore. 
 
 Has this been thus before ? 
 
 And shall not thus time's eddying flight 
 Still with our lives our loves restore 
 
 In death's despite, 
 And day and night yield one delight once more? 
 
 I think you will acknowledge that this is very pretty ; and 
 the same poet has treated the idea equally well in other 
 poems of a more complicated kind. But another poet of 
 the period was haunted even more than Rossetti by this 
 idea — Arthur O'Shaughnessy. Like Rossetti he was a 
 great lover, and very unfortunate in his love; and he wrote 
 his poems, now famous, out of the pain and regret that was 
 in his heart, much as singing birds born in cages are said to 
 sing better when their eyes are put out. Here is one 
 example : 
 
 Along the garden ways just now 
 
 I heard the flowers speak ; 
 The white rose told me of your brow, 
 
 The red rose of your cheek ; 
 The lily of your bended head, 
 
 The bindweed of your hair : 
 Each looked its loveliest and said 
 
 You were more fair. 
 
 I went into the woods anon. 
 
 And heard the wild birds sing 
 How sweet you were ; they warbled on. 
 
 Piped, trill'd the self-same thing. 
 Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause 
 
 The burden did repeat. 
 And still began again because 
 
 You were more sweet. 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY IT 
 
 And then I went down to the sea, 
 
 And heard it murmuring too, 
 Part of an ancient mystery, 
 
 All made of me and you : 
 How many a thousand years ago 
 
 I loved, and you were sweet — 
 Longer I could not stay, and so 
 
 I fled back to your feet. 
 
 The last stanza especially expresses the idea that I have 
 been telling you about; but in a poem entitled "Greater 
 Memory" the idea is much more fully expressed. By 
 "greater memory" you must understand the memory beyond 
 this life into past stages of existence. This piece has be- 
 come a part of the nineteenth century poetry that will live ; 
 and a few of the best stanzas deserve to be quoted. 
 
 In the heart there lay buried for years 
 Love's story of passion and tears; 
 Of the heaven that two had begun 
 
 And the horror that tore them apart; 
 When one was love's slayer, but one 
 
 Made a grave for the love in his heart. 
 
 The long years pass'd weary and lone 
 
 And it lay there and changed there unknown ; 
 
 Then one day from its innermost place. 
 
 In the shamed and ruin'd love's stead, 
 Love arose with a glorified face. 
 
 Like an angel that comes from the dead. 
 
 It uplifted the stone that was set 
 
 On that tomb which the heart held yet ; 
 
 But the sorrow had moulder'd within, 
 
 And there came from the long closed door 
 A dear image, that was not the sin 
 
 Or the grief that lay buried before. 
 
 There was never the stain of a tear 
 On the face that was ever so dear; 
 'Twas the same in each lovelier way; 
 'Twas old love's holier part, 
 
18 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 And the dream of the earliest day 
 Brought back to the desolate heart. 
 
 It was knowledge of all that had been 
 
 In the thought, in the soul unseen ; 
 
 'Twas the word which the lips could not say 
 
 To redeem or recover the past. 
 It was more than was taken away 
 
 Which the heart got back at the last. 
 
 The passion that lost its spell, 
 The rose that died where it fell. 
 The look that was look'd in vain. 
 
 The prayer that seemed lost evermore, 
 They were found in the heart again, 
 
 With all that the heart would restore. 
 
 Put into less mystical language the legend is this: A 
 young man and a young woman loved each other for a time ; 
 then they were separated by some great wrong — we may 
 suppose the woman was untrue. The man always loved 
 her memory, in spite of this wrong which she had done. 
 The two died and were buried; hundreds and hundreds of 
 years they remained buried, and the dust of them mixed 
 with the dust of the earth. But in the perpetual order of 
 things, a pure love never can die, though bodies may die 
 and pass away. So after many generations the pure love 
 which this man had for a bad woman was born again in the 
 heart of another man — the same, yet not the same. And 
 the spirit of the woman that long ago had done the wrong, 
 also found incarnation again; and the two meeting, are 
 drawn to each other by what people call love, but what is 
 really Greater Memory, the recollection of past lives. But 
 now all is happiness for them, because the weaker and worse 
 part of each has really died and has been left hundreds of 
 years behind, and only the higher nature has been born 
 again. All that ought not to have been is not; but all that 
 ought to be now is. This is really an evolutionary teach- 
 ing, but it is also poetical license, for the immoral side of 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 19 
 
 mankind does not by any means die so quickly as the poet 
 supposes. It is perhaps a question of many tens ot thou- 
 sands of years to get rid of a few of our simpler faults. 
 Anyway, the fancy charms us and tempts us really to hope 
 that these things might be so. 
 
 While the poets of our time so extend the history of a 
 love backwards beyond this life, we might expect them to 
 do the very same thing in the other direction. I do not 
 refer to reunion in heaven, or anything of that sort, but 
 simply to affection continued after death. There are some 
 very pretty fancies of the kind. But they cannot prove to 
 you quite so interesting as the poems which treat the recol- 
 lection of past life. When we consider the past imag- 
 inatively, we have some ground to stand on. The past has 
 been — there is no doubt about that. The fact that we are 
 at this moment alive makes it seem sufficiently true that 
 we were alive thousands or millions of years ago. But 
 when we turn to the future for poetical inspiration, the 
 case is very different. There we must imagine without 
 having anything to stand upon in the way of experience. 
 Of course if born again into a body we could imagine many 
 things; but there is the ghostly interval between death and 
 birth which nobody is able to tell us about. Here the poet 
 depends upon dream experiences, and it is of such an ex- 
 perience that Christina Rossetti speaks in her beautiful poem 
 entitled "A Pause." 
 
 They made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves, 
 And the bed sweet with flowers on which I lay, 
 While my soul, love-bound, loitered on its way. 
 
 I did not hear the birds about the eaves, 
 
 Nor hear the reapers talk among the sheaves : 
 Only my soul kept wp.tch from day to day, 
 My thirsty soul kept watch for one away : — 
 
 Perhaps he loves, I thought, remembers, grieves. 
 
 At length there came the step upon the stair. 
 Upon the lock the old familiar hand : 
 
20 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 Then first my spirit seemed to scent the air 
 
 Of Paradise ; then first the tardy sand 
 Of time ran golden ; and I felt my hair 
 
 Put on a glory, and my soul expand. 
 
 The woman is dead. In the room where her body died, 
 flowers have been placed, offerings to the dead. Also there 
 are flowers upon the bed. The ghost of the woman ob- 
 serves all this, but she does not feel either glad or sad 
 because of it; she is thinking only of the living lover, who 
 was not there when she died, but far away. She wants to 
 know whether he really loved her, whether he will really be 
 sorry to hear that she is dead. Outside the room of death 
 the birds are singing; in the fields beyond the windows 
 peasants are working, and talking as they work. But the 
 ghost does not listen to these sounds. The ghost remains 
 in the room only for love's sake; she cannot go away until 
 the lover comes. At last she hears him coming. She knows 
 the sound of the step; she knows the touch of the hand 
 upon the lock of the door. And instantly, before she sees 
 him at all, she first feels delight. Already it seems to her 
 that she can smell the perfume of the flowers of heaven; it 
 then seems to her that about her head, as about the head of 
 an angel, a circle of glory is shaping itself, and the real 
 heaven, the Heaven of Love, is at hand. 
 
 How very beautiful this is. There is still one line which 
 requires a separate explanation — I mean the sentence about 
 " the sands of time running golden." Perhaps you may 
 remember the same simile in Tennyson's "Locksley Hall " : 
 
 Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands ; 
 Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 
 
 Here time is identified with the sand of the hour glass, 
 and the verb "to run" is used because this verb com- 
 monly expresses the trickling of the sand from the upper 
 part of the glass into the lower. In other words, fine sand 
 "runs" just like water. To say that the "sands of time 
 
ON LOVE IN, ENGLISH POETRY ^1 
 
 ran golden," or become changed into gold, is only a poetical 
 way of stating that the time becomes more than happy — 
 almost heavenly or divine. And now you will see how 
 very beautiful the comparison becomes in this little poem 
 about the ghost of the woman waiting for the coming step 
 of her lover. 
 
 Several other aspects of the emotion may now be con- 
 sidered separately. One of these, an especially beautiful 
 one, is memory. Of course, there are many aspects of 
 love's memories, some all happiness, others intensely sor- 
 rowful — the memory of a walk, a meeting, a moment of 
 good-bye. Such memories occupy a very large place in the 
 treasure house of English love poems. I am going to give 
 three examples only, but each of a different kind. The 
 first poet that I am going to mention is Coventry Patmore, 
 He wrote two curious books of poetry, respectively called 
 "The Angel in the House" and "The Unknown Eros." 
 In the first of these books he wrote the whole history of his 
 courtship and marriage — a very dangerous thing for a poet 
 to do, but he did it successfully. The second volume is 
 miscellaneous, and contains some very beautiful things. I 
 am going to quote only a few lines from the piece called 
 "Amelia." This piece is the story of an evening spent with 
 a sweetheart, and the lines which I am quoting refer to the 
 moment of taking the girl home. They are now rather 
 famous : 
 
 . . . To the dim street 
 
 I led her sacred feet ; 
 
 And so the Daughter gave, 
 
 Soft, moth-like, sweet, 
 
 Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk, 
 
 Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk. 
 
 And now "Good Night !" 
 
 Why should the poet speak of the girl in this way? 
 Why does he call her feet sacred'? She has just promised 
 to marry him ; and now she seems to him quite divine. But 
 
22 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 he discovers very plain words with which to communicate 
 his finer feelings to the reader. The street is "dim" because 
 it is night; and in the night the beautifully dressed maiden 
 seems like a splendid moth — the name given to night butter- 
 flies in England. In England the moths are much more 
 beautiful than the true butterflies; they have wings of scar- 
 let and purple and brown and gold. So the comparison, 
 though peculiarly English, is very fine. Also there is a 
 suggestion of the soundlessness of the moth's flight. Now 
 "showy as damask rose" is a striking simile only because 
 the damask-rose is a wonderfully splendid flower — richest 
 in colour of all roses in English gardens. "Shy as musk" 
 is rather a daring simile. "Musk" is a perfume used by 
 English as well as Japanese ladies, but there is no perfume 
 which must be used with more discretion, carefulness. If 
 you use ever so little too much, the effect is not pleasant. 
 But if you use exactly the proper quantity, and no more, 
 there is no perfume which is more lovely. "Shy as musk" 
 thus refers to that kind of girlish modesty which never com- 
 mits a fault even by the measure of a grain — a beautiful 
 shyness incapable of being anything but beautiful. Never- 
 theless the comparison must be confessed one which should 
 be felt rather than explained. 
 
 The second of the three promised quotations shall be from 
 Robert Browning. There is one feeling, not often touched 
 upon by poets, yet peculiar to lovers, that is here treated 
 — the desire when you are very happy or when you are look- 
 ing at anything attractive to share the pleasure of the 
 moment with the beloved. But it seldom happens that the 
 wish and the conditions really meet. Referring to this 
 longing Browning made a short lyric that is now a classic; 
 it is among the most dainty things of the century. 
 
 Never the time and the place 
 
 And the loved one all together ! 
 This path — how soft to pace! 
 
 This May — what magic weather! 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 23 
 
 Where is the loved one's face? 
 
 In a dream that loved one's face meets mine 
 
 But the house is narrow, the place is bleak. 
 
 Where, outside, rain and wind combine 
 
 With a furtive ear, if I try to speak. 
 
 With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek 
 
 With a malice that marks each word, each sign! 
 
 Never can we have things the way we wish in this world 
 — a beautiful day, a beautiful place, and the presence of 
 the beloved all at the same time. Something is always 
 missing; if the place be beautiful, the weather perhaps is 
 bad. Or if the weather and the place both happen to be 
 perfect, the woman is absent. So the poet finding himself 
 in some very beautiful place, and remembering this, remem- 
 bers also the last time that he met the woman beloved, It 
 was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was rain 
 and storm; and the sounds of the wind and of the rain 
 were as the sounds of people secretly listening, or sounds 
 of people trying to look in secretly through the windows. 
 Evidently it was necessary that the meeting should be 
 secret, and it was not altogether as happy as could have 
 been wished. 
 
 The third example is a very beautiful poem; we must 
 content ourselves with an extract from it. It is the memory 
 of a betrothal day, and the poet is Frederick Tennyson. I 
 suppose you know that there were three Tennysons, and 
 although Alfred happened to be the greatest, all of them 
 were good poets. 
 
 It is a golden morning of the spring, 
 
 My cheek is pale, and hers is warm with bloom. 
 And we are left in that old cavern room 
 
 And she begins to sing. 
 
 The open casement quivers in the breeze, 
 
 And one large musk-rose leans its dewy grace 
 Into the chamber like a happy face. 
 
 And round it swim the bees. 
 
24 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 I know not what I said ; — what she replied 
 Lives, like eternal sunshine, in my heart ; 
 And then I murmured, Oh ! we never part. 
 
 My love, my life, my bride ! 
 
 And silence o'er us, after that great bliss. 
 Fell like a welcome shadow ; and I heard 
 The far woods sighing, and a summer bird 
 
 Singing amid the trees. 
 
 The sweet bird's happy song that streamed around, 
 The murmur of the woods, the azure skies, 
 Were graven on my heart, though ears and eyes 
 
 Marked neither sight nor sound. 
 
 She sleeps in peace beneath the chancel stone. 
 But ah I so clearly is the vision seen. 
 The dead seem raised, or Death has never been. 
 
 Were I not here alone. 
 
 This is great art in its power of picturing a memory of 
 the heart. Let us notice some of the beauties. The lover 
 is pale because he is afraid, anxious; he is going to ask a 
 question and he does not know how she may answer him. 
 All this was long ago, years and years ago, but the strong 
 emotions of that morning leave their every detail painted 
 in remembrance, with strange vividness. After all those 
 years the man still recollects the appearance of the room, 
 the sunshine entering, and the crimson rose looking into 
 the room from the garden, with bees humming round it. 
 Then after the question had been asked and happily 
 answered, neither could speak for joy; and because of the 
 silence all the sounds of nature outside became almost pain- 
 fully distinct. Now he remembers how he heard in that 
 room the sound of the wind in far away trees, the singing 
 of a bird — he also remembers all the colours and the lights 
 of the day. But it was very, very long ago, and she is dead. 
 Still, the memory is so clear and bright in his heart that it 
 is as if time had stood still, or as if she had come back from 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 25 
 
 the grave. Only one thing assures him that it is but a 
 memory — he is alone. 
 
 Returning now to the subject of love's illusion in itself, 
 let me remind you that the illusion does not always pass 
 away — not at all. It passes away in every case of happy 
 union, when it has become no longer necessary to the great 
 purposes of nature. But in case of disappointment, loss, 
 failure to win the maiden desired, it often happens that the 
 ideal image never fades away, but persistently haunts the 
 mind through life, and is capable thus of making even the 
 most successful life unhappy. Sometimes the result of such 
 disappointment may be to change all a man's ideas about 
 the world, about life, about religion; and everything remains 
 darkened for him. Many a young person disappointed in 
 love begins to lose religious feeling from that moment, for 
 it seems to him, simply because he happens to be unfortu- 
 nate, that the universe is all wrong. On the other hand 
 the successful lover thinks that the universe is all right; he 
 utters his thanks to the gods, and feels his faith in religion 
 and human nature greater than before. I do not at this 
 moment remember any striking English poem illustrating 
 this fact; but there is a pretty little poem in French by 
 Victor Hugo showing well the relation between successful 
 love and religious feeling in simple minds. Here is an 
 English translation of it. The subject is simply a walk 
 at night, the girl-bride leaning upon the arm of her husband; 
 and his memory of the evening is thus expressed: 
 
 The trembling arm I pressed 
 Fondly ; our thoughts confessed 
 
 Love's conquest tender ; 
 God filled the vast sweet night, 
 Love filled our hearts ; the light 
 
 Of stars made splendour. 
 
 Even as we walked and dreamed, 
 'Twixt heaven and earth, it seemed 
 
26 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 Our souls were speaking; 
 The stars looked on thy face ; 
 Thine eyes through violet space 
 
 The stars were seeking. 
 
 And from the astral light 
 Feeling the soft sweet night 
 
 Thrill to thy soul, 
 Thou saidst: "O God of Bliss 
 Lord of the Blue Abyss, 
 
 Thou madest the whole !" 
 
 And the stars whispered low 
 To the God of Space, "We know, 
 
 God of Eternity, 
 Dear Lord, all Love is Thine, 
 Even by Love's Light we shine! 
 
 Thou madest Beauty !" 
 
 Of course here the religious feeling itself is part of the 
 illusion, but it serves to give great depth and beauty to 
 simple feeling. Besides, the poem illustrates one truth very 
 forcibly — namely, that when we are perfectly happy all the 
 universe appears to be divine and divinely beautiful; in 
 other words, we are in heaven. On the contrary, when we 
 are very unhappy the universe appears to be a kind of hell, 
 in which there is no hope, no joy, and no gods to pray to. 
 
 But the special reason I wished to call attention to 
 Victor Hugo's lyric is that it has that particular quality 
 called by philosophical critics "cosmic emotion." Cosmic 
 em.otion means the highest quality of human emotion. 
 The word "cosmos" signifies the universe — not simply this 
 world, but all the hundred millions of suns and worlds in 
 the known heaven. And the adjective "cosmic," means, 
 of course, "related to the whole universe." Ordinary 
 emotion may be more than individual in its relations. I 
 mean that your feelings may be moved by the thought or 
 the perception of something relating not only to your own 
 life but also to the lives of many others. The largest form 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY rt 
 
 of such ordinary emotion is what would be called national 
 feeling, the feeling of your own relation to the whole nation 
 or the whole race. But there is higher emotion even than 
 that. When you think of yourself emotionally not only in 
 relation to your own country, your own nation, but in rela- 
 tion to all humanity, then you have a cosmic emotion of 
 the third or second order. I say "third or second," because 
 whether the emotion be second or third rate depends very 
 much upon your conception of humanity as One. But if 
 you think of yourself in relation not to this world only but 
 to the whole universe of hundreds of millions of stars and 
 planets — in relation to the whole mystery of existence — 
 then you have a cosmic emotion of the highest order. Of 
 course there are degrees even in this; the philosopher or the 
 metaphysician will probably have a finer quality of cosmic 
 emotion than the poet or the artist is able to have. But 
 lovers very often, according to their degree of intellectual 
 culture, experience a kind of cosmic emotion; and Victor 
 Hugo's little poem illustrates this. Night and the stars 
 and the abyss of the sky all seem to be thrilling with love 
 and beauty to the lover's eyes, because he himself is in a 
 state of loving happiness ; and then he begins to think about 
 his relation to the universal life, to the supreme mystery 
 beyond all Form and Name. 
 
 A third or fourth class of such emotion may be illustrated 
 by the beautiful sonnet of Keats, written not long before 
 his death. Only a very young man could have written 
 this, because only a very young man loves in this way — but 
 how delightful it is I It has no title. 
 
 Bright star ! would I were steadfast as thou art — 
 
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night 
 And watching, with eternal lids apart, 
 
 Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, 
 The moving waters at their priest-like task 
 
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, 
 Or gazing on new soft-fallen mask 
 
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors — 
 
28 ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, 
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast. 
 
 To feel forever its soft fall and swell. 
 Awake forever in a sweet unrest, 
 
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath. 
 
 And so live ever — or else swoon to death. 
 
 Tennyson has charmingly represented a lover wishing 
 that he were a necklace of his beloved, or her girdle, or her 
 earring; but that is not a cosmic emotion at all. Indeed, 
 the idea of Tennyson's pretty song was taken from old 
 French and English love songs of the peasants — popular 
 ballads. But in this beautiful sonnet of Keats, where the 
 lover wishes to be endowed with the immortality and like- 
 ness of a star only to be forever with the beloved, there is 
 something of the old Greek thought which inspired the 
 beautiful lines written between two and three thousand 
 years ago, and translated by J. A. Symonds: 
 
 Gazing on stars, my Star ! Would that I were the welkin, 
 Starry with myriad eyes, ever to gaze upon thee I 
 
 But there is more than the Greek beauty of thought in 
 Keats's sonnet, for we find the poet speaking of the exterior 
 universe in the largest relation, thinking of the stars watch- 
 ing forever the rising and the falling of the sea tides, think- 
 ing of the sea tides themselves as continually purifying 
 the world, even as a priest purifies a temple. The fancy 
 of the boy expands to the fancy of philosophy; it is a blend- 
 ing of poetry, philosophy, and sincere emotion. 
 
 You will have seen by the examples which we have been 
 reading together that English love poetry, like Japanese love 
 poetry, may be divided into many branches and classified 
 according to the range of subject from the very simplest 
 utterance of feeling up to that highest class expressing 
 cosmic emotion. Very rich the subject is; the student is 
 only puzzled where to choose. I should again suggest to 
 you to observe the value of the theme of illusion, especially 
 
ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY 29 
 
 as illustrated in our examples. There are indeed multi- 
 tudes of Western love poems that would probably appear 
 to you very strange, perhaps very foolish. But you will 
 certainly acknowledge that there are some varieties of Eng- 
 lish love poetry which are neither strange nor foolish, and 
 which are well worth studying, not only in themselves but 
 in their relation to the higher forms of emotional expression 
 in all literature. Out of love poetry belonging to the 
 highest class, much can be drawn that would serve to enrich 
 and to give a new colour to your own literature of emotion. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 STUDIES IN TENNYSON 
 
 (A Fragment) 
 
 With perhaps one exception, the great poets of the Victo- 
 rian period only carried on and developed the traditions of 
 the preceding era. This is curious. The poets of the Lake 
 School and of the other schools who were contemporary 
 with it have their counterparts in the men of the Victorian 
 age. Tennyson is Keats perfected and enriched. Words- 
 worth is represented also partly by Tennyson, but much 
 more by Matthew Arnold, both as to his faults and as to 
 his merits. Coleridge reblossoms in Rossetti. Shelley and 
 Byron both reappear in Swinburne, but without any of the 
 faults of the Satanic School as to form, Swinburne being 
 the greatest master of form in all modern literature. But 
 the Satanic spirit of Byron is there — larger, stronger, fiercer, 
 and all the grace and passion and music of Shelley, magni- 
 fied miraculously, with a new and strange quality of beauty 
 borrowed from former times. Even Sir Walter Scott is 
 reborn in the poetry of William Morris, who inherited the 
 same extraordinary faculty for romance in verse, though he 
 falls far below Scott as a lyrical poet. There is only one 
 great figure of the Victorian era for whom we cannot find 
 any prototype; that is Robert Browning. Browning alone 
 belongs to no school, and makes a tradition of his own, the 
 future of which is very doubtful. It might be said that 
 Tennyson is not a fair representative of the philosophical 
 tradition of Wordsworth, and that Matthew Arnold does 
 not go much beyond Wordsworth in range of thought. 
 This is true. I think that the man who most expanded the 
 Wordsworthian tradition and brought it into perfect har- 
 
 30 
 
STUDIES IN TENNYSON 31 
 
 mony with nineteenth century philosophy, is George Mere- 
 dith, whose faults of style alone prevent him from taking 
 place in the very front rank. As a philosopher I hold him 
 to be the largest thinker of the century, 
 
 Alfred Tennyson is the first figure that rises up before 
 us — the first great star that showed itself in the poetical sky 
 after the sinking of those two constellations of which 
 Wordsworth and Shelley were respectively the principal 
 luminaries. The serious and self-controlled character ex- 
 pressed in his familiar portraits appears to have dis- 
 tinguished him even in childhood. Nevertheless, it is 
 curious that as a boy he absolutely worshipped Byron, and 
 afterwards thought that the death of Byron was the greatest 
 possible misfortune that could have happened to the human 
 race. Even as a child he composed somewhat, but none of 
 his very youthful poems was suffered to see the light. As 
 he grew older, Wordsworth began to influence him consid- 
 erably, together with Scott and Coleridge. Then it appears 
 that he had an enthusiasm for Shelley. But by the time 
 that he had reached maturity, his great source of inspiration 
 became Keats; and it is the tradition of Keats that he 
 chiefly followed. 
 
 Considering the extraordinary perfection of his work as 
 we now have it, you might find it difficult to believe that 
 the first work which he published was bad — weak, senti- 
 mental, gushing — somewhat in the style of Mrs. Hemans 
 and the lady-poets before the Victorian period. There 
 were beauties in it; but it was deserving of severe criticism, 
 and it was criticised very severely indeed. Previously, in 
 1826, Tennyson had been in print; he and his brothers, 
 Charles and Frederick, had published a little volume en- 
 titled "Poems by Two Brothers." We do not know now 
 why it was so called, but we do know that three and not 
 two persons composed it. But this anonymous publication 
 cannot be said to have much connection with Alfred's career. 
 The first book that he published bearing his own name was 
 
32 STUDIES IN TENNYSON 
 
 a volume simply entitled "Poems," printed in 1830. This 
 was the book that deserved severe criticism, and received it. 
 The criticism was very beneficial to Tennyson, probably 
 because of his extremely strong character. Instead of being 
 downcast by it, he set to work to correct his faults, quietly, 
 slowly, patiently, and twelve years later he printed a second 
 volume of poems, containing, besides much new matter, the 
 best of the bad poems of 1830 entirely changed, trans- 
 formed, and beautified. This time he was not severely 
 criticised; men of letters saw that a very great poet was 
 coming. Five years later appeared "The Princess." Then 
 Tennyson's reputation suddenly blazed up and he becarne 
 famous; no such poetry had ever been read in England 
 before. Then in rapid succession followed "In Memo- 
 riam," "Maud," and the first half of the "Idylls of the 
 King" — these last appearing in 1859. Tennyson mean- 
 time had become poet laureate after the death of Words- 
 worth; and there can be no doubt that the honour greatly 
 increased his popularity. When "Enoch Arden" was pub- 
 lished, in 1864, seventeen thousand copies were sold on the 
 morning of publication. Thenceforth the poet's fortune 
 was in every way secure. He rose from honour to honour; 
 he was made a peer; he became as rich as he could possibly 
 have wished; and he continued the dominant figure in Eng- 
 lish literature during the latter half of the century. Even 
 to-day we must confess that, in a general way, the greatest 
 literary figure of the nineteenth century is Tennyson, He 
 died in 1892, and was buried in Westminster Abbey with 
 extraordinary honours, his death being considered as a 
 national calamity. 
 
 No other English poet, except perhaps Pope, has ever 
 given so many familiar quotations to the English language ; 
 and nobody else, certainly not Pope, has influenced and 
 enriched the English language so much as Tennyson. 
 Probably his influence will be felt for hundreds of years to 
 come. In spite of the predictions of Matthew Arnold and 
 
STUDIES IN TENNYSON 33 
 
 others, that influence is growing. And it is an influence 
 not only artistic and philosophical, but also educational and 
 moral in the highest degree. The whole English world 
 from Great Britain to India, from Canada in the North 
 down to South Africa and Australia in the other hemisphere, 
 studies Tennyson, and will long continue to study him. 
 Let us now try to understand the reason of this great influ- 
 ence and this extraordinary recognition of an excellence as 
 exquisite as it is rare. 
 
 The first fact to bear in mind about the character of 
 Tennyson's work as individual labour is this, that no other 
 man in our literary history, not even Pope, ever polished his 
 work so much. He was not simply satisfied with keeping 
 work back for years rather than print it before feeling quite 
 sure that he had done his best upon it; but he subsequently 
 corrected it in almost every one of the many editions which 
 it afterwards went through. For, as a man grows older, 
 his capacity for literary judgment, his faculty of literary 
 perception, and the range of his knowledge, are all con- 
 stantly increasing in breadth and depth; and Tennyson, 
 recognising this fact, has given to even the work of his early 
 years the most highly developed powers of his old age. In 
 critical editions of poets, it is necessary that all different 
 versions of each poem be presented to the student; and it 
 has been well said that if such an edition of Tennyson 
 should ever be published it must be the most enormous pro- 
 duction of its kind in existence. 
 
 As a result of this perpetual polishing, the work of Ten- 
 nyson has an exquisiteness not to be surpassed in any lit- 
 erature. Of no other poet can it be said that the exquisite- 
 ness is so uniform. You cannot find in the whole immense 
 body of this man's verse inequalities of construction. You 
 may find inequalities of other kinds, but not of workman- 
 ship. And were there no other merit in Tennyson at all, 
 this single merit would still give him the first place as a 
 wordsmith. 
 
34 STUDIES IN TENNYSON 
 
 But there are many other qualities in Tennyson, some of 
 which are even greater than merits of workmanship. 
 There is thought, singularly broad and liberal, with just a 
 little of that English conservatism which we may not be 
 able to sympathise with, but which we are obliged to con- 
 fess healthy and dignified. Then there is the splendid 
 sense of sound and colour. There is fine observation of 
 nature, and fine observation of human character. And all 
 these abilities were directed especially toward the painting 
 of English subjects as a rule — English life, English land- 
 scape, English women, English ideals of heroism and of 
 duty. Tennyson seldom ventures into classical or ancient 
 themes, though when he does, as in "Lucretius," "Ulysses," 
 "Tithonus," or the translations from Homer, he is still peer- 
 less within the limits which he has set himself. Even in 
 the Idylls, and other studies of which the subject is medi- 
 seval, it is always English life and English character that are 
 described under a thin disguise. The knights of Arthur's 
 court are not really the men of the Middle Ages; they are 
 ideals of English gentlemen, and have long been so recog- 
 nised by the people. The Princess and her girl-students 
 and her lady professor and all the figures of that wonderful 
 medley are figures familiar to every English reader; they 
 are nineteenth century people wearing the robes of other 
 days; they are actors and actresses acting out a lesson both 
 didactic and eesthetic. How should the English people not 
 love work that painted them in such splendid colours'? 
 
 This would alone explain popularity. Besides the pleas- 
 ure found in the subject, and in the artistic treatment of 
 the subject, there is yet another quality to ensure popu- 
 larity — the quality of clearness. Great scholar though he 
 was, Tennyson could be understood by any person with a 
 moderate degree of education. It is true that some of his 
 thoughts could be read at once only by a philosopher, but 
 the proportion of these to the rest of the text is rather small ; 
 and we may generally say that even where Tennyson's sen- 
 
STUDIES IN TENNYSON 35 
 
 tences seem at first sight most difficult, a little patient think- 
 ing and study can always straighten out the difficulty. I 
 am speaking of course of English readers. When we study 
 Tennyson in Japan we have to explain almost every line of 
 certain poems. But that is because those poems are full 
 of English idioms and English allusions which, though fa- 
 miliar to the English reader from local habit and experi- 
 ence, are necessarily very obscure for one who reads in a 
 language not his own. 
 
 And there is yet another curious quality in Tennyson's 
 compositions — a teaching quality. He has brought back 
 to the English language, out of the cemetery of dead words, 
 a great many expressions from Middle English and other 
 obsolete English, and given them new life; and he has done 
 this in such a way that the reader is taught the meaning of 
 these unfamiliar words without looking at the dictionary. 
 The context teaches the value of the words better than any 
 dictionary could teach it to you. I may say that I myself, 
 as a boy, learned more English from Tennyson than I learned 
 in any other way; and even now I cannot read him over 
 again without constantly learning something new. The 
 more you study him, the more you will find in him ; and the 
 more you will be astonished at the perception of the labour 
 and the learning that such work must have cost. I con- 
 sider Tennyson the greatest educational influence in Eng- 
 lish literature; and the etymologists, now engaged upon the 
 colossal dictionary of the English language, would prob- 
 ably be the first to recognise Tennyson's influence upon that 
 language. No small portion of the three millions of quo- 
 tations that are to appear in that dictionary will be quota- 
 tions from Tennyson. 
 
 Some of you may have read Taine's criticism upon 
 Tennyson; and I wish to say a word about that. Taine, 
 who was a very great critic, one of the greatest artists that 
 literature ever produced, made a very unfavourable com- 
 parison of Tennyson with Alfred de Musset. From Taine's 
 
36 STUDIES IN TENNYSON 
 
 point of view, I venture to assure you, Taine is quite right. 
 He explains his partiality perfectly well. He found Ten- 
 nyson too correct, too genteel, too conservative, too cold, 
 and altogether too English. Tennyson was not, in his 
 judgment, a world-poet — that is, a poet who can touch 
 equally well the hearts of the men in all languages, a poet 
 who sings only of emotions common to all mankind. But 
 de Musset is a poet of passion; and passion is universal. 
 True, there is not much passion in Tennyson. True, also, 
 Tennyson is not really a world-poet. But as an English 
 poet, as a master of all the beauties and riches and powers 
 of the English language, he is unique. And for the study 
 of language, rather than for the study of emotion, there is 
 no one like him. Upon this point, which Taine did not 
 sufficiently recognise, it is necessary that you should think 
 clearly. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 We must rank Dante Gabriel Rossetti as not inferior to 
 Tennyson in workmanship — therefore as occupying the 
 very first rank in nineteenth century poetry. He was not 
 inferior to Tennyson either as a thinker, but his thinking 
 was in totally different directions. He had no sympathy 
 with the ideas of his own century; he lived and thought in 
 the Middle Ages; and while one of our very greatest Eng- 
 lish poets, he takes a place apart, for he does not reflect the 
 century at all. He had the dramatic gift, but it was a gift 
 in his case much more limited than that of Browning. Al- 
 together we can safely give him a place in the first rank as 
 a maker of poetry, but in all other respects we cannot 
 classify him in any way. He remains a unique figure in 
 the Victorian age, a figure such as may not reappear for 
 hundreds of years to come. It was as if a man of the thir- 
 teenth century had been reborn into the nineteenth century, 
 and, in spite of modern culture, had continued to think and 
 to feel very much as men felt and thought in the time of 
 the great Italian poet Dante. 
 
 One reason for this extraordinary difference between him- 
 self and his contemporaries was that Rossetti was not an 
 Englishman but an Italian by blood, religion, and feeling. 
 In his verse we might expect to find something that we can- 
 not find in any other English poet; and I think that we 
 shall find it. The facts of his life — strange and pathetic — 
 need not occupy us now. You need only remember for the 
 present that he was a great painter before becoming a great 
 
 poet, and that his painting, like his poetry, was the painting 
 
 37 
 
38 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 of another century than his own. Also it will be well to 
 bear in mind that he detested modern science and modern 
 philosophy — which fact maizes it all the more remarkable 
 that he uttered some great thoughts quite in harmony with 
 the most profound philosophy of the Orient. 
 
 In studying the best of his poetry, it will be well for us 
 to consider it by groups, taking a few specimens from each 
 group as examples of the rest; since we shall not have time 
 to read even a quarter of all his production. Taking the 
 very simplest of his work to begin with, I shall make a se- 
 lection from what I might call the symbolic group, for want 
 of a better name. I mean those poems which are parables, 
 or symbolic illustrations of deep truths — poems which seem 
 childishly simple, but are nevertheless very deep indeed. 
 We may begin with a little piece called "The Mirror." 
 
 She knew It not, — most perfect pain 
 
 To learn : this too she knew not. Strife 
 For me, calm hers, as from the first. 
 'Twas but another bubble burst 
 Upon the curdling draught of life, — 
 My silent patience mine again. 
 
 As who, of forms that crowd unknown 
 Within a distant mirror's shade, 
 
 Deems such a one himself, and makes 
 Some sign ; but when the image shakes 
 No whit, he finds his thought betray'd, 
 And must seek elsewhere for his own. 
 
 So far as the English goes, this verse is plain enough; 
 but unless you have met with the same idea in some other 
 English writer, you will find the meaning very obscure. 
 The poet is speaking of a universal, or almost universal, ex- 
 perience of misplaced love. A man becomes passionately 
 attached to a woman, who treats him with cold indifference. 
 Finally the lover finds out his mistake; the woman that he 
 loved proves not to be what he imagined; she is not worthy 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI S9 
 
 of his love. Then what was he in love with? With a 
 shadow out of his brain, with an imagination or ideal very 
 pure and noble, but only an imagination. Supposing that 
 he was worshipping good qualities in a noble woman, he 
 deceived himself; the woman had no such qualities; they 
 existed only in his fancy. Thus he calls her his mirror, 
 the human being that seemed to be a reflection of all that 
 was good in his own heart. She never knows the truth as 
 to why the man loved her and then ceased to love her; he 
 could not tell her, because it would have been to her "most 
 perfect pain to learn," 
 
 A less obscure but equally beautiful symbolism, in an- 
 other metre, is "The Hone5^suckle." 
 
 I plucked a honeysuckle where 
 
 The hedge on high is quick with thorn, 
 And climbing for the prize, was torn, 
 
 And fouled my feet in quag-water ; 
 And by the thorns and by the wind 
 The blossom that I took was thinn'd, 
 
 And yet I found it sweet and fair. 
 
 Thence to a richer growth I came, 
 Where, nursed in mellow intercourse, 
 The honeysuckle sprang by scores, 
 
 Not harried like my single stem, 
 All virgin lamps of scent and dew, 
 So from my hand that first I threw. 
 
 Yet plucked not any more of them. 
 
 It often happens that a young man during his first strug- 
 gle in life, when all the world seems to be against him, 
 meets with some poor girl who loves him. She is not edu- 
 cated as he has been; she is ignorant of many things, and 
 she has suffered herself a great deal of hardship, so that 
 although beautiful naturally and good-hearted, both her 
 beauty and her temper have been a little spoiled by the 
 troubles of life. The young man whom she loves is obliged 
 to mix with a very poor and vulgar class of people in order 
 
40 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 to become intimate with her. There are plenty of rough 
 common men who would like to get that girl ; and the young 
 man has a good deal of trouble in winning her away from 
 them. With all her small faults she seems for the time 
 very beautiful to her lover, because he cannot get any finer 
 woman while he remains poor. But presently success 
 comes to him, and he is able to enter a much higher class 
 of society, where he finds scores of beautiful girls, much 
 more accomplished than his poor sweetheart; and he be- 
 comes ashamed of her and cruelly abandons her. But he 
 does not marry any of the rich and beautiful women. Per- 
 haps he is tired of women; perhaps his heart has been 
 spoiled. The poet does not tell us why. He simply tells 
 a story of human ingratitude which is as old as the world. 
 One more simple poem before we take up the larger and 
 more complicated pieces of the group. 
 
 THE WOODSPURGE 
 
 The wind flapped loose, the wind was still, 
 Shaken out dead from tree and hill : 
 I had walked on at the wind's will, — 
 I sat now, for the wind was still. 
 
 Between my knees my forehead was, — 
 My lips, drawn in, said not Alas ! 
 My hair was over in the grass, 
 My naked ears heard the day pass. 
 
 My eyes, wide open, had the run 
 
 Of some ten weeds to fix upon ; 
 
 Among those few, out of the sun, 
 
 The woodspurge flower'd, three cups in one. 
 
 From perfect grief there need not be 
 Wisdom or even memory : 
 One thing then learnt remains to me, — 
 The woodspurge has a cup of three ! 
 
 The phenomenon here described by the poet is uncon- 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 41 
 
 sciously familiar to most of us. Any person who has suf- 
 fered some very great pain, moral pain, is apt to observe 
 during that instant of suffering things which he never ob- 
 served before, or to notice details never noticed before in 
 common things. One reason is that at such a time sense- 
 impressions are stimulated to a strange degree by the in- 
 crease of circulation, while the eyes and ears remain auto- 
 matically active only. Whoever among you can remember 
 the pain of losing a parent or beloved friend, will probably 
 remember with extraordinary vividness all kinds of little 
 things seen or heard at the time, such as the cry of a bird 
 or a cricket, the sound of the dripping of water, the form 
 of a sunbeam upon a wall, the shapes of shadows in a gar- 
 den. The personage of this poem often before saw the 
 woodspurge, without noticing anything particular about it; 
 but in a moment of great sorrow observing the plant, he 
 learns for the first time the peculiar form of its flower. In 
 a wonderful novel by Henry Kingsley, called "Ravenshoe," 
 there is a very striking example of the same thing. A cav- 
 alry-soldier, waiting in the saddle for the order to charge 
 the enemy, observes on the back of the soldier before him 
 a grease-spot which looks exactly like the map of Sweden, 
 and begins to think that if the outline of Norway were be- 
 side it, the upper part of the map would go over the shoulder 
 of the man. This fancy comes to him in a moment when 
 he believes himself going to certain death. 
 
 Now we will take a longer poem, very celebrated, en- 
 titled "The Cloud Confines." 
 
 The day is dark and the night 
 
 To him that would search their heart; 
 
 No lips of cloud that will part 
 Nor morning song in the light: 
 
 Only, gazing alone, 
 
 To him wild shadows are shown. 
 
 Deep under deep unknown, 
 And height above unknown height. 
 
42 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Still we say as we go, — 
 
 "Strange to think by the way, 
 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That shall we know one day." 
 
 The Past is over and fled ; 
 
 Named new, we name it the old ; 
 
 Thereof some tale hath been told, 
 But no word comes from the dead ; 
 
 Whether at all they be, 
 
 Or whether as bond or free. 
 
 Or whether they too were we. 
 Or by what spell they have sped. 
 
 Still we say as we go, — 
 
 "Strange to think by the way. 
 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That shall we know one day." 
 
 What of the heart of hate 
 
 That beats in thy breast, O Time ? — 
 Red strife from the furthest prime. 
 
 And anguish of fierce debate; 
 War that shatters her slain, 
 And peace that grinds them as grain, 
 And eyes fixed ever in vain 
 
 On the pitiless eyes of Fate. 
 Still we say as we go, — 
 
 "Strange to think by the way. 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That shall we know one day." 
 
 What of the heart of love 
 
 That bleeds in thy breast, O Man ? — 
 Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban 
 
 Of fangs that mock them above ; 
 Thy bells prolonged unto knells, 
 Thy hope that a breath dispels. 
 Thy bitter forlorn farewells 
 
 And the empty echoes thereof? 
 Still we say as we go, — 
 
 "Strange to think by the way. 
 Whatever there is to know. 
 That shall we know one day." 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 43 
 
 The sky leans dumb on the sea, 
 
 Aweary with all its wings ; 
 
 And oh ! the song the sea sings 
 Is dark everlastingly. 
 
 Our past is clean forgot, 
 
 Our present is and is not, 
 
 Our future's a sealed seedplot, 
 And what betwixt them are we ? 
 
 Still we say as we go, — 
 
 "Strange to think by the way, 
 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 
 That shall we know one day." 
 
 This dark poetry is very different from the optimism of 
 Tennyson; and we uncomfortably feel it to be much more 
 true. In spite of all its wonderful tenderness and caressing 
 hopefulness, we feel that Tennyson's poetry does not illumi- 
 nate the sombre problems of life. But Rossetti will not be 
 found to be a pessimist. I shall presently show, by exam- 
 ples, the difference between poetical pessimism and Ros- 
 setti's thoughtful melancholy. He is simply communing 
 with us about the mystery of the universe — sadly enough, 
 but always truthfully. We may even suspect a slight 
 mockery in the burthen of his poem : 
 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That shall we know one day. 
 
 Suppose there is nothing to know*? "Very well," the poet 
 would answer, "then we shall know nothing." Although 
 by education and by ancestry a Roman Catholic, Rossetti 
 seems to have had just as little faith as any of his great 
 contemporaries; the artistic and emotional side of Catholi- 
 cism made strong appeal to his nature as an artist, but so far 
 as personal belief is concerned we may judge him by his 
 own lines : 
 
 Would God I knew there were a God to thank 
 When thanks arise in me ! 
 
44 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Nevertheless we have here no preacher of negation, but a 
 sincere doubter. We know nothing of the secret of the uni- 
 verse, the meaning of its joy and pain and impermanency ; 
 we do not know anything of the dead; we do not know the 
 meaning of time or space or life. But just for that reason 
 there may be marvellous things to know. The dead do not 
 come back, but we do not know whether they could come 
 back, nor even the real meaning of death. Do we even 
 know, he asks, whether the dead were not ourselves *? This 
 thought, like the thought in the poem "Sudden Light," is 
 peculiar to Rossetti. You will find nothing of this thought 
 in any other Victorian poet of great rank — except, indeed, 
 in some of the work of O'Shaughnessy, who is now coming 
 into a place of eminence only second to that of the four 
 great masters. 
 
 Besides this remarkable line, which I have asked you to 
 put in italics, you should remember those two very splendid 
 lines in the third stanza: 
 
 War that shatters her slain, 
 
 And peace that grinds them as grain. 
 
 These have become famous. The suggestion is that peace 
 is more cruel than war. In battle a man is dashed to pieces, 
 and his pain is immediately over. In the competition of 
 civil life, the weak and the stupid, no matter how good or 
 moral they may be, are practically crushed by the machinery 
 of Western civilisation, as grain might be crushed in a mill. 
 In the last stanza of the composition you will doubtless 
 have observed the pathetic reference to the meaning of the 
 song of the sea, mysterious and awful beyond all other 
 sounds of nature. Rossetti has not failed to consider this 
 sound, philosophically and emotionally, in one of his most 
 beautiful poems. And now I want to show you, by illus- 
 tration, the difference between a really pessimistic treatment 
 of a subject and Rossetti's treatment of it. Perhaps the 
 very finest example of pessimism in Victorian poetry is a 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 45 
 
 sonnet by Lee-Hamilton, on the subject of a sea-shell. 
 You know that if you take a large sea-shell of a particular 
 form, and hold it close to your ear, you will hear a sound 
 like the sound of the surf, as if the ghost of the sea were in 
 the shell. Nearly all English children have the experience 
 of listening to the sound of the sea in a shell ; it startles them 
 at first; but nobody tells them what the sound really is, 
 for that would spoil their surprise and delight. You must 
 not tell a child that there are no ghosts or fairies. Well, 
 Rossetti and Lee-Hamilton wrote about this sound of the 
 sea in a shell — but how differently I Here is Lee-Hamil- 
 ton's composition : 
 
 The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood 
 On dusty shelves, when held against the ear 
 Proclaims its stormy parent ; and we hear 
 The faint far murmur of the breaking flood. 
 We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood 
 In our own veins, impetuous and near, 
 And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear, 
 And with our feelings' ever-shifting mood. 
 
 Lo I in my heart I hear, as in a shell, 
 The murmur of a world beyond the grave, 
 Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. 
 Thou fool ; this echo is a cheat as well, — 
 The hum of earthly instincts ; and we crave 
 A world unreal as the shell-heard sea. 
 
 Of course this is a very fine poem, so far as the poetry is 
 concerned. But it is pessimism absolute. Its author, a 
 brilliant graduate of Oxford University, entered the Eng- 
 lish diplomatic service as a young man, and in the middle 
 of a promising career was attacked by a disease of the spine 
 which left him a hopeless invalid. We might say that he 
 had some reason to look at the world in a dark light. But 
 such poetry is not healthy. It is morbid. It means retro- 
 gression. It brings a sharp truth to the mind with a pain- 
 ful shock, and leaves an after-impression of gloom unspeak- 
 
46 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 able. As I said before, we must not spoil the happiness of 
 children by telling them that there are no ghosts or fairies. 
 So we must not tell the humanity which believes in happi- 
 ness after death that there is no heaven. All progress is 
 through faith and hope in something. The measure of a 
 poet is in the largeness of the thought which he can apply 
 to any subject, however trifling. Bearing this in mind, let 
 us now see how the same subject of the sea-shell appeals 
 to the thought of Rossetti. You will then perceive the 
 difference between pessimism and philosophical humani- 
 
 tarianism. 
 
 THE SEA-LIMITS 
 
 Consider the sea's listless chime : 
 Time's self it is, made audible, — 
 The murmur of the earth's own shell. 
 
 Secret continuance sublime 
 
 Is the sea's end : our sight may pass 
 No furlong further. Since time was, 
 
 This sound hath told the lapse of time. 
 
 No quiet, which is death's, — it hath 
 
 The mournfulness of ancient life, 
 
 Enduring always at dull strife. 
 As the world's heart of rest and wrath, 
 
 Its painful pulse is in the sands. 
 
 Last utterly, the whole sky stands, 
 Grey and not known, along its path. 
 
 Listen alone beside the sea. 
 
 Listen alone among the woods ; 
 
 Those voices of twin solitudes 
 Shall have one sound alike to thee: 
 
 Hark where the murmurs of thronged men 
 
 Surge and sink back and surge again, — 
 Still the one voice of wave and tree. 
 
 Gather a shell from the strewn beach 
 And listen at its lips : they sigh 
 The same desire and mystery. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 47 
 
 The echo of the whole sea's speech. 
 
 And all mankind is thus at heart 
 
 Not anything but what thou art: 
 And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each. 
 
 In the last beautiful stanza we have a comparison as 
 sublime as any ever made by any poet — of the human heart, 
 the human life, re-echoing the murmur of the infinite Sea 
 of Life. As the same sound of the sea is heard in every 
 shell, so in every human heart is the same ghostly murmur 
 of Universal Being. The sound of the sea, the sound of 
 the forest, the sound of men in cities, not only are the same 
 to the ear, but they tell the same story of pain. The sound 
 of the sea is a sound of perpetual strife, the sound of the 
 woods in the wind is a sound of ceaseless struggle, the tu- 
 mult of a great city is also a tumult of effort. In this sense 
 all the three sounds are but one, and that one is the sound 
 of life everywhere. Life is pain, and therefore sadness. 
 The world itself is like a great shell full of this sound. But 
 it is a shell on the verge of the Infinite. The millions of 
 suns, the millions of planets and moons, are all of them but 
 shells on the shore of the everlasting sea of death and birth, 
 and each would, if we could hear it, convey to our ears and 
 hearts the one same murmur of pain. This is, to my think- 
 ing, a much vaster conception than anything to be found in 
 Tennyson ; and such a poem as that of Lee-Hamilton dwin- 
 dles into nothingness beside it, for we have here all that 
 man can know of our relation to the universe, and the mys- 
 tery of that universe brought before us by a simile of in- 
 comparable sublimity. 
 
 Before leaving this important class of poems, let me cite 
 another instance of the comparative nearness of Rossetti at 
 times to Oriental thought. It is the fifteenth of that won- 
 derful set of sonnets entitled the "House of Life." 
 
 THE BIRTH-BOND 
 Have you not noted, in some family 
 
 Where two were born of a first marriage-bed, 
 
48 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 How still they own their gracious bond, though fed 
 And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee? — 
 How to their father's children they shall be 
 
 In act and thought of one goodwill ; but each 
 
 Shall for the other have, in silence speech, 
 And in a word complete community? 
 
 Even so, when I first saw you, seemed it, love. 
 That among souls allied to mine was yet 
 
 One nearer kindred than life hinted of. 
 
 O born with me somewhere that men forget. 
 And though in years of sight and sound unmet, 
 
 Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough I 
 
 This beautiful little thought of love is almost exactly the 
 same as that suggested in a well-known Japanese proverb 
 about the relations of a previous existence. We have here, 
 in an English poet, who very probably never read anything 
 about Buddhism, the very idea of the Buddhist en. The 
 whole tendency of the poet's mind was toward larger things 
 than his early training had prepared him for. 
 
 Yet it would be a mistake to suppose Rossetti a pure 
 mystic; he was too much of an artist for that. No one felt 
 the sensuous charm of life more keenly, nor the attraction 
 of plastic beauty and grace. By way of an interlude, we 
 may turn for a time to his more sensuous poetry. It is by 
 this that he is best known; for you need not suppose that 
 the general English public understands such poems as those 
 which we have been examining. Keep in mind that there 
 is a good deal of difference between the adjectives "sensu- 
 ous" and "sensual." The former has no evil meaning; it 
 refers only to sense-impression — to sensations visual, audi- 
 tory, tactile. The other adjective is more commonly used 
 in a bad sense. At one time an attempt was made to injure 
 Rossetti by applying it to his work; but all good critics have 
 severely condemned that attempt, and Rossetti must not be 
 regarded as in any sense an immoral poet. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 49 
 
 II 
 
 To the cultivated the very highest quality of emotional 
 poetry is that given by blending the artistically sensuous 
 with the mystic. This very rare quality colours the greater 
 part of Rossetti's work. Perhaps one may even say that it 
 is never entirely absent. Only, the proportions of the 
 blending vary, like those mixtures of red and blue, crimson 
 and azure, which may give us either purple or violet of dif- 
 ferent shades according to the wish of the dyer. The qual- 
 ity of mysticism dominates in the symbolic poems; we 
 might call those deep purple. The sensuous element domi- 
 nates in most of the ballads and narrative poems; we might 
 say that these have rather the tone of bright violet. But 
 even in the ballads there is a very great difference in the 
 proportions of the two qualities. The highest tone is in the 
 "Blessed Damozel," and in the beautiful narrative poem 
 of the "Staff and Scrip"; while the lowest tone is perhaps 
 that of the ballad of "Eden Bower," which describes the 
 two passions of lust and hate at their greatest intensity. 
 But everything is beautifully finished as work, and unap- 
 proachably exquisite in feeling. I think the best example 
 of what I have called the violet style is the ballad of "Troy 
 Town." 
 
 Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's Queen, 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Had two breasts of heavenly sheen, 
 The sun and moon of the heart's desire : 
 All Love's lordship lay between. 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire/) 
 
 Helen knelt at Venus' shrine, 
 
 (0 Troy Town!) 
 Saying, "A little gift is mine, 
 A little gift for a heart's desire. 
 
50 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Hear me speak and make me a sign ! 
 (0 Troy's down! 
 Tall Troy's on fire/) 
 
 "Look! I bring thee a carven cup; 
 
 (0 Troy Town!) 
 See it here as I hold it up, — 
 Shaped it is to the heart's desire, 
 Fit to fill when the gods would sup. 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 "It was moulded like my breast ; 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 He that sees it may not rest, 
 Rest at all for his heart's desire. 
 O give ear to my heart's behest! 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 "See my breast, how like it is ; 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 See it bare for the air to kiss ! 
 Is the cup to thy heart's desire ? 
 O for the breast, O make it his ! 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 "Yea, for my bosom here I sue ; 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Thou must give it where 'tis due. 
 Give it there to the heart's desire. 
 Whom do I give my bosom to? 
 
 (6> Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 "Each twin breast is an apple sweet! 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Once an apple stirred the beat 
 Of thy heart with the heart's desire: — 
 Say, who brought it then to thy feet? 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 51 
 
 "They that claimed it then were three: 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 For thy sake two hearts did he 
 Make forlorn of the heart's desire. 
 Do for him as he did for thee ! 
 
 (6^ Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 "Mine are apples grown to the south, 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Grown to taste in the days of drouth, 
 Taste and waste to the heart's desire : 
 Mine are apples meet for his mouth !" 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 Venus looked on Helen's gift, 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Looked and smiled with subtle drift. 
 Saw the work of her heart's desire : — 
 "There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!" 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 Venus looked in Helen's face, 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Knew far off an hour and place. 
 And fire lit from the heart's desire; 
 Laughed and said, "Thy gift hath grace !" 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 Cupid looked on Helen's breast, 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Saw the heart within its nest, 
 Saw the flame of the heart's desire, — 
 Marked his arrow's burning crest. 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 Cupid took another dart, 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Fledged it for another heart, 
 
52 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Winged the shaft with the heart's desire, 
 Drew the string, and said "Depart!" 
 
 (0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 Paris turned upon his bed, 
 
 {0 Troy Town!) 
 Turned upon his bed, and said, 
 Dead at heart with the heart's desire, — 
 "O to clasp her golden head I" 
 
 {0 Troy's down! 
 
 Tall Troy's on fire!) 
 
 This wonderful ballad, with its single and its double re- 
 frains, represents Rossetti's nearest approach to earth, 
 except the ballad of "Eden Bower." Usually he seldom 
 touches the ground, but moves at some distance above it, 
 just as one flies in dreams. But you will observe that the 
 mysticism here has almost vanished. There is just a little 
 ghostliness to remind you that the writer is no common 
 singer, but a poet able to give a thrill. The ghostliness is 
 chiefly in the fact of the supernatural elements involved; 
 Helen with her warm breast we feel to be a real woman, 
 but Venus and love are phantoms, who speak and act as 
 figures in sleep. This is true art under the circumstances. 
 We feel nothing more human until we come to the last 
 stanza; then we hear it in the cry of Paris. But why do 
 I say that this is high art to make the gods as they are made 
 here? The Greeks would have made Venus and Cupid 
 purely human. But Rossetti is not taking the Greek view 
 of the subject at all. He is taking the mediiEval one. He 
 is writing of Greek gods and Greek legends as such subjects 
 were felt by Chaucer and by the French poets of the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries. It would not be easy to 
 explain the mediaeval tone of the poem to you ; that would 
 require a comparison with the work of very much older 
 poets. I only want now to call your attention to the fact 
 that even in a Greek subject of the sensuous kind Rossetti 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 53 
 
 always keeps the tone of the Middle Ages; and that tone 
 was mystical. 
 
 Having given this beautiful example of the least mysti- 
 cal class of Rossetti's light poems, let us pass at once to the 
 most mystical. These are in all respects, I am not afraid 
 to say, far superior. The poem by which Rossetti became 
 first widely known and admired was "The Blessed Damo- 
 zel." This and a lovely narrative poem entitled "Staff and 
 Scrip" form the most exquisite examples of the poet's treat- 
 ment of mystical love. You should know both of them; 
 but we shall first take "The Blessed Damozel." 
 
 This is the story of a woman in heaven, speaking of the 
 man she loved on earth. She is waiting for him. She 
 watches every new soul that comes to heaven, hoping that 
 it may be the soul of her lover. While waiting thus, she 
 talks to herself about what she will do to make her lover 
 happy when he comes, how she will show him all the beau- 
 tiful things in heaven, and will introduce him to the holy 
 saints and angels. That is all. But it is very wonderful 
 in its sweetness of simple pathos, and in a peculiar, inde- 
 scribable quaintness which is not of the nineteenth century 
 at all. It is of the Middle Ages, the Italian Middle Ages 
 before the time of Raphael. The heaven painted here is 
 not the heaven of modern Christianity — if modern Chris- 
 tianity can be said to have a heaven; it is the heaven of 
 Dante, a heaven almost as sharply defined as if it were on 
 earth. 
 
 THE BLESSED DAMOZEL 
 
 The blessed damozel leaned out 
 
 From the gold bar of Heaven ; 
 Her eyes were deeper than the depth 
 
 Of waters stilled at even ; 
 She had three lilies in her hand, 
 
 And the stars in her hair were seven. 
 
 Damozel. This is only a quaint form of the same word 
 which in modern French signifies a young lady — demoiselle. 
 
54 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 The suggestion is not simply that it is a maiden that speaks, 
 but a maiden of noble blood. The idea of the poet is ex- 
 actly that of Dante in speaking of Beatrice. Seven is the 
 mystical number of Christianity. 
 
 Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, 
 
 No wrought flowers did adorn, 
 But a white rose of Mary's gift, 
 
 For service meetly worn ; 
 Her hair that lay along her back 
 
 Was yellow like ripe corn. 
 
 Clasp. The ornamental fastening of the dress at the 
 neck. "From clasp to hem" thus signifies simply "from 
 neck to feet," for the hem of a garment means especially 
 its lower edge. Wrought flowers here means embroidered 
 flowers. The dress has no ornament and no girdle; it is a 
 dress of the thirteenth century as to form ; but it may inter- 
 est you to know that usually in religious pictures of angels 
 and heavenly souls (the French religious prints are incom- 
 parably the best) there is no girdle, and the robe falls 
 straight from neck to feet. Service. The maiden in 
 heaven becomes a servant of the Mother of God. But the 
 mediaeval idea was that the daughter of a very noble house, 
 entering heaven, might be honoured by being taken into the 
 service of Mary, just as in this world one might be hon- 
 oured by being taken into the personal service of a queen 
 or emperor. A white rose is worn as the badge or mark 
 of this distinction, because white is the symbol of chastity, 
 and Mary is especially the patron of chastity. In heaven 
 also — the heaven of Dante — the white rose has many sym- 
 bolic significations. Telloiv. Compare "Elle est blonde 
 comme le ble.'' (De Musset.) 
 
 Herseemed she scarce had been a day 
 
 One of God's choristers ; 
 The wonder was not yet quite gone 
 
 From that still look of hers; 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 55 
 
 Albeit, to them she left, her day 
 Had counted as ten years. 
 
 Herseemed. This word is very unusual, even obsolete. 
 Formerly instead of saying "it seems to me," "it seems to 
 him," English people used to say meseems, himseems, her- 
 seems. The word "meseems" is still used, but only in the 
 present, with rare exceptions. It is becoming obsolete also. 
 Choristers. Choir-singers. The daily duty of angels and 
 souls in heaven was supposed to be to sing the praises of 
 God, just as on earth hymns are sung in church. Albeit. 
 An ancient form of "although." 
 
 (To one, it is ten years of years, 
 
 . . . Yet now, and in this place. 
 Surely she leaned o'er me — her hair 
 
 Fell all about my face. . . . 
 Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves. 
 
 The whole year sets apace.) 
 
 Ten years of years. That is, years composed not of three 
 hundred and sixty-five days, but of three hundred and sixty- 
 five years. To the lover on earth, deprived of his beloved 
 by death, the time passes slowly so that a day seems as long 
 as a year. Sometimes he imagines that he feels the dead 
 bending over him — that he feels her hair falling over his 
 face. When he looks, he finds that it is only the leaves of 
 the trees that have been falling upon him; and he knows 
 that the autumn has come, and that the year is slowly- 
 dying. 
 
 It was the rampart of God's house 
 
 That she was standing on; 
 By God built over the sheer depth 
 
 The which is Space begun ; 
 So high, that looking downward thence 
 
 She scarce could see the sun. 
 
 Rampart^ you know, means part of a fortification ; all the 
 nobility of the Middle Ages lived in castles or fortresses. 
 
56 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 and their idea of heaven was necessarily the idea of a splen- 
 did castle. In the "Song of Roland" we find the angels 
 and the saints spoken of as knights and ladies, and the lan- 
 guage they use is the language of chivalry. Sheer depths 
 straight down, perpendicularly, absolute. God's castle 
 overlooks, not a landscape, but space ; the sun and the stars 
 lie far below. 
 
 It lies in Heaven, across the flood 
 
 Of ether, as a bridge. 
 Beneath, the tides of day and night 
 
 With flame and darkness ridge 
 The void, as low as where this earth 
 
 Spins like a fretful midge. 
 
 Around her, lovers, newly met 
 
 'Mid deathless love's acclaims. 
 Spoke ever more among themselves 
 
 Their heart-remembered names ; 
 And the souls mounting up to God 
 
 Went by her like thin flames. 
 
 Ether. This is not the modern word, the scientific ether, 
 but the Greek and also mediaeval ether, the most spiritual 
 form of matter. The house of God, or heaven, rests upon 
 nothing, but stretches out like a bridge over the ether itself. 
 Far below something like enormous waves seem to be sound- 
 lessly passing, light and dark. Even in heaven, and 
 throughout the universe, it was supposed in the Middle Ages 
 that there were successions of day and night independent of 
 the sun. These are the "tides" described. Ridge the void 
 means, make ridges or wave-like lines in the ether of space. 
 Midge is used in English just as the word kobai is used in 
 Japanese. Fretful midge, a midge that moves very quickly 
 as if fretted or frightened. 
 
 And still she bowed herself and stooped 
 
 Out of the circling charm ; 
 Until her bosom must have made 
 
 The bar she leaned on warm, 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 57 
 
 And the lilies lay as if asleep 
 Along her bended arm. 
 
 Charm. The circling charm is not merely the gold rail- 
 ing upon which she leans, but the magical limits of heaven 
 itself which holds the souls back. She cannot pass beyond 
 them. Otherwise her wish would take her back to this 
 world to watch by her living lover. But only the angels, 
 who are the messengers of heaven, can go beyond the bound- 
 aries. 
 
 From the fixed place of Heaven she saw 
 
 Time like a pulse shake fierce 
 Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove 
 
 Within the gulf to pierce 
 Its path ; and now she spoke as when 
 
 The stars sang in their spheres. 
 
 Shake. Here in the sense of to beat like a heart or 
 pulse. Heaven about her is motionless, fixed; but looking 
 down upon the universe she sees a luminous motion, regu- 
 lar like a heart-beat; that is Time. Its path. Her eyes 
 tried to pierce a way or path for themselves through space; 
 that is, she made a desperate effort to see farther than she 
 could see. She is looking in vain for the coming of her 
 lover. Their spheres. This is an allusion to a biblical 
 verse, "when the morning stars sang together." It was said 
 that when the world was created the stars sang for joy. 
 
 The sun was gone now ; the curled moon 
 
 Was like a little feather 
 Fluttering far down the gulf; and now 
 
 She spoke through the still weather. 
 Her voice was like the voice the stars 
 
 Had when they sang together. 
 
 (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song, 
 
 Strove not her accents there, 
 Fain to be hearkened? When those bells 
 
 Possessed the mid-day air. 
 
58 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Strove not her steps to reach my side 
 Down all the echoing stair?) 
 
 Stair. We must suppose the lover to be in or near a 
 church with a steeple, or lofty bell tower. Outside he 
 hears a bird singing; and in the sweetness of its song he 
 thinks that he hears the voice of the dead girl speaking to 
 him. Then, as the church bells send down to him great 
 sweet waves of sound from the tower, he imagines that he 
 can hear, in the volume of the sound, something like a 
 whispering of robes and faint steps as of a spirit trying to 
 descend to his side. 
 
 "I wish that he were come to me, 
 
 For he will come," she said. 
 "Have I not prayed in Heaven"? — on earth, 
 
 Lord, Lord, has he not prayed ? 
 Are not two prayers a perfect strength ? 
 
 And shall I feel afraid? 
 
 An allusion to a verse in the New Testament — "if two 
 of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
 shall ask, it shall be done for them." She is a little afraid 
 that her lover may not get to heaven after all, but she sud- 
 denly remembers this verse, and it gives her encouragement. 
 Perfect strength means strength of prayer, the power of the 
 prayer to obtain what is prayed for. As she and he have 
 both been praying for reunion in heaven, and as Christ has 
 promised that whatever two people pray for, shall be 
 granted, she feels consoled. 
 
 "When round his head the aureole clings, 
 
 And he is clothed in white, 
 I'll take his hand and go with him 
 
 To the deep wells of light ; 
 As unto a stream we will step down, 
 
 And bathe there in God's sight. 
 
 The aureole is the circle or disk of golden light round the 
 head of a saint. Sometimes it is called a "glory." In 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 59 
 
 some respects the aureole of Christian art much resembles 
 that of Buddhist art, with this exception, that some of the 
 Oriental forms are much richer and more elaborate. Three 
 forms in Christian art are especially common — the plain 
 circle; the disk, like a moon or sun, usually made in art by 
 a solid plate of gilded material behind the head; the full 
 "glory," enshrining the whole figure. There is only one 
 curious fact to which I need further refer here; it is that 
 the Holy Ghost in Christian art has a glory of a special 
 kind — the triangle. White. This is a reference to the de- 
 scription of heaven in the paradise of St. John's vision, 
 where all the saints are represented in white garments. 
 Deep "wells of light. Another reference to St. John's vi- 
 sion. Rev. xxii, l — "And he showed me a pure river of 
 water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne 
 of God." In the heaven of the Middle Ages, as in the 
 Buddhist paradise, we find also lakes and fountains of light, 
 or of liquid jewels. 
 
 "We two will stand beside that shrine, 
 
 Occult, withheld, untrod. 
 Whose lamps are stirred continually 
 
 With prayer sent up to God ; 
 And see our old prayers, granted, melt 
 
 Each like a little cloud. 
 
 Shrine. The Holy of Holies, or innermost sanctuary of 
 heaven, imagined by mediseval faith as a sort of reserved 
 chapel. But the origin of the fancy will be explained in 
 the next note. Lamps. See again St. John's vision. Rev. 
 iv, 5 — "And there were seven lamps of fire burning before 
 the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God." These 
 mystical flames, representing special virtues and powers, 
 would be agitated according to the special virtues corre- 
 sponding to them in the ascending prayers of men. But 
 now we come to another and stranger thought. A little 
 cloud. See again Rev. v, 8, in which reference is made to 
 
60 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 "golden vials, full of incense, which are the prayers of the 
 saints." Here we see the evidence of a curious belief that 
 prayers in heaven actually become transformed into the sub- 
 stance of incense. By the Talmudists it was said that they 
 were turned into beautiful flowers. Again, in Rev. viii, 3, 
 we have an allusion to this incense, made of prayer, being 
 burned in heaven — "And there was given unto him much in- 
 cense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints." 
 Now the poem can be better understood. The Blessed 
 Damozel thinks that her old prayers, that is to say, the 
 prayers that she made on earth, together with those of her 
 lover, are in heaven in the shape of incense. As long as 
 prayer is not granted, it remains incense; when granted it 
 becomes perfume smoke and vanishes. Therefore she says, 
 "We shall see our old prayers, granted, melt each like a 
 little cloud" — that is, a cloud of smoke of incense. 
 
 "We two will lie i' the shadow of 
 
 That living mystic tree 
 Within whose secret growth the Dove 
 
 Is sometimes felt to be, 
 While every leaf that His plumes touch 
 
 Saith His Name audibly. 
 
 The heavenly tree of life is described in Rev. xxvii, 2, as 
 bearing twelve different kinds of fruit, one for each of the 
 twelve months of the year, while its leaves heal all diseases 
 or troubles of any kind. The Dove is the Holy Ghost, who 
 is commonly represented in Christian art by this bird, when 
 he is not represented by a tongue or flame of fire. Every 
 time that a leaf touches the body of the Dove, we are told 
 that the leaf repeats the name of the Holy Ghost. In 
 what language? Probably in Latin, and the sound of the 
 Latin name would be like the sound of the motion of leaves, 
 stirred by a wind: functus Spiritus. 
 
 "And I myself will teach to him, 
 I myself, lying so, 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 61 
 
 The songs I sing here ; which his voice 
 
 Shall pause in, hushed and slow, 
 And find some knowledge at each pause, 
 
 Or some new thing to know." 
 
 (Alas ! we two, we two, thou say'st ! 
 
 Yea, one wast thou with me 
 That once of old. But shall God lift 
 
 To endless unity 
 The soul whose likeness with thy soul 
 
 Was but its love for thee?) 
 
 It is the lover who now speaks, commenting upon the 
 imagined words of the beloved in heaven. Endless unity 
 here has a double meaning, signifying at once the mystical 
 union of the soul with God, and the reunion forever of 
 lovers separated by death. The lover doubts whether he 
 can be found worthy to enter heaven, because his only like- 
 ness to the beloved was in his love for her; that is to say, 
 his merit was not so much in being good as in loving good 
 in another. 
 
 "We two," she said, "will seek the groves 
 
 Where the lady Mary is. 
 With her fine handmaidens, whose names 
 
 Are five sweet symphonies, 
 Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, 
 
 Margaret, and Rosalys. 
 
 Notice the mediaeval method of speaking of the mother 
 of God as "the lady Mary" ; such would have been the form 
 of address for a princess or queen in those times. So King 
 Arthur's wife, in the old romance, is called the lady Guine- 
 vere. Symphonies here has only the simplest meaning of 
 a sweet sound, not of a combination of sounds; but the use 
 of the word nevertheless implies to a delicate ear that the 
 five names make harmony with each other. They are 
 names of saints, but also favourite names given to daughters 
 of great families as Christian names. The picture is simply 
 
62 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 that of the lady of a great castle, surrounded by her wait- 
 ing women, engaged in weaving and sewing. 
 
 "Circlewlse sit they, with bound locks 
 
 And foreheads garlanded; 
 Into the fine cloth white like flame 
 
 Weaving the golden thread, 
 To fashion the birth-robes for them 
 
 Who are just born, being dead. 
 
 Wdlk bound locks means only with the hair tied up, not 
 flowing loose, as was usual in figures of saints and angels. 
 They are weaving garments for new souls received into 
 heaven, just as mothers might weave cloth for a child soon 
 to be born. The description of the luminous white cloth 
 might be compared with descriptions in Revelation. Being 
 dead. Christianity, like the Oriental religions, calls death 
 a rebirth; but the doctrinal idea is entirely different. You 
 will remember that the Greeks represented the soul under 
 the form of a butterfly. Christianity approaches the Greek 
 fancy by considering the human body as a sort of caterpil- 
 lar, which enters the pupa-state at death; the soul is like 
 the butterfly leaving the chrysalis. So far everything is 
 easy to understand ; but this rebirth of the soul is only half 
 a rebirth in the Christian sense. The body is also to be 
 born again at a later day. At present there are only souls 
 in heaven; but after the judgment day the same bodies 
 which they used to have during life are to be given back 
 to them. Therefore Rossetti is not referring here to rebirth 
 except in the sense of spiritual rebirth, as Christ used it, in 
 saying "Ye must be born again" — that is, obtain new 
 hearts, new feelings. What in Oriental poetry would rep- 
 resent a fact of belief, here represents only the symbol of a 
 belief, a belief of a totally different kind. 
 
 "He shall fear, haply, and be dumb : 
 
 Then will I lay my cheek 
 To his, and tell about our love, 
 
 Not once abashed or weak : 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 63 
 
 And the dear Mother will approve 
 My pride, and let me speak. 
 
 "Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, 
 
 To Him round whom all souls 
 Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads 
 
 Bowed with their aureoles : 
 And angels meeting us shall sing 
 
 To their citherns and citoles. 
 
 "There will I ask of Christ the Lord 
 
 Thus much for him and me : — 
 Only to live as once on earth 
 
 With Love, only to be, 
 As then awhile, forever now 
 
 Together, I and he." 
 
 The Damozel's idea is that her lover will be ashamed 
 and afraid to speak to the mother of God when he is intro- 
 duced to her; but she will not be afraid to say how much 
 she loves her lover, and she will cause the lady Mary to 
 bring them both into the presence of God himself, identified 
 here rather with the Son than with the Father. Citherns 
 and citoles. Both words are derived from the Latin 
 cithara^ a harp, and both refer to long obsolete kinds of 
 stringed instruments used during the twelfth, thirteenth, 
 and fourteenth centuries. 
 
 She gazed and listened and then said. 
 
 Less sad of speech than mild, — 
 "All this is when he comes." She ceased. 
 
 The light thrilled toward her, filled 
 With angels in strong level flight. 
 
 Her eyes prayed, and she smiled. 
 
 (I saw her smile.) But soon their path 
 
 Was vague in distant spheres : 
 And then she cast her arms along 
 
 The golden barriers. 
 And laid her face between her hands. 
 
 And wept. (I heard her tears.) 
 
64. STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 In these beautiful lines we are reminded of the special 
 duty of angels, from which they take their name, "mes- 
 senger" — the duty of communicating between earth and 
 heaven and bringing the souls of the dead to paradise. The 
 Damozel, waiting and watching for her lover, imagines, 
 whenever she sees the angels coming from the direction of 
 the human world, that her lover may be coming with them. 
 At last she sees a band of angels flying straight toward her 
 through the luminous ether, which shivers and flashes be- 
 fore their coming. "Her eyes prayed," that is, expressed 
 the prayerful desire that it might be her beloved; and she 
 feels almost sure that it is. Then comes her disappoint- 
 ment, for the angels pass out of sight in another direction, 
 and she cries — even in heaven. At least her lover imagines 
 that he saw and heard her weeping. 
 
 The use of the word Damozel needs a little more explana- 
 tion, that you may understand the great art with which the 
 poem was arranged. The Old French damoisel (later 
 damoiseau) signified a young lad of noble birth or knightly 
 parentage, employed in a noble house as page or squire. 
 Originally there was no feminine form; but afterwards the 
 form damoselle came into use, signifying a young lady in 
 the corresponding capacity. Thus Rossctti in choosing the 
 old English form damozel selected perhaps the only possible 
 word which could exactly express the position of the Damo- 
 zel in heaven, as well as the mediaeval conception of that 
 heaven. Our English word "damsel," so common in the 
 Bible, is a much later form than damozel. There was, 
 however, a Middle English form spelled almost like the 
 form used by Rossetti, except that there was an "s" instead 
 of a "z." 
 
 Now you will better see the meaning of Rossetti's mysti- 
 cism. When you make religion love, without ceasing to 
 be religious, and make love religion, without ceasing to be 
 human and sensuous, in the good sense of the word, then 
 you have made a form of mysticism. The blending in 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 65 
 
 Rossetti is very remarkable, and has made this particular 
 poem the most famous thing which he wrote. We have 
 here a picture of heaven, with all its mysteries and splen- 
 dours, suspended over an ocean of ether, through which 
 souls are passing like an upward showering of fire; and all 
 this is spiritual enough. But the Damozel, with her yellow 
 hair, and her bosom making warm what she leans upon, is 
 very human; and her thoughts are not of the immaterial 
 kind. The suggestions about bathing together, about em- 
 bracing, cheek against cheek, and about being able to love 
 in heaven as on earth, have all the delightful innocence of 
 the Middle Ages, when the soul was thought of only as 
 another body of finer substance. Now it is altogether 
 the human warmth of the poem that makes its intense at- 
 traction. Rarely to-day can any Western poet write satis- 
 factorily about heavenly things, because we have lost the 
 artless feeling of the Middle Ages, and we cannot think of 
 the old heaven as a reality. In order to write such things, 
 we should have to get back the heart of our fathers; and 
 Rossetti happened to be born with just such a heart. He 
 had probably little or no real faith in religion; but he was 
 able to understand exactly how religious people felt hun- 
 dreds of years ago. 
 
 Let us now turn to a more earthly phase of the same tone 
 of love which appears in "The Blessed Damozel." Now 
 it is the lover himself on earth who is speaking, while con- 
 templating the portrait of the dead woman whom he loved. 
 We shall only make extracts, on account of the extremely 
 elaborate and difficult structure of the poem. 
 
 THE PORTRAIT 
 
 This Is her picture as she was : 
 
 It seems a thing to wonder on, 
 As though mine image in the glass 
 
 Should tarry when myself am gone. 
 I gaze until she seems to stir, — 
 Until mine eyes almost aver 
 
66 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 That now, even now, the sweet lips part 
 To breathe the words of the sweet heart : — 
 And yet the earth is over her. 
 
 Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears 
 
 The beating heart of Love's own breast, — 
 Where round the secret of all spheres 
 
 All angels lay their wings to rest, — 
 How shall my soul stand rapt and awed, 
 When, by the new birth borne abroad 
 
 Throughout the music of the suns. 
 
 It enters in her soul at once 
 And knows the silence there for God ! 
 
 Here is the very highest form of mystical love; for love 
 is identified with God, and the reunion in heaven is a blend- 
 ing, not with a mere fellow soul, but with the Supreme 
 Being. By "silence" here you must understand rest, heav- 
 enly peace. The closing stanza of the poem contains one 
 of the most beautiful images of comparison ever made in 
 any language. 
 
 Here with her face doth memory sit 
 Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline, 
 
 Till other eyes shall look from it, 
 Eyes of the spirit's Palestine, 
 
 Even than the old gaze tenderer: 
 
 While hopes and aims long lost with her 
 Stand round her image side by side, 
 Like tombs of pilgrims that have died 
 
 About the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 What the poet means is this: "Now I sit, remembering 
 the past, and look at her face in the picture, as long as the 
 light of day remains. Presently, with twilight the stars 
 will shine out like eyes in heaven — heaven which is my 
 Holy Land, because she is there. Those stars will then 
 seem to me even as her eyes, but more beautiful, more lov- 
 ing than the living eyes. The hopes and the projects which 
 I used to entertain for her sake, and which died when she 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 67 
 
 died — they come back to mind, but like the graves ranged 
 around the grave of Christ at Jerusalem." The reference 
 is of course to the great pilgrimages of the Middle Ages 
 made to Jerusalem. 
 
 More than the artist speaks here; and if there be not 
 strong faith, there is at least beautiful hope. A more ten- 
 der feeling could not be combined with a greater pathos; 
 but Rossetti often reaches the very same supreme quality 
 of sentiment, even in poems of a character closely allied to 
 romance. We can take "The Staif and Scrip" as an ex- 
 ample of mediaeval story of the highest emotional quality. 
 
 "Who rules these lands?" the Pilgrim said. 
 
 "Stranger, Queen Blanchelys." 
 "And who has thus harried them?" he said. 
 
 "It was Duke Luke did this ; 
 God's ban be his I" 
 
 The Pilgrim said, "Where is your house ? 
 
 I'll rest there, with your will." 
 "You've but to climb these blackened boughs 
 
 And you'll see it over the hill, 
 For it burns still." 
 
 "Which road, to seek your Queen?" said he. 
 
 "Nay, nay, but with some wound 
 You'll fly back hither, it may be, 
 
 And by your blood i' the ground 
 My place be found." 
 
 "Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head, 
 
 And mine, where I will go ; 
 For He is here and there," he said. 
 
 He passed the hillside, slow. 
 And stood below. 
 
 So far the poem is so simple that no one could expect 
 anything very beautiful in the sequence. We only have 
 a conversation between a pilgrim from the Holy Land, re- 
 turned to his native country (probably mediaeval France), 
 
68 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 and a peasant or yeoman belonging to the estate of a certain 
 Queen. We may suspect, however, from the conversation, 
 that the pilgrim is a knight or noble, and probably has been 
 a crusader. He sees that the country has been ravaged by 
 some merciless enemy ; and the peasant tells him that it was 
 Duke Luke. The peasant's house is burning; he himself 
 is hiding in terror of his life. But the pilgrim is not afraid, 
 and goes to see the Queen in spite of all warning. One can 
 imagine very well that the purpose of the Duke in thus 
 making war upon a woman was to force a marriage as well 
 as to acquire territory. Now it was the duty of a true 
 knight to help any woman unjustly oppressed or attacked; 
 therefore the pilgrim's wish to see the Queen is prompted 
 by this sense of duty. Hereafter the poem has an entirely 
 different tone. 
 
 The Queen sat idle by her loom : 
 
 She heard the arras stir, 
 And looked up sadly : through the room 
 
 The sweetness sickened her 
 Of musk and myrrh. 
 
 Her women, standing two and two, 
 
 In silence combed the fleece. 
 The Pilgrim said, "Peace be with you, 
 
 Lady" ; and bent his knees. 
 
 She answered, "Peace." 
 
 Her eyes were like the wave within; 
 
 Like water-reeds the poise 
 Of her soft body, dainty-thin ; 
 
 And like the water's noise 
 Her plaintive voice. 
 
 The naked walls of rooms during the Middle Ages were 
 covered with drapery or tapestry, on which figures were 
 embroidered or woven. Arras was the name given to a 
 kind of tapestry made at the town of Arras in France. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 69 
 
 For him, the stream had never well'd 
 
 In desert tracts malign 
 So sweet ; nor had he ever felt 
 
 So faint in the sunshine 
 Of Palestine. 
 
 Right so, he knew that he saw weep 
 
 Each night through every dream 
 The Queen's own face, confused in sleep 
 
 With visages supreme 
 
 Not known to him. 
 
 At this point the poem suddenly becomes mystical. It 
 is not chance nor will that has brought these two together, 
 but some divine destiny. As he sees the Queen's face for 
 the first time with his eyes, he remembers having seen the 
 same face many times before in his dreams. And when he 
 saw it in dreams, it was also the face of a woman weeping; 
 and there were also other faces in the dream, not human 
 but "supreme" — probably angels or other heavenly beings. 
 
 "Lady," he said, "your lands lie burnt 
 
 And waste : to meet your foe 
 All fear : this I have seen and learnt. 
 
 Say that it shall be so. 
 And I will go." 
 
 She gazed at him. "Your cause is just. 
 
 For I have heard the same :" 
 He said: "God's strength shall be my trust. 
 
 Fall it to good or grame, 
 'Tis in His name." 
 
 "Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead. 
 
 Why should you toil to break 
 A grave, and fall therein?" she said. 
 
 He did not pause but spake: 
 "For my vow's sake." 
 
 "Can such vows be. Sir — to God's ear, 
 Not to God's will ?" "My vow 
 
70 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Remains : God heard me there as here," 
 He said, with reverent brow, 
 "Both then and now." 
 
 They gazed together, he and she, 
 
 The minute while he spoke ; 
 And when he ceased, she suddenly 
 
 Looked round upon her folk 
 As though she woke. 
 
 "Fight, Sir," she said ; "my prayers in pain 
 
 Shall be your fellowship." 
 He whispered one among her train, — 
 
 "To-morrow bid her keep 
 
 This staff and scrip." 
 
 The scrip was a kind of wallet or bag carried by pil- 
 grims. Now we have a few sensuous touches, of the kind 
 in which Rossetti excels all other poets, because they always 
 are kept within the extreme limits of artistic taste. 
 
 She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt 
 
 About his body there 
 As sweet as her own arms he felt. 
 
 He kissed its blade, all bare. 
 Instead of her. 
 
 She sent him a green banner wrought 
 
 With one white lily stem, 
 To bind his lance with when he fought. 
 
 He writ upon the same 
 
 And kissed her name. 
 
 "Wrought" here signifies embroidered with the design 
 of the white lily. Remember that the Queen's name is 
 white lily (Blanchelys), and the flower is her crest. It was 
 the custom for every knight to have fastened to his lance a 
 small flag or pennon — also called sometimes "pennant." 
 
 She sent him a white shield, whereon 
 She bade that he should trace 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 71 
 
 His will. He blent fair hues that shone. 
 And in a golden space 
 
 He kissed her face. 
 
 Being appointed by the Queen her knight, it would have 
 been more customary that she should tell him what design 
 he should put upon his shield — heraldic privileges coming 
 from the sovereign only. But she tells him generously 
 that he may choose any design that he pleases. He returns 
 the courtesy very beautifully by painting the Queen's face 
 on the shield upon a background of gold, and kissing the 
 image. By "space" here must be understood a quarter, or 
 compartment, of the shield, according to the rules of her- 
 aldry. 
 
 Born of the day that died, that eve 
 
 Now dying sank to rest; 
 As he, in likewise taking leave, 
 
 Once with a heaving breast 
 Looked to the west. 
 
 And there the sunset skies unseal'd, 
 
 Like lands he never knew, 
 Beyond to-morrow's battle-field 
 
 Lay open out of view 
 To ride into. 
 
 Here we have the suggestion of emotions known to us 
 all, when looking into a beautiful sunset sky in which there 
 appeared to be landscapes of gold and purple and other 
 wonderful colours, like some glimpse of a heavenly world. 
 Notice the double suggestion of this verse. The knight, 
 having bidden the Queen good-bye, is riding home, looking, 
 as he rides, into the sunset and over the same plain where 
 he must fight to-morrow. Looking, he sees such landscapes 
 — strangely beautiful, more beautiful than anything in the 
 real world. Then he thinks that heaven might be like 
 that. At the same time he has a premonition that he is 
 
7a STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 going to be killed the next day, and this thought comes to 
 him: "Perhaps I shall ride into that heaven to-morrow." 
 
 Next day till dark the women pray'd; 
 
 Nor any might know there 
 How the fight went; the Queen has bade 
 
 That there do come to her 
 No messenger. 
 
 The Queen is pale, her maidens ail; 
 
 And to the organ-tones 
 They sing but faintly, who sang well 
 
 The matin-orisons, 
 
 The lauds and nones. 
 
 Orison means a prayer; matin has the same meaning as 
 the French word, spelled in the same way, for morning. 
 Matin-orisons are morning prayers, but special prayers be- 
 longing to the ancient church services are intended; these 
 prayers are still called matins. Lauds is also the name of 
 special prayers of the Roman morning service; the word 
 properly means "praises." Nones is the name of a third 
 special kind of prayers, intended to be repeated or sung at 
 the ninth hour of the morning — ^hence nones. 
 
 Lo, Father, is thine ear inclin'd, 
 
 And hath thine angel pass'd? 
 For these thy watchers now are blind 
 
 With vigil, and at last 
 Dizzy with fast. 
 
 Weak now to them the voice o' the priest 
 
 As any trance affords ; 
 And when each anthem failed and ceas'd, 
 
 It seemed that the last chords 
 Still sang the words. 
 
 By Father is here meant God — probably in the person 
 of Christ. To incline the ear means to listen. When this 
 expression is used of God it always means listening to 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 73 
 
 prayer. In the second line angel has the double significa- 
 tion of spirit and messenger, but especially the latter. 
 Why is the expression "at last" used here*? It was the 
 custom when making special prayer both to remain without 
 sleep, which was called "keeping vigil" or watch, and to 
 remain without food, or "to fast." The evening has come 
 and the women have not eaten anything all day. . At first 
 they were too anxious to feel hungry, but at last as the night 
 advances, they become too weak. 
 
 "Oh, what is the light that shines so red? 
 
 'Tis long since the sun set" ; 
 Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid: 
 
 " 'Twas dim but now, and yet 
 The light is great." 
 
 Quoth the other : " 'Tis our sight is dazed 
 
 That we see flame i' the air." 
 But the Queen held her brows and gazed, 
 
 And said, "It is the glare 
 Of torches there." 
 
 Held her brows — that is, put her hand above her eyes 
 so as to see better by keeping off the light in the room. 
 There is a very nice suggestion here; the Queen hears and 
 sees better than the young girls, not simply because she has 
 finer senses, or because she has more to fear by the loss of 
 her kingdom. It is the intensification of the senses caused 
 by love that makes her see and hear so well. 
 
 "Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread? 
 
 All day it was so still" ; 
 Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid: 
 
 "Unto the furthest hill 
 The air they fill." 
 
 Quoth the other : " 'Tis our sense is blurr'd 
 
 With all the chants gone by." 
 But the Queen held her breath and heard, 
 
 And said, "It is the cry 
 Of Victory." 
 
74. STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 The first of all the rout was sound, 
 
 The next were dust and flame, 
 And then the horses shook the ground; 
 
 And in the thick of them 
 A still band came. 
 
 I think that no poet in the world ever performed a 
 greater feat than this stanza, in which, and in three lines 
 only, the whole effect of the spectacle and sound of an army 
 returning at night has been given. We must suppose that 
 the women have gone out to wait for the army. It comes ; 
 but the night is dark, and they hear at first only the sound 
 of the coming, the tramp of black masses of men passing. 
 Probably these would be the light troops, archers and foot- 
 men. The lights are still behind, with the cavalry. Then 
 the first appearance is made in the light of torches — foot 
 soldiers still, covered with dust and carrying lights with 
 them. Then they feel the ground shake under the weight 
 of the feudal cavalry — the knights come. But where is 
 the chief? No chief is visible; but, surrounded by the 
 mounted knights, there is a silent company of men on foot 
 carrying something. The Queen wants to know what it 
 is. It is covered with leaves and branches so that she can- 
 not see it. 
 
 "Oh what do ye bring out of the fight. 
 
 Thus hid beneath these boughs*?" 
 "Thy conquering guest returns to-night. 
 
 And yet shall not carouse, 
 
 Queen, in thy house." 
 
 After a victory there was always in those days a great 
 feast of wine-drinking, or carousal, l^o carouse means to 
 take part in such noisy festivity. When the Queen puts 
 her question, she is kindly but grimly answered, so that she 
 knows the dead body of her knight must be under the 
 branches. But being a true woman and lover, her love 
 conquers her fear and pain ; she must see him again, no mat- 
 ter how horribly his body may have been wounded. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 75 
 
 "Uncover ye his face," she said. 
 
 "O changed in little space !" 
 She cried, "O pale that was so red I 
 
 O God, O God of grace ! 
 Cover his face!" 
 
 His sword was broken in his hand 
 
 Where he had kissed the blade. 
 "O soft steel that could not withstand! 
 
 O my hard heart unstayed, 
 
 That prayed and prayed I" 
 
 Why does she call her heart hard'? Because she natu- 
 rally reproaches herself with his death. Unstayed means 
 uncomforted, unsupported. There is a suggestion that she 
 prayed and prayed in vain because her heart had suffered 
 her to send that man to battle. 
 
 His bloodied banner crossed his mouth 
 
 Where he had kissed her name. 
 "O east, and west, and north, and south, 
 
 Fair flew my web, for shame. 
 
 To guide Death's aim!" 
 
 The tints were shredded from his shield 
 
 Where he had kissed her face. 
 "Oh, of all gifts that I could yield. 
 
 Death only keeps its place. 
 My gift and grace!" 
 
 The expression ''tny web" implies that the Queen had her- 
 self woven the material of the flag. The word "web" is 
 not now often used in modern prose in this sense — we say 
 texture, stuff, material instead. A shred especially means 
 a small torn piece. "To shred from" would therefore mean 
 to remove in small torn pieces — or, more simply expressed, 
 to scratch off, or rend away. Of course the rich thick paint- 
 ing upon the shield is referred to. Repeated blows upon 
 the surface would remove the painting in small shreds. 
 This is very pathetic when rightly studied. She sees that 
 
76 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 all the presents she made to him, banner, sword, shield, have 
 been destroyed in the battle; and with bitter irony, the irony 
 of grief, she exclaims, "The only present I made him that 
 could not be taken back or broken was death. Death was 
 my grace, my one kindness!" 
 
 Then stepped a damsel to her side, 
 
 And spoke, and needs must weep; 
 "For his sake, lady, if he died, 
 
 He prayed of thee to keep 
 
 This staff and scrip." 
 
 That night they hung above her bed, 
 
 Till morning wet with tears. 
 Year after year above her head 
 
 Her bed his token wears, 
 
 Five years, ten years. 
 
 That night the passion of her grief 
 
 Shook them as there they hung 
 Each year the wind that shed the leaf 
 
 Shook them and in its tongue 
 A message flung. 
 
 We must suppose the Queen's bed to have been one of 
 the great beds used in the Middle Ages and long after- 
 wards, with four great pillars supporting a kind of little 
 roof or ceiling above it, and also supporting curtains, which 
 would be drawn around the bed at night. The staff and 
 scrip and the token would have been hung to the ceiling, 
 or as the French call it del, of the bed; and therefore they 
 might be shaken by a passion of grief — because a woman 
 sobbing in the bed would shake the bed, and therefore any- 
 thing hung to the awning above it. 
 
 And once she woke with a clear mind 
 
 That letters writ to calm 
 Her soul lay in the scrip ; to find 
 
 Only a torpid balm 
 
 And dust of palm. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 77 
 
 Sometimes when we are very unhappy, we dream that 
 what we really wish for has happened, and that the sorrow 
 is taken away. And in such dreams we are very sure that 
 what we were dreaming is true. Then we wake up to find 
 the misery come back again. The Queen has been greatly 
 sorrowing for this man, and wishing she could have some 
 news from his spirit, some message from him. One night 
 she dreams that somebody tells her, "If you will open that 
 scrip, you will find in it the message which you want." 
 Then she wakes up and finds only some palm-dust, and 
 some balm so old that it no longer has any perfume — but 
 no letter. 
 
 They shook far off with palace sport 
 
 When joust and dance were rife ; 
 And the hunt shook them from the court; 
 
 For hers, in peace or strife, 
 Was a Queen's life. 
 
 A Queen's death now : as now they shake 
 
 To gusts in chapel dim, — 
 Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake 
 
 (Carved lovely white and slim), 
 With them by him. 
 
 It would be for her, as for any one in great sorrow, a 
 consolation to be alone with her grief. But this she cannot 
 be, nor can she show her grief to any one, because she is a 
 Queen. Only when in her chamber, at certain moments, 
 can she think of the dead knight, and see the staff and scrip 
 shaking in their place, as the castle itself shakes to the sound 
 of the tournaments, dances, and the gathering of the great 
 hunting parties in the court below. 
 
 In that age it was the custom when a knight died to carve 
 an image of him, lying asleep in his armour, and this image 
 was laid upon his long tomb. When his wife died, or the 
 lady to whom he had been pledged, she was represented as 
 lying beside him, with her hands joined, as if in prayer. 
 
78 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 You will see plenty of these figures upon old tombs in Eng- 
 land. Usually a nobleman was not buried in the main 
 body of a large church, but in a chapel — which is a kind 
 of little side-church, opening into the great church. Such 
 is the case in many cathedrals; and some cathedrals, like 
 Westminster, have many chapels used as places of burial 
 and places of worship. On the altar in these little chapels 
 special services are performed for the souls of the dead 
 buried in the chapel. It is not uncommon to see, in such 
 a chapel, some relics of the dead suspended to the wall, such 
 as a shield or a flag. In this poem, by the Queen's own 
 wish, the staff and scrip of the dead knight are hung on 
 the wall above her tomb, where they are sometimes shaken 
 by the wind. 
 
 Stand up to-day, still armed, with her. 
 
 Good knight, before His brow 
 Who then as now was here and there, 
 
 Who had in mind thy vow 
 Then even as now. 
 
 The lists are set in Heaven to-day, 
 
 The bright pavilions shine ; 
 Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay ; 
 
 The trumpets sound in sign 
 That she is thine. 
 
 Not tithed with days' and years' decease 
 
 He pays thy wage He owed, 
 But with imperishable peace 
 
 Here in His own abode. 
 Thy jealous God. 
 
 Still armed refers to the representation of the dead knight 
 in full armour. Mediaeval faith imagined the warrior 
 armed in the spiritual world as he was in this life; and the 
 ghosts of dead knights used to appear in armour. The gen- 
 eral meaning of these stanzas is, "God now gives you the 
 reward which he owed to you; and unlike rewards given 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 79 
 
 to men in this world, your heavenly reward is not dimin- 
 ished by the certainty that you cannot enjoy it except for 
 a certain number of days or years. God does not keep any- 
 thing back out of his servants' wages — no tithe or tenth. 
 You will be with her forever." The adjective "jealous" 
 applied to God is a Hebrew use of the term; but it has 
 here a slightly different meaning. The idea is this, that 
 Heaven is jealous of human love when human love alone 
 is a motive of duty. Therefore the reward of duty need 
 not be expected in this world but only in Heaven. 
 
 Outside of the sonnets, which we must consider sepa- 
 rately, I do not know any more beautiful example of the 
 mystical feeling of love in Rossetti than this. It will not 
 be necessary to search any further for examples in this spe- 
 cial direction ; I think you will now perfectly understand 
 one of the peculiar qualities distinguishing Rossetti from 
 all the other Victorian poets — the mingling of religious 
 with amatory emotion in the highest form of which the 
 language is capable. 
 
 Ill 
 
 While we are discussing the ballads and shorter narrative 
 poems, let us now consider Rossetti simply as a story-teller, 
 and see how wonderful he is in some of those lighter pro- 
 ductions in which he brought the art of the refrain to a 
 perfection which nobody else, except perhaps Swinburne, 
 has equalled. Among the ballads there is but one, "Strat- 
 ton Water," conceived altogether after the old English 
 fashion; and this has no refrain. I do not know that any 
 higher praise can be given to it than the simple statement 
 that it is a perfect imitation of the old ballad — at least so 
 far as perfect imitation is possible in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. Should there be any criticism allowable, it could be 
 only this, that the tenderness and pathos are somewhat 
 deeper, and somewhat less rough in utterance, than we ex- 
 
80 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 pect in a ballad of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. 
 Yet there is no stanza in it for which some parallel might 
 not be found in ballads of the old time. It is nothing more 
 than the story of a country girl seduced by a nobleman, 
 who nevertheless has no intention of being cruel or un- 
 faithful. Just as she is about to drown herself, or rather 
 to let herself be drowned, he rescues her from the danger, 
 marries her in haste to save appearances, and makes her his 
 wife. There is nothing more of narrative, and no narra- 
 tive could be more simple. But as the great pains and 
 great joys of life are really in simple things, the simplest is 
 capable of almost infinite expansion when handled by a true 
 artist. Certainly in English poetry there is no ballad more 
 beautiful than this; nor can we imagine it possible to do 
 anything more with so slight a theme. It contains noth- 
 ing, however, calling for elaborate explanation or comn\ent; 
 I need only recommend you to read it and to feel it. 
 
 It is otherwise in the case of such ballads as "Sister 
 Helen" and "The White Ship." "The White Ship" is a 
 little too long for full reproduction in the lecture; but we 
 can point out its special beauties. "Sister Helen," al- 
 though rather long also, we must study the whole of, partly 
 because it has become so very famous, and partly because 
 it deals with emotions and facts of the Middle Ages re- 
 quiring careful interpretation. Perhaps it is the best ex- 
 ample of story telling in the shorter pieces of Rossetti — not 
 because its pictures are more objectively vivid than the 
 themes of the "White Ship," but because it is more sub- 
 jectively vivid, dealing with the extremes of human passion, 
 hate, love, revenge, and religious despair. All these are 
 passions peculiarly coloured by the age in which the story 
 is supposed to happen, the age of belief in magic, in ghosts, 
 and in hell-fire. 
 
 I think that in nearly all civilised countries, East and 
 West, from very old times there has been some belief in the 
 kind of magic which this poem describes. I have seen refer- 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 81 
 
 ences to similar magic in translations of Chinese books, and 
 I imagine that it may have been known in Japan. In 
 India it is still practised. At one time or other it was 
 practised in every country of Europe. Indeed, it was only 
 the development of exact science that rendered such beliefs 
 impossible. During the Middle Ages they caused the mis- 
 ery of many thousands of lives, and the fear born of them 
 weighed upon men's minds like a nightmare. 
 
 This superstition in its simplest form was that if you 
 wished to kill a hated person, it was only necessary to make 
 a small statue or image of that person in wax, or some other 
 soft material, and to place the image before a fire, after 
 having repeated certain formulas. As the wax began to 
 melt before the fire, the person represented by the image 
 would become sick and grow weaker and weaker, until with 
 the complete melting of the image, he would die. Some- 
 times when the image was made of material other than wax, 
 it was differently treated. Also it was a custom to stick 
 needles into such images, for the purpose of injuring rather 
 than of killing. By putting the needles into the place of 
 the eyes, for example, the person would be made blind; or 
 by putting them into the place of the ears, he might be 
 rendered deaf. A needle stuck into the place of the heart 
 would cause death, slow or quick according to the slowness 
 with which the needle was forced in. 
 
 But there were many penalties attaching to the exercise 
 of such magic. People convicted of having practised it 
 were burned alive by law. However, burning alive was 
 not the worst consequence of the practice, according to gen- 
 eral belief; for the church taught that such a crime was 
 unpardonable, and that all guilty of it must go to hell for 
 all eternity. You might destroy your enemy by magic, but 
 only at the cost of your own soul. A soul for a life. And 
 you must know that the persons who did such things be- 
 lieved the magic was real, believed they were killing, and 
 believed they were condemned to lose their souls in conse- 
 
82 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 quence. Can we conceive of hatred strong enough to satisfy 
 itself at this price*? Certainly, there have been many ex- 
 amples in the history of those courts in which trials for 
 witchcraft were formerly held. 
 
 Now we have the general idea behind this awful ballad. 
 The speakers in the story are only two, a young woman and 
 her brother, a little boy. We may suppose the girl to be 
 twenty and the boy about five years old or even younger. 
 The girl is apparently of good family, for she appears to 
 be living in a castle of her own — at least a fortified dwelling 
 of some sort. We must also suppose her to be an orphan, 
 for she avenges herself — as one having no male relative 
 to fight for her. She has been seduced under promise of 
 marriage; but before the marriage day, her faithless lover 
 marries another woman. Then she determines to destroy 
 his life by magic. While her man of wax is melting before 
 the fire, the parents, relatives, and newly-wedded bride of 
 her victim come on horseback to beg that she will forgive. 
 But forgive she will not, and he dies, and at the last his 
 ghost actually enters the room. This is the story. 
 
 You will observe that the whole conversation is only be- 
 tween the girl and this baby-brother. She talks to the child 
 in child language, but with a terrible meaning behind each 
 simple word. She herself will not answer the prayers of 
 the relatives of the dying man; she makes the little brother 
 act as messenger. So all that is said in the poem is said be- 
 tween the girl and the little boy. Even in the opening of 
 the ballad there is a terrible pathos in the presence of this 
 little baby brother. What does he know of horrible be- 
 liefs, hatred, lust, evil passion of any sort^ He only sees 
 that his sister has made a kind of wax-doll, and he thinks 
 that it is a pretty doll, and would like to play with it. But 
 his sister, instead of giving him the doll, begins to melt it 
 before the fire, and he cannot understand why. 
 
 One more preliminary observation. What is the mean- 
 ing of the refrain ■? This refrain, in italics, always repre- 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 83 
 
 sents the secret thought of the girl, what she cannot say to 
 the little brother, but what she thinks and suffers. The 
 references to Mary refer to the Virgin Mary of course, but 
 with the special mediseval sense. God would not forgive 
 certain sins; but, during the Middle Ages at least, the Vir- 
 gin Mar}^ the mother of God, was a refuge even for the 
 despairing magician or witch. We could not expect one 
 practising witchcraft to call upon the name of Christ. But 
 the same person, in moments of intense pain, might very 
 naturally ejaculate the name of Mat}'. And now we can 
 begin the poem. 
 
 SISTER HELEN 
 
 "Why did you melt your waxen man, 
 
 Sister Helen?' 
 To-day is the third since you began." 
 "The time was long, yet the time ran, 
 
 Little brother." 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven/) 
 
 "But if you have done your work aright, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 You'll let me play, for you said I might." 
 "Be very still in your play to-night, 
 
 Little brother." 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "You said it must melt ere vesper-bell. 
 
 Sister Helen ; 
 If now it be molten, all Is well." 
 "Even so, — nay, peace ! you cannot tell. 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother! 
 what is this, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "Oh, the waxen knave was plump to-day. 
 
 Sister Helen ; 
 How like dead folk he has dropped away !*' 
 
84. STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 "Nay now, of the dead what can you say, 
 Little brother ? " 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother/ 
 What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "See, see, the sunken pile of wood. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!" 
 "Nay now, when looked you yet on blood, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother! 
 How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven/) 
 
 "Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And I'll play without the gallery door." 
 "Aye, let me rest, — I'll lie on the floor. 
 
 Little brother." 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother/ 
 What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "Here high up in the balcony. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 The moon flies face to face with me." 
 "Aye, look and say whatever you see, 
 
 Little brother," 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother/ 
 What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "Outside, it's merry in the wind's wake. 
 
 Sister Helen ; 
 In the shaken trees the chill stars shake." 
 "Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake. 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother/ 
 What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "I hear a horse-tread, and I see. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 Three horsemen that ride terribly." 
 "Little brother, whence come the three, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 85 
 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother/ 
 Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 In this last stanza the repetition of the words "little 
 brother" indicates intense eagerness. The girl has been ex- 
 pecting that the result of her enchantments would force 
 the relatives of her victim to come and beg for mercy. The 
 child's words therefore bring to her a shock of excitement. 
 
 "They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And one draws nigh, but two are afar." 
 "Look, look, do you know them who they are, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 For I know the white mane on the blast." 
 "The hour has come, has come at last, 
 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 Those who come are knights, and the child can know 
 them only by the crest or by the horses ; as they are very far 
 he can distinguish only the horses, but he knows the horse 
 of Keith of Eastholm, because of its white mane, floating 
 in the wind. From this point the poem becomes very ter- 
 rible, because it shows us a play of terrible passion — pas- 
 sion all the more terrible because it is that of a woman. 
 
 "He has made a sign and called Halloo ! 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And he says that he would speak with you." 
 "Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew 
 
 Little brother." 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
86 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 "The wind is loud, but I hear him cry, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 That Keith of Ewern's like to die." 
 "And he and thou, and thou and I, 
 
 Little brother." 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 And they and we, between Hell and Heaven.^ 
 
 "Three days ago, on his marriage-morn, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 He sickened, and lies since then forlorn." 
 "For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!') 
 
 We now can surmise the story from the girl's own lips. 
 There are wrongs that a woman cannot forgive, unless she 
 is of very weak character indeed. But this woman is no 
 weakling; she can kill, and laugh while killing, because she 
 is a daughter of warriors, and has been cruelly injured. 
 Notice the bitter mockery of every word she utters, espe- 
 cially the exulting reference to the unhappy bride. We 
 imagine that she might be sorry for killing a man whom 
 she once loved; but we may be perfectly sure that she will 
 feel no pity for the woman that he married. 
 
 "Three days and nights he has lain abed, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And he prays in torment to be dead." 
 "The thing may chance, if he have prayed. 
 
 Little brother !" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "But he has not ceased to cry to-day. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 That you should take your curse away." 
 "My prayer was heard, — he need but pray, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 87 
 
 "But he says till you take back your ban, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 His soul would pass, yet never can." 
 "Nay then, shall I slay a living man, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "But he calls for ever on your name, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And says that he melts before a flame." 
 "My heart for his pleasure fared the same, 
 
 Little brother." 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother/ 
 Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 For I know the white plume on the blast." 
 "The hour, the sweet hour I forecast, 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "He stops to speak, and he stills his horse. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 But his words are drowned in the wind's course." 
 "Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear, perforce. 
 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother! 
 What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "Oh, he says that Keith of Ewern's cry. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 Is ever to see you ere he die." 
 "In all that his soul sees, there am I, 
 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 The souVs one sight, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "He sends a ring and a broken coin, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And bids you mind the banks of Boyne." 
 
88 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 "What else he broke will he ever join," 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 No, never joined, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 It was a custom, and in some parts of England still is 
 a custom, for lovers not only to give each other rings, but 
 also to divide something between them — such as a coin or 
 a ring, for pledge and remembrance. Sometimes a ring 
 would be cut in two, and each person would keep one-half. 
 Sometimes a thin coin, gold or silver money, was broken 
 into halves and each of the lovers would wear one-half 
 round the neck fastened to a string. Such pledges would 
 be always recognised, and were only to be sent back in time 
 of terrible danger — in a matter of life and death. There 
 are many references to this custom in the old ballads. 
 
 "He yields you these, and craves full fain, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 You pardon him in his mortal pain." 
 "What else he took will he give again. 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven/) 
 
 *'He calls your name in an agony, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 That even dead Love must weep to see." 
 "Hate, born of Love, is blind as he. 
 
 Little brother !" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 For I know the white hair on the blast." 
 "The short, short hour will soon be past. 
 
 Little brother!" 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 89 
 
 "He looks at me and he tries to speak, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 But oh! his voice is sad and weak!" 
 "What here should the mighty Baron seek, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "Oh his son still cries, if you forgive, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 The body dies, but the soul shall live." 
 "Fire shall forgive me as I forgive. 
 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 This needs some explanation in reference to religious be- 
 lief. The witch, you will observe, has the power to destroy 
 the soul as well as the body, but on the condition of suf- 
 fering the same loss herself. Yet how can this be"? It 
 could happen thus: if the dying man could make a confes- 
 sion before he dies, and sincerely repent of his sin before a 
 priest, his soul might be saved; but while he remains in the 
 agony of suffering caused by the enchantment, he cannot 
 repent. Not to repent means to go to Hell for ever and 
 ever. If the woman would forgive him, withdrawing the 
 curse and pain for one instant, all might be well. But she 
 answers, "Fire shall forgive me as I forgive" — she means, 
 "The fire of Hell shall sooner forgive me when I go to 
 Hell, than I shall forgive him in this world." There will 
 be other references to this horrible belief later on. It was 
 very common in the Middle Ages. 
 
 "Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 To save his dear son's soul alive." 
 "Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive, 
 
 Little brother !" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
90 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Rive is seldom used now in prose, though we have "riven" 
 very often. To rive is to tear. The last line of this stanza 
 is savage, for it refers to the belief that the black fire of 
 Hell preserves the body of the damned person instead of 
 consuming it. 
 
 "He cries to you, kneeling in the road, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 To go with him for the love of God!" 
 "The way is long to his son's abode. 
 
 Little brother I" 
 {0 Mother^ Mary Mother, 
 The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!^ 
 
 "A lady's here, by a dark steed brought. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 So darkly clad, I saw her not." 
 "See her now or never see aught, 
 
 Little brother !" 
 ((? Mother, Mary Mother, 
 What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 As the horse was black and the lady was all dressed in 
 black, the child could not at first notice either in the shadows 
 of the road. On announcing that he had seen her at last, 
 the excitement of the sister reaches its highest and wicked- 
 est; she says to him, "Nay, you will never be able to see 
 anything in this world, unless you can see that woman's face 
 and tell me all about it." For it is the other woman, who 
 has made forgiveness impossible; it is the other woman, the 
 object of her deepest hate. 
 
 "Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair." 
 "Blest hour of my power and her despair, 
 
 Little brother !" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Hour blessed and bannd, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 91 
 
 "Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago." 
 "One morn for pride, and three days for woe, 
 Little brother!" 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head, 
 
 Sister Helen; 
 With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed." 
 "What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven^) 
 
 You must remember that the word "strains" is nearly 
 always used in the sense of musical tones, and that "wed- 
 ding-strains" means the joyful music played at a wedding. 
 Thus the ferocity of Helen's mockery becomes apparent, 
 for it was upon the bridal night that the bridegroom was 
 first bewitched; and from the moment of his marriage, there- 
 fore, he has been screaming in agony. 
 
 The climax of hatred is in the next stanza. After that 
 the tone begins to reverse, and gradually passes away in 
 the melancholy of eternal despair. 
 
 "She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, 
 
 Sister Helen, — 
 She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon." 
 "Oh I might I but hear her soul's blithe tune. 
 
 Little brother !" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 To "gasp" means to open the mouth in the effort to get 
 breath, as one does in a fit of hysterics, or in time of great 
 agony. "Gasps on the moon" means that she gasps with 
 her face turned up toward the moon. In the last line we 
 
92 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 have the words "blithe tune" used in the same tone of terri- 
 ble irony as that with which the words "wedding strain" was 
 used in the preceding stanza. "Blithe" means "merry." 
 Helen is angry because the other woman has fainted; hav- 
 ing fainted, she has become for the moment physically in- 
 capable of suffering. But Helen thinks that her soul must 
 be conscious and suffering as much as ever; therefore she 
 wishes that she could hear the suffering of the soul, since she 
 cannot longer hear the outcries of the body. 
 
 "They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow." 
 "Let it turn whiter than winter-snow, 
 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven.') 
 
 The allusion is to the physiological fact that intense 
 moral pain, or terrible fear, sometimes turns the hair of a 
 young person suddenly white. 
 
 "O Sister Helen, you heard the bell, 
 
 Sister Helen! 
 More loud than the vesper-chime it fell." 
 "No vesper-chime, but a dying knell, 
 
 Little brother I" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "Alas, but I fear the heavy sound, 
 
 Sister Helen; 
 Is it in the sky or in the ground?" 
 "Say, have they turned their horses round. 
 
 Little brother?" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?) 
 
 "They have raised the old man from his knee. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And they ride in silence hastily." 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 93 
 
 "More fast the naked soul doth flee, 
 Little brother !" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven/) 
 
 "Flank to flank are the three steeds gone, 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 But the lady's dark steed goes alone." 
 "And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown, 
 Little brother !" 
 (0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And weary sad they look by the hill." 
 "But he and I are sadder still, 
 
 Little brother I" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "See, see, the wax has dropped from its place. 
 
 Sister Helen, 
 And the flames are winning up apace !" 
 "Yet here they burn but for a space. 
 
 Little brother I" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 "Ah ! what white thing at the door has cross'd, 
 
 Sister Helen? 
 Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?" 
 "A soul that's lost as mine is lost, 
 Little brother!" 
 {0 Mother, Mary Mother, 
 Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!) 
 
 Notice how the action naturally dies off into despair. 
 From the beginning until very nearly the close, we had an 
 uninterrupted crescendo, as we should say in music — that 
 is, a gradual intensification of the passion expressed. With 
 
94 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 the stroke of the death-bell the passion subsides. The re- 
 venge is satisfied, the irreparable wrong is done to avenge 
 a wrong, and with the entrance of the ghost the whole con- 
 sequence of the act begins to appear within the soul of the 
 actor. I know of nothing more terrible in literature than 
 this poem, as expressing certain phases of human feeling, 
 and nothing more intensely true. The probability or im- 
 probability of the incidents is of no more consequence than 
 is the unreality of the witch-belief. It is enough that such 
 beliefs once existed to make us know that the rest is not 
 only possible but certain. For a time we are really sub- 
 jected to the spell of a mediseval nightmare. 
 
 As we have seen, the above poem is mainly a subjective 
 study. As an objective study, "The White Ship" shows 
 us an equal degree of power, appealing to the visual faculty. 
 We cannot read it all, nor is this necessary. A few ex- 
 amples will be sufficient. This ballad is in distichs, and 
 has a striking refrain. The story is founded upon historical 
 fact. The son and heir of the English king Henry I, to- 
 gether with his sister and many knights and ladies, was 
 drowned on a voyage from France to England, and it is 
 said that the king was never again seen to smile after he 
 had heard the news. Rossetti imagines the story told by 
 a survivor — a butcher employed on the ship, the lowest 
 menial on board. Such a man would naturally feel very 
 differently toward the prince from others of the train, and 
 would criticise him honestly from the standpoint of simple 
 morality. 
 
 Eighteen years till then he had seen, 
 
 And the devil's dues in him were eighteen. 
 
 The peasant thus estimates the ruler who breaks the com- 
 mon laws of God and man. Nevertheless he is just in his 
 own way, and can appreciate unselfishness even in a man 
 whom he hates. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 95 
 
 He was a Prince of lust and pride ; 
 
 He showed no grace till the hour he died. 
 
 God only knows where his soul did wake, 
 But I saw him die for his sister's sake. 
 
 It is a simple mind of this sort that can best tell a tragical 
 story; and the butcher's story is about the most perfect 
 thing imaginable of its kind. Here also we have one ad- 
 mirable bit of subjective work, the narration of the butcher's 
 experience in the moment of drowning. I suppose you all 
 know that when one is just about to die, or in danger of 
 sudden death, the memory becomes extraordinarily vivid, 
 and things long forgotten flash into the mind as if painted 
 by lightning, together with voices of the past. 
 
 I Berold was down in the sea ; 
 
 Passing strange though the thing may be, 
 
 Of dreams then known I remember me. 
 
 Not dreams in the sense of visions of sleep, but images 
 of memory. 
 
 Blithe is the shout on Harfleur's strand 
 When morning lights the sails to land : 
 
 And blithe is Honfleur's echoing gloam 
 When mothers call the children home : 
 
 And high do the bells of Rouen beat 
 
 When the Body of Christ goes down the street. 
 
 These things and the like were heard and shown 
 In a moment's trance 'neath the sea alone ; 
 
 And when I rose, 'twas the sea did seem, 
 And not these things, to be all a dream. 
 
 In the moment after the sinking of the ship, under the 
 water, the man remembers what he most loved at home — 
 
96 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 mornings in a fishing village, seeing the ships return; eve- 
 nings in a like village, and the sound of his own mother's 
 voice calling him home, as when he was a little child at 
 play ; then the old Norman city that he knew well, and the 
 church processions of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ), the 
 great event of the year for the poorer classes. Why he re- 
 membered such things at such a time he cannot say; it 
 seemed to him a very ghostly experience, but not more 
 ghostly than the sight of the sea and the moon when he 
 rose again. 
 
 The ship was gone and the crowd was gone, 
 And the deep shuddered and the moon shone; 
 
 And in a strait grasp my arms did span 
 
 The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran ; 
 
 And on it with me was another man. 
 
 Where lands were none 'neath the dim sea-sky, 
 We told our names, that man and I. 
 
 "O I am Godefroy de I'Aigle hight, 
 And son I am to a belted knight." 
 
 "And I am Berold the butcher's son. 
 Who slays the beasts in Rouen town." 
 
 The touch here, fine as it is, is perfectly natural. The com- 
 mon butcher finds himself not only for the moment in 
 company with a nobleman, but able to talk to him as a 
 friend. There is no rank or wealth between sky and sea — 
 or, as a Japanese proverb says, "There is no king on the road 
 of death." The refrain of the ballad utters the same 
 truth : 
 
 Lands are swayed by a king on a throne^ 
 
 The sea hath no King but God alone. 
 
 Both in its realism and in its emotion this ballad is a 
 great masterpiece. It is much superior to "The King's 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 97 
 
 Tragedy," also founded upon history. "The King's Trag- 
 edy" seems to us a little strained; perhaps the poet at- 
 tempted too much. I shall not quote from it, but will only 
 recommend a reading of it to students of English literature 
 because of its relation to a very beautiful story — the story 
 of the courtship of James I of Scotland, and of how he 
 came to write his poem called "The King's Ouhair." 
 
 Another ballad demands some attention and explanation, 
 though it is not suitable for reading in the classroom. It is 
 an expression of passion — but not passion merely human; 
 rather superhuman and evil. For she who speaks in this 
 poem is not a woman like "Sister Helen" ; she is a demon. 
 
 Not a drop of her blood was human, 
 
 But she was made like a soft sweet woman. 
 
 Perhaps the poet desired to show us here the extremest 
 imaginative force of hate and cruelty — not in a mortal be- 
 ing, because that would repel us, but in an immortal being, 
 in whom such emotion can only inspire fear. Emotionally, 
 the poet's conception is of the Middle Ages, but the tradi- 
 tion is incomparably older; we can trace it back to ancient 
 Assyrian beliefs. Coming to us through Hebrew literature, 
 this strange story has inspired numberless European poets 
 and painters, besides the author of "Eden Bower." You 
 should know the stoiy, because you will find a great many 
 references to it in the different literatures of Europe. 
 
 Briefly, Lilith is the name of an evil spirit believed by 
 the ancient Jews and by other Oriental nations to cause 
 nightmare. But she did other things much more evil, and 
 there were curious legends about her. The Jews said that 
 before the first woman, Eve, was created, Adam had a 
 demon wife by whom he became the father of many evil 
 spirits. When Eve was created and given to him in mar- 
 riage, Lilith was necessarily jealous, and resolved to avenge 
 herself upon the whole human race. It is even to-day the 
 custom among Jews to make a charm against Lilith on their 
 
98 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 marriage night ; for Lilith is especially the enemy of brides. 
 
 But the particular story about Lilith that mostly figures 
 in poetry and painting is this: If any young man sees 
 Lilith, he must at once fall in love with her, because she is 
 much more beautiful than any human being; and if he falls 
 in love with her, he dies. After his death, if his body is 
 opened by the doctors, it will be found that a long golden 
 hair, one strand of woman's hair, is fastened round his heart. 
 The particular evil in which Lilith delights is the destruc- 
 tion of youth. 
 
 In Rossetti's poem Lilith is represented only as declaring 
 to her demon lover, the Serpent, how she will avenge her- 
 self upon Adam and upon Eve. The ideas are in one way 
 extremely interesting; they represent the most tragical and 
 terrible form of jealousy — that jealousy written of in the 
 Bible as being like the very fires of Hell. We might say 
 that in Victorian verse this is the unique poem of jealousy, 
 in a female personification. For the male personification 
 we must go to Robert Browning. 
 
 But there is a masterly phase of jealousy described in 
 one of Rossetti's modern poems, "A Last Confession." 
 Here, however, the jealousy is of the kind with which we 
 can humanly sympathise ; there is nothing monstrous or dis- 
 torted about it. The man has reason to suspect unchastity, 
 and he kills the woman on the instant. I should, therefore, 
 consider this poem rather as a simple and natural tragedy 
 than as a study of jealousy. It is to be remarked here that 
 Rossetti did not confine himself to mediseval or supernatural 
 subjects. Three of his very best poems are purely modern, 
 belonging to the nineteenth century. This "Last Confes- 
 sion," appropriately placed in Italy, is not the most remark- 
 able of the three, but it is very fine. I do not know any- 
 thing in even French literature to be compared with the 
 pathos of the murder scene, unless it be the terrible closing 
 chapter of Prosper Merimee's "Carmen." The story of 
 "Carmen" is also a confession ; but there is a great difference 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 99 
 
 in the history of the tragedies. Carmen's lover does not 
 kill in a moment of passion. He kills only after having 
 done everything that a man could do in order to avoid kill- 
 ing. He argues, prays, goes on his knees in supplication — 
 ail in vain. And then we know that he must kill, that any 
 man in the same terrible situation must kill. He stabs her; 
 then the two continue to look at each other — she keeping 
 her large black eyes fixed on the face of her murderer, till 
 suddenly they close, and she falls. No simpler fact could 
 occur in the history of an assassination ; yet how marvellous 
 the power of that simple fact as the artist tells it. We 
 always see those eyes. In the case of Rossetti's murderer, 
 the incidents of the tragedy differ somewhat, because he 
 is blind with passion at the moment that he strikes, and 
 does not see. When his vision clears again, he sees the 
 girl fall, and 
 
 — her stiff bodice scooped the sand 
 Into her bosom. 
 
 As long as he lived, he always saw that — the low stiff front 
 of the girl's dress with the sand and blood. In its way this 
 description is quite as terrible as the last chapter of "Car- 
 men" ; and it would be difficult to say which victim of pas- 
 sion most excites our sympathies. The other two poems of 
 modern life to which I have referred are "The Card-Dealer" 
 and "Jenny." "The Card-Dealer" represents a singular 
 faculty on the poet's part of seeing ordinary facts in their 
 largest relations. In many European gambling houses of 
 celebrity, the cards used are dealt — that is, given to the 
 players — by a beautiful woman, usually a woman not of 
 the virtuous kind. The poet, entering such a place, watches 
 the game for a time in silence, and utters his artistic admira- 
 tion of the beauty of the card-dealer, merely as he would 
 admire a costly picture or a statue of gold. Then suddenly 
 comes to him the thought that this woman, and the silent 
 players, and the game, are but symbols of eternal fact. 
 
100 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 The game is no longer to his eyes a mere game of cards ; it 
 is the terrible game of Life, the struggle for wealth and 
 vain pleasures. The woman is no longer a woman, but 
 Fate; she plays the game of Death against Life, and those 
 who play with her must lose. However, the allusions in 
 this poem would require for easy understanding considera- 
 ble familiarity with the terms of card-play and the names 
 of the cards. If you know these, I think you will find this 
 poem a very solemn and beautiful composition. 
 
 Much more modern is "Jenny," a poem which greatly 
 startled the public when it was first published. People 
 were inclined for the moment to be shocked; then they 
 studied and admired; finally they praised unlimitedly, and 
 the poem deserved all praise. But the subject was a very 
 daring one to put before a public so prudish as the English. 
 For Jenny is a prostitute. Nevertheless the prudish public 
 gladly accepted this wonderful psychological study, which 
 no other poet of the nineteenth century, except perhaps 
 Browning, could have attempted. 
 
 The plan of the poem is as follows : A young man, per- 
 haps the poet himself, finds at some public place of pleasure 
 a woman of the town who pleases him, and he accompanies 
 her to her residence. Although the young man is perhaps 
 imprudent in seeking the company of such a person, he is 
 only doing what tens of thousands of young men are apt 
 to do without thinking. He represents, we might say, 
 youth in general. But there is a difference between him 
 and the average youth in one respect — he thinks. On 
 reaching the girl's room, he is already in a thoughtful mood; 
 and when she falls asleep upon his knees, tired with the 
 dancing and banqueting of the evening, he does not think 
 of awakening her. He begins to meditate. He looks 
 about the room and notices the various objects in it, simple 
 enough in themselves, but strangely significant by their re- 
 lation to such a time and place — a vase of flowers, a little 
 clock ticking, a bird in a cage. The flowers make him think 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI lOl 
 
 of the symbolism of flowers — lilies they are, but faded. 
 Lilies, the symbol of purity, in Jenny's room I But once 
 she herself was a lily — now also morally faded. Then the 
 clock, ticking out its minutes, hours — what strange hours it 
 has ticked out I He looks at the sleeping girl again, but 
 with infinite pity. She dreams; what is she dreaming of'? 
 To wake her would be cruel, for in the interval of sleep 
 she forgets all the sorrows of the world. He thinks: 
 
 For sometimes, were the truth confess'd, 
 You're thankful for a little rest, — 
 Glad from the crush to rest within, 
 From the heart-sickness and the din 
 Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch 
 Mocks you because your gown is rich ; 
 And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke, 
 Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look 
 Proclaims the strength that keeps her weak. 
 
 Is rest not sometimes sweet to you? — 
 But most from the hatefulness of man, 
 Who spares not to end what he began. 
 Whose acts are ill and his speech ill. 
 Who, having used you at his will, 
 Thrusts you aside, as when I dine 
 I serve the dishes and the wine. 
 
 Then he begins to think of the terrible life of the prostitute, 
 what it means, the hideous and cruel part of it, and the end 
 of it. Here let me say that the condition of such a woman 
 in England is infinitely worse than it is in many other coun- 
 tries; in no place is she treated with such merciless cruelty 
 by society. He asks himself why this should be so — how 
 can men find pleasure in cruelty to so beautiful and simple- 
 hearted a creature? Then, suddenly looking at her asleep, 
 he is struck by a terrible resemblance which she bears to the 
 sweetest woman that he knows, the girl perhaps that he 
 would marry. Seen asleep, the two girls look exactly the 
 
1&2 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 same. Each is young, graceful, and beautiful; yet one is 
 a girl adored by society for all that makes a woman lovable, 
 and the other is — what^ These lines best explain the 
 thought : 
 
 Just as another woman sleeps ! 
 
 Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps 
 
 Of doubt and horror, — what to say 
 
 Or think, — this awful secret sway, 
 
 The potter's power over the clay ! 
 
 Of the same lump (it has been said) 
 
 For honour and dishonour made, 
 
 Two sister vessels. Here is one. 
 
 My cousin Nell is fond of fun, 
 
 And fond of dress, and change, and praise, 
 
 So mere a woman in her ways : 
 
 And if her sweet eyes rich in youth 
 
 Are like her lips that tell the truth, 
 
 My cousin Nell is fond of love. 
 
 And she's the girl I'm proudest of. 
 
 Who does not prize her, guard her well? 
 
 The love of change, in cousin Nell, 
 
 Shall find the best and hold it dear: 
 
 The unconquered mirth turn quieter 
 
 Not through her own, through others' woe : 
 
 The conscious pride of beauty glow 
 
 Beside another's pride in her. 
 
 Of the same lump (as it is said), 
 For honour and dishonour made. 
 Two sister vessels. Here is one. 
 It makes a goblin of the sun ! 
 
 For, judging by the two faces, the two characters were 
 originally the same. Yet how terrible the difference now. 
 This woman likes what all women like; his cousin, the girl 
 he most loves in the world, has the very same love of nice 
 dresses, pleasures, plays. There is nothing wrong in liking 
 these things. But in the case of the prostitute all pleasure 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 103 
 
 must turn for her to ashes and bitterness. The pure girl 
 will have in this world all the pretty dresses, and pleasures,, 
 and love that she can wish for; and will never have reason 
 to feel unhappy except when she hears of the unhappiness 
 of somebody else. And it seems a monstrous thing under 
 heaven that such a different destiny should be portioned out 
 to beings at first so much alike as those two women. Even 
 to think of his cousin looking like her, gives him a shudder 
 of pain — not because he cruelly despises the sleeping girl, 
 but because he thinks of what might have happened to his 
 own dearest, under other chances of life. 
 
 Yet again, who knows what may be in the future, any 
 more than what has been in the past*? All this world is 
 change. The fortunate of to-day may be unfortunate in 
 their descendants; the fortunate of long ago were perhaps 
 the ancestors of the miserable of to-day. And everything 
 may in the eternal order of change have to rise and sink 
 alternately. Cousin Nell is to-day a fortunate woman; he,, 
 the dreamer at the bed-side of the nameless girl, is a fortu- 
 nate man. But what might happen to their children? He 
 thinks again of the strange resemblance of the two women,, 
 and murmurs: 
 
 So pure, — so fall'n ! How dare to think 
 Of the first common kindred link? 
 Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn 
 It seems that all things take their turn; 
 And who shall say but this fair tree 
 May need, in changes that may be. 
 Your children's children's charity? 
 Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd ! 
 Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd 
 Till in the end, the Day of Days, 
 At Judgment, one of his own race, 
 As frail and lost as you, shall rise, — 
 His daughter, with his mother's eyes? 
 
 Then he begins to think more deeply on the great wrongs 
 of this world, the great misery caused by vice, the cruelty 
 
104 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 of lust in itself. The ruined life of this girl represents but 
 one fact of innumerable facts of a like kind. Millions of 
 beautiful and affectionate women have been, and are being, 
 and will be through all time to come, sacrificed in this way 
 to lust — selfish and foolish and cruel lust, that destroys 
 mind and body together. The mystery of the dark side 
 of life comes to him in a new way. He cannot explain it — 
 who can explain the original meaning of pain in this world? 
 But he begins to get at least a new gleam of truth — this 
 great truth, that every one who seeks pleasure in the way 
 that he at first intended to seek it that night, adds a little 
 to the great sum of human misery. For vice exists only at 
 the cost of misery. The question is not, "Is it right for 
 me or wrong for me to take what is forbidden if I pay 
 for it." The real question is, "Is it right for me or wrong 
 for me to help in any way to support that condition of 
 society which sacrifices lives, body, and soul, to cruelty and 
 selfishness." We all of us in youth think chiefly about 
 right and wrong in their immediate relations to ourselves 
 and our friends. Only later in life, after we have seen a 
 great deal of the red of human pain, do we begin to think 
 of the consequences of an act in relation to the happiness 
 or unhappiness of humanity. 
 
 Suddenly the morning comes as he is thinking thus. At 
 once he ceases to be the philosopher, and becomes again the 
 gentleman of the world. The girl's head is still upon his 
 knees; he looks at the sleeping face, and wonders whether 
 any painter could have painted a face more beautiful. But 
 the beauty does not appeal to his senses in any passional 
 way; it only fills him with unspeakable compassion. He 
 does not awake her, but lifts her into a more comfortable 
 position for sleeping, and leaves beside her pillow a present 
 of gold coins, and then steals away without bidding her 
 good-bye. The night has not given him pleasure, but pain 
 only — yet a pain that has made his heart more kindly and 
 his thoughts more wise than they had been before. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 105 
 
 IV 
 
 Our last lecture dealt with the shorter narrative poems 
 of Rossetti, including the ballads. There remain to be 
 considered two other narrative poems of a much more ex- 
 tended kind. They are quite unique in English literature; 
 and both of them deal with mediaeval subjects. One, 
 again, is chiefly objective in its treatment; and the other 
 chiefly subjective — that is to say, psychological. One is a 
 fragment, but the most wonderful fragment of its kind in 
 existence; more wonderful, I think, than even the frag- 
 ments of Coleridge, both as to volume and finish. The 
 other is complete, a story of magic and passion entitled 
 "Rose Mary." We may first deal with "Rose Mary," giv- 
 ing the general plan of the poem, rather than extracts of 
 any length; for this narration cannot very well be illus- 
 trated by examples. We shall make some quotations only 
 in illustration of the finish and the beauty of the work. 
 
 The subject of "Rose Mary" was peculiarly adapted to 
 Rossetti's genius. In the Middle Ages there was a great 
 belief in the virtue of jewels and crystals of a precious kind. 
 Belief in the magical power of rubies, diamonds, emeralds, 
 and opals was not confined either to Europe or to modern 
 civilisation; it had existed from great antiquity in the 
 Orient, and had been accepted by the Greeks and Romans. 
 This belief was perhaps forgotten after the destruction of 
 the Roman Empire, for a time at least, in Europe; but the 
 Crusades revived it. Talismanic stones were brought back 
 from Palestine by many pilgrim-knights; and as some of 
 these were marked with Arabic characters, then supposed 
 by the ignorant to be characters of magic, supernatural 
 legends were invented to account for the history of not a 
 few. Also there was a certain magical use to which pre- 
 cious stones were put during the Middle Ages, and to which 
 they are still sometimes put in Oriental countries. This is 
 
106 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 called crystallomancy. Crystal lomancy is the art of seeing 
 the future in crystals, or glass, or transparent substances of 
 jewels. The same art can be practised even with ink — a 
 drop of ink, held in the hand, offering to the eye the same 
 reflecting surface that a black jewel would do. In Egypt, 
 Arabia, Persia, and India divination is still practised with 
 ink. This is the same thing as crystallomancy. Usually 
 in those countries a young boy or a young girl is used by 
 the diviner. He mesmerises the boy or the girl, and bids 
 him or her look into the crystal or the ink-drop, as the case 
 may be, and say what he or she sees there. In this way, 
 the future is supposed to be told. Modern investigation 
 has taught us how the whole thing is done, though science 
 has not been able yet to explain all that goes on in the mind 
 of the "subject." But in the Middle Ages, when the whole 
 process was absolutely mysterious, it was thought to be the 
 work of spirits inside the stone, or crystal, or ink-drop. 
 And this is the superstition to which Rossetti refers in his 
 poem "Rose Mary." 
 
 Now there is one more fact which must be explained in 
 connection with crystallomancy. It has always been 
 thought that the "subject" — that is, the boy or girl who 
 looks into the stone, crystal, or ink-drop — must be abso- 
 lutely innocent. The "subject" must be virtuous. In the 
 Catholic Middle Ages the same idea took form especially in 
 relation to the chastity of the "subject." Chastity was, in 
 those centuries, considered a magical virtue. A maiden, it 
 was thought, could play with lions or tigers, and not be hurt 
 by them. A maiden — and the word was then used for both 
 sexes, as it is sometimes used by Tennyson in his Idylls — 
 could see ghosts or spirits, and could be made use of for 
 purposes of crystallomancy even by a very wicked person. 
 But should the subject have been secretly guilty of any 
 fault, then the power to see would be impaired. The trag- 
 edy of Rossetti's poem turns upon this fact. 
 
 In the poem a precious stone, of the description called 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 107 
 
 beryl, is the instrument of divination. This beryl is round, 
 lilce a terrestrial globe, and is supposed to be of the shape 
 of the world. It is half transparent, but there are cloudings 
 inside of it. Hidden among these cloudings are a number 
 of evil spirits, who were enclosed in the jewel by magic. 
 These spirits make the future appear visible to any virtu- 
 ous person who looks into the stone; but they have power 
 to deceive and to injure any one coming to consult them who 
 is not perfectly chaste. The stone came from the East, and 
 it was obtained only at the sacrifice of the soul of the person 
 who obtained it. Having been brought to England, it be- 
 came the property of a knightly family. This family con- 
 sists only of a widow and her daughter Rose Mary. The 
 daughter is in a state of great anxiety. She was to be mar- 
 ried to a certain knight, who has not kept his affectionate 
 promises. The daughter and the mother both fear that the 
 knight may have been killed by some of his enemies. So 
 they resolve to consult the beryl-stone. The mother does 
 not know that her daughter has been too intimate with the 
 absent knight. Believing that Rose Mary is all purity, the 
 mother makes her the subject of an experiment in crystal- 
 lomancy ; and she looks into the beryl. 
 
 First she sees an old man with a broom, sweeping away 
 dust and cobwebs; that is always the first thing seen. Then 
 the inside of the beryl becomes perfectly clear, and the girl 
 can see the open country, and the road along which her lover 
 is expected to travel. And she sees him too. But there are 
 perhaps enemies waiting for him. The mother tells her to 
 look for those enemies. She looks; she sees the points of 
 lances, in a hiding place by a roadside, and there is the 
 evidence of what the lover has to fear in that direction. 
 "Now look in the other direction," says the mother. The 
 girl does so, and sees the whole road clearly, except in one 
 place, in a valley. There she says that there is a mist; 
 and she cannot see under the mist. This surprises the 
 mother, and she takes away the beryl. The presence of the 
 
108 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 mist indicates that Rose Mary has committed some sin. 
 
 As a consequence the daughter confesses to the mother 
 all that has occurred. She is not severely blamed; she is 
 only gently rebuked, and forgiven with great love and ten- 
 derness. But it is probable that the sin must be expiated. 
 Both are afraid. Then the expiation comes. The lover is 
 killed by his enemies, and killed exactly on that part of 
 the road where the mist was in the image seen in the beryl- 
 stone. The mother goes to the dead knight's home, and 
 examines the body. Evidently the man had died fighting 
 bravely. The woman at first is all pity for him, as well 
 as for her daughter. Suddenly she notices something in 
 the dead man's breast. She takes it out, and finds that it 
 is a package containing a love-letter, and a lock of hair. 
 The hair is bright gold — while the hair of Rose Mary is 
 black. This makes the mother suspicious, and she reads the 
 letter. Then she no longer pities but abhors the dead man ; 
 for the letter proves him to have had another sweetheart, 
 and that he had intended to betray Rose Mary. 
 
 When the daughter learns of her lover's death, she suf- 
 fers terribly; but she makes sincere repentance for her fault, 
 and then in her mother's absence she determines to destroy 
 the beryl-stone, as a devilish thing. This is another way 
 of committing suicide, because whoever breaks the stone is 
 certain to be killed by the enraged spirits cast out of it. By 
 one blow of a sword the stone is broken, and Rose Mary 
 atones for all her faults by death. This is the whole of the 
 story. 
 
 The extraordinary charm of the story is in its vividness — 
 a vividness perhaps without equal even in the best work of 
 Tennyson (certainly much finer than similar work in Cole- 
 ridge), and in the attractive characterisation of mother and 
 daughter. There is this great difference between the medi- 
 aeval poems of Coleridge or Scott, and those of Rossetti, 
 that when you are reading "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" 
 or the wonderful "Christabel," you feel that you are read- 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 109 
 
 ing a fairy-tale, but when you read Rossetti you are looking 
 at life and feeling human passion. It is a great puzzle to 
 critics how any man could make the Middle Ages live as 
 Rossetti did. One reason, I think, is that Rossetti was 
 a great painter as well as a great poet, and he studied 
 the life of the past in documents and in museums until it 
 became to him as real as the present. But we must also 
 suppose that he inherited a great deal of his peculiar power. 
 This power never wearies. Although the romance of Rose 
 Mary is not very short, you do not get tired of wondering 
 at its beauty until you reach the end. It is divided into 
 three parts, which is a good thing for the student, as he can 
 see the structure of the composition at once. It is written 
 in stanzas of five lines, thus arranged — a^ a^ b^ b, b. You 
 would think this measure monotonous, but it is not. I give 
 two examples. The first is the description of the magic 
 jewel. 
 
 The lady unbound her jewelled zone 
 And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone. 
 Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere, — 
 World of our world, the sun's compeer, 
 That bears and buries the toiling year. 
 
 With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn 
 Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon : 
 Freaked it was as the bubble's ball, 
 Rainbow-hued through a misty pall, 
 Like the middle light of the waterfall. 
 
 Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth 
 Of the known and unknown things of earth ; 
 The cloud above and the wave around, — 
 The central fire at the sphere's heart bound, 
 Like doomsday prisoned underground. 
 
 I feel quite sure that even Tennyson could not have done 
 this. Only a great painter, as well as a great observer, 
 could have done it; and the choice of words is astonishing 
 
110 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 in its exquisiteness. Most of them have more than one 
 meaning, and both meanings are equally implied by their 
 use. Take, for example, the word "shadowy"; it means 
 cloudy and it also means ghostly. Thus it is peculiarly 
 appropriate to picture the magic stone as full of moving 
 shadows, themselves of ghostly character. Or take the 
 word "shuddering"; it means trembling with cold or fear, 
 and it means also a quick trembling, never a slow motion. 
 Just such a word might be used to describe the strange vi- 
 bration of air-bubbles enclosed in a volcanic crystal. But 
 we have also the suggestion here of a ghostly motion, a 
 motion that gives a shiver of fear to the person who sees it. 
 Or take the word "freaked." "Freak" is commonly used 
 to signify a mischievous bit of play, a wild fancy. "Fanci- 
 fully marked" would be the exact meaning of "freaked" in 
 the ordinary sense; but here it is likewise appropriate as a 
 description of the streams and streaks of colour playing over 
 the surface of a bubble without any apparent law, as if they 
 were made by some whimsical spirit. Now every verse of 
 the whole long poem is equally worthy of study for its aston- 
 ishing finish. I shall give a few more verses merely to 
 show the application of the same power to a description 
 of pain. The girl has just been told of her lover's mur- 
 der; and the whole immediate consequence is told in five 
 lines. 
 
 Once she sprang as the heifer springs 
 
 With the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings : 
 
 First 'twas fire in her breast and brain, 
 
 And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain, 
 
 As she gave one shriek and sank again. 
 
 The first two lines might give you an undignified image 
 unless you understood the position of the girl when she 
 received the news. She was kneeling at her mother's feet, 
 with her mother's arms around her. On being told the 
 terrible thing, she tries to spring up, because of the shock 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 111 
 
 of the pain — just as a young heifer would leap when the 
 wolf had seized it from underneath. A wolf snaps at the 
 belly of the animal, close to the heart. Therefore the com- 
 parison is admirable. As for the rest of the verse, any 
 physician can confirm its accuracy. The up-rush of blood 
 at the instant of a great shock of pain feels like a great 
 sudden heat, burning up toward the head. And in such a 
 time one realises that certain forms of pain, moral pain, are 
 larger than oneself — too great to be borne. Psychologi- 
 cally, great moral pain depends upon nervous development; 
 and this nervous susceptibility to pain is greater than would 
 seem fitted to the compass of one life. Moral pain can kill. 
 It is said that in such times we feel not only our own pain, 
 but the pain of all those among our ancestors who suffered 
 in like manner. Thus, by inheritance, individual pain is 
 more than individual. At all events the fourth line ot the 
 stanza I have quoted will appear astonishingly true to any- 
 body who knows the greater forms of mental suffering. 
 
 Leaving this poem, which could not be too highly praised, 
 we may turn to "The Bride's Prelude," the greatest of the 
 longer compositions, therefore the greatest thing that Ros- 
 setti did. Unfortunately, perhaps, it is unfinished. It is 
 only a fragment; death overtook the writer before he was 
 able to complete it. Like "Rose Mary," it leads us back 
 to the Middle Ages, But here there is no magic, nothing 
 ghostly, nothing impossible; there is only truth, atrocious, 
 terrible truth — a tale of cruelty, treachery, and pain related 
 by the victim. The victim is a bride. She is just going 
 to be married. But before her marriage, she has a story 
 to tell her sister — a story so sad and so frightful that it 
 requires strong nerves to read the thing without pain. 
 
 We may suppose that the incident occurred in old France, 
 or — though I doubt it — in Norman England. The scenery 
 and the names remind us rather of Southern France. All 
 the facts belong to the life of the feudal aristocracy. We 
 are among princes and princesses; great lords of territory 
 
112 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 and great lords of battle are introduced to us, with their 
 secret sorrows and shames. Great ladies, too, open their 
 hearts to us, and prove so intensely human that it is very 
 hard to believe the whole story is a dream. It rather seems 
 as if we had known all these people, and that our lives had 
 at some time been mingled with theirs. The eldest daugh- 
 ter of one great house, very beautiful, and very innocent, 
 is taken advantage of by a retainer in the castle. She is 
 foolish and unable to imagine that any gentleman could 
 intend to do her a wrong. The retainer, on the other hand, 
 is a very cunning villain. His real purpose is to bring 
 shame upon the daughter of the house. Why'? Because, 
 as he is only a poor knight, he could not hope to marry into 
 a princely family. But if he can seduce one of the girls, 
 then perhaps the family will be only too glad to have him 
 marry his victim, because that will hide their shame. Evi- 
 dently he has plotted for this. But his plans, and every- 
 body's plans, are affected by unexpected results of civil war. 
 His masters, being defeated in a great battle, have to retreat 
 to the mountains for a time; and then he deserts them in 
 the basest manner. Meantime the unhappy girl is found 
 to be with child. Death was the rule in those days for 
 such a case — burning alive. Her brothers wish to kill her. 
 But her father interferes and saves her. It is decided only 
 that the child shall be taken from her — to be killed, prob- 
 ably. Everybody is forbidden to speak of the matter. 
 Some retainers who did speak of it are hanged for an ex- 
 ample. Presently, by another battle, the family return 
 into their old possessions, and enormously increase their an- 
 cient power. When this happens the scoundrel that se- 
 duced the daughter of the house and then deserted the 
 family returns. Why does he return? Now is the time 
 to fulfil his purpose. He has become a great soldier and 
 a nobleman in his own right. Now he can ask for that 
 young lady in marriage, and they dare not refuse. If they 
 refuse, he can revenge himself by telling the story of her 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 113 
 
 disgrace. If they accept him as a son-in-law, they will also 
 be obliged to make him very powerful; and he will know 
 how to take every advantage. The girl is not consulted 
 at all. Her business is to obey. She thinks that it would 
 be better to die than to marry the wicked man that had 
 wronged her; but she must obey and she is ordered to marry 
 him. He cares nothing about her; she is only the tool by 
 which he wishes to win his way into power. But, cunning 
 as he is, the brothers of the girl are even more cunning. 
 They wish for the marriage only for the purpose of getting 
 the man into their hands, just for one moment. He shall 
 marry her, but immediately afterwards he shall disappear 
 forever from the sight of men. The bride does not know 
 the purpose of her terrible brothers ; she thinks they are cruel 
 to her when she tells her story, but they only wish to avenge 
 her, and they are much too prudent to tell her what they 
 are going to do. The poem does not go any further than 
 the moment before the marriage. The first part is quite 
 finished; but the second part was never written. 
 
 The whole of this great composition is in verses of five 
 lines, curiously arranged. Rossetti adopts a different form 
 of verse for almost every one of his narrations. This is 
 quite as unique a measure in its way — that is, in nineteenth 
 century poetry — as was the measure of Tennyson's 'Tn 
 Memoriam" in elegiac poetry. Now we shall try to illus- 
 trate the style of the poem. 
 
 Against the haloed lattice-panes 
 
 The bridesmaid sunned her breast; 
 Then to the glass turned tall and free, 
 And braced and shifted daintily 
 Her loin-belt through her cote-hardie. 
 
 The belt was silver, and the clasp 
 
 Of lozenged arm-bearings; 
 A world of mirrored tints minute 
 The rippling sunshine wrought into 't, 
 That flushed her hand and warmed her foot. 
 
ii4j studies in rossetti 
 
 At least an hour had Aloyse, — 
 
 Her jewels in her hair, — 
 Her white gown, as became a bride, 
 Quartered in silver at each side, — 
 Sat thus aloof, as if to hide. 
 
 Over her bosom, that lay still, 
 The vest was rich in grain. 
 With close pearls wholly overset : 
 Around her throat the fastenings met 
 Of chevesayle and mantelet. 
 
 Absolutely real as this seems, we know that the details must 
 have been carefully studied in museums. Elsewhere, ex- 
 cept perhaps in very old pictures, these things no longer 
 exist. There are no more loin-belts of silver, no cote- 
 hardies, no chevesayle or mantelet. I cannot explain to 
 you what they are without pictures — further than to say 
 that they were parts of the attire of a lady of rank about 
 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Brides do not now 
 have their white robes "quartered in silver" — that is, 
 figured with the family crest or arms. Why silver instead 
 of gold? Simply because of the rule that brides should be 
 all in white; therefore even the crest was worked in white 
 metal instead of gold. By the word vest, you must also 
 understand an ancient garment for women; the modern 
 word signifies a garment worn only by men. "Grain" is 
 an old term for texture. The description of the light play- 
 ing on the belt-clasp of the bridesmaid, in the second stanza, 
 is a marvellous bit of work, the effect being given especially 
 by three words — "lozenged," "rippling," for the sunshine, 
 and "minute," for the separate flushes or sparklings thrown 
 off from the surface. But all is wonderful ; this is painting 
 with words exactly as a painter paints with colours. 
 Sounds are treated with the same wonderful vividness: 
 
 Although the lattice had dropped loose, 
 There was no wind : the heat 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 115 
 
 Being so at rest that Amelotte 
 Heard far beneath the plunge and float 
 Of a hound swimming in the moat. 
 
 Some minutes since, two rooks had toiled 
 
 Home to the nests that crowned 
 Ancestral ash-trees. Through the glare 
 Beating again, they seemed to tear 
 With that thick caw the woof o' the air. 
 
 One must have been in the tower of a castle to feel the 
 full force of the first stanza. The two girls are in a room 
 perhaps one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet above 
 the water of the moat, so that except in a time of extraordi- 
 nary stillness they would not hear ordinary sounds from so 
 far below. And notice that the poet does not tell us that 
 this was because the air did not move ; he says that the heat 
 was at rest. Very expressive — in great summer heat, with- 
 out wind, the air itself seems to our senses not air but fluid 
 heat. And the same impression of summer is given by the 
 description of the two crows flying to their nest and back 
 again, and screaming as they fly. The poet does not say 
 that they flew; he says they toiled home — because flying in 
 that thick warm air is difficult for them. When they re- 
 turn he uses another word, still more impressive; he says 
 they beat again through the glare. This makes you hear 
 the heavy motion of the wings. And he describes the crow 
 as seeming to tear the air, because that air is so heavy that 
 it seems like a thing woven. 
 
 Here is a strangely powerful stanza describing the diffi- 
 culty of speaking about a painful subject that for many 
 years one has tried to forget : 
 
 Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech, 
 
 Gave her a sick recoil ; 
 As, dip thy fingers through the green 
 That masks a pool, — where they have been 
 The naked depth is black between. 
 
116 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 Any of you who as boys have played about a castle moat, 
 and stirred the green water weeds covering the still water, 
 must have remarked that the water looks black as ink under- 
 neath. Of course it is not black in itself; but the weeds 
 keep out the sun, so that it seems black because of the 
 shadow. The poet's comparison has a terrible exactness 
 here. The mind is compared to stagnant water covered 
 with water-weeds. Weeds grow upon water in this way 
 only when there has been no wind for a long time, and no 
 current. The condition of a mind that does not think, that 
 dares not think, is like stagnant water in this way. Mem- 
 ory becomes covered up with other things, matters not re- 
 lating to the past. 
 
 Now we can take four stanzas from the scene of the secret 
 family meeting, after the shame has been confessed and is 
 known. They are very powerful. 
 
 "Time crept. Upon a day at length 
 
 My kinsfolk sat with me : 
 That which they asked was bare and plain : 
 I answered : the whole bitter strain 
 Was again said, and heard again. 
 
 "Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turned 
 
 The point against my breast. 
 I bared it, smiling : 'To the heart 
 Strike home,' I said ; 'another dart 
 Wreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.' 
 
 " 'Twas then my sire struck down the sword, 
 
 And said, with shaken lips : 
 'She from whom all of you receive 
 Your life, so smiled ; and I forgive.' 
 Thus for my mother's sake, I live. 
 
 "But I, a mother even as she, 
 
 Turned shuddering to the wall : 
 For I said : 'Great God ! and what would I do. 
 When to the sword, with the thing I knew, 
 I offered not one life, but two !' " 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 117 
 
 This is now the most terrible part of the story; and it has 
 a humanity about it that almost makes us doubt. Fancy 
 the situation. The daughter of a prince unchaste with a 
 common retainer. Now in princely families chastity was 
 of as much importance as physical strength and will; it 
 meant everything — honour, purity of race, the possibility 
 of alliance. And a great house is thus disgraced. We can 
 sympathise with the horrible mental suffering of the girl, 
 but it is impossible not to sympathise also even with the 
 terrible brother that wishes to kill her. He is right, she 
 deserves death; but he is young, and cruel because young. 
 The father sorrows, and seeing the girl smiling, thinks of 
 the dead mother, and forgives. This is the only point at 
 which we feel inclined to lay down the book and ask ques- 
 tions. Would a father in such a position have done this in 
 those cruel ages'? Would he have allowed himself to pity*? 
 — or rather, could he have allowed himself to pity^ Ten- 
 der-hearted men did not rule in those days. We have rec- 
 ords of husbands burning their wives, of fathers killing their 
 sons. All we can say is that an exception might have ex- 
 isted, just as Rossetti imagines. Human nature was of 
 course not different then from what it is now, but it is quite 
 certain that the gentle side of human nature seldom dis- 
 played itself in the families of the feudal princes; a man 
 who was gentle could not rule. In Italy sons who did not 
 show the ruling character were apt to be killed or poisoned. 
 One must understand that feudal life was not much more 
 moral than other life. 
 
 I think we can here turn to another department of Ros- 
 setti's verse. I only hope that the examples given from the 
 "Bride's Prelude" will interest you sufficiently to make you 
 at a later day turn to this wonderful poem for a careful 
 study of its beauty and power. 
 
118 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 When we come to the study of the lives of the Victorian 
 poets, we shall find that Rossetti's whole existence was gov- 
 erned by his passion for one woman, whom he loved in a 
 strange mystical way, with a love that was half art (art in 
 the good sense) and half idolatry. To him she was much 
 more than a woman; she was a divinity, an angel, a model 
 for all things beautiful. You know that he was a great 
 painter, and in a multitude of beautiful pictures he painted 
 the face of this woman. He composed his poems also in 
 order to please her. He lost her within a little more than 
 a year after winning her, and this nearly killed him. I 
 may say that throughout all his poems, speaking in a gen- 
 eral way, there are references to this great love of his life; 
 but there is one portion of his work that we must consider 
 as especially illustrating it, and that is the "House of Life," 
 a collection of more than one hundred sonnets upon the sub- 
 ject of love and its kindred emotions. But the love of 
 which Rossetti sings is not the love of a young man for a 
 girl — not the love of youth and maid. It is married love 
 carried to the utmost degree of worship. You will think 
 this a strange subject; and I confess that it is. Very few 
 men could be praised for touching such a subject. Coven- 
 try Patmore, you know, was an exception. He made the 
 subject of his own courtship, wedding, and married life 
 the subject of his poetry, and he did it so nicely and so 
 tenderly that his book had a great success. But Rossetti 
 did his work in an entirely different way, which I must try 
 to explain. 
 
 Unlike Patmore, Rossetti did not openly declare that he 
 took any personal experience for the subject of his study; 
 we only perceive, through knowledge of his life, and 
 through suggestions obtained from other parts of his work, 
 that personal love and personal loss were his great inspira- 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 119 
 
 tion. As a matter of fact, any man who sings about love 
 must draw upon his own personal experience of the passion. 
 Every lover thinks of love in his own way. But the value 
 of a love poem is not the personal part of it; the value of 
 a love poem is according to the degree in which it represents 
 universal experience, or experience of a very large kind. 
 It must represent to some degree a general philosophy of 
 life. Even the commonest little love-song, such as a peas- 
 ant might sing in the streets of Tokyo, as he comes in from 
 the country walking beside his horse, will represent some- 
 thing of the philosophy of life if it is a good and true com- 
 position, no matter how vulgar may be the idiom of it. 
 When we come to think about it, we shall find that all great 
 poetry is in this sense also philosophical poetry. 
 
 Rossetti, as I have already shown you, was a true philoso- 
 pher in certain directions; and he applied his philosophical 
 powers, as well as his artistic powers, to his own experi- 
 ences, so as to adapt them to the uses of great poetry. He 
 is never narrowly impersonal. And his sonnets are really 
 very wonderful compositions — not reflecting universal ex- 
 perience so as to be universally understood, but reflecting 
 universal experience so as to be understood by cultivated 
 minds only. These productions are altogether above the 
 range of the common mind; they are extremely subtle and 
 elaborate, both as to thought and as to form. But their 
 subject is not at all special. Rossetti had the idea that 
 every phase of happiness and sorrow belonging to married 
 life, from the hour of the wedding night to the hour of 
 death, was worthy of poetical treatment, because married 
 life is related to the deepest human emotions. And in the 
 space of one hundred sonnets he treats every phase. This 
 series of sonnets is divided into two groups. The first con- 
 tains poems relating to the early conditions of love in mar- 
 riage; the second group treats especially of the more 
 sorrowful aspects of a married life — the trials of death, the 
 pains of memory, and the hopes and fears of reuniting after 
 
120 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 death. The second part does not, however, contain all the 
 sad pieces; there are very sad ones in the first group of 
 fifty-nine. We have already studied one of the first group, 
 the piece called "The Birth-Bond." There is another piece 
 in this group, the first of four sonnets, which is exquisite as 
 a bit of fancy. It is entitled "Willowwood." 
 
 I sat with Love upon a woodside well, 
 
 Leaning across the water, I and he ; 
 
 Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me, 
 But touched his lute wherein was audible 
 The certain secret thing he had to tell : 
 
 Only our mirrored eyes met silently 
 
 In the low wave ; and that sound came to be 
 The passionate voice I knew ; and my tears fell. 
 
 And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers ; 
 And with his foot and with his wing-feathers 
 
 He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth. 
 Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair, 
 And as I stooped, her own lips rising there 
 
 Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth. 
 
 This is a dream of the dead woman loved. The lover finds 
 himself seated with the god of love, the little naked boy 
 with wings, as the ancients represented him, at the edge of 
 a spring near the forest. He does not look at the god of 
 love, neither does the god look at him; they were friends 
 long ago, but now — what is the use"? She is dead. By 
 the reflection in the water only he knows that Love is look- 
 ing down, and he does not wish to speak to him. But Love 
 will not leave him alone. He hears the tone of a musical 
 instrument, and that music makes him suddenly very sad, 
 for it seems like the voice of the dead for whom he mourns. 
 It makes his tears fall into the water; and immediately, 
 magically, the reflection of the eyes of Love in the water 
 become like the eyes of the woman he loved. Then while 
 he looks in wonder, the little god stirs the surface of the 
 water with wings and feet, and the ripples become like the 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 121 
 
 hair of the dead woman, and as the lover bends down, her 
 lips rise up through the water to kiss him. You may ask, 
 what does all this mean*? Well, it means as much as any 
 dream means; it is all impossible, no doubt, but the impos- 
 sible in dreams often makes us very sad indeed — especially 
 if the dead appear to come back in them. 
 
 Another example of regret, very beautiful, is the sonnet 
 numbered ninety-one in this collection. It is called "Lost 
 on Both Sides." 
 
 As when two men have loved a woman well, 
 
 Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit ; 
 
 Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet 
 And the long pauses of this wedding-bell ; 
 Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel 
 
 At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat ; 
 
 Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet 
 The two lives left that most of her can tell : — 
 
 So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed 
 
 The one same Peace, strove with each other long. 
 And Peace before their faces perished since : 
 
 So through that soul, in restless brotherhood, 
 They roam together now, and wind among 
 Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns. 
 
 The comparison is of the hopes and aims of the artist to 
 a couple of men in love with the same woman — bitter ene- 
 mies while she lives, because of their natural rivalry, but 
 loving each other after her death, simply because each can 
 understand better than anybody else in the world the pain 
 of the other. Afterward the men, once rivals, passed all 
 their time together, wandering about at night in search of 
 some quiet place, where they can sit down and drink and 
 talk together. In Rossetti's time such quiet places were 
 not to be found in the main streets, but in the little side 
 streets called bye-streets. After this explanation, the com- 
 parison should not be obscure. The artist who loves does 
 all his work with the thought of the woman that he loves 
 
122 STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 before him ; his hope to win fame is that he may make her 
 proud of him ; his aims are in all cases to please her. After 
 he has lost her, these hopes and aims, which might have 
 been antagonists to each other in former days, are now 
 reconciled within him; her memory alone is now the inspira- 
 tion and the theme. I hope you will notice the curious and 
 exquisite value of certain words here. "Stark," meaning 
 stiff, nearly always refers to the rigidness of death; it is 
 especially used of the appearance and attitude of corpses, 
 and its application in this poem to the cover of the marriage 
 bed is quite enough to convey the sense of death without 
 any more definite observation. Again the expression "long 
 pauses," referring to the sound of the church bells, makes 
 us understand that the bells are really ringing a funeral 
 knell; for the ringing of wedding bells ought to be quick 
 and joyous. It might seem a strange contradiction, this 
 simile, but the poet has in his mind an old expression about 
 the death of a maiden: "She became the bride of Death." 
 Thus the effect is greatly intensified by the sombre irony of 
 the simile itself. 
 
 We might extract a great many beauties from this won- 
 derful collection of sonnets; but time is precious, and we 
 shall have room for only another quotation or two. The 
 following is one to which I should like especially to invite 
 your attention — not only because of its strange charm, but 
 also because of the curious legend which it recalls — a legend 
 which we have already studied: 
 
 BODY'S BEAUTY 
 
 Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told 
 
 (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) 
 
 That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive. 
 
 And her enchanted hair was the first gold. 
 
 And still she sits, young while the earth is old, 
 And subtly of herself contemplative, 
 Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave. 
 
 Till heart and body and life are in its hold. 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 123 
 
 The rose and poppy are her flowers ; for where 
 Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent 
 
 And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? 
 Lo ! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went 
 Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent, 
 
 And round his heart one strangling golden hair. 
 
 The reference to the rose and the poppy may need some 
 explanation. The rose has been for many centuries in 
 Western countries a symbol of love; and the poppy has 
 been a symbol of death and sleep from the time of the 
 Greeks. It is from the seeds of the poppy that opium is 
 extracted. The Greeks did not know the use of opium; 
 but they knew that the seeds of the flower produced sleep, 
 and might, in certain quantities, produce death. We have 
 the expression "poppied sleep" to express the sleep of death. 
 
 A final word must be said about Rossetti's genius as a 
 translator. He has given us, in one large volume, the most 
 precious anthology of the Italian poets of the Middle Ages 
 that ever has been made — the poets of the time of Dante, 
 under the title of "Dante and his Circle." This magnifi- 
 cent work would alone be sufficient to establish his supreme 
 excellence as a translator of poetry; but the material is 
 mostly of a sort that can appeal to scholars only. Rossetti 
 is better known as a translator through a very few short 
 pieces translated from French poets, chiefly. Such is the 
 wonderful rendering of Villon's "Ballad of Dead Ladies," 
 beginning 
 
 Tell me now in what hidden way is 
 
 Lady Flora, the lovely Roman ? 
 Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, 
 
 Neither of them the fairer woman ? 
 Where is Echo, beheld of no man, 
 
 Only heard on river and mere, — 
 She whose beauty was more than human ? — 
 
 But where are the snows of yester-year? 
 
 Even Swinburne, when making his splendid translations 
 
IM STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 
 
 from Villon, refrained from attempting to translate this 
 ballad, saying that no man could surpass, even if he could 
 equal, Rossetti's version. The burthen is said to be espe- 
 cially successful as a rendering of the difficult French 
 
 refrain : 
 
 Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? 
 
 You will find this matchless translation almost any- 
 where, so we need not occupy the time further with it; but 
 I doubt whether you have noticed as yet other wonderful 
 translations made by this master from the French. Such is 
 the song from Victor Hugo's drama "Les Burgraves"; you 
 will not forget Rossetti's translation after having once 
 read it. 
 
 Through the long winter the rough wind tears; 
 With their white garments the hills look wan. 
 
 Love on : who cares ? 
 
 Who cares ? Love on ! 
 My mother is dead ; God's patience wears ; 
 It seems my chaplain will not have done ! 
 
 Love on : who cares ? 
 
 W^ho cares ? Love on I 
 The Devil, hobbling up the stairs, 
 Comes for me with his ugly throng. 
 
 Love on : who cares ? 
 
 Who cares? Love on. 
 
 Another remarkable translation from the same drama is 
 that of the song beginning: 
 
 In the time of the civil broils 
 Our swords are stubborn things. 
 A fig for all the cities ! 
 A fig for all the kings! 
 
 and ending: 
 
 Right well we hold our own 
 With the brand and the iron rod. 
 A fig for Satan, Burgraves ; 
 Burgraves, a fig for God! 
 
STUDIES IN ROSSETTI 125 
 
 But even more wonderful Rossetti seems when we go back 
 to the old French, as in the translation which has been 
 called "My Father's Close." 
 
 Inside my father's close 
 
 {Fly away my heart away!) 
 Sweet apple-blossom blows 
 So sweet. 
 
 Three kings' daughters fair, 
 
 {Fly away my heart away!) 
 They lie below it there 
 So sweet! 
 
 Now the Old French of the first stanza will show you the 
 astonishing faithfulness of the rendering: 
 
 Au jardin de mon pere, 
 
 {Vole, mon coeur, vole!) 
 II y a un pommier doux, 
 Tout doux. 
 
 Besides the small exquisite things, there are long transla- 
 tions from mediaeval writers, French and Italian, of won- 
 derful beauty. Compare, for example, the celebrated epi- 
 sode of Francesca da Rimini in Dante (which Carlyle so 
 beautifully called "a lily in the mouth of Hell"), as trans- 
 lated by Byron, and as translated by Rossetti, and observe 
 the immeasurable superiority of the latter. It would be 
 very pleasant, if we had time, to examine Rossetti's trans- 
 lations more in detail ; but the year advances and we must 
 turn to an even greater master of verse — Swinburne. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 A GOOD modem critic has said that the resemblance be- 
 tween Shelley and Algernon Charles Swinburne is of so 
 astonishing a kind that it tempts one to believe that Swin- 
 burne is Shelley in a new body, that the soul of the drowned 
 poet really came back to life again, and returned to finish 
 at Oxford University the studies interrupted by his expul- 
 sion at the beginning of the century. The fancy is pretty; 
 and it is supported by a number of queer analogies. Swin- 
 burne, like Shelley, is well born; like Shelley, he has been 
 from his early days at Eton a furious radical; like Shelley, 
 he has always been an enem)^ of Christianity; and like Shel- 
 ley, he has also been an enemy of conventions and preju- 
 dices of every description. At the beginning of the century 
 Swinburne would certainly have been treated just as Byron 
 and Shelley were treated, but times are changed to-day; 
 the public has become more generous and more sensible, and 
 critics generally recognise Swinburne as the greatest verse 
 writer English literature produced. He will certainly have 
 justice done him after his death, if not during his life. 
 
 If Swinburne were Shelley reborn, we should have to 
 recognise that he gained a good deal of wisdom from the 
 experiences of his former life. He is altogether an incom- 
 parably stronger character than Shelley. He kept his radi- 
 calism for his poetry, and never in any manner outraged the 
 conventions of society in such matters as might relate to 
 his private life. He is also a far greater poet than Shelley 
 — greater than Tennyson, greater than Rossetti, greater 
 than Browning, greater than any other Englishman, not 
 excepting Milton, in the mastery of verse. He is also prob- 
 ably one of the greatest of scholars among the poets of any 
 
 126 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 127 
 
 country, writing poetry in English or French, in Greek and 
 Latin. For learning, there are certainly few among the 
 poets of England who would not have been obliged to bow 
 before him. He is also the greatest living English drama- 
 tist — I might as well say the greatest English dramatist of 
 the nineteenth century. Except the "Cenci" of Shelley, 
 there is no other great drama since 1800 to be placed beside 
 the dramas of Swinburne; and the "Prometheus Unbound" 
 by Shelley is far surpassed by Swinburne's Greek tragedy 
 of "Atalanta in Calydon." Another feature of Swinburne's 
 genius is his critical capacity. He is a great critic; so great 
 that he has been able to make his enemies afraid of him, 
 as well as to help to distinction struggling young men of 
 talent whose work he admires. You will perceive what 
 force there must be in the man. Born in 1837, he has never 
 ceased to produce poetry from the time of his University 
 days, and he still writes, with the result that the bulk of 
 his work probably exceeds the work of any other great poet 
 of the century. If he be indeed the reborn Shelley, it is 
 certain that Shelley has become a giant. 
 
 I may have surprised you by saying that Swinburne is 
 the greatest of all our poets. But understand that I am 
 speaking of poetry as distinguished from prose, of poetry as 
 rhythm and rhyme, as melody and measure. By greatest 
 of poets I mean the greatest master of verse. If you were 
 to ask me whether Swinburne has as great a quality as 
 Tennyson or as Rossetti or as Browning, either in the moral 
 or philosophical sense, I should say no. Greatest of all in 
 the knowledge and use of words, he is perhaps less than any 
 of the three in the higher emotional, moral, sympathetic, 
 and philosophical qualities that give poetry its charm for 
 even those who know nothing about the art of words. And 
 of all the Victorian poets, Swinburne will be the least use- 
 ful to students of these literary classes. The extraordinary 
 powers that distinguish him are powers requiring not only 
 a perfect knowledge of English, but a perfect knowledge 
 
128 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 of those higher forms of literary expression which are espe- 
 cially the outcome of classical study. Swinburne's schol- 
 arship is one of the great obstacles to his being understood 
 by any who are not scholars themselves in the very same 
 direction ; in this sense he would be, I think, quite as useless 
 to you as Milton in the matter of form. In value to you 
 he would be far below Milton in the matter of thought and 
 sentiment. 
 
 There are several ways of studying poetry. The greater 
 number of people who buy the books of poets, and who find 
 pleasure in them, do not know anything about the rules of 
 verse. Out of one hundred thousand Englishmen who read 
 Tennyson, I doubt very much if one thousand know the 
 worth of his art. English University students, who have 
 taken a literary course, probably do understand very well; 
 but a poet's reputation and fortune are not made by schol- 
 ars, but by the great mass of half-educated people. They 
 read for sentiment, for emotion, for imagination; and they 
 are quite satisfied with the pleasure given them by the poet 
 in this way. They are improving and educating themselves 
 when they read him, and for this it is not necessary that 
 they should know the methods of his work, but only that 
 they should know its results. The educators of the great 
 mass of any people in Europe are, in this sense, the poets. 
 
 The other way of studying a poet is the scholarly way, 
 the critical method (I do not mean the philosophical 
 method; that is beside our subject) ; we read a poet closelj, 
 carefully, observing every new and unfamiliar word, every 
 beautiful phrase and unaccustomed term, every device of 
 rhythm or rhyme, sound or colour that he has to give us. 
 Our capacity to study any poet in this way depends a good 
 deal upon literary habit and upon educational opportunity. 
 By the first method I doubt whether you could find much in 
 Swinburne. He is like Shelley, often without substance of 
 any kind. By the second method we can do a great deal 
 with a choice of texts from his best work. I think it better 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 129 
 
 to state this clearly beforehand, so that you may not be dis- 
 appointed, failing to find in him the beautiful haunting 
 thoughts that you can find in Rossetti or in Tennyson or in 
 Browning. 
 
 Here I must digress a little. I must speak of the worst 
 side of Swinburne as well as of the best. The worst is 
 nearly all in one book, not a very large book, which made 
 the greatest excitement in England that had been made 
 since the appearance of Byron's "Don Juan." It is the 
 greatest lyrical gift ever given to English literature, this 
 book; but it is also, in some respects, the most immoral book 
 yet written by an English poet. The work of Byron, at its 
 worst, is pure and innocent by comparison with the work 
 of Swinburne in this book. It is astonishing that the Eng- 
 lish public could have allowed the book to exist. Probably 
 it was forgiven on account of its beauty. Some years ago, 
 I remember, an excellent English review said, in speaking 
 of a certain French poem, that it was the most beautiful 
 poem of its kind in the French language, but that, unfortu- 
 nately, the subject could not be mentioned in print. Of 
 course when there is a great beauty and great voluptuous- 
 ness at the same time, it is the former, not the latter, that 
 makes the greatness of the work. There must be something 
 very good to excuse the existence of the bad. Much of the 
 work of Swinburne is like that French poem, valuable for 
 the beauty and condemnable for the badness in it — and 
 touching upon subjects which cannot be named at all. Why 
 he did this work we must try to understand without preju- 
 dice. 
 
 First, as to the man himself. We must not suppose that 
 a person is necessarily immoral in his lite because he hap- 
 pens to write something which is immoral, any more than 
 we should suppose a person whose writings are extremely 
 moral to be incapable of doing anything of a vicious or 
 foolish kind. Shelley, for example, is a very chaste poet — 
 there is not one improper line in the whole of his poetry; 
 
130 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 but his life was decidedly unfortunate. Exactly the re- 
 verse happens in the case of Swinburne, who has written 
 thousands of immoral lines. The fact is that many per- 
 sons are apt to mistake artistic feeling for vicious feeling, and 
 a spirit of revolt against conventions for a general hatred of 
 moral law. I must ask you to try to put yourselves for a 
 moment in the place of a young student, such as Swinburne 
 was at the time of these writings, and try to imagine how 
 he felt about things. In every Western boy — indeed, I may 
 say in every civilised boy — there are several distinct periods, 
 corresponding to the various periods in the history of human 
 progress. Both psychologically and physiologically the his- 
 tory of the race is repeated in the history of the individual. 
 The child is a savage, without religion, without tenderness, 
 with a good deal of cruelty and cunning in his little soul. 
 He is this because the first faculties that are developed 
 within him are the faculties for self-preservation, the facul- 
 ties of primitive man. Then ideas of right and wrong and 
 religious feelings are quickened within him by home-train- 
 ing, and he becomes somewhat like the man of the Middle 
 Ages — he enters into his medi£eval period. Then in the 
 course of his college studies he is gradually introduced to 
 a knowledge of the wonderful old Greek civilisation, civ- 
 ilisation socially and, in some respects, even morally su- 
 perior to anything in the existing world; and he enters into 
 the period of his Renaissance. If he be very sensitive to 
 beauty, if he have the aesthetic faculty largely developed, 
 there will almost certainly come upon him an enthusiastic 
 love and reverence for the old paganism, and a correspond- 
 ing dislike of his modern surroundings. This feeling may 
 last only for a short time, or it may change his whole life. 
 One fact to observe is this, that it is just about the time 
 when a young man's passions are strongest that the story 
 of Greek life is suddenly expounded to him in the course 
 of his studies; and you must remember that the sesthetic 
 faculty is primarily based upon the sensuous life. Now in 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 131 
 
 Swinburne's case we have an abnormal aesthetic and schol- 
 arly faculty brought into contact with these influences at a 
 very early age ; and the result must have been to that young 
 mind like the shock of an earth-quake. We must also 
 imagine the natural consequence of this enthusiasm in a 
 violent reaction against all literary, religious, or social con- 
 ventions that endeavour to keep the spirit of the old pagan- 
 ism hidden and suppressed within narrow limits, as a 
 dangerous thing. Finally we must suppose the natural ef- 
 fect of opposition upon this mind, the effect of threats, 
 sneers, or prohibitions, like oil upon fire. For young Swin- 
 burne was, and still is, a man of exceeding courage, inca- 
 pable of fear of any sort. A great idea suddenly came to 
 him, and he resolved to put it into execution. This idea 
 was nothing less than to attempt to obtain for English 
 poetry the same liberty enjoyed by French poetry in recent 
 times, to attempt to obtain the right of absolute liberty of 
 expression in all directions, and to provoke the contest with 
 such a bold stroke as never had been dared before. The 
 result was the book that has been so much condemned. 
 
 We cannot say that Swinburne was successful in this at- 
 tempt at reform. He attempted a little too much, and at- 
 tempted it too soon. Even in his own time the great French 
 poet Charles Baudelaire was publicly condemned in a French 
 court for having written verse less daring than Swinburne's. 
 The great French novelist Flaubert also had to answer in 
 court for the production of a novel that is now thought to 
 be very innocent. It was only at a considerably later time 
 that the French poets obtained such liberty of expression 
 as allowed of the excesses of writers like Zola or of poets 
 like Richepin. Altogether Swinburne's fight was prema- 
 ture. He must now see that it was. But I should not like 
 to say that he was entirely wrong. The result of absolute 
 liberty in French literature gives us a good idea of what 
 would be the result of absolute liberty in English literature. 
 Extravagances of immorality were followed by extrava- 
 
132 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 gances of vulgarity as well, and after the novelty of the 
 thing was over a reaction set in, provoked by disgust and 
 national shame. Exactly the same thing would happen 
 in England after a brief period of vicious carnival ; the Eng- 
 lish tide of opinion would set in the contrary direction with 
 immense force, and would bring about such a tyrannical 
 conservatism in letters as would signify, for the time being, 
 a serious check upon progress. As a matter of fact, we 
 cannot do in English literature what can be done in French 
 literature. Swinburne might, but there is only one Swin- 
 burne. The English language is not perfect enough, not 
 graceful and flexible enough, to admit of elegant immo- 
 rality; and the English character is not rehned enough. A 
 Frenchman can say very daring things, very immoral things, 
 gracefully; an Englishman cannot. Only one Englishman 
 has approached the possibility; and that Englishman is 
 Swinburne himself. 
 
 I think you will now understand what Swinburne's pur- 
 pose was, and be able to judge of it. His mistakes were 
 due not only to his youth but also to his astonishing genius ; 
 for he could not then know how much superior in ability 
 he actually was to any other English poet. He imagined 
 that there were many who might do what he could do. 
 The truth is that hundreds of years may pass before another 
 Englishman is born capable of doing what Swinburne could 
 do. Men of letters have long ago forgiven him, because 
 of this astonishing power. They say, "We know the poems 
 are improper, but we have nothing else like them, and Eng- 
 lish literature cannot aiford to lose them." The scholars 
 have forgiven him, because his worst faults are always schol- 
 arly; and a common person cannot understand his worst 
 allusions. Indeed, one must be much of a classical scholar 
 to comprehend what is most condemnable in the first series 
 of the "Poems and Ballads." Their extreme laxity will 
 not be perceived without elaborate explanation, and no one 
 can venture to explain — I do not mean in a university class 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 133 
 
 room only, I mean even in printed criticism. When this 
 was attempted by the poet's enemies, he was able to point 
 out, with great effect, that the explanations were much more 
 immoral than the poems. 
 
 Now in considering Swinburne's poetry in a short course 
 of lectures, I think it will be well to begin by explaining his 
 philosophical position; for every poet has a philosophy of 
 his own. As I liave already said, there is less of this visible 
 in Swinburne than in the other Victorian poets, but the little 
 there is has a particular and beautiful interest, which we 
 shall be able to illustrate in a series of quotations. I am 
 presuming a little in speaking about his philosophy because 
 there has been nothing of importance written about his phi- 
 losophy, nor has he himself ever made a plain state- 
 ment of it. In such a case I can only surmise, and you 
 need not consider my opinion as definitive. Swinburne is, 
 like George Meredith, an evolutionist, and he has some- 
 thing of the spiritual element in him which we notice in 
 Meredith as a philosopher — but always with this difference, 
 that Meredith makes evolution preach a moral law, and 
 Swinburne does not. But here we notice that Swinburne's 
 evolution is something totally different from Meredith's 
 in its origin. I have said to you that Meredith expresses 
 evolutional philosophy according to Herbert Spencer; I 
 consider him the greatest of our philosophical poets for 
 that very reason. Swinburne does not appear to have felt 
 the influence of Herbert Spencer; he seems rather to re- 
 flect the opinions of Comte — especially of Comte as inter- 
 preted by Lewes, and perhaps by Frederic Harrison. He 
 speaks of the Religion of Humanity, of the Divinity of 
 Man, and of other things which indicate the influence of 
 Comte. Furthermore, I must say, being myself a disciple 
 of Spencer, that Swinburne's sociological and radical opin- 
 ions are quite incompatible with evolutional philosophy as 
 expounded by Spencer. Indeed, Swinburne's views about 
 government, about fraternity and equality, about liberty 
 
134. STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 in all matters of thought and action, are heresies for the 
 strictly scientific mind. The great thinkers of our century 
 have exposed and overthrown the old fallacies of the French 
 revolutionary school as to the equality of men and the 
 meaning of liberty and fraternity. Swinburne still cham- 
 pions, or appears to champion, some of the erroneous ideas 
 of Rousseau. Otherwise there is little fault to be found 
 with his thoughts concerning the ultimate nature of things, 
 except in the deep melancholy that always accompanies 
 them. Meredith is a grand optimist. Swinburne is some- 
 thing very like a pessimist. There is no joy and no hope 
 in his tone of speaking about the mystery of death; rather 
 we find ourselves listening to the tone of the ancient Roman 
 Epicureans, in the time when faith was dying, and when 
 philosophy attempted, without success, to establish a re- 
 ligion of duty founded upon pure ethics. 
 
 An important test of any writer's metaphysical position 
 is what he believes about the soul. Swinburne's idea is 
 very well expressed in the prelude to his "Songs before Sun- 
 rise." A single stanza would be enough in this case; but 
 we shall give two, in order to show the pantheistic side of 
 the poet's faith. 
 
 Because man's soul is man's God still, 
 What wind soever waft his will 
 
 Across the waves of day and night 
 
 To port or shipwreck, left or right. 
 By shores and shoals of good and ill ; 
 
 And still its flame at mainmast height 
 Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill 
 
 Sustains the indomitable light 
 Whence only man hath strength to steer 
 Or helm to handle without fear. 
 
 Save his own soul's light overhead, 
 
 None leads him, and none ever led. 
 Across birth's hidden harbour-bar, 
 Past youth where shoreward shallows are. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 135 
 
 Through age that drives on toward the red 
 
 Vast void of sunset hailed from far, 
 To the equal waters of the dead ; 
 
 Save his own soul he hath no star, 
 And sinks, except his own soul guide, 
 Helmless in middle turn of tide. 
 
 This is a very plain statement not only that man has no 
 god, and that he makes his own gods, but that he never had 
 a creator or a god of any kind. He has no divine help, 
 no one to pray to, no one to trust except himself. So far 
 this is in tolerable accord with the teaching of the Buddha, 
 "Be ye lights unto yourselves; seek no refuge but in your- 
 selves." But the question comes, What is man's soul? Is 
 it divine*? Is it part of the universal soul, a supreme and 
 infinite intelligence'? There is another meaning in the first 
 line of the first stanza which I quoted to you about man's 
 soul being man's god. Some verses from the wonderful 
 poem called "On the Downs" will make the meaning 
 plainer. 
 
 "No light to lighten and no rod 
 
 To chasten men? Is there no God?" 
 
 So girt with anguish, iron-zoned, 
 Went my soul weeping as she trod 
 Between the men enthroned 
 And men that groaned. 
 
 O fool, that for brute cries of wrong 
 Heard not the grey glad mother's song 
 
 Ring response from the hills and waves, 
 But heard harsh noises all day long. 
 
 Of spirits that were slaves 
 
 And dwelt in graves. 
 
 With all her tongues of life and death, 
 With all her bloom and blood and breath. 
 
 From all years dead and all things done. 
 In the ear of man the mother saith, 
 
 "There is no God, O son, 
 
 If thou be none." 
 
136 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 This is the declaration of a belief in the divinity of man, 
 a doctrine well known to students of Comte. It is not al- 
 together in disaccord with Oriental philosophy; you must 
 not suppose Swinburne to be speaking of individual di- 
 vinity, but of a universal divinity expressing itself in human 
 thought and feeling. His view of life is that the essential 
 thing is to live as excellently as possible, but we must not 
 suppose that excellence is used in the moral sense. Swin- 
 burne's idea of excellence is the idea of completeness. His 
 notions of right and wrong are not the religious or the so- 
 cial notions of right and wrong. In this respect he some- 
 times seems to think very much like the German philosopher 
 Nietzsche. Nevertheless he does tell us that the real spirit 
 of the universe is a spirit of love, a doctrine at which Huxley 
 would certainly have laughed. But it is beautiful doctrine 
 in its way, even if not true, and admirably suits the pur- 
 poses of poetry. 
 
 I think that I need not say much more here about Swin- 
 burne's philosophy; you will understand that he is at once 
 a pantheist and an evolutionist, and that is sufficient for our 
 purposes. But it is necessary to remember this in order 
 to understand many things in his verse, and especially in 
 order to understand some of his extraordinary attitudes in 
 condemning what most men respect, and in praising what 
 most men condemn. Remember also that his judgments, 
 like those of Nature, are never moral; they are not always 
 the reverse, but they are founded entirely upon aesthetic per- 
 ception. Those who praise him especially are men in re- 
 volt like himself. Therefore he praised Walt Whitman, at 
 a time when Walt Whitman was being condemned every- 
 where for certain faults in his compositions; therefore he 
 sang the praises of Baudelaire, as none other had done 
 before him (and here he is certainly right) ; therefore he 
 praised Theophile Gautier's "Mademoiselle de Maupin," 
 calling it "the golden book of spirit and sense"; therefore 
 also he wrote a sonnet praising Burton's translation of the 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 137 
 
 Arabian Nights, which made a great scandal in England 
 because it translated all the obscene passages which nobody 
 else had ventured to put into English or French. The es- 
 thetic judgment in all these cases is correct, but I will not 
 venture to pronounce upon the moral judgment any further 
 than to say this, that Swinburne delights in courage, and 
 that literary courage in his eyes covers a multitude of sins. 
 Not a few, however, of these daring songs of praise are 
 among the most wonderful triumphs of modern lyric verse. 
 I should like, for example, to quote to you the whole of 
 his ode to Villon, but I fear that because of its length, and 
 the unfamiliarity of the subject, we cannot afford the time. 
 I will quote the closing stanza as a specimen of the rest, 
 and I am sure that you will see its beauty. 
 
 Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, 
 A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire ; 
 
 Shame soiled thy song, and song assolled thy shame. 
 But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, 
 Love reads out first at head of all our quire, 
 
 Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name. 
 
 Each Stanza ends with this strange refrain of "sad bad 
 glad mad," adjectives, which excellently express the change- 
 ful and extraordinary character of that poor student of 
 Paris with whose name modern French literature properly 
 begins. He lived a terrible and reckless life, very nearly 
 ending with the gallows; he was an associate at one time 
 of princes and bishops, at another time of thieves and pros- 
 titutes; he would be one day a spendthrift, the next day 
 a beggar or a prisoner; and he sang of all these experiences 
 as no man ever sang before or since. Really Swinburne's 
 praise in this case is not only just — it represents the best 
 possible estimate of the singer's faults and virtues com- 
 bined. 
 
 To speak in detail of the great range of subjects chosen 
 by Swinburne is not possible within the limits of this lee- 
 
138 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 ture. I am going to make selections from every part of his 
 production, except the dramatic, as well as I can, and the 
 selections will be made with a view especially to show you 
 the music of his verse and the brilliance of his language. 
 Most of his poems are above the ordinary lyrical length 
 rather than below it, and I hope that you will not be dis- 
 appointed if I do not often give the whole of a poem, for 
 the selections will contain, I am sure, the best part of the 
 poem. 
 
 Being a descendant of great seamen, Swinburne had every 
 reason to sing of the sea ; and he has sung of it better than 
 any one else. A great number of his poems are sea-poems, 
 or poems containing descriptions of the sea in all its moods, 
 splendours, or terrors. Sun, sea, and wind are favourite 
 subjects with him, and I know of nothing in the whole of 
 his work finer than his description of the wind as the lover 
 of the sea. The verses I am going to quote are from a 
 great composition entitled "By the North Sea." The per- 
 sonal pronoun "he" in the first line means the wind, per- 
 sonified. 
 
 The delight that he takes but in living 
 
 Is more than of all things that live : 
 For the world that has all things for giving 
 
 Has nothing so goodly to give : 
 But more than delight his desire is, 
 
 For the goal where his pinions would be 
 Is immortal as air or as fire is, 
 
 Immense as the sea. 
 
 Though hence come the moan that he borrows 
 
 From darkness and depth of the night, 
 Though hence be the spring of his sorrows, 
 
 Hence too is the joy of his might; 
 The delight that his doom is forever 
 
 To seek, and desire, and rejoice, 
 And the sense that eternity never 
 
 Shall silence his voice. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 139 
 
 That satiety never may stifle 
 
 Nor weariness ever estrange 
 Nor time be so strong as to rifle 
 
 Nor change be so great as to change 
 His gift that renews in the giving, 
 
 The joy that exalts him to be 
 Alone of all elements living 
 
 The lord of the sea. 
 
 What is fire, that its flame should consume her? 
 
 More fierce than all fires are her waves : 
 What is earth, that its gulfs should entomb her? 
 
 More deep are her own than their graves. 
 Life shrinks from his pinions that cover 
 
 The darkness by thunders bedinned ; 
 But she knows him, her lord and her lover, 
 
 The godhead of wind. 
 
 This titanic personification of sea and wind is sublime, 
 but Swinburne has many other ways of personifying wind 
 and sea, and sometimes the element of tenderness and love 
 is not wanting. Sometimes the sea is addressed as a god- 
 dess, but more often she is addressed as a mother, and some 
 of the most exquisite forms of such address are found in 
 poems which have, properly speaking, nothing to do with 
 the sea at all. A good example is in the poem called "The 
 Triumph of Time." The words are supposed to be spoken 
 by a person who is going to drown himself. 
 
 O fair green-girdled mother of mine, 
 
 Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, 
 Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine. 
 
 Thy large embraces are keen like pain. 
 Save me and hide me with all thy waves. 
 Find me one grave of thy thousand graves. 
 Those pure cold populous graves of thine. 
 
 Wrought without hand in a world without stain. 
 
 We shall also find great wonder and beauty in Swinburne's 
 hymns to the sun, which is also for him, as for the poets 
 
140 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 of old, a living god, and which certainly is, in a scientific 
 sense, the lord of all life within this world. The best ex- 
 pression of this feeling is in a poem called "Off Shore," de- 
 scribing sunrise over the sea, and the glory of light. 
 
 Light, perfect and visible 
 
 Godhead of God! 
 God indivisible, 
 Lifts but his rod, 
 And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness 
 is light at his nod. 
 
 At the touch of his wand, 
 
 At the nod of his head 
 From the spaces beyond 
 
 Where the dawn hath her bed, 
 Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one 
 risen from the dead. 
 
 He puts forth his hand, 
 
 And the mountains are thrilled 
 To the heart as they stand 
 In his presence, fulfilled 
 With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and 
 her sorrows are stilled. 
 
 As a kiss on my brow 
 
 Be the light of thy grace, 
 Be thy glance on me now 
 From the pride of thy place : 
 As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face 
 of thy face. 
 
 Fair father of all 
 
 In thy ways that have trod, 
 That have risen at thy call. 
 
 That have thrilled at thy nod. 
 Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O Sun that we see to 
 be God. 
 
 • «••••«• 
 
 Be praised and adored of us 
 All in accord. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 14.1 
 
 Father and lord of us 
 Always adored, 
 The slayer, and the stayer, and the harper, the light 
 of us all and our lord. 
 
 Swinburne has no equal in enthusiastic celebration of the 
 beauties of sky and sea and wood, of light and clouds and 
 waters, of sound and perfume and blossoming. Indeed, 
 one of his particular characteristics, a characteristic very 
 seldom found in English masterpieces, though common in 
 the best French work, is his art for describing odours — 
 the smell of morning and evening, scents of the seasons, 
 scents also of life. We shall have many opportunities to 
 notice this characteristic of Swinburne, even in his descrip- 
 tions of human beauty. What the French call the parfum 
 de jeunesse or odour of youth, the pleasant smell of young 
 bodies, the perfume that we notice, for example, in the hair 
 of a healthy child, is something which English writers very 
 seldom venture to treat of; but Swinburne has treated it 
 quite as delicately at times as a French poet could do, 
 though sometimes a little extravagantly. You must think 
 of him as one whom no quality of beauty escapes, whether 
 of colour, odour, or motion; and as one who believes, I think 
 rightly, that whatever is in itself beautiful and natural is 
 worthy of song. You will be able to imagine, from what 
 I have already quoted, how he feels in the presence of wild 
 nature. How he considers human beauty is a more diffi- 
 cult matter to illustrate by quotation, at least by quotation 
 before a class. But I shall try to offer some illustrations 
 from the "Masque of Queen Bersabe." You all know what 
 a masque is. The masque in question is a perfect imitation, 
 for the most part, of a mediaeval masque, both as to form 
 and language. But there is one portion of it which is 
 mediseval only in tone, not in language, since there never 
 lived in the Middle Ages any man capable of writing such 
 verse. It is from this part that I want to quote. But 
 I must first explain to you that the name Bersabe is only 
 
142 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 a mediaeval form of the Biblical name Bathsheba, the 
 wife of Uriah, whom King David caused to be murdered. 
 It is an ugly story. The King committed adultery with 
 Bathsheba; then he ordered her husband to be put into the 
 front rank during a battle, in such a place that he 
 must be killed. Afterwards the King married Bathsheba; 
 but the prophet Nathan heard of the wickedness, and 
 threatened the King with the punishment of God. This 
 was the subject of several mediaeval religious plays, and 
 Swinburne adopted it for an imitation of such play. The 
 first part of his conception is that at the command of the 
 prophet the ghosts of all the beautiful and wicked queens 
 who ever lived come before Bathsheba, to reproach her with 
 her sin, and to tell her how they had been punished in other 
 time for sins of the same kind. Each one speaks in turn; 
 and though I cannot quote all of what they said, I can 
 quote enough to illustrate the magnificence of the work. 
 Each verse is a portrait in words, uttered by the subject. 
 
 CLEOPATRA 
 
 I am the queen of Ethiope. 
 Love bade my kissing eyelids ope 
 
 That men beholding might praise love. 
 My hair was wonderful and curled; 
 My lips held fast the mouth of the world 
 
 To spoil the strength and speech thereof. 
 The latter triumph in my breath 
 Bowed down the beaten brows of death, 
 
 Ashamed they had not wrath enough. 
 
 AHOLAH 
 
 I am the queen of Amalek. 
 
 There was no tender touch or fleck 
 
 To spoil my body or bared feet. 
 My words were soft like dulcimers, 
 And the first sweet of grape-flowers 
 
 Made each side of my bosom sweet. 
 My raiment was as tender fruit 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 143 
 
 Whose rind smells sweet of spice-tree root. 
 Bruised balm-blossom and budded wheat. 
 
 SEMIRAMIS 
 
 I am the queen Semiramis. 
 
 The whole world and the sea that is 
 
 In fashion like a chrysopras, 
 The noise, of all men labouring, 
 The priest's mouth tired through thanksgiving, 
 
 The sound of love in the blood's pause, 
 The strength of love in the blood's beat, 
 All these were cast beneath my feet 
 
 And all found lesser than I was. 
 
 PASITHEA 
 
 I am the queen of Cypriotes. 
 
 Mine oarsmen, labouring with brown throats, 
 
 Sang of me many a tender thing. 
 My maidens, girdled loose and braced 
 With gold from bosom to white waist. 
 
 Praised me between their wool-combing. 
 All that praise Venus all night long 
 With lips like speech and lids like song 
 
 Praised me till song lost heart to sing. 
 
 ALACIEL 
 
 I am the queen Alaciel. 
 
 My mouth was like that moist gold cell 
 
 Whereout the thickest honey drips. 
 Mine eyes were as a grey-green sea ; 
 The amorous blood that smote on me 
 
 Smote to my feet and finger-tips. 
 My throat was whiter than the dove. 
 Mine eyelids as the seals of love, 
 
 And as the doors of love my lips. 
 
 ERIGONE 
 
 I am the queen Erigone. 
 
 The wild wine shed as blood on me 
 
 Made my face brighter than a bride's. 
 My large lips had the old thirst of earth. 
 
144 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 Mine arms the might of the old sea's girth 
 Bound round the whole world's iron sides. 
 
 Within mine eyes and in mine ears 
 
 Were music and the wine of tears, 
 And light, and thunder of the tides. 
 
 So pass the strange phantoms of dead pride and lust and 
 power, together with many more of whom the descriptions 
 are not less beautiful and strange, though much less suit- 
 able for quotation. I have made the citations somewhat 
 long, but I have done so because they offer the best possible 
 illustration of two things peculiar to Swinburne, the music 
 and colour of his verse, and the peculiar mediseval tone which 
 he sometimes assumes in dealing with antique subjects. 
 These descriptions are quite unlike anything done by Tenny- 
 son, or indeed by any other poet except Rossetti. They 
 represent, in a certain way, what has been called Pre- 
 Raphaelitism in poetry. Swinburne was, with Rossetti, one 
 of the great forces of the new movement in literature. Ob- 
 serve that the illustrations are chiefly made by compari- 
 sons — that the descriptions are made by suggestion; there 
 is no attempt to draw a clear sharp line, nothing is described 
 completely, but by some comparison or symbolism in praise 
 of a part, the whole figure is vaguely brought before the 
 imagination in a blaze of colour with strange accompani- 
 ment of melody. For example, you will have noticed that 
 no face is fully pictured; you find only some praise of the 
 eyes or the mouth, the throat or the skin, but that is quite 
 enough to bring to your fancy the entire person. But there 
 is another queer fact which you must be careful to notice — 
 namely, that no comparison is modern. The language and 
 the symbolism are Biblical or mediaeval in every case. The 
 European scholar who had made a special study of the litera- 
 ture of the Middle Ages would notice even more than this; 
 he would notice that the whole tone is not of the later but 
 of the earlier Middle Ages, that the old miracle plays, the 
 old French romances, and the early Italian poets, have all 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 145 
 
 contributed something to this splendour of expression. It 
 is modern art in one sense, of course, but there is nothing 
 modern about it except the craftsmanship; the material is 
 all quaint and strange, and gives us the sensation of old ta- 
 pestry or of the paintings that were painted in Italy before 
 the time of Raphael. 
 
 Here I must say a word about the Pre-Raphaelite move- 
 ment in nineteenth century literature. To explain every- 
 thing satisfactorily, I ought to have pictures to show you; 
 and that is unfortunately impossible. But I think I can 
 make a very easy explanation of the subject. First of all 
 you must be quite well aware that the literature of all coun- 
 tries seeks for a majority of its subjects in the past. The 
 everyday, the familiar, does not attract us in the same way 
 as that which is not familiar and not of the present. Dis- 
 tance, whether of space or time, lends to things a certain 
 tone of beauty, just as mountains look more beautifully 
 blue the further away they happen to be. This seeking for 
 beauty in the past rather than in the present represents much 
 of what is called romanticism in any literature. 
 
 Necessarily, even in this age of precise historical knowl- 
 edge, the past is for us less real than the present; time has 
 spread mists of many colours between it and us, so that we 
 cannot be sure of details, distances, depths, and heights. 
 But in other generations the mists were heavier, and the 
 past was more of a fairy-land than now; it was more pleas- 
 ant also to think about, because the mysterious is attrac- 
 tive to all of us, and men of letters delighted to write about 
 it, because they could give free play to the imagination. 
 Such stories of the past as we find even in what have been 
 called historical novels, were called also, and rightly called, 
 romances — works of imagination rather than of fact. 
 
 But still you may ask, why such words as romance and 
 romantic? The answer is that works of imagination, deal- 
 ing with past events, were first written in languages de- 
 rived from the Latin, the romance languages; and at a very 
 
146 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 early time it became the custom to distinguish work writ- 
 ten in these modern tongues upon fanciful or heroic sub- 
 jects, by this name and quality. The romantic in the Mid- 
 dle Ages signified especially the new literature of fancy as 
 opposed to the old classical literature. Remember, there- 
 fore, that this meaning is not yet entirely lost, though it has 
 undergone many modifications. "Romantic" in literature 
 still means "not classical," and it also suggests imagination 
 rather than fact, and the past rather than the present. 
 
 When we say "mediae val" in speaking of nineteenth cen- 
 tury poetry, we mean of course nineteenth century litera- 
 ture having a romantic tone, as well as reflecting, so far 
 as imagination can, the spirit of the Middle Ages. But 
 what is the difference between the Pre-Raphaelite and 
 Mediceval? The time before Raphael, the Pre-Raphaelite 
 period, would necessarily have been mediaeval. As a mat- 
 ter of fact, the term Pre-Raphaelite does not have the wide 
 general meaning usually given to it. It is something of a 
 technical term, belonging to art rather than to literature, 
 and first introduced into literature by a company of painters. 
 The Pre-Raphaelite painters, in the technical sense, were a 
 special group of modern painters, distinguished by particu- 
 lar characteristics. 
 
 So much being clear, I may say that there was a school 
 of painting before Raphael of a very realistic and remark- 
 able kind. This school came to existence a little after the 
 true religious spirit of the Middle Ages had begun to weaken. 
 It sought the emotion of beauty as well as the emotion of 
 religion, but it did not yet feel the influence of the Renais- 
 sance in a strong way; it was not Greek nor pagan. It 
 sought beauty in truth, studying ordinary men and wpmen, 
 flowers and birds, scenery of nature or scenery of streets; 
 and it used reality for its model. It was much less romantic 
 than the school that came after it; but it was very great 
 and very noble. With Raphael the Greek feeling, the old 
 pagan feeling for sensuous beauty, found full expression. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 147 
 
 and this Renaissance tone changed the whole direction and 
 character of art. After Raphael the painters sought beauty 
 before all things; previously they had sought for truth and 
 sentiment even before beauty. Raphael set a fashion 
 which influenced all arts after him down to our own time; 
 for centuries the older painters were neglected and almost 
 forgotten. Therefore Ruskin boldly declared that since 
 Raphael's death Western art had been upon the decline 
 and that the school of painters immediately before Raphael 
 were greater than any who came after him. Gradually 
 within our own time a new taste came into art-circles, a 
 new love for the old forgotten masters of the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries. It was discovered that they were, 
 after all, nearer to truth in many respects than the later 
 painters; and then was established, by Rossetti and others, 
 a new school of painting called the Pre-Raphaelite school. 
 It sought truth to life as well as beauty, and it endeavoured 
 to mingle both with mystical emotion. 
 
 At first this was a new movement in art only, or rather 
 in painting and drawing only, as distinguished from lit- 
 erary art. But literature and painting and architecture and 
 music are really all very closely related, and a new literary 
 movement also took place in harmony with the new depar- 
 ture in painting. This was chiefly the work of Rossetti, 
 Swinburne, and William Morris. They tried to make 
 poems and to write stories according to the same aesthetic 
 motives which seem to have inspired the school of painters 
 before Raphael, This is the signification of the strange 
 method and beauty of those quotations which I have been 
 giving to you from Swinburne's masque. They represent 
 very powerfully the Pre-Raphaelite feelings in English 
 poetry. I know that this digression is somewhat long, but 
 I believe that it is of great importance; without knowing 
 these facts, it would be impossible for the student to un- 
 derstand many curious things in Swinburne's manner. 
 Throughout even his lighter poems we find this curious habit 
 
148 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 of describing things in ways totally remote from nineteenth 
 century feeling, and nevertheless astonishingly effective. 
 Fancy such comparisons as these for a woman's beauty in 
 the correct age of Wordsworth : 
 
 I said "she must be swift and white, 
 And subtly warm, and half perverse. 
 And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite, 
 And like a snake's love lithe and fierce." 
 Men have guessed worse. 
 
 Or take the following extraordinary description of a 
 woman's name, perhaps I had better say of the sensation 
 given by the name Felise, probably an abbreviation of 
 Felicita, but by its spelling reminding one very much of the 
 Latin word felis^ which means a cat : 
 
 Like colours in the sea, like flowers, 
 
 Like a cat's splendid circled eyes 
 That wax and wane with love for hours, 
 
 Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies, 
 
 And soft like sighs. 
 
 The third line refers to the curious phenomenon of the en- 
 larging and diminishing of the pupil in a cat's eye accord- 
 ing to the decrease or increase of light. It is said that you 
 can tell the time of day by looking at a cat's eyes. Now 
 all these comparisons are in the highest degree offences 
 against classical feeling. The classical poet, even the half- 
 classical poet of the beginning of our own century, would 
 have told you that a woman must not be compared to a 
 snake or a cat; that you must not talk about her sweetness 
 being like the sweetness of fruit, or the charm of her pres- 
 ence being like the smell of perfume. All such comparisons 
 seemed monstrous, unnatural. If such a critic were asked 
 why one must not compare a woman to a snake or a cat, 
 the critic would probably answer, "Because a snake is a 
 hateful reptile and a cat is a hateful animal." What would 
 Ruskin or Swinburne then say to the critic *? He would say 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 149 
 
 simply, "Did you ever look at a snake*? Did you ever 
 study a cat'?" The classicist would soon be convicted of 
 utter ignorance about snakes and cats. He thought them 
 hateful simply because it was not fashionable to admire them 
 a hundred years ago. But the old poets of the early Middle 
 Ages were not such fools. They had seen snakes and ad- 
 mired them, because for any man who is not prejudiced, a 
 snake is a very beautiful creature, and its motions are as 
 beautiful as geometry. If you do not think this is true, 
 I beg of you to watch a snake, where its body can catch 
 the light of the sun. Then there is no more graceful or 
 friendly or more attractively intelligent animal than a cat. 
 The common feeling about snakes and cats is not an ar- 
 tistic one, nor even a true one; it is of ethical origin, and 
 unjust. These animals are not moral according to our no- 
 tions; they seem cruel and treacherous, and forgetting that 
 they cannot be judged by our code of morals, we have 
 learned to speak of them contemptuously even from the 
 physical point of view. Well, this was not the way in the 
 early Middle Ages. People were less sensitive on the sub- 
 ject of cruelty than they are to-day, and they could praise 
 the beauty of snakes and tigers and all fierce or cunning 
 creatures of prey, because they could admire the physical 
 qualities without thinking of the moral ones. In Pre- 
 Raphaelite poetry there is an attempt to do the very same 
 thing. Swinburne does it more than any one else, perhaps 
 even too much ; but there is a great and true principle of art 
 behind this revolution. 
 
 Now we can study Swinburne in some other moods. I 
 want to show you the splendour of his long verse, verse of 
 fourteen and sixteen syllables, of a form resurrected by him 
 after centuries of neglect ; and also verse written in imitation 
 of Greek and Roman measures with more success than has 
 attended similar efforts on the part of any other living poet. 
 But in the first example that I shall offer, you will find mat- 
 ter of more interest than verse as verse. The poem is one 
 
150 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 of Swinburne's greatest, and the subject is entirely novel. 
 The poet attempts to express the feeling of a Roman pagan, 
 perhaps one of the last Epicurean philosophers, living at the 
 time when Christianity was first declared the religion of the 
 Empire, and despairing because of the destruction of the 
 older religion and the vanishing of the gods whom he loved. 
 By law Christianity has been made the state-religion, and 
 it is forbidden to worship the other gods; the old man 
 haughtily refuses to become a Christian, even after an im- 
 partial study of Christian doctrine; on the contrary, he is 
 so unhappy at the fate of the religion of his fathers that he 
 does not care to live any longer without his gods. And he 
 prays to the goddess of death to take him out of this world, 
 from which all the beauty and art, all the old loved cus- 
 toms and beliefs are departing. We cannot read the whole 
 "Hymn to Proserpine"; but we shall read enough to illus- 
 trate the style and feeling of the whole. At the head of the 
 poem are the words Vicisti^ Galilczel — "Thou hast con- 
 quered, O Galilean" — words uttered by the great Roman 
 Emperor Julian at the moment of his death in battle. 
 Julian was the last Emperor who tried to revive and purify 
 the decaying Roman religion, and to oppose the growth of 
 Christianity. He was, therefore, the great enemy of Chris- 
 tianity. His dying words were said to have been addressed 
 to Christ, when he felt himself dying, but it is not certain 
 whether he really ever uttered these words at all. 
 
 I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath 
 
 an end ; 
 Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now, and befriend. 
 Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh 
 
 or that weep ; 
 For these give joy and sorrow ; but thou, Proserpina, sleep. 
 Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove: 
 But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love. 
 
 After speaking to the goddess of death, he speaks thus to 
 Christ: 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 151 
 
 "Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean*? but these thou shalt not take, 
 The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in 
 
 the brake ; 
 Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath; 
 And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death; 
 All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre, 
 Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire. 
 More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things? 
 Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings. 
 A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may? 
 For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day. 
 And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears : 
 Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years? 
 Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean ; the world has grown grey 
 
 from thy breath ; 
 We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness of death. 
 
 Or, in other words, the pagan says: "O Christ, you 
 would wish to take everything from us, yet some things 
 there are which you cannot take : not the inspiration of the 
 poet, nor the spirit of art, nor the glory of heroism, nor the 
 dreams of youth and love, nor the great and gracious gifts 
 of time — the beauty of the seasons, the splendour of night 
 and day. All these you cannot deprive us of, though you 
 wish to; and what is better than these*? Can you give us 
 anything more precious*? Assuredly you cannot. For these 
 things are fitted to human life; and what do we know about 
 any other life*? Life passes quickly; why should we make 
 it miserable with the evil dreams of a religion of sorrow*? 
 Short enough is the time in which we have pleasure, and the 
 world is already full enough of pain; wherefore should we 
 try to make ourselves still more unhappy than we already 
 are? Yet you have conquered; you have destroyed the 
 beauty of life; you have made the world seem grey and old, 
 that was so beautiful and eternally young. You have made 
 us drink the waters of forgetfulness and eat the food of 
 death. For your religion is a religion of death, not of life; 
 you yourself and the Christian gods are figures of death, 
 not figures of life." 
 
15a STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 And how does he think of this new divinity, Christ'? As 
 a Roman citizen necessarily, and to a Roman citizen Christ 
 was nothing more than a vulgar, common criminal executed 
 by Roman law in company with thieves and murderers. 
 Therefore he addresses such a divinity with scorn, even in 
 the hour of his triumph : 
 
 O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods ! 
 
 ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods I 
 
 Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend, 
 
 1 kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end ! 
 
 To understand the terrible bitterness of this scorn, it is 
 necessary for the student to remember that a Roman citizen 
 could not be tortured or flogged or gibbeted. Such punish- 
 ments and penalties were reserved for slaves and for bar- 
 barians. Therefore to a Roman the mere fact of Christ's 
 death and punishment — for he was tortured before being 
 crucified — was a subject for contempt; accordingly he speaks 
 of such a divinity as the "leavings of racks and rods" — that 
 is, so much of a man's body as might be left after the tor- 
 turers and executioners had finished with it. Should a 
 Roman citizen kneel down and humble himself before that? 
 A little while, some thousands of years, perhaps, Chris- 
 tianity may be a triumphant religion, but all religions must 
 die and pass away, one after another, and this new and de- 
 testable religion, with its ugly gods, must also pass away. 
 For although the old Roman has studied too much phi- 
 losophy to believe in all that his fathers believed, he be- 
 lieves in a power that is greater than man and gods and 
 the universe itself, in the unknown power which gives life 
 and death, and makes perpetual change, and sweeps away 
 everything that man foolishly believes to be permanent. 
 He gives to this law of impermanency the name of the god- 
 dess of death, but the name makes little difference; he has 
 recognised the eternal law. Time will sweep away Chris- 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 153 
 
 tianity itself, and his description of this mighty wave of time 
 is one of the finest passages in all his poetry : 
 
 All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast 
 Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of 
 the past: 
 
 Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as 
 with wings. 
 
 And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things. 
 
 White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine- 
 curled. 
 
 Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world. 
 
 The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away ; 
 
 In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey ; 
 
 In its sides is the north-wind bound ; and its salt is of all men's tears ; 
 
 With light of ruins and sound of changes, and pulse of years : 
 
 With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour ; 
 
 And bitter as blood is the spray ; and the crests are as fangs that 
 devour: 
 
 And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be ; 
 
 And its noise as the noise in a dream ; and its depth as the roots of 
 the sea : 
 
 And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the 
 air: 
 
 And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time 
 is made bare. 
 
 When the poet calls this the wave of the world, you 
 must not understand world to mean our planet only, but the 
 universe, the cosmos; and the wave is the great wave of 
 impermanency, including all forces of time and death and 
 life and pain. But why these terrible similes of white eyes 
 and poisonous things and shark's teeth, of blood and bit- 
 terness and terror *? Because the old philosopher dimly rec- 
 ognises the cruelty of nature, the mercilessness of that aw- 
 ful law of change which, having swept away his old gods, 
 will just as certainly sweep away the new gods that have 
 appeared. Who can resist that mighty power, higher than 
 
154. STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 the stars, deeper than the depths, in whose motion even 
 gods are but as bubbles and foam? Assuredly not Christ 
 and his new religion. Speaking to the new gods the Roman 
 cries : 
 
 All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past ; 
 Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you 
 at last, 
 
 Thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee 
 dead. 
 
 Here follows a beautiful picture of the contrast between the 
 beauty of the old gods and the uninviting aspect of the 
 new. It is a comparison between the Virgin Mary, mother 
 of Christ, and Venus or Aphrodite, the ancient goddess of 
 love, bom from the sea. For to the Roman mind the Chris- 
 tian gods and saints wanted even the common charm of 
 beauty and tenderness. All the divinities of the old Greek 
 world were beautiful to look upon, and warmly human; 
 but these strange new gods from Asia seemed to be not even 
 artistically endurable. Addressing Christ, he continues: 
 
 Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad 
 
 around ; 
 Thou art throned where another was king ; where another was queen 
 
 she is crowned. 
 Yea, once we had sight of another : but now she is queen, say these. 
 Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas. 
 Clothed around with the world's desire as with raiment and fair as 
 
 the foam, 
 And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess and mother of Rome. 
 For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow ; but ours. 
 Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers. 
 White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame. 
 Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with 
 
 her name. 
 For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected ; but she 
 Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on 
 
 the sea. 
 And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 155 
 
 And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays. 
 Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should 
 
 not fall. 
 Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all. 
 
 Why, by what power, for what reason, should the old gods 
 have passed away? Even if one could not believe in them 
 all, they were too beautiful to pass away and be broken, 
 as their statues were broken by the early Christians in the 
 rage of their ignorant and brutal zeal. The triumph of 
 Christianity meant much more than the introduction of a 
 new religion; it meant the destruction of priceless art and 
 priceless literature, it signified the victory of barbarism over 
 culture and refinement. Doubtless the change, like all 
 great changes, was for the better in some ways ; but no lover 
 of art and the refinements of civilisation can read without 
 regret the history of the iconoclasm in which the Christian 
 fanatics indulged when they got the government and the 
 law upon their side. It is this feeling of regret and horror 
 that the poet well expresses through the mouth of the 
 Roman who cares no more to live, because the gods and 
 everything beautiful must pass away. But there is one 
 goddess still left for him, one whom the Christians cannot 
 break but who will at last break them and their religion, 
 and scatter them as dust — the goddess of death. To her 
 he turns with a last prayer: 
 
 I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end ; 
 Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend. 
 
 daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth, 
 
 1 am also, I also, thy brother ; I go as I came unto earth. 
 
 Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal 
 
 breath; 
 For these give labour and slumber, but thou, Proserpina, death. 
 Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know 
 I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep ; even so. 
 For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span ; 
 A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man. 
 
156 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep. 
 For there is no God found stronger than death ; and death is a sleep. 
 
 The third line from the end, "a little soul for a little," is a 
 translation from the philosopher Epictetus. It is the Epi- 
 curean philosophy especially which speaks in this poetry. 
 The address to the goddess of death as the daughter of 
 earth, cannot be understood without some reference to 
 Greek mythology. Proserpina was the daughter of the 
 goddess Ceres, whom the ancients termed the Holy Mother 
 — queen of the earth, but especially the goddess of fruitful- 
 ness and of harvests. While playing in the fields as a 
 young girl, Proserpina was seized and carried away by the 
 god of the dead, Hades or Pluto, to become his wife. 
 Everywhere her mother sought after her to no purpose; and 
 because of the grief of the goddess, the earth dried up, 
 the harvests failed, and all nature became desolate. After- 
 wards, finding that her daughter had become the queen of 
 the kingdom of the dead, Ceres agreed that Proserpina 
 should spend a part of every year with her husband, and 
 part of the year with her mother. To this arrangement 
 the Greeks partly attributed the origin of the seasons. 
 
 Incidentally in the poem there is a very beautiful pas- 
 sage describing the world of death, where no sun is, where 
 the silence is more than music, where the flowers are white 
 and full of strange sleepy smell, and where the sound of 
 the speech of the dead is like the sound of water heard far 
 away, or a humming of bees — whither the old man prays 
 to go, to rest with his ancestors away from the light of the 
 sun, and to forget all the sorrow of this world and its 
 changes. But I think that you will do well to study this 
 poem in detail by yourselves, when opportunity allows. It 
 happens to be one of the very few poems in the first series 
 of Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads" to which no reason- 
 able exception can be made; and it is without doubt one of 
 the very finest things that he has ever written. I could 
 recommend this for translation; there are many pieces in 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 157 
 
 the same book which I could not so recommend, notwith- 
 standing their beauty. For instance, the poem entitled 
 "Hesperia," with its splendid beginning: 
 
 Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is, 
 Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy. 
 
 There is nothing more perfect in modern literature than the 
 beginning of this poem, which gives us an exact imitation 
 in English words of the sound of the Greek hexameter 
 and pentameter. But much of this work is too passionate 
 and violent for even the most indulgent ears; and though 
 I think that you ought to study the beginning, I should never 
 recommend it for translation. 
 
 The comparison of the wave in the hymn to Proserpina 
 must have given you an idea of Swinburne's power to deal 
 with colossal images. I know of few descriptions in any 
 literature to be compared with that picture of the wave; 
 but Swinburne himself in another poem has given us de- 
 scriptions nearly as surprising, if not as beautiful. There 
 is a poem called "Thalassius," a kind of philosophical moral 
 fable in Greek form, that contains a surprise of this kind. 
 The subject is a young man's first experience with love. 
 Walking in the meadows he sees a pretty boy, or rather 
 child, just able to walk — a delicious child, tender as a flower, 
 and apparently needing kindly care. So he takes the child 
 by the hand, wondering at his beauty; and he speaks to the 
 child, but never gets any reply except a smile. Suddenly, 
 at a certain point of the road the child begins to grow 
 tall, to grow tremendous; his stature reaches the sky, and 
 in a terrible voice that shakes everything like an earth- 
 quake, he announces that though he may be Love, he is 
 also Death, and that only the fool imagines him to be Love 
 alone. There is a bit both of old and of new philosophy 
 in this ; and I remarked when reading it that in Indian my- 
 thology there is a similar representation of this double at- 
 tribute of divinity, love and death, creation and destruc- 
 
158 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 tion, represented by one personage. But we had better read 
 the scene which I have been trying to describe, the meeting 
 with the child: 
 
 That well-nigh wept for wonder that it smiled, 
 And was so feeble and fearful, with soft speech 
 The youth bespake him softly; but there fell 
 From the sweet lips no sweet word audible 
 That ear or thought might reach; 
 No sound to make the dim cold silence glad, 
 No breath to thaw the hard harsh air with heat, 
 Only the saddest smile of all things sweet. 
 Only the sweetest smile of all things sad. 
 
 And so they went together one green way 
 
 Till April dying made free the world for May ; 
 
 And on his guide suddenly Love's face turned, 
 
 And in his blind eyes burned 
 
 Hard light and heat of laughter ; and like flame 
 
 That opens in a mountain's ravening mouth 
 
 To blear and sear the sunlight from the south. 
 
 His mute mouth opened, and his first word came ; 
 
 "Knowest thou me now by name?" 
 
 And all his stature waxed immeasurable. 
 
 As of one shadowing heaven and lightening hell ; 
 
 And statelier stood he than a tower that stands 
 
 And darkens with its darkness far-off sands 
 
 Whereon the sky leans red ; 
 
 And with a voice that stilled the winds he said: 
 
 "I am he that was thy lord before thy birth, 
 
 I am he that is thy lord till thou turn earth ; 
 
 I make the night more dark, and all the morrow 
 
 Dark as the night whose darkness was my breath: 
 
 O fool, my name is sorrow ; 
 
 Thou fool, my name is death." 
 
 By the term "darkness" in the third line from the end of 
 the above quotation, we must understand the darkness and 
 mystery out of which man comes into this world, and comes 
 only to die. This monstrous symbolism may need some 
 explanation, before you see how very fine the meaning is. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 159 
 
 Love, that is the attraction of sex to sex, with all its emo- 
 tions, heroisms, sacrifices, and nobilities, cannot be under- 
 stood by the young. To them, love is only the physical 
 and the moral charm of the being that is loved. In man 
 the passion of love becomes noble and specialised by the 
 development in him of moral, aesthetic, and other feelings 
 that are purely human. But the attraction of sex, that 
 is behind all this, is a universal and terrible fact, a tre- 
 mendous mystery, whose ultimate nature no man knows or 
 ever will know. Why*? Because if we knew the nature 
 and origin of the forces that create, we could understand 
 the whole universe, and ourselves, and everything that men 
 now call mystery. But all that we certainly do know is 
 this, that we come into the world out of mystery and go 
 out of the world again back into mystery, and that no mor- 
 tal man can explain the Whence, the Why, or the Whither. 
 The first sensations of love for another being are perhaps 
 the most delicious feelings known to men ; the person loved 
 seems for the time to be more beautiful and good than any 
 one else in the world. This is what the poet means by de- 
 scribing the first appearance of love as a beautiful, tender 
 child, innocent and dumb. But later in life the physical 
 illusion passes away; then one learns the relation of this 
 seeming romance to the awful questions of life and death. 
 The girl beloved becomes the wife; then she becomes the 
 mother; but in becoming a mother, she enters into the very 
 shadow of death, sometimes never to return from it. Birth 
 itself is an agony, the greatest agony that humanity has to 
 bear. We come into the world through pains of the most 
 deadly kind, and leave the world later on in pain ; and what 
 all this means, we do not know. We are only certain that 
 the Greeks were not wrong in representing love as the brother 
 of death. The Oriental philosophers went further; they 
 identified love with death, making them one and the same. 
 One cannot help thinking of the Indian statue represent- 
 ing the creative power, holding in his hand the symbol of 
 
160 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 life, but wearing around his neck a necklace of human skulls. 
 
 The poem that introduces the first volume of Swin- 
 burne's poems, as published in America, gave its name to the 
 book, so that thousands of English readers used to call the 
 volume by the name of this poem, "Laus Veneris," which 
 means the praise of Venus. I do not think that there is 
 a more characteristic poem in all Swinburne's work; it is 
 certainly the most interesting version in any modern lan- 
 guage of the old mediaeval story. Without understanding 
 the story you could not possibly understand the poem, and 
 as the story has been famous for hundreds of years, I shall 
 first relate it. 
 
 After Christianity had made laws forbidding people to 
 worship the old gods, it was believed that these gods still 
 remained wandering about like ghosts and tempting men 
 to sin. One of these divinities especially dreaded by the 
 Christian priests, was Venus. Now in the Middle Ages 
 there was a strange story about a knight called Tannhauser, 
 who, riding home one evening, saw by the wayside a beauti- 
 ful woman unclad, who smiled at him, and induced him to 
 follow her. He followed her to the foot of a great moun- 
 tain; the mountain opened like a door, and they went in, 
 and found a splendid palace under the mountain. The 
 fairy woman was Venus herself; and the knight lived with 
 her for seven years. At the end of the seven years he be- 
 came afraid because of the sin which he had committed ; and 
 he begged her, as Urashima begged the daughter of the 
 Dragon King, to let him return for a little time to the world 
 of men. She let him go; and he went to Rome. There he 
 told his story to different priests, and asked them to obtain 
 for him the forgiveness of God. But each of the priests 
 made answer that the sin was so great that nobody except 
 the Pope of Rome could forgive it. Then the knight went 
 to the Pope. But when the Pope heard his confession, the 
 Pope said that there was no forgiveness possible for such a 
 crime as that of loving a demon. The Pope had a wooden 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 161 
 
 staff in his hand, and he said, "Sooner shall this dry stick 
 burst into blossom than you obtain God's pardon for such 
 a sin." Then the knight, sorrowing greatly, went back to 
 the mountain and to Venus. After he had gone, the Pope 
 was astonished to see that the dry staff was covered with 
 beautiful flowers and leaves that had suddenly grown out 
 of it, as a sign that God was more merciful than his priests. 
 At this the Pope became sorry and afraid, and he sent out 
 messengers to look for the knight. But no man ever saw 
 him again, for Venus kept him hidden in her palace under 
 the mountain. Swinburne found his version of the story 
 in a quaint French book published in 1530. He repre- 
 sents, not the incidents of the story itself, but only the feel- 
 ings of the knight after his return from Rome. There is 
 no more hope for him. His only consolation is his love 
 and worship for her; but this love and worship is mingled 
 with fear of hell and regret for his condition. Into the 
 poem Swinburne has put the whole spirit of revolt of which 
 he and the Pre-Raphaelite school were exponents. A few 
 verses will show you the tone. The knight praises Venus: 
 
 Lo, this is she that was the world's delight; 
 The old grey years were parcels of her might ; 
 The strewings of the ways wherein she trod 
 Were the twain seasons of the day and night. 
 
 Lo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed 
 All lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ, 
 
 Stained with blood fallen from the feet of God, 
 The feet and hands whereat our souls were priced. 
 
 Alas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair. 
 But lo her wonderfully woven hair ! 
 
 And thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss ; 
 But see now. Lord ; her mouth is lovelier. 
 
 She is right fair ; what hath she done to thee ? 
 Nay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see ; 
 
 Had now thy mother such a lip — like this ? 
 Thou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me. 
 
162 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 This calling upon God to admire Venus, this asking Christ 
 whether his mother was even half as beautiful as Venus, was 
 to religious people extremely shocking, of course. And still 
 more shocking seemed the confession in the latter part of 
 the poem that the knight does not care whether he has 
 sinned or not, since, after all, he has been more fortunate 
 than any other man. This expression of exultation after 
 remorse appeared to reverent minds diabolical, the thought 
 of a new Satanic School. But really the poet was doing 
 his work excellently, so far as truth to nature was concerned; 
 and these criticisms were as ignorant as they were out of 
 place. The real fault of the poem was only a fault of 
 youth, a too great sensuousness in its descriptive passages. 
 We might say that Swinburne himself was, during those 
 years, very much in the position of the knight Tannhauser; 
 he had gone back to the worship of the old gods because 
 they were more beautiful and more joyous than the Chris- 
 tian gods; we may even say that he never came back from 
 the mountain of Venus. But all this poetry of the first 
 series was experimental; it was an expression of the Renais- 
 sance feeling that visits the youth of every poet possessing 
 a strong sense of beauty. Before the emotions can be fully 
 corrected by the intellect, such poets are apt to offend the 
 proprieties, and even to say things which the most liberal 
 philosopher would have to condemn. It was at such a 
 time that in another poem Swinburne spoke of leaving 
 
 The lilies and languors of virtue 
 For the raptures and roses of vice, 
 
 — lines that immediately became famous. It was also at 
 such a time that he uttered the prayer to a pagan ideal : 
 
 Come down and redeem us from virtue. 
 
 But on the other hand, if all poets were to wait for the age 
 of wisdom before they began to sing, we should miss a thou- 
 sand beautiful things of which only youth is capable, where- 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 163 
 
 fore it were best to forgive the eccentricities for the sake 
 of the incomparable merits. For example, in the very poem 
 from which these quotations have been made, we have such 
 splendid verses as these, referring to the worship of Venus 
 in the time of Nero: 
 
 Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber. 
 
 In a lull of the fires of thy life, 
 Of the days without name, without number, 
 
 When thy will stung the world into strife ; 
 When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion 
 
 Smote kings as they revelled in Rome, 
 And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, 
 
 Foam-white, from the foam^ 
 
 Thalassian means the sea-born, derived from the Greek word 
 Thalatta, the sea. Here Swinburne might be referring to 
 the times of the Triumvirate, when Cleopatra succeeded in 
 bewitching the great captain Csesar and the great captain 
 Antony, and set the world fighting for her sake. Then we 
 have a reference to the great games in Rome, the splendour 
 and the horror of the amphitheatre: 
 
 On sands by the storm never shaken. 
 
 Nor wet from the washing of tides ; 
 Nor by foam of the waves overtaken. 
 
 Nor winds that the thunder bestrides ; 
 But red from the print of thy paces. 
 
 Made smooth for the world and its lords, 
 Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, 
 
 And splendid with swords. 
 
 The floor of the amphitheatre was covered with sand, which 
 absorbed the blood of the combatants. But you will ask 
 what had the games to do with the goddess *? All the Roman 
 festivities of this kind were, to a certain extent, considered 
 as religious celebrations ; they formed parts of holiday cere- 
 mony. 
 
 There the gladiator pale for thy pleasure, 
 Drew bitter and perilous breath; 
 
164. STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 There torments laid hold on the treasure 
 
 Of limbs too delicious for death ; 
 When thy gardens were lit with live torches ; 
 
 When the world was a steed for thy rein; 
 When the nations lay prone in thy porches, 
 
 Our Lady of Pain. 
 
 When with flame all around him aspirant. 
 
 Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands. 
 The implacable beautiful tyrant 
 
 Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; 
 And a sound as the sound of loud water 
 
 Smote far through the flight of the fires, 
 And mixed with the lightning of slaughter 
 
 A thunder of lyres. 
 
 The reference here in the third, fourth, and fifth lines of 
 the first of the above stanzas is to the torture of the Chris- 
 tians by Nero in the amphitheatre. By "limbs too delicious 
 for death" the poet refers to the torture of young girls. The 
 "live torches" refers to Nero's cruelty in having hundreds 
 of Christians wrapped about with combustible material, tied 
 to lofty poles, and set on fire, to serve as torches during a 
 great festival which he gave in the gardens of his palace. 
 The second stanza represents him as the destroyer of Rome. 
 It is said that he secretly had the city set on fire in a dozen 
 different places, in order that he might be thereby enabled 
 to imagine the scene of the burning of Troy, as described 
 by Homer. He wanted to write a poem about it; and it 
 is said that while the city was burning, he watched it from 
 a high place, at the same time composing and singing a 
 poem on the spectacle. The "flight of fires" refers of 
 course to the spreading of fire through Rome. The "light- 
 ning of slaughter" means the flashing of swords in the work 
 of killing, and is explained by the legend that Nero sent 
 soldiers to kill anybody who tried to put out the fire. Any- 
 thing was possible in the times of which Swinburne sings; 
 for the world was then governed by emperors who were 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 165 
 
 not simply wicked but mad. But what I wish to point 
 out is that while a poet can write verses so splendid in sound 
 and colour as those that I have quoted, even such a composi- 
 tion as "Dolores" must be preserved, with all its good and 
 bad, among the treasures of English verse. 
 
 In spite of his radicalism in the matter of religion and of 
 ethics, the Bible has had no more devoted student than 
 Swinburne; he has not only appreciated all the beauties of 
 its imagery and the strength of its wonderful English, but 
 he has used for the subjects of not a few of his pieces, and 
 his more daring pieces, Biblical subjects. The extraordinary 
 composition "Aholibah" was inspired by a study of Ezekiel; 
 unfortunately this is one of the pieces especially inappropri- 
 ate to the classroom. "A Litany" will suit our purpose bet- 
 ter. It consists of a number of Biblical prophecies, from 
 Isaiah and other books of the Old Testament, arranged into 
 a kind of dramatic chorus. God is made the chief speaker, 
 and he is answered by his people. This is a kind of imita- 
 tion of a certain part of the old church-service, in which 
 one band of singers answers another, such singing being 
 called "antiphonal," and the different parts, "antiphones." 
 There is very little English verse written in the measure 
 which Swinburne has adopted for this study, and I hope 
 that you will notice the peculiar rhythmic force of the 
 stanzas. We need quote only a few. 
 
 All the bright lights of heaven 
 
 I will make dark over thee ; 
 One night shall be as seven 
 
 That its skirts may cover thee; 
 I will send on thy strong men a sword. 
 
 On thy remnant a rod : 
 Ye shall know that I am the Lord, 
 
 Saith the Lord God. 
 
 And the people answer: 
 
 All the bright lights of heaven 
 Thou hast made dark over us ; 
 
166 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 One night has been as seven, 
 
 That its skirt might cover us ; 
 Thou hast sent on our strong men a sword. 
 
 On our remnant a rod ; 
 We know that thou art the Lord, 
 
 Lord our God. 
 
 But this submission is not enough; for the Lord replies: 
 
 As the tresses and wings of the wind 
 
 Are scattered and shaken, 
 I will scatter all them that have sinned. 
 
 There shall none be taken ; 
 As a sower that scattereth seed. 
 
 So will I scatter them; 
 As one breaketh and shattereth a reed, 
 
 1 will break and shatter them. 
 
 The antiphone is: 
 
 As the wings and the locks of the wind 
 
 Are scattered and shaken, 
 Thou hast scattered all them that have sinned ; 
 
 There was no man taken, 
 As a sower that scattereth seed, 
 
 So hast thou scattered us ; 
 As one breaketh and shattereth a reed, 
 
 Thou hast broken and shattered us. 
 
 Observe that, simple as this versification looks, there is 
 nothing more difficult. With the simplest possible words, 
 the greatest possible amount of sound and force is here 
 obtained. There are many other stanzas, and a noteworthy 
 fact is that very few words of Latin origin are used. Most 
 of the words are Anglo-Saxon; perhaps that is why the lan- 
 guage is so sonorous and strong. But when the poet does 
 use a word of Latin origin, the result is simply splendid: 
 
 Ye whom your lords loved well. 
 
 Putting silver and gold on you. 
 The inevitable hell 
 
 Shall surely take hold on you; 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 167 
 
 Your gold shall be for a token, 
 
 Your staff for a rod ; 
 With the breaking of bands ye are broken, 
 
 Saith the Lord God. 
 
 The use of the Latin adjective "inevitable" here gives an 
 extraordinary effect, the main accent of the line coming 
 on the second syllable of the word. But, as if to show his 
 power, in the antiphonal response the poet does not repeat 
 this effect, but goes back to the simple Anglo-Saxon with 
 astonishing success: 
 
 *& 
 
 We whom the world loved well, 
 
 Laying silver and gold on us, 
 The kingdom of death and of hell 
 
 Riseth up to take hold on us ; 
 Our gold is turned to a token, 
 
 Our staff to a rod ; 
 ■ Yet shalt thou bind them up that were broken, 
 
 O Lord our God I 
 
 Here the substitution of these much simpler words gives 
 nearly as fine an effect of sound and a grander effect of 
 sense because of the grim power of the words themselves. 
 
 Besides studies in Biblical English, the poet has made 
 a number of studies in the Old Anglo-Saxon poets, most 
 of whom were religious men who liked sad and terrible sub- 
 jects. In the poem entitled 'After Death" we have an ex- 
 ample of this Anglo-Saxon feeling combined with the plain 
 strength of a later form of language, chiefly Middle English, 
 with here and there a ver\- quaint use of grammar. It was 
 common in Anglo-Saxon poetry to depict the horrors of the 
 grave. Here we have a dead man talking to his own cof- 
 fin, and the coffin answers him horribly : 
 
 The four boards of the coffin lid 
 Heard all the dead man did. 
 
 "I had fair coins red and white, 
 And my name was as great light; 
 
168 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 "I had fair clothes green and red. 
 And strong gold bound round my head. 
 
 "But no meat comes in my mouth. 
 Now I fare as the worm doth; 
 
 "And no gold binds in my hair, 
 Now I fare as the blind fare. 
 
 "My live thews were of great strength. 
 Now am I waxen a span's length ; 
 
 "My live sides were full of lust. 
 Now they are dried with dust." 
 
 The first board spake and said : 
 "Is it best eating flesh or bread?" 
 
 The second answered it: 
 
 "Is wine or honey the more sweet?" 
 
 The third board spake and said: 
 
 "Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?" 
 
 The fourth made answer, thus: 
 
 "All these things are as one with us." 
 
 The dead man asked of them: 
 
 "Is the green land stained brown with flame ? 
 
 "Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat, 
 And my wife's body for beasts' meat? 
 
 "Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan, 
 And built a gallows to hang my man ?" 
 
 The boards said to him: 
 
 "This is a lewd thing that ye deem. 
 
 ■"Your wife has gotten a golden bed; 
 All the sheets are sewn with red. 
 
 "Your son has gotten a coat of silk. 
 The sleeves are soft as curded milk. 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 169 
 
 "Your maid has gotten a kirtle new, 
 All the skirt has braids of blue. 
 
 "Your man has gotten both ring and glove, 
 Wrought well for eyes to love." 
 
 The dead man answered thus : 
 "What good gift shall God give us?" 
 
 The boards answered anon: 
 "Flesh to feed hell's worm upon." 
 
 I doubt very much whether a more terrible effect could be 
 produced by any change of language. The poem is an ex- 
 cellent illustration of the force of the Old English, with- 
 out admixture of any sort. Do not think that this is simple 
 and easy work; perhaps no other living man could have 
 done it equally well. It is not only in these simple forms, 
 however, that Swinburne shows us the results of his Old 
 English studies. Two of the most celebrated among his 
 early poems, "The Triumph of Time" and the poem on the 
 swallow, "Itylus," are imitations of very old forms of Eng- 
 lish verse, though the language is luxurious and new. I 
 have already given you a quotation from the former poem, 
 describing the poet's love of the sea. I now cite a single 
 stanza of "Itylus." 
 
 Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, 
 
 How can thine heart be full of the spring ? 
 A thousand summers are over and dead. 
 What hast thou found in the spring to follow? 
 What hast thou found in thine heart to sing ? 
 What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? 
 
 Probably Swinburne found this measure in early Middle 
 English poetry; it was used by the old poet Hampole in his 
 "Prick of Conscience." After it had been forgotten for 
 five hundred years, Swinburne brought it to life again. 
 Something very close to it forms the splendid and beauti- 
 ful chorus of "Atalanta in Calydon:" 
 
170 STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 
 
 When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, 
 
 The mother of months in meadow or plain 
 Fills the shadows and windy places 
 
 With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain ; 
 And the brown bright nightingale amorous 
 
 Is half assuaged for Itylus, 
 For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, 
 
 The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. 
 
 Here as in all other cases, however, the poet has far sur- 
 passed his model. The measures which he revived take 
 new life only because of the extraordinary charm which 
 he has put into them. 
 
 Passing suddenly from these lighter structures, let us ob- 
 serve the great power which Swinburne manifests in an- 
 other kind of revival, the sixteen syllable line. This is 
 not a modern measure at all. It was used long ago, but 
 was practically abandoned and almost forgotten except by 
 scholars when Swinburne revived it. Nor has he revived 
 it only in one shape, but in a great many shapes, sometimes 
 using single lines, sometimes double, or again varying the 
 accent so as to make four or live different kinds of verse 
 with the same number of syllables. The poem on the 
 Armada is a rich example of this re-animation and varia- 
 tion of the long dead form. In this poem Swinburne de- 
 scribes the god of Spain as opposed to the god of England, 
 and the most forceful lines are those devoted to these con- 
 ceptions. Observe the double rhymes. 
 
 Ay, but we that the wind and sea gird round with shelter of storms 
 
 and waves. 
 Know not him that ye worship, grim as dreams that quicken from 
 
 dead men's graves: 
 God is one with the sea, the sun, the land that nursed us, the love 
 
 that saves. 
 
 Love whose heart is in ours, and part of all things noble and all 
 things fair; 
 
 Sweet and free as the circling sea, sublime and kind as the foster- 
 ing air; 
 
STUDIES IN SWINBURNE 171 
 
 Pure of shame as is England's name, whose crowns to come are as 
 crowns that were. 
 
 Now we have, quite easily, a change in the measure. We 
 have sixteen syllables still, but the whole music is changed. 
 
 But the Lord of darkness, the God whose love is a flaming fire, 
 The master whose mercy fulfils wide hell till its tortures tire, 
 He shall surely have heed of his servants who serve him for love, 
 not hire. 
 
 The double rhymes are not used here. Later on, after the 
 English victory and the storm, they are used again, for the 
 purpose of additional force. The address is to the Span- 
 iards and to their gods. 
 
 Lords of night, who would breathe your blight on April's morning 
 and August's noon, 
 
 God your Lord, the condemned, the abhorred, sinks hellward, smit- 
 ten with deathlike swoon. 
 
 Death's own dart in his hateful heart now thrills, and night shall 
 receive him soon. 
 
 God the Devil, thy reign of revel is here forever eclipsed and fled; 
 God the Liar, everlasting fire lays hold at last on thee, hand and 
 head. 
 
 Page after page of constantly varying measures of this kind 
 will be found in the poem — a poem which notwithstanding 
 its strong violence at times, represents the power of the 
 verse-maker better than almost any other single piece in the 
 work of his later years. 
 
 From what extracts we have already made, I think you 
 will see enough of the value and beauty of Swinburne's dic- 
 tion to take in it such interest as it really deserves. We 
 might continue the study of this author for a much longer 
 time. But the year is waning, the third term, which is very 
 short, will soon be upon us; and I wish to turn with you 
 next week to the study of Browning. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Robert Browning very much reminds us in some respects 
 of the American thinker, Emerson. The main doctrine of 
 Emerson is Individualism; and this happens also to be the 
 main doctrine of Browning. By Individualism, Emerson 
 and Browning mean self-cultivation. Both thought that 
 the highest possible duty of every man was to develop the 
 best powers of his mind and body to the utmost possible de- 
 gree. Make yourself strong — that is the teaching. You 
 are only a man, not a god; therefore it is very likely that you 
 will do many things which are very wrong or very foolish. 
 But whatever you do, even if it be wrong, do it well — do 
 it with all your strength. Even a strong sin may be better 
 than a cowardly virtue. Weakness is of all things the 
 worst. When we do wrong, experience soon teaches us our 
 mistake. And the stronger the mistake has been, the more 
 quickly will the experience come which corrects and puri- 
 fies. Now you understand what I mean by Individualism 
 — the cultivation by untiring exercise of all our best facul- 
 ties, and especially of the force and courage to act. 
 
 This Individualism in Emerson was founded upon a 
 vague Unitarian pantheism. The same fact is true of 
 Browning's system. According to both thinkers, all of us 
 are parts of one infinite life, and it is by cultivating our 
 powers that we can best serve the purpose of the Infinite 
 Mind. Leaving out the words "mind" and "purpose," 
 which are anthropomorphisms, this doctrine accords fairly 
 well with evolutional philosophy; and both writers were, to 
 a certain degree, evolutionists. But neither yielded much 
 to the melancholy of nineteenth century doubt. Both 
 were optimists. We may say that Browning's philosophy 
 
 is an optimistic pantheism, inculcating effort as the very 
 
 172 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 173 
 
 first and highest duty of life. But Browning is not espe- 
 cially a philosophical poet. We find his philosophy flash- 
 ing out only at long intervals. Knowing this, we know 
 what he is likely to think under certain circumstances; but 
 his mission was of another special kind. 
 
 His message to the world was that of an interpreter of 
 life. His art is, from first to last, a faithful reflection of 
 human nature, the human nature of hundreds of different 
 characters, good and bad, but in a large proportion of cases, 
 decidedly bad. Why"? Because, as a great artist, Brown- 
 ing understood very well that you can draw quite as good 
 a moral from bad actions as from good ones, and his un- 
 conscious purpose is always moral. Such art of picturing 
 character, to be really great, must be dramatic; and all of 
 Browning's work is dramatic. He does not say to us, "This 
 man has such and such a character" ; he makes the man 
 himself act and speak so as to show his nature. The sec- 
 ond fact, therefore, to remember about Browning is that 
 artistically he is a dramatic poet, whose subject is human 
 nature. No other English poet so closely resembled 
 Shakespeare in this kind of representation as Browning. 
 
 There is one more remarkable fact about the poet. He 
 always, or nearly always, writes in the first person. Every 
 one of his poems, with few exceptions, is a soliloquy. It 
 is not he who speaks, of course; it is the "I" of some other 
 person's soul. This kind of literary form is called "mono- 
 logue." Even the enormous poem of "The Ring and the 
 Book" is nothing but a gigantic collection of monologues, 
 grouped and ordered so as to produce one great dramatic 
 effect. 
 
 In the case of Browning, I shall not attempt much illus- 
 tration by way of texts, because a great deal of Browning's 
 form could be not only of no use to you, but would even 
 be mischievous in its influence upon your use of language. 
 In Browning every rule of rhetoric, of arrangement, is likely 
 to be broken. The adjective is separated by vast distances 
 
174 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 from the noun; the preposition is tumbled after the word 
 to which it refers ; the verb is found at the end of a sentence 
 of which it should have been the first word. When Car- 
 lyle first read the poem called "Sordello," he said that he 
 could not tell whether "Sordello" was a man or a town or 
 a book. And the obscurity of "Sordello" is in some places 
 so atrocious that I do not think anybody in the world can 
 unravel it. Now, most of Browning's long poems are writ- 
 ten in this amazing style. The text is, therefore, not a 
 good subject for literary study. But it is an admirable sub- 
 ject for psychological study, emotional study, dramatic 
 study, and sometimes for philosophic study. Instead of 
 giving extracts, therefore, from very long poems, I shall 
 give only a summary of the meaning of the poem itself. If 
 such summary should tempt you to the terrible labour of 
 studying the original, I am sure that you would be very 
 tired, but after the weariness, you would be very much sur- 
 prised and pleased. 
 
 Providing, of course, that you would understand; and I 
 very much doubt whether you could understand. I doubt 
 because I cannot always understand it myself, no matter 
 how hard I try. 
 
 One reason is the suppression of words. Browning 
 leaves out all the articles, prepositions, and verbs that he 
 can. I met some years ago a Japanese scholar who had 
 mastered almost every difficulty of the English language 
 except the articles and prepositions; he had never been 
 abroad long enough to acquire the habit of using them 
 properly. But it was his business to write many letters 
 upon technical subjects, and these letters were always per- 
 fectly correct, except for the extraordinary fact that they 
 contained no articles and very few prepositions. Much of 
 Browning's poetry reads just in that way. You cannot say 
 that there is anything wrong; but too much is left to the 
 imagination. Therefore he has been spoken of as writing 
 in telegraph language. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 175 
 
 Not to make Browning too formidable at first, let us be- 
 gin with a few of his lighter studies, in very simple verse. 
 I will take as the first example the poem called "A Light 
 Woman." This is a polite word for courtesan, "light" re- 
 ferring to the moral character. The story, told in mono- 
 logue, is the most ordinary story imaginable. It happens 
 in every great city of the world almost every day, among 
 that class of young men who play with lire. But there are 
 two classes among these, the strong and the weak. The 
 strong take life as half a joke, a very pleasant thing, and 
 pass through many dangers unscathed simply because they 
 know that what they are doing is foolish; they never con- 
 sider it in a serious way. The other class of young men 
 take life seriously. They are foolish rather through affec- 
 tion and pity than through anything else. They want a 
 woman's love, and they foolishly ask it from women who 
 cannot love at all — not, at least, in ninety cases out of a 
 hundred. They get what seems to them affection, however, 
 and this deludes them. Then they become bewitched; and 
 the result is much sorrow, perhaps ruin, perhaps crime, per- 
 haps suicide. In Browning's poem we have a representa- 
 tive of each type. A strong man, strong in character, has 
 a young friend who has been fascinated by a woman of a 
 dangerous class. He says to himself, "My friend will be 
 ruined; he is bewitched; it is no use to talk to him. I will 
 save him by taking that woman away from him. I know 
 the kind of man that she would like; she would like such a 
 man as I." And the rest of the cruel story is told in 
 Browning's verses too well to need further explanation. 
 
 So far as our story approaches the end, 
 Which do you pity the most of us three? — 
 
 My friend, or the mistress of my friend 
 With her wanton eyes, or me? 
 
 My friend was already too good to lose, 
 And seemed in the way of improvement yet, 
 
176 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose, 
 And over him drew her net. 
 
 When I saw him tangled in her toils, 
 A shame, said I, if she adds just him 
 
 To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, 
 The hundredth for a whim! 
 
 And before my friend be wholly hers, 
 How easy to prove to him, I said, 
 
 An eagle's the game her pride prefers. 
 Though she snaps at a wren instead ! 
 
 So I gave her eyes my own eyes to take, 
 My hand sought hers as in earnest need. 
 
 And round she turned for my noble sake, 
 And gave me herself indeed. 
 
 The eagle am I, with my fame in the world, 
 The wren is he, with his maiden face. 
 
 You look away, and your lip is curled? 
 Patience, a moment's space ! 
 
 For see, my friend goes shaking and white ; 
 
 He eyes me as the basilisk : 
 I have turned, it appears, his day to night, 
 
 Eclipsing his sun's disk. 
 
 And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief : 
 
 "Though I love her — that, he comprehends — 
 
 One should master one's passions (love, in chief). 
 And be loyal to one's friends !" 
 
 And she — she lies in my hand as tame 
 As a pear late basking over a wall ; 
 
 Just a touch to try, and off it came; 
 'Tis mine, — can I let it fall? 
 
 With no mind to eat it, that's the worst! 
 
 Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist? 
 'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst 
 
 When I gave its stalk a twist. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 177 
 
 And I, — what I seem to my friend, you see: 
 What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess: 
 
 What I seem to myself, do you ask of me? 
 No hero, I confess. 
 
 'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls, 
 
 And matter enough to save one's own : 
 Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals 
 
 He played with for bits of stone ! 
 
 One likes to show the truth for the truth ; 
 
 That the woman was light is very true : 
 But suppose she says, — Never mind that youth ! 
 
 What wrong have I done to you'? 
 
 Well, anyhow, here the story stays, 
 
 So far at least as I understand; 
 And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays, 
 
 Here's a subject made to your hand I 
 
 Now let us see how much there is to study in this simple- 
 seeming poem. It will give us an easy and an excellent 
 example of the way in which Browning must be read; and 
 it will require at least an hour's chat to explain properly. 
 For, really, Browning never writes simply. 
 
 Here we have a monologue. It is uttered to the poet by 
 a young man with whom he has been passing an hour in 
 conversation. We can guess from the story something 
 about the young man; we can almost see him. We know 
 that he must be handsome, tall, graceful, and strong; and 
 full of that formidable coolness which the sense of great 
 strength gives — great strength of mind and will rather than 
 of body, but probably both. Let us hear him talk. "You 
 see that friend of mine over there'?" he says to the poet. 
 "He hates me now. When he looks at me his lips turn 
 white. I can't say that he is wrong to hate me, but really 
 I wanted to do him a service. He got fascinated by that 
 woman of whom I was speaking; she was playing with him 
 as a cat plays with a mouse or with a bird before killing it. 
 
178 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Well, I thought to myself that my friend was in great dan- 
 ger, and that it was better for me to try to save him. You 
 see, he is not the kind of man that a woman of that class 
 could fancy; he is too small, too feeble, too gentle; they 
 like strong men only, men they are afraid of. So, just for 
 my friend's sake, I made love to her one day, and she left 
 him immediately and came to me. I have to take care of 
 her now, and I do not like the trouble at all. I never cared 
 about the woman herself; she is not the kind of woman that 
 I admire; I did all this only to save my friend. And my 
 friend does not understand. He thinks that I took the 
 woman from him because I was in love with her; he thinks 
 it quite natural that I should love her (which I don't) ; but 
 he says that even in love a man ought to be true to his 
 friends." 
 
 At this point of the story the young man sees that the 
 poet is disgusted by what he has heard, but this does not 
 embarrass him; he is too strong a character to be embar- 
 rassed at all, and he resumes: "Don't be impatient — I 
 want to tell you the whole thing. You see, I have de- 
 stroyed all the happiness of my friend merely through my 
 desire to do him a service. He hates me, and he does not 
 understand. He thinks that I was moved by lust; and 
 everybody else thinks the same thing. Of course it is not 
 true. But now there is another trouble. The woman does 
 not understand. She thinks that I was really in love with 
 her; and I must get rid of her as soon as I can. If I tell her 
 that I made love to her only in order to save my friend, 
 she will say, 'What had that to do with your treatment of 
 me? I did not do you any harm; why should you have 
 amused yourself by trying to injure and to deceive me'?' 
 If she says that, I don't know how I shall be able to answer. 
 :So it seems that I have made a serious mistake; I have lost 
 my friend, I have wantonly wronged a woman whose only 
 fault toward me was to love me, and I have made for my- 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 179 
 
 self a bad reputation in society. People cannot understand 
 the truth of the thing." 
 
 This is the language of the man, and he perhaps thinks 
 that he is telling the truth. But is he telling the truth? 
 Does any man in this world ever tell the exact truth about 
 himself? Probably not. No man really understands him- 
 self so well as to be able to tell the exact truth about him- 
 self. It is possible that this man believes himself to be 
 speaking truthfully, but he is certainly telling a lie, a half- 
 truth only. We have his exact words, but the exact lan- 
 guage of the speaker in any one of Browning's monologues 
 does not tell the truth ; it only suggests the truth. We must 
 find out the real character of the person, and the real facts 
 of the case, from our own experience of human nature. 
 And to understand the real meaning behind this man's 
 words, you must ask yourselves whether you would believe 
 such a story if it were told to you in exactly the same way 
 by some one whom you know. I shall answer for you that 
 you certainly would not. 
 
 And now we come to the real meaning. The young man 
 saw his friend desperately in love with a woman who did 
 not love that friend. The woman was beautiful. Looking 
 at her, he thought to himself, "How easily I could take her 
 away from my friend I" Then he thought to himself that 
 not only would this be a cause of enmity between himself 
 and his friend, but such an action would be severely judged 
 by all his acquaintances. Could he be justified? When a 
 man wishes to do what is wrong, he can nearly always in- 
 vent a moral reason for doing it. So this young man finds 
 a moral reason. He says, "My friend is in danger; there- 
 fore I will sacrifice myself for him. It will be quite grati- 
 fying both to my pride and to my pleasure to take that 
 woman from him; then I shall tell everybody why I did it. 
 My friend would like to kill me, of course, but he is too 
 weak to avenge himself." He follows this course, and 
 
180 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 really tries to persuade himself that he is justified in follow- 
 ing it. When he says that he did not care for the woman, 
 he only means that he is now tired of her. He has indulged 
 his lust and his vanity by the most treacherous and brutal 
 conduct; yet he tries to tell the world that he is a moral man, 
 a martyr, a calumniated person. Such is the real meaning 
 of his apology. 
 
 Nevertheless we cannot altogether dislike this young 
 man. He is selfish and proud and not quite truthful, but 
 these are faults of youth. On the other hand we can feel 
 that he is very gifted, very intelligent, and very brave, and, 
 what is still better, that he is ashamed of himself. He has 
 done wrong, and the very fact that he lies about what he 
 has done shows us that he is ashamed. He is not all bad. 
 If he does not tell us the whole truth, he tells a great deal 
 of it; and we feel that as he becomes older he will become 
 better. He has abused his power, and he feels sorry for 
 having abused it; some day he will probably become a very 
 fine man. We feel this; and, curiously, we like him better 
 than we like the man whom he has wronged. We like him 
 because of his force; we despise the other man because of 
 his weakness. It would be a mistake to do this if we did 
 not feel that the man who has done wrong is really the 
 better man of the two. What he has done is not at all to 
 be excused, but we believe that he will redeem his fault 
 later on. This type is an English or American type — per- 
 haps it might be a German type. There is nothing Latin 
 about it. Its faults are of the Northern race. 
 
 But now let us take an unredeemable type, the purely 
 bad, the hopelessly wicked, a type not of the North this 
 time, but purely Latin. As the Latin races have been civil- 
 ised for a very much longer time than the Northern races, 
 they have higher capacities in certain directions. They are 
 physically and emotionally much more attractive to us. 
 The beauty of an Italian or French or Spanish woman is 
 incomparably more delicate, more exquisite, than the beauty 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 181 
 
 of the Northern women. The social intelligence of the Ital- 
 ian or Spaniard or Frenchman is something immeasurably 
 superior to the same capacity in the Englishman, the Scan- 
 dinavian, or the German. The Latins have much less moral 
 stamina, but imaginatively, eesthetically, emotionally, they 
 have centuries of superiority. The Northern races were 
 savages when these were lords of the world. But the vices 
 of civilisation are likely to be developed in them to a degree 
 impossible to the Northern character. If their good quali- 
 ties are older and finer than ours, so their bad qualities will 
 be older and stronger and deeper. At no time was the worst 
 side of man more terribly shown than during the Renais- 
 sance, Here is an illustration. We know that for this 
 man there is no hope; the evil predominates in his nature 
 to such an extent that we can see nothing at all of the good 
 except his fine sense of beauty. And even this sense be- 
 comes a curse to him. 
 
 MY LAST DUCHESS 
 
 That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 
 Looking as if she were alive. I call 
 That piece a wonder, now : Fra Pandolf 's hands 
 Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 
 Will't please you sit and look at her? I said 
 "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read 
 Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 
 The depth and passion of its earnest glance. 
 But to myself they turned (since none puts by 
 The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 
 And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst. 
 How such a glance came there; so, not the first 
 Are you to turn and ask thus. 
 
 Let us paraphrase the above. It is a duke of Ferrara who 
 speaks. The person to whom he is speaking is a marriage- 
 maker, a nakodo employed by the prince of a neighbouring 
 state. For the duke wishes to marry the daughter of that 
 prince. When the match-maker comes, the duke draws a 
 
182 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 curtain from a part of the wall of the room in which the 
 two men meet, and shows him, painted upon the wall, the 
 picture of a wonderfully beautiful woman. Then the duke 
 says to the messenger: "That is a picture of my last wife. 
 It is a beautiful picture, is it not*? Well, it was painted by 
 that wonderful monk, Fra Pandolf. I mention his name 
 on purpose, because everybody who sees that picture for the 
 first time wants to know why it is so beautiful, and would 
 ask me questions if they were not afraid. I have shown it 
 to several other people; but nobody, except myself, dares 
 draw the curtain that covers it. Yes, Fra Pandolf painted 
 it all in one day; and the expression of the smiling face still 
 makes everybody wonder. You wonder ; you want to know 
 why that woman looks so charming, so bewitching in the 
 picture." 
 
 Now listen to the explanation. It is worthy of the great- 
 est of the villains of Shakespeare : 
 
 Sir, 'twas not 
 Her husband's presence only, called that spot 
 Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps 
 Fra Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps 
 Over my lady's wrist too much," or, "Paint 
 Must never hope to reproduce the faint 
 Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff 
 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 
 For calling up that spot of joy. She had 
 A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad, 
 Too easily impressed : she liked whate'er 
 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 
 Sir, 'twas all one ! My favour at her breast, 
 The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
 The bough of cherries some officious fool 
 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
 She rode with round the terrace — all and each 
 Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
 Or blush, at least. She thanked men — good ! but thanked 
 Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 
 My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
 With anybody's gift. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 183 
 
 The explanation at least shows us the sweet and childish 
 character of the woman, which the speaker tries to describe 
 as folly: "It was not her gladness at seeing me, her hus- 
 band, that made her smile so beautifully, that brought the 
 rosy dimple to her cheek. Probably the painter said some- 
 thing to flatter her, and she smiled at him. She was ready to 
 smile at anything, at anybody, she was altogether too easily 
 pleased; she liked everything and everybody that she saw, 
 and she took a pleasure in looking at everything and at 
 everybody. Nothing made any difference to her. She 
 would smile at the jewel which I gave her, but she would 
 also smile at the sunset, at a bunch of cherries, at her mule, 
 at anything or anybody. Any matter would bring the dim- 
 ple to her cheek, or the blush of joy. I do not blame her 
 for thanking people, but she had a way of thanking people 
 that seemed to show that she was just as much pleased by 
 what a stranger did for her, as by the fact that she had be- 
 come the wife of a man like myself, head of a family nine 
 hundred years old," Notice how the speaker calls the man 
 who gave his wife a bough with cherries upon it "an offi- 
 cious fool." We can begin to perceive what was the mat- 
 ter. He was insanely jealous of her, without any cause; 
 and she, poor little soul ! did not know anything about it. 
 She was too innocent to know. The duke does not want 
 anybody else to know, either; he is trying to give quite a 
 different explanation of what happened : 
 
 Who'd stoop to blame 
 This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 
 In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will 
 Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this 
 Or that in you disgusts me ; here you miss, 
 Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let 
 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
 Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 
 — E'en then would be some stooping ; and I choose 
 Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, 
 
184 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Whene'er I passed her ; but who passed without 
 Much the same smile? 
 
 This means, "A man like me cannot afford to degrade him- 
 self by showing what he feels under such circumstances; a 
 man like me cannot say to a woman, 'I am greatly vexed 
 and pained when I see you smile at any one except myself.' 
 If I were to speak to her about the matter at all, she might 
 think I was jealous. Of course she would insult me by 
 making excuses, by saying that she did not know, which 
 would be nothing less than daring to oppose her judgment 
 to mine. To speak about my feelings in any case would 
 require a skill in the use of language such as only poets or 
 such vulgar people possess. I am a prince, not a poet, and 
 I shall never disgrace myself by telling anybody, especially 
 a woman, that I do not like this or I do not like that. So 
 I said nothing. Perhaps you think that she did not smile- 
 when she saw me. That would be a mistake; she always 
 smiled when I passed. But she smiled at everybody else 
 in exactly the same way." He found the smile unbearable 
 at last, and the poet lets him tell us the rest in a very few 
 words : 
 
 This grew ; I gave commands ; 
 Then all smiles stopped together. 
 
 In other words, he caused her to be killed; told somebody 
 to cut her throat, probably, or to give her a drink of poison, 
 all without having ever allowed her to know how or why 
 he had been displeased with her. And he is not a bit sorry. 
 No, looking at the dead woman's picture, in company with 
 the marriage-maker, he coolly expresses his admiration for 
 it as a work of realistic art — as much as to say, "You can 
 see for yourself how beautiful she was; but that did not 
 prevent me from killing her." Listen to his atrocious 
 
 chatter: 
 
 There she stands 
 As if alive. Will't please you rise ? We'll meet 
 The company below, then. I repeat, 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 185 
 
 The Count your master's known munificence 
 Is ample warrant that no just pretence 
 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed ; 
 Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 
 At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go 
 Together down, sir. . . . Notice Neptune, though, 
 Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity. 
 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me ! 
 
 Evidently both had seated themselves in front of the pic- 
 ture. The count says, "Now she is as if alive; and we shall 
 go downstairs together. As for the matter of the new mar- 
 riage, you can tell your master that I am quite sure so 
 generous a man will not make any objection to my just 
 demands for a dowry — though, of couise, it is his daughter 
 that I principally want." Here the messenger bows, to 
 allow the duke to go first downstairs. He answers: "No, 
 we can go down together this time." On the way, prob- 
 ably at a turn of the grand staircase, the count points to a 
 fine bronze statue, representing the god of the sea, and asks 
 the man to admire it. That is all. 
 
 This is a Renaissance character, and a very terrible one. 
 But it is also very complicated. We must think a little be- 
 fore we can even guess the whole range and depth of this 
 man's wickedness. Even then we can only guess, because 
 he lets us know only so much about him as he wishes us to 
 know. Every word that he says is carefully measured in 
 its pride, in its falsehood, in its cruelty, in its cunning. 
 Just this much he tells us: "I had a beautiful wife, but 
 you must not think tliat I can be influenced by beauty. 
 Look at the picture of her. You would worship a woman 
 like that. But I cut her throat. Why did I do it*? Just 
 because I did not like her way of smiling; she was too 
 tender-hearted to love. And I would do the same thing to- 
 morrow to any one who displeased me. Some people will 
 think that I am jealous; let them think so. But you had 
 better tell the girl who now expects to become my wife what 
 kind of person I am." 
 
186 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 How much of this is the truth"? Probably more than 
 half. Undoubtedly the man was jealous, and he wishes to 
 deceive us in regard to the whole extent of that jealousy. 
 He has no shame or remorse for crime, but he has shame of 
 appearing to be weak. Jealousy is a weakness; therefore 
 he does not like to be suspected of being weak in that way. 
 He gives a strong suggestion that he must not have future 
 cause for jealousy — nothing more. But the fact that he 
 most wishes to have understood is that his wife must be a 
 wicked woman, a vulture among vultures. He does not 
 want a dove. And he hated his first wife much more be- 
 cause she was good and gentle and loving, than because she 
 smiled at other people. You may ask, why should he hate 
 a woman for being good? The answer is simple. In the 
 courts of such princes as the Borgias, a good woman could 
 only do mischief. She could not be used for cunning and 
 wicked purposes. She would have refused to poison a 
 guest, or to entice a man to make love to her only in order 
 to get that man killed; and as you will discover if you read 
 the terrible history of the Italian republics, all these things 
 had to be done. Morality was a hindrance to such men. 
 Power remained only to cunning and strength; all kind- 
 heartedness was regarded as criminal weakness. When you 
 have become familiar with the real history of Ferrara, you 
 will perceive the terrible truth of this poem. 
 
 The most unpleasant fact still remains to be noticed. 
 The wickedness of this man is not a wickedness of igno- 
 rance. It is a wickedness of highly cultivated intelligence. 
 The man is an artist, a judge of beauty, a connoisseur. To 
 suppose that cultivation makes a naturally wicked man bet- 
 ter is a great educational mistake, as Herbert Spencer 
 showed long ago. Education does not make a man more 
 moral ; it may give him power to be more immoral. Italian 
 history furnishes us with the most extraordinary illustra- 
 tions of this fact. Some of the wickedest of the Italian 
 princes were great poets, great artists, great scholars, and 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 187 
 
 great patrons of learning. Among the monsters, we have, 
 for example, the terrible Malatesta of Rimini, whose life 
 was given to us some years ago by the French antiquarian 
 Yriarte. He wrote the most delicate and tender poetry, 
 and he committed crimes so terrible that they cannot be 
 named. When he laid his hand, however lightly, upon a 
 horse, the animal began to tremble from head to foot. Yet 
 he could love, and be the most devoted of gallants. Again, 
 you know the case of Benvenuto Cellini, a splendid artist 
 and an atrocious murderer, who actually tells us the pleas- 
 ure that he felt in killing. And there were the Borgias, all 
 of them, father, daughter, and brothers, who committed 
 every crime and never knew remorse, yet who were beautiful 
 and gifted lovers of art and poetry. So in this case Brown- 
 ing is true to life when he shows us the duke pointing out 
 the beauty of pictures and statues, even in the same moment 
 that he is uttering horrors. There is a strange mixture of 
 the extremes of the bad and of the good in the higher types 
 of the Italian race — a mingling that gives us much to think 
 about in regard to moral problems. Probably that is why 
 a very large number of Browning's studies are of the dark 
 side of Italian character. 
 
 Now we can take a lighter subject. It is not black, it is 
 only gloomy, and the interest of it will chiefly be found 
 in the extraordinary moral comment made by Browning. 
 This is one of the few studies which is not all written in 
 the first person. It is called "The Statue and the Bust." 
 It is a tale or tradition of Florence. 
 
 The legend is that a certain duke of Florence, by name 
 Ferdinand, attempted to captivate the young bride of a 
 Florentine nobleman named Riccardi. But Riccardi, a 
 very keen man, observed what was going on ; and he said to 
 his wife very quietly and firmly, "This is your room in my 
 house; you shall stay in this room and never leave it during 
 the rest of your life, never leave it until you are carried 
 to the graveyard." So she had to live in that room. But 
 
188 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 the duke, who was a very handsome man, got a splendid 
 bronze statue of himself on horseback erected in the public 
 street opposite the window of the lady's room, so that she 
 could always look at him. Then she had a bust of herself 
 made and placed above the window, so that the duke could 
 see the bust whenever he rode by. That is all the story — 
 but not all the story as Browning tells it. Browning tells 
 us the secret thoughts and feelings of the imprisoned wife 
 and of the duke. At first the two intended to run away to- 
 gether. It would have been an easy matter. The woman 
 would only have had to dress herself like a boy, and drop 
 from the window, and get help from the duke to reach his 
 palace. The duke thought to himself, "I can get this 
 woman whenever I wish; but it will be better to wait a little 
 while; then we can manage to live as we please without 
 making too much trouble." So they both waited till they 
 became old. Then the woman called an artist and said : 
 
 "Make me a face on the window there, 
 Waiting as ever, mute the while, 
 My love to pass below in the square I 
 
 "And let me think that it may beguile 
 Dreary days which the dead must spend 
 Down in their darkness under the aisle, 
 
 "To say, 'What matters it at the end? 
 I did no more while my heart was warm 
 Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.' " 
 
 She thinks to console herself a moment by saying, "What 
 is life worth? When I was young and beautiful and im- 
 pulsive, I did no more harm or good, no more right or wrong, 
 than the bust that resembles me. It is a comfort to think 
 that I did nothing wrong." But is that enough? 
 
 "Where is the use of the lip's red charm. 
 The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, 
 And the blood that blues the inside arm — 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 189 
 
 "Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, 
 The earthly gift to an end divine? 
 A lady of clay is as good, I trow." 
 
 Somehow or other she feels that it is no consolation not to 
 have done wrong. She wonders what was the use of being 
 so beautiful, if she could not make use of that beauty. The 
 bust itself lived just as much as she did. And all this is 
 true ; but she is nearer to living than the duke. What does 
 he say*? 
 
 "Set me on horseback here aloft, 
 Alive, as the crafty sculptor can, 
 
 "In the very square I have crossed so oft : 
 That men may admire, when future suns 
 Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft, 
 
 "While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze — 
 Admire and say, 'When he was alive 
 How he would take his pleasure once I' " 
 
 Nothing else; he only wants to be admired after his death, 
 to have people say, looking at his statue, "What a splendid 
 looking man he must have been, how the women must have 
 loved him I" And they both died, and were buried in the 
 church near where they lived; and the English poet Brown- 
 ing went to that church, and heard the story, and thought 
 about it, and gives us the moral of it. It is a startling moral 
 and needs explanation. I think you will be shocked when 
 you first hear it, but you will not be shocked if you think 
 about it. The following verses are the poet's own reflec- 
 tions : 
 
 So I While these wait the trump of doom, 
 How do their spirits pass, I wonder, 
 Nights and days in the narrow room? 
 
 Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder 
 What a gift life was, ages ago, 
 Six steps out of the chapel yonder. 
 
190 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Only they see not God, I know, 
 
 Nor all that chivalry of his. 
 
 The soldier-saints who, row on row, 
 
 Burn upward each to his point of bliss — 
 
 He condemns them. Why*? Because they did not do any- 
 thing. Anything*? You do not mean to say that they 
 ought to have committed adultery? 
 
 I hear your reproach — "But delay was best, 
 
 For their end was a crime." — Oh, a crime will do 
 
 As well, I reply, to serve for a test, 
 
 As a virtue golden through and through, 
 
 Sufficient to vindicate itself 
 
 And prove its worth at a moment's view ! 
 
 Must a game be played for the sake of pelf? 
 
 The true has no value beyond the sham: 
 
 As well the counter as coin, I submit, 
 
 When your table's a hat, and your prize, a dram. 
 
 Stake your counter as boldly every whit. 
 
 Venture as truly, use the same skill, 
 
 Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 
 
 If you choose to play — is my principle ! 
 
 Let a man contend to the uttermost 
 
 For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! 
 
 The counter our lovers staked was lost 
 
 As surely as if it were lawful coin ; 
 
 And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
 
 Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, 
 Though the end in sight was a crime, I say. 
 
 In order to understand the full force of this strange ethical 
 philosophy, you must remember that the word "counter" is 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 191 
 
 here a gambling term; it is used for the round buttons or 
 disks of bone or ivory, not in themselves money, but repre- 
 senting money to be eventually received or paid. Remem- 
 bering this, we can simplify Browning; this is what he says: 
 "These people were the most contemptible of sinners; 
 they deliberately threw their lives away. They were afraid 
 to commit a sin. To wish to commit a sin and to be afraid 
 to commit it, is much worse than committing it. All their 
 lives those two dreamed and purposed and desired a sin; 
 they wanted to commit adultery. If they had committed 
 the crime, there would have been some hope for them; there 
 is always hope for the persons who are not afraid. When 
 a young man begins to doubt what his parents and teachers 
 tell him about virtue, it is sometimes a good thing for him 
 to test this teaching by disobeying it. Human experience 
 has proclaimed in all ages that theft and murder and adul- 
 tery and a few other things can never give good results. 
 It is not easy to explain the whole why and wherefore to 
 a young person who is both self-willed and ignorant. But 
 let him try for himself what murder means, or theft means, 
 or adultery means, and after he has experienced the conse- 
 quences, he will begin to perceive what moral teaching sig- 
 nifies. If he is not killed, or imprisoned for life, he will 
 very possibly become wise and good at a later time. Now 
 in regard to those two lovers, they wanted to have an ex- 
 perience; and the experience might have been so valuable 
 to them that it would have given them a new soul — but they 
 were afraid; they were criminals without profit; and their 
 great sin was that of being too cowardly to commit sin. 
 Never will God forgive such weakness as that I" Of course 
 all great religions teach that the man who wishes to do 
 wrong does the wrong in wishing as truly as if he did it 
 with his body; there is only a difference of degree. Now 
 Browning goes a little further than such religious teaching; 
 he tells us that only wishing under certain circumstances 
 may be incomparably worse than doing, because the doing 
 
192 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 brings about its punishment in ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred, and the punishment becomes a moral lesson, forc- 
 ing the sufferer to think about the moral aspect of what he 
 has done. That is why Browning says, "A sin will do to 
 serve for a test." But only to wish to do, and not do, 
 leaves a person in the state of inexperience. There is an 
 old proverb, which is quite true: "Any man can become 
 rich who is willing to pay the price." With equal truth it 
 might be said, "You can do anything that you please in this 
 world, if you are willing to pay the price, but the price of 
 acts and thoughts is fixed by the Eternal Powers, and you 
 must not try to cheat them." 
 
 Philosophers will tell you that our moral laws are not 
 always perfect, that man cannot make a perfect code in- 
 variably applicable to all times and circumstances. This 
 is true. But it is also true that there is a higher morality 
 than human codes, and when human law fails to give jus- 
 tice, a larger law occasionally steps in to correct the failure. 
 Browning delights in giving us examples of this kind, ex- 
 traordinary moral situations, wrong by legal opinion, right 
 by the larger law of nature, which is sometimes divine. A 
 startling story which he tells us, entitled "Ivan Ivanovitch," 
 will show us how he treats such themes. Ivan, the hero 
 of the story, is a wood-cutter, who works all day in his 
 native village, to support a large family. He is the most 
 highly respected of the young peasants, the strong man of 
 the community, a good father and a good husband. One 
 day, while he is working out of doors in the bitter cold, a 
 sledge drawn by a maddened and dying horse enters the 
 village, with a half dead woman on it. The woman is the 
 wife of Ivan's best friend, and she has come back alone, 
 although she had taken her three children with her on the 
 homeward journey. Ivan helps her into the house, gives 
 her something warm to drink, caresses her, comforts her, 
 and asks at last for her story. The sledge had been pur- 
 sued by wolves, and the wolves had eaten the three children, 
 
STUDIES IN BROWxNING 193 
 
 one after another. Ivan listens very carefully to the moth- 
 er's relation of how the three children were snatched out 
 of the sledge by the wolves. As soon as she has told every 
 one in her own way, Ivan takes his sharp axe, and with one 
 blow cuts the woman's head off. To the other peasants he 
 simply observes, "God told me to do that; I could not help 
 it." Of course Ivan knew that the woman had lied. The 
 wolves had not taken the children away from her: she had 
 dropped one child after another out of the sledge in order 
 to save her own miserable life. 
 
 At the news of the murder, the authorities of the village 
 all hurry to the scene. There is the dead body without its 
 head, and the blood flowing, or rather crawling like a great 
 red snake over the floor. The lord of the village declares 
 that Ivan must be executed for this crime. The Starosta, 
 or head man, takes the same view of the situation. But, 
 just as Ivan is about to be arrested, the old priest of the 
 village, the Pope as the peasants call him, a man more than 
 a hundred years of age, comes into the assembly and speaks. 
 He is the only man who has a word to say on behalf of 
 Ivan, but what he says is extraordinary in its force and 
 primitive wisdom. All of it would be too long to quote. 
 I give you only the conclusion, which immediately results 
 in Ivan's being acquitted both by law and by public opinion. 
 
 "A mother bears a child : perfection is complete 
 So far in such a birth. Enabled to repeat 
 The miracle of life, — herself was born so just 
 A type of womankind, that God sees fit to trust 
 Her with the holy task of giving life in turn. 
 
 How say you, should the hand God trusted with life's torch 
 Kindled to light the word — aware of sparks that scorch, 
 Let fall the same ? Forsooth, her flesh a fire-flake stings : 
 The mother drops the child! Among what monstrous things 
 Shall she be classed?" 
 
 Of course the old Pope is speaking from the Christian point 
 
194i STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 of view when he says that perfection is complete in a birtti ; 
 he refers to the orthodox belief that the soul of man is cre- 
 ated a perfect thing of its kind, a perfect spiritual entity, 
 to be further made or marred by its own acts and thoughts. 
 The mother does not give birth only to a body, but to a 
 soul also, expressly made by God to fit that body. She is 
 allowed to repeat the miracle of creation thus far; as 
 mother she is creator, but only in trust. She has made the 
 vessel of the soul; her most sacred duty is to guard that 
 little body from all harm. A mother who would even let 
 her child fall to escape pain herself would be incomparably 
 more ignoble than the most savage of animals. The rule 
 is that during motherhood even the animal-mother for the 
 time being becomes the ruling power; the male animal then 
 allows her to have her own way in all things. 
 
 "Because of motherhood, each male 
 
 Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale : 
 
 His strength owned weakness, wit — folly, and courage — fear, 
 
 Beside the female proved male's mistress — only here. 
 
 The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire 
 
 Who dares assault her whelp : the beaver, stretched on fire, 
 
 Will die without a groan : no pang avails to wrest 
 
 Her young from where they hide — her sanctuary breast. 
 
 What's here then? Answer me, thou dead one, as I trow. 
 
 Standing at God's own bar, he bids thee answer now ! 
 
 Thrice crowned wast thou — each crown of pride, a child — thy charge ! 
 
 Where are they *? Lost ? Enough : no need that thou enlarge 
 
 On how or why the loss : life left to utter 'lost' 
 
 Condemns itself beyond appeal. The soldier's post 
 
 Guards from the foe's attack the camp he sentinels : 
 
 That he no traitor proved, this and this only tells — 
 
 Over the corpse of him trod foe to foe's success. 
 
 Yet — one by one thy crowns torn from thee — thou no less 
 
 To scare the world, shame God — livedst ! I hold he saw 
 
 The unexampled sin, ordained the novel law, 
 
 Whereof first instrument was first intelligence 
 
 Found loyal here. I hold that, failing human sense, 
 
 The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface 
 
 Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 195 
 
 Earth oped not, neither fell the sky, for prompt was found 
 A man and man enough, head-sober and heart-sound, 
 Ready to hear God's voice, resolute to obey. 
 
 I proclaim 
 Ivan Ivanovitch God's servant!" 
 
 On hearing this speech the peasantry are at once con- 
 vinced; the Russian lord orders the proclamation to be made 
 that the murderer is forgiven, and the head man of the 
 village goes to Ivan's house to bring the good news. He 
 expects to find Ivan on his knees at prayer, very much afraid 
 of the police and coming punishment. But on opening the 
 door the head man finds Ivan playing with his five children, 
 and making for them a toy-church out of little bits of wood. 
 It has not even entered into the mind of Ivan that he did 
 anything wrong. And when they tell him, "You are free, 
 you will not be punished," he answers them in surprise, 
 "Why should I not be free*? Why should you talk of my 
 not being punished'?" To this simple mind there is noth- 
 ing to argue about. He has only done what God told him 
 to do, punished a crime against Nature. 
 
 The story is a strange one; but not stranger than many 
 to be found in Browning. None of his moral teachings are 
 at discord with any form of true religion, yet they are mostly 
 larger than the teachings of any creed. Perhaps this is why 
 he has never offended the religious element even while 
 preaching doctrines over its head. The higher doctrines 
 thus proclaimed might be anywhere accepted; they might 
 be also questioned; but no one would deny their beauty and 
 power. We may assume that Browning usually considers 
 all incidents in their relation to eternal law, not to one place 
 or time, but to all places and to all times, because the results 
 of every act and thought are infinite. This doctrine espe- 
 cially is quite in harmony with Oriental philosophy, even 
 when given such a Christian shape as it takes in the beauti- 
 ful verses of "Abt Vogler." 
 
196 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Abt Vogler was a great musician, a great improvisor. 
 Here let me explain the words "improvise" and "improvisa- 
 tion," as to some of you they are likely to be unfamiliar, 
 at least in the special sense given to them in this connection. 
 An improvisation in poetry means a composition made in- 
 stantly, without preparation, at request or upon a sudden 
 impulse. In Japanese literary history, I am told, there are 
 some very interesting examples of improvisation. For ex- 
 ample, the story of that poetess who, on being asked to 
 compose a poem including the mention of something square, 
 something round, and something triangular, wrote those 
 celebrated lines about unfastening one corner of a mosquito- 
 curtain in order to look at the moon. Among Europeans 
 improvisation is now almost a lost art in poetry, except 
 among the Italians. Some Italian families still exist in 
 which the art of poetical improvisation has been cultivated 
 for hundreds of years. But in music it is otherwise. Im- 
 provisation in music is greatly cultivated and esteemed. 
 Most of our celebrated musicians have been great impro- 
 visors. Those who heard such music would regret that it 
 could not be reproduced, not even by the musician himself. 
 It was a beautiful creation, forgotten as soon as made, be- 
 cause never written down. 
 
 Now you know what Browning means by improvisation 
 in his poem "Abt Vogler." The musician has been impro- 
 vising, and the music, made only to be forgotten, is so 
 beautiful that he himself bitterly regrets the evanescence 
 of it. We may quote a few of the verses in which this 
 regret is expressed; they are very fine and very strange, 
 written in a measure which I think you have never seen 
 before. 
 
 Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, 
 Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, 
 
 Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon 
 willed 
 Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 197 
 
 Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of aim, 
 
 Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed, — 
 
 Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, 
 And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he 
 loved ! 
 
 The musician is comparing the music that he makes to magi- 
 cal architecture; he refers to the Mohammedan legends of 
 Solomon. Solomon knew all magic; and all men, animals, 
 angels, and demons obeyed him. God has ninety-nine 
 names by which the faithful may speak of him, but the 
 hundredth name is secret, the Name ineffable. He who 
 knows it can do all things by the utterance of it. When 
 Solomon pronounced it, all the spirits of the air and of 
 heaven and of hell would rush to obey him. And if he 
 wanted a palace or a city built, he had only to order the 
 spirits to build it, and they would build it immediately, 
 finishing everything between the rising and the setting of 
 the sun. That is the story which the musician refers to. 
 He has the power of the master-musician over sounds; but 
 the sounds will not stay. 
 
 Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine. 
 
 This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise ! 
 Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now 
 combine, 
 
 Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise I 
 And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, 
 
 Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things. 
 Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well. 
 
 Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. 
 
 The musician wishes that his architecture of sound could 
 remain, as remained the magical palace that Solomon made 
 the spirits build to please Queen Balkis. He remembers 
 how beautiful his music was; he remembers how the differ- 
 ent classes of notes combined to make it, just as the dif- 
 ferent classes of spirits combined to make the palace of 
 Solomon. There the deep notes, the bass chords, sank down 
 
198 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 thundering like demon-spirits working to make the founda- 
 tion in the very heart of the earth. And the treble notes 
 seemed to soar up like angels to make the roof of gold, and 
 to tip all the points of the building with glorious fires of 
 illumination. Truly the palace of sounds was built, but 
 it has vanished away like a mirage; the builder cannot repro- 
 duce it. Why not? Well, because great composition of 
 any kind is not merely the work of man ; it is an inspiration 
 from God, and the mystery of such inspired composition 
 is manifested in music as it is manifested in no other art. 
 For the harmonies, the combinations of tones, are mysteries, 
 and must remain mysterious even for the musician himself. 
 Who can explain them? 
 
 But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, 
 
 Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they are ! 
 And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man 
 
 That out of three sounds he frame not a fourth sound, but a star. 
 Consider it well ; each tone of our scale in itself is naught : 
 
 It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is said: 
 Give to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: 
 
 And there ! Ye have heard and seen : consider and bow the head ! 
 
 But for the same reason that they are mysteries and can- 
 not be understood because they relate to the infinite, they 
 are eternal. That is the consolation. The musician need 
 not regret that the music composed in a moment of divine 
 inspiration cannot be remembered; he need not regret that 
 it has been forgotten. Forgotten it is by the man who 
 made it; forgotten it is by the people who heard it; forgot- 
 ten it is therefore by all mankind. Nevertheless it is eter- 
 nal, because the Universal Soul that inspired it never for- 
 gets anything. I think that the verse in which this beauti- 
 ful thought is expressed — the verse that contains the whole 
 of Browning's religion, is the most beautiful thing in all 
 his work. But you must judge for yourselves: 
 
 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist: 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 199 
 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard. 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
 
 Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear it by and by. 
 
 By the phrase "when eternity affirms the conception of 
 an hour," the poet means when we ourselves, in a future 
 and higher state of being, shall see the worth of our good 
 acts and thoughts proved by the fact that they survive along 
 with us. Eternity affirms them — that is, recognises them as 
 worthy of immortality by suffering them to exist. This 
 line gives us the key to the philosophy of the rest. It is 
 quite in harmony with Buddhist philosophy. Browning 
 holds that all good acts and thoughts are eternal, whether 
 men in this world remember them or not. But what of 
 the bad acts and thoughts'? Are they also eternal? Not 
 in the same sense. Evil acts and thoughts do indeed exert 
 an influence reaching enormously into the future, but it is 
 an influence that must gradually wane, it is a Karma that 
 must become exhausted. As for regretting that nobody 
 sees or knows the good that we do, that is very foolish. 
 The good will never die; it will be seen again — perhaps 
 only in millions of years, yet this should make no difference. 
 To the dead the time of a million years and the time of a 
 moment may be quite the same thing. 
 
 But you must not suppose that Browning lives much in 
 the regions of abstract philosophy. He is human in the 
 warmest way, and very much alive to impressions of sense. 
 Not even Swinburne is at times more voluptuous, but the 
 voluptuous in Browning is always natural and healthy as 
 well as artistic. I must quote to you some passages from 
 the wonderful little dramatic poem entitled "In a Gondola." 
 You know that a gondola is a peculiar kind of boat which 
 in Venice takes the place of carriages or vehicles of any 
 kind. In the city of Venice there are no streets to speak 
 
200 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 of, but canals only, so that people go from one place to an- 
 other only by boat. These boats or gondolas of Venice are 
 not altogether unlike some of the old-fashioned Japanese 
 pleasure-boats; they have a roof and windows and rooms, 
 and it is possible to travel in them without being seen by 
 anybody. In the old days of Venice, many secret meetings 
 between lovers and many secret meetings of conspirators 
 were held in such boats. The poet is telling us of the secret 
 meeting of two lovers, at the risk of death, for if the man is 
 seen he will certainly be killed. At the end of the poem 
 he actually is killed; the moment he steps on shore he is 
 stabbed, because he has been watched by the spies of a 
 political faction that hates him. But this is not the essen- 
 tial part of the poem at all. The essential part of the poem 
 is the description of the feelings and thoughts of these two 
 people, loving in the shadow of death; this is very beautiful 
 and almost painfully true to nature. We get also not a 
 few glimpses of the old life and luxury of Venice in the 
 course of the narrative. As the boat glides down the long 
 canals, between the high ranges of marble palaces rising 
 from the water, the two watch the windows of the houses 
 that they know, and talk about what is going on inside. 
 
 Past we ghde, and past, and past! 
 
 What's that poor Agnese doing 
 Where they make the shutters fast? 
 
 Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing 
 To his couch the purchased bride : 
 
 Past we glide! 
 
 Past we glide, and past, and past! 
 
 Why's the Pucci Palace flaring 
 Like a beacon to the blast? 
 
 Guests by hundreds, not one caring 
 If the dear host's neck were wried : 
 
 Past we glide ! 
 
 It is the man who is here looking and talking and criticising. 
 The woman is less curious; she is thinking only of love. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 201 
 
 and what she says in reply has become famous in English 
 literature; we might say that this is the very best we have 
 in what might be called the "literature of kissing." 
 
 The moth's kiss, first! 
 
 Kiss me as if you made believe 
 
 You were not sure, this eve, 
 
 How my face, your flower, had pursed 
 
 Its petals up ; so, here and there 
 
 You brush it, till I grow aware 
 
 Who wants me, and wide open burst. 
 
 The bee's kiss, now I 
 Kiss me as if you entered gay 
 My heart at some noonday, 
 A bud that dares not disallow 
 The claim, so all is rendered up. 
 And passively its shattered cup 
 Over your head to sleep I bow. 
 
 Of course you know all about the relation of insects to 
 flowers — how moths, beetles, butterflies, and other little 
 creatures, by entering flowers in order to suck the honey, 
 really act as fertilisers, carrying the pollen from the male 
 flower to the female flower. It is the use of this fact from 
 natural history that makes these verses so exquisite. The 
 woman's mouth is the flower; the lips of the man, the vis- 
 iting insect. "Moth" is the name which we give to night 
 butterflies, that visit flowers in the dark. What the woman 
 says is this in substance: "Kiss me with my mouth shut 
 first, like a night moth coming to a flower all shut up, and 
 not knowing where the opening is." The second compari- 
 son of the bee suggests another interesting fact in the rela- 
 tion between insects and flowers. A bee or wasp, on finding 
 it difficult to enter a flower from the top, so as to get at the 
 honey, will cut open the side of the flower, and break its 
 way in. The woman is asking simply, "Now give me a 
 rough kiss after the gentle one." All this is mere play, of 
 course, but by reason of the language used it rises far above 
 
202 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 the merely trifling into the zones of supreme literary art. 
 Later on, we have another comparison, made by the man, 
 which I think very beautiful. The thought, the compari- 
 son itself, is not new: from very ancient times it has been 
 the custom of lovers to call the woman they loved an angel. 
 I fancy this custom is reflected in the amatory literature of 
 all countries ; it exists even in Japanese poetry. But really 
 it does not matter whether a comparison be new or old; 
 its value depends upon the way that a poet utters it. 
 Browning's lover says: 
 
 Lie back ; could thought of mine improve you ? 
 
 From this shoulder let there spring 
 
 A wing; from this, another wing; 
 
 Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you ! 
 
 Snow-white must they spring, to blend 
 
 With your flesh, but I intend 
 
 They shall deepen to the end, 
 
 Broader, into burning gold, 
 
 Till both wings crescent-wise enfold 
 
 Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet 
 
 To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet 
 
 As if a million sword-blades hurled 
 
 Defiance from you to the world! 
 
 This is a picture painted after the manner of the Venetian 
 school; we seem to be looking at something created by the 
 brush of Titian or Tintoretto. I am not sure that it will 
 seem to you as beautiful as it really is, for it is intended to 
 appeal to the imagination of persons who have actually 
 seen the paintings of the Italian masters, or at least en- 
 gravings of them. Angels were frequently represented by 
 those great artists as clothed with their own wings, the 
 wings, white below, gold above, meeting over the head like 
 two new moons joining their shining tips. What the poet 
 means by "sword-blades" are the long narrow flashing 
 feathers of the angel-wings, which, joined all together, look 
 like a cluster of sword-blades. But one must have seen 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 203 
 
 the pictures of the Italian masters to appreciate the skill 
 of this drawing in words. Here I may remind you that 
 Dante, in his vision of Paradise, uses colours of a very 
 similar sort — blinding white and dazzling gold appear in 
 the wings of his angels also. 
 
 The above examples of the merely artistic power of 
 Browning will suffice for the moment; great as he always 
 is when he descends to earth, he is most noteworthy in those 
 other directions which I have already pointed out, and 
 which are chiefly psychological. I want to give you more ex- 
 amples from the poems of the psychological kind, partly be- 
 cause they are of universally recognised value in themselves, 
 and partly because it is these that make the distinction be- 
 tween Browning and his great contemporaries. One of these 
 pieces, now quoted through the whole English-speaking 
 world, is "A Grammarian's Funeral." This poem is in- 
 tended to give us the enthusiasm which the students of the 
 later Middle Ages felt for scholarship, the delight in learn- 
 ing which revived shortly before the Renaissance. I sup- 
 pose that many of you recollect the first enthusiasm for 
 Western studies in Japan; people then studied too hard, 
 tried to do even more than they could do. So it was in 
 Europe at the time of the revival of learning; men killed 
 themselves by overstudy. In this poem Browning makes us 
 listen to the song sung by a company of university students 
 burying their dead teacher; they are carrying him up to the 
 top of a high mountain above the mediaeval city, there to let 
 him sleep forever above the clouds and above the vulgarities 
 of mankind. The philosophy in it is very noble and strong, 
 though it be only the philosophy of young men. 
 
 Let us begin and carry up this corpse, 
 
 Singing together. 
 Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes 
 
 Each in Its tether 
 Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 
 
 Cared-for till cock-crow : 
 
204 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Look out if yonder be not day again 
 
 Rimming the rock-row! 
 That's the appropriate country ; there, man's thought, 
 
 Rarer, intenser, 
 Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought. 
 
 Chafes in the censer. 
 Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop ; 
 
 Seek we sepulture 
 On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 
 
 Crowded with culture ! 
 All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels. 
 
 Clouds overcome it ; 
 No ! yonder sparkle is the citadel's 
 
 Circling its summit. 
 Thither our path lies ; wind we up the heights ; 
 
 Wait ye the warning? 
 Our low life was the level's and the night's ; 
 
 He's for the morning. 
 Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 
 
 'Ware the beholders ! 
 This is our master, famous, calm and dead, 
 
 Borne on our shoulders. 
 
 Some little description will be necessary before we can go 
 further with the poem. It was dark, before daybreak, when 
 the students assembled for the funeral, and it is still rather 
 dark when the funeral procession starts up the mountain. 
 This appears from the lines, "Look out if yonder be not 
 day again rimming the rock-row" — meaning, see if that is 
 not daylight up there at the top of the mountains. 
 It is not full day, but they can see, far up, the lights of the 
 citadel. The poet wants to give us the feeling of a forti- 
 fied city of the Middle Ages. You must understand that 
 multitudes of cities, especially in France and in Germany, 
 were then built upon mountain tops, so that they could be 
 better fortified and defended against attack. Part of such 
 a city would be of course on sloping ground. But the very 
 highest place was always reserved, inside the city, for mili- 
 tary purposes. Outside the city were walls and ditches and 
 towers. Inside the city there was a smaller city or citadel. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 205 
 
 also suriounded by ditches and walls and towers, and oc- 
 cupying the highest place possible. An enemy, after cap- 
 turing the city proper, would still have the citadel to cap- 
 ture, always a very difficult military feat. Now you will 
 understand better the suggestions of immense height in the 
 poem. The students are going up above the citadel to bury 
 their teacher. They say that the place is appropriate be- 
 cause the air at that height is, like intellectual thought, cold 
 and pure and full of electricity, the symbol of mental en- 
 ergy and moral effort. You may notice that the students 
 are still somewhat rough in their ways. It was a rough 
 age ; they do not intend to submit to any interference on the 
 way, nor even to any curiosity, so the ignorant "beholders" 
 are bidden to be very careful. 
 
 At this point the poem gives us the students' account of 
 their teacher's life. They are singing a song about it, and 
 you must understand that all the lines in parentheses do 
 not necessarily mean interruptions of the narrative, though 
 some of them do. A little careful reading will make every- 
 thing clear; then you will perceive how very fine the spirit 
 of the whole thing is. 
 
 Sleep, crop and herd I sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, 
 
 Safe from the weather ! 
 He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, 
 
 Singing together, 
 He was a man born with thy face and throat, 
 
 Lyric Apollo I 
 Long he lived nameless : how should Spring take note 
 
 Winter would follow? 
 Till lo ! the little touch, and youth was gone ! 
 
 Cramped and diminished. 
 Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon I 
 
 My dance is finished?" 
 No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, 
 
 Make for the city!) 
 He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride 
 
 Over men's pity ; 
 Left play for work, and grappled with the world 
 
206 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Bent on escaping : 
 "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? 
 
 Show me their shaping, 
 Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, — 
 
 Give !" so he gowned him. 
 Straight got by heart that book to its last page : 
 
 Learned, we found him. 
 
 When his first students met him, they met him as a youth- 
 ful and a learned man; these latest students found him old, 
 bald, scarcely able to see — and yet he had not allowed him- 
 self any rest. In spite of the fact that he felt death was 
 coming, he continued to study day and night, he read all the 
 books then existing, and when he had read them all, he 
 said only, "Now I have got to the beginning of my real 
 studies. The material is in my hands; now I shall use it." 
 Sickness or health made no difference to him. This life he 
 thought of only as the commencement of eternity. 
 
 He said, "What's Time *? Leave Now for dogs and apes ! 
 
 Man has Forever!" 
 Back to his books then ; deeper drooped his head : 
 
 Calculus racked him : 
 Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead : 
 
 Tussis attacked him. 
 
 In vain did his friends and pupils beg him to take a little 
 rest, but he never would; he said that he must learn every- 
 thing he could before dying. 
 
 So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, 
 
 Ground he at grammar ; 
 Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife ; 
 
 While he could stammer 
 He settled H oil's business — let it be ! — 
 
 Properly based Oun — 
 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, 
 
 Dead from the waist down. 
 
 "Hoti" is the Greek word "that" ; "Oun" is the word "then," 
 also "now"; it has other kindred meanings. "De" has the 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 207 
 
 meaning of "toward" when enclitic; but there is another 
 Greek word "de" meaning "but." The reference in the 
 poem is to the rule for distinguishing the Greek "de" mean- 
 ing "toward" from the Greek "de" meaning "but." "Cal- 
 culus" is the disease commonly called "stone in the blad- 
 der." "Tussis" is a cough. 
 
 And now the singers have brought the body to the burial- 
 place at the top of the mountain, and their song ends with 
 this glorious burst: 
 
 Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: 
 
 Hail to your purlieus. 
 All ye highfliers of the feathered race. 
 
 Swallows and curlews I 
 Here's the top-peak; the multitude below 
 
 Live, for they can, there ; 
 This man decided not to Live but Know — 
 
 Bury this man there? 
 Here — here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, 
 
 Lightnings are loosened. 
 Stars come and go I Let joy break with the storm, 
 
 Peace let the dew send ! 
 Lofty designs must close in like effects : 
 
 Loftily lying. 
 Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects. 
 
 Living and dying. 
 
 We may turn from this fine poem without further com- 
 ment to a piece entitled "The Patriot." There is a bit, and 
 a very bitter bit, of the true philosophy of life in it. Noth- 
 ing is so fickle, so uncertain, so treacherous as popularity. 
 Thousands of men who tried to get the applause of the multi- 
 tude, the love of the millions, and thought that they had suc- 
 ceeded, found out at a later day how quickly that applause 
 could be turned into roars of hate, how quickly that seem- 
 ing admiration could be changed into scorn. This fact 
 about the instability of human favour is well known to 
 every clear headed person who enters into what is called 
 the social struggle; but it is more often illustrated in poli- 
 
208 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 tics. The political aspect of the matter is the most re- 
 markable, and has therefore been chosen by Browning. I 
 do not know to what particular person he may be making 
 reference — perhaps he was thinking of Rienzi. But in all 
 periods of history the fact has been about the same. You 
 will remember, no doubt, the case of Pericles in the his- 
 tory of Athens, and of many others. You may remember 
 also how the French Revolution devoured its own children, 
 how the men that were one day almost worshipped by the 
 people like gods, would be dragged to the guillotine the 
 day after. And even in the history of this country I think 
 you must remember not a few examples of how uncertain 
 popular favour must always be. In this case the victim 
 speaks, some man who once had been regarded as the sa- 
 viour of the people, but who is now regarded as their enemy, 
 and who is going to be executed as a common criminal, sim- 
 ply because he happened to be unfortunate. He remem- 
 bers the past, and contrasts it with the cruel present : 
 
 It was roses, roses, all the way, 
 
 With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: 
 
 The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, 
 The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, 
 
 A year ago on this very day. 
 
 The air broke into a mist with bells, 
 
 The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. 
 
 Had I said: "Good folk, mere noise repels — 
 But give me your sun from yonder skies I" 
 
 They had answered, "And afterward, what else?" 
 
 Here I may say that in Western countries from very an- 
 cient times it has been the custom to cover with flowers the 
 road along which some great conqueror or other honoured 
 person was to come. The ancients used especially roses and 
 myrtles, but even to-day it is often the custom to throw 
 flowers on the ground before the passing of a sovereign or 
 other great person. "Like mad" is an idiom used to ex- 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 209 
 
 press extreme action of any sort; "to laugh like mad," would 
 be to laugh unreasonably and extravagantly. The refer- 
 ence to the apparent movement of the roots of the houses pic- 
 tures the crowding of people on the house-tops to see the 
 hero, a custom still kept up. And the reference to the effect 
 of the bells as making "mist," indicates the excessive volume 
 of sound ; for it is said that the firing of cannon or the making 
 of any other great noise will often cause rain to tall. The 
 idea is that the people rang the bells so hard that the rain 
 fell, and these were what we call "joy-bells." 
 
 "If on that day of my triumph," he says, "I had asked 
 them to give me the sun, they would have answered out of 
 their hearts, Certainly — and what else*?" Now it is very 
 different indeed. 
 
 Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 
 
 To give it my loving friends to keep ! 
 Nought man could do, have I left undone : 
 
 And you see my harvest, what I reap 
 This very day, now a year is run. 
 
 There's nobody on the house-tops now — 
 
 Just a palsied few at the windows set ; 
 For the best of the sight is, all allow. 
 
 At the Shambles' Gate— or, better yet, 
 By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 
 
 I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
 
 A rope cuts both my wrists behind ; 
 And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 
 
 For they fling, whoever has a mind, 
 Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 
 
 What he says is this: "I did not ask them for anything 
 for myself; it was I who wanted to give them the sun, or 
 anything else that they wished for. Every possible sacri- 
 fice that any man could make I made for these people, and 
 you see what my reward is to-day — just one year from the 
 time when they honoured and revered me. Nobody now 
 
210 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 stands on the house tops to look at me; all have gone to 
 the execution ground to see me die, except a few old people 
 who cannot walk, and who stay at the windows to see me 
 pass, with my hands tied behind my back. People are 
 throwing stones at me, and I think my face is bleeding." 
 The last allusion is to a very cruel custom only of late 
 years abolished in England by better police regulations. In 
 the old times, when a prisoner was being taken to the gal- 
 lows, people would often strike him, or throw stones at him 
 as he went by, and nobody attempted to protect him. To- 
 day this is not done, simply because the police do not allow 
 it, but the natural cruelty of a mob is perhaps just as great 
 as it ever was. 
 
 Thus I entered, and thus I go ! 
 
 In triumphs people have dropped down dead. 
 "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 
 
 Me?" — God might question; now instead, 
 'Tis God shall repay : I am safer so. 
 
 These are the man's last thoughts. "I came into this 
 city a hero, as I told you ; now I am going out of it, to be 
 executed like a vulgar criminal. How much better would 
 it have been if I had died on the day when all the people 
 were honouring me I I have heard that men have fallen 
 dead from joy in the middle of such a triumph as I then 
 had. But would it have been better if I had died happy like 
 that*? Perhaps it would not. God is said to demand a 
 strict account in the next world from any human being who 
 has been too happy in this. If I had died that day, God 
 might have said to me. You have had your reward from the 
 world; have you paid to me what you owed in love and 
 duty"? But now the world kills me; it is from God only 
 that I can hope for justice. He is terrible, but I can trust 
 him better than this people; I am safer with him !" 
 
 I am not sure what Browning refers to in speaking of 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 211 
 
 those who have been known to drop dead in the middle of 
 a triumph. But perhaps he is referring to the story of 
 the Sicilian, Diagoras, which is one of the most beautiful 
 of all Greek stories, and is fortunately quite true. Diagoras 
 had been the greatest wrestler among the Greeks, the great- 
 est athlete of his time, and was loved and honoured by all 
 men of Greek blood. He had seven sons. When he was 
 a very old man these seven sons went to contend at the great 
 Olympic games (if I remember correctly). There were but 
 seven prizes for all the feats of strength and skill ; and these 
 seven prizes were all won by the seven sons of Diagoras — 
 that is to say, they had proved themselves the best men of 
 the whole world at that time, even the boy son winning the 
 prize given only to boys. Then the people demanded to 
 know the name of the father of those young men, and the 
 sons lifted him upon their shoulders to show him to all the 
 people. The people shouted so that birds flying above 
 them, tell down; and the old man in the same moment died 
 of joy, as he was thus supported upon the shoulders of his 
 sons. The Greeks said that this was the happiest death 
 that any man ever died. Perhaps Browning was referring 
 to this story; but I am not sure. 
 
 Kings have sometimes been accused of ingratitude, but 
 on the whole, kings have shown more gratitude than mobs; 
 a sovereign is apt to remember that it is good policy to repay 
 loyalty and to encourage affection. Browning gives us a 
 few magnificent specimens of loyal feeling toward sover- 
 eigns, feeling which it is pleasant to know was not repaid 
 with ingratitude. I am referring to his "Cavalier Tunes," 
 little songs into which he has managed to put all the fiery 
 love and devotion of the English gentlemen who fought for 
 the king against Cromwell and his Puritans, and who fought, 
 luckily for England, in vain at that time. Right or wrong 
 as we may think their cause, it is impossible not to admire 
 the feeling here expressed. I shall quote the second song 
 
212 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 first. You must imagine that all these gentlemen are drink- 
 ing the health of the king, with songs and cheers, even at 
 the time when the king's cause seems hopeless. 
 
 GIVE A ROUSE! 
 
 King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
 Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now, 
 King Charles I 
 {Single voice) 
 
 Who gave me the goods that went since? 
 Who raised me the house that sank once? 
 Who helped me to gold I spent since? 
 Who found me in wine you drank once? 
 {Chorus, answering) 
 
 King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
 Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now, 
 King Charles ! 
 {Single voice) 
 
 To whom used my boy George quaff else, 
 By the old fool's side that begot him? 
 For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 
 While Noll's damned troopers shot him? 
 {Chorus, answering) 
 
 King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
 Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now, 
 King Charles ! 
 
 The father is reminding his friends of the brave death of 
 his own son, who died shouting for the king and laughing 
 at his executioners. I do not think that there is a more 
 spirited song in English literature than this. Perhaps you 
 may observe that the measure in the third stanza does not 
 run smoothly like the measure of the other stanzas; it hesi- 
 tates a little. But this is a great stroke of art, for it indi- 
 cates the suppressed emotion of the father speaking of his 
 dead son. The other song, the first of the three given by 
 Browning, represents the feeling of an earlier time in the 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 213 
 
 civil war, probably the time when the aristocracy and gen- 
 try first gathered together to defend the king. There is a 
 splendid swing in it. Both songs are a little rough, be- 
 cause the spirit of the age was rough; the finest gentleman 
 used to swear in those days, and to use words which we 
 now consider rather violent. I may remark, however, that 
 even to-day in the upper ranks of the English army and 
 navy, something of the same scorn of conventions still re- 
 mains; generals and admirals will swear occasionally in bat- 
 tle, just as these gentlemen of an older school swore as they 
 advanced against the Puritan armies. 
 
 MARCHING ALONG 
 
 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 
 
 Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing : 
 
 And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 
 
 And see the rogues flourish and honest men droop. 
 
 Marched them along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 God for King Charles ! Pym and such carles 
 To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous paries I 
 Cavaliers, up ! Lips from the cup, 
 Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup 
 Till you're — 
 {Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell 
 Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well ! 
 England, good cheer ! Rupert is near ! 
 Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here, 
 {Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 Then God for King Charles ! Pym and his snarls 
 To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles ! 
 Hold by the right, you double your might ; 
 So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, 
 {Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
gl4. STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 The names in this poem are all of them great names of the 
 Civil War. Hampden, you know, was Parliamentary 
 leader in the movement against the king. He was killed 
 in battle, and his place as leader was taken by Pym. The 
 other names are of members of the Long Parliament — ex- 
 cept Rupert. Rupert, or Prince Rupert, as he is more 
 generally known, was the leader of the Royal cavalry, one 
 of the most brilliant cavalry leaders of history. He was 
 never beaten seriously until he met Cromwell's Puritan cav- 
 alry. A reference may be necessary in regard to Notting- 
 ham. There was no fight exactly at Nottingham; but it 
 was at Nottingham that the cavalry gathered round the 
 king's standard before the battle of Edgehill, near Banbury, 
 a drawn battle, not decided either way. 
 
 So much for the references. As for the song itself, some- 
 thing remains to be said. I think that the two songs are 
 about the most spirited in English literature. They are so 
 for many reasons, especially because of the fiery emotion 
 which the poet has flung into them, and because of their 
 absolute truth to the feeling of the seventeenth century, both 
 as to form and as to tone. But I wonder whether any of 
 you have noticed what it is that gives such uncommon force 
 to the verses. To a great degree, it is the use of triple 
 rhymes. In both songs the rhymes are triple, while the 
 measure is short, and the result is something of that rough 
 strength which characterises the old Northern poetry. For 
 instance : 
 
 Hold by the right, you double your might. 
 
 So onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight. 
 
 King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now ? 
 Give a rouse : here's in hell's despite now, 
 King Charles ! 
 
 You see that very great effects may be produced by very 
 simple means. In "Marching Along," the "swing" or "lilt" 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 215 
 
 is partly due to the fact that the three rhymes follow each 
 other not in regular but in irregular succession, a rhymeless 
 measure alternating between the second and the third 
 rhymes, as will be plainly seen if we write the verses in 
 
 another form: 
 
 Kentish Sir Byng 
 Stood for his king. 
 Bidding the crop-headed 
 Parliament swing. 
 
 But I want to explain the spirit rather than the workman- 
 ship of Browning; and I have turned aside here to the sub- 
 ject of measure only because the instances happened to be 
 very extraordinary. The beauty of the work is really in 
 the glow and strength of the loyal feeling that peals through 
 it. 
 
 Do not suppose, however, that the poet picks out by pref- 
 erence the noble or the attractive side of human feeling in 
 any form of society, for his subject. Quite the contrary. 
 Most often he paints the ugly side, even in speaking of kings 
 and courts, nobles and princes. In the splendid poem 
 "Count Gismond," which I dictated last year, you may have 
 seen one very beautiful side of knightly character, but there 
 were horrible phases of human nature exhibited in the story. 
 Browning made the shadows very heavy, with the result 
 that the lights appeared more dazzling. Sometimes we have 
 no lights — all is shadow, and sometimes a shadow of hell. 
 Such is the case in the horrible poem called "The Labora- 
 tory," depicting the feelings of a jealous court-lady, as she 
 stands in the laboratory of a chemist who is selling her a 
 poison with which she intends to poison her rival in the 
 favour of the king. The story is laid in the time of Louis 
 XIV, probably, when such things did actually occur in 
 France. A still blacker shadow, a still more infernal pic- 
 ture of humanity's dark side, is "The Heretic's Tragedy," 
 portraying the wicked feelings of a superstitious person while 
 watching a heretic being burned alive. Another frightful 
 
«16 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 thing is "The Confessional," a story of the Inquisition in 
 Spain, showing how the inquisitors succeeded in seizing, con- 
 victing, and burning aUve a young man, by taking advan- 
 tage of the innocence of his sweetheart, who was made to 
 betray him through confession without knowing it. An- 
 other piece that is ugly psychologically, is "Cristina and 
 Monaldeschi." Cristina was a queen of Sweden, and one of 
 the most learned women of her time, but very masculine; 
 she liked to wear men's clothes and to follow the amuse- 
 ments of men. She abdicated her throne, merely in order 
 to feel more free in her habits. It is believed that she se- 
 cretly loved her private secretary, and that he was dishon- 
 ourable enough to tell other people of his relation to her. 
 At all events, one day she ordered him to come into her 
 room, and after upbraiding him with treachery to her, she 
 had him killed in her presence. The fact shocked Europe 
 a great deal at the time. Browning tries to make us under- 
 stand Cristina's feeling, and he forces us to sympathise a 
 little with her anger. There are multitudes of poems of 
 this class in Browning. He wants us to know all the 
 strange possibilities of the human soul, bad or good, and he 
 never hesitates because a subject may be shocking to weak 
 nerves. It is just because he does not care about public 
 feeling, ignorant public opinion, upon these matters, that 
 he manages to give us such exact truth; he is not afraid. 
 For a little bit of truth thus exemplified — this is not ugly 
 — let us take a little piece entitled "Which*?" Here is an- 
 other picture of the manners of the old French court, a very 
 corrupt court and very luxurious. You must read Taine's 
 "Ancien Regime" to understand what its morals were. But 
 let us turn to the little picture. Three great ladies are talk- 
 ing with a priest about love — a fashionable priest, a priest 
 of the old age, ready to make love or to say mass just ac- 
 cording as it suited his private interest. A very good priest 
 could scarcely have existed in the court; one had to be very 
 clever and very subtle to live there. The conversation of 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 217 
 
 these four persons gives us a hint of the feeling of the age. 
 Only one woman really seems to say what she thinks; and 
 she says what she thinks only because she is the most clever 
 of the three. 
 
 So, the three Court-ladies began 
 Their trial of who judged best 
 
 In esteeming the love of a man : 
 Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed 
 Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and eager ; 
 An Abbe crossed legs to decide on the wager. 
 
 First the Duchesse: "Mine for me — 
 Who were it but God's for Him, 
 
 And the King's for — who but he? 
 Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brim 
 His cup with perfection : a lady's true lover. 
 He holds— save his God and his king — none above her." 
 
 "I require" — outspoke the Marquise — 
 "Pure thoughts, ay, but also fine deeds : 
 
 Play the paladin must he, to please 
 My whim, and — to prove my knight's service exceeds 
 Your saint's and your loyalist's praying and kneeling — 
 Show wounds, each wide mouth to my mercy appealing." 
 
 Then the Comtesse : "My choice be a wretch, 
 Mere losel in body and soul, 
 
 Thrice accurst ! What care I, so he stretch 
 Arms to me his sole saviour, love's ultimate goal, 
 Out of earth and men's noise — names of 'infidel,' 'traitor,' 
 Cast up at him? Crown me, crown's adjudicator!" 
 
 And the Abbe uncrossed his legs. 
 Took snuff, a reflective pinch. 
 
 Broke silence : "The question begs 
 Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch ? 
 The love which to one and one only has reference 
 Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference." 
 
 The answer of the priest, giving the victory to the Comtesse, 
 is clever and double-edged. He probably knows every- 
 
218 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 thing that goes on in the court: he knows how many lovers 
 the Duchesse has had, and the Marquise. He knows that 
 their talk about religion and loyalty as the perfections of 
 man, are not quite sincere. Indeed, the Marquise is much 
 more sincere than the Duchesse; but if she were altogether 
 sincere, she would have recognised that her wish — her ex- 
 pressed wish, at least — must appear as pure pride, not any- 
 thing else. But the Comtesse tells a bitter truth by point- 
 ing out that if it is a question of real love, the place and 
 station of the man can signify nothing at all; love should 
 be a thing of the heart, not a thing of rank and fashion. 
 And the priest, in supporting her claim and in saying that a 
 true love can have reference only to one person, really sug- 
 gests to his audience, whose love relations have doubtless 
 been very numerous, what he thinks to be the opinion of 
 God on the subject. But "perhaps," as the priest utters 
 the word, is terrible irony. "Perhaps gains God's prefer- 
 ence," means "I know, of course, that in the society to which 
 we belong, love only for one's husband is not considered 
 fashionable; yet the opinions of God may not be the same 
 as the opinions of our society. It would not be polite of 
 me to say directly that your opinions and God's opinions 
 are different, but I just hint it." It was a very queer age. 
 Taine, in his history of the time, tells a story about a noble- 
 man who, on entering his wife's room suddenly and finding 
 her making love to another man, took off his hat and saluted 
 her, saying, "Oh, my dear, how can you be so careless I 
 Suppose it had not been your husband who opened the 
 door I" You must understand all this, to understand the 
 mockery of the poem. Then, again, you must understand 
 the desire of the Comtesse even for the love of a "wretch," 
 a mere losel, as meaning that here is a woman who deserves 
 to be loved, but is not loved by her husband, and who has 
 learned that real love has a value in this world beyond all 
 value of rank or money or influence. 
 
 If you ask me why I have talked so much about so short 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 219 
 
 a poem, the answer is that nearly all of Browning's short 
 poems mean a great deal, and force us to think and to talk 
 about them. The reason is that the characters in these 
 poems are really alive; they impress us exactly as living 
 persons do, and excite our curiosity in precisely the same 
 way. Accordingly, notwithstanding their many faults of 
 construction and obscure English, they have something of 
 the greatness of Shakespeare's dramas. 
 
 It is now time to turn to the study of the greatest of all 
 Browning's poems. Perhaps I should not call it a poem. 
 It is rather an immense poetic drama. As printed in this 
 single volume it represents four hundred and seventy-seven 
 pages of closely printed small text. It is, therefore, even 
 considered as a dramatic composition, many times larger 
 than any true drama. But no true drama, except Shake- 
 speare's, is more real or more terrible. Besides, it is a purely 
 psychological drama. There is no scenery, no narrative in 
 the ordinary sense. Everything is related in the first per- 
 son. The whole is divided into twelve parts, each of which 
 is a monologue. Nearly all of the monologues are spoken 
 by different persons. The first monologue is the author's 
 own, in which he tells us the meaning of the title and the 
 story of the drama. 
 
 It is a true story of Italian life in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, the chief incident having really occurred in the year 
 1698. The poet one day found in an old Italian book shop 
 a little book for sale, which was the history of a celebrated 
 criminal trial. Besides the book, which included the 
 speeches of the lawyers on both sides, and the evidence 
 given before the court, there was a good deal of old manu- 
 script — papers probably prepared by some lawyer of the 
 time in connection with the case. Browning was able to 
 buy the whole thing for eight pence; that small sum fur- 
 nished him with material for the most enormous poem in 
 the English language. When he read the facts of the trial, 
 he said he could actually see all the characters as plainly 
 
220 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 as if they were alive, and could even hear them speak. 
 He soon formed in his mind the plan for his poem; but 
 it was a peculiar plan. The plan is indicated by the title 
 of "The Ring and the Book." In Italy there is a great 
 deal of beautiful light gold work made — for rings especially, 
 which looks so delicate that at first sight you cannot under- 
 stand how it was made. In a gold ring there are leaves 
 and flowers and fruits and insects, so lightly made that even 
 if you let the ring fall they would be injured or destroyed. 
 Gold is very soft. In order to cut the gold in this way, the 
 goldsmith uses a hard composition with which he covers 
 the gold work, and after the carving and engraving have 
 been done, this composition is melted off, so that only the 
 pure gold is left, with all the work upon it. Browning says 
 that he made his book somewhat in the same way that the 
 Italian goldsmith makes his ring — by the use of an alloy. 
 The facts of history and of law represent the gold in this 
 case, and the poet mixes them with an alloy of imagina- 
 tion, emotion, sympathy, which helps him to make the whole 
 story into a perfectly rounded drama, a complete circle, a 
 Ring. This is the meaning of the title. 
 
 I shall first tell you the story briefly, according to the 
 historical facts. About the year 1679 there was a family 
 in Rome of the name of Comparini. The family consisted 
 only of husband and wife; but it happened that the fact 
 of their being without children proved a legal obstacle in 
 the way of obtaining some money which they greatly de- 
 sired. The wife, Violante, knew that her husband was too 
 honest to wish to cheat the law, so she determined to try 
 to get the money without letting him know her deceit in the 
 matter. She pretended to have given birth, unexpectedly, 
 to a child, but the child had really been bought from a woman 
 of loose life — it was a very pretty female child, and was 
 called Francesca Pompilia. Little Pompilia was supposed 
 to be the real child of the Comparini ; and the much desired 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 221 
 
 money thus passed into their hands. This is the first act of 
 the tragedy. 
 
 Pompilia grew up into a wonderfully beautiful girl ; and 
 when she was thirteen years old, many people wished to 
 marry her. Guido Franceschini, Count of Arezzo, noticed 
 the girl's beauty, and heard that she was rich. He deter- 
 mined to marry her if possible, chiefly for the sake of her 
 money. He was a wicked old m'an, between fifty and sixty 
 years of age, ugly, cunning, and poor. But he had im- 
 mense influence, both among the nobility and among the 
 church dignitaries, on account of his family relations ; and he 
 was himself of high rank. The marriage was negotiated 
 successfully. Pompilia, a child of thirteen, could not 
 naturally have wished to marry this horrible old man, but 
 she had been taught to obey her parents as she obeyed Al- 
 mighty God, and when she was told to marry him she' mar- 
 ried him without one word of complaint. By this marriage 
 the wicket Count got into his hands all the property of the 
 Comparini family, but it had been promised that the parents 
 of the girl were to live in the palace of the Count, and to 
 be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, as 
 soon as the Count had everything in his hands, he turned the 
 old parents out of his house, in a state of absolute destitu- 
 tion; he had taken from them their daughter and all their 
 money, everything that they had in the world. This is the 
 second act of the tragedy. 
 
 Naturally the Comparini family were very angry. The 
 mother of the girl was so angry that she told her husband 
 all about the trick which she had played in passing off 
 Pompilia for her own child. Pompilia, you know, was not 
 her real child at all. This changed the legal aspect of the 
 matter. Old Comparini went to the Count and said, "You 
 took our money, and thought that you were taking our 
 daughter. But you must give back that money. The girl 
 is not our daughter; the money does not belong to her: it 
 
222 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 will have to be given back to the government that we de- 
 ceived." This is the third act of the tragedy. 
 
 The Count was equal to the occasion. He understood the 
 law; but he understood it much better than the Comparini 
 people. So long as he kept Pompilia as his wife, he knew 
 that he could keep the money. If he divorced her, on the 
 ground that she was of vulgar origin, then he would have 
 to give up the money. But this was not the only alterna- 
 tive. There was a third possibility. If Pompilia com- 
 mitted adultery, then he could either kill her or get rid 
 of her and keep the money notwithstanding. Pompilia was 
 a weak child only thirteen years old. He was a wicked and 
 terrible man, with half a century of experience, diabolical 
 cunning, diabolical cruelty, and ferocious determination. 
 He could make her commit adultery. That would be the 
 simplest possible solution of the difficulty. But, strange 
 to say, this terrible man could not conquer that delicate child 
 of thirteen. First he tried to appeal to her passions, to ex- 
 cite her imagination in an immoral way. But her heart 
 was too pure to be corrupted. There was in her no spur 
 of lust. She was a simple good pure wife, too pure for 
 any wicked ideas to be planted in her mind. Then he 
 tried force, atrocious cruelty, horrible menace, always with- 
 out letting her know what he really intended. What he 
 really intended was to force her to run away from him. 
 She could not run away except in the company of a pro- 
 tector. If she ran away with a protector, then he could 
 kill both her and the man and claim that he had detected 
 the two in adultery. After having tortured the girl hide- 
 ously, in every moral and immoral way, he did succeed in get- 
 ting her to ask for protection. She first asked protection 
 from priests and bishops. The priests and bishops were 
 afraid of the Count, and told her, like the cowards that they 
 were, that they could not help her. She wanted to become a 
 nun. The nuns were afraid of the Count, and refused her 
 prayer. At last she did find one priest, a brave man, who 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 223 
 
 was willing to save her if possible. He said, "You must run 
 away with me, though it will look very bad ; there is no other 
 way to help you." She ran away with him. Within 
 twenty-four hours the pair were overtaken by the Count 
 and his company of armed men. The opportunity to kill 
 Pompilia and her "lover" had come; but the so-called 
 "lover," although only an honest poor priest, showed fight, 
 and protected Pompilia against the Count and all his fol- 
 lowers. The priest refused to surrender Pompilia except 
 to the Church. The Church arrested both. Pompilia was 
 put into a convent for safe keeping. The priest was tried 
 for adultery, and acquitted. But he had done wrong by 
 breaking the law of the Church even for a good purpose; 
 therefore he was sentenced to banishment for a certain num- 
 ber of years. This is the fourth act of the tragedy. 
 
 The Count finds that all his plans have failed. He has 
 not been able to convict his wife of adultery, although he 
 has been able to injure her reputation in the opinion of the 
 public. He cannot get rid of her, and keep her money too, 
 except by killing her. But she is in the convent. While 
 he is thinking what to do, another event happens which 
 upsets all his calculations. Pompilia gives birth to a child 
 of which he certainly is the father. The money question, 
 the legal aspect of it, is still more complicated by the birth 
 of the child. At once the Count determines to kill Pompilia 
 and her parents, out of revenge. He knows that on cer- 
 tain days she goes to visit her parents. He watches for 
 such an occasion, and with the help of some professional 
 murderers, he kills the Comparini, and stabs Pompilia 
 twenty-two times with a dagger. He imagined that this 
 could be done so as to remain undiscovered; he thought 
 that the crime could not be proved upon him. But poor 
 Pompilia is very hard to kill. x\lthough her slender body 
 was thus stabbed through and through by a powerful man, 
 she did not die at once ; her wonderful youth kept her alive 
 long enough to tell the police what had happened. The 
 
224 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 Count and his hired murderers were arrested and thrown 
 into prison. This is the fifth act of the tragedy. 
 
 It is one thing to find the author of a crime, and put him 
 into prison ; it is a very different thing to convict and punish 
 him. The Count was very powerful with the army, with 
 the nobility, with the Church; everybody in his native city 
 was more afraid of him than of the devil. Nothing is so 
 hard to get in this world as justice. The Count's powerful 
 friends and relations all united to defend him, Dukes 
 and great captains, cardinals and bishops and abbots and 
 priests, rich merchants, influential statesmen, all combined 
 to secure his acquittal. They obtained the services of great 
 lawyers. They used money and threats to corrupt wit- 
 nesses or to terrify them. Yet there was one thing neces- 
 sary to secure his acquittal — evidence that the deed, which 
 he cannot deny, was justified by adultery. An attempt was 
 made to blacken the character of the murdered wife. But 
 this evidence was overthrown in the court, and the judges 
 pronounced sentence of death. Thereupon all the Count's 
 friends made an appeal to the Pope; the Pope can save the 
 Count, if pressure be brought of a sufficient sort upon his 
 judgment. But the Pope happened to be a good man, and 
 a keen man. He examines the evidence. He sees the 
 truth. He understands the innocence and beauty of the 
 character of the murdered Pompilia; he comprehends also 
 the innocence and the courage of the priest who tried to de- 
 fend her. He sends word to the prison that the Count must 
 be executed immediately. So justice is obtained, at least 
 so far as the punishment of murder can be called justice. 
 But what becomes of the money*? The nuns of the con- 
 vent in which Pompilia died, they get the money by very 
 discreditable means, and they keep it. The terrible 
 Franceschini family cannot try to get that money from 
 the convent ; for the convent means the power of the Church ;' 
 and the power of the Church is even more terrible than the 
 power of the Franceschini. Of course the Pope knows 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 225 
 
 nothing of this matter; the Pope is the finest character in 
 the whole story. Historically this Pope was Innocent XII, 
 but his character, as drawn in the study of Browning, is 
 much more like the character of one of his predecessors, 
 Innocent XL 
 
 Now I have told you the story, or rather the history of 
 the real tragedy, which happened something more than two 
 hundred years ago. You can imagine how complicated the 
 whole thing is, from the very short summary which I have 
 made. Now if you had to treat a story like this dramati- 
 cally, how would you do it? where would you begin? in 
 what way could you hope to make artistic order out of such 
 confusion'? The task might have puzzled even Shake- 
 speare. It puzzled Browning for more than a year before 
 he felt how the thing was possible to manage. When I 
 tell you the way in which he treated the whole material of 
 the case, I think you will perceive that only a genius could 
 have thought of the way. 
 
 As I have said. Browning divides his poem into twelve 
 parts; and each part is a monologue. I shall now give 
 you in paragraphs as brief as possible, the subject of each 
 monologue. You had better follow the order of the book, 
 using Roman numerals at the beginning of each paragraph, 
 and putting the title of the book in Italic letters : 
 
 I. The Ring and the Book. Interpretation of the title, 
 and history of the crime and the trial as told in the ancient 
 legal documents. This monologue represents the author's 
 speaking only. 
 
 II. Half-Rome. Public opinion is always divided upon 
 any extraordinary event. Browning here tries to give us 
 one side of public opinion in the year 1698, upon tlie 
 Franceschini murder. The monologue represents the ideas 
 of a man of the society of that time. 
 
 III. ^he Other Half Rome. This monologue represents 
 the contrary opinion on the subject. But it is a curious 
 fact that neither form of public opinion even approaches 
 
226 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 the truth. Both sides are absolutely mistaken, and very 
 unjust to poor Pompilia. 
 
 IV. Tertiutn Quid (i.e., "a third somebody" or "party"). 
 This opinion is quite different from that of the two halves 
 of Rome, but it is equally far from the truth. 
 
 V. Count Guido Franceschini. Notice that although the 
 three forms of opinion previously expressed all contradict 
 each other, and all are untrue, nevertheless every one of 
 them seems true while you read it. So does the story of 
 Count Guido Franceschini, the murderer, in his own de- 
 fence. Although you have been prejudiced against him 
 from the beginning, when you first read his side of the 
 story you cannot help thinking that it is a very reasonable 
 and very true story. He says in substance that he made a 
 great mistake in marrying so young a girl, that she dis- 
 liked him, that he did everything in his power to obtain her 
 affection and to make her happy, that she ran away from his 
 house with a monk, that even after that he was willing to 
 make every allowance for her, but that at last it was im- 
 possible for him, without losing all self-respect, not to 
 punish her crimes, and those of her infamous parents. He 
 makes an excellent speech, this Count Guido Franceschini. 
 
 VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi. This is the good priest, the 
 true loyal man that tried to save Pompilia, He tells his 
 story with perfect truthfulness and simplicity, and you 
 know that it is true. But at the same time you feel that 
 no one can believe it. The evidence is against the priest. 
 Although he is innocent, everybody laughs at his protesta- 
 tions of innocence. 
 
 VII. Pompilia. This is the most horrible part of the 
 book. It is a monologue by Pompilia telling of the cruelty 
 and the atrocious wickedness of her husband. It makes 
 your blood run cold to read it, but you know that nobody 
 would believe that story in a court of justice. It is too 
 terrible, too unnatural. Those who hear it only think that 
 Pompilia is a very cunning wicked woman, trying to make 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING . 227 
 
 people hate her husband, in order to excuse her own 
 adultery. 
 
 VIII. Dominus Hyocinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum 
 Procurator. The speech of the lawyer for the defence, very 
 cautious, very learned, very cunning. It was in those days 
 the custom to argue such cases partly in Latin, and the 
 papers were made out in Latin. "Dominus," "lord," was 
 the Latin title of lawyer. "Pauperum Procurator" means 
 the advocate or counsel of the poor ; persons without money 
 enough to procure legal services in the ordinary way, might 
 be furnished with a lawyer employed by the state. 
 
 IX. Juris Doctor J ohannes-Battista^ &c. The speech 
 of the lawyer on the other side, equally learned, equally 
 cunning, and equally cautious. The reader is forced to the 
 conclusion that neither of these lawyers really understands 
 the truth of the case. Both are telling untruth, and both 
 are afraid of the truth. But you will notice that the law- 
 yer who should speak in favour of Pompilia really does her 
 more harm than the lawyer whose duty it is to speak against 
 her. This is the result of cowardice and self-interest on 
 both sides. 
 
 X. The Pope. A beautiful study of character. For the 
 first time we learn the truth in this tenth monologue, so that 
 we feel it is all there, and not to be mistaken by any one 
 who hears it. 
 
 XI. Guido. Horrible. The murderer's confession of 
 his own character. 
 
 XII. The Book and the Ring. Conclusion, and moral 
 commentary. 
 
 I believe there is only part of this whole drama that has 
 been seriously called into question by critics — the last line 
 of the eleventh monologue, where Guido cries out, "Pom- 
 pilia, will you let them murder me?" The question is 
 whether the poet is right in representing this terrible man 
 in such a passion of fear that he calls to his dead wife to 
 help him. Certainly it is a general rule that the man ca- 
 
228 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 pable of studied cruelty to women and children — to the 
 weak, in short — is a coward at heart. But there are excep- 
 tions to this rule, and a great many remarkable Italian ex- 
 ceptions. Again many tribes of savages contradict the rule, 
 being at once brave and cruel. I think that the criticism 
 in this case may have been largely inspired by the history 
 of certain Italian families, who were cruel indeed, but fe- 
 rociously brave as well. However, Browning studied the 
 facts for his characters very closely, and he may be right 
 in representing Guido as a coward. He has been proved 
 to be both treacherous and avaricious by the evidence in the 
 case, and although prudence may sometimes be mistaken for 
 cowardice, there were some facts brought out by witnesses 
 that seem to show the man to have been as much of a coward 
 as he was a miser. 
 
 Now observe the immense psychological work that this 
 treatment of the story involves — the study of nine or ten 
 completely different characters, no one of whom could re- 
 semble a character of the nineteenth century, not at least 
 in the matter of thought and speech. To create these was 
 almost as wonderful as to call the dead of two hundred 
 years ago out of their graves, a veritable necromancy. This 
 work alone would make the book a marvellous thing. But 
 the book is more than marvellous; it is in the highest de- 
 gree philosophically instructive. Almost anything that 
 happens in this world is judged somewhat after the fashion 
 of the judgments delivered in the "Ring and the Book." 
 For example, let us suppose an episode in Tokyo to-day, 
 rather than an episode in Italy two hundred years ago, a 
 case of killing. At first when the mere fact of the killing 
 is known, there is a great curiosity as to the reason of it, 
 and different newspapers publish different stories about it, 
 and different people who knew both parties express differ- 
 ent opinions as to the why and how. You may be sure 
 that none of these accounts is perfectly true — they could 
 not be true, because those from whom the accounts come 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 229 
 
 have no perfect knowledge of the antecedents of the crime. 
 But presently the case comes before the criminal court, with 
 lawyers on both sides, to prosecute and to defend. Each 
 does his duty the very best he can, one trying to convict, 
 one trying to secure acquittal. But do these know the 
 real story from beginning to end*? Probably not. It is 
 very seldom indeed that a lawyer can learn the inside, the 
 psychological, history of a crime. He learns only the naked 
 facts, and he must theorise largely from these facts. Fi- 
 nally the judge pronounces judgment. Does the judge 
 know all about the matter^ Almost certainly not. His 
 duty is fixed by law in rigid lines, and he cannot depart 
 from those lines; he can sentence only according to the 
 broad conclusions which he draws from the facts. And 
 after the whole thing is over, still the real secrets of the 
 two parties, of the criminal and the victim, remain forever 
 unknown in a majority of cases. Now what does this 
 prove *? It proves that human judgment is necessarily very 
 imperfect, and that nothing is so difficult to learn as the 
 absolute truth of motives and of feelings, even when the 
 truth of the facts is unquestionable. Browning's book tells 
 us more than this; it shows us that in some cases, where 
 power and crime are on one side, and poverty and virtue 
 upon the other, the chances against truth being able to make 
 itself heard are just about a thousand to one. Of course 
 the world is a little better to-day than two hundred years 
 ago; murder is less common, justice is less corrupt. But 
 allowing for these things, the chances of a man persecuted 
 by a rich corporation, without reason, perhaps with mon- 
 strous cruelty, to obtain even a hearing, would be scarcely 
 better than those of Pompilia in the story of "The Ring 
 and the Book." 
 
 So much for the teaching. There is more than teaching, 
 however; there are studies of character truly Shakespearian. 
 Pompilia is quite as sweet a woman as Shakespeare's Cor- 
 delia. Her sweetness is altogether shown by a multitude of 
 
230 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 details, little words and thoughts and feelings, that we find 
 scattered through her account of her terrible sufferings. 
 The author never interrupts his speakers; he makes them 
 describe themselves. In the case of the Pope, we are 
 brought into the presence of a very superior intellect — one- 
 sided, perhaps, but immensely strong in the direction of 
 moral judgment; the mind of an old man whose entire life 
 has been spent in the finest study of human nature from 
 an ethical point of view, of human nature in its manifesta- 
 tions of good and evil. Nothing but this long experience 
 helps him to see exactly how matters stand. The evidence 
 brought before him is hopelessly confused, and where not 
 confused, the facts are against Pompilia and strongly in 
 favour of the murderer. Moreover, the murderer is power- 
 ful in the Church, with all the influence of clergy and no- 
 bility upon his side. But the old man can see through the 
 entire plot; he cuts it open, gets to the heart of it, perceives 
 everything that was hidden. What is the lesson of his 
 character'? I think it is this, that a pure nature obtains, 
 simply by reason of its unselfishness and purity, certain 
 classes of perceptions that very cunning minds never can 
 obtain. Very cunning people are peculiarly apt to make 
 false judgments, because they are particularly in the habit 
 of looking for selfish motives. They judge other hearts by 
 their own. A pure nature does not do this; it considers 
 the motive in the last rather than the first place, preferring 
 to judge kindly so long as the evidence allows it. Intel- 
 lectual training cannot always compensate for purity of 
 character. 
 
 The studies of Guido himself, which are very horrible, 
 are especially studies of the man of the Renaissance. We 
 have had other studies of this kind in other poems of Brown- 
 ing, some of which I have already quoted to you. But 
 there is a special moral in this study of Guido, the moral 
 that a really wicked man must hate a really good woman, 
 simply for the reason that she is good. Then we have in 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 231 
 
 the two lawyers, two pictures of conflicting selfish interests, 
 of selfishness and falsehood combined to defeat the truth, 
 not because truth is necessarily unpleasant to the lawyer, 
 but because he wants to make no enemies by exposing it. 
 This is the way of the world to-day, and although these 
 men speak the language of the sixteenth or seventeenth cen- 
 tury, their feelings are those of the shrewd and selfish mod- 
 ern man of society, the man who has no courage in the face 
 of wrong, if his pocket happens to be in danger. We like 
 only three characters in the whole drama — Pompilia, the 
 Pope, and Caponsacchi. Yet there is nothing very re- 
 markable about Caponsacchi, except in the way of con- 
 trast. He is the one character who, although his life and 
 interests and reputation are at stake, boldly risks every- 
 thing simply for a generous impulse. Happily he is not 
 extraordinary; if he were, one would lose faith in so terrible 
 a world. Happily we know that wherever and whenever 
 a great wrong is done, there will always be a Caponsacchi 
 to speak out and to do all that is possible against it. But 
 Caponsacchi is crushed; and even the Pope is obliged to 
 punish him for doing what is noble. This is one of the 
 moral problems of the composition. The man who wants 
 to do right, and cannot do right except by disobedience to 
 law, may be loved for doing right, but he must be punished 
 nevertheless for breaking the law. Does this mean that 
 he is punished for doing right? I think we should not 
 look at it in that way. The truth is that the observance of 
 discipline must be insisted upon even in exceptional cases, 
 because it regards the happiness of millions. We cannot 
 allow men to decide for themselves when discipline should 
 be broken. Caponsacchi is thus a martyr in the cause of 
 individual justice. He has to pay, justly, the penalty of 
 setting a dangerous example to thousands of others. But 
 he is not on that account less estimable and lovable, and 
 even the Pope, in punishing him, gives him words of warm 
 praise. 
 
232 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 The consideration of this huge poem ought also to tempt 
 some of you at a later day to try some application of its 
 method to some incident of real life. I do not now mean 
 in poetry, but in prose. If you know enough about human 
 nature to make the attempt, there is no better way of telling 
 a story. It was a pure invention on the part of Brown- 
 ing, and we may call it a new method. But of course one 
 must have a very great power of reading character to be 
 able to do anything of the same kind. 
 
 This is the most colossal attempt in psychology made 
 by Browning, but a large number of his longer poems are 
 worked out in precisely the same manner as single mono- 
 logues. "The Bishop Orders his Tomb," another Italian 
 study, gives us all the ugly side of the Renaissance char- 
 acter — its selfishness, lust, hypocrisy, and ambition, together 
 with that extraordinary sense of art which gave a certain 
 greatness even to very bad men. "Bishop Blougram's Apol- 
 ogy" (which is said to be a satire upon a famous English 
 Cardinal) is quite modern, but it is almost equally ugly. 
 It shows us a very powerful mind arguing, with irre- 
 sistible logic and merciless cleverness, in an absolutely un- 
 worthy cause. The bishop has heard a young free thinker 
 observe that the bishop could not believe the doctrines of 
 the church, he was too clever a bishop for that. So he 
 calls the young man to him, and utterly crushes him by a 
 very clever lecture, in which he proves that belief or un- 
 belief are equally foolish, that right and wrong are inter- 
 changeable, that black may be white or white black, that 
 common sense and a knowledge of the world represent the 
 highest wisdom, and that the free thinker is an absolute 
 fool because he tells the world that he is a free thinker. We 
 know that the bishop is morally wrong the whole way 
 through, that every statement which he makes is wrong; 
 yet it would take a clever man to prove him wrong. The 
 logic is too well managed. Few psychological studies are 
 comparable to this. "Mr. Sludge, 'the Medium,' " said 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 233 
 
 to be a satire upon the great Scottish spiritualist and hum- 
 bug, Home, shows us another kind of quackery ; a man who 
 lives by imposture explains to us how he can practise im- 
 posture witti a good moral conscience, and under the belief 
 that imposture is a benefit to mankind. He talks so well 
 that he obliges even the person who has detected his im- 
 posture to lend him or give him a considerable sum of 
 money — in short, he can trick even those who know his 
 trickery. But see how different these beings are from each 
 other, and how different the studies of their character must 
 necessarily prove. Yet Browning seems never to find any 
 difficulty in painting the mind of a man, whether good or 
 bad, whether of to-day or of the Middle Ages. "Par- 
 acelsus," for example, is a mediaeval character; Browning 
 makes him tell us the story of his researches into alchemy 
 and magic, makes him impart to us the secret ambition that 
 once filled him, and the consequences of disappointment and 
 of failure. "Sordello," again, is of the thirteenth century; 
 you will find his name in the great poem of Dante. Sor- 
 dello was a poet and troubadour, who tried to succeed 
 socially and politically by the exercise of a brilliant talent, 
 and almost did succeed. Browning's poem on him is the 
 whole story of a human soul ; only, it is the man him- 
 self who tells it. And the moral is that suffering and sor- 
 row bring wisdom. How various and how wonderful is 
 this range of character-study I Yet I have mentioned only 
 a few out of scores and scores of compositions. I cannot 
 insist too much upon this quality of versatility in Brown- 
 ing, this display of Shakespearian power. In all Tenny- 
 son you will find scarcely more than twenty really dis- 
 tinct characters; and some of these are but half drawn. 
 In Rossetti you will find scarcely more than half a dozen, 
 mostly women. In Swinburne there is no character what- 
 ever, except the poet's own, outside of that grand singer's 
 dramatic work. But in Browning there are hundreds of 
 distinct characters, and there is nothing at all vague about 
 
234 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 them; they speak, they move, they act with real and not 
 with artificial life. Sometimes a character may occupy a 
 hundred pages, sometimes it may be drawn in half a dozen 
 lines, but the drawing is equally distinct and equally true. 
 And there is scarcely any kind of human nature of which 
 we have no picture. Even the lowest type of savage is 
 drawn, the primitive savage, for "Caliban upon Setebos" 
 gives us the thoughts and feelings of such a savage about 
 God — God being figured in the savage mind, of course, as 
 only a much stronger and larger kind of savage, possessing 
 magical power. 
 
 In all his poems, as I said. Browning is essentially dra- 
 matic. Quite rightly has he grouped several collections 
 of short poems under titles which suggest this fact, such 
 as "Dramatic Idyls," "Dramatis Personse," "Men and 
 Women." Sometimes the poet himself is the only speaker 
 and actor, giving us his own particular feelings of the mo- 
 ment; but in the most noteworthy cases of this kind he is 
 talking, not to the reader, but to ghosts. For instance, 
 "Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their 
 Day," are imaginary conversations which Browning holds 
 with the ghosts of men long dead — writers, philosophers, 
 statesmen, priests. It is in this collection that you will find 
 the remarkable verses on the great poem of Smart, which 
 revived Smart's work for modern readers after a hundred 
 years of oblivion. I cannot find time to tell you about the 
 other personages of these imaginary conversations; but I 
 may mention that Mandeville is the subject of a special 
 conversation, and that you will find the whole germ of 
 Mandeville's philosophy in this composition. But let us 
 turn to some consideration of Browning's work in the true 
 dramatic form — in plays, tragedies or comedies, and in trans- 
 lations of plays from the Greek. 
 
 It would require several lectures to give a summary of 
 Browning's plays; and they do not always represent his 
 best genius. For it is a curious fact that this man who, as 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 235 
 
 a simple poet, was the greatest of English dramatists after 
 Shakespeare, was rarely quite successful when he attempted 
 the true dramatic form. He was great in the monologue; 
 he was not great upon the stage. Some of his plays were 
 acted, such as "Strafford" and "The Blot on the 'Scutch- 
 eon"; but they did not prove to be worthy of great suc- 
 cess. "In a Balcony," which could not be put upon the 
 stage at all, is much better; and perhaps it is better be- 
 cause it consists only of two monologues, or rather of a 
 conversation between two persons; for the part taken by 
 the other actors is altogether insignificant. "The Return 
 of the Druses" and "Luria," like Tennyson's dramas, are 
 excellent poetry, but they are not suited for the stage. The 
 best of all Browning's dramas, the only one that I really 
 want you to read, is "A Soul's Tragedy." I may say a 
 word about the plot of this. It is a stor}' of friendship be- 
 tween two young men, patriots and statesmen. In a politi- 
 cal crisis one of the young men stabs a political enemy, and 
 has fled from the country. But before fleeing, he trusts all 
 his interests and his property to his friend, and asks the 
 friend also to take care of his betrothed. What does the 
 friend do'? Exposed to great temptation, he betrays his 
 trust. He sees a chance to obtain political power by pre- 
 tending to be the man who really stabbed the politician on 
 the other side — the tyrant of an hour. The people acclaim 
 him as their saviour, make him dictator. Then he goes 
 further in his treachery, by making love to his friend's 
 sweetheart. At last a Roman statesman, Ogniben, appears 
 upon the scene, with power to crush the revolution, or to 
 do anything that he pleases. But Ogniben is a terribly 
 clever man, and he does not want blood-shed; he knows the 
 character of the new dictator, and determines to play with 
 him, as a cat with a mouse. First he flatters him enough 
 to make him betray all his weaknesses, his vanities, his fears. 
 Then, at quite the unexpected moment, he summons the 
 young man who had run away, I mean the friend betrayed, 
 
236 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 and brings him face to face with the treacherous dictator. 
 The result is of course a moral collapse; that is the real 
 Soul's Tragedy. I am giving only a thin skeleton of the 
 plot. But you ought to read this play, if only for the 
 wonderful studies of character in it, not the least remark- 
 able of which is the awful Ogniben, far-seeing, cunning 
 beyond cunning, strong beyond force, who can unravel plots 
 with a single word and pierce all masks of hypocrisy with 
 a single glance; but whom you feel to be, in a large way, 
 generous and kindly, and so far as possible, just. I think 
 not only that this is Browning's greatest play, but that as a 
 play it is psychologically superior to anything else which 
 has been done in Victorian drama. It is not fit for the 
 stage, and it is not even very great as poetry — indeed half 
 of it or more is prose, and rather eccentric prose; but it offers 
 wonderful examples of analytical power not surpassed in 
 any other contemporary poet or dramatist. 
 
 About Browning's translations from the Greek poets, I 
 scarcely know what to say. Most critics of authority ac- 
 knowledge that Browning has made the most faithful metri- 
 cal translation of the "Agamemnon" of iEschylus. But 
 they also declare that in spite of its exactness, the Greek 
 spirit and feeling have entirely vanished under Browning's 
 treatment. My own feeling about the matter is that you 
 would do much better to read the prose translation of 
 iEschylus. Yet I could not say this in regard to Brown- 
 ing's translation of the "Alkestis" of Euripides, which you 
 will find embodied in the text of "Balaustian's Adventure." 
 Balaustian is a Greek dancing girl. She is taken pris- 
 oner with many Athenian people at the time of the disas- 
 trous Greek expedition to Syracuse, which you must have 
 read about in history. To please her captors, she repeats 
 for them the wonderful verses of Euripides, by which they 
 are so much affected that they pardon both her and her 
 companions. This incident is founded upon fact, and 
 Browning uses it very well to introduce his translation. 
 
STUDIES IN BROWNING 237 
 
 Perhaps the genius of Euripides was closer to the genius 
 of Browning than that of ^schylus; for this translation is 
 incomparably better from an emotional point of view than 
 the other. It is very beautiful indeed; and even after hav- 
 ing read the Greek play in a good prose translation, I think 
 that you would find both pleasure and profit in reading 
 Browning's verses. 
 
 The important thing now for you to get clearly into your 
 minds is one general fact about this enormously various 
 work of Browning. Suppose somebody should ask you 
 what is different in the work of Browning from that of all 
 other modern poets, what would you be able to answer? 
 But unless you can answer, the whole value of this lecture 
 would be lost upon you. Browning himself has excellently 
 answered, in a little verse which forms the prologue to the 
 second series of the Dramatic Idyls. 
 
 "You are sick, that's sure," — they say : 
 "Sick of what?" — they disagree. 
 " 'Tis the brain," — thinks Doctor A ; 
 " 'Tis the heart," — holds Doctor B. 
 "The fiver — my fife I'd lay!" 
 "The lungs!" "The lights!" Ah me! 
 So ignorant of man's whole 
 Of bodily organs plain to see — 
 So sage and certain, frank and free, 
 About what's under lock and key — 
 Man's soul ! 
 
 That is to say, even the wisest doctors cannot agree about 
 the simple fact of a man's sickness, notwithstanding the fact 
 that they have studied anatomy and physiology and oste- 
 ology, and have examined every part of the body. Yet, 
 although the wisest men of science are obliged to confess 
 that they cannot tell you everything about the body, which 
 can be seen, even ignorant persons think that they know 
 everything about the soul of a man, which cannot be seen 
 at all, and about the mind of a man, to which only God 
 
238 STUDIES IN BROWNING 
 
 himself has the key. Now all the purpose of Browning's 
 work and life has been to show people what a very wonder- 
 ful and complex and incomprehensible thing human charac- 
 ter is — therefore to show that the most needful of all study 
 is the study of human nature. He is especially the poet of 
 character, the only one who has taught us, since Shake- 
 speare's time, what real men and women are, how differ- 
 ent each from every other, how unclassifiable according to 
 any general rule, how differently noble at their best, how 
 differently wicked at their worst, how altogether marvellous 
 and infinitely interesting. His mission has been the mis- 
 sion of a great dramatic psychologist. And if anybody ever 
 asks you what was Robert Browning, you can answer that 
 he was the great Poet of Human Character — not of char- 
 acter of any one time or place or nation, but of all times and 
 places and peoples of which it was possible for him to learn 
 anything. 
 
 Here we must close our little studies of Victorian poets 
 — that is to say, of the four great ones. I hope that you 
 will be able to summarise in your own mind the main char- 
 acteristic of each, as I have tried to indicate in the case of 
 Browning. Remember Tennyson as the greatest influence 
 upon the language of his mother country, because of his ex- 
 quisiteness of workmanship and his choice of English sub- 
 jects in preference to all others. He is the most English 
 of all the four. Remember Rossetti as being altogether 
 different in his personality and feeling — a man of the Mid- 
 dle Ages born into the nineteenth century, and in the nine- 
 teenth century still the poet of mediaeval feeling. And 
 think of Swinburne — the greatest musician of all, the most 
 perfect master of form and sound in modern poetry — as an 
 expounder of Neo-Paganism, of another Renaissance in the 
 world of literature. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 William Morris suffers by comparison with the more ex- 
 quisite poets of his own time and circle. Nevertheless he 
 is quite great enough to call for a special lecture. I am not 
 sure whether I shall be able to make you much interested 
 in him; but I shall certainly try to give you a clear idea of 
 his position in English poetry as something entirely distinct, 
 and very curious. 
 
 A few words first about the man himself — in more ways 
 than one the largest figure among the Romantics. He was 
 the great spirit of the Pre-Raphaelite coterie; he was the 
 most prolific poet of the century; and he was in all respects 
 the nearest in his talent and sentiment to Sir Walter Scott. 
 All these reasons make it necessary to speak of him at con- 
 siderable length. 
 
 He was born in 1834 and died in 1896, so that he is very 
 recent in his relation to English poetry. There was noth- 
 ing extraordinary in the incidents of his life at school or in 
 his university career. In this man the extraordinary gift 
 was altogether of the mind. Without the eccentricity of 
 genius, he was also without the highest capacity of genius; 
 but in his life as well as in his poetry he was always correct 
 and always charming in a certain gentle and dreamy way. 
 He had the stature and strength of a giant, perfect health, 
 and immense working capacity, and did very well whatever 
 he tried to do. Fortunately for his inclinations, he was the 
 son of a rich man and never knew want; so that when he 
 took to literature as a profession, he never had to think 
 about pleasing the public, nor to care how much money his 
 books might bring. After leaving Oxford University he 
 
 239 
 
240 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 devoted his life to art and literature, becoming equally well 
 known as a painter and a poet. At a later day he estab- 
 lished various businesses for an esthetic purpose. For ex- 
 ample, he thought that the early Italian printers and Vene- 
 tian printers had done much better work and produced much 
 more wonderful books than any modern printer; and he 
 founded a press for the purpose of producing modern books 
 in the same beautiful way. Then he thought that a reform 
 in the matter of house furniture was possible. The furni- 
 ture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been 
 good, solid, costly, and beautiful; but the later furniture 
 had become both cheap and ugly. Morris's artistic inter- 
 ests had led him to study furniture a great deal ; he became 
 familiar with the furniture of the Middle Ages, of the 
 Elizabethan Age, and of later times, as scarcely any man 
 of the day had become. It occurred to him that the best 
 and most beautiful forms of mediseval and later furniture 
 might be reintroduced, if anybody would only take pains 
 to manufacture them. The ordinary manufacturers of fur- 
 niture would not do this. Morris and a few friends estab- 
 lished a factory, and there designed and made furniture 
 equal to anything in the past. This undertaking was suc- 
 cessful, and it changed the whole fashion of English house 
 furnishing. Only a decorative artist like Morris would 
 have been capable of imagining and carrying out such a 
 plan; and it was carried out so well that almost every rich 
 house in England now possesses some furniture designed 
 by him. 
 
 Thus you will see that he must have been a very busy 
 man, occupied at once with poetry, with romance (for he 
 wrote a great many prose romances), with artistic printing, 
 with house furniture, with designs for windows of stained 
 glass, and with designs for beautiful tiling — also with a 
 very considerable amount of work as a decorative artist. 
 All this would appear almost too much for any one person to 
 attempt. But it was rendered easy to Morris by the simple 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 241 
 
 fact that the whole of his various undertakings happened 
 to be influenced by exactly the same spirit and motive, the 
 artistic feeling of the Middle Ages, and of the period ending 
 with the eighteenth century. Whether Morris was making 
 books of poetry or books of prose, whether he was translat- 
 ing sagas from the Norse or writing stories in imitation of 
 the early French romances, whether he was casting Italian 
 forms of type for the making of beautiful books or design- 
 ing furniture for some English palace, whatever he was 
 doing, he had but one thought, one will — to reproduce the 
 strange beauty of the Middle Ages. There was almost 
 nothing modern about the man. The whole of his writings, 
 comprising a great many volumes, contained scarcely ten 
 pages having any reference to modern things. Even the 
 language that he used has been correctly described by a 
 great critic as eighteenth century English, mixed with Scan- 
 dinavian idioms and forms. Thus there were two men 
 among the Pre-Raphaelites who actually did not belong to 
 their own century — Rossetti and Morris. Both were paint- 
 ers as well as poets, and though the former was the greater 
 in both arts, the practical influence of Morris counted for 
 much more in changing English taste both in literature and 
 in sesthetics. 
 
 We have chiefly to consider his writing, and, of that writ- 
 ing, especially the poetry. As a poet I have already men- 
 tioned him as having points of resemblance with Sir Walter 
 Scott. But he also had even more points of resemblance 
 with Chaucer. He was like Scott in the singular ease and 
 joyous force of his creative talent. Scott could sit down 
 and write a romance in verse beautifull)', correctly, with- 
 out any more difficulty than other men write prose. Byron, 
 3'ou know, used to write his poetry straight off, without even 
 taking the trouble to correct it; as a consequence it is now 
 becoming forgotten. But Scott took very great trouble to 
 make his verse quite correct, without trying to be exquisite, 
 and his verse will always count as good, stirring English 
 
242 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 poetry. Morris had almost exactly the same talent, the 
 talent that can give you a three-volume story either in verse 
 or prose, just as you may prefer. And he wrote in verse 
 on a scale that astonishes, a scale exceeding that of any 
 modern poet. To find his equal in production we must go 
 back to the poets of those romantic Middle Ages which he 
 so much loved, the poets who wrote vast epics or romances 
 in thirty or forty thousand lines. Eleven volumes of verse 
 and fifteen volumes of prose represent Morris's production; 
 and the extraordinary thing is that all his production is 
 good. It does not reach the very highest place in litera- 
 ture ; no man could write so much and make his work of the 
 very highest class. But it is good as to form, good as to 
 feeling, much beyond mediocrity at all times; and some- 
 times it rises to a level that is only a little below the first 
 class. 
 
 I am not going to give selections from his larger works, 
 so I can only mention here what the large works signify and 
 how he is related to Chaucer through one of them. The 
 most successful, in a popular sense, of all his poems is the 
 "Earthly Paradise," originally published in five volumes, 
 now published in four — and the volumes are very thick. 
 This vast composition is much on the plan of the "Canter- 
 bury Tales"; and Morris and Chaucer both followed the 
 same method, and were filled with the same sense of beauty. 
 Both found in the legends of the Middle Ages and in the 
 myths of antiquity, material for their art in the shape of 
 stories; and as these stories had no inter-relation, belonging 
 even to widely different epochs of human civilisation, it was 
 necessary to imagine some general plan according to which 
 all could be brought harmoniously together, like jewels, 
 upon a single tray. This plan of uniting heterogeneous 
 masses of fiction or legends into one artistic circle was known 
 to the East long before it was known in Europe; the great 
 Indian collections of stories, such as the Panchatantra and 
 the Katha-sarit-sagara, are perhaps the oldest examples ; and 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 243 
 
 the huge Sanskrit epics show something of the same design, 
 afterwards adopted by Arabian and Persian story-tellers. 
 But Chaucer was the first to make the attempt with any 
 success in English literature. His plan was to have the 
 stories told by pilgrims travelling on their way to Canter- 
 bury, every man or woman of the company being obliged 
 to tell one or two stories. The plan was so good that it 
 has been followed in our own day; Longfellow's "Tales of 
 a Wayside Inn" are constructed upon precisely the same 
 principle. But Chaucer made a plan so large that he had 
 not the strength nor the time to carry it to completion; 
 Morris, upon a scale nearly as large, brought his work to a 
 happy conclusion with the greatest ease. He makes a com- 
 pany of exiled warriors tell the stories of a foreign court, as 
 results of their experience or knowledge obtained in many 
 different countries. There are twenty-four stories, twelve 
 mediseval or romantic and twelve classical; and each pair 
 of these corresponds with one of the twelve months, the first 
 two stories being told in January, the second two in Feb- 
 ruary, and so forth. The division neatly partitions the great 
 composition into twelve books, with the regular prologues 
 and epilogues added. The English are not apt to trouble 
 themselves to read very long poems these days; but Morris 
 was able actually to revive the mediseval taste for long 
 romances. Tens of thousands of his books were sold, not- 
 withstanding their costliness, and the result was altogether 
 favourable for the new development of romantic feeling, not 
 only in literature, but in art and decoration. One might 
 suppose that such composition was enough to occupy a life- 
 time, but Morris threw it off quite lightly and set to work 
 upon a variety of poetical undertakings nearly as large. 
 He translated Homer and Virgil into the same kind of 
 flowery verse; and he put the grand Scandinavian epic of 
 Sigurd the Volsung into some of the finest long-lined poetry 
 produced in modern times. This epic seems to me the bet- 
 ter work of the two long productions by which Morris is 
 
244 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 best known; later on some lines from it may be quoted. 
 But Morris was scarcely less attracted by Greek myths than 
 by the old literature of Scandinavia; and he also produced 
 a long epic poem upon the story of Jason and Medea, the 
 story of the Golden Fleece. Nevertheless, I can much 
 better illustrate to you what Morris is in literature and what 
 his influence and his objects were, by means of his still 
 earlier and shorter poems. There are several volumes of 
 these, now published in more compact form under the titles 
 of "Poems by the Way" and "Love is Enough" and "The 
 Defense of Guinevere." From the last, originally dedi- 
 cated to Rossetti, I will make some quotations that will 
 show you how Morris tried to revive the Middle Ages. 
 
 One of the most remarkable things in the late Mr. 
 Froude's charming account of a voyage which he made to 
 Norway, is his statement of a sudden conviction that there 
 came to him about the character of the ancient Vikings. 
 He felt assured, he said, that the modern Norwegian and 
 the ancient Norwegian were very much the same ; that mod- 
 ern customs, religion, and education had produced only dif- 
 ferences of surface; and that if we could go back against 
 the stream of time to the age of the sea kings, we should 
 find that the}^ were exactly like the men of to-day in all 
 that essentially belongs to race character. Now Morris, 
 while studying mediaeval romances and loving them for their 
 intrinsic curious beauty, came to a very similar conclusion. 
 It is true, he thought, that the Middle Ages were much more 
 cruel, more ignorant, more savage than the ages before them 
 or after them; but after all, the men and women of those 
 times must have felt about many things just like modern 
 men and women. Why should we not feel enough of this 
 to study their fashions, joys, and feelings under the peculiar 
 conditions of their terrible society? And this is what he 
 did. You may say that, except for some difference in the 
 home speech, the talk of these people in the poems of Morris 
 is the talk of modern men and women. There is some dif- 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 245 
 
 ference as to sentiment. But you cannot say that it is not 
 natural, not likely; in fact, the seeming pictures often have 
 such force that you cannot forget them. That is a test of 
 truth. 
 
 They are very brief pictures, like sudden glimpses caught 
 during a flash of lightning: a glimpse into an arena where 
 two men are about to fight to the death in presence of their 
 king, according to the code of the day; a knight riding 
 through a flooded country in order to take a castle by sur- 
 prise; a woman driven to madness by the murder of her 
 lover; a woman at the stake about to be burned alive, when 
 the sound of the hoofs of the lover's horse is heard, as he 
 gallops to her rescue; ladies in the upper chamber of a cas- 
 tle, weaving and singing; the capture of a robber and his 
 vain pleading for life; also some fairy tales of weird and 
 sensuous beauty, told as people of the Middle Ages must 
 have felt them. To me one of the most powerful pictures 
 is the story of "The Haystack in the Floods." We are not 
 told how the tragedy began, nor how it ended; and this is 
 great art to tell something without beginning and without 
 end, so well that the reader is always thereafter wondering 
 what the beginning was and what the end might have been. 
 The poem begins with the words: 
 
 Had she come all the way for this 
 To part at last without a kiss? 
 Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain 
 That her own eyes might see him slain 
 Beside the haystack in the floods ? 
 
 We know from this only that the woman referred to is 
 a woman ot gentle birth, accustomed to luxurious things, so 
 that it was very difficult for her to travel in rainy weather 
 and cold, and that she thought it was a great sacrifice on 
 her part to do so even for a lover. If she thought this, we 
 have a right to suspect that she is a wanton — though we are 
 not quite sure about it. The description of her does not 
 
246 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 explain anything further than the misery of the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 Along the dripping leafless woods, 
 The stirrup touching either shoe. 
 She rode astride as troopers do; 
 With kirtle kilted to her knee, 
 To which the mud splashed wretchedly; 
 And the wet dripp'd from every tree 
 Upon her head and heavy hair, 
 And on her eyelids broad and fair ; 
 The tears and rain ran down her face. 
 
 The delicate woman has also the pain of being lonesome 
 on her ride ; for the lover, the knight, cannot ride beside her, 
 cannot comfort her; he has to ride far ahead in order to see 
 what danger may be in the road. He is running away with 
 her; perhaps he is a stranger in that country; we shall pres- 
 ently see. 
 
 Suddenly, nearby in the middle of a flooded place the 
 enemy appears, a treacherous knight who is the avowed 
 lover of the woman and the enemy of the man. She counts 
 the number of spears with him — thirty spears, and they 
 have but ten. Fighting is of no use, the woman says, but 
 Robert (now we know for the first time the name of her 
 companion) is not afraid — believes that by courage and 
 skill alone he can scatter the hostile force, and bring his 
 sweetheart over the river. She begs him not to fight; her 
 selfishness shows her character — it is not for him she is 
 afraid, but for herself. 
 
 But, "O," she said, 
 
 "My God ! My God ! I have to tread 
 The long way back without you; then 
 The court at Paris ; those six men, 
 The gratings of the Chatelet ; . . ." 
 
 And worse than the gratings of the Chatelet is the stake, 
 at which she may be burned, or the river into which she may 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 24j7 
 
 be thrown, if her lover is killed; there is only one way to 
 secure her own safety — that is to accept the love of another 
 man whom she hates, the wicked knight Godmar, who is 
 now in front of them with thirty spearsmen. Evidently 
 this is no warrior woman, no daughter of soldiers; she may 
 love, but like Cleopatra she is afraid of battle. Her lover 
 Robert, like a man, does not answer her tearful prayers, but 
 gives the command to his men to shout his war-cry, and 
 boldly charges forward. Then, triple sorrow I his men 
 stand still; they refuse to fight against three times their 
 number, and in another moment Robert is in the power of 
 his enemy, disarmed and bound. Thereupon Godmar with 
 a wicked smile observes to the woman: 
 
 "Now, Jehane, 
 Your lover's life is on the wane 
 So fast, that, if this very hour 
 You yield not as my paramour, 
 He will not see the rain leave off." 
 
 He does more than threaten to kill her lover; he reminds 
 her of what he can further do to her. She has said that if 
 he takes her into his castle by force, she will kill either 
 herself or him (we may doubt whether she would really do 
 either) ; and he wants a voluntary submission. He talks to 
 her about burning her alive; how would she like that*? 
 And the ironical caressing tone of his language only makes 
 it more implacable. 
 
 "Nay, if you do not my behest; 
 O Jehane ! though I love you well," 
 Said Godmar, "would I fail to tell 
 All that I know." "Foul lies," she said. 
 "Eh ! lies, my Jehane ? by God's head 
 At Paris folks would deem them true ! 
 Do you know, Jehane, they cry for you, 
 Jehane the brown ! Jehane the brown ! 
 Give us Jehane to burn or drown ! — 
 Eh — gag me Robert I — sweet my friend, 
 
248 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 This were indeed a piteous end 
 
 For those long fingers, and long feet, 
 
 And long neck, and smooth shoulders sweet; 
 
 An end that few men would forget, 
 
 That saw it — So, an hour yet; 
 
 Consider, Jehane, which to take 
 
 Of life or death!" 
 
 She considers, or rather tries to consider, for she is almost 
 too weary to speak, and very quickly falls asleep in the rain 
 on the wet hay. An hour passes. When she is awakened, 
 she only sighs like a tired child, and answers, "I will not." 
 Perhaps she could not believe that her enemy and lover 
 would do as he had threatened; and in spite of the risk of 
 further angering him, she approaches the prisoner and tries 
 to kiss him farewell. Immediately, 
 
 With a start 
 Up Godmar rose, thrust them apart; 
 From Robert's throat he loosed the bands 
 Of silk and mail ; with empty hands 
 Held out, she stood and gazed, and saw. 
 The long bright blade without a flaw 
 Glide out from Godmar's sheath, his hand 
 In Robert's hair ; she saw him bend 
 Back Robert's head ; she saw him send 
 The thin steel down ; the blow told well, 
 Right backward the knight Robert fell. 
 And moaned as dogs do, being half dead, 
 Unwittingly, as I deem : so then 
 Godmar turn'd grinning to his men. 
 Who ran, some five or six, and beat 
 His head to pieces at her feet. 
 
 The knight groans involuntarily, in the death struggle 
 only, and probably the sound of his pain pleases Godmar, 
 but in order to make sure that he cannot recover again, he 
 makes a sign to his followers to finish the work of murder; 
 so they beat in his skull — an ugly thing for a woman to see 
 done. There were rough-hearted men in those days who 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 249 
 
 could see a woman burned alive and laugh at her suffering. 
 You have read, I think, the terrible story about Black Fulk, 
 who made a great holiday on the occasion of burning his 
 young wife alive, and took his friends to see the show, him- 
 self putting on his best holiday attire. This Godmar seems 
 to be nearly as harsh a brute, judging from what he next 
 has to say. 
 
 Then Godmar turn'd again and said: 
 "So, Jehane, the first fitte is read ! 
 Take note, my lady, that your way 
 Lies backward to the Chatelet !" 
 She shook her head and gazed awhile 
 At her cold hands with rueful smile. 
 As though this thing had made her mad. 
 
 This was the parting that they had 
 Beside the haystack in the floods. 
 
 Notice the brutal use of the word "iitte" (often spelled 
 fytte). This was an old name for the divisions of a long 
 poem, romance, or epic. Later the Italian term "canto" 
 was substituted for it. Godmar refers to the woman's love 
 as her romance, her poem : "Now the first canto of our love- 
 romance has been read — only the first, remember I" The 
 second fitte will be perhaps the burning of the woman when 
 she is brought back to the castle prison from which she fled. 
 It all depends upon circumstances. If she has really be- 
 come mad, she may escape. The poem ends here, leaving 
 us in doubt about the rest. We can only imagine the termi- 
 nation. I think that she has not really become mad, that 
 she is too selfish and weak to bear or even to feel the real 
 emotional shock of the thing; and that when they are half 
 way to the prison she is likely to yield to Godmar's will. 
 If she does so, he will probably keep her in his castle until 
 he tires of her, and finds it expedient to end her existence 
 with as little scruple as he showed in killing Robert. But, 
 as an actual fact, it is difficult to be sure of anything, be- 
 
250 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 cause we know neither the beginning nor the end of the 
 affair. We have only a glimpse of the passion, suffering, 
 selfishness, cruelty — then utter darkness. And this method 
 of merely glimpsing the story causes it to leave a profound 
 impression upon the imagination. Please do not forget 
 this, because it is the most important art in any kind of 
 narrative literature, whether of poetry or of prose. 
 
 A second example of the same device is furnished by 
 another terrible poem called "The Judgment of God." 
 The Judgment of God is an old name for trial by single 
 combat. It was a superstitious law, a foolish and wicked 
 law, but it served a purpose in the Middle Ages, and it af- 
 forded an opportunity for many noble and courageous 
 deeds. Browning took up this subject in his stirring poem 
 of "Count Gismond." The law was this: when one knight 
 was accused by another of some evil, cruel, or treacherous 
 act, he was allowed to challenge the man who brought the 
 charge against him to fight to the death — a Voutrance^ as 
 the old term expressed it. The combat took place in the 
 presence of the lord or king and before a great assembly, 
 according to fixed rules. If the man who brought the 
 charge lost the fight, then it was thought that he had proved 
 himself a liar. If the person accused won the battle, then 
 he was declared to be innocent. For it was thought that 
 God would protect the truth in such cases; and therefore 
 these combats were called the "judgment of God." Never- 
 theless you will perceive that a very skilful knight might 
 be able to kill a great number of accusers, and lawfully 
 "prove" himself innocent of a hundred crimes. That was 
 a great defect of the system. 
 
 The "Judgment of God" is a monologue, quite as good 
 in its way as many of the short monologues of Browning. 
 It is the knight against whom accusation has been brought 
 that tells us the feelings and impressions of the moment 
 that he enters the lists to fight. In this case we are more 
 moved to sympathy than in the former stories, because we 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 251 
 
 know thrt the man, whether otherwise bad or good, has 
 saved a woman from the stake, and killed the lords who 
 were about to burn her. So we are inclined to think of him 
 as a hero. We have just one sudden vision of a man's 
 mind, as he stands in the face of death, with no sympathy 
 about him except that of his old father, who comes to give 
 him advice about fighting, because he is to be matched 
 against a very skilful knight. 
 
 "Swerve to the left, son Roger," he said, 
 
 "When you catch his eyes through the helmet-slit, 
 
 Swerve to the left, then out at his head, 
 And the Lord God give you joy of it !" 
 
 The old man knows how to fight, has probably won many 
 a battle, and he has observed the way that the light is fall- 
 ing. So he tells his son, "When you begin to fight, don't 
 turn to the right — turn to the left; then you will be able to 
 see his eyes through the helmet, and immediately that you 
 see them, strike straight for his head, and may God help 
 you to kill him." He has just heard these words from his 
 father when the prologue begins. 
 
 The blue owls on my father's hood 
 
 Were a little dimm'd, as I turned away; 
 
 This giving up of blood for blood 
 Will finish here somehow to-day. 
 
 So when I walked from out the tent, 
 
 Their howling almost blinded me ; 
 Yet for all that I was not bent 
 
 By any shame. Hard by, the sea 
 
 Made a noise like the aspens where 
 We did that wrong, but now the place 
 
 Is very pleasant, and the air 
 Blows cool on any passer's face. 
 
 And all the throng is gather'd now 
 Into the circle of these lists — 
 
252 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Yea, howl out, butchers ! tell me how 
 His hands were cut off at the wrists ; 
 
 And how Lord Roger bore his face 
 A league above his spear point, high 
 
 Above the owls, to that strong place 
 Among the waters — yea, yea, cry ! 
 
 The owls on the crest are the emblem of the family. 
 The knight has been waiting in his tent according to rulej 
 until the signal is given; and his father and his retainers 
 probably helped to arm him there. He feels no emotion 
 except at the moment of bidding his father good-bye, and 
 then he knows that there are tears in his own eyes, because 
 the owl crest on his father's hood suddenly appears dim. 
 Then, as the signal is given, he walks out of the tent into 
 the lists, only to hear a roar of hatred and abuse go up 
 from all the circles of seats. The friends of the dead are 
 evidently in great force, and he has no friend except his 
 father and his retainers. And they shout at him, his ene- 
 mies, telling him what he has done — how he cut off the 
 hands of the knight and cut off his head and carried it upon 
 the top of a spear for three miles, carried it above his own 
 banner to his own castle. This was indeed considered an 
 unknightly thing in those days, for such was the treat- 
 ment given to common people in war, not to knights or men 
 of rank. 
 
 Then he sees the man with whom he must fight, waiting 
 for him, all in armour, with white linen over his arm, to 
 indicate that he is fighting for the cause of truth. At 
 this Roger can very well laugh; and he remarks that the 
 face of the champion's lady looks even whiter than the 
 linen upon her lord's arm. She has reason, perhaps, to be 
 afraid for him. And though he has not much time for 
 thinking, Roger remembers his own beloved, waiting for 
 him, remembers even how he first met her. Addressing her 
 in thought, he says: 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 253 
 
 And these say : "No more now my knight, 
 
 Or God's knight any longer" — you 
 Being than they so much more white, 
 
 So much more pure and good and true, 
 
 Will cling to me forever — there, 
 
 Is not that wrong turn'd right at last 
 Through all these years, and I wash'd clean? 
 
 Say, yea, EUayne ; the time is past, 
 
 Since on that Christmas-day last year 
 
 Up to your feet the tire crept ; 
 And the smoke through the brown leaves sere 
 
 Blinded your dear eyes that you wept ; 
 
 Was it not I that caught you then 
 
 And kiss'd you on the saddle-bow ? 
 Did not the blue owl mark the men 
 
 Whose spears stood like the corn a-row? 
 
 Evidently she has reason to love him and his house; did 
 he not save her from the fire*? — did he not come with his 
 spearmen and crush her enemies, and take her away upon 
 his horse to safety"? And was not that enough to atone 
 for whatever other wrong he might have done'? But he 
 has only a moment in which to think all this, for the trumpet 
 is about to sound for the fight, and there are other things 
 to think about. One of these is that his antagonist is a 
 very good man, difficult to overcome; the other is that 
 there is danger for him even if he conquers, because there 
 are so many present who hate him. 
 
 This Oliver is a right good knight, 
 
 And needs must beat me, as I fear. 
 Unless I catch him in the fight. 
 
 My father's crafty way — John, here! 
 
 Bring up the men from the south gate, 
 
 To help me if I fall or win, 
 For even if I beat, their hate 
 
 Will grow to more than this mere grin. 
 
254 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 If the reader could imagine the result of the combat, 
 the real effect of the poem in its present form would be 
 lost. No man can imagine it. The challenged knight ac- 
 knowledges his antagonist to be a better man — indeed, he 
 says that he can only hope to conquer him by the cunning 
 trick taught him by his old father. But the really danger- 
 ous man never underrates the capacity of an enemy; and we 
 may suspect that the forces are at least even. So, as I have 
 said, no man can guess the result of the battle, and the 
 reader is forced to keep wondering what happened. He 
 will always wonder, but he will never be able to feel con- 
 vinced. And to leave the mind of the reader thus inter- 
 ested and unsatisfied is a great stroke of literary art. The 
 same book contains a number of mediaeval pieces of the 
 same sort, showing how very unimportant it is whether you 
 begin a story in the middle or whether you leave it without 
 an end. The greatest French story-tellers of modern 
 times have made almost popular the form of art in fic- 
 tion to which I refer. Take, for example, the late Guy de 
 Maupassant, many of whose short stories have, I am told, 
 been translated into Japanese. No one modern prose 
 writer ever succeeded better in telling a story without any 
 beginning or without any end. Positively no beginning 
 and no end is necessary, in many cases; and remember, this 
 method of representing only the middle of things is exactly 
 true to life. We never see or hear of the whole of any 
 incident that happens under our eyes. We see only a fact, 
 without knowing what caused it to come about, and with- 
 out knowing what will be the consequences of it. Out- 
 side of our own homes we do not see much of other people's 
 lives, and never the whole of any one's life. 
 
 Among other pieces in the book I should call your at- 
 tention to "The Little Tower," "Sir Peter Harpdon's End," 
 "The Wind," "The Eve of Crecy," "In Prison," and "The 
 Blue Closet." They are very different in idea, but I think 
 that you will find them all extremely original. "The Little 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 255 
 
 Tower" has no beginning and no end. It only describes 
 faithfully the feelings of a knight riding over an inundated 
 country, swimming his horse along the side of bridges un- 
 der water, and thinking to himself of the joy of capturing 
 an enemy's castle by surprise, killing the lord and burning 
 the lady. It is brutal in a certain way, but supremely 
 natural. The story of "Sir Peter Harpdon's End" is not 
 a monologue; it is a very dramatic narrative in which a 
 number of men of different character play their parts. It 
 has no beginning, but the end is plainly suggested — and 
 this shows the tender side of human nature in the Middle 
 Ages. Sir Peter is brave, kindl}^, and true. Therefore, 
 when he has his enemy at his mercy, instead of killing him, 
 he only cuts off his ears. As a consequence he is after- 
 wards himself destroyed; the obvious moral of the narra- 
 tive is that a merciful heart was a dangerous possession in 
 those times. The good men were easily trapped by play- 
 ing upon their feelings of pity or sympathy. "The 
 Wind" represents the madness of a very old knight, alone 
 in his castle. The sound of the wind makes him think of 
 the voices of the dead whom he knew, and brings him 
 back to the memories of his youth, and of a woman that he 
 loved. And at last the ghosts of forgotten friends enter 
 and glide about him. This has no beginning and no end, 
 and it remains very strongly impressed upon the memory. 
 We should like to know the story of that woman, the story 
 of the madness of the old man, but we shall never know. 
 "The Eve of Crecy" represents the state of mind of a 
 young French knight just before the fatal battle, when 
 the flower of the French chivalry was destroyed by a mere 
 handful of English soldiers driven to bay. You may re- 
 member that before the battle the English prepared them- 
 selves very thoroughly and made fervent prayers to heaven 
 for success. But the French spent the night in carousing 
 and jesting, never dreaming that they could lose the fight. 
 Here Morris shows us one of the young noblemen think- 
 
256 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 ing only about his sweetheart, some girl of noble rank whom 
 he hopes to win. He is going to do great deeds the next 
 day, then the king will smile upon him, and he will not be 
 afraid to ask the father of that girl to permit him to be- 
 come his son-in-law. And so the poem abruptly breaks 
 off. The end here we can guess — a corpse riddled with 
 English arrows, and trampled under the feet of thousands 
 of horses. "In Prison," among the others, represents the 
 emotions of a knight confined in a mediseval dungeon. 
 "The Blue Closet" is a fantasy, a wild mediaeval fairy tale, 
 put into a dramatic form that reminds one singularly of 
 the later work of Maeterlinck. It is, however, a note- 
 worthy composition as poetry, and attained immediate popu- 
 larity among all those who looked for beauties of colour 
 and sound rather than reflections of life. 
 
 Those notes will give you an idea of the variety of the 
 book. And the mediseval pieces are worth thinking about, 
 if any of you should care to attempt authorship in a simi- 
 lar direction, whether in poetry or in prose. There was 
 a period in Japanese feudalism, a period of constant civil 
 wars and baronial quarrels, which would have produced 
 a very similar condition of things to that described in cer- 
 tain of these poems, and I even think that more startling 
 effects could be produced by a judicious handling of Jap- 
 anese themes in the same way, that is, without attempting 
 any beginning or suggesting any end. 
 
 But observe that I am not holding up these poems to you 
 as great masterpieces of verse. I mean only that they sug- 
 gest how great masterpieces might be made. And please 
 to note especially one phase of the art of them, its psycho- 
 logical quality. Morris was not so great a psychologist as 
 Browning, who came nearest to Shakespeare in this respect 
 of all English poets. But Morris has considerable ability 
 in this way, and the most striking effects in his short poems 
 are produced by making us understand the feelings of per- 
 sons in particular moments of pain or terror or heroic ef- 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 257 
 
 fort. For example, how natural and horrible is the solilo- 
 quy of Guinevere in the long poem with which the book 
 opens. You know that Tennyson did not follow the 
 original account of Malory in regard to the more cruel 
 episodes of the old story. He felt repelled by such an inci- 
 dent as the preparations for burning the queen alive. In 
 the real story she is about to be burned when Lancelot 
 comes and saves her, not without killing half the knights 
 present and some of his own relations into the bargain. 
 But Morris saw in this episode an opportunity for psycho- 
 logical work, and took it, just as Browning might have done. 
 He makes the queen express her thought : 
 
 ... "I know 
 I wondered how the fire, while I should stand, 
 And burn, against the heat, would quiver so, 
 Yards above my head." 
 
 This Startles, because it is true. The quotations which 
 I gave you from "The Haystack in the Floods" contain sev- 
 eral passages of an equally impressive sort. We can best 
 revive the past in literature not by trying to describe the 
 details of custom and of costume then prevalent, but by 
 trying to express faithfully the feelings of people who lived 
 long ago. And this can be managed most effectively either 
 by monologue or dialogue. 
 
 The only other collection of short poems written by 
 Morris is now compressed into a companion volume en- 
 titled "Poems by the Way." All of it is later work, but 
 it is not more successful than the youthful productions 
 which we have been considering. Nevertheless it excels in 
 greater variety. You have here dramatic pieces of sev- 
 eral kinds, ballads and translations of ballads, fairy tales 
 and translations of fairy tales, mediaeval and Norse stories, 
 and strangely mixed with these a number of socialist poems 
 — for Morris believed in the theories of socialism, in the 
 possibility of an ideal communism. 
 
258 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 The bulk of the pieces in the volume, however, are 
 Scandinavian, and the general tone of the book is North- 
 ern. Morris was a tremendous worker in the interest of 
 Scandinavian literature. He loved the medievalism of the 
 pagan Norse even more than the corresponding period of 
 the Christian and chivalrous South. He helped the work 
 of those great Oxford professors who brought out the Corpus 
 Poeticum Bo real e, translating in conjunction with one of 
 them several ancient Sagas. And as a poet he did a great 
 deal to quicken English interest in Norse literature, as we 
 shall see later on. In this book we have only short pieces, 
 but they are good, and a number of them have the value 
 of almost literal translations. As for the style, a good ex- 
 ample is furnished by the story of the killing of the Hall- 
 gerd (or Hallgerda) by Hallbiorn the Strong. The story 
 is taken from an old Icelandic history, and is undoubtedly 
 true. Hallbiorn wedded a daughter of a man called Odd, 
 on account of his odd character. She was very beautiful. 
 Her father insisted that Hallbiorn should spend the whole 
 next season, winter, with him, and said that he might take 
 his bride away in the spring for the summer. During the 
 winter Hallgerda had a secret intrigue with a blood rela- 
 tion called Sncebiorn. The husband did not know, he only 
 felt a little suspicious at times. When the summer came, 
 and he asked Hallgerda to go with him to the house which 
 he had built for her, she did not answer. He asked her 
 twice, still she did not answer. The third time she refused. 
 Then he killed her. Then Snabiorn, her lover, attacked 
 him, and after a terrible fight in which eight or nine men 
 were killed, Hallbiorn was cut down. Snaebiorn then left 
 the country vowing that he would never speak to man 
 again, and settled in Greenland, where he died. The inci- 
 dents are not wonderful, but the simple and terrible way 
 in which they are told by the Icelandic chronicle makes 
 them appeal greatly to the imagination. And Morris did 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 259 
 
 justice to the style of the old Landnamabok, as it is called. 
 The following lines relate to the tragedy only : 
 
 . . . But Hallbiorn into the bower is gone 
 
 And there sat Hallgerd all alone. 
 
 She was not dight to go nor ride, 
 
 She had no joy of the summer-tide, 
 
 Silent she sat and combed her hair. 
 
 That fell all round about her there. 
 
 The slant beam lay upon her head 
 
 And gilt her golden locks to red. 
 
 He gazed at her with hungry eyes 
 
 And fluttering did his heart arise. 
 
 "Full hot," he said, "is the sun to-day, 
 
 And the snow is gone from the mountain-way. 
 
 The king-cup grows above the grass, 
 
 And through the wood do the thrushes pass." 
 
 Of all his words she hearkened none 
 
 But combed her hair amidst the sun. 
 
 "The laden beasts stand in the garth. 
 
 And their heads are turned to Helliskarth." 
 
 The sun was falling on her knee, 
 
 And she combed her gold hair silently. 
 
 "To-morrow great will be the cheer 
 
 At the Brothers' Tongue by Whitewater." 
 
 From her folded lap the sunbeam slid ; 
 
 She combed her hair, and the word she hid. 
 
 "Come, love; is the way so long and drear 
 
 From Whitewater to Whitewater?" 
 
 The sunbeam lay upon the floor ; 
 
 She combed her hair and spake no more. 
 
 He drew her by the lily hand : 
 
 "I love thee better than all the land." 
 
 He drew her by the shoulders sweet, 
 
 "My threshold is but for thy feet." 
 
 He drew her by the yellow hair, 
 
 "Oh, why wert thou so deadly fair? 
 
 Oh, am I wedded to death?" he cried, 
 
 "Is the Dead-strand come to Whitewater side?" 
 
 In order to know how terrible all this is, we must under- 
 
260 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 stand the character of the Norse woman. Like the will 
 of the man, her will is iron; she cannot be broken, she can- 
 not be made to bend, except by love, and when she refuses 
 to bend there is nothing to be done but to kill her. All 
 the facts stated here in rhymed verse are even more terri- 
 ble and more simple in the prose chronicle. Throughout 
 Norse history we repeatedly hear of women being killed 
 under like circumstances. These ferocious men would not 
 beat or abuse their women; that would have been no use. 
 But they insisted upon being obeyed; to refuse obedience 
 was to court death. In the present true story, however, 
 the refusal to obey means much more than to court death; 
 it means a bold confession by the bride that she has loved 
 and still loves another man than her husband, and that is 
 the reason of his sudden and terrible question, "Oh, am I 
 wedded to death? Is the Dead-strand come to this place*?" 
 The Dead-strand or Corpse-strand was, in Norse mythology, 
 the name of a part of Hel, the region of the dead, the 
 Hades of old Norse, so his question really means, "Have 
 the evil dead come here for us both?" for good men and 
 women did not go to the Dead-strand. Now hear her 
 answer. When he speaks at last, she sings in his face her 
 secret lover's favourite song, which is just the Jame thing 
 as to say, "I am glad to be killed for my lover's sake," 
 And to kill a Norse woman meant, of course, death for the 
 man who slew her, for her kindred were bound to avenge 
 her. So she is defying him in every way. 
 
 The sun was fading from the room, 
 
 But her eyes were bright in the change and the gloom, 
 
 "Sharp Sword," she sang, — "and death is sure, 
 
 But over all doth love endure." 
 
 She stood up shining in her place 
 
 And laughed beneath his deadly face. 
 
 Instead of the sunbeam gleamed a brand, . 
 
 The hilts were hard in Hallbiorn's hand. 
 
 The last line contains a phrase from old Northern war 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 261 
 
 poetry. To say that the hilt of a man's sword was hard 
 in his hand, signifies that he was a terrible swordsman, ac- 
 customed to mighty blows. But Morris here makes a little 
 departure from the original chronicle. He makes Hallbiorn 
 pass his sword through the woman's body. As a matter of 
 fact he did nothing of the kind; he simply cut her head 
 off at a single blow. Very dramatic, however, is his telling 
 of the subsequent flight of Hallbiorn, and the pursuit by 
 Snaebiorn. Hallbiorn's men are surprised at the fact that 
 he does not hold his ground, for they know nothing of what 
 happened in the house, and one of them says, "Where shall 
 we sleep to-night?" Hallbiorn answers grimly, "Under 
 the ground." Then his retainers know for the first time 
 that they are going to be attacked. The attacking party 
 consists of twelve men. Hallbiorn's retainers urge their 
 master to hasten forward; it is still possible, they think, 
 to escape. But he stops his horse and leaps down, ex- 
 claiming: 
 
 "Why should the supper of Odin wait? 
 Weary and chased I will not come 
 To the table of my father's home." 
 
 That is a fine expression about the supper of Odin, re- 
 ferring to the hope of every brave man to enter, at his 
 death, into Valhalla, the hall of Odin, and to sup with the 
 gods. And to enter there one had to be killed in battle. 
 So you can see the fierce humour of Hallbiorn's remark that 
 he does not want to come late to the supper of the gods, 
 and to keep the feast waiting. Snsebiorn does not speak'. 
 Hallbiorn only laughs. He kills five men; then one of 
 his feet is cut off, but he rushes forward upon the bleeding 
 stump, and kills two more before he is overpowered. It 
 was a terribly savage world, the old Norse world; but we 
 like to read about it, and we cannot help loving the splendid 
 courage of the men and women who passed their lives among 
 such tragedies, fearing nothing but loss of honour. 
 
262 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Several other Norse subjects have been treated by Morris 
 with equal success; and one is remarkable for the strange 
 charm of a refrain used in it, a refrain from the Norse. 
 It is called "The King of Denmark's Sons," and it is the 
 story of a fratricide. King Gorm of Denmark had two 
 sons, Knut and Harald: 
 
 Fair was Knut of face and limb, 
 
 As the breast of the Queen that suckled him; 
 
 But Harald was hot of hand and heart 
 
 As lips of lovers ere they part. 
 
 In history Knut was called the beloved. All men loved 
 him, he was the heir; and the old king loved him so much 
 that he one day said, "If any one, man or woman, ever tells 
 me that my son Knut is dead, that person has spoken the 
 word which sends him or her to Hel." But this great 
 love only made the younger brother jealous. Harald was 
 a Viking; he voyaged southward and eastward, ravaging 
 coasts in the Mediterranean or desolating provinces nearer 
 home. His name was a terror in England at one time. 
 But his father never praised him as he praised his brother. 
 So one day at sea he attacked his brother, overcame all re- 
 sistance, and killed him. Then he went home and told 
 his mother what had been done. But who dare tell the 
 King? The mother imagined a plan. During the night 
 she decked the palace hall all in black, taking away every 
 ornament. So in the morning, when the King entered the 
 hall, he asked, "Who has dared to do this*?" the Queen 
 answered, "We, the women of the palace have done it." 
 "Then," said the King, "tell me that my son Knut is dead I" 
 "You yourself have said the word," the Queen made an- 
 swer. And therewith the old king died as he sat in his 
 chair; and the wicked son became king. This is the simple 
 history, and Morris has not departed from historic truth 
 in his version of it. The refrain excellently suits the ballad 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 263 
 
 measure chosen; from the very first stanza, the tone of it 
 suggests all the tragedy that is going to follow. 
 
 In Denmark gone is many a year, 
 So fair upriseth the rim of the sun. 
 Two sons of Gorm the King there were, 
 So grey is the sea when the day is done. 
 
 Sunrise symbolises happiness, joy; grey is the colour of 
 melancholy; and nothing is so lonesome, so sad looking, 
 as the waste of the sea when it turns to grey in the twi- 
 light. The refrain reminds one of a famous line by an 
 American poet, Bryant, who certainly never saw this bal- 
 lad: 
 
 Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste. 
 
 Besides the above Norse subjects, I might call your at- 
 tention to the following titles: "The Folk-Mote by the 
 River," "Knight Aagen and Maiden Else," "Hafbur and 
 Signy," "The Raven and the King's Daughter." All these 
 are well worth reading. So are the purely fairy tales. 
 Northern fairy tales had a great charm for Morris. He 
 chose them as subjects, perhaps because he saw a way of 
 putting into them a new charm, a charm not suited for child 
 readers, but attractive to the adult public. I suppose you 
 know that fairy tales, as written for children, are written so 
 as to appeal chiefly to the imagination, and to those simple 
 emotions of which children are capable. But originally 
 such stories were told for the amusement of grown up peo- 
 ple, and a great deal of love sentiment figures in some of 
 them. Morris remembering this, took several charming 
 stories and infused them with a new artistic sensuousness, 
 making love the motive and the principal sentiment. In 
 the other volume of which I spoke, the old story of "Rapun- 
 zel" is treated in this way; in the volume now under con- 
 sideration we have the story "Goldilocks and Goldilocks." 
 
264. WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 It is the wildest, the most impossible kind of fairy tale (so, 
 for that matter, is Coleridge's "Christabel"), but he gave it 
 a very human charm by putting delightful little bits of 
 human nature into it — such as the passage where the en- 
 chanted maiden, who never saw a man before, meets the 
 handsome knight for the first time: 
 
 But the very first step he made from the place 
 He met a maiden face to face. 
 
 Face to face, and so close was she, 
 That their lips met soft and lovingly. 
 
 Sweet-mouthed she was, and fair he wist; 
 And again in the darksome wood they kissed. 
 
 Then first in the wood her voice he heard, 
 As sweet as the song of the summer bird. 
 
 "O thou fair man with the golden head, 
 What is the name of thee?" she said. 
 
 "My name is Goldilocks," said he, 
 
 "O sweet-breathed, what is the name of thee?" 
 
 "O Goldilocks the Swain," she said, 
 "My name is Goldilocks the Maid." 
 
 He spake, "Love me as I thee. 
 And Goldilocks one flesh shall be." 
 
 She said, "Fair man, I wot not how 
 Thou lovest, but I love thee now." 
 
 And they go on talking together, like two children, in 
 their eighteenth century English — she full of wonder at 
 the beauty of the stranger of another sex, he full of loving 
 pity for her supreme innocence. And then all kinds of 
 magical dangers and troubles come to separate them, but 
 love conquers all. The story is known by many children, 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 265 
 
 but not as Morris tells it. His principal purpose is to pic- 
 ture a character of perfect innocence and perfect trust; and 
 he does this so delightfully that we cease to care whether 
 the tale is a fairy one or not. It stirs most agreeably some- 
 thing which is true in everybody's heart; we love what is 
 beautiful in the character of the child or the supremely 
 innocent young girl. 
 
 As a single work in one key, the greatest production of 
 Morris is the "Stor}^ of Sigurd"; indeed, we might call it the 
 masterpiece of the poet, but for the fact that it is not 
 original in the true sense. It is little more than a magnifi- 
 cent translation in swinging verse of the Volsunga Saga. 
 But in more ways than one, it has become a literary work 
 of extreme importance. It was through this metrical ver- 
 sion that the Volsunga Saga first became known to English 
 readers in a general way. Since then we have had prose 
 translations. 
 
 I want to speak about this Saga, because the subject is 
 of extreme literary importance. To-day you can scarcely 
 open a literary periodical or any volume of essays on liter- 
 ary subjects without finding there some reference to the fa- 
 mous Northern story. It is one version of an epic which in 
 various forms belongs to the whole Northern race; and 
 one of the forms best known is the Nibelungenlied of Ger- 
 many. Through German musical art the latter form of 
 the story has in our own time become universally known in 
 all great cities of the West, for Wagner made it the sub- 
 ject of a magnificent composition; the greatest of all modern 
 operas, dramatically at least, is certainly his musical pres- 
 entation of the epic cycle. 
 
 A word now about the place of this story in European 
 literature. Medieval Europe produced four great epics. 
 Each of these represents the beginning of a vast national 
 literature. The great English epic is the story of Beowulf, 
 and I am sorry to say that it is not the best. The great 
 French epic is the story of Roland. The great Spanish 
 
266 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 epic is the story of the Cid. And the great German epic is 
 the Nibelungenlied or Nibelunge Not, as it has also been 
 called. Of these four the German epic is the grandest. 
 Its date is not exactly known. But the best critics assert 
 that it cannot be older than the middle of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, and not later than the middle of the thirteenth. 
 Therefore the date must be somewhat between 1150-1250. 
 
 But the German epic is by no means the oldest form of 
 the story. The older forms are Norse. There are poeti- 
 cal fragments of the story to be found in the ancient Scandi- 
 navian literature (you can find them in the library in the 
 Corpus Poeticum Boreale), and there is a splendid prose 
 version of the story in the old Icelandic — this is the Vol- 
 sunga Saga, from which Morris took his poetical materials. 
 Between the versions of the German and the North, there 
 are great differences of narrative, but perhaps not great 
 differences of merit. If we could have the whole of the 
 old Norse epic, we should perhaps find it even grander than 
 the German. But only fragments have been preserved of 
 the poetry, and we can only imagine from the prose Saga 
 how magnificent the lost poetry may have been. And now 
 a word about the story itself. 
 
 When Herbert Spencer, some years ago, criticised cer- 
 tain English translations issued by the Japanese depart- 
 ment of education, he stated that the story of the great 
 swordsman Musashi was not a proper subject for the ad- 
 miration of the )^outh, because it is a story of vengeance. 
 He was speaking from the standpoint of ideal education, 
 and from that standpoint his criticism is not disputable. 
 But ideal education, in the present state of humanity, he 
 himself would acknowledge to be impossible. It is only 
 something toward which we can all work a little, slowly 
 and patiently. In the meantime, the same objection made 
 to the story of Musashi might equally well be made to all 
 the epic poems of the Western world, and to nearly all the 
 great romances of the past. To begin with, the grand 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 267 
 
 poems of Homer, both the Iliad and the Odyssey, are epics 
 of vengeance. The great story of King Arthur is a narra- 
 tive full of incidents of revenge and even of crime. We 
 can scarcely mention any great composition which is not 
 full of vengeance, and which is not also admired. But I 
 wonder what could Mr. Spencer say of the Volsunga Saga 
 or the Nibelungenlied. For all stories of vengeance ever 
 told, whether in verse or prose, pale before the immense 
 quarrel and cruelty of these. They are terrible stories, and 
 the Volsunga version is even more terrible than the German. 
 
 The story takes its name from the great family of the 
 Volsung. It opens with an account of the might and power 
 of King Volsung, the heroism of his sons and the beauty 
 of his only daughter Signy. These rule in the far North. 
 After a time the King of the Goths in the South, hearing 
 of the wonderful beauty of Signy, asks for her hand in 
 marriage, and obtains it. He goes to the country of the 
 Volsung to wed her, and during the wedding he becomes 
 jealous of the splendour and strength of the Volsung fam- 
 ily. When he takes his bride South with him there is an 
 evil purpose in his heart — the purpose to destroy the family 
 of his bride by treachery whenever opportunity offers. 
 WTiat follows does not belong to the German story at all; 
 it is only to be found in the Norse. 
 
 Siggeir, the Gothic king, next year invites the King Vol- 
 sung and his sons to come South and pay him a visit. The 
 sons of King Volsung suspect treachery, and they advise their 
 father not to go without a great army. But the old king 
 wants to see his daughter, and he thinks that it would be 
 showing fear to go with a great army, so he tells his sons 
 that they must go as invited, with only a small following. 
 They go. But the suspicion of the sons was justified by 
 events. In the middle of the festival of welcome, King 
 Volsung and his party are attacked by an immense force, 
 and nearly all the followers of the king are killed. The 
 sons are taken prisoners and left in a wood tied to trees 
 
268 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 for the wolves to devour. Only one escapes, Sigmund. He 
 hides in the forest and becomes a hunter, and dreams of 
 vengeance. 
 
 But the real avenger is Signy, the daughter of the dead 
 King Volsung and the wife of the murderer. Signy knows 
 that her brother Sigmund is alive. But that makes only 
 two Volsungs; and two young people alone cannot hope to 
 destroy a king and an army. But Signy believes that three 
 can do it. Secretly she keeps her brother supplied with 
 provisions and weapons, and she resolves to raise up sons 
 to avenge the wrong. When her first son is born she begs 
 to train him, and when he is old enough to begin to learn 
 what war means, she sends him to her brother in the wood 
 that he may teach the lad. 
 
 Sigmund does not much like the boy. He thinks that 
 he talks too much to be really brave. He tests the lad's 
 courage in different ways, telling him, among other things, 
 to bake and knead cake in which a poisonous snake has been 
 hidden. The boy is afraid of the snake. Sigmund sends 
 him back to Signy, saying that he will not do. 
 
 Signy almost despairs. Must her sons be cowards be- 
 cause they have a coward father'? Suddenly a strange idea 
 comes to her. "I shall do as the Gods did in ancient times," 
 she said; "only my brother can produce such a child as I 
 wish for, and I shall have a child by him." She goes to a 
 witch, who changes her body, transforms her so completely 
 that her brother can have no suspicion of what has taken 
 place. Then by him she has a son, Sinfiotli. When he is 
 old enough she sends the boy to Sigmund. 
 
 Sigmund is astonished by the extraordinary fierceness and 
 suUenness of the child. "Is it possible," he wonders, "that 
 my sister can have such a child by her husband^" The 
 boy scarcely speaks at all, but does whatever he is told, and 
 is afraid of nothing. Sigmund gives him flour to knead 
 and bake containing a poisonous snake. Instead of being 
 afraid of the serpent, the child breaks and crushes the 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 269 
 
 creature in his fingers and rolls the poisonous body in the 
 flour, and makes the whole thing into cakes. Sigmund is 
 delighted. He sends word to his sister, "This boy will do." 
 
 The rest of this part of the story you can imagine. The 
 boy grows up a giant, and is trained in all arts by Sigmund. 
 On a certain day these two unexpectedly force their way 
 into the palace of the King Siggeir, slaughter his people and 
 himself, and set fire to the palace. Thus King Volsung is 
 avenged. But Signy, after having told her brother the 
 story of Sinfiotli, goes back into the burning house of the 
 king, and voluntarily dies. She has done her duty, but she 
 does not care to live any longer. This ends the great epi- 
 sode of the Volsung Saga. 
 
 The next part contains the story of the dragon Fafnir. 
 Here we have no more Sigmund. Smfiotli has been pois- 
 oned, Sigmund has been killed in battle. But there is still 
 one child of the Volsung blood alive in the world. This 
 is Sigurd (the Siegfried of the German story). Sigurd is 
 kindly brought up by a foster father, a Viking, who teaches 
 him all the arts of seamanship and war. One of the teach- 
 ers who helped the Viking in the work is a strange old man 
 called Begin, who much resembles the Merlin of the story 
 of King Arthur. Sigurd wants a sword, a magical sword, 
 that will not break in his hand; for he is so strong that 
 common swords are of no use to him. Begin alone knows 
 the art. But he does not wish to give Sigurd such art. He 
 makes in succession a number of swords. Sigurd takes 
 each one of them and strikes the anvil with it, whereupon 
 the blade flies into pieces. He threatens Begin so terribly 
 that the latter at last is obliged to make the magical sword. 
 When he finished, Sigurd strikes the anvil with the blade, 
 and the anvil is cut in two pieces. In the musical presenta- 
 tion of the story by Wagner, the finest episode is this forg- 
 ing of the sword. If you ever see that performed in a 
 great theatre, you will not easily forget it. But in the 
 German story it is not Begin but the hero himself who 
 
270 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 makes the blade. The anvil is placed upon the stage and 
 all the forging is really done there. When the anvil is 
 cut in two, a flash as of lightning follows the blade of the 
 sword; the spectacle is very grand. 
 
 But to return to the Volsung legend. Sigurd needs the 
 sword in order that he may perform great deeds in the 
 world, and the first great deed that he wishes to perform 
 is to secure a magical hoard of wealth, belonging to the 
 Dwarfs of the underworld and guarded by the terrible 
 dragon Fafnir. He goes with Regin to the place of the 
 hoard, and meets the dragon, and kills him. Regin then 
 says to him, "Give me his heart — cut it out and roast it." 
 Sigurd obeys, cuts out the heart of the dragon, and begins 
 to roast it over the fire. But while roasting it, some grease 
 gets upon his fingers, and he licks it off with his tongue. 
 Immediately a wonderful thing happens — ^he can under- 
 stand the language of birds and animals. In the trees above 
 him he hears the birds speaking, and they give him warning 
 that Regin intends to kill him. Thereupon he kills Regin. 
 This story of the dragon's heart is very famous in European 
 literature, and you will find many references to it in the 
 poetry and prose of to-day. 
 
 The next part of the story is one of the finest — the meet- 
 ing of Sigurd and Brynhild, the first love episode. Bryn- 
 hild is half human, half divine. Though born among men, 
 she had been taken to heaven by Odin and made a Valkyria, 
 one of the celestial virgins called the "Choosers of the 
 Slain." But for a fault which she committed she had 
 been sent back to earth again, to suffer pain and sorrow. 
 In an enchanted sleep she was left upon the summit of a 
 mountain, and all about her sleepingplace towered a wall of 
 never-dying fire. "Only the man brave enough to ride 
 through the fire shall have this maiden" — so spake Odin. 
 
 Sigurd rides through the fire, and the fire, although roar- 
 ing like the sea, does not hurt him, because he is brave. 
 Entering the enchanted circle, he there sees a human figure 
 
WILLIAJM MORRIS 271 
 
 lying, all in golden armour not made by any human smith. 
 He tries to awake the sleeper, but cannot. He tries to 
 take off the armour, but he cannot unfasten it. Then he 
 takes his wonderful sword and cuts open the armour as 
 easily as if it were silk. Then he finds that the sleeper is 
 a woman, more beautiful than any woman of earth. She 
 opens her eyes and looks at him. They fall in love with 
 each other, and pledge themselves to become man and wife. 
 Probably this part of the story is one of the sources from 
 which the beautiful fairly tale of the Sleeping Beauty 
 came into our child literature. But the idea is also found 
 in very ancient Eastern literature. 
 
 The third part of the great story treats of the history of 
 Brynhild especially. Being a Valkyria, she has power to 
 see much of the future; she can foretell things in a dim 
 way. She warns Sigurd that there is danger for him if he 
 should ever be untrue to her. Sigurd accepts the warning 
 in the noblest spirit. But the Fates are against him. He 
 goes upon a warlike expedition to the kingdom of Niblung 
 in the North. The Niblung family, after a great battle 
 which Sigurd has helped them to win, wish to adopt him 
 as a son, and the beautiful daughter of the King falls in love 
 with him. Her father and her brothers wish Sigurd to 
 marry the girl, whose name is Gudrun. But Sigurd remem- 
 bers his promise to Brynhild. Then the wicked Queen 
 Grimhild, the mother of Gudrun, gives Sigurd a poisonous 
 drink that causes him to forget the past; and while he is 
 under the influence of this magical drink he is persuaded 
 to marry Gudrun. 
 
 But this is not the worst thing that he is obliged to do 
 through the magical arts of Grimhild. He is obliged to 
 go to Brynhild, and persuade her to become the wife of 
 young Gunnar, the brother of Gudrun. He rides through 
 the fire again, and persuades Brynhild to become the wife 
 of Gunnar. She obeys his will, but the result is the destruc- 
 tion of Sigurd and all concerned. For the two women pres- 
 
272 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 ently begin to quarrel. Brynhild loves Sigurd with a 
 supernatural love, and he knows that he has been deceived. 
 Gudrun also loves Sigurd fiercely, and her jealousy quickly 
 perceives the secret affection of Brynhild, In short, the re- 
 sult of the quarrel between the women is that the brothers 
 of Gudrun resolve to kill Sigurd while he sleeps. One of 
 them stabs him in the middle of night. Sigurd, awakening, 
 throws his sword after the escaping murderer with such 
 force that the man is cut in two. But Sigurd dies of his 
 wound, and Brynhild then kills herself, and the two are 
 burnt upon the same funeral pyre. 
 
 The last part of the story is the revenge of Gudrun, one 
 of the most terrible characters in all Northern stories. She 
 lives only to avenge Sigurd. On finding that her brothers 
 have caused his murder, she curses her house, her family, 
 her people, and vows that they shall all suffer for the wrong 
 done her. Her brothers, who know her character, are afraid, 
 but there is a hope that time will make her heart more 
 gentle. At all events she cannot remain always a widow. 
 Presently she is asked for in marriage by Atli, king of the 
 Goths. Her brothers wish for this marriage, all except 
 one, who is against it. Gudrun marries Atli. This gives 
 her power to plan her longed-for revenge. She persuades 
 her husband that the great treasures which Sigurd got by 
 killing the dragon are worth securing even at the cost of 
 the lives of her brothers and father. She does not lie to 
 the King; she frankly tells him that she hates her people, 
 and he believes her. By treachery, all the Niblungs are al- 
 lured to Atli's hall. In the middle of the day of their ar- 
 rival, they are suddenly attacked. They make a great fight, 
 but all their followers are killed, and they themselves are 
 taken prisoners — that is, the brothers, the father having 
 died before the occurrence. During the fight Gudrun is 
 present and the blood spurts upon her dress and hands, but 
 the expression of her face never changes. This is one of 
 the most awful scenes in the poem. 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 278 
 
 When all the brothers are dead but two, Hogni and 
 Gunnar, the King says to Gunnar, "Give me the treasure 
 of the Niblungs, and I will spare your life." Gunnar an- 
 swers: "I must first see the heart of my brother Hogni 
 cut out of his breast and laid upon a dish," The King's 
 soldiers take among the prisoners a tall man whom they 
 imagine to be Hogni, but who is really only a slave, and 
 they cut out the man's heart and put it upon a dish and 
 bring it to Gunnar. Gunnar looks at it and laughs and 
 says, "That is not my brother's heart; see how it trembles 
 — that is the heart of a slave I" Then the soldiers kill the 
 real Hogni and cut out his heart and bring it upon a plate. 
 This time Gunnar does not laugh. He says, "That is really 
 my brother's heart. It does not tremble. Neither did it 
 ever tremble in his breast when he was alive. There were 
 only two men in the world yesterday who knew where the 
 treasure of the Niblungs is hidden, my brother and myself. 
 And now that my brother is dead, I am the only one in the 
 world who knows. See if you can make me tell you. I 
 shall never tell you." He is tortured and killed, but he 
 never tells. 
 
 There is only one of the whole Niblung race still alive, 
 Gudrun. She has avenged her husband upon her own 
 brothers, but that does not satisfy her. By the strange and 
 ferocious Northern code she must now avenge her kindred, 
 though they be her enemies, upon the stranger. She has 
 used Atli in order to destroy her brothers; but, after all, they 
 were her brothers and Atli only her husband. She sets fire 
 to the palace, kills Atli with her own hands, and then leaps 
 into the sea. Thus all the characters of the story meet with 
 a tragic end. There is no such story of vengeance in any 
 other literature. Yet this epic, or romance, is the greatest 
 of mediseval compositions, and every student ought to know 
 something about it, either in its Scandinavian or its German 
 form. In the German form the character of Gudrun — she 
 is there called Kriemhild — is much less savage; and the Ger- 
 
274 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 man story is altogether a more civilised expression of feel- 
 ing. But any form of the story (and there are several other 
 forms besides those of which I have spoken) shows the mov- 
 ing passion to be vengeance; and to return to the subject of 
 Mr. Spencer's criticism, we may say that there is no great 
 tale, Western or Eastern, in which this passion has no 
 play. 
 
 The values of the story are in the narration, in the de- 
 scriptions of battles, weapons, banquets, weddings, in the 
 heroic emotions often expressed in speeches or pledges, and 
 in the few chapters of profound tenderness strangely mingled 
 among chapters dealing only with atrocious and cruel pas- 
 sions; all these give perpetual literary worth to the composi- 
 tion, and we cannot be tired of them. The subject was a 
 grand one for any English poet to take up, and Morris took 
 it up in a very worthy way. He has put the whole legend 
 into anapestic verse of sixteen syllables, a long swinging, 
 irregular measure which has a peculiar exultant effect upon 
 the reader. To give an example of this work is very diffi- 
 cult. Any part detached from the rest, loses by detach- 
 ment — for Morris, although a good poet, and a correct poet, 
 and a spiritual poet, is not an exquisite poet. He does not 
 give to his verses that supreme finish which we find in the 
 compositions of the greater Victorian poets. However, I 
 shall attempt a few examples. I thought at first of reading 
 to you some passages regarding the forging of the sword; 
 but I gave up the idea on remembering how much better 
 Wagner has treated the same incident where the hero chants 
 as he strikes out the shape of the blade with his hammer, 
 and at last, with a mighty shout lifts up the blade and cuts 
 the anvil in two. Perhaps a better example of Morris's 
 verse may be found in these lines : 
 
 By the Earth that groweth and giveth, and by all the Earth's in- 
 crease 
 That is spent for Gods and man-folk, by the sun that shines on these ; 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 275 
 
 By the Salt-Sea-Flood that beareth the life and death of men ; 
 By the Heaven and Stars that change not, though Earth die out 
 again ; 
 
 I hallow me to Odin for a leader of his host, 
 
 To do the deeds of the Highest, and never count the cost ; 
 
 And I swear, that whatso great-one shall show the day and the deed, 
 
 I shall ask not why nor wherefore, but the sword's desire shall 
 
 speed : 
 And I swear to seek no quarrel, nor to swerve aside for aught 
 Though the right and the left be blooming, and the straight way 
 
 wend to nought, 
 And I swear to abide and hearken the prayer of any thrall. 
 Though the war-torch be on the threshold and the foemen's feet 
 
 in the hall : 
 And I swear to sit on my throne in the guise of the kings of the 
 
 earth, 
 Though the anguish past amending, and the unheard woe have birth : 
 And I swear to wend in my sorrow that none shall curse mine eyes 
 For the scowl that quelleth beseeching, and the hate that scorneth 
 
 the wise. 
 So help me Earth and Heavens, and the Under-sky and Seas, 
 And the Stars in their ordered houses, and the Norns that order 
 
 these ! 
 And he drank of the cup of Promise, and fair as a star he shone. 
 And all men rejoiced and wondered, and deemed Earth's glory won. 
 
 This will serve very well to show you the ringing spirit 
 of the measure. Here is an example of another kind taken 
 from the pages describing the first secret love of the maiden 
 Gudrun for Sigurd. It is true to human nature; the North- 
 ern woman is apt to be most cruel to the man whom she 
 loves most, and these few lines give us a dark suggestion of 
 the character of Gudrun long before the real woman re- 
 veals herself — immensely passionate and immensely strong 
 in self-control. 
 
 But men say that howsoever all other folk of earth 
 Loved Sigmund's son rejoicing, and were bettered of their mirth, 
 Yet ever the white-armed Gudrun, the dark haired Niblung Maid, 
 From the barren heart of sorrow her love upon him laid ; 
 
276 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 He rejoiceth, and she droopeth ; he speaks and hushed is she ; 
 He beholds the world's days coming, nought but Sigurd may she see. 
 He is wise and her wisdom falters ; he is kind, and harsh and strange 
 Comes the voice from her bosom laden, and her woman's mercies 
 
 change. 
 He longs, and she sees his longing, and her heart grows cold as a 
 
 sword. 
 And her heart is the ravening fire, and the fretting sorrows' hoard. 
 
 A great deal is said in these lines by the use of sugges- 
 tive words and words of symbolism. Paraphrased these 
 verses mean much more. "No matter how much all other 
 people showed their love and admiration for Sigurd by 
 making festival and public rejoicing, feeling happier and 
 better for having seen him, all their affection was as noth- 
 ing to the love that Gudrun secretly felt for him, out of 
 her lonesome heart; and great was her secret grief at the 
 thought that he might not love her. Then she acted with 
 him after the manner of the woman resolved to win. When- 
 ever she saw him rejoice she became sad. Whenever he 
 spoke to her, she remained silent. Many things Sigurd 
 knew — so wise he was that he could see even the events 
 of the future ; but she saw nothing and knew nothing there- 
 after except Sigurd, nor did she wish to see or to know 
 anything else. And when he showed himself wise, she 
 acted as a foolish child. And when he tried to be kind to 
 her she answered him with a strange and harsh voice, and 
 suddenly became without pity. And at last when he be- 
 gan to long for love, and she perceived it, then her heart 
 became cold as a sword. So was the soul of this woman 
 in the time of her passion — now like ravening fire, now 
 again desolate with all the sorrows that corrode and de- 
 stroy." 
 
 Because she sees still that love is not for her, the whole 
 scene of the courting — this is one of the cases where the 
 maiden woos the man without ever losing her dignity as a 
 maiden — is of consummate skill, showing Gudrun at one 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 277 
 
 moment simple and sweet as a child, revealing suddenly, at 
 another time, the strange height and depth of her, many 
 things terrible in her, capable of the making or the ruin 
 of a kingdom. 
 
 I am not going to quote, but I hope that you will notice 
 particularly the fine scene of the death of Brynhild. There 
 is a grand thought in it. I did not tell you, in the brief 
 epitome of the plot which I gave you, about the second 
 wooing of Brynhild. When Sigurd wooed her for King 
 Gunnar, he lay down beside her at night; but he placed his 
 naked sword between them. This episode is famous in 
 Western literature. So he brought her chaste to her bride- 
 groom. And when afterwards Brynhild kills herself, in 
 order that she may be able to join him in the spirit world, 
 she shows her admiration of Sigurd's action by saying, 
 "When you put my dead body on the funeral pyre beside 
 the dead body of Sigurd, put his naked sword again be- 
 tween us, as it was put between us when he wooed me long 
 ago, for the sake of King Gunnar." The suicide chapter 
 is very grand. And the ending of the long tragedy has 
 also a peculiar grandeur, when Gudrun leaps into the sea. 
 
 The sea-waves o'er her swept; 
 
 And their will is her will henceforward ; and who knoweth the deeps 
 
 of the sea 
 And the wealth of the bed of Gudrun, and the days that yet shall be ? 
 
 A finer simile could not be imagined than this sudden 
 transformation of a passionate woman's will into the vast 
 motion and unimaginable depths of the sea. The idea is, 
 "Deep and wide was her soul like the sea; and the strength 
 of her and the depth of her are now the strength and depth 
 of the ocean ; and who knows what her spirit may hereafter 
 accomplish"?" 
 
 In concluding this little study of the romance, I may 
 say that some of its incidents are probably immortal be- 
 cause they contain perpetual truth. I am not now speak- 
 
278 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 ing particularly of Morris's work, but only of the legend of 
 Sigurd. The studies in it of evil passions need not de- 
 mand our praise, but the stories of heroism, like that of the 
 naked sword laid between the man and the maid, will 
 always seem to us grand. Symbolically we may say that 
 the wealth of the world is still guarded by dragons as truly 
 as in the story of Sigurd; formidable and difficult to over- 
 come are the powers opposing success in the struggle of 
 life, and the acquisition of the prize can be only for the 
 hero, the strong man mentally or morally. Again that 
 strange fancy of Brynhild ringed about in her magical sleep 
 with a wall of living fire — I do not know how it may seem 
 to the far Eastern reader, but to the Western it is the 
 symbol of a real truth, that beauty, the object of human 
 desire, is still truly ringed about by fire, in the sense that 
 the winner of it must risk all possible dangers of body and 
 soul before he succeeds. Still in Northern countries the 
 finest woman is for the best man; only the hero can truly 
 ride through the fire of the gods. 
 
 I have said enough about the great poems of Morris; I 
 do not think that it will be necessary to say anything about 
 "The Life and Death of Jason," If you like his other 
 work, probably you will like that book also. But I think 
 that the story of Jason is more charmingly told by Charles 
 Kingsley in his Greek fairy tale, and that Morris was at 
 his best, so far as long narrative poems are concerned, in 
 Norse subjects. I have already told you about his strong 
 personal interest in Norse literature, and about his work 
 as a prose translator. In this connection I may mention a 
 queer fact. Morris, who claimed to have Norse blood in 
 his own veins, became so absorbed by the Norse subjects 
 that his character seems to have been changed in later life. 
 He became stark and grim like the old Vikings, even to his 
 friends. But if he offended in this wise, he certainly made 
 up for the fault by that tremendous energy which he ap- 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 279 
 
 peared to absorb from the same source. No man ever 
 worked harder for romantic literature and romantic art, and 
 few men have made so deep an impression upon the esthetic 
 sentiments of the English public. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 You may remember my having told you that the best ex- 
 amples of the hexameter in English were written by the 
 admirable novelist Charles Kingsley. I may have also 
 said something in a general way about Kingsley's place in 
 the nineteenth century, but time did not permit of a spe- 
 cial lecture in regard to his verse — which, nevertheless, is 
 of very great importance, and is constantly obtaining wider 
 recognition. No man of the century who figures in Eng- 
 lish literature had more of the soul of the poet than Kings- 
 ley; and a very great poet he might have become had he 
 possessed sufficient means to devote all of his powers to 
 poetry. He had very little time for poetry. But little as 
 the time was that he could devote, it sufficed him to write 
 the best hexameters of an English poet, and to compose 
 songs which have been translated into almost every modern 
 language. "The Three Fishers" has been translated into 
 Japanese, so I need not repeat it to you. The "Sands of 
 Dee" has been translated even into Arabic. Kingsley had 
 the divine gift of exciting the deepest emotions with the 
 simplest words, and it is to this faculty in particular that 
 I will call your attention to-day. Later on we shall study 
 some of his hexameters; but these do not show how great a 
 poet he was nearly so well as do the things which read so 
 simply that you might fancy a young boy had written them, 
 until their magic begins to stir the emotions. 
 
 Let us first take the "Sands of Dee." It is only a little 
 song about a peasant girl being drowned by a high tide, 
 which rose unexpectedly off the coast where she was taking 
 care of her father's cows; but the whole world has learned 
 it. 
 
 280 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET »81 
 
 "O Mary, go and call the cattle home. 
 
 And call the cattle home. 
 
 And call the cattle home 
 
 Across the sands of Dee" ; 
 The western wind was wild and dank with foam. 
 
 And all alone went she. 
 
 The western tide crept up along the sand. 
 
 And o'er and o'er the sand. 
 
 And round and round the sand. 
 
 As far as eye could see. 
 The rolling mist came down and hid the land ; 
 
 And never home came she. 
 
 "Oh ! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair — 
 
 A tress of golden hair, 
 
 A drowned maiden's hair 
 
 Above the nets at sea? 
 Was never salmon yet that shone so fair 
 
 Among the stakes on Dee !" 
 
 They rowed her in across the rolling foam, 
 
 The cruel crawling foam. 
 
 The cruel hungry foam. 
 
 To her grave beside the sea : 
 But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home 
 
 Across the sands of Dee. 
 
 But for the grazing cattle, this incident might happen 
 upon any coast in the world; everywhere you see the nets 
 and the stakes, and the "cruel crawling foam." It is 
 curious that John Ruskin found fault with this poem, de- 
 claring that sea-foam did not seem to crawl. He was con- 
 tradicted, indeed, by many observers; but his criticism must 
 be mentioned, as it is so well known. "Crawling" means 
 moving like a creeping worm or a slow winding serpent; and 
 it is true that you do not see this stealthy motion of the 
 foam upon all coasts. To see it, you must be upon a coast 
 where there is a wide beach of smooth sand; you may then 
 see it at the time of a rising tide. The great waves are 
 
282 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 yet very far away, but over the smooth shallows you see 
 the water gradually rising and spreading, edged with foam 
 that really seems to crawl. I have often seen this on parts 
 of the English and the Irish coasts; and I think that the 
 word crawling, so far from being wrong, is one of the very 
 happiest words in the song. I suppose you know that the 
 salmon is a very beautiful large fish, and can be seen shin- 
 ing like silver, or rather like pale gold, at a very consider- 
 able distance. 
 
 Now observe the extraordinary brevity with which the 
 tale is told. There are indeed four stanzas, but several 
 lines of each stanza are repeated, or partly repeated, so that 
 the telling of the story is really done within eight lines less 
 than the total number of the poem. Yet within this little 
 space we have two very definite pictures created in the 
 reader's mind. The first is of the darkening of the eve- 
 ning sky, the rising of the sea-fog over the sands, and the 
 scents and colours of the coming storm. We are not told 
 about the girl's being drowned; it is implied much more 
 effectively by the statement that she never came home. 
 The second little picture, the appearance beyond the break- 
 ers of the gold hair, together with the reference to the stakes 
 of the fishermen, is a perfect water-colour made with a few 
 strokes. Even this would be enough to make the poem 
 remarkable; but the supernatural touch at the end of the 
 recital, the reference to the fishermen's belief that the ghost 
 of the girl can still be heard at night calling to the cows, 
 completes the work in such a way as to leave it unmatched 
 among modern songs. It is not scholarship (though Kings- 
 ley was a good scholar) that can enable a man to produce 
 such a gem as this; one must be born with the heart of a 
 poet. 
 
 You will remember that, during our lecture upon Keats 
 last year, I quoted for you the ballad of "La Belle Dame 
 Sans Merci," as one of the most weirdly beautiful things in 
 English literature. Now there are not many poets who have 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 283 
 
 the ability to give the feeling of weird beauty, of ghostliness 
 and aesthetic charm at the same time. But Kingsley had 
 this gift, and his poems offer many examples of it. One 
 of these I think to be very nearly if not quite equal to 
 Keats's poem. You might say that Keats's poem probably 
 inspired it; you would be partly right. But the treatment 
 is so different and so many original elements have been in- 
 troduced, that it is certainly a very original poem. Be- 
 sides, we have in it a Christian element which is treated in 
 a totally new and startling way. It is something like the 
 story of Urashima, but the ending is unique of its kind. 
 
 THE WEIRD LADY 
 
 The swevens came up round Harold the Earl 
 
 Like motes in the sunnes beam ; 
 And over him stood the Weird Lady 
 In her charmed castle over the sea, 
 
 Sang, "Lie thou still and dream. 
 
 "Thy steed is dead in his stall, Earl Harold, 
 
 Since thou hast been with me ; 
 The rust has eaten thy harness bright, 
 ' And the rats have eaten thy greyhound light 
 
 That was so fair and free." 
 
 Mary Mother she stooped from heaven. 
 And wakened Earl Harold out of his sweven, 
 
 To don his harness on ; 
 And over the land and over the sea 
 He wended abroad to his own countrie, 
 
 A weary way to gon. 
 
 Oh but his beard was white with eld, 
 
 Oh but his hair was grey; 
 He stumbled on by stock and stone. 
 And as he journeyed he made his moan 
 
 Along that weary way. 
 
 Earl Harold came to his castle wall ; 
 The gate was burnt with fire ; 
 
284 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 Roof and rafter were fallen down, 
 The folk were strangers all in the town, 
 And strangers all in the shire. 
 
 Earl Harold came to a house of nuns. 
 
 And he heard the dead-bell toll ; 
 He saw the sexton stand by a grave ; 
 "Now Christ have mercy, who did us save. 
 
 Upon yon fair nun's soul I" 
 
 The nuns they came from the convent gate. 
 
 By one, by two, by three ; 
 They sang for the soul of a lady bright 
 Who died for the love of a traitor knight: 
 
 It was his own lady ! 
 
 He stayed the corpse beside the grave; 
 
 "A sign, a sign !" quod he. 
 "Mary Mother who rulest heaven. 
 Send me a sign if I be forgiven 
 
 By the woman who so loved me." 
 
 A white dove out of the coffin flew ; 
 
 Earl Harold's mouth it kist; 
 He fell on his face, wherever he stood; 
 And the white dove carried his soul to God 
 
 Or ever the bearers wist. 
 
 We have here a story which has been told in a hundred 
 different ways by hundreds of different poets, both foreign 
 and English, yet perhaps no one ever told it more touch- 
 ingly. The legend is found in Danish, Swedish, German, 
 and old French literature. Some knight, betrothed to a 
 fair lady, is tempted to break his vow by a strange woman, 
 a fairy or enchantress. He yields to the temptation, and 
 thereafter falls into a magical sleep. Returning home after 
 his waking, he finds that many years have passed, that every- 
 thing is changed, and that all his people are dead. In this 
 case the Virgin Mary interferes to wake the sleeper; but 
 this is quite a new idea. In most of the old Northern bal- 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 285 
 
 lads the knight who meets a fairy lady meets misfortune. 
 If he loves her, she enchants him, and he never returns home 
 until centuries had passed. But on the other hand, if he 
 refuses to love her, he dies the same night. The singers 
 of the Middle Ages would have made a very long romance 
 out of such a version as that which Kingsley adopted; yet 
 he has condensed all the possibilities of the romance into 
 nine little six line stanzas. 
 
 A peculiarity of Kingsley's work is the extraordinary nov- 
 elty of its method, even when the subject happens to be 
 of the most commonplace kind. A good example of this 
 original part is presented in his famous "Ode to the North- 
 east Wind," a piece which it is said no Englishman can 
 read without feeling his heart beat faster. The East wind 
 in England, particularly the Northeast wind, is the bitter- 
 est and coldest of all winds, bringing death to the weak, 
 and suffering even to domestic animals, so that there is an 
 old English proverb which every child learns by heart in 
 the nursery: 
 
 When the wind is in the East 
 
 'Tis neither good for man nor beast. 
 
 The West wind, you know, is tempered by the warm gulf- 
 stream. But Kingsley remembered that it was by the 
 Northeast wind that the Norsemen and the ancient Eng- 
 lish first sailed to Britain, and perhaps he was thinking 
 also of the evolutional fact that Northern strength has 
 been developed by cold and hardship. Perhaps you know 
 that Northern plants when taken to Southern countries mul- 
 tiply at the expense of Southern plants. The strength of 
 the Western world is from the North; that is the philosophy 
 of Kingsley's ode. 
 
 Welcome, wild North-easter! 
 
 Shame it is to see 
 Odes to every zephyr, 
 
 Ne'er a verse to thee. 
 
286 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 Welcome, black North-easter I 
 
 O'er the German foam ; 
 O'er the Danish moorlands, 
 
 From thy frozen home. 
 Tired we are of summer, 
 
 Tired of gaudy glare. 
 Showers soft and steaming, 
 
 Hot and breathless air. 
 Tired of listless dreaming, 
 
 Through the lazy day. 
 Jovial wind of winter, 
 
 Turns us out to play! 
 Sweep the golden reed-beds; 
 
 Crisp the lazy dyke; 
 Hunger into madness 
 
 Every plunging pike. 
 Fill the lake with wild-fowl; 
 
 Fill the marsh with snipe. 
 
 Let the luscious South-wind 
 
 Breathe in lovers' sighs. 
 While the lazy gallants 
 
 Bask in ladies' eyes. 
 What does he but soften 
 
 Heart alike and pen"? 
 'Tis the hard grey weather 
 
 Breeds hard English men. 
 What's the soft South-wester? 
 
 'Tis the ladies' breeze 
 Bringing home their true loves 
 
 Out of all the seas. 
 But the black North-easter, 
 
 Through the snowstorm hurled. 
 Drives our English hearts of oak 
 
 Seaward round the world. 
 Come, as came our fathers. 
 
 Heralded by thee 
 Conquering from the eastward, 
 
 Lords by land and sea. 
 Come; and strong within us 
 
 Stir the Vikings' blood; 
 Bracing brain and sinew ; 
 Blow, thou wind of God! 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 287 
 
 Of course the whole force of the poem is in the last seven 
 or eight lines, but these are grand. There is an allusion 
 here to the old Viking custom of going to sea in a storm. 
 They did not attack a coast in fine weather; they came 
 only in the time of terrible storms, when nobody was ex- 
 pecting them, and when the watchmen were driven away 
 from the coasts by the wild weather. Somewhere or other 
 Prof. Saintsbury criticised the last line of the poem as very 
 strange, probably because it was written by a Christian 
 clergyman; for here destroying force is called divine — a 
 creed much more of the old Norse than of Christianity. 
 But Kingsley's Christianity was very Norse in many re- 
 spects; he would have said that might is right, when the 
 might has been acquired by self-control and power to bear 
 pain. And, after all, we find a very similar thought even 
 in the poems of the gentle Quaker Whittier: 
 
 The vigour of the Northern brain 
 Shall nerve the world outworn. 
 
 At all events, Kingsley's influence in making Englishmen 
 proud of their Norse ancestry has been a healthy one, how- 
 ever it might be judged from a severely orthodox stand- 
 point. As a clergyman and a teacher he was never afraid 
 to take up any subject that he thought beautiful, whether 
 very religious people approved of it or not. A fair example 
 is the story of the search for King Harold's body on 
 the field of battle. The body was so disfigured by wounds 
 that even his own mother could not recognise him. There 
 was only one person in the world who could identify 
 Harold's corpse — that was his mistress. She was sent 
 for. The story is very beautifully told in Kingsley's 
 verse : 
 
 Evil sped the battle play 
 
 On the Pope Calixtus' day ; 
 
 Mighty war-smiths, thanes and lords, 
 
288 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 In Senlac slept the sleep of swords. 
 Harold Earl, shot over shield, 
 Lay along the autumn weald, 
 Slaughter such was never none, 
 Since the Ethelings England won. 
 Thither Lady Githa came. 
 Weeping sore for grief and shame; 
 How may she her first-born tell? 
 Frenchmen stript him where he fell. 
 Gashed and marred his comely face ; 
 Who can know him in his place? 
 
 Up and spake two brethren wise, 
 "Youngest hearts have keenest eyes ; 
 Bird which leaves its mother's nest 
 Moults its pinions, moults its crest; 
 Let us call the Swan-Neck here. 
 She that was his leman dear ; 
 She shall know him in this stound ; 
 Foot of wolf, and scent of hound, 
 Eye of hawk, and wing of dove. 
 Carry woman to her love." 
 
 Up and spake the Swan-Neck high, 
 "Go ! to all your thanes let cry 
 How I loved him best of all, 
 I whom men his leman call ; 
 Better knew his body fair 
 Than the mother which him bare. 
 When ye lived in wealth and glee. 
 Then ye scorned to look on me; 
 God hath brought the proud ones low. 
 After me afoot to go." 
 
 Rousing erne and sallow glede, 
 Over franklin, earl, and thane, 
 Heaps of mother-naked slain. 
 Round the red field tracing slow. 
 Stooped that Swan-Neck white as snow, 
 Never blushed nor turned away. 
 Till she found him where he lay; 
 Clipt him in her armes fair, 
 Wrapped him in her yellow hair. 
 Bore him from the battle-stead 
 Saw him laid in pall of lead. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 289 
 
 Took her to a minster high, 
 For Earl Harold's soul to cry. 
 
 Thus fell Harold, bracelet-giver ; 
 Jesu rest his soul forever; 
 Angels all from thrall deliver; 
 Miserere Domine I 
 
 This is of course an imitation of the old ballad forms, 
 so far as language goes, hence the few curious Middle Eng- 
 lish words. But without any appearance of effort, and 
 without any attempt at decorative expression, the result 
 is very pathetic and powerful, all the more powerful, per- 
 haps, because we know that the incident is true. "Swan- 
 Neck" was a pet name only, given because she had a very 
 beautiful long neck. The poet has not mentioned one cruel 
 fact, that William the Conqueror would not allow Harold 
 to be buried in a churchyard. So he was buried on the sea- 
 shore. 
 
 By this time I think you will see how very clever Kings- 
 ley is in the art of touching emotions with simple words. 
 Had he had the time to devote himself to the ballad form, 
 which he loved, I think he would have done much greater 
 things than Whittier, in the same direction of emotional and 
 religious song. As it is, a few of the things which he did 
 in this form are puzzlingly beautiful ; it is hard to find out 
 how the effect has been produced. It is not art of words 
 so much as pure feeling, always expressed in the briefest 
 possible way. I do not know any simple ballad, in mod- 
 em poetry, more touching than the little composition called 
 "The Mango Tree." But how the emotion is produced, 
 how the art is inspired, you must feel for yourselves. The 
 subject is the commonest possible, the story of a soldier's 
 wife in India. She followed the army in its wanderings 
 about the world, and she lost her husband and all her chil- 
 dren by fever at some Indian station. I suppose you know 
 that common English soldiers are allowed to marry under 
 
290 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 certain conditions, and the government pays for the travel- 
 ling expenses of the woman and the children. We have 
 here only the thoughts of a very simple mind, remember- 
 ing the past, but how touching the remembrance is : 
 
 He wiled me through the furzy croft; 
 
 He wiled me down the sandy lane. 
 He told his boy's love, soft and oft, 
 
 Until I told him mine again. 
 
 Probably a village on the Scotch coast is here intended; it 
 is certainly suggested by the use of the adjective furzy; 
 and the term "sandy lane" suggests the proximity of the sea. 
 Observe there is a very little in this first stanza as it stands; 
 but at the end of the poem you will see what use it really 
 has. 
 
 We married, and we sailed the main; 
 
 A soldier, and a soldier's wife. 
 We marched through many a burning plain ; 
 
 We sighed for many a gallant life. 
 
 But his — God kept it safe from harm. 
 
 He toiled and dared, and earned command; 
 And those three stripes upon his arm 
 
 Were more to me than gold or land. 
 
 Sure he would win some great renown; 
 
 Our lives were strong, our hearts were high; 
 One night the fever struck him down, 
 
 I sat, and stared, and saw him die. 
 
 I had his children — one, two, three. 
 
 One week I had them, blithe and sound, 
 The next — beneath this mango-tree. 
 
 By him in barrack burying-ground. 
 
 I sit beneath the mango-shade ; 
 
 I live my five years' life all o'er — 
 Round yonder stems his children played; 
 
 He mounted guard at yonder door. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 291 
 
 'Tis I, not they, am gone and dead. 
 
 They live ; they know ; they feel ; they see. 
 Their spirits light the golden shade 
 
 Beneath the giant mango-tree. 
 
 All things, save I, are full of life ; 
 
 The minas, pluming velvet breasts. 
 The monkeys, in their foolish strife. 
 
 The swooping hawks, the swinging nests ; 
 
 The lizards basking on the soil, 
 
 The butterflies who sun their wings ; 
 The bees about their household toil. 
 
 They live, they love, the blissful things. 
 
 Each tender purple mango-shoot. 
 
 That folds and droops so bashful down ; 
 
 It lives ; it sucks some hidden root ; 
 It rears at last a broad green crown. 
 
 It blossoms; and the children cry — 
 "Watch when the mango-apples fall." 
 
 It lives : but, rootless, fruitless, I — 
 I breathe and dream ; — and that is all. 
 
 Thus am I dead ; yet cannot die : 
 
 But still within my foolish brain 
 There hangs a pale blue evening sky ; 
 
 A furzy croft, a sandy lane. 
 
 The pathos here is not so much in the natural thoughts, 
 touching as these are ; it is in the sudden return to the Scotch 
 memory described in the very first stanza, the sudden con- 
 trast between the burning colours and the fantastic splen- 
 dour of that tropical scenery beheld with the eyes, and that 
 pale Scotch scenery of five years before beheld in the 
 mind. This is a bit of great poetical skill; and I do not 
 know whether Wordsworth was ever equally successful in 
 the use of the same art of contrast. I suppose that you 
 remember his study of the servant girl in London hearing 
 a caged bird sing, and seeing at once through the gloom 
 
292 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 of the ugly streets the bright fields where she used to play 
 as a child. Nevertheless, that little poem about the serv- 
 ant girl and the thrush does not reach the heart like the 
 last stanza of Kingsley's "Mango-tree." 
 
 I shall make only one more quotation before turning to 
 the subject of Kingsley's classical verse. Both in his novels 
 and in his poems he appears to us as a constant observer of 
 small things having philosophical meanings. Nature spoke 
 to him with the lisping of leaves, the murmuring of streams, 
 the humming of bees; even the sunlight upon the rocks had 
 a message for him. But sights and sound which are beauti- 
 ful in themselves influence every poet. The surprise is 
 when we find Kingsley extracting poetry from the vulgar 
 or the commonplace. What is less poetical than a field 
 of potatoes or turnips or cabbages *? Yet there is poetry even 
 here for a thinker, as Kingsley teaches us. 
 
 THE POETRY OF A ROOT-CROP 
 
 Underneath their eider-robe 
 Russet swede and golden globe. 
 Feathered carrot, burrowing deep, 
 Steadfast wait in charmed sleep ; 
 Treasure-houses wherein lie, 
 Locked by angels' alchemy, 
 Milk, and hair, and blood, and bone. 
 Children of the barren stone. 
 
 How many of you must have sometimes had a thought 
 like this, without perhaps developing it, while walking 
 about the field of a farmer, either in winter or in summer. 
 The vegetables below there mean many great strange things 
 to the modern dreamer. The substance of them is indeed 
 to become milk and hair and blood and bone, but it is to 
 become even more than that — humajj feeling, human 
 thought. Kingsley calls vegetables children of the stones, 
 because only vegetables can extract the substance of life, 
 protoplasm, from the soil. But even in the dead clay and 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 293 
 
 stones there is life hidden, the same life that beats in our 
 hearts and thinks in our minds. All is life; there is no 
 grander discovery of modern science than the knowledge 
 that the sentient issues from the non-sentient, the con- 
 scious from the unconscious. But there is even more than 
 this thought in the sight of a vegetable field. Not only will 
 all that substance be changed into future human life; but 
 it has been life before, thousands of times, millions of times. 
 Nor are the elements of life within those vegetables derived 
 only from the earth in which thy grow; they are not only 
 children of the barren stone ; they are also : 
 
 Children of the flaming Air, 
 With his blue eye keen and bare, 
 Spirit-peopled smiling down 
 On frozen field and toiling town — 
 Toiling town that will not heed. 
 
 The vegetable grows, you know, not only by taking into it- 
 self material from the earth, but also by absorbing ma- 
 terial from the great blue air, which the poet describes for 
 us as a blue-eyed spirit gazing down upon the world. 
 Such, too, is our own growth, from air and clay. Dying, 
 all life-shapes melt back again, partly into the ground, partly 
 into gasses that mingle with the atmosphere. Thus not 
 only the ground on which we walk is old life, but the air 
 all about us and above us is life also that once was and 
 that will again be. There is really very much to think 
 about in these little verses, not at all so simple in mean- 
 ing as they might at first appear. 
 
 Now let us turn to Kingsley's classical poems. As a 
 dramatist, his long play called "The Saint's Tragedy" is 
 a failure; perhaps it is a failure because it was written for 
 a particular argumentative purpose. Poetry written for any 
 didactic or special purpose is likely to prove a failure. 
 Quite otherwise was it when Kingsley attempted to write 
 great poetry only for the joy of writing and for the beauty 
 
294 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 of the thought in itself. He is, as I told you before, the 
 writer of the best hexameters in the English language, and 
 that is a very great glory. I suppose you know that the 
 hexameter is not considered altogether possible in English; 
 it is a Greek measure, and most of the poets who have tried 
 to write English hexameters have failed. Longfellow's 
 "Evangeline," a beautiful poem emotionally, is a proof of 
 the difficulty of the hexameter, for it is somewhat a failure 
 in its verse form. Tennyson wisely left the hexameter al- 
 most alone. Swinburne succeeded with it upon a small 
 scale; Kingsley succeeded with it upon a very considerable 
 scale. But in both cases this success will be found due, 
 in great part, to the use of Greek words and words of Greek 
 derivation. Even so, the feat is very remarkable in Kings- 
 ley's case. He chose for his subject the story of Perseus 
 and Andromeda, a subject which he has also treated with 
 wonderful beauty in prose; I refer to the story of Perseus 
 in his Greek fairy tales, "The Heroes," one of the most 
 exquisite books ever written. You ought to know some- 
 thing of this story before we make quotations from the 
 verses. The whole of it is too long to tell now, nor is it 
 necessary to tell all, because Kingsley in the poem treats 
 of one episode only, the delivery of Andromeda. 
 
 Andromeda was the most beautiful of maidens in the 
 old Greek story, the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia. One 
 day the Queen rashly said that her daughter was more beau- 
 tiful than the gods, more beautiful than the divinity of 
 the sea. Thereupon the divinity of the sea became angry, 
 and sent a great sea-monster to ravage the coast, as a pun- 
 ishment for the Queen's words. When the cause of this 
 visitation was discovered, the priests decided that Andro- 
 meda should be given to the sea-monster in expiation of 
 the mother's words. Accordingly the girl was chained naked 
 to a rock by the sea-shore. But when the sea-monster came 
 to devour her, she was delivered by the hero Perseus, who 
 came flying over the sea to save her, moving through the 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 2^5 
 
 air on winged sandals of gold, die gift of die gods. The 
 poem treats of the discovery of the Queen's words, the sen- 
 tence of the priests, the chaining of the maiden to the rock, 
 her despair, the passing of the sea-gods, refusing to save 
 her, the coming of Perseus, and the promise of marriage. 
 You know that the Greeks named constellations after their 
 heroes and divinities; and it may interest you to remember 
 that the characters of this beautiful old story appear in 
 the figures of the celestial globe even in these days of mod- 
 ern astronomy. 
 
 Perhaps the best idea of Kingsley's excellence in this 
 verse can be obtained by quoting the passage describing the 
 sea-gods. It is rather long; but I shall only quote a few 
 lines of the best: 
 
 . . . Far off, in the heart of the darkness. 
 Bright white mists rose slowly ; beneath them the wandering ocean 
 Glimmered and glowed to the deepest abyss ; and the knees of the 
 
 maiden 
 Trembled and sank in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the mid- 
 night, 
 Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-maids. 
 Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their 
 
 coming, 
 Watching the bliss of the gods, as they wakened the cliffs with 
 
 their laughter. 
 Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the 
 
 surges 
 Sank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked 
 
 marble. 
 Awed ; and the crags of the cliff, and the pines of the mountain 
 
 were silent. 
 Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the 
 
 sea-nymphs. 
 Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving ; and rainbows 
 Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers.^, 
 
 lighting 
 Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of 
 
 Nereus, 
 Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the 
 
 ocean. 
 
296 CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 
 
 Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which 
 
 they scattered, 
 Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the 
 
 Tritons 
 Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in 
 
 worship 
 Hovered the terns, and the seagulls swept past them on silvery 
 
 pinions, 
 Echoing softly their laughter ; around them the wantoning dolphins 
 Sighed as they plunged, full of love ; and the great sea-horses which 
 
 bore them 
 Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the 
 
 maidens. 
 Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming. 
 Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of 
 
 the mermen. 
 
 This is a fair example, not so much to be admired be- 
 cause it is like a picture by Titian or Giorgione, but be- 
 cause it represents a triumph over a supremely difficult form 
 of verse. I have chosen the extract also because it con- 
 tains fewer Greek words than other parts of the poem, which 
 are otherwise more beautiful — such as the description of the 
 maiden's first sight of Perseus, at the very moment when 
 she is reproaching the gods for their cruel t)^: 
 
 Sudden she ceased, with a shriek: in the spray, like a hovering 
 foam-bow. 
 
 Hung, more fair than the foam-bow, a boy in the bloom of his 
 manhood. 
 
 Golden-haired, ivory-limbed, ambrosial ; over his shoulder 
 
 Hung for a veil of his beauty the gold-fringed folds of the goat- 
 skin. 
 
 The most beautiful word in the above lines is the Greek 
 "'ambrosial" ; it is the value of this word that makes the 
 'line in which it occurs so much more perfect than the 
 -other four. Of course, without the use of many Greek 
 words the poem could not have been written at all; but 
 the longer extract which I gave you contains remarkably 
 few. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY AS POET 297 
 
 My object was to show you by extracts the really im- 
 portant place that Kingsley occupied in nineteenth century 
 literature. It is not a small thing to have written the best 
 songs of the period, songs which have been translated into 
 so many languages ; and it is not a small thing to have writ- 
 ten the best English hexameters. Nor is it common that a 
 man capable of writing an immortal song should also be 
 capable of severe verse. Altogether Kingsley must be con- 
 sidered as a very extraordinary phenomenon, a true genius 
 whose powers were unfortunately prevented by the difficul- 
 ties of life from fully developing themselves. He was like 
 a bird whose wings were clipped. To study him will re- 
 ward you richly, if you will remember his limitations. Do 
 not read his dramatic poem; and do not be shocked by dis- 
 covering in the rest of his work some short poems of no im- 
 portance. It has happened to very few poets in this world 
 to produce work uniformly good. Tennyson did this; Ros- 
 setti did this, or very nearly did it; but scarcely any other 
 has done it. You do not read the whole of Wordsworth, 
 nor of Coleridge, nor of Byron, nor even of Shelley. And 
 for the same reason I should not advise you to read every 
 bit of verse that Kingsley wrote. There is some rubbish. 
 But the jewels among that rubbish have a peculiar colour 
 and splendour that distinguish them from everything else 
 written during the same period. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 For a number of years the prose work of Matthew Arnold 
 has been considered to some degree as affording excellent 
 models of English composition, and his essays have been 
 studied as class texts all over the English-speaking world. 
 I venture to say that this has been a mistake, and that the 
 value of Matthew Arnold's essays has been greatly exag- 
 gerated in regard to the matter of style. Matthew Ar- 
 nold's essays are very valuable indeed, in thought and in- 
 struction, but they are not great models of perfect English ; 
 they do not represent a vigorous nor a clear nor a con- 
 centrated style. It is quite different in regard to his poetry, 
 which is not so well known, but which is steadily growing 
 in the estimation of the literary world. 
 
 Now there are two ways of judging poetry. It is either 
 great or not great by reason of its form or by reason of 
 its thought. And I must tell you that the very greatest mas- 
 ters of form are not likely to -be the very greatest masters 
 of thought. Shakespeare, our greatest genius, is often very 
 deficient in regard to form. The greatest of French poets, 
 Victor Hugo, is a perfect master of form, and a very poor 
 thinker; he is a magician, he is not a philosopher. The 
 greatest of German poets and thinkers of his time, Goethe, 
 a man who excelled in form and thought, said in his old 
 age that if he could begin his literary life again he would 
 give all his attention to the thought, and waste very little 
 time upon the form. Among modem English poets we may 
 take the cases of Browning and George Meredith as opposed 
 to Rossetti and Swinburne. Swinburne is the greatest mas- 
 ter of English verse that ever lived, but he is very unim- 
 
 298 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 299 
 
 portant as a thinker; there are only two or three of his 
 poems in which we find a grand flash of thought. Ros- 
 setti was perhaps the very greatest of our emotional poets 
 during the nineteenth century, and he was nearly as great 
 a master of form as Swinburne; but Rossetti did not teach 
 men to think new thoughts about the great problems of life. 
 He hated science, and he was not, in the modern sense of 
 the word, a philosopher. But Browning and Meredith are 
 philosophers, deep thinkers, great teachers — more especially 
 Meredith. Neither of them was a master of form in the 
 highest meaning of the term. They are both great sinners 
 in the matter of obscurity and imperfect construction. 
 They have followed the suggestion of Goethe to sacrifice the 
 form to the thinking. I should like to be able to speak to 
 you of some poet of our own day who is equally great as a 
 thinker and as a verse-maker, but I cannot cite a single name. 
 The nearest approach to such a person is Tennyson, but as a 
 thinker Tennyson is much below Meredith. We have to 
 take our choice in this world between two kinds of perfec- 
 tion in poetry which are seldom united in any one individual. 
 In considering Matthew Arnold as a poet we must bear this 
 in mind. 
 
 For Arnold cannot be placed among the great masters of 
 form. He is very uninteresting in regard to form. It is 
 chiefly as a thinker that we must study him, as a thinker 
 of a very peculiar kind. Not for a moment could we place 
 him upon the same level as George Meredith. His value is 
 not the value of an expositor of new ideas, but the value of 
 the man himself, a personal value, a value of character. 
 Again, this character is not important because it is extremely 
 original; quite the contrary. It is because Matthew Ar- 
 nold's character and way of thinking faithfully represent 
 hundreds of thousands of similar characters and similar ways 
 of thinking during the middle of the present century, the 
 thought of cultivated minds. In this class there was a great 
 deal of solid thinking done, thinking based upon the whole 
 
300 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 experience of the past — the moral experience of the English 
 race. Macaulay's essays take much of their value from this 
 kind of thinking. It is not new, but it is very good, very 
 true in a certain sense, and likely to remain so for thou- 
 sands of years to come. So we find the poetry of Matthew 
 Arnold to be valuable as a crystallisation of the best think- 
 ing of the time. 
 
 But now we must say a word about the time. It was 
 the time of Darwin and Spencer, when evolutional phi- 
 losophy first began to upset old doctrines and to shake the 
 faith of the educated classes. It was the time also of the 
 Oxford movement toward a new religious spirit — I might 
 say toward a religious revival. For the sudden introduc- 
 tion of new and startling ideas must always produce two 
 effects. One effect is to destroy old ways of feeling and 
 thinking. The other effect is to create a violent reaction 
 in favour of them. And the middle of the century wit- 
 nessed both of these effects. Among the university men of 
 Arnold's time there were three attitudes of mind. The 
 strong men, like Clifford, went over to the new philosophy 
 altogether. Less strong minds became frightened and fled 
 for refuge into religious circles. Between these two there 
 was a very remarkable class of young students, who were 
 profoundly religious in feeling but much too intelligent 
 to refuse to understand the new methods of science. They 
 could not continue to believe in the old way, and yet the 
 new way caused them terrible sorrow and pain. Intel- 
 lectually they were sceptics; emotionally and by inheritance 
 they were intensely religious. 
 
 Persons of this kind suffered much from the conflict 
 between their natural character and their fresh convictions. 
 Most noteworthy among them were Arthur Hugh Clough 
 and Matthew Arnold. Both became poets, both expressed 
 their feelings and thoughts in very good verse, but Matthew 
 Arnold was altogether the greater man, and left the deeper 
 mark upon the literature of his time. He was born in 1822 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 301 
 
 and died in 1888, so that he enjoyed a fairly long life. It 
 was not, however, a happy life. He was a son of Dr. Ar- 
 nold, perhaps the greatest English educator in modern 
 times. Dr. Arnold laid down a plan for teaching which is 
 still followed, which will probably continue to be followed 
 for all time in the best English schools. He taught that 
 education itself, in the sense of learning from books or lec- 
 tures, was a very secondary matter, and that the first and 
 most important matter was the formation of character. 
 He was a Christian, of course, but he was not a sectarian 
 in the narrow sense of the term, and his plan of education 
 was not religious at all. It was based upon the simplest 
 rules of social morality. But as a matter of fact, to be 
 good in this world is an extremely difficult thing; and it 
 was to cultivate a knowledge of this difficulty and a knowl- 
 edge of how to meet it that Dr. Arnold changed the sys- 
 tem of education in those institutions which he controlled. 
 It was very important that a young man should study well 
 and obey the rules, but Dr. Arnold taught that it was more 
 important for the student to learn how to master himself 
 and how to be a great man and a gentleman outside of the 
 class room and outside of the college. Matthew Arnold 
 was severely trained by his father in this way, and he went 
 to Oxford a model of everything that his father could have 
 desired. There, after having distinguished himself, having 
 won several prizes in various literary studies, he graduated, 
 and soon afterwards obtained the position of Inspector of 
 Schools. He kept this position until the time of his death, 
 but after middle life he was also Professor of Poetry at 
 Oxford. All his literary work of importance was done 
 somewhat later than one might suppose; it would indeed 
 seem as if he had never wished to become a poet until after 
 he had ceased to be a young man. These simple facts will 
 help us to explain the very remarkable merits and shortcom- 
 ing of his verse. 
 
 You will see that Matthew Arnold's intellectual and re- 
 
302 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 ligious training must have been rather of the eighteenth 
 than of the nineteenth century. His great father, with all 
 his greatness, was essentially a man of the old traditions, a 
 man who belonged in principles and in feelings rather to 
 the time of Dr. Johnson than to the time of the Lake poets. 
 The principles and the feelings were right and true, but in 
 form they were old-fashioned. To understand the position 
 of Matthew Arnold in a period of transition, you must imag- 
 ine the son of an old-fashioned samurai^ educated strictly 
 according to the ancient system, and then suddenly intro- 
 duced to the new condition of mei]i. Such a one would 
 necessarily suffer not a little in this new order of things. 
 So it was with Matthew Arnold. He had been made a per- 
 fect gentleman, a true man, a good scholar, but he had not 
 been prepared for the times of Darwin and Spencer and 
 Huxley. Neither had he been prepared for the new feeling 
 in poetry and in other branches of literature. By heredity 
 and sentiment he was essentially religious ; yet his religious 
 ideas were necessarily changed by the new learning. By 
 heredity and education he was essentially classic; yet he 
 found himself suddenly placed in the middle of the ro- 
 mantic movement in literature. And what is more worth 
 while for you to know than anything else, his duties were 
 of the most monotonous and unsympathetic kind. There is 
 no position more tiresome, more uninviting, more hopeless 
 for a man of original power than the position of Inspector 
 of Schools. But Matthew Arnold remained in that posi- 
 tion during the rest of his life. Thus he was out of sympa- 
 thy with the thought of his age in philosophy, with the 
 literature of his age in poetry, and with the very conditions 
 upon which his living depended. 
 
 If I have kept you thus upon the subject of the man's 
 life, it is only because you should understand very clearly 
 Matthew Arnold's curious position in English poetry. Our 
 nineteenth century has been especially the century of the 
 romantic movement in poetry. Even Wordsworth, with 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 303 
 
 all his seriousness, was romantic. Byron, Shelley, Keats, 
 Coleridge, Southey, all were romantics. And the great 
 Victorian poets brought the romantic feeling to its highest 
 possible degree of perfected expression. It would be hard 
 to mention any great poet of the century who escaped the 
 new influences. Even Matthew Arnold could not alto- 
 gether escape them, but he had no sympathy with them — 
 he disliked even Tennyson; and the all-important fact about 
 Matthew Arnold for you to remember is that he remains a 
 classical spirit in the middle of the romantic movement. 
 
 A good deal of his poetry reflects, as you might expect, 
 his dissatisfaction with the new order of things, and with 
 the tendency to new ways of thinking and feeling. One 
 of his earliest poems bears witness to his sentiment in this 
 regard. He had heard a clergyman of liberal tendencies 
 utter some advice to his congregation about life in harmony 
 with nature ; and this advice, probably inspired by the same 
 kind of feeling which characterises the teaching of Rous- 
 seau, at once aroused his indignation, as the following verses 
 testify. 
 
 IN HARMONY WITH NATURE 
 (to a preacher) 
 
 "In harmony with Nature?" Restless fool, 
 
 Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee. 
 
 When true, the last impossibility — 
 
 To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool ! 
 
 Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, 
 And in that more lie all his hopes of good. 
 Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood ; 
 Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore ; 
 
 Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest; 
 Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave ; 
 Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest. 
 
 Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends ; 
 Nature and man can never be fast friends. 
 Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave! 
 
304 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 This is fine, and, in a particular sense, it is very true. If 
 we understand by Nature merely the creating and destroy- 
 ing forces of the universe, we can understand the poet's in- 
 dignation. The great thinker Huxley well said, that if 
 humanity were simply to follow the laws of Nature in this 
 sense, the successful man in the world would be the man 
 with the strongest muscles and the hardest heart — in other 
 words, one would have to become a cruel brute to succeed 
 in life. The same teacher has also boldly said that every- 
 thing good in human nature has been made not by acting 
 according to the laws of the universe, but by opposing them, 
 by fighting against them, by resisting them even in the face 
 of death. When Matthew Arnold tells us, however, that 
 man has something more than Nature has, we see there 
 something of religious feeling expressing itself. A much 
 greater man than Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare, better said 
 that the highest excellencies of man, however supernatural 
 they may seem, have been made by Nature. The whole 
 meaning of poetry like this, the whole value of it, depends 
 upon how one understands the word Nature. Huxley 
 could make the observation which I have quoted, only after 
 he had clearly defined what he meant by Nature. Nature 
 can seem to the popular imagination something distinct 
 from intelligent life and moral feeling. But Huxley re- 
 minds us at the same time that the opinion of Shakespeare 
 is a correct one. All life throughout the universe is one, 
 and Nature, in the modem scientific sense, would mean the 
 universe itself. A pupil of the new philosophy would 
 solve the riddle in this way: "It is true that man has be- 
 come moral by resisting certain natural impulses, but even 
 his resistance was compelled by other eternal and natural 
 laws." What Nature really says to man is this : "It is not 
 enough to obey me when you find an inclination to do it; 
 it is much more important to disobey me — to make yourself 
 strong with constant wrestling with me. I love only those 
 who can fight me well." Nor is this all. Nature helps us 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 305 
 
 to do this fighting against her own impulses. Consider the 
 most powerful of human passions, the sexual instinct; this 
 is natural, most certainly, and the natural tendency is to 
 indulge it. But without talking about reason at all, we 
 have other natural impulses given us to oppose selfish in- 
 dulgence even in this direction. For example, there is the 
 love of children — maternal and paternal affection. These 
 forms of affection are equally natural, and yet they more 
 than anything else prevent either men or animals from com- 
 mitting certain forms of sexual excess. The love of off- 
 spring acts as a check upon the very impulse that produces 
 the offspring, it makes the family, and the family depends 
 upon the observance of certain moral obligations. Again, 
 we have all of us the instinct of revenge, which is natural, 
 and which has its uses even in the formation of society. It 
 is natural that a man should strike back when he is struck. 
 But he must not gratify even his natural instinct beyond 
 a certain extent. For there is in all men the instinct also 
 of self-preservation, and when a man indulges revenge be- 
 yond a certain limit, all men become afraid of him, and kill 
 him in order to protect themselves. Their action is quite 
 as natural as the action of the man to strike. There is no 
 form of virtue which would not, upon close examination, 
 be found quite as natural as the vice which is opposed to it. 
 Nature gives both, like the God of the Hebrews, who says, 
 'T am the Lord thy God, creating both good and evil." 
 And, therefore, I should certainly think that the preacher 
 thus criticised by Matthew Arnold was nearer to the truth 
 than his critic. But mediaeval religion regarded Nature as 
 a kind of demon, inspiring the evil passions only, and the 
 poet argues only from the mediseval standpoint. If the 
 preacher meant, with Shakespeare, that "Nature is made 
 better by no means, but Nature makes that means," then, I 
 should say, his position was beyond criticism. It is not a 
 case of human choice at all ; we must live in harmony with 
 Nature, or else disappear from the face of the earth. But: 
 
S06 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 when we recognise this, we must recognise also that Nature 
 makes morality, and Matthew Arnold could not recognise 
 that. His thoughts were in the eighteenth century. 
 
 He was much happier in his philosophy when he wrote 
 from the results of personal experience, not from the results 
 of theory. At an early time he thought, for example, of 
 what the pains of life mean — of the difficulty of being 
 good, of the impossibility of obtaining more than one is 
 really fitted for. He recognised a certain terrible Justice 
 in the very Nature that he had spoken ill of. A man's 
 chances in this world really depend very much upon his per- 
 sonal power, more so in Western countries even than in 
 Japan. But one of the last things which a man can learn 
 is the extent of his weakness. A young man scarcely ever 
 discovers this. If young men really knew their weaknesses, 
 their deficiencies, their ignorance, they never could succeed 
 in life; such knowledge would make them afraid. But 
 after the great struggle is over, then they learn why many 
 things happened to them which they formerly thought un- 
 just and cruel and wicked. They begin to understand that 
 their own deficiencies were in great part the reason of their 
 sorrows and of their failures. Oriental philosophy meets 
 the puzzle of life better than Western religion in this re- 
 gard. It teaches that the misfortunes of this life are con- 
 sequent upon faults committed in former lives; modern 
 science, in other language, teaches exactly the same thing. 
 The best things are for the strong man; if the man is not 
 strong, that is the fault of the race from which he springs, 
 the consequence of something that happened perhaps hun- 
 dreds of years before he was born. In a little poem called 
 "Human Life" Matthew Arnold expresses a dim perception 
 of the truth. 
 
 What mortal, when he saw 
 Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, 
 Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly: 
 "I have kept uninfringed my nature's law; 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 307 
 
 The dimly-written chart thou gavest me, 
 To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end?" 
 
 Ah ! let us make no claim, 
 
 On life's incognisable sea. 
 
 To too exact a steering of our way ; 
 
 Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim, 
 
 If some fair coast have lured us to make stay, 
 
 Or some friend hail'd us to keep company. 
 
 Ay ! we would each fain drive 
 
 At random, and not steer by rule. 
 
 Weakness ! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vam. 
 
 Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive. 
 
 We rush by coasts where we had lief remain ; 
 
 Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool. 
 
 No ! as the foaming swath 
 
 Of torn-up water, on the main, 
 
 Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar, 
 
 On either side the black deep-furrowed path 
 
 Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore, 
 
 And never touches the ship-side again ; 
 
 Even so we leave behind. 
 
 As, charter'd by some unknown Powers, 
 
 We stem across the sea of life by night, 
 
 The joys which were not for our use design'd ; — 
 
 The friends to whom we had no natural right, 
 
 The homes that were not destined to be ours. 
 
 This grave poetry is not attractive at first sight, neither 
 is it easy to understand. But when we examine it pa- 
 tiently, we shall find that it repays study. Let us para- 
 phrase it: What man after his death could dare to say to 
 God, "I have never done anything wrong, I have always 
 obeyed my conscience'"? We must not pretend to be too 
 good, we do not know anything about the secrets of this 
 great sea of life upon which we sail, and we must not be 
 afraid of our mistakes in youth. If we have sometimes 
 
308 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 yielded to temptation caused by beauty or friendship, we 
 need not on that account despair. 
 
 Why? Simply because we cannot do as we would alto- 
 gether, either in the direction of right or wrong. Of 
 course we should like to do as we please, instead of follow- 
 ing rules. But that is useless and foolish. Whatever we, 
 wish, good or bad, our wishes are not likely to be gratified. 
 If we love a woman who is not suited to us — either because 
 she is too good or because we are too bad, the result is sepa- 
 ration. If we want to live in some beautiful place where 
 our lives would not be useful, we find that we cannot stop 
 there. There is a law that governs everything which we do, 
 and it is quite impossible for men to escape that law. 
 
 Just as the water that is cut by a ship closes again after 
 the ship passes, and never again touches that ship, so each 
 man, as he passes over the great sea of life, has to leave 
 behind him everything that according to the eternal law of 
 fitness he ought not to have. He would like to have cer- 
 tain men as friends, but he is not naturally fitted to become 
 intimate with them, therefore he cannot have their friend- 
 ship. He wishes for certain pleasures, but if his natural 
 capacities have not entitled him to such pleasures, he will 
 never obtain them. He would like to have a beautiful 
 home; that also is a wish only to be gratified in the case of 
 men of larger powers. He must remember, to console him- 
 self, that he is only indeed a ship chartered to cross the sea 
 of life and death, and to follow a fixed course. That is his 
 destiny — not a blind destiny, but a destiny evolved by his 
 own past history, by his own inheritance of greater or of 
 less ability than his fellow man. 
 
 This is sad in tone, but it is also wise and true. Equally 
 true is a piece upon the folly of prayer. Did you ever think 
 what could happen if the gods were to answer all the 
 prayers that are made to them every day*? The world 
 would be very soon destroyed. For example, in Western 
 countries all Christian people every day pray for food, that 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 309 
 
 they may have enough to eat. If they did have all the 
 food which they desired, the result would be an enormous 
 increase of population that could only end in misery, war, 
 or destruction of some horrible kind. Again, who does not 
 pray for long life? But many of the miseries of this world 
 are caused by excess of population, and if all men could live 
 as long as they wish, the world would eventually become 
 unendurable. People do not often think about these things, 
 and Matthew Arnold is one of the very few who make us 
 think about them. In a poem called "Consolation" he 
 makes a series of little pictures of life in different parts of 
 the world, and shows us how in each of these places people 
 are praying to the gods, and how all the prayers contradict 
 each other. The poem is a little too long to quote complete, 
 but we may cite the verses about young lovers which con- 
 clude the composition. 
 
 Two young, fair lovers, 
 Where the warm June-wind, 
 Fresh from the summer fields 
 Plays fondly round them, 
 Stand, tranced in joy. 
 
 With sweet, join'd voices. 
 And with eyes brimming; 
 "Ah," they cry, "Destiny," 
 Prolong the present! 
 Time ! stand still here !" 
 
 The prompt stern Goddess 
 Shakes her head, frowning; 
 Time givec his hour-glass 
 Its due reversal ; 
 Their hour is gone. 
 
 With weak indulgence 
 Did the just Goddess 
 Lengthen their happiness, 
 She lengthen'd also 
 Distress elsewhere. 
 
310 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 The hour, whose happy 
 Unalloy'd moments 
 I would eternalise, 
 Ten thousand mourners 
 Well pleased see end. 
 
 The bleak, stern hour, 
 Whose severe moments 
 I would annihilate. 
 Is pass'd by others 
 In warmth, light, joy. 
 
 Time, so complain'd of. 
 Who to no one man 
 Shows partiality, 
 Brings round to all men 
 Some undimm'd hours. 
 
 This has the value of suggestion more than of poetical 
 art, as we generally understand the term, but even consid- 
 ered only as form it is admirably and severely correct. 
 Cold Matthew Arnold's poetry certainly is, but it makes us 
 think. As I said before, he is especially successful in tell- 
 ing the result of his own mental experience, and this is an 
 instance. Evidently he has thought a great deal about the 
 world in relation to human will, and has recognised that 
 none of us could have our desires fulfilled, except at the 
 expense of some other person's happiness. We recognise 
 this truth in more familiar ways every day. For example, 
 when we regret that the weather is rainy instead of fine, 
 we do not reflect that this rain which spoils our pleasure is 
 bringing fertility to the crops, benefit to farmers. Also we 
 soon learn that a man sometimes cannot become rich, unless 
 somebody else becomes poor. But we are not apt to remem- 
 ber, as we ought to do, that many of our wishes fall under the 
 same universal law. What we wish for can often be ob- 
 tained only at somebody else's cost. After all, the world is 
 not so very bad, for even the most unfortunate among us 
 have some bright, or, as the poet calls them, undimmed hours. 
 
 The preceding verses are, I must tell you, rather cheerful, 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 311 
 
 considering how very gloomy much of Matthew Arnold's 
 poetry is. But it is in his glooms and shadows that his best 
 work is, the work which affords food for thought because 
 it has grown out of the memories and personal sufferings 
 of the man. As an example of warmer feeling in the same 
 melancholy direction, there is nothing more touching than 
 the little poem which he calls "The Voice." Have you 
 ever noted that a voice is one of those things that longest 
 remain in memory *? Sometimes even after we have for- 
 gotten the face of some dead friend, forgotten even his 
 name, kind words which he spoke to us continue to resound 
 in our remembrance, with the very same tone in which they 
 were uttered. The poet here is speaking, however, about 
 the voice of a dead woman, remembered in his old age. 
 This woman very often appears in his poems, a girl — a 
 French girl, probably — whom he met when he was very 
 young, and whom he was only prevented from marrying by 
 reason of some social obstacle, we know not what, perhaps 
 duty, perhaps want of money, I shall quote only two 
 stanzas. The last is more than beautiful. 
 
 Like bright waves that fall 
 
 With a lifelike motion 
 
 On the lifeless margin of the sparkling Ocean ; 
 
 A wild rose climbing up a mouldering wall — 
 
 A gush of sunbeams through a ruin'd hall — 
 
 Strains of glad music at a funeral — 
 
 So sad, and with so wild a start 
 
 To this deep-sober'd heart, 
 
 So anxiously and painfully, 
 
 So drearily and doubtfully, 
 
 And oh, with such intolerable change 
 
 Of thought, such contrast strange, 
 
 O unforgotten voice, thy accents come, 
 
 Like wanderers from the world's extremity, 
 
 Unto their ancient home ! 
 
 In vain, all, all in vain. 
 
 They beat upon mine ear again, 
 
3ia MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 Those melancholy tones so sweet and still. 
 
 Those lute-like tones which in the bygone year 
 
 Did steal into mine ear — 
 
 Blew such a thrilling summons to my will, 
 
 Yet could not shake it, 
 
 Made my tost heart its very life-blood spill, 
 
 Yet could not break it. 
 
 Why these comparisons about the breaking waves on a 
 dreadful shore, about roses blooming on broken walls, sun- 
 light in a ruined chamber, music at a funeral'? Because 
 the time of youth and hope and love is utterly dead, and 
 the memory of the voice recalling it also recalls years of 
 pain, but not of joy. The contrast between what is and 
 what might have been is itself, as Dante teaches in a certain 
 immortal verse, the greatest of all sorrows. The voice re- 
 ferred to might have said, "Take me I I can make your 
 life beautiful — I am youth, love, and happiness." But 
 duty would have said, "Impossible." The poem suggests 
 the desperate character of the struggle between inclination 
 and reason. Reason proved the stronger, duty was obeyed, 
 but at how terrible a cost. The reference to the breaking 
 of the heart becomes very pathetic if you understand that 
 the English phrase "to break one's heart" signifies to die 
 of grief. The line "yet could not break it" implies a wish 
 to die of the struggle instead of living to endure all its 
 consequences. 
 
 The meditative character in Matthew Arnold's poetry, 
 in its most personal form, is also beautifully shown in a 
 composition recording his thoughts while listening to the 
 roar of the sea at night. This piece is called "Dover 
 Beach," but the incident might be anywhere, on any coast 
 in the world, in Japan as well as in England. There is only 
 the presentation of thoughts awakened by the sound of the 
 sea in the mind of a scholar and a doubter. 
 
 The sea is calm to-night. 
 
 The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET SIS 
 
 Upon the straits; — on the French coast the light 
 
 Gleams and is gone ; the cliffs of England stand, 
 
 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 
 
 Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 
 
 Only from the long line of spray 
 
 Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, 
 
 Listen! you hear the grating roar 
 
 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 
 
 At their return, up the high strand, 
 
 Begin, and cease, and then again begin. 
 
 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
 
 The eternal note of sadness in. 
 
 Sophocles long ago 
 
 Heard it on the ^Egaean, and it brought 
 
 Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
 
 Of human misery; we 
 
 Find also in the sound a thought, 
 
 Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 
 
 The Sea of Faith 
 
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
 
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 
 
 But now I only hear 
 
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 
 
 Retreating to the breath 
 
 Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
 
 And naked shingles of the world. 
 
 Ah, love, let us be true 
 
 To one another ! for the world, which seems 
 
 To lie before us like a land of dreamy. 
 
 So various, so beautiful, so new, 
 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. 
 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 
 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain 
 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night. 
 
 We may paraphrase a part of this, the better to show its 
 beauty and its relation to the writer's own experience. 
 Telling us to listen to the sound of the waves, he thus pro- 
 
314 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 ceeds: "Thousands of years ago, by the shores of the 
 Greek sea, the great poet and dramatist Sophocles listened 
 to that sound as we are doing now and it made him think 
 of the great sea of life, with all its confused sounds of joy 
 and pain. We also in this nineteenth century can find in 
 that sound something to think about, just as Sophocles did, 
 although the world has greatly changed since his time, and 
 although this is not the warm coast of Greece, but the cold 
 Northern shore of England. 
 
 "I hear the roar of the retreating tide, fainter and fainter 
 as the moments pass. Then it seems to me that I am listen- 
 ing, not to the sounds of the sea on the English coast, but 
 to the sound of the ebbing of the great sea of religion. 
 Once men believed in God and a future life; once Chris- 
 tianity covered the whole world like the water of a sea. 
 But to-day in the age of new philosophy, in this age of sci- 
 entific doubt, the tide of religious faith is beginning to ebb 
 away, leaving only naked barren sands and stones behind it. 
 
 "Then let us who love each other, draw close to each 
 other. There is nothing left in this world but friendship 
 and love. For all that the world promises of pleasure, 
 proves to be empty and worthless, and there is really no 
 beauty nor glory, nor rest nor happiness, no certainty and 
 no God to pray to. We are like people alone in darkness 
 in the middle of a great plain, where armies are fighting 
 without light." 
 
 To an Oriental thinker, I fancy, the sound of the sea by 
 night would bring suggestions of the great sea of birth and 
 death, in which suggestion there is much consolation of a 
 certain kind. Feeling that we are a part of the sea that 
 has no shore, no beginning, and no end, we cannot feel 
 very anxious or very unhappy about the future. The fact 
 that we now exist is proof positive that we have always 
 / existed; it is equal proof that we never can cease to exist. 
 
 To-day this would be the position of the most advanced 
 Western philosopher. But Matthew Arnold's time was the 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 315 
 
 interval between the death of old ideas and the birth of 
 new convictions. And men of such a time are likely to be 
 very unhappy. A man who trusts entirely to religion, to 
 belief in God and Heaven and the reward of good conduct, 
 becomes utterly miserable if he suddenly discovers that he 
 cannot longer believe the doctrines which once gave him so 
 much consolation. This poem expresses faithfully and 
 painfully the thoughts of many men of that time. 
 
 But it also expresses something more — the melancholy of 
 old age. You may have read of what are called the "dis- 
 illusions of a man of fifty." I do not think that any of 
 you could exactly understand what the phrase means, for 
 the simple reason that none of you is fifty. But you can 
 imagine a good deal about it. When a man has lived for 
 fifty years in this world, he has learned a great many things 
 that never could be learned from books, some things which 
 are not pleasant to learn and which make him serious. He 
 cannot trust his fellow men as he did in other times, because 
 he has learned a great deal about human motives and human 
 weaknesses. He cannot believe in a great many things 
 which it is happiness to believe in, because these have been 
 proved impossible by his personal experience. He has 
 learned that scarcely any honest ambition can be gratified 
 except at such a cost that the result is not worth struggling 
 for. And then his capacity for pleasure has become very 
 much lessened. I do not mean only that his bodily strength 
 has been diminished and his passions impaired, but I mean 
 especially that his mind has become less sensitive either to 
 pleasure or to pain. The sweet fresh air that delights the 
 boy, the beauty of a summer sunset or an autumn afternoon, 
 the singing of birds, the blossoming of flowers — all these 
 make very little impression upon the man who is beginning 
 to grow old. And Matthew Arnold is, I think, almost the 
 only Englishman who has written a poem- upon the subject. 
 Of course he is expressing only his own feeling, but this is 
 the feeling of thousands and thousands who have attempted 
 
S16 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 to do what he tried to do, and who have failed even more 
 than he failed. 
 
 GROWING OLD 
 
 What is it to grow old? 
 
 Is it to lose the glory of the form, 
 
 The lustre of the eye"? 
 
 Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? 
 
 — Yes, but not this alone. 
 
 Is it to feel our strength — 
 
 Not our bloom only, but our strength — decay? 
 
 Is it to feel each limb 
 
 Grow stiffer, every function less exact. 
 
 Each nerve more loosely strung? 
 
 Yes, this, and more; but not 
 
 Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be I 
 
 'Tis not to have our life 
 
 Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset-glow, 
 
 A golden day's decline. 
 
 'Tis not to see the world 
 
 As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, 
 
 And heart profoundly stirr'd ; 
 
 And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, 
 
 The years that are no more. 
 
 It is to spend long days 
 
 And not once feel that we were ever young ; 
 
 It is to add, immured 
 
 In the hot prison of the present, month 
 
 To month with weary pain. 
 
 It is to suffer this, 
 
 And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. 
 
 Deep in our hidden heart 
 
 Festers the dull remembrance of a change, 
 
 But no emotion — none. 
 
 It is — last stage of all — 
 
 When we are frozen up within, and quite 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 317 
 
 The phantom of ourselves, 
 
 To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost 
 
 Which blamed the living man. 
 
 I suppose that this is one of the most horrible pictures of 
 old age ever written, but it is true of the old age of many 
 a good and great man in the history of civilisation. It was 
 certainly the history of Matthew Arnold's old age. Only 
 at a very late day did success come to him, when he could 
 no longer enjoy it. But you must not think that his poeti- 
 cal complaint signifies weakness. He was too well trained 
 by his father to show weakness. The despair of the pessi- 
 mist never took hold upon him. He only thought of him- 
 self as a soldier in a losing battle, certain of defeat, but 
 resolved to die bravely. The brave note, mixed with a 
 little bitterness, we find in another poem of much simpler 
 form called "The Last Word." 
 
 Creep into thy narrow bed, 
 Creep, and let no more be said ! 
 Vain thy onset! all stands fast. 
 Thou thyself must break at last. 
 
 Let the long contention cease ! 
 Geese are swans, and swans are geese. 
 Let them have it how they will I 
 Thou art tired; best be still. 
 
 In Other words, "Go to your grave in silence, and stop 
 talking truth. It is no use. You have been fighting with 
 a society too powerful for you, prejudices too strong for 
 you, superstitions impregnable. Society, prejudice, super- 
 stition, are not only stronger than you, they are longer 
 lived; you must die before they die. Stop your hopeless 
 fighting. Of course you know that geese are not swans, but 
 since people persist in saying that they are swans, it is no 
 use for you to be angry with them. Why be angry with 
 stupidity?" 
 
318 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 But the reformer states that he has other reasons to be 
 angry, in the injustice and cruelty and malice of men. 
 
 They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee ? 
 Better men fared thus before thee ; 
 Fired their ringing shot and pass'd, 
 Hotly charged — and sank at last. 
 
 Charge once more, then, and be dumb ! 
 Let the victors, when they come, 
 When the forts of folly fall, 
 Find thy body by the wall ! 
 
 This is excellent advice to any reformer who despairs or 
 feels like despairing. It is good to remember that no mat- 
 ter what injustice the world may do to you, it has done 
 injustice to greater men in past times, and will doubtless 
 continue to do greater injustice to still greater men in the 
 future. If you want to benefit the world, you must make 
 up your mind about two things; you must be content to 
 sacrifice your life or your happiness or both, and whatever 
 you do, you must not expect to be told or to hear of your 
 own success. The new truth which you wish to teach will 
 certainly be some day accepted, if it is truth, but you must 
 not hope to have even the reward of seeing it accepted. 
 Great reforms demand the absolute sacrifice of self. 
 
 Now, the thinker who observes the tendencies of modem 
 civilisation often finds reason to doubt not only the possi- 
 bilities of ethical reform, but the possibilities even of men- 
 tal or moral development in the highest sense. It seems to 
 him that the necessities of this civilisation are turning men's 
 minds away from noble ideas to selfish and material ambi- 
 tions. It seems to him that even the feeling which makes 
 poetry must die. It seems to him that the spiritual and 
 moral ideals of the past must be forgotten in the great 
 hurried hungry struggle for money and position. The 
 world is becoming material in the ugliest meaning of the 
 term. The great cities are drawing away from nature the 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 319 
 
 millions who used to feel and know the poetry of country 
 life. The fields are no longer cultivated by men, but by 
 machinery, and vast parts of America and of other countries 
 which are tilled by steam, remain practically uninhabited 
 except in the season of the harvests. Everywhere the popu- 
 lation increases, and always the struggle for existence be- 
 comes fiercer, and always the duties of life become heavier 
 and harder. Will there be in the future any time to think, 
 any time to feel, any time to be happy, any time to cherish 
 noble motives and sublime thoughts'? Certainly things 
 look dark, Herbert Spencer told us that the period of the 
 greatest possible human suffering has yet to come. Scien- 
 tific civilisation cannot save us from that; on the contrary 
 it will bring it about, by increasing the population of 
 the world to a degree never before known. The struggle 
 for life in Europe will become like the struggle for life in 
 China. 
 
 All these thoughts are suggested in a little poem by Mat- 
 thew Arnold called "The Future." In this poem the course 
 of human progress is compared to the flowing of a river, 
 down which the soul of man is floating. The idea of the 
 River of Life is very old, and has been used by many thou- 
 sands of poets, but Matthew Arnold has treated the subject 
 in a new way. In the first part of the poem there is not 
 much which is new, only a comparison of humanity's first 
 joy in the life of the world to the joy of a child in a boat 
 upon a little country stream. Somewhat further on, as it 
 recedes from its source, the stream broadens, and great 
 shapes of mountains and forests appear on the horizon. 
 "As is the world on the banks, so is the mind of man." 
 Human knowledge of the world itself has always been, and 
 still is, limited to impressions of the senses, and these are 
 illusions. But while these illusions were beautiful in the 
 past, men were comparatively happy. They were close to 
 nature in ancient times; they did not live in great gloomy 
 cities, full of dust and smoke, but they delighted in their 
 
320 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 life in forests and fields, on mountains and by rivers. The 
 course of progress was then like the course of a river wind- 
 ing through sunlit valleys and plains, under a bright blue 
 sky. But with the development of material civilisation the 
 landscape darkens. Great cities appear on the banks of a 
 winding stream, blackening the sky with the smoke of their 
 innumerable fires, and the water itself is no longer clear and 
 pure. Still the spirit of man floats on with the stream, and 
 this spirit feels the sadness of the great change. Does this 
 sadness signify wisdom? Perhaps so, but as yet only in a 
 relative sense — that is, in relation to the world of which 
 man forms a part. But of the origin of the world itself, 
 of the source of the stream of Being, or of the destiny of 
 the stream, we know nothing at all. We float on, watch- 
 ing the banks, but we do not know where we came from nor 
 whither we are going. This only we know, that always as 
 we float with the stream the cities on either bank become 
 larger and more tumultuous and the sky darker and the 
 river stormier, and the horizon is black before us, so black 
 that we cannot see. 
 
 And we say that repose has fled 
 
 Forever the course of the river of Time. 
 
 That cities will crowd to its edge 
 
 In a blacker, incessanter line; 
 
 That the din will be more on its banks, 
 
 Denser the trade on its stream, 
 
 Flatter the plain where it flows. 
 
 Fiercer the sun overhead. 
 
 That never will those on its breast 
 
 See an ennobling sight, 
 
 Drink of the feeling of quiet again. 
 
 That is, we feel as if the joy of calm had forever been de- 
 stroyed by this new industrial civilisation, and the future, 
 as we behold it, looks so gloomy that we doubt whether 
 mankind can ever again be happy. 
 
 Still, who can predict what changes will come? A hun- 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 321 
 
 dred years ago, who could have believed in the power which 
 science has given us to-day^ There may be a hope that 
 some new and totally unimaginable faculties will yet re- 
 store to us something of the happiness of those conditions of 
 peace which we have left behind. In the suggestion of this 
 hope, the poet gives us one beautiful touch of mysticism: 
 
 But what was before us we know not, 
 And we know not what shall succeed. 
 
 Haply, the river of Time — 
 
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge 
 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 
 On a wider, statelier stream — 
 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 
 Of its early mountainous shore, 
 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 
 And the width of the waters, the hush 
 
 Of the grey expanse where he floats, 
 
 Freshening its currents and spotted with foam 
 
 As it draws to the Ocean, may strike 
 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast — 
 
 As the pale waste widens around him. 
 
 As the banks fade dimmer away. 
 
 As the stars come out, and the night-wind 
 
 Brings up the stream 
 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. 
 
 You remember the previous description of the mountain 
 stream descending to the plain, and widening, and always 
 flowing over flatter ground. Observe that the word "flat" 
 means not only level, but also commonplace, dull, uninter- 
 esting, vulgar. What gives poetry life is our sense of the 
 beautiful, our sense of duty, our idea of conditions better 
 than any which we have. Now, the tendency of industrial 
 civilisation is to compel men to think more about money 
 than ever before, and less about truth and beauty and di- 
 vine things. This is what the poet means when he ex- 
 presses the fear that the River of Life will be flowing in 
 
322 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 the future through a flatter world than now, more selfish, 
 more vulgar. It does indeed seem as if mankind were going 
 to lose all spiritual ambitions, and to think only about com- 
 monplace and vulgar things. We imagine greater cities, 
 greater wealth, more people, more material power in the 
 future, but we cannot at the same time imagine great no- 
 bility of mind, greater beauty of thought, or finer qualities 
 of emotion. However, says the poet, we do not know the 
 future; we do not even know the past. Being ignorant as 
 to where we came from, how can we tell whither we are 
 going"? One thing only is certain — that we issued origi- 
 nally out of the Infinite Mystery and that we must return 
 to the Mystery. Outside of us, outside this world, all 
 about us the Infinite lies like a sea without shore, and the 
 drifting of all life is to that fathomless deep. Thither 
 flows this River of Time, with the spirit of man floating 
 upon it through countless different kinds of illusions, like 
 the scenery of landscapes. When and how and where the 
 stream will enter the sea, we cannot tell. But it is possible 
 that at some time, before we all pass back into that Un- 
 known out of which we came, some sudden revelation will 
 come to us. Mankind will continue to learn, and continue 
 to hope, and continue to pray for rest through all the cen- 
 turies, while the world grows older and approaches the end. 
 If you have ever descended a river to the sea in a boat, you 
 will remember the pleasure of the moment when you first 
 began to smell the salt air of the sea, and to feel the pure, 
 fresh sea wind in your face. At once you feel stronger and 
 happier, and all your senses seem to become sharper and 
 finer. So it may be with humanity, as it descends the River 
 of Time toward the Sea of Eternity. Perhaps it will be 
 only in the moment when we first perceive the odour of that 
 Infinite Sea, and hear far away the muttering of its waves — 
 that is to say, perhaps it will only be when the life of the 
 world is nearly done — that we shall suddenly discover some 
 great truth that will make us happy. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 In his power of suggestiveness, Matthew Arnold is cer- 
 tainly very remarkable, and not only when he treats of 
 large subjects. We notice this characteristic still more 
 when he touches upon slighter things than the destiny of 
 man or the meaning of the universe. For example, he has 
 written a little poem about the great French actress Rachel, 
 which is, I think, a very wonderful thing, because the whole 
 story and meaning of her life is put into fourteen lines. 
 You know Rachel was the greatest actress of modern 
 times. She was a Jewess, and always remained true to her 
 religion and race, but she found pleasure sometimes in read- 
 ing Christian and other religious books. She was the child 
 of very poor people, and belonged to an oppressed race, 
 yet she rose to the very highest rank in her profession, and 
 obtained from kings and emperors the highest marks of 
 honour and esteem. She never married, and she died, before 
 her time, of consumption. What Matthew Arnold writes 
 about her might be called a little study in the great problem 
 of heredity. 
 
 Sprung from the blood of Israel's scattered race, 
 At a mean inn in German Aarau born, 
 To forms from antique Greece and Rome uptorn, 
 Trick'd out with a Parisian speech and face, 
 
 Imparting life renew'd, old classic grace ; 
 Then, soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn, 
 A-Kempis ! her departing soul outworn. 
 While by her bedside Hebrew rites have place — 
 
 Ah, not the radiant spirit of Greece alone 
 
 She had — one power, which made her breast its home ! 
 
 In her, like us, there clash'd, contending powers, 
 
 Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome. 
 The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours ; 
 Her genius and her glory are her own. 
 
 Here was a curious mingling of emotional elements, 
 artistic elements, and race elements — a Jewess acting as a 
 
824 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 Greek woman of the past in the Paris of the present. But 
 there was yet another curious fact, the interest that this 
 Jewess took in Christian mysticism. When she was dying 
 the prayers repeated at her bedside were Hebrew prayers, 
 but she read in those moments "The Imitation of Christ" by 
 Thomas a Kempis. So we have in her history mingled 
 religious sentiments also. What does such a life as this 
 signify*? 
 
 That is the question which Matthew Arnold asks and 
 answers in his own way. He says: Rachel had genius 
 and fame born of genius ; these were peculiar to her ; nobody 
 else had such a genius or such a fame. But Rachel had 
 nothing else which other people have not. Just as in her 
 soul there were mingled the spirit of Greece and the spirit 
 of Rome, of Judaism and Christianity, of modern Germany 
 and modern France, so with every one who inherits the 
 fruits of the ancient and the modern civilisation. It is not 
 only a mental inheritance which many of us have, there is 
 a physical inheritance also — sometimes the blood of many 
 races in one person. I suppose you know the curious fact 
 that most of the great Englishmen of the present century, 
 even of the men of science, are men who have descended 
 from unions between different races. Even Tennyson had 
 some French blood. The English race itself has been made 
 by a mingling of many peoples. Scientifically, there is no 
 unmixed race. Is it, the poet asks, for this reason that the 
 minds of many of us are constantly in a state of struggle, 
 as though between impulses and emotions originally belong- 
 ing to different civilisations, different religions, different 
 nations*? Very possibly, but every man who passes through 
 the whole range of modern university education must have 
 the like experience and like struggle, for he mentally in- 
 herits not only the wisdom but the conflicting emotions and 
 sentiments of many vanished civilisations. 
 
 The sonnet is the form generally chosen by Matthew 
 Arnold for short philosophical studies of this kind. It is 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 325 
 
 the sonnet in its simplest and oldest form — at least, the old- 
 est English form, for the early foreign form was more elab- 
 orate. We have sonnets treating about bits of life seen in 
 the street, about the meaning of religion, about the nature 
 of God, about the difficulty of being good in this world, 
 about pictures seen in ancient houses, and about many other 
 things. These are not the least interesting of Arnold's com- 
 positions, and I want to quote several of them. Let us first 
 take one which has a bit of street life tor its subject. I re- 
 member that a student of the literature class, last year, 
 wrote for me a little story or sketch of exactly the same 
 experience, though I am tolerably sure that he never read 
 Matthew Arnold's "West London." As a matter of fact, 
 \ou will observe the same thing in Tokyo or in any part 
 of the civilised world, exactly as the poet saw it in London. 
 
 Crouched on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square, 
 
 A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied. 
 
 A babe was in her arms, and at her side 
 
 A girl ; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare. 
 
 Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, 
 Passed opposite ; she touch'd her girl, who hied 
 Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied. 
 The rich she had let pass with frozen stare. 
 
 Thought I : "Above her state this spirit towers ; 
 She will not ask of aliens, but of friends. 
 Of sharers in a common human fate. 
 
 "She turns from that cold succour, which attends 
 The unknown little from the unknowing great. 
 And points us to a better time than ours." 
 
 By "cold succour" the poet means public charity, for in 
 London there are hundreds of places where poor people can 
 go and ask for food, and get it upon certain unpleasant con- 
 ditions. Thousands of rich people subscribe for such pub- 
 lic charities, and a rich person usually answer's a beggar's 
 
326 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 request by saying, "Why do you not go to the proper place 
 for help?" Poor people hate public charities, for many 
 reasons. But the main truth of the poem is the fact that 
 suffering makes sympathy. Rich people who do not under- 
 stand the pain of hunger and cold or the difficulty of liv- 
 ing, do not pity the poor in most cases; they refuse to give. 
 On the other hand the workingman, the poor labourer, knows 
 what pain is, and little as he has, he will give when his 
 heart is touched. In the essay written for me last year the 
 writer said that he had seen exactly the same thing on the 
 way to Ueno. A woman with a little boy was begging on 
 that street, and she asked many persons to help her, but 
 the only one who gave her any money was a poor carpenter 
 on his way home after a hard day's work. Why does Mat- 
 thew Arnold say that this instinct of the poor to ask help 
 from the poor "points us to a better time than ours'"? Be- 
 cause the fact in itself suggests that when all classes of men 
 have learned what suffering is, there will be much more 
 sympathy and much less suffering. If the rich are not kind, 
 it is often because they do not know. 
 
 Another sonnet on the difficulty of life is of equal inter- 
 est. It is inspired by a reading of Marcus Aurelius. Mar- 
 cus Aurelius was the most virtuous of all the Roman 
 Emperors, although living at an age when the people were 
 very corrupt. The important thing to know about him in 
 this connection is that he wrote a beautiful little book which 
 has been translated into all Western languages, and which 
 is still studied by everybody who loves modern philosophy. 
 The book begins with a history of the Emperor's own life, 
 from boyhood; then follow a number of chapters contain- 
 ing his thoughts about many things, but especially about 
 morality, the gods, and the future life. This book is called 
 "The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius." 
 
 Now, this emperor found it very difficult to be as good 
 as he wished to be; he frankly tells us that in a very high 
 position it is much harder to be good than in a very humble 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 327 
 
 position. It is very curious to read what he says about 
 the little miseries of his every day life, about the pain of 
 having to meet disagreeable people and vicious people and 
 ungrateful people, and of knowing how to act justly with 
 them. But he adds, "Even in a palace a man can live a 
 good life." This is the sentence that Matthew Arnold 
 writes a poem about, under the title of "Worldly Place.'* 
 
 Even in a palace life may be led well! 
 So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, 
 Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den 
 Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell. 
 
 Our freedom for a little bread we sell, 
 And drudge under some foolish master's ken 
 Who rates us if we peer outside our pen — 
 Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell? 
 
 Even in a palace! On his truth sincere. 
 Who spake these words, no shadow ever came ; 
 And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame 
 
 Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win, 
 
 I'll stop, and say : "There were no succour here ! 
 
 The aids to noble life are all within." 
 
 The compact language may be paraphrased as follows: 
 "What a strange thing to say, that even in a palace a man 
 can be virtuous I Yet the man who said it was himself an 
 emperor, a philosopher, and the purest of men in his own 
 life. Yet, when we think of our own pain and trouble, 
 how difficult it is for us to believe that the state of an em- 
 peror is not happier than the state of a common man. 
 Think of the trouble that we have to earn a living — obliged 
 to work every day in some uncomfortable position, watched 
 by some man not wiser than ourselves, but often even more 
 foolish, who is only watching our work in order to find 
 fault with us. Surely the Emperor, who is the master of 
 all men, and who is not obliged to obey anybody, or even 
 
328 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 obliged to do anydiing he does not wish to do, ought to be 
 happier than we. But these are the words of the wisest 
 and noblest of the Roman emperors — 'Even in a palace I' 
 Therefore we must understand that it is still harder for an 
 emperor to be good and happy than it is for a common 
 man. To believe this may be difficult, but Marcus Aure- 
 lius said it, and in his whole life he never told even the 
 shadow of a lie. I believe him. When I feel myself dis- 
 satisfied, when I wish to leave the work that I now do, in 
 order to obtain a higher or a better position, I remember 
 the words of Marcus Aurelius. The secret of happiness 
 and the power of virtue are in our hearts. That is the 
 meaning of life as it was understood by that great teacher 
 and great emperor." 
 
 So excellently does this poem represent the moral teach- 
 ing of Matthew Arnold, that no other example of the same 
 kind is necessary. You will see the same idea repeated in 
 hundreds of passages, and really there is no better teaching. 
 The all-important fact to know in the first place is the 
 nature of duty; when we know this, the rules of conduct 
 can be tolerably well understood without any teaching of 
 creed or dogma. On this subject of dogma, Matthew 
 Arnold is liberal enough. Nowhere does he plainly declare 
 himself a Christian, and we cannot always be sure of the 
 meaning which he attaches to the word "God." He uses 
 the word frequently (so does Mr. Swinburne, who does not 
 T^elieve in what is usually understood by God) ; but he may 
 use it in a signification which is not by any means Christian, 
 nor even religious in the sectarian sense. Sometimes God 
 means not the poet's idea of the Supreme Unknown, but 
 the idea of goodness and justice, personified. In one place 
 we have a plain statement of sympathy with a Christian 
 definition, but you must not suppose this sympathy to mean 
 that the poet accepts the definition in the original meaning. 
 He sympathises with it only because it symbolises for him 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 329 
 
 a truth independent of any religion. The statement to 
 which I refer is in a sonnet entitled "The Divinity." 
 
 "Yes, write it in the rock," Saint Bernard said, 
 Grave it on brass with adamantine pen ! 
 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when 
 God's wisdom and God's goodness are display'd, 
 
 "For God of these his attributes is made." — 
 Well spake the impetuous Saint, and bore of men 
 The suffrage captive ; now, not one in ten 
 Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh'd. 
 
 God's wisdom and God's goodness! — Ay, but fools 
 Mis-define these till God knows them no more. 
 Wisdom and goodness, they are God! — what schools 
 
 Have yet so much as heard this simple lore ? 
 This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules ; 
 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore. 
 
 Saint Bernard was a great church reformer, who lived in 
 the twelfth century; I think that the best account of him 
 is that which we find in Froude's Essays. The incident 
 which Matthew Arnold mentions happened in the year 
 1 148, when Bernard was accused of heresy for saying that 
 wisdom and goodness were God. But he was not ashamed 
 or afraid of what he had said, and he argued so well that 
 he silenced his accusers. You must know the Church of 
 Rome at no time would acknowledge that goodness could 
 exist outside faith; in other words a person could not be 
 good who was not a Christian, according to mediaeval opin- 
 ion. No matter how kind or how generous or how noble 
 a man might be, unless he were a Christian his good deeds 
 could not save him. Therefore it seemed to many people 
 shocking to say that wisdom and goodness were identical 
 with divinity. Matthew Arnold's thought about this dec- 
 laration is that it is really true from a modern philosophical 
 
330 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 point of view. Wisdom is divine, goodness is divine. 
 From the oldest time the great value of belief in God has 
 been the value of recognising the divine nature of wisdom 
 and of goodness. I think Saint Bernard was right, says 
 Matthew Arnold, when he called these God. But accord- 
 ing to sectarian and dogmatic declarations, what are wis- 
 dom and goodness? Do they mean the highest knowledge 
 and the highest morality? No, they do not. Religious 
 prejudice calls wisdom what is not wisdom, and goodness 
 what is not goodness. If we should take the highest con- 
 ception of goodness and of wisdom, we should certainly find 
 these to be divinity in the deepest and grandest meaning. 
 But to-day there is nobody in the churches to teach such a 
 truth; very few men would have the courage to utter it. 
 Therefore the voice of Saint Bernard is still a voice in the 
 desert, a voice speaking alone in the great ignorant silence 
 of the past and of the present. If mankind ever generally 
 recognise that wisdom and goodness are divine, they will 
 have learned the best that any religion could teach them. 
 There is something in this little poem that reminds us also 
 of Kenan, who said, in one of his philosophical dialogues, 
 that perhaps there is no God existing at present, but that 
 men are gradually working to make a God, and that out 
 of all the sorrow and the labour of mankind, a God will be 
 created at last. Well, this God of the French philosopher, 
 not yet made but in process of being made, would certainly 
 be the same God suggested by Matthew Arnold's verses — 
 infinite goodness and infinite knowledge. 
 
 I do not wish to keep you too long at the study of this 
 grey, colourless, but very curious poetry. Still, I may cite 
 to you another sonnet, about a picture which Matthew 
 Arnold once saw. You must know that this picture really 
 exists. Long ago an English nobleman, a great warrior 
 and great statesman, very brave but also very proud and 
 positive in his character, became angry one day with his 
 little son, a boy of six or seven years old, and thoughtlessly 
 
]VIATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 331 
 
 struck him. Perhaps a man would scarcely have been 
 pained by the blow, but a child's brain and body are very 
 delicate things, and the shock of the blow destroyed the 
 little brain. The child never again knew anything; he 
 was without any remembrance even of what had happened; 
 he could not even understand why his father asked for 
 pardon. In order to punish himself, the father had a great 
 picture painted of the cruel act which he had committed, 
 so that all the world might know his own shame and sorrow. 
 This picture still hangs in the Abbey at Newstead. 
 
 I presume you remember that Newstead Abbey was the 
 residence and property of Lord Byron. Because of his 
 great memory, Newstead Abbey has long been a place of 
 literary pilgrimage, strangers from all parts of the world 
 making visits there in order to see the relics of the great 
 poet. It was while upon such a visit that Matthew 
 Arnold saw this picture, and wrote the following sonnet 
 about it: 
 
 What made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell ? — 
 'Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry 
 Stormily sweet, his Titan-agony; 
 It was the sight of that Lord Arundel 
 
 Who struck, in heat, his child he loved so well, 
 And his child's reason flicker'd, and did die. 
 Painted (he will'd it) in the gallery 
 They hang; the picture doth the story tell. 
 
 Behold the stern, mail'd father, staff in hand ! 
 The little fair-hair'd son, with vacant gaze, 
 Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are ! 
 
 Methinks the woe, which made that father stand 
 Baring his dumb remorse to future days. 
 Was woe than Byron's woe more tragic far. 
 
 I do not know any poem more painful than this in mod- 
 ern literature, and scarcely any equally touching — perhaps 
 
332 MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 
 
 Coventry Patmore's poem "The Toys" comes nearest to it 
 in the latter quality. And yet how very simply the thing 
 is told! 
 
 My purpose in this lecture has been to make you inter- 
 ested in those parts of Matthew Arnold's work which are 
 least known to the general reader. School text books and 
 anthologies contain plenty of extracts from Arnold, but no 
 extracts which really give you any idea of the thought and 
 the feelings of the man. Such extracts are usually chosen 
 because of the beauty of the verse, and they are therefore 
 chosen usually from those longer poems in which Arnold 
 shows himself a student of Milton, as in "Thyrsis," or a 
 student of the Greek tragedians, as in "Merope." You 
 will also find quotations made from "Sohrab and Rustum," 
 one of which is so famous that it is quoted in hundreds of 
 books — I mean the passage about the Chinese porcelain 
 maker. But these would not at all serve the object which 
 I had in view — namely, to make you see the great, sad, 
 tender mind of the man. This you will learn only by read- 
 ing and liking those shorter pieces, such as I have quoted, 
 which are a little difficult to study, but which repay study 
 much better than the most of the poet's more ambitious 
 work. In writing these he probably did not intend or 
 expect to appear as a great poet, yet it is here indeed that 
 the great poet is, rather than in even such beautiful lines 
 as the following: 
 
 Then, with weak hasty fingers, Sohrab loosed 
 His belt, and near the shoulder bared his arm, 
 And showed a sign in faint vermilion points 
 Prick'd ; as a cunning workman, in Pekin, 
 Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, 
 An emperor's gift — at early morn he paints, 
 And all day long, and when night comes, the lamp 
 Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands. 
 
 Milton might have written that, it is so truly beautiful. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET 333 
 
 But it is not characteristic of Matthew Arnold otherwise 
 than by being in the style of Milton. The imitation of a 
 great poet may be admirable, but original thought always 
 proves in the end to be the supreme test of poetical value. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 As the term is drawing to a close, so that we shall have 
 only two or three more days together, I have thought it 
 better, having completed the last lecture, not to begin a 
 new lecture upon the same scale, but to give a short lecture 
 about some single famous poem. And I have chosen for 
 this purpose Jean Ingelow's famous poem, "The High Tide 
 on the Coast of Lincolnshire." Sometimes a poet becomes 
 celebrated by the writing of one poem only. This happens 
 to be the case with Miss Ingelow. She wrote several vol- 
 umes of poems which were very popular in England and 
 even in America. But popularity, during the lifetime of a 
 writer, is no proof of literary merit; and it was not so in 
 Miss Ingelow's case. She really wrote only one great 
 poem; and by that one poem her name will always be pre- 
 served in the history of English literature. 
 
 The subject of this poem ought to interest you. The 
 subject is only too familiar in Japan — a tidal wave 
 {^tsunami). There are few more terrible things possible 
 for man to endure, in the form of what are called "natural 
 visitations," than earthquakes and tidal waves. These two 
 dreadful forms of calamity have been more common in this 
 countr)^ than in Europe; but Europe has not been entirely 
 exempt from them. There is only one other kind of natu- 
 ral calamity which can be at all compared with them — a 
 volcanic eruption. But it is seldom indeed that a volcanic 
 eruption, in any civilised country, produces such destruction 
 of life as may be caused by an earthquake or a tidal wave. 
 
 It is about three hundred years since England had a great 
 cataclysm of this sort; and it has never been forgotten by 
 the people of the coast where it happened. That coast 
 
 334 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 happens to be quite low. At one time, indeed, it was little 
 better than a great salt-marsh. But several miles inland 
 there was very good farm-land, and plenty of farms and 
 towns and villages. Miss Ingelow herself lived very near 
 the scene of her poem. You must imagine a river flowing 
 through the low country, widening very much toward the 
 mouth — the river Lindis ; Boston town stands near the bank. 
 When the tidal wave came, the immediate effect was to 
 force the river back, so that even distant parts of the coun- 
 try which the sea could not reach were flooded by the river. 
 There is only one more thing to tell you about the poem — 
 that it is written in English of the sixteenth century, yet 
 there are only two or three queer words in it; everything is 
 easy to understand. The verses are of different form and 
 the stanzas of irregular length. 
 
 The old mayor climbed the belfry-tower, 
 The ringers ran by two, by three ; 
 "Pull, if ye never pulled before ; 
 Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he. 
 "Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells ! 
 Ply all your changes, all your swells. 
 
 Play uppe 'The Brides of Enderby.' " 
 
 The church tower of St, Botolph's, which still stands, is 
 the belfry-tower here referred to. That was long before 
 the time of telegraphs and railroads, and the only way of 
 quickly sending news of danger through the country used 
 to be to ring the great bells of the churches. It was there- 
 fore very important to have good bells; and every great 
 church had a number of them, all of different sizes, so ar- 
 ranged that different tunes could be played upon them. 
 You can still hear this kind of ringing in many parts of Eu- 
 rope. The tunes are usually very simple tunes known to 
 all the people, and commonly hymn tunes, but not always. 
 In time of danger it was agreed that particular tunes should 
 be played. In the district of Lincolnshire, the tune that 
 
336 A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 meant danger was the tune of an old ballad, called "The 
 Brides of Enderby," and when people heard the church 
 bells play it they knew that something terrible was going 
 to happen. I believe you know it requires a number of 
 men to ring the bells in this way ; and it used to be a regular 
 calling. The word "changes" in the sixth line means varia- 
 tion in the modern musical sense; the word "swells" refers 
 to a particular way of ringing two or more bells together, 
 so that the sounds of all would blend into one great wave 
 of tone. 
 
 You must understand that the whole story is being told 
 by an old grandmother; she relates everything as she saw 
 it and felt it, in a simple and touching way. 
 
 Men say it was a stolen tyde — 
 The Lord that sent it, He knows all ; 
 But in myne ears doth still abide 
 The message that the bells let fall : 
 And there was naught of strange, beside 
 The flights of mews and peewits pied 
 By millions crouched on the old sea wall. 
 
 I sat and spun within the doore, 
 
 My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes; 
 
 The level sun, like ruddy ore, 
 
 Lay sinking in the barren skies ; 
 
 And dark against day's golden death 
 
 She moved where Lindis wandereth, 
 
 My Sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth. 
 
 "Cusha ! Cusha ! Cusha," calling, 
 Ere the early dews were falling, 
 Farre away I heard her song. 
 "Cusha ! Cusha !" all along ; 
 Where the reedy Lindis floweth, 
 
 Floweth, floweth. 
 From the meads where melick groweth 
 Faintly came her milking song — 
 
 "Cusha ! Cusha ! Cusha !" calling, 
 "For the dews will soone be falling; 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 337 
 
 Leave your meadow grasses mellow, 
 
 Mellow, mellow. 
 Quit your cow-slips, cow-slips yellow ; 
 Come uppe Whitef oot, come uppe Lightfoot ; 
 Quit the stalks of parsely hollow. 
 
 Hollow, hollow, 
 Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow. 
 From the clovers lift your head ; 
 Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot 
 Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow, 
 Jetty, to the milking shed." 
 
 The expression "stolen tide" in the first stanza is strange 
 to you, I think; it is strange even to English readers who 
 are not aware that country-folk often use the word "stolen" 
 in the sense of contrary to nature, monstrous, magical. 
 Now you have the old grandmother talking to you, recall- 
 ing her memories. She tells you that upon the evening of 
 the great tidal wave, the first thing that startled her was 
 the sound of the church bells signalling danger. It startled 
 her so that she broke the thread which she was spinning at 
 the door; then she looked up to see if there was anything 
 unusual in sky or field. Nothing in the sky; it was what 
 she called "a barren sky" — that is, a sky without a single 
 cloud; and the sun was sinking beautifully, making all the 
 West full of gold light. Nothing in the field — no, but 
 what was that upon the sea-wall*? Of course )^ou know 
 what a sea-wall is; they are very common in Japan, built 
 to protect fishing villages or low coasts against the surf of 
 heavy storms. Yes; there was something strange on the 
 sea-wall; millions of sea-birds were crowded there — white 
 gulls, and parti-coloured gulls, called peewits from their mel- 
 ancholy cry. The danger was probably from the sea — but 
 what was it*? While wondering what it could be, the old 
 woman heard her son's wife singing to the cows. I am 
 not sure whether you know about this custom. Milk-cows, 
 in England, are left all day to graze in the meadows, when 
 the weather is fine; and at evening they are called home, 
 
B38 A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 milked, and put in their stables. The men or boys who 
 take care of them, or the girls — dairymaids as they are 
 termed — often sing a kind of song to call the animals home ; 
 they come at once when they hear the song. Names are 
 given to them, usually names indicating the appearance of 
 the cow, or something peculiar about it. In this song, the 
 name Whitefoot probably means a red or a black cow with 
 pure white feet. The name Lightfoot might mean a thor- 
 oughbred cow — that is, a cow of very fine race — with a 
 particularly light quick walk. The name Jetty probably 
 refers to a perfectly black cow, black as jet. There is 
 nothing else to explain, except the queer old word "melick," 
 the name of a particular kind of grass. "Cow-slips" are, 
 you know, long yellow flowers, very common in European 
 
 fields. 
 
 If it be long, ay, long ago> 
 
 When I beginne to think howe long, 
 
 Againe I hear the Lindis flow, 
 
 Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong; 
 
 And all the aire, it seemeth me, 
 
 Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee), 
 
 That ring the tune of Enderby. 
 
 AUe fresh the level pasture lay, 
 And not a shadowe mote be seene, 
 Save where full fyve good miles away 
 The steeple towered from out the greenc. 
 And lo! the great bell farre and wide 
 Was heard in all the country side 
 That Saturday at eventide. 
 
 The swanherds where their sedges are 
 Moved on in sunset's golden breath, 
 The shepherde lads I heard afarre, 
 And my Sonne's wife, Elizabeth; 
 Till floating o'er the grassy sea 
 Came downe that kyndly message free. 
 The "Brides of Mavis Enderby." 
 
 Then some looked uppe into the sky, 
 And all along where Lindis flows 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 339 
 
 To where the goodly vessels lie, 
 And where the lordly steeple shows. 
 They sayde, "And why should this thing be ? 
 What danger lowers by land or sea? 
 They ring the tune of Enderby I 
 
 "For evil news from Mablethorpe, 
 Of pyrate galleys warping downe; 
 For shippes ashore beyond the scorpe, 
 They have not spared to wake the towne : 
 But while the west bin red to see, 
 And storms be none, and pyrates flee, 
 Why ring 'The Brides of Enderby'?" 
 
 The conditional mood at the beginning of the first of the 
 stanzas just quoted, is only suggested; there is no sequence, 
 no main clause. You must understand the meaning to be 
 something like this: "You ask me if it was long ago. If 
 it was long ago I Ah, perhaps, it was long ago — yet when 
 I try to think how long ago it was, I see and hear every- 
 thing so plainly that it seems to me even now." In the 
 fourth line, the adjectives "sharp and strong" refer, of 
 course, to the arrow — a heavy war-arrow would fly much 
 faster and with a louder sound than the sporting arrow. 
 Archery was still kept up in the sixteenth century. But 
 the old woman is not thinking only of the arrow; she is 
 thinking of the sound made by the strong current of the 
 river. It had a sharp sound, she tells us, like the sound 
 of a heavy arrow. Notice in the sixth line the use of "bin" 
 for "is." In the following stanza, you need only observe 
 the curious old perfect "mote" used where we would now 
 say "might" or "could." In the third line, you will find 
 the term "good miles." Why should people speak of a 
 good mile or a good distance? In such places the word 
 "good" has the sense of "at least," "fully," "not less than." 
 
 The description goes on very vividly; after speaking of 
 the beautiful clear weather, with nothing in all the level 
 of the flat country to break the skyline, except the far-away 
 
340 A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 shape of the church steeple, the old woman speaks of the 
 swans in the high river grass, the shouting of the shepherd 
 boys, calling home their sheep, and the sweet song of the 
 young wife waiting to milk the cows as they return from 
 pasture. There was nothing at all of danger visible; and 
 the peasants wondered why the bells sounded danger. Ob- 
 serve in the fourth of this group of stanzas the use of the 
 word "lowers" in the sixth line. To-day we more com- 
 monly spell it "lour" — though originally the meaning was 
 very much the same. When clouds hang down very low, 
 it is a sign of storm; when brows are lowered in a frown 
 it is a sign of anger. So when we speak of a lowering sky 
 we mean a threatening sky; but however we spell the word, 
 we pronounce it with a very full sound of "ow" in the 
 sense of "to threaten." "What danger is threatening us 
 from the land or from the sea'?" That is what the people 
 ask each other. Why do they ring the bells in that way*? 
 If pirates had attacked the neighbouring port of Mable- 
 thorpe, or if there were any ships wrecked beyond the rock- 
 line (scorpe), then there would be some reason for calling 
 up all the people. The expression "wake" the town, does 
 not mean to awaken, but to summon, to call. This is a 
 quaint idiom. 
 
 Very suddenly, though, the old grandmother learns what 
 the danger is: 
 
 I looked without, and lo ! my sonne 
 
 Came riding downe with might and main ! 
 
 He raised a shout as he drew on, 
 
 Till all the welkin rang again, 
 
 "Elizabeth ! Elizabeth !" 
 
 (A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath 
 
 Than my Sonne's wife, Elizabeth.) 
 
 "The olde sea-wall (he cried) is downe, 
 The rising tide comes on apace, 
 And boats adrift in yonder towne 
 Go sailing uppe the market-place." 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 341 
 
 He shook as one that looks on death : 
 "God save you, mother!" straight he saith; 
 "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?" 
 
 "Good Sonne, where Lindis winds away. 
 With her two bairns I marked her long ; 
 And ere yon bells beganne to play 
 Afar I heard her milking song." 
 He looked across the grassy lea, 
 To right, to left, "Ho Enderby !" 
 They rang "The Brides of Enderby!" 
 
 With that he cried and beat his breast ; 
 For, lo! along the river's bed 
 A mighty eygre reared his crest. 
 And uppe the Lindis raging sped. 
 It swept with thunderous noises loud ; 
 Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud, 
 Or like a demon in a shroud. 
 
 In the fourth line of the first of the above stanzas oc- 
 curs the word "welkin," much less often used now than 
 formerly. It most commonly signifies the sky, the vault 
 of heaven. But we may often understand the word merely 
 in the sense of atmosphere, the whole expanse of blue air. 
 Indeed the word chiefly lingers in modern use in this mean- 
 ing, as is illustrated by the common idiom "to make the 
 welkin ring," This simply means to make all the air 
 shake, and resound with a noise or a shout. It is thus 
 that the word is used in the present poem. 
 
 In the following stanza observe the word "apace" — it 
 is now very old-fashioned. The meaning is "very quickly" 
 or "suddenly" — so that it does not at all appear to be what 
 it means. We are apt to think of the verb "to pace," 
 meaning to walk slowly with full strides; but apace is 
 exactly the contrary of slowly. In the next stanza the 
 word "bairns," meaning young children, is familiar to any- 
 body acquainted with Scotch dialect; and we have got 
 accustomed to think of the word as purely Scotch. But 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 it is not: it is very old English, and is much used in the 
 provinces outside of Scotland. In the next stanza we 
 find an especially curious and very ancient word, "eygre." 
 This word can be found in the most ancient Anglo-Saxon 
 poems, and it still lingers in various English provincial dia- 
 lects. But it is not often spelt in this way; the common 
 spelling is "eagre." It means an immense wave or billow; 
 and it has a very weird effect in this stanza. For it is the 
 real tidal wave that the old woman describes by that 
 terrible word. All the flood that had come before was 
 only the precursor of the great sea rising to follow. Now 
 it comes roaring up the river, with a sound of thunder — 
 all black below, all white above with foam, so that it 
 suggests to the old grandmother's terrified fancy the idea 
 of a great black demon moving with a funeral shroud 
 thrown over his head. You must understand that she sees 
 the wave at an angle, not in front. Now comes an excel- 
 lent description of the immediate result of the wave. 
 
 And rearing Lindis backward pressed, 
 Shook all her trembling bankes amaine ; 
 Then madly at the eygre's breast 
 Flung uppe her weltering walls again, 
 Then bankes came downe with ruin and rout — 
 Then beaten foam flew round about — 
 Then all the mighty floods were out. 
 
 So far, so fast, the eygre drave, 
 The heart had hardly time to beat, 
 Before a shallow seething wave 
 Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet: 
 The feet had hardly time to flee 
 Before it brake against the knee, 
 And all the world was in the sea. 
 
 You must understand that the Lindis River flowing 
 through a very low country, constantly liable to inunda- 
 tion, has to be confined between artificial banks to pro- 
 vide against accidents. In England there are but very 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 343 
 
 few rivers to which it has been found necessary to fur- 
 nish artificial banks ; but in America many great rivers have 
 to be thus banked for immense distances. For instance, the 
 great Mississippi River flows between artificial banks for 
 a distance of many hundreds of miles; and when you read 
 of terrible floods in the Southern States, it generally means 
 that the banks have been somewhere broken. These banks 
 rise much above the surrounding country, like great walls. 
 So it was in the landscape of the present poem — the river 
 was flowing between high banks like walls. When the 
 great wave came from the sea, moving at a tremendous 
 speed, the first effect was to check and throw back the 
 river current; and this made a great counter wave. But 
 the counter wave could not resist the pressure of a sea wave; 
 and the consequence was that the whole force of the river 
 was diverted sidewards, with the result that the banks 
 were at once broken to pieces. That caused an immediate 
 inundation of fresh water; but the fresh water inundation 
 was almost instantly followed by the rush of the sea, a 
 much more dangerous and terrible affair. 
 
 In the fourth line of the stanza about the rising of the 
 river, you must understand the word "weltering" to have 
 the meaning of the word "liquid"; and the term "welter- 
 ing walls" to signify only high waves rising like walls in 
 vain opposition to the mighty tidal wave. In the stanza 
 following, the term "shallow seething wave" refers to the 
 first burst of the fresh water over the country; but the 
 last three lines of the same stanza refer to the rush of 
 the sea following after. Before a person had time even 
 to move, the water was up to his knees; the next minute 
 it was high enough to cover the greater part of the houses. 
 
 Upon the roofe we sate that night, 
 
 The noise of bells went sweeping by ; 
 
 I marked the lofty beacon light 
 
 Stream from the church tower, red and high — 
 
 A lurid mark and dread to see; 
 
844> A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 And awsome bells they were to me, 
 That in the dark rang "Enderby." 
 
 They rang the sailor lads to guide 
 From roof e to roof e who fearless rowed ; 
 And I — my sonne was at my side, 
 And yet the ruddy beacon glowed ; 
 And yet he moaned beneath his breath, 
 "O come in life, or come in death I 
 O lost! my love, Elizabeth!" 
 
 Some of the houses, of two or three stories and strongly 
 built, withstood the flood for a time, and people took refuge 
 upon the roofs. Then from the neighbouring port sailors 
 came with boats, and went from roof to roof, to take the 
 people away. The phrase "sailor-lads" does not neces- 
 sarily mean sailor boys or young sailors, though the Eng- 
 lish "lad" strictly means a person between the ages of boy- 
 hood and of manhood — let us say from sixteen to twenty- 
 one. That is the strict meaning; but for a very long time 
 this word had a caressing meaning, when it is attached to 
 another word so as to make such compounds, as for ex- 
 ample, soldier-lads, sailor-lads. In these instances the word 
 "lad" has a meaning something like "dear" or "good." The 
 beacon fire, lighted upon the top of a church tower, is de- 
 scribed as "lurid." This word "lurid" has somewhat 
 changed its meaning in modern times. It is from the Latin, 
 and the Latin meaning was a dim green or a very dim yel- 
 low. The idea suggested by the Latin word was the gloomy 
 light in a deep forest, or the indistinct light in a time of 
 eclipse. But modern writers have used it a great deal, 
 and somewhat incorrectly, in the signification of red light 
 — light having an awful colour; for the ancient word al- 
 ways conveyed some idea of fear, and this idea has never 
 been lost in English. Whenever you see in literature some- 
 thing described as lurid, you may be sure that the meaning 
 is a terrible and unnatural light. Of course the church 
 tower, used for a beacon light, had a square flat roof. As 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 345 
 
 a matter of fact, when we see the word "church tower" used 
 in English, a flat-topped tower is meant; the pointed form 
 being more correctly indicated by the word "spire." 
 
 So much for the scene described — the tragedy continues 
 with the lamentation of the sorrowing husband for his lost 
 wife and children. He asks her to come to him alive or 
 dead, so that he may at least know what has become of 
 her in that awful night. If you think a moment about the 
 matter, you will see that the expression is quite natural; 
 people usually almost expect that those whom they loved 
 will give them some signs in case of sudden death — such 
 as a visit in dreams, or an apparitional visit. In this case 
 the wife comes to her husband dead, but not as a ghost : 
 
 And didst thou visit him no more? 
 
 Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare; 
 
 The waters laid thee at his doore. 
 
 Ere yet the early dawn was clear. 
 
 Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, 
 
 The lifted sun shone on thy face, 
 
 Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place. 
 
 Many poets have used this fancy, in poetry about death 
 by drowning, and perhaps the idea first came into superior 
 poetry with the study of the popular ballads. In many 
 English ballads we read about the corpse of a mother and 
 a child being carried by some flood or storm to the door 
 of the husband; sometimes the floating body which thus re- 
 turns is that of a betrayed girl. The idea is artistically 
 excellent, because it is so natural that no amount of use 
 can wear it out. It was a favourite incident with Ros- 
 setti. The narrative continues, with certain reflections: 
 
 That flow strewed wrecks about the grass, 
 That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea ; 
 A fatal ebbe and flow, alas ! 
 To manye more than myne and me ; 
 But each will mourn his own (she saith). 
 
346 A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath 
 Than my Sonne's wife, Elizabeth. 
 
 In this stanza you must understand that the word "flow" 
 means the incoming tide, as ebb means the outgoing tide, 
 though the use of the word "flow," all by itself, in the first 
 line is a little unusual. The fifth line is the line to which 
 I particularly wish to call your attention : 
 
 But each will mourn his own. 
 
 This line, simple as any commonplace, simple as the most 
 trite of household phrases, is nevertheless, by reason of its 
 opportune use in this place, a very fine bit of human poetry. 
 The old grandmother remembers and relates the great de- 
 struction of life, both of animals and human beings; and 
 in the recollection of that immense calamity, with the vision 
 of a thousand past sorrows before her, she suddenly feels 
 like reproaching herself for talking so much about her own 
 particular grief. She apologises for this involuntary self- 
 ishness by citing the old saying that each person feels his 
 or her own sorrow most; "each will mourn his own"; per- 
 haps it is bad, yet who can help it, and who can fail to find 
 a kindly excuse for it? 
 
 Really that is almost the best line in the poem; and I 
 want to talk about it, because it suggests so many things. 
 It is quite true that each person best understands sorrow 
 or joy by his or her sorrow and joy; and in a certain way, 
 a person is not wrong in imagining his joy or pain to be the 
 greatest joy or the greatest pain in the whole world. There 
 are many proverbial sayings, quoted in opposition to the 
 indulgence of personal feeling; I suppose that they really 
 serve a good purpose by checking a tendency to over-ef- 
 fusiveness. For example, you have heard many sayings 
 about the admiration of a mother for her child, to the effect 
 that every mother thinks her own child to be the very best 
 
A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 347 
 
 child alive. So a son invariably thinks that his own mother 
 is the best of all mothers ; he may not say so, but he is very 
 likely to think so. And there are household phrases re- 
 lating to a corresponding feeling on the part of brother 
 and sister, husband and wife, father and son. The tendency 
 to laugh at or to repress expressions of such innocent feel- 
 ing certainly have their special use: we must so think of 
 them. But most people utter the mockery, and there stop 
 — without asking themselves anything about the reason 
 and about the truth of such feeling. After all, there is a 
 great deal of truth in it. The value of an affection, the 
 value of a personality, to each of us is quite special. The 
 son who thinks of his mother as the best of all mothers 
 thinks quite truly so far as the relation of that mother to 
 himself is concerned. She is the best of all mothers for 
 him; and no human being could ever take her place. So 
 with the relation of the child to the parent. It is a ques- 
 tion of relativity. Everybody feels this — though it is not 
 easily expressed by simple minds, which can only think as 
 the old grandmother thinks in the story, that each one can- 
 not help "mourning his own," and faintly justify by an 
 appeal to universal experience, the declaration that no one 
 could be sweeter or better than the one who has been lost. 
 The poem concludes with the memories of the song and 
 the singer: 
 
 I shall never hear her more 
 By the reedy Lindis shore, 
 "Cusha ! Cusha ! Cusha !" calling, 
 Ere the early dews be falling; 
 I shall never hear her song 
 "Cusha ! Cusha !" all along. 
 Where the sunny Lindis floweth, 
 
 Goeth, floweth; 
 From the meads where melick groweth, 
 When the water winding down, 
 Onward floweth to the town. 
 
348 A NOTE ON JEAN INGELOW 
 
 I shall never see her more 
 
 Where the reeds and rushes quiver, 
 
 Shiver, quiver; 
 Stand beside the sobbing river. 
 Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling 
 To the sandy lonesome shore; 
 I shall never hear her calling, 
 "Leave your meadow grasses mellow. 
 
 Mellow, mellow; 
 Quit your cow-slips, cow-slips yellow ; 
 Come uppe Whitef oot, come uppe Lightfoot ; 
 Quit your pipes of parsley hollow. 
 
 Hollow, hollow ; 
 Come up Lightfoot, rise and follow; 
 
 Lightfoot, Whitefoot, 
 From your clovers lift the head ; 
 Come uppe Jetty, follow, follow, 
 Jetty, to the milking shed." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 "THREE SILENCES" 
 
 I HAVE said in another lecture that Swinburne and Rossetti 
 had no imitators of any worth to literature. Nevertheless 
 it sometimes happens that a new poet, although not imitat- 
 ing his predecessors, may so represent in his verse a blend- 
 ing of the best qualities of some of them, that we must 
 say, this man's work was developed by the study of such 
 and such singers. We say that Tennyson is the poetical 
 descendant of Keats, but we never could say that Tenny- 
 son imitated Keats. You will now understand exactly 
 what I mean when I say that Arthur O'Shaughnessy, the 
 author of the poem entitled "Three Silences," is the de- 
 scendant both of Swinburne and of Rossetti. He has united 
 some of the best qualities of both — of Swinburne as to form 
 and as to colour, of Rossetti as to feeling. This poem shows 
 his relation to Swinburne and Rossetti, more especially to 
 Rossetti. The feeling borders upon mystical tenderness, 
 but you will discern in it the melancholy doubt of the nine- 
 teenth century. Perhaps this only adds to its sweetness. 
 
 We may suppose that the poet is referring to the three 
 great sorrows of human existence. The first great sorrow 
 might be, for example, the death of one's mother — a shock 
 of pain which the child cannot even fully understand as 
 a fact. If he asks the meaning of it, really no one can 
 tell him; and the tender things that are told him in order 
 to console him, do not in the least illuminate for him the 
 awful mystery of the fact. 
 
 The next great sorrow might be the death of the woman 
 he loved. As Huxley says, the man who stands with his 
 dead before the abyss of the eternal, has questions to ask. 
 Some of them he asks his own heart, some of them he asks 
 
 349 
 
350 "THREE SILENCES" 
 
 the dead — ^but there is no answer. The second shock of 
 death finds him very much wiser and stronger than he was 
 when a child, yet the mystery is not any nearer to solution 
 for him; it is even further away. 
 
 Later come other surprises of pain — doubts of humanity, 
 doubts of the worth of life, doubts of everything; and, in 
 the moment of some great sorrow, one turns back to the 
 habit of childhood, to the resource of prayer. And there 
 is no answer. 
 
 We can suppose these to be the Three Silences. Never- 
 theless this is not a philosophical poem but a love poem. 
 It is in a moment of disappointed affection, in the moment 
 of a fourth silence, that the poet remembers the other three 
 periods of pain. This is what gives the poem its extraor- 
 dinary qualities of melancholy and tenderness. 
 
 'Tis a world of silences. I gave a cry 
 
 In the first sorrow my heart could not withstand ; 
 I saw men pause, and listen, and look sad, 
 As though no answer in their hearts they had ; 
 Some turned away, some came and took my hand, 
 For all reply. 
 
 I stood beside a grave. Years had pass'd by; 
 
 Sick with unanswer'd life I turn'd to death. 
 And whisper'd all my questions to the grave, 
 And watch'd the flowers desolately wave, 
 
 And the grass stir on it with a fitful breath, 
 For all reply. 
 
 I rais'd my eyes to heaven ; my prayer went high 
 Into the luminous mystery of the blue ; 
 
 My thought of God was purer than a flame, 
 
 And God it seem'd a little nearer came, 
 
 Then pass'd, and greater still the silence grew, 
 For all reply. 
 
 But you ! If I can speak before I die, 
 
 I spoke to you with all my soul, and when 
 
"THREE SILENCES" 351 
 
 I look at you 't is still my soul you see, ^ 
 
 Oh, in your heart was there no word for me? 
 All would have answer'd had you answer'd then 
 With even a sigh. 
 
 The last line but one is the most beautiful in the whole 
 poem. Love casts out sorrow and fear and doubt in the 
 first moment of its ecstasy; the lover says that had she an- 
 swered, the grave and the heaven and God himself would 
 have answered at the same time, because in perfect hap- 
 piness there is no doubt and no fear and no regret. You 
 will observe that this approaches to the tone of Rossetti, 
 and that there is nevertheless within it a something which 
 is not of Rossetti, something sweeter and simpler, and in 
 spite of this simplicity, equally artistic. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 
 
 Among the minor poets of to-day, there is one figure de- 
 serving special attention — William Watson. As a minor 
 poet his rank has been a high one from the first, and he 
 is constantly rising to a higher place. His appearance also 
 has some significance in relation to the general poetical 
 movement of the century. He represents, not the romantic 
 feeling of Rossetti and his school, nor the splendid warmth 
 and colour and finish of Tennyson's school ; rather he repre- 
 sents the reaction. I told you that after the romantics had 
 exhausted their art, and the art of the English language as 
 well, further advance became impossible, and whoever at- 
 tempted to create poetry would either have to be an imi- 
 tator, or would have to go back to simpler forms. Mr. 
 Watson took the latter course, and he has won success in 
 it. Spiritually he is a descendant of Wordsworth; the best 
 feeling of Wordsworth glows all through him in a new form 
 and with the colours of another time. In form he is not 
 exactly classic, but he goes back to the models of the early 
 nineteenth century, rarely attempting any of those more 
 elaborate forms of verse which the Victorian period brought 
 to the highest pitch of excellence. One of his favourite 
 forms is the sonnet; this is perhaps the most complicated 
 which he uses. A great deal of his work is in simpler 
 forms. He loves quatrains — complete poems in four lines. 
 He has attempted, not unsuccessfully, to use the very early 
 English forms of rhymeless alliteration, the old Runic meas- 
 ure, in which very few moderns have excelled. Here are a 
 few examples of this form; you will remember, from the 
 lecture on Anglo-Saxon poetry, the rule of values in this 
 metre : 
 
 352 
 
A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 353 
 
 England, my mother, 
 Wardress of waters, 
 Builder of peoples, 
 Maker of men, — 
 
 Hast thou yet leisure 
 Left for the muses? 
 Heed'st thou the songsmith 
 Forging the rhyme? 
 
 Song is no bauble — 
 Slight not the songsmith, 
 England my mother 
 Maker of men ! 
 
 There are some fine stanzas in the composition from which 
 these extracts are made, but you will see that the Runic form 
 is not strictly preserved, and the thing, as a whole, lacks 
 force. Tennyson and Charles Kingsley are the only two 
 nineteenth century poets that I know of who used the North- 
 ern measure with real success. The best example in Tenny- 
 son is the translation of the "Battle of Brunanburh"; the 
 best example in Kingsley is to be found among the songs 
 scattered through the novels of "Hypatia" and "Hereward." 
 But if Watson has not always been successful with the 
 simpler forms of verse as verse, he has sometimes been re- 
 markably successful in the direction of imagination and 
 force. He has given us a very remarkable composition en- 
 titled, "The Dream of Man," which deserves attention es- 
 pecially because it was inspired by the new evolutional phi- 
 losophy. In this poem the poet considers the great prob- 
 lem of Pain in the universe — why it exists, what would hap- 
 pen if it could be entirely suppressed. Accepting the ex- 
 istence of a God as creator, he imagines the future of man 
 in a new way. The figure of God is necessary for the 
 dramatic conception which follows. Man conquers all the 
 obstacles which Nature and his own weaknesses oppose to 
 progress. He learns how to vanquish disease, how to con- 
 
854 A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 
 
 quer tempests, and how to render danger no longer possible. 
 He even conquers pain — that is, he learns how to relieve 
 all physical pain. But moral pain remains, and the dread 
 of death. Death is a power which he cannot oppose. He 
 can do almost everything else that he pleases, except make 
 himself immortal. He discovers even means of communi- 
 cation with other solar systems, and extends his influence into 
 other planets; but death is always with him. He deter- 
 mines to make one last tremendous battle against death. 
 In the meantime he has forgotten the existence of God, 
 who has been watching all his progress, but in whom he has 
 almost ceased to believe. When God observes that the 
 man is about to fight against death, he thinks it is time 
 to warn him. He shows himself to the spirit of man and 
 speaks : 
 
 "O great In thine own conceit, 
 
 I will show thee thy source, how humble, thy goal, for a god how 
 unmeet." 
 
 Thereat, by the word of the Maker, the Spirit of Man was led 
 To a mighty peak of vision, where God to His creature said, 
 "Look Eastward toward Time's sunrise, and age upon age untold." 
 The Spirit of Man saw clearly the past as a chart out-rolled — 
 Beheld his base beginnings in the depths of time, and his strife, 
 With beasts and crawling horrors for leave to live, when life 
 Meant but to slay and to procreate, to feed and to sleep, among 
 Mere mouths, voracities boundless, blind lusts, desires without 
 
 tongue. 
 And ferocities vast, fulfilling their being's malignant law. 
 While nature was one hunger, and one hate, all fangs and maw. 
 
 This, of course, is the vision of the evolutionist looking 
 back to the past, and holding that man, evolved from a 
 speck of protoplasm, passed gradually upward from the 
 very lowest forms of life, through innumerable transforma- 
 tions, before reaching the state of intelligence. But the 
 period especially referred to in these lines is the period 
 before maternal love showed itself, the period preceding the 
 
A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 355 
 
 appearance of the mammalia or milk-giving animals. Then 
 indeed Nature was, as the poet says, only hunger and lust. 
 Reason had not yet gleamed. For the moment that he first 
 perceives this vision of his own past, man feels a little 
 humble, and his pride is abased. But very soon he turns to 
 God with a reproach upon his lips, saying, "Is not this fact 
 the proof of my divinity *? If I have been able to rise up 
 from such depths, shall I not be able in the future to rise 
 far beyond them"? I am not ashamed." God answers, 
 "Look now to the future that you talk about; I will give 
 you the power to see." Then man looks, and he perceives 
 the great periods of disintegration and of dissolution which 
 philosophers tell us about, the periods when worlds become 
 old and suns burn dim, and are finally extinguished for- 
 ever in the infinite night. For evolution does not mean 
 only a development; it likewise means a decline. Here, 
 however, there is a slight criticism to be made upon the poet's 
 idea. There are two great phases of evolution correctly 
 suggested by him; but there is a vaster phase of the sub- 
 ject which, unlike George Meredith, he does not appear to 
 have perceived. 
 
 Indeed, the digression which I now venture to make em- 
 bodies the principal object of this lecture. It is quite as 
 important that you should understand the philosophical 
 weaknesses of a poet, as that you should understand his 
 strong points. Otherwise he might be able to set up in 
 your minds a totally wrong train of thinking. Those who 
 have a superficial knowledge only of evolutional philosophy 
 are apt to imagine that it teaches a definite end and a 
 definite beginning of universes. As for a beginning, the 
 philosophy confesses itself to be sublimely ignorant. Here 
 it can only theorise. It is not impossible, nor even im- 
 probable, that there may have been a beginning of what 
 we call matter, because the latest chemical science gives 
 some evidence of the extraordinary possibility that all com- 
 pound forms of matter have been evolved in a totally un- 
 
356 A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 
 
 known way, from simpler forms. On the other hand, we 
 have tolerably good evidence as to how universes begin 
 and end as systems. But this beginning or ending is only 
 a beginning or ending of particular forms. Really an end- 
 ing is utterly inconceivable. The end of one evolution is 
 only the beginning of another. When the suns burn out 
 and worlds crumble to dust, new suns and worlds arise from 
 the wreck. That is the real teaching of evolutional phi- 
 losophy, and it is in accord with Oriental thought. But 
 there is more than this. It is almost certain that the his- 
 tory of one universe will affect the history of a succeeding 
 universe, just as the actions and habits of our own genera- 
 tion must certainly have some effect upon the habits and 
 manners of our descendants. The experience not only of 
 mind, but even of what we call matter, have tendencies 
 that will influence future forms of mind and matter; and 
 thus an enormous ethical system is suggested by the real 
 evolutional philosophy. Meredith is the only English poet 
 who has fully expressed this truth. Watson has not even 
 perceived it. But this fact does not prevent his poem 
 from being very interesting in itself, because of the way it 
 treats a problem that no philosophy can perfectly explain. 
 To return to the story. Man is not distressed by per- 
 ceiving the future which God shows him — the end of the 
 human race and the crumbling of the world in darkness. 
 On the contrary, with desperate courage he proclaims, "I 
 shall conquer death and make myself the equal of God." 
 A tremendous time of struggle follows; but human intelli- 
 gence at last wins the battle. Death is conquered; and even 
 God is surprised. 
 
 So to each star in the heavens the exultant word was blown, 
 
 The annunciation tremendous, Death is overthrown! 
 
 And Space, in her ultimate borders, prolonging the jubilant tone, 
 
 With hollow ingeminations, sighed, Death is overthrown! 
 
 And God, in His house of silence, where he dwelleth aloof, alone, 
 
 Paused in His tasks to hearken: Death is overthrown! 
 
A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 357 
 
 But what is the consequence'? For a short time man is 
 very happy indeed, but only for a time. All things have 
 become possible to him — and he has nothing more to do. 
 He has no pleasure of hope, because there is nothing to 
 hope for which he has not already got. He has no pleas- 
 ure of effort, because there is nothing for which to make 
 an effort. Pleasures soon become uninviting to the idle; 
 man's intelligence has at last condemned him to eternal 
 agonies. Then for the first time he recognises that pleas- 
 ure is impossible without pain, that they are connected in- 
 separably as light and shadow. In a little while man be- 
 comes frightfully unhappy, cursed with eternal life and 
 unable to use that life to any purpose. So he humbles him- 
 self at last before God, praying for only one thing, the 
 blessed gift of death. God hears the prayer. Death is 
 loosened and returns among men; and they welcome him 
 as their best friend. And God says to the spirit of man 
 in conclusion, as an explanation of all that man could not 
 understand : 
 
 "O Man, my creature, thy lot was more blest than mine. 
 I taste not delight of seeking, nor the boon of longing know. 
 There is but one joy transcendent, and I hoard it not but bestow. 
 I hoard it not, nor have tasted, but freely I gave it thee — 
 The joy of most glorious striving, which dieth in victory." 
 
 Thus the poem proclaims that there is really no happiness 
 worth having except the happiness of effort. This is not 
 a commonplace saying at all. It is a very deep saying, and 
 contains what seems to me the nearest possible approach 
 to the truth of life. Perhaps there may occur to you, in 
 contrast to it, the Eastern religious saying that the high- 
 est happiness is rest. But the two declarations do not really 
 contradict each other. Rest would be the highest happiness, 
 perhaps, for unconditioned being; but for being having 
 form, having body, capable of joy and sorrow, pain and 
 pleasure, rest could be of no possible value. In the last 
 
358 A NOTE ON WATSON'S POEMS 
 
 part of the poem the poet really brings us face to face with 
 an apparent solution of the problem of pain. The verse 
 is sometimes rough and uneven; the poem is great only as 
 a fancy; but as a fancy it is one of the most remarkable 
 composed during the Victorian age; and I should therefore 
 recommend you to read it carefully and to think about it. 
 I also venture to say that it is the most remarkable thing 
 which Watson has done, though by no means the most per- 
 fect. Much more perfect is a little piece, somewhat in the 
 manner of Blake, called "World-Strangeness." 
 
 Strange the world about me lies, 
 
 Never yet familiar grown — 
 Still disturbs me with surprise, 
 
 Haunts me like a face half known. 
 
 In this house with starry dome, 
 
 Floored with gem-like plains and seas, 
 
 Shall I never feel at home, 
 Never wholly be at ease? 
 
 On from room to room I stray; 
 
 Yet my Host can ne'er espy, 
 And I know not to this day. 
 
 Whether guest or captive I. 
 
 So, between the starry dome 
 
 And the floor of plains and seas, 
 I have never felt at home, 
 
 Never wholly been at ease. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 Among the minor poets of the Victorian period, Robert 
 Buchanan cannot be passed over unnoticed. A contem- 
 porary of all the great singers, he seems to have been always 
 a little isolated; I mean that he formed no strong literary 
 friendships within the great circle. Most great poets must 
 live to a certain extent in solitude; the man who can at 
 once mix freely in society and find time for the production 
 of masterpieces is a rare phenomenon. George Meredith is 
 said to be such a person. But Tennyson, Rossetti, Swin- 
 burne, Browning, Fitzgerald, were all very reserved and 
 retired men, though they had little circles of their own, and 
 a certain common sympathy. The case of Buchanan is dif- 
 ferent. His aloofness from the rest has been, not the re- 
 sult of any literary desire for quiet, but the result, on the 
 contrary, of a strong spirit of opposition. Not only did he 
 have no real sympathy with the great poets, but he repre- 
 sented in himself the very prejudices against which they 
 had to contend. Hard headed Scotchman as he was, he 
 manifested in his attitude to his brother poets a good deal 
 of the peculiar, harsh conservatism of which Scotchmen 
 seemed to be particularly capable. And he did himself im- 
 mense injury in his younger days by an anonymous attack 
 upon the morals, or rather upon the moral tone, of such 
 poets as Rossetti and Swinburne. Swinburne's reply to this 
 attack was terrible and withering. That of Rossetti was 
 very mild and gentle, but so effective that English lit- 
 erary circles almost unanimously condemned Buchanan, and 
 attributed his attack to mere jealousy. I think the attack 
 was less due to jealousy than to character, to prejudice, to 
 the harshness of a mind insensible to particular forms of 
 
 359 
 
360 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 beauty. And for more than twenty years Buchanan has 
 suffered extremely from the results of his own action. 
 Thousands of people have ignored him and his books sim- 
 ply because it was remembered that he gave wanton pain 
 to Rossetti, a poet much too sensitive to endure unjust criti- 
 cism. I suppose that for many years to come Buchanan will 
 still be remembered in this light, notwithstanding that he 
 tried at a later day to make honourable amends to the mem- 
 ory of Rossetti, by dedicating to him, with a beautiful son- 
 net of apology, the definitive edition of his own works. 
 
 But the time has now passed when Buchanan can be 
 treated as an indifferent figure in English literature. In 
 spite of all disadvantages he has been a successful poet, 
 a successful novelist, and a very considerable influence in 
 the literature of criticism. Besides, he has written at least 
 one poem that will probably live as long as the English 
 language, and he has an originality quite apart and quite 
 extraordinary, though weaker than the originality of the 
 greater singers of his time. As to his personal history, little 
 need to be said. He was educated at Glasgow University, 
 and his literary efforts have always been somewhat col- 
 oured by Scotch sentiment, in spite of his long life in literary 
 London, 
 
 Three volumes represent his poetical production. In 
 these are contained a remarkable variety of poems — narra- 
 tive, mystical, fantastic, classical, romantic, ranging from 
 the simplest form of ballad to the complex form of the 
 sonnet and the ode. The narrative poems would, I think, 
 interest you least; they are gloomy studies of human suf- 
 fering, physical and moral, among the poor, and are not 
 so good as the work of Crabbe in the same direction. The 
 mystical poems, on the contrary, are of a very curious kind ; 
 for Buchanan actually made a religious philosophy of his 
 own, and put it into the form of verse. It is a Christian 
 -mysticism, an extremely liberal Unitarianism forming the 
 basis of it; but the author's notions about the perpetual 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 361 
 
 order of things are all his own. He has, moreover, put 
 these queer fancies into a form of verse imitating the ancient 
 Celtic poetry. We shall afterward briefly consider the 
 mystical poetry. But the great production of Buchanan 
 is a simple ballad, which you find very properly placed at 
 the beginning of his collected poems. This is a beautiful 
 and extraordinary thing, quite in accordance with the poet's 
 peculiar views of Christianity. It is called "The Ballad 
 of Judas Iscariot." If you know only this composition, 
 you will know all that it is absolutely necessary to know 
 of Robert Buchanan. It is by this poem that his place is 
 marked in nineteenth century literature. 
 
 Before we turn to the poem itselt, I must explain to you 
 something of the legend of Judas Iscariot. You know, of 
 course, that Judas was the disciple of Christ who betrayed 
 his master. He betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver, 
 according to the tradition; and he betrayed him with a kiss, 
 for he said to the soldiers whom he was guiding, "The man 
 whom I shall kiss is the man you want." So Judas went 
 up to Christ, and kissed his face; and then the soldiers 
 seized Christ. From this has come the proverbial phrase 
 common to so many Western languages, a "Judas-kiss." 
 Afterwards Judas, being seized with remorse, is said to 
 have hanged himself; and there the Scriptural story ends. 
 But in Church legends the fate of Judas continues to be 
 discussed in the Middle Ages. As he was the betrayer 
 of a person whom the Church considered to be God, it was 
 deemed that he was necessarily the greatest of all traitors; 
 and as he had indirectly helped to bring about the death of 
 God, he was condemned as the greatest of all murderers. 
 It was said that in hell the very lowest place was given to 
 Judas, and that his tortures exceeded all other tortures. 
 But once every year, it was said, Judas could leave hell, 
 and go out to cool himself upon the ice of the Northern 
 seas. That is the legend of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Now Robert Buchanan perceived that the Church legends 
 
362 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 of the punishment of Judas might be strongly questioned 
 from a moral point of view. Revenge is indeed in the 
 spirit of the Old Testament; but revenge is not exactly in 
 the spirit of the teaching of Christ. The true question as 
 to the fate of Judas ought to be answered by supposing 
 what Christ himself would have wished in the matter. 
 Would Christ have wished to see his betrayer burning for 
 ever in the fires of hell*? Or would he have shown to him 
 some of that spirit manifested in his teachings, "Do good 
 unto them that hate you; forgive your enemies"^ As a 
 result of thinking about the matter, Buchanan produced his 
 ballad. All that could be said against it from a religious 
 point of view is that the spirit of it is even more Christian 
 than Christianity itself. From the poetical point of view 
 we must acknowledge it to be one of the grandest ballads 
 produced in the whole period of Victorian literature. You 
 will not find so exquisite a finish here as in some of the bal- 
 lads of Rossetti; but you will find a weirdness and a beauty 
 and an emotional power that make up for slenderness in 
 workmanship. 
 
 In order to understand the beginning of the ballad 
 clearly, you should know the particulars about another su- 
 perstition concerning Judas. It is said that all the ele- 
 ments refused to suffer the body to be committed to them; 
 fire would not bum it; water would not let it sink to rest; 
 every time it was buried, the earth would spew it out again. 
 Man could not bury that body, so the ghosts endeavoured 
 to get rid of it. The Field of Blood referred to in the bal- 
 lad is the Aceldama of Scriptural legend, the place where 
 Judas hanged himself. 
 
 'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Lay in the Field of Blood; 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Beside the body stood. 
 
 Black was the earth by night, 
 And black was the sky. 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 363 
 
 Black, black were the broken clouds, 
 Though the red Moon went by. 
 
 Then the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Did make a gentle moan — 
 "I will bury underneath the ground 
 
 My flesh and blood and bone. 
 
 "The stones of the field are sharp as steel 
 
 And hard and cold, God wot ; 
 And I must bear my body hence 
 
 Until I find a spot!" 
 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot, 
 
 So grim, and gaunt, and grey. 
 Raised the body of Judas Iscariot 
 
 And carried it away. 
 
 And as he bare it from the field 
 
 Its touch was cold as ice. 
 And the ivory teeth within the jaw 
 
 Rattled aloud, like dice. 
 
 The use of the word "ivory" here has a double function; 
 dice are usually made of ivory; and the suggestion of white- 
 ness heightens the weird effect. 
 
 As the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Carried its load with pain. 
 The Eye of Heaven, like a lanthorn's eye, 
 
 Opened and shut again. 
 
 Half he walk'd, and half he seemed 
 
 Lifted on the cold wind ; 
 He did not turn, for chilly hands 
 
 Were pushing from behind. 
 
 The first place that he came unto 
 
 It was the open wold 
 And underneath were pricky whins, 
 
 And a wind that blew so cold. 
 
364 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 The next place that he came unto 
 
 It was a stagnant pool, 
 And when he threw the body in 
 
 It floated light as wool. 
 
 He drew the body on his back, 
 
 And it was dripping chill. 
 And the next place he came unto 
 
 Was a Cross upon a hill. 
 
 A Cross upon the windy hill. 
 
 And a cross on either side, 
 Three skeletons that swing thereon, 
 
 Who had been crucified. 
 
 And on the middle cross-bar sat 
 
 A white Dove slumbering ; 
 Dim it sat in the dim light, 
 
 With its head beneath its wing. 
 
 And underneath the middle Cross 
 
 A grave yawned wide and vast, 
 But the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Shiver'd, and glided past. 
 
 We are not told what this hill was, but every reader 
 knows that Calvary is meant, and the skeletons upon the 
 crosses are those of Christ and the two thieves crucified with 
 him. The ghostly hand had pushed Judas to the place of 
 all places where he would have wished not to go. We 
 need not mind the traditional discrepancy suggested by the 
 three skeletons; as a matter of fact, the bodies of malefac- 
 tors were not commonly left upon the crosses long enough 
 to become skeletons, and of course the legend is that Christ's 
 body was on the cross only for a short time. But we may 
 suppose that the whole description is of a phantasm, pur- 
 posely shaped to stir the remorse of Judas. The white 
 dove sleeping upon the middle cross suggests the soul of 
 Christ, and the great grave made below might have been 
 prepared out of mercy for the body of Judas. If the dove 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 365 
 
 had awoke and spoken to him, would it not have said, "You 
 can put your body here, in my grave; nobody will torment 
 you." But the soul of Judas cannot even think of daring 
 to approach the place of the crucification. 
 
 The fourth place that he came unto, 
 
 It was the Brig of Dread, 
 And the great torrents rushing down 
 
 Were deep, and swift, and red. 
 
 He dared not fling the body in 
 
 For fear of faces dim. 
 And arms were waved in the wild water 
 
 To thrust it back to him. 
 
 There is here a poetical effect borrowed from sources 
 having nothing to do with the Judas tradition. In old 
 Northern folklore there is the legend of a River of Blood, 
 in which all the blood ever shed in this world continues to 
 flow; and there is a reference to this river in the old Scotch 
 ballad of "Thomas the Rhymer." 
 
 It was mirk, mirk night, and there was nae light. 
 And they waded in red blude up to the knee. 
 For a' the blude that's shed on earth, 
 Kins through the springs o' that countrie. 
 
 Judas leaves the dreadful bridge and continues his wan- 
 derings over the mountain, through woods and through great 
 desolate plains: 
 
 For months and years, in grief and tears. 
 
 He walked the silent night ; 
 Then the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Perceived a far-off light. 
 
 A far-off light across the waste. 
 
 As dim as dim might be, 
 That came and went like a lighthouse gleam 
 
 On a black night at sea. 
 
366 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Crawled to the distant gleam ; 
 And the rain came down, and the rain was blown 
 
 Against him with a scream. 
 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot, 
 
 Strange, and sad, and tall, 
 Stood all alone at dead of night 
 
 Before a lighted hall. 
 
 And the wold was white with snow. 
 And his foot-marks black and damp. 
 
 And the ghost of the silver Moon arose, 
 Holding her yellow lamp. 
 
 And the icicles were on the eaves. 
 And the walls were deep with white, 
 
 And the shadows of the guests within 
 Passed on the window light. 
 
 The shadows of the wedding guests 
 
 Did strangely come and go. 
 And the body of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Lay stretch'd along the snow. 
 
 But only the body. The soul which has carried it does 
 not lie down, but runs round and round the lighted hall, 
 where the wedding guests are assembled. What wedding^ 
 What guests'? This is the mystical banquet told of in the 
 parable of the New Testament; the bridegroom is Christ 
 himself; the guests are the twelve disciples, or rather, the 
 eleven, Judas himself having been once the twelfth. And 
 the guests see the soul of Judas looking in at the window. 
 
 'Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head. 
 And the lights burnt bright and clear — 
 
 "Oh, who is that," the Bridegroom said, 
 "Whose weary feet I hear?" 
 
 'Twas one look'd from the lighted hall, 
 And answered soft and slow, 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 367 
 
 "It is a wolf runs up and down 
 With a black track in the snow." 
 
 The Bridegroom in his robe of white 
 
 Sat at the table-head— 
 "Oh, who is that who moans without^" 
 
 The blessed Bridegroom said. 
 
 'Twas one looked from the lighted hall, 
 
 And answered fierce and low, 
 " 'Tis the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Gliding to and fro." 
 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Did hush itself and stand, 
 And saw the Bridegroom at the door 
 
 With a light in his hand. 
 
 The Bridegroom stood in the open door 
 
 And he was clad in white, 
 And far within the Lord's Supper 
 
 Was spread so broad and bright. 
 
 The Bridegroom shaded his eyes and looked, 
 
 And his face was bright to see— 
 "What dost thou here at the Lord's Supper 
 
 With thy body's sins T said he. 
 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot, 
 
 Stood black, and sad, and bare— 
 "I have wandered many nights and days; 
 
 There is no light elsewhere." 
 
 'Twas the wedding guests cried out within. 
 And their eyes were fierce and bright— 
 
 "Scourge the soul of Judas Iscariot, 
 Away into the night!" 
 
 The Bridegroom stood in the open door 
 And he waved hands still and slow. 
 
 And the third time that he waved his hands 
 The air was thick with snow. 
 
368 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 And of every flake of falling snow, 
 
 Before it touched the ground, 
 There came a dove, and a thousand doves 
 
 Made sweet sound. 
 
 'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Floated away full fleet. 
 And the wings of the doves that bare it off 
 
 Were like its winding-sheet. 
 
 'Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door. 
 
 And beckon'd, smiling sweet ; 
 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot 
 
 Stole in, and fell at his feet. 
 
 "The Holy Supper is spread within, 
 
 And the many candles shine, 
 And I have waited long for thee 
 
 Before I poured the wine!" 
 
 It would have been better, I think, to finish the ballad 
 at this stanza; there is one more, but it does not add at all 
 to the effect of what goes before. When the doves, em- 
 blems of divine love, have carried away the sinful body, 
 and the Master comes to the soul, smiling and saying: "I 
 have been waiting for you a long time, waiting for your 
 coming before I poured the wine" — there is nothing more 
 to be said. We do not want to hear any more; we know 
 that the Eleven had again become Twelve; we do not re- 
 quire to be told that the wine is poured out, or that Judas 
 repents his fault. The startling and beautiful thing is the 
 loving call and the welcome to the Divine Supper. You 
 will find the whole of this poem in the "Victorian Anthol- 
 ogy," but I should advise any person who might think of 
 making a Japanese translation to drop the final stanza 
 and to leave out a few of the others, if his judgment agrees 
 with mine. 
 
 Read this again to yourselves, and see how beautiful it is» 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 369 
 
 The beauty is chiefly in the central idea of forgiveness; 
 but the workmanship of this composition has also a very re- 
 markable beauty, a Celtic beauty of weirdness, such as we 
 seldom find in a modern composition touching religious tra- 
 dition. It were interesting to know how the poet was able 
 to imagine such a piece of work. I think I can tell a little 
 of the secret. Only a man with a great knowledge and 
 love of old ballads could have written it. Having once 
 decided upon the skeleton of the story, he must have gone 
 to his old Celtic literature and to old Northern ballads for 
 further inspiration. I have already suggested that the bal- 
 lad of "Thomas the Rhymer" was one source of his inspira- 
 tion, with its strange story of the River of Blood. Thomas 
 was sitting under a tree, the legend goes, when he saw a 
 woman approaching so beautiful that he thought she was 
 an angel or the Virgin Mary, and he addressed her on his 
 knees. But she sat down beside him, and said, "I am no 
 angel nor saint; I am only a fairy. But if you think that 
 I am so beautiful, take care that you do not kiss me, for 
 if you do, then I shall have power over you." Thomas 
 immediately did much more than kiss her, and he there- 
 fore became her slave. She took him at once to fairy land, 
 and on their way they passed through strange wild countries, 
 much like those described in Robert Buchanan's ballad; 
 they passed the River of Blood; they passed dark trees 
 laden with magical food ; and they saw the road that reaches 
 Heaven and the road that reaches Hell. But Buchanan 
 could take only a few ideas from this poem. Other ideas 
 I think were inspired by a ballad of Goethe's, or at least 
 by Sir Walter Scott's version of it, "Frederick and Alice." 
 Frederick is a handsome young soldier who seduces a girl 
 called Alice under promise of marriage, and then leaves 
 her. He rides to join the army in France. The girl be- 
 comes insane with grief and shame; and the second day 
 later she dies at four o'clock in the morning. Meantime 
 Frederick unexpectedly loses his way; the rest I may best 
 
S70 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 tell in the original weird form. The horse has been fright- 
 ened by the sound of a church bell striking the hour of four. 
 
 Heard ye not the boding sound, 
 
 As the tongue of yonder tower, 
 Slowly, to the hills around. 
 
 Told the fourth, the fated hour? 
 
 Starts the steed, and snuffs the air. 
 
 Yet no cause of dread appears ; 
 Bristles high the rider's hair, 
 
 Struck with strange mysterious fears. 
 
 Desperate as his terrors rise. 
 
 In the steed the spur he hides ; 
 From himself in vain he flies ; 
 
 Anxious, restless, on he rides. 
 
 Seven long days, and seven long nights, 
 
 Wild he wandered, woe the while ! 
 Ceaseless care, and causeless fright, 
 
 Urge his footsteps many a mile. 
 
 Dark the seventh sad night descends ; 
 
 Rivers swell, and rain-streams pour 
 While the deafening thunder lends 
 
 All the terrors of its roar. 
 
 At the worst part of his dreary wandering over an un- 
 known and gloomy country, Frederick suddenly sees a light 
 far away. This seems to him, as it seemed in Buchanan's 
 ballad to the soul of Judas, a light of hope. He goes to 
 the light, and finds himself in front of a vast and ruinous 
 looking church. Inside there is a light; he leaps down from 
 his horse, descends some steps, and enters the building. 
 Suddenly all is darkness again; he has to feel his way. 
 
 Long drear vaults before him lie ! 
 
 Glimmering lights are seen to glide ! — 
 "Blessed Mary, hear my cry ! 
 
 Deign a sinner's steps to guide!" 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 371 
 
 Often lost their quivering beam, 
 
 Still the lights move slow before, 
 Till they rest their ghastly gleam 
 
 Right against an iron door. 
 
 He is really in the underground burial place of a church, 
 in the vaults of the dead, but he does not know it. He 
 hears voices. 
 
 Thundering voices from within, 
 
 Mixed with peals of laughter, rose ; 
 
 As they fell, a solemn strain 
 
 Lent its wild and wondrous close ! 
 
 'Midst the din, he seem'd to hear 
 
 Voice of friends, by death removed; — 
 
 Well he knew that solemn air, 
 'Twas the lay that Alice loved. 
 
 Suddenly a great bell booms four times, and the iron 
 door opens. He sees within a strange banquet; the seats 
 are cofRns, the tables are draped with black, and the dead 
 are the guests. 
 
 Alice, in her grave-clothes bound. 
 
 Ghastly smiling, points a seat. 
 All arose with thundering sound ; 
 
 All the expected stranger greet. 
 
 High their meagre arms they wave. 
 Wild their notes of welcome swell ; 
 
 "Welcome, traitor, to the grave ! 
 Perjured, bid the light farewell I" 
 
 I have given the greater part of this strange ballad be- 
 cause of its intrinsic value and the celebrity of its German 
 author. But the part that may have inspired Buchanan is 
 only the part concerning the wandering over the black moor, 
 the light seen in the distance, the ghostly banquet of the 
 dead, and the ruined vaults. A great poet would have 
 easily found in these details the suggestion which Buchanan 
 
372 A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 found for the wandering of Judas to the light and the un- 
 expected vision of the dead assembling to a banquet with 
 him — but only this. The complete transformation of the 
 fancy, the transmutation of the purely horrible into a 
 ghostly beauty and tenderness, is the wonderful thing. 
 After all, this is the chief duty of the poet in this world, 
 to discover beauty even in the ugly, suggestions of beauty 
 even in the cruel and terrible. This Buchanan did once 
 so very well that his work will never be forgotten, but 
 he received thereafter no equal inspiration, and the "Bal- 
 lad of Judas" remains, alone of its kind, his only real claim 
 to high distinction. 
 
 The poetry of Robert Buchanan is not great enough as 
 poetry to justify many quotations, but as thinking it de- 
 mands some attention. His third volume is especially of 
 interest in this respect, because it contains a curious ex- 
 position of his religious idealism. Buchanan is a mystic; 
 there is no doubt that he has been very much influenced by 
 the mysticism of Blake. The whole of the poems collec- 
 tively entitled "The Devil's Mystics," must have been sug- 
 gested by Blake's nomenclature. This collection belongs 
 to "the Book of Orm," which might have been well called 
 "The Book of Robert Buchanan." Orm ought to be a 
 familiar name to students of English literature, one of the 
 old English books also being called "The Ormulum," be- 
 cause it was written by a man named Orm. Buchan- 
 an's Orm is represented to be an ancient Celt, who has 
 visions and dreams about the mystery of the universe, and 
 who puts these visions and dreams, which are Buchanan's, 
 into old-fashioned verse. 
 
 The great Ernest Renan said in his "Dialogues Phi- 
 losophiques" that if everybody in the world who had thought 
 much about the mystery of things were to write down his 
 ideas regarding the Infinite, some great truth might be 
 discovered or deduced from the result. Buchanan has tried 
 to follow this suggestion; for he has very boldly put down 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN 373 
 
 all his thoughts about the world and man and God. As 
 to results, however, I can find nothing particularly original 
 except two or three queer fancies, none of which relates to 
 the deeper riddles of being. In a preface in verse, the 
 author further tells us that when he speaks of God he does 
 not mean the Christian God or the God of India nor any 
 particular God, but only the all-including Spirit of Life. 
 Be that as it may, we find his imagery to be certainly bor- 
 rowed from old Hebrew and old Christian thinkers; here 
 he has not fulfilled expectations. But the imagery is used 
 to express some ideas which I think you will find rather 
 new — not exactly philosophical ideas, but moral parables. 
 
 One of these is a parable about the possible consequences 
 of seeing or knowing the divine power which is behind the 
 shadows of things. Suppose that there were an omnipo- 
 tent God whom we could see; what would be the conse- 
 quences of seeing him*? Orm discovered that the blue of 
 the sky was a blue veil drawn across Immensity to hide 
 the face of God. One day, in answer to prayer, God drew 
 aside the blue veil. Then all mankind were terrified be- 
 cause they saw, by day and by night, an awful face look- 
 ing down upon them out of the sky, the sleepless eyes of the 
 face seeming to watch each person constantly wherever he 
 was. Did this make men happy ^ Not at all. They be- 
 came tired of life, finding themselves perpetually watched; 
 they covered their cities with roofs, and lived by lamp light 
 only, in order to avoid being looked at by the face, God. 
 This queer parable, recounted in the form of a dream, has 
 a meaning worth thinking about. The ultimate suggestion, 
 of course, is that we do not know and see many things be- 
 cause it would make us very unhappy to know them. 
 
 An equally curious parable, also related in the form of 
 a dream, treats of the consolations of death. What would 
 become of mankind if there were no death"? I think you 
 will remember that I told you how the young poet William 
 Watson took up the same subject a few years ago, in his 
 
3T4j a note on ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 remarkable poem "A Dream of Man." Watson's supposi- 
 tion is that men became so wise, so scientific, that they were 
 able to make themselves immortal and to conquer death. 
 But at last they became frightfully unhappy, unutterably 
 tired of life, and were obliged to beg God to give them 
 back death again. And God said to them, "You are hap- 
 pier than I am. You can die; I cannot. The only hap- 
 piness of existence is effort. Now you can have your friend 
 death back again." Buchanan's idea was quite different 
 from this. His poem is called "The Dream of the World 
 without Death." Men prayed to God that there might be 
 no more death or decay of the body; and the prayer was 
 granted. People continued to disappear from the world, 
 but they did not die. They simply vanished, when their 
 time came, as ghosts. A child goes out to play in the 
 field, for example, and never comes back again; the mother 
 finds only the empty clothes of her darling. Or a peasant 
 goes to the fields to work, and his body is never seen again. 
 People found that this was a much worse condition of things 
 than had been before. For the consolation of knowledge, 
 of certainty, was not given them. The dead body is a 
 certificate of death; nature uses corruption as a seal, an 
 official exhibit and proof of the certainty of death. But 
 when there is no body, no corpse, no possible sign, how 
 horrible is the disappearance of the persons we love. The 
 mystery of it is a much worse pain than the certain knowl- 
 edge of death. Doubt is the worst form of torture. Well, 
 when mankind had this experience, they began to think 
 that, after all, death was a beautiful and good thing, and 
 they prayed most fervently that they might again have the 
 privilege of dying in the old way, of putting the bodies of 
 their dead into beautiful tombs, of being able to visit the 
 graves of their beloved from time to time. So God took 
 pity on them and gave them back death, and the poet sings 
 his gratitude thus: 
 
A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN Q79 
 
 And I cried, "O unseen Sender of Corruption, 
 I bless thee for the wonder of Thy mercy, 
 Which softeneth the mystery and the parting. 
 
 "I bless Thee for the change and for the comfort, 
 The bloomless face, shut eyes, and waxen fingers, — 
 For Sleeping, and for Silence, and Corruption." 
 
 This idea is worth something, if only as a vivid teaching 
 of the necessity of things as they are. The two fantasies 
 thus commented upon are the most original things in the 
 range of this mystical book. I could not recommend any 
 further reading or study of the poet, except perhaps of 
 his "Vision of the Man Accurst." But even this has not 
 the true stamp of originality; and only the "Ballad of Judas 
 Iscariot" is certain not to be soon forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 
 
 There are several reasons why the poem entitled "Dor- 
 othy" should be made well known to you. First of all 
 it represents in a very striking manner a new spirit of pas- 
 toral poetry in the latter part of the Victorian period. In 
 the second place it is a poem which has been very widely 
 read and admired both in England and America — in fact, 
 wherever the English language is read. And in the third 
 place it can give you some notions about the life of the peas- 
 ant classes in England and about their relation to the upper 
 classes, almost better than any other book can do. Finally 
 I may add that it touches strongly and sensibly upon cer- 
 tain economic facts of life, opposing the sentimental laws 
 forbidding women to do the work of men. You know that 
 there are several sides to this question ; it is not to be lightly 
 decided, and I am not a teacher of ethics or economics, or 
 of the relation between ethics and economics, so I shall not 
 attempt to express any opinion on the subject at present. 
 But you should certainly be interested in the view of the 
 matter taken by the author of this book, who ought to be 
 able to judge of such matters well, since he is an eminent 
 lawyer, a good scholar, an official representing government 
 interests in the country districts, and a farmer and a poet. 
 Such a combination of knowledge and experience should en- 
 title a man to express an opinion about the conditions of the 
 peasantry. 
 
 When this book first appeared it was published anony- 
 mously. But now it is well known as the work of Arthur 
 Joseph Munby, an English lawyer who occasionally visits 
 London, but who has lived for the greater part of his life 
 in the country, especially in Surrey. Munby was born in 
 
 376 
 
A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 377 
 
 Yorkshire, which district, by the way, possesses the finest 
 peasantry in England. His birth was in 1828, so that he 
 must now be quite an old man; but he published a volume 
 of new poem.s only this year. It is rather a curious combi- 
 nation which he presents — farmer, country squire, and law- 
 yer all in one, yet finding time to be a poet. University 
 training developed his power to write poetry almost as 
 easily as other men write prose; this partly may account 
 for the phenomenon. I do not mean to say that it is great 
 poetry ; no man can be a great poet and exercise three other 
 professions at the same time. But it is not bad poetry, 
 it is actually better than the work of Arthur Hugh Clough, 
 the friend of Matthew Arnold, who wrote very much the 
 same kind of verse, and there is a merit in it besides that 
 of poetry proper. As a romance in verse, the measure and 
 construction of "Dorothy" do not greatly impress the 
 reader; in fact you are sometimes surprised, and almost made 
 angry, by the apparent indifference to poetical rules. But 
 after you have read the work, the impression left upon the 
 mind is very strong and very pleasing, and you will not 
 forget it. The book has the power to charm; it has charmed 
 tens of thousands of readers. The secret of the charm 
 is not, as I have suggested, in the literary art, but in the 
 feeling of the book, in the author's grasp of the subject, in 
 his knowledge of and sympathy with country life. From 
 boyhood this man liked the peasants, saw their good quali- 
 ties and admired them, learned their dialects and liked to 
 talk to them. I may mention here also that he has written 
 a good deal of poetry in peasant dialect, although a uni- 
 versity scholar. And one day he conceived the idea of 
 trying to interest the English upper classes in the humble 
 life of these country folk whom they pretended to despise. 
 But he had many prejudices to face in order to be able to 
 do this well. He had to be prepared to meet every possible 
 kind of sneer and jeer on the part of snobs and cads. He 
 had to expect to be told that his peasants were dirty, smelled 
 
378 A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 
 
 bad, had ugly hands, ugly faces, ugly feet, ugly manners, 
 and detestable stupidity into the bargain. And then he 
 met these prejudices and affectations simply by drawing 
 peasant life as he saw it. He described all the dirt and 
 the smell and the vulgarity and the ignorance in his poems 
 — even exaggerating them ; and nevertheless he made people 
 like them, admire them, almost love them when he had 
 done. The fact is, nearly all class prejudices, based upon 
 social conditions, are utter humbug; and they would 
 scarcely exist if the upper classes were less ignorant than 
 they are of what is noble and good and human in the low- 
 est classes. Munby did not attempt to fight prejudices by 
 denying their cause or denying their assertions, but by bring- 
 ing the real human facts into the light, and making people 
 look at them fairly and squarely. I think this is all I need 
 say about the social side of the poem. 
 
 But I must tell you something about English peasant life, 
 country life, labouring life, before I quote to you anything 
 from "Dorothy." I do not think that much is known in 
 Japan about English country life, though a good deal is 
 now known -about the life of the cities and of their indus- 
 trial classes. Japanese travellers do not have either the 
 time or the opportunity to go out into the country and 
 study the peasant. And yet, not to study the peasantry of 
 a country must be to remain with a very imperfect knowl- 
 edge of the nation. For the body, the strength, the whole 
 power of the race is there. In England, perhaps, the diffi- 
 culty of studying the agricultural classes is especially great, 
 for the extraordinary reason that the agricultural classes 
 are gradually disappearing. The entire country is owned 
 by a few thousand people; there is no future in store for 
 the common worker, and the advent of the complicated ma- 
 chinery into field work dispenses with a great deal of hu- 
 man labour. Therefore the English peasantry emigrates 
 whenever it can, and in the future its place will perhaps 
 
A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 379 
 
 be taken by an inferior foreign class. But, as I have said, to 
 know the English race one should know something about its 
 peasants. The excellent French thinker Taine, who made 
 an admirable book of English travels, understood this per- 
 fectly well, and he based his studies of English char- 
 acter largely upon his observation of the agricultural and 
 the working classes. 
 
 At the time when Munby wrote his poem, women in the 
 English country district used to do extraordinary work, per- 
 haps more than they do now. There were plenty of women 
 blacksmiths, women colliers, women farmers — in fact, al- 
 most every department of heavy labour had places for 
 women as well as for men. I believe that legislation sub- 
 sequently changed a good many of these conditions, forbid- 
 ding women, for example, to work in the coal mines dressed 
 in men's clothes. But as a boy I remember seeing much 
 heavy work done by women, and I do not know that the leg- 
 islation was altogether wise. Only a very particular class 
 of women could do the work against which the laws were 
 passed, and that class of women were particularly well 
 fitted by nature to do it. You could not have told, by 
 the eye alone, whether those working women were men or 
 women; their voices might betray them, but not their walk 
 or their bulk. Among them were figures six feet high, with 
 shoulders broad as a wrestler's, arms muscled like those of 
 a man, and walking with the long swinging step of a man 
 in great heavy shoes. The impression you received on see- 
 ing them work was that there was nothing womanly about 
 them, for their roughness of appearance was equal to the 
 roughness of men. 
 
 Among the peasant class proper — I mean among those 
 who remain all their lives at farm work — this masculinity 
 does not appear to the same degree in manners. The 
 labouring woman in the country is often huge and strong 
 but seldom unwomanly. Her manner remains gentle and 
 
380 A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 
 
 kind. It is the contact with the life of the mines, with me- 
 chanical industries and manufactories, that seems to make 
 the woman rough. They lose the moral tone of their sex — 
 I do not mean by this that they become bad, but they cease 
 to act and talk like women. It is not so in the country; it 
 is so only in the manufacturing and mining towns. Now 
 it is of the country girl that Mr. Munby writes, and he takes 
 for his type one of the lowest class of workers, a female farm 
 servant. 
 
 I must tell you something about these female servants. 
 A woman must be very strong indeed to be a servant in the 
 country, not only in England but even in America. A 
 woman employed as servant on a farm must do what would 
 be considered in this country hard work for at least six per- 
 sons. She must cook three times a day for the entire house- 
 hold, she must bake bread in addition to cooking, she must 
 do all the washing of the family, and keep the house clean, 
 and she must help with the work on the farm — milking and 
 feeding the cow, taking care of the poultry, doing, in short, 
 the work of both a man and a woman. One must be very 
 strong indeed for such labour; and it is no wonder that 
 women are gradually passing from the sphere of domestic 
 employment, to be replaced by men. 
 
 Can we imagine any romance in so hard a life*? Our 
 English poet has proved to us that romance may be found 
 in it quite as well as in any other walk of life — though of a 
 different kind. 
 
 Let us take the plan of the story as he tells it to us, 
 giving extracts here and there to show the attraction of his 
 verse. It is good verse, all hexameters and pentameters 
 alternating; and although this kind of verse cannot be made 
 quite perfect in English by anybody, Mr. Munby's hexam- 
 eters will certainly compare very well with either Long- 
 fellow's or Clough's. He first tells us about the birth of 
 the girl on the farm — an illegitimate child, and therefore 
 destined to hard work without any parental affection to 
 
A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 381 
 
 soften the way for her, but honest, good, kind, and beauti- 
 ful. Here is a little description, which includes the descrip- 
 tion of a farm girl in general : 
 
 Weakly her mistress was, and weakly the two little daughters ; 
 
 But by her master's side Dorothy wrought like a son ; 
 
 Wrought out of doors on the farm, and labour'd in dairy and kitchen 
 
 Doing the work of two ; help and support of them all. 
 
 Rough were her broad brown hands, and within, ah me ! they were 
 
 horny ; 
 Rough were her thick ruddy arms, shapely and round as they were; 
 Rough too her glowing cheeks ; and her sunburnt face and forehead 
 Browner than cairngorm seem'd, set in her amber-bright hair. 
 Yet 'twas a handsome face ; the beautiful regular features 
 Labour could never spoil, ignorance could not degrade : 
 And in her clear blue eyes bright gleams of intelligence linger'd ; 
 And on her warm red mouth, Love might have 'lighted and lain. 
 Never an unkind word nor a rude unseemly expression 
 Came from that soft red mouth ; nor in those sunny blue eyes 
 Lived there a look that belied the frankness of innocent girlhood — 
 Fearless, because it is pure ; gracious, and gentle, and calm. 
 Have you not seen such a face, among rural hard-working maidens 
 Born but of peasant stock, free from our Dorothy's shame? 
 Just such faces as hers — a countenance open and artless. 
 Where no knowledge appears, culture, nor vision of grace; 
 Yet which an open-air life and simple and strenuous labour 
 Fills with a charm of its own — precious, and warm from the heart? 
 
 I think the author insists too much in his poem upon the 
 roughness and hardness of Dorothy's hands. As a matter 
 of fact, no soft-handed woman could be a good worker, and 
 it is the custom to look at a woman's hands before giving 
 her work to do on a farm. If they are soft and white, they 
 belong to a lazy woman. It is good to recognise the hon- 
 esty of a hard working hand, to recognise that there is a 
 certain nobility in labour, but I think that Munby insists 
 too much on the ugliness of hard hands. Really hard hands 
 are not any uglier than any other hands, except to fastidious 
 persons; perhaps Mr. Munby was only desiring to antici- 
 pate fastidious criticism. He goes on to give a description 
 
382 A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 
 
 of the girl on the farm in winter, spring, summer, and 
 autumn. The description of the spring work is fine; the 
 subject is ploughing. It is very hard to plough perfectly, 
 unless you have been brought up to the work from a child. 
 Prizes for straight ploughing used to be given in different 
 parts of the country; perhaps they are still given, but the 
 introduction of steam ploughing machinery from America is 
 very likely to do away with hand ploughing in the course 
 of time. If that day comes, a description of ploughing like 
 this will be remembered and read with a pleasure somewhat 
 like that which we feel when we read in Virgil accounts of 
 the work done upon old Roman farms: 
 
 Well can our Dorothy plough — as a girl she learnt it and loved it; 
 
 Leading the teams at first, followed by master himself; 
 
 Then when she grew to the height and the strength of a muscular 
 
 woman, 
 Grasping the stilts in her pride, driving the mighty machine. 
 Ah, what a joy for her, at early morn in the springtime 
 Driving from hedge to hedge furrows as straight as a line ! 
 Seeing the crisp brown earth, like waves in the bow of a vessel 
 Rise, curl over, and fall, under the thrust of the share ; 
 Orderly falling and still, its edges all creamy and crumbling, 
 But on the sloping side, polished and purple as steel ; 
 Till all the fields she thought looked bright as the bars of that gridiron 
 In the great window at church, over the gentle folks' pew : 
 And ever more as she strode she had cheerful companions behind her ; 
 Rooks and smaller birds, following after her plough : 
 And ere the ridges were done, there was gossamer woven above them. 
 Gossamer dewy and white, shining like foam on the sea. 
 
 Of descriptions like these there are not many, for the 
 subject of the ppem is the description of character rather 
 than of hills and fields, and descriptions of character are 
 better given through the words and actions of a person than 
 in any other way. So a large proportion of the poem is 
 simply a narrative of acts, mingled with a record of col- 
 loquial speech. Still I may quote you a few lines about a 
 sunset : 
 
A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 383 
 
 Well, there was something to see; for the sun was setting in glory, 
 Glowing through marvellous clouds, molten suffused with his light; 
 Clouds all rosy above, like the snows of an Alpine sunset, 
 But in the heart of their snow thrilled with a cavernous fire ; 
 Clouds that were couched superb in a blaze of opal and emerald, 
 Haunting the clear, cool sky lucid and lovely and blue. 
 
 The quotations will show the very considerable power 
 of art which the poet possesses and can use at will. But 
 the art of showing the beauty and charm of a simple char- 
 acter is much more difficult than the painting of clouds, 
 and this also the poet has done. He traces for us the life 
 of the girl up to the time of her wedding, and the object of 
 the whole work is certainly, in no small degree, the praise 
 of honest labour that strengthens the body and keeps the 
 mind pure. Why discourage women from labour in the 
 fields, he asks, since such work is good both for the body 
 and for the mind; and the women capable of such work 
 become the mothers of the strong and steady men that make 
 up the force of a country. It is not, he reminds us, the 
 sickly and delicate girls working in factories or in shops, 
 who are likely to be the mothers of the best men. 
 
 Probably this poem of Mr. Munby's had very little ef- 
 fect in checking the course of things, and probably the ag- 
 ricultural population of England must disappear. The 
 whole country is becoming divided into nothing but 
 manufacturing districts or ornamental estates. It does not 
 pay to grow corn or wheat nor even to raise cattle and 
 sheep in England. It is cheaper to buy such things from 
 abroad. So the farming population is disappearing. The 
 best men and women go to other countries — Canada, 
 America, Australia; the weaker part of the peasant popula- 
 tion drift into factory life. These things cannot be helped. 
 But the poet has preserved for us a fine picture of this 
 fine peasant life, which will be read when the peasant life 
 itself has passed from England. The book suggests or 
 ought to suggest a good deal to lovers of literature in other 
 
384 A NOTE ON MUNBY'S "DOROTHY" 
 
 countries than England, especially the fact that peasant life 
 is a subject for poetry; and that the poet able to perceive 
 its relation to the moral and physical well-being of a nation 
 has a great opportunity before him. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 This poet, one of the greatest of the English minor poets of 
 our time, and represented in literature by a very considerable 
 bulk of work, happens to be one of the least known. He 
 was never popular; and even to-day, when recognition is 
 coming to him slowly, almost as slowly as it came to George 
 Meredith, he is chiefly read by the cultivated classes. 
 There are several reasons for this. One is that he is al- 
 together an old-fashioned poet, writing with the feeling of 
 the eighteenth rather than of the nineteenth century, so that 
 persons in search of novelty are not likely to look at him. 
 Then again he is not a thinker, except at the rarest moments, 
 not touched at all by the scientific ideas of the nineteenth 
 century. For that reason a great many people, accustomed 
 to look for philosophy in poetry, do not care about his verse. 
 I must confess that I myself should not have read him, had 
 it not been for a beautiful criticism of his work published 
 some five years ago. That tempted me to study him, 
 with pleasant results. But I then found a third reason for 
 his unpopularity — want of passion. When everything else 
 is missing that attracts intellectual attention to a poet, every- 
 thing strange, novel, and philosophical, he may still become 
 popular if he has strong emotion, deep feeling. But Rob- 
 ert Bridges has neither. He is somewhat cool, even when 
 he is not cold; his colours are never strong, though they are 
 always natural ; and there is something faint about his music 
 that makes you think of the music of insects, of night 
 crickets or locusts. You may therefore begin to wonder 
 that I should speak about him at all. If a poet has no 
 philosophy, no originality, and no passion, what can there 
 be in him? Well, a great deal. It is not necessary to be 
 
 385 
 
386 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 original in order to be a poet; it is only necessary to say 
 old things somewhat better than they have been said be- 
 fore. Such a non-original poet of excellence may be a 
 great lover of nature; for nature has been described in a 
 million ways, and we are not tired of the descriptions. 
 Again, the feeling need not be very strong; it is not strong 
 in Wordsworth, except at moments. I think that the charm 
 of Robert Bridges, who is especially a nature-poet, lies 
 in his love of quiet effects, pale colours, small soft sounds, 
 all the dreaminess and all the gentleness of still and beauti- 
 ful days. Some of us like strong sounds, blazing colours, 
 heavy scents of flowers and fruits ; but some of us do not — 
 we prefer rest and coolness and quiet tones. And I think 
 that to Japanese feeling Robert Bridges ought to make an 
 appeal. Much of his work makes me think of the old 
 Japanese colour prints of spring, summer, autumn, and win- 
 ter landscapes. He is particularly fond of painting these; 
 perhaps half of his poetry, certainly a third of it, deals with 
 descriptions of the seasons. There is nothing tropical in 
 these descriptions, because they are true to English land- 
 scape, the only landscape that he knows well. Now there 
 is a good deal in English landscape, in the colours of the 
 English seasons, that resembles what is familiar to us in the 
 aspects of Japanese nature. 
 
 I cannot tell you very much about the poet himself; he 
 has left his personality out of the reach of public curiosity. 
 I can only tell you that he was born in 1844 and that he 
 is a country doctor, which is very interesting, for it is not 
 often that a man can follow the busy duties of a country 
 physician and find time to make poetry. But Dr. Bridges 
 has been able to make two volumes of poetry which take 
 very high rank; and a whole school of minor poets has 
 been classed under the head of "Robert Bridges and his 
 followers" in the new Encyclopedia of English poets. 
 
 I do not intend at once to tire you by quoting this poet's 
 descriptions of the seasons; I only want to interest you in 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 387 
 
 him, and if I can do that, you will be apt to read these de- 
 scriptions for yourselves. I am going to pick out bits, here 
 and there, which seem to me beautiful in themselves, inde- 
 pendently of their subjects. Indeed, I think this is the way 
 tl"iat Robert Bridges wants us to read him. At the begin- 
 ning of Book IV, of the shorter poems (you will be inter- 
 ested to know that most of his poems have no titles), he 
 himself tells us what his whole purpose is, in these pretty 
 stanzas : 
 
 I love all beauteous things, 
 
 I seek and adore them ; 
 God hath no better praise, 
 And man in his hasty days 
 
 Is honoured for them. 
 
 I too will something make, 
 
 And joy In the making ; 
 Ahhough to-morrow it seem 
 Like the empty words of a dream 
 
 Remembered on waking. 
 
 With this hint I have no hesitation in beginning this lec- 
 ture on Robert Bridges by picking out what seems to me 
 almost the only philosophical poem in the whole of his 
 work. The philosophy is not very deep, but the poem is 
 haunting. 
 
 EROS 
 
 Why hast thou nothing in thy face? 
 Thou idol of the human race, 
 Thou tyrant of the human heart. 
 The flower of lovely youth that art; 
 Yea, and that standest in thy youth 
 An image of eternal Truth, 
 With thy exuberant flesh so fair. 
 That only Pheidias might compare, 
 Ere from his chaste marmoreal form 
 Time had decayed the colours warm ; 
 Like to his gods in thy proud dress, 
 Thy starry sheen of nakedness. 
 
388 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 Surely thy body is thy mind, 
 For in thy face is nought to find, 
 Only thy soft unchristen'd smile 
 That shadows neither love nor guile, 
 But shameless will and power immense, 
 In secret sensuous innocence. 
 
 king of joy, what is thy thought? 
 
 1 dream thou knowest it is nought, 
 And wouldst in darkness come, but thou 
 Makest the light where'er thou go. 
 
 Ah yet no victim of thy grace, 
 
 None who e'er longed for thy embrace, 
 
 Hath cared to look upon thy face. 
 
 The divinity here described is not the infant but the 
 more mature form of the god of Love, Eros (from whose 
 name is derived the adjective "erotic," used in such terms as 
 "erotic poetry"). This Eros was represented as a beautiful 
 naked boy about twelve or thirteen years old. Several 
 statues of him are among the most beautiful works of Greek 
 art. It is one of these statues that the poet refers to. And 
 you must understand his poem, first of all, as treating of 
 physical love, physical passion, as distinguished from love 
 which belongs rather to the mind and heart and which is 
 alone real and enduring. There is always a certain amount 
 of delusion in physical attraction, in mere bodily beauty; 
 but about the deeper love, which is perfect friendship be- 
 tween the sexes, there is no delusion, and it only grows 
 with time. Now the god Eros represented only the power 
 of physical passion, the charm of youth. Looking at the 
 face of the beautiful statue, the poet is startled by some- 
 thing which has been from ancient times noticed by all 
 critics of Greek art, but which appears to him strange in 
 another way — there is no expression in that face. It is 
 beautiful, but it is also impersonal. So the faces of all 
 the Greek gods were impersonal; they represented ideals, 
 not realities. They were moved neither by deep love nor 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 389 
 
 by deep hate — not at least in the conception of the artist 
 and sculptor. They were above humanity, above affection, 
 therefore above pity. Here it is worth while to remark 
 the contrast between the highest Eastern ideals in sculpture 
 and the highest Western ideals. In the art of the Far 
 East the Buddha is also impersonal; he smiles, but the 
 smile is of infinite pity, compassion, tenderness. He repre- 
 sents a supreme ideal of virtue. Nevertheless he is, though 
 impersonal, warmly human for this very reason. The more 
 beautiful Greek divinity smiles deliciously, but there is no 
 tenderness, no compassion, no affection in that smile. It 
 is not human; it is superhuman. Looking at the features 
 of a Greek Aphrodite, an Eros, a Dionysius, you feel that 
 they could smile with the same beautiful smile at the de- 
 struction of the world. What does the smile mean*? You 
 are charmed by it, yet it is mysterious, almost awful. It 
 represents nothing but supreme content, supreme happiness 
 — not happiness in the spiritual sense of rest, but happiness 
 of perfect youth and innocence of pain. That is why 
 there is something terrible about it to the modern thinker. 
 It is without sympathy; it is only joy. 
 
 Now you will see the poem in its inner meaning. Let 
 us paraphrase it: 
 
 "Why is there no expression in that divinely beautiful 
 face of thine, O fair god, who art forever worshipped by 
 the race of men, forever ruling the hearts of its youth with- 
 out pity, without compassion I Thou who art the perfect 
 image of the loveliness of youth, and the symbol of some 
 eternal and universal law, so fair, so lovely that only the 
 great Greek sculptor Pheidias could represent thee in pure 
 marble, thou white as that marble itself, before time had 
 faded the fresh colour with which thy statue had been 
 painted! Truly thou art as one of his gods in the pride 
 of thy nakedness — which becomes thee more than any robe, 
 being itself luminous, a light of stars. But why is there 
 no expression in thy face*? 
 
g90 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 "It must be that thy body represents thy mind. Yet 
 thy mind is not reflected in thy face like the mind of man. 
 There I see only the beautiful old pagan smile, the smile 
 of the years before the Religion of Sorrow came into this 
 world. And that smile of thine shows neither love nor 
 hate nor shame, but power incalculable and the innocence 
 of sensuous pleasure. 
 
 "Thou king of Joy, of what dost thou think'? For thy 
 face no-wise betrays thy thought. Truly I believe thou 
 dost not think of anything which troubles the minds of 
 sorrowing men; thou thinkest of nothing. Thou art Joy, 
 not thought. And I imagine that thou wouldst prefer not 
 to be seen by men, to come to them in darkness only, or in- 
 visibly, as thou didst to Psyche in other years. But thou 
 canst not remain invisible, since thy body is made of light, 
 and forever makes a great shining about thee. For un- 
 counted time thou hast moved the hearts of millions of 
 men and of women; all have known thy presence, felt thy 
 power. But none, even of those who most longed for 
 thee, has ever desired to look into thy beautiful face, be- 
 cause it is not the face of humanity but of divinity, and 
 because there is in it nothing of human love." 
 
 There is a good deal to think about in this poem, but to 
 feel the beauty of it you ought to have before your eyes, 
 when studying it, a good engraving of the statue. How- 
 ever, even without any illustration you will easily perceive 
 the moral of the thought in it, that beauty and youth alone 
 do not signify affection, nor even anything dear to the 
 inner nature of man. 
 
 Now I shall turn to another part of the poet's work. 
 Here is a little verse about a grown man looking at the 
 picture of himself when he was a little child. I think 
 that it is a very charming sonnet, and it will give you some- 
 thing to think about. 
 
 A man that sees by chance his picture, made 
 As once a child he was, handling some toy, 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 391 
 
 Will gaze to find his spirit within the boy, 
 Yet hath no secret with the soul portrayed : 
 He cannot think the simple thought which played 
 Upon those features then so frank and coy ; 
 'Tis his, yet oh ! not his : and o'er the joy 
 His fatherly pity bends in tears dismayed. 
 
 There is indeed no topic which Robert Bridges has treated 
 more exquisitely and touchingly than certain phases of child- 
 hood, the poetry of childhood, the purity of childhood, the 
 pathos of childhood. I do not think that any one except 
 Patmore, and Patmore only in one poem, "The Toys," has 
 even approached him. Take this little poem for example, 
 on the death of a little boy. It is the father who is speak- 
 ing. 
 
 ON A DEAD CHILD 
 
 Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, 
 
 With promise of strength and manhood full and fair I 
 Though cold and stark and bare. 
 The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee. 
 
 Thy mother's treasure wert thou ; — alas I no longer 
 To visit her heart with wondrous joy, to be 
 Thy father's pride ; — ah, he 
 Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger. 
 
 To me, as I move thee now in the last duty, 
 
 Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond ; 
 Startling my fancy fond 
 With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty. 
 
 Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it : 
 But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff ; 
 Yet feels my hand as if 
 'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it. 
 
 So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing, — 
 
 Go lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed ; — 
 Propping thy wise, sad head. 
 Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing. 
 
892 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 So quiet! — doth the change content thee? — Death, whither hath he 
 taken thee ? 
 To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this? 
 The vision of which I miss, 
 Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee ? 
 
 Ah ! little at best can all our hopes avail us 
 
 To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark 
 Unwilling, alone we embark, 
 And the things we have seen, and have known and have heard of, 
 fail us ! 
 
 You will see the exquisiteness of this more fully after a 
 little explanation. The father is performing the last duty 
 to his little dead son : washing the body with his own hands, 
 closing the eyes, and placing the little corpse in the coffin, 
 rather than trust this work to any less loving hands. The 
 Western coffin, you must know, is long, and the body is 
 placed in it lying at full length as upon a bed, with a 
 little pillow to support the head. Then the hands are 
 closed upon the heart in the attitude of prayer. The poem 
 describes more than the feelings of a father, .during these 
 tender offices. As he turns the little body to wash it, the 
 small head changes its position now and then, and the mo- 
 tion is so much like the pretty motions made by that little 
 head during life, that it is very difficult to believe there is 
 now no life there. In all modern English poetry there is 
 nothing more touching than the lines : 
 
 Startling my fancy fond 
 With a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty. 
 
 The word "freak" is incomparably beautiful in this line, 
 for it has a sense of playfulness; it means often a childish 
 fancy or whim or pretty mischievous action. The turning 
 of the dead head seems so like the motion of the living head 
 in play. Then as the hands were washed by the father, the 
 relaxed muscles caused the opened fingers to close upon the 
 father's finger, just as in other days when the two walked 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 393 
 
 about together, the little boy's hands were too small to 
 hold the great hands of the father, and therefore clasped one 
 finger only. Then observe the very effective use of two 
 most simple adjectives to picture the face of the dead child 
 — "wise" and "sad." Have you ever seen the face of a 
 dead child? If you have, you will remember how its calm- 
 ness gives one the suggestion of strange knowledge ; the wise 
 smile little, and fond fancy for thousands of years has 
 looked into the faces of the unsmiling dead in search of 
 some expression of supreme knowledge. Also there is an 
 expression of sadness in the face of death, even in the faces 
 of children asleep, although relaxation of muscles is the 
 real explanation of the fact. All these fancies are very 
 powerfully presented in the first five verses. 
 
 In the last two verses the sincerity of grief uniquely shows 
 itself. "Where do you think the little life has gone?" the 
 father asks. "Do you want me to say that I think it has 
 gone to a happier world than this, to what you call Heaven? 
 Ah, I must tell you the truth. I do not know; I doubt, I 
 fear. When a grief like this comes to us, all our religious 
 imaginations and hopes can serve us little." 
 
 You must read that over and over again to know the 
 beauty of it. Here is another piece of very touching poetry 
 about a boy, perhaps about the same boy who afterward 
 died. It will require some explanation, for it is much 
 deeper in a way than the previous piece. It is called "Pater 
 Filio," meaning "the father to the son." 
 
 Sense with keenest edge unused, 
 
 Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire ; 
 Lovely feet as yet unbruised 
 
 On the ways of dark desire ; 
 Sweetest hope that lookest smiling 
 O'er the wilderness defiling! 
 
 Why such beauty, to be blighted 
 By the swarm of foul destruction? 
 
394 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 "Why such innocence delighted, 
 
 When sin stalks to thy seduction? 
 All the litanies e'er chaunted 
 Shall not keep thy faith undaunted. 
 
 Me too once unthinking Nature 
 
 — Whence Love's timeless mockery took me, — 
 
 Fashion'd so divine a creature, 
 Yea, and like a beast forsook me. 
 
 I forgave, but tell the measure 
 
 Of her crime in thee, my treasure. 
 
 The father is suffering the great pain of fathers when 
 he speaks thus, the pain of fearing for the future of his 
 child; and the mystery of things oppresses him, as it op- 
 presses everybody who knows what it is to be afraid for 
 the sake of another. He wonders at the beautiful fresh 
 senses of the boy, "yet unsteeled by scathing fire" — that is, 
 not yet hardened by experience of pain. He admires the 
 beauty of the little feet tottering happily about; but in the 
 same moment dark thoughts come to him, for he remem- 
 bers how blood-stained those little feet must yet become 
 on the ways of the world, in the streets of cities, in the 
 struggle of life. And he delights in the smile of the child, 
 full of hope that knows nothing of the great foul wilder- 
 ness of the world, in which envy and malice and passions 
 of many kinds make it difficult to remain either good or 
 hopeful. And he asks, "Why should a child be made so 
 beautiful, only to lose that beauty at a later day, through 
 sickness and grief and pain of a thousand kinds'? Why 
 should a child come into the world so charmingly innocent 
 and joyful, only to lose that innocence and happiness later 
 on through the encountering of passion and temptation? 
 Why should a child believe so deeply in the gods and in 
 human nature? Later on, no matter how much he grieves, 
 the time will come when that faith in the powers unseen 
 must be sadly warped." 
 
 And lastly the father remembers his own childhood, think- 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 395 
 
 ing, "I too was once a divine little creature like that. Love, 
 the eternal illusion, brought me into the vi^orld, and Nature 
 made me as innocent and trustful as this little boy. Later 
 on, however, the same Nature abandoned me, like the ani- 
 mal that forsakes her young as soon as they grow a little 
 strong. I forgave Nature for that abandonment," the 
 father says, turning to the child, "but it is only when I look 
 at you, my treasure, that I understand how much I lost with 
 the vanishing of my own childhood." 
 
 Nobody in the whole range of English literature has 
 written anything more tender than that. It is out of the 
 poet's heart. 
 
 One would expect, on reading delicacies of this kind, 
 that the poet would express himself not less beautifully 
 than tenderly in regard to woman. As a matter of fact, 
 he certainly ranks next to Rossetti as a love poet, even in 
 point of workmanship. I am also inclined to think, and I 
 believe that critics will later recognise this, that his feeling 
 in regard to the deeper and nobler qualities of love can only 
 be compared to the work of Browning in the same direc- 
 tion. It has not Browning's force, nor the occasional 
 sturdiness that approaches roughness. It is altogether softer 
 and finer, and it has none of Browning's eccentricities. A 
 collection of sonnets, fifty-nine in number, entitled "The 
 Growth of Love" may very well be compared with Ros- 
 setti's sonnet-sequence, "The House of Life." But it is 
 altogether unlike Rossetti's work; it deals with thought more 
 than sensation, and with joy more than sorrow. But be- 
 fore we give an example of these, let me quote a little 
 fancy of a very simple kind, that gives the character of 
 Robert Bridges as a love poet quite as well as any long 
 or elaborate poem could do. 
 
 Long are the hours the sun is above, 
 
 But when evening comes I go home to my love. 
 
 I'm away the daylight hours and more, 
 Yet she comes not down to open the door. 
 
896 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 She does not meet me upon the stair, — 
 
 She sits in my chamber and waits for me there. 
 
 As I enter the room she does not move ; 
 I always walk straight up to my love ; 
 
 And she lets me take my wonted place 
 
 At her side, and gaze in her dear, dear face. 
 
 There as I sit, from her head thrown back 
 Her hair falls straight in a shadow black. 
 
 Aching and hot as my tired eyes be, 
 She is all that I wish to see. 
 
 And in my wearied and toil-dinned ear, 
 She says all things that I wish to hear. 
 
 Dusky and duskier grows the room, 
 Yet I see her best in the darker gloom. 
 
 When the winter eves are early and cold, 
 The firelight hours are a dream of gold. 
 
 And so I sit here night by night. 
 
 In rest and enjoyment of love's delight. 
 
 But a knock at the door, a step on the stair 
 Will startle, alas, my love from her chair. 
 
 If a stranger comes she will not stay : 
 At the first alarm she is off and away. 
 
 And he wonders, my guest, usurping her throne, 
 That I sit so much by myself alone. 
 
 You feel the mystery of the thing beginning at the sec- 
 ond stanza, but not until you get to the sixth stanza do you 
 begin to perceive it. This is not a living woman, but a 
 ghost. The whole poetry of the composition is here. What 
 does the poet mean*? He has not told us anywhere, and it 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 397 
 
 is better that he should not have told us, because we can 
 imagine so many things, so many different circumstances, 
 which the poem would equally well illustrate. Were this 
 the fancy of a young man, we might say that the phantom 
 love means the ideal wife, the unknown bride of the fu- 
 ture, the beautiful dream that every young man makes for 
 himself about a perfectly happy home. Again, we might 
 suppose that the spirit bride is not really related at all to 
 love in the common sense, but figures or symbolises only 
 the devotion of the poet to poetry, in which case the spirit 
 bride is art. But the poet is not a young man; he is an 
 old country doctor, coming home late every night from vis- 
 iting his patients, tired, weary, but with plenty of work to 
 do in his private study. Who, then, may be the shadowy 
 woman with the long black hair always waiting for him 
 alone'? Perhaps art, perhaps a memory, most likely the 
 memory of a dead wife, and we may even imagine, the 
 mother of the little boy about whose death the poet has so 
 beautifully written elsewhere. I do not pretend to ex- 
 plain; I do not want to explain; I am only anxious to show 
 you that this composition fulfils one of the finest condi- 
 tions of poetry, by its suggestiveness. It leaves many ques- 
 tions to be answered in fancy, and all of them are beautiful. 
 Let me now take a little piece about the singing of the 
 nightingale. I think you remember that I read to you, and 
 commented upon Keats's poem about the nightingale. That 
 is the greatest English poem, the most perfect, the most 
 unapproachable of poems upon the nightingale. And after 
 that, only a very, very skilful poet dare write seriously about 
 the nightingale, for his work, if at all imperfect, must suf- 
 fer terribly by comparison with the verses of Keats. But 
 Robert Bridges has actually come very near to the height 
 of Keats in a three stanza poem upon the same subject. 
 The treatment of the theme is curiously different. The 
 poem of Keats represents supreme delight, the delight which 
 is so great that it becomes sad. The poem of Bridges is 
 
398 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 slightly dark. The mystery of the bird song is the fact 
 that he chiefly considers; and he considers it in a way that 
 leaves you thinking a long time after the reading of the 
 verses. The suggestions of the composition, however, can 
 best be considered after we have read the verses. 
 
 NIGHTINGALES 
 
 Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, 
 
 And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom 
 
 Ye learn your song: 
 Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, 
 Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air 
 
 Bloom the year long I 
 
 Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams : 
 Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, 
 
 A throe of the heart. 
 Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, 
 No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, 
 
 For all our art. 
 
 Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men 
 
 We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then. 
 
 As night is withdrawn 
 From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May, 
 Dream, while the innumerable choir of day 
 
 Welcome the dawn. 
 
 Other poets, following the popular notion that birds are 
 happy when they sing, often speak of the nightingale as an 
 especially happy bird because of the extraordinary sweet- 
 ness of its song. The Greek poets thought otherwise; to 
 them it seemed that the song of the birds was the cry of 
 infinite sorrow and regret, and one of the most horrible of 
 all the Greek myths is the story of Philomela, transformed 
 into a nightingale. Matthew Arnold, you may remember, 
 takes the Greek view. So in a way does Robert Bridges, 
 but there are other suggestions in his verse, purely human. 
 Pajaphrased, the meaning is this (a man speaks first) : 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 399 
 
 "When I listen to your song, I feel sure that the coun- 
 try from which you come must be very beautiful ; and very 
 sweet the warbling music of the stream, whose sound may 
 have taught you how to sing. O how much I wish that 
 I could go to your wonderful world, your tropical world, 
 where summer never dies, and where flowers are all the year 
 in bloom." But the birds answer: "You are in error. 
 Desolate is the country from which we come; and in that 
 country the mountains are naked and barren, and the rivers 
 are dried up. If we sing, it is because of the pain that we 
 feel in our hearts, the pain of great desire for happier things. 
 But that which we desire without knowing it by sight, that 
 which we hope for in vain, these are more beautiful than 
 any song of ours can express. Skilful we are, but not skil- 
 ful enough to utter all that we feel. At night we sing, 
 trying to speak our secret of pain to men; but when all the 
 other birds awake and salute the sun with happy song, 
 while all the flowers open their leaves to the light, then 
 we do not sing, but dream on in silence and shadow." 
 
 Is there not in this beautiful verse the suggestion of the 
 condition of the soul in the artist and the poet, in those 
 whose works are beautiful or seem beautiful, not because 
 of joy, but because of pain — the pain of larger knowledge 
 and deeper perception? I think it is particularly this that 
 makes the superior beauty of the stanzas. You soon find 
 yourself thinking, not about the nightingale, but about the 
 human heart and the human soul. 
 
 Here and there on almost every page of Bridges are 
 to be found queer little beauties, little things that reveal 
 the personality of the writer. Can you describe an April 
 sky, and clouds in the sky, and the light and the colour 
 of the day, all in two lines? It is not an easy thing to 
 do; but there are two lines that seem to do it in a poem, 
 which is the sixth of the fourth book: 
 
 On high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud uptower 
 In bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling South. 
 
400 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 Notice the phrase "bulging heads." Nothing is so diffi- 
 cult to describe in words, as to form, than ordinary clouds, 
 because the form is indefinite. Yet the great rounding 
 masses do dimly suggest giant heads, not necessarily the 
 heads of persons, much oftener heads of trees. The word 
 "bulging" means not only a swelling outwards but a soft 
 baggy kind of swelling. No other adjective in the Eng- 
 lish language could better express the roundish form here 
 alluded to. And we know that they are white, simply by 
 the poet's use of the word dazzling that completes the pic- 
 ture. But there is more to notice ; the poet has called these 
 clouds banks of cloud, and has spoken of them as crowding 
 the sky for miles. Remember that a bank of clouds always 
 implies masses of cloud joined together below. Now on a 
 beautiful clear day you must have often noticed in the sky 
 that a clear space, straight as any line upon a map, marks 
 off the lower part of the cloud. Between the horizon and 
 this line there is only clear blue; then the clouds, all lined 
 and joined together at the bottom, are all rounded, bulgy 
 at the top. This is what the two lines which I have quoted 
 picture to us. 
 
 In the simplest fancies, however, the same truth to Na- 
 ture is observable, and comes to us in like surprises. Here 
 is a little bit about a new moon shining on the sea at 
 night. 
 
 She lightens on the comb 
 
 Of leaden waves, that roar 
 And thrust their hurried foam 
 
 Up on the dusky shore. 
 
 Behind the Western bars 
 
 The shrouded day retreats, 
 And unperceived the stars 
 
 Steal to their sovran seats. 
 
 And whiter grows the foam, 
 The small moon lightens more ; 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES 401 
 
 And as I turn me home, 
 My shadow walks before. 
 
 You feel that this has been seen and felt, that it is not 
 merely the imagination of a man sitting down to manu- 
 facture poetry at his desk. I imagine that you have not 
 seen the word "comb" used of wave motion very often, 
 though it is now coming more and more into poetical use. 
 The comb of the wave is its crest, and the term is used just 
 as we use the word comb in speaking of the crest of a 
 cock. But there is also the verb "to comb" ; and this re- 
 fers especially to the curling over of the crest of the wave, 
 just before it breaks, when the appearance of the crest- 
 edge resembles that of wool being pulled through a comb 
 {kushi). Thus the word gives us two distinct and pic- 
 turesque ideas, whether used as noun or as adjective. No- 
 tice too the use of "leaden" in relation to the colour of 
 waves where not touched by moonlight; the dull grey could 
 not be better described by any other word. Also observe 
 that as night advances, though the sea becomes dark, the 
 form appears to become whiter and whiter. In a phos- 
 phorescent sea the foam lines appear very beautiful in 
 darkness. 
 
 I shall quote but one more poem by Robert Bridges, 
 choosing it merely to illustrate how modern things appear 
 to this charming dreamer of old-fashioned dreams. One 
 would think that he could not care much about such mat- 
 ters as machinery, telegraphs, railroads, steamships. But 
 he has written a very fine sonnet about a steamship; and 
 the curious thing is that this poem appears in the middje of 
 a collection of love poems : 
 
 The fabled sea-snake, old Leviathan, 
 
 Or else what grisly beast of scaly chine 
 
 That champ'd the ocean-wrack and swash'd the brine, 
 
 Before the new and milder days of man, 
 
 Had never rib nor bray nor swindging fan 
 
402 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 Like his iron swimmer of the Clyde or Tyne, 
 Late-born of golden seed to breed a line 
 Of offspring swifter and more huge of plan. 
 
 Straight is her going, for upon the sun 
 
 When once she hath look'd, her path and place are plain; 
 
 With tireless speed she smiteth one by one 
 
 The shuddering seas and foams along the main ; 
 
 And her eased breath, when her wild race is run, 
 
 Roars through her nostrils like a hurricane. 
 
 While this is true to fact, it is also fine fancy; the only 
 true way in which the practical and mechanical can appeal 
 to the poet is in the sensation of life and power that it 
 produces. 
 
 I think we have read together enough of Robert Bridges 
 to excite some interest in such of his poetry as we have 
 not read. But you will have perceived that this poet is 
 in his own way quite different from other poets of the time, 
 and that he cannot appeal to common-place minds. His 
 poetry is like fine old wine, mild, mellowed wine, that only 
 the delicate palate will be able to appreciate properly. 
 
INDEX 
 
 "Abt Vogler," 195-199 
 
 "After Death," 167-169 
 
 "Against the haloed lattice-panes," 
 
 113 
 "Agamemnon" of "^schylus," 236 
 "Alack, it was I who leaped at the 
 
 sun," 209 
 "All delicate days and pleasant," 153 
 "All the bright lights of heaven," 
 
 165 
 "Along the garden ways just now," 
 
 16 
 "Amelia," 21 
 "Ancien Regime," 216 
 "And I cried 'O unseen Sender of 
 
 Corruption,' " 375 
 "And rearing Lindis backward 
 
 pressed," 342 
 "And we say that repose has fled," 
 
 320 
 "Angel in the House, The," 21 
 "Arabian Nights," 137 
 Arnold, Matthew, 30, 32, 298-333, 
 
 377. 398 
 "As when two men have loved a 
 
 woman well," 121 
 "Atalanta in Calydon," 127, 169 
 "Atalanta's Race," 13-15 
 Aurelius, Marcus, 326, 328 
 "Ay, but ii'e that the wind and sea 
 
 gird round," 170 
 
 "Balaustian's Adventure," 236-237 
 "Ballad of Dead Ladies," 123 
 "Ballad of Judas Iscariot, The," 361- 
 
 368, 372, 375 
 "Battle of Brunanburh," 353 
 Baudelaire, Charles, 131, 136 
 "Beautiful must be the mountains 
 
 whence ye come," 398 
 "Because man's soul is man's God 
 
 still," 134 
 "Birth-Bond, The," 47, 120 
 "Bishop Blougram's Apology," 232 
 "Bishop Orders his Tomb, The," 232 
 Blake, William, 258, 372 
 "Blessed Damozel, The," 49, 53-65 
 
 403 
 
 "Blessed damozel leaned out, The," 
 
 53 
 "Blot on the 'Scutcheon, The," 235 
 "Blue Closet, The," 254, 256 
 "Body's Beauty," 122 
 "Book of Orm, The," 372 
 "Born of the day that died, that eve," 
 
 "Brides of Enderby, The," 336 
 "Bride's Prelude, The," 111-117 
 Bridges, Robert, 385-402 
 "Bright star! would I were stead- 
 fast as thou art," 27 
 Browning, Robert, i, 22, 30, 37, 98, 
 
 172-238, 256, 298, 359, 395 
 Buchanan, Robert, 359-375 
 ". . . But Hallbiorn into the bower is 
 
 gone," 259 
 "But here is the finger of God," 198 
 "But men say that howsoever all other 
 
 folk of earth," 275 
 "But the very first step he made from 
 
 the place," 264 
 Byron, Lord George Gordon, i, 30, 
 
 31, 125, 129, 241, 297, 331 
 "By the Earth that groweth and 
 
 giveth," 274 
 "By the North Sea," 138 
 
 "Caliban upon Setebos," 234 
 "Canterbury Tales," 242 
 "Card-Dealer, The," 99-100 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 125, 174 
 "Carmen," 98-99 
 "Cavalier Tunes," 211-215 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 187 
 "Cenci," 127 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 241, 242, 243 
 "Christabel," 108, 264 
 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 15 
 Clifford, William Kingdon, 300 
 "Cloud Confines, The," 41 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 300, 377, 380 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 2, 30, 31, 
 
 105, 108, 264, 297, 303 
 Comte, Auguste, 133, 136 
 "Confessional, The," 216 
 "Consider the sea's listless chime," 46 
 
404? 
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Consolation," 309-310 
 "Count Gismond," 215, 250 
 Crabbe, George, 360 
 "Creep into thy narrow bed," 317 
 "Cristina and Monaldeschi," 216 
 "Crouched on the pavement," 325 
 
 Dante, Alighieri, 11, 37, 54, 123, 233, 
 
 312 
 "Dante and His Circle," 123 
 Darwin, Charles Robert, 300, 302 
 "Day is dark and the night. The," 
 
 41-43 
 "Defence of Guinevere, The,' 244, 
 
 257 
 "Delight he takes but in living. The," 
 
 138 
 De Musset, Alfred, 35-36, 54 
 "Devil's Mystics, The," 372 
 "Dialogues Philosophiques," 372 
 "Divinity, The," 329 
 "Don Juan," 129 
 "Dorothy," 376-384 
 "Dost thou dream, in a respite of 
 
 slumber," 163 
 "Dover Beach," 312-313 
 "Dramatic Idyls," 234, 237 
 "Dramatis Personae," 234 
 "Dream of Man, The," 353, 374 
 "Dream of the World without Death, 
 
 The," 374 
 
 "Earthly Paradise," 242 
 
 "Eden Bower," 49, 52, 97 
 
 "Eighteen years till then he had seen," 
 
 94 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 172 
 "England, my mother. Wardress of 
 
 waters," 353 
 •"Enoch Arden," 32 
 "Eros," 387 
 "Evangeline," 294 
 "Even in a palace life may be led 
 
 well," 327 
 "Eve of Crecy, The," 254, 255-256 
 "Evil sped the battle play on the Pope 
 
 Calixtus' day," 287 
 
 "Fabled sea-snake, old Leviathan, 
 The," 401 
 
 "Fair was Knut of face and limb," 
 262 
 
 ". . . Far off, in the heart of the dark- 
 ness," 295 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, 359 
 
 Flaubert, Gustav, 131 
 
 "Folk-Mote by the River, The," 263 
 
 "For sometimes, were the truth con- 
 
 fess'd," loi 
 "Four boards of the coffin lid. The," 
 
 167 
 "Frederick and Alice," 369-371 
 Froude, James Anthony, 244 
 "Future, The," 319-322 
 
 Gautier, Theophile, 136 
 
 "Gazing on stars, my Star," 28 
 
 "Give a Rouse," 212 
 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 298, 
 
 299, 369 
 "Goldilocks and Goldilocks," 263 
 "Grammarian Funeral, A," 203-207 
 "Greater Memory," 17, i8 
 "Growing Old," 316-317 
 "Growth of Love, The," 395 
 
 "Had she come all the way for this," 
 
 245 
 "Hafbur and Signy," 263 
 Hamilton, Lee, 45, 47 
 Hampole, Richard Rolle of, 169 
 Harrison, Frederic, 133 
 "Have you not noted, in some family," 
 
 47 
 "Haystack in the Floods, The," 245- 
 
 249, 257 
 "Heard ye not the bodmg sound, 
 
 370 
 "Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's Queen," 
 
 49-52 
 Hemans, Felicia Dorothea, 31 
 "Heretic's Tragedy, The," 215 
 "Hereward," 353 
 "Heroes, The," 294 
 "Hesperia," 157 
 "He wiled me through the furzy 
 
 croft," 290 
 "High Tide on the Coast of Lincoln- 
 shire, The," 334-348 
 "His bloodied banner crossed his 
 
 mouth," 75 
 "Hold by the right, you double your 
 
 mig/it," 214 
 "Hollow sea-shell, which for years. 
 
 The," 45 
 Homer, 34, 164, 243, 267 
 "Honeysuckle, The," 39 
 "House of Life, The," 47, n8, 395 
 Hugo, Victor, 13, 25, 26, 27, 124, 298 
 "Human Life," 306 
 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 136, 302, 304, 
 
 349 
 "Hymn of Prosperme," 150-156 
 "Hypatia," 353 
 
INDEX 
 
 405 
 
 "I am the queen of Ethiope," 142 
 
 "Idylls of the King," 32 
 
 "I have been here before," 15 
 
 "I looked without, and lo ! my sonne," 
 
 340 
 "I love all beauteous things," 387 
 "Imitation of Christ, The," 324 
 "In a Balcony," 235 
 "In a Gondola," 199-202 
 Ingelow, Jean, 334-348 
 "In Harmony with Nature," 303-306 
 "In Memoriam," 32, 113 
 "In Prison," 254, 256 
 "Inside my father's close," 125 
 "In the heart there lay buried for 
 
 years," 17 
 "In the time of the civil broils," 124 
 "I plucked a honeysuckle," 39 
 "I said, 'she must be swift and 
 
 white,' " 148 
 "I sat with Love upon a woodside 
 
 well," I20 
 "I shall never hear her more," 347 
 "It is a golden morning of the spring," 
 
 "It lies in Heaven, across the flood," 
 
 56 
 "It was roses, roses all the way," 208 
 "Itylus," 169 
 "Ivan Ivanovitch," 192-195 
 
 "Jenny," 99, 100-104 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 302 
 "Judgment of God, The," 250-254 
 "Just as another woman sleeps," 102 
 
 Keats, John, 27, 28, 30, 31, 282, 283, 
 
 303,. 349, 397 
 Kempis, Thomas a, 324 
 "Kentish Sir Byng stood for his 
 
 King," 213 
 "King Charles, and who'll do him 
 
 right now," 212 
 "King of Denmark's Sons, The," 262- 
 
 263 
 Kingsley, Charles, 278, 280-297, 353 
 Kingsley, Henry, 41 
 "King's Quhair, The," 97 
 "King's Tragedy, The," 97 
 "Knight Aagen and the Maiden Else," 
 
 263 
 
 "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," 282 
 ^'Lady," he said, "your lands lie 
 burnt," 69 
 
 "Lady unbound her jewelled zone, 
 
 The," 109 
 "Last Confession, A," 98 
 "Last Word, The," 317 
 "Laus Veneris," 160-162 
 "Lay of the Last Minstrel, The," 108 
 "Les Burgraves," 124 
 "Let us begin and carry up this 
 
 corpse," 203 
 "Life and Death of Jason, The," 278 
 "Light, perfect and visible. Godhead 
 
 of God," 140 
 "Light Woman, A," 175-180 
 "Like bright waves that fall," 311 
 "Little Tower, The," 254 
 "Locksley Hall," 20 
 "Lo, Father, is thine ear inclined," 72 
 "Long are the hours the sun is above," 
 
 395 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 294 
 "Lost on Both Sides," 121 
 "Lo, this is she that was the world's 
 
 delight," 161 
 "Love is Enough," 244 
 "Love took up the harp of Life," 8 
 "Lucretius," 34 
 "Luria," 235 
 
 Macaulay, Lord Thomas Babington, 
 
 300 
 "Mademoiselle de Maupin," 136 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 256 
 "Make me a face, on the window 
 
 there," 188 
 "Mango Tree, The," 289-291 
 "Man that sees by chance his picture, 
 
 A," 390 
 "Marching Along," 213 
 "Masque of Queen Bersabe," 141-144 
 "Maud," 32 
 
 Maupassant, Guy de, 254 
 "Men and Women," 234 
 "Men say it was a stolen tyde," 336 
 Meredith, George, 31, 133, 298, 299, 
 
 355, 356, 359, 385 
 Merimee, Prosper, 98 
 "Merope," 332 
 
 Milton, John, 126, 128, 332, 333 
 "Mirror, The," 38 
 Morris, William, 30, 147, 239-279 
 "Mother bears a child, perfection is 
 
 complete, A," 193 
 "Moth's kiss first! The," 201 
 "Mr. Sludge, 'the Medium,' " 232 
 Munby, Joseph, 376-383 
 "My Father's Close," 125 
 "My Last Duchess," 181-186 
 
406 
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Never the time and the place," 22 
 
 Newstead Abbey, 331 
 'Nightingales," 398 
 'No light to lighten and no rod," 135 
 'Not a drop of her blood was hu- 
 man," 97 
 
 'Ode to the Northeast Wind," 285 
 'Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is 
 
 told," 122 
 'O fair green-girdled mother of 
 
 mine," 139 
 'Off Shore," 140 
 
 'O great in thine own conceit," 354 
 'Oh, what is the light that shines so 
 
 red," 73 
 'Old mayor climbed the belfry-tower, 
 
 The," 335 
 'O let the solid ground," 12 
 'O Mary, go and call the cattle 
 
 home," 281 
 'On a Dead Child," 391 
 'On sands by the storm never 
 
 shaken," 163 
 "On the Downs," 135 
 'Orraulum, The," 372 
 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur, i6, 44 
 'Out of the golden remote wild west," 
 
 157 
 
 'Paracelsus," 233 
 
 'Parleyings with Certain People of 
 
 Importance in Their Day," 234 
 'Past we glide, and past, and past," 
 
 200 
 'Pater Filio," 393 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, 21, n8, 332, 391 
 'Patriot, The," 207-211 
 'Pause, A," 19 
 'Perfect little body, without fault," 
 
 391 
 Plato, 7 
 'Poems," 32 
 
 'Poems and Ballads," 132, 156 
 'Poems by the Way," 244, 257-261 
 'Poems by Two Brothers," 31 
 'Poetry of a Root-Crop, The," 292 
 Pope, Alexander, 32, 33 
 'Portrait, The," 65-66 
 'Prick of Conscience," 169 
 'Prince of sweet songs made out of 
 
 tears," 137 
 'Princess, The," 32 
 'Prometheus Unbound," 127 
 
 "Queen sat idle by her loom, The," 
 68 
 
 Rachel (Elisabeth Rachel-Felix), 323, 
 
 324 
 "Rapunzel," 263 
 "Raven and the King's Daughter, 
 
 The," 263 
 "Ravenshoe," 41 
 Renan, Ernest, 372 
 "Return of the Druses, The," 235 
 Richardson, Samuel, 3 
 Richepin, Jean, 131 
 "Ring and the Book, The," 219-232 
 "Rose Mary," 105-111 
 Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 19 
 Rossetti, Daniel Gabriel, i, 15, 16, 30, 
 
 37-125, 128, 233, 238, 241, 244, 297, 
 
 298, 349, 351, 359, 395 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 134 
 Ruskin, John, 147, 148, 281 
 
 "Sands of Dee, The," 280-281 
 
 Saint Bernard, 329-330 
 
 Saintsbury, Professor George, 287 
 
 "Saint's Tragedy, The," 293 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 30, 31, io8, 241, 369 
 
 "Sea is calm to-night, The," 312 
 
 "Sea-Limits, The," 46 
 
 "Sense with keenest edge unused,' 
 
 393 
 Shakespeare, William, 173, 182, 219 
 
 229, 256, 298, 304, 305 
 "She is coming, my own, my sweet,' 
 
 II 
 "She knew it not, — most perfect pain,' 
 
 38 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, i, 31, 126, 127 
 
 128, 297, 303 
 "She lightens on the comb of leaden 
 
 waves," 400 
 "She sent him a sharp sword," 70 
 "Sir Peter Harpdon's End," 254, 255 
 "Sister Helen," 80, 83-93, 97 
 "So far as our story approaches the 
 
 end," 175 
 "Sohrab and Rustum," 332 
 "Song of Roland," 56 
 "Songs before Sunrise," 134 
 "So pure, — so fall'n ! How dare to 
 
 think," 103 
 "Sordello," 174, 233 
 "So, the three Court-ladies began 
 
 their trial," 217 
 "So to each star in the heavens," 356 
 "Soul's Tragedy, A," 235-236 
 Southey, Robert, 303 
 "So! While these wait the trump of 
 
 doom," 189 
 
INDEX 
 
 407 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 7, 133, i86, 266, 267, 
 
 274, 300, 302, 319 
 "Sprung from the blood of Israel's 
 
 scattered race," 323 
 "StaflE and Scrip," 49, 67-78 
 "Statue and the Bust, The," 187-190 
 "Story of Sigurd," 265-273, 275-278 
 "Strafford," 235 
 "Strange the world about rae lies," 
 
 358 
 
 "Stratton Water," 79 
 
 "Sudden Light," 15, 44 
 
 "Swallow my sister, O sister, swal- 
 low," 169 
 
 " 'Swerve to the left, so Roger,' he 
 said," 251 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 79, 
 123, 125, 126-170, 233, 238, 298, 328, 
 
 349, 359 
 Symonds, John Addington, 28 
 
 ". . . To the dim street, I led her 
 
 sacred feet," 21 
 "Toys, The," 332, 391 
 "Trembling arm I pressed. The," 25 
 "Triumph of Time, The," 139, 169 
 "Troy Town," 49, 52 
 " 'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot," 
 
 362 
 "Two young, fair lovers, where the 
 
 warm June-wind," 309 
 
 "Ulysses," 34 
 
 "Unknown Eros, The," 21 
 
 "Victorian Anthology," 368 
 Villon, Frangois, 123, 124, 137 
 Virgil, 243 
 
 "Vision of the Man Accurst," 375 
 "Voice, The," 311 
 
 Taine, Hippolyte, 35-36, 216, 379 
 "Tales of a Wayside Inn," 243 
 "Tell me now in what hidden way," 
 
 123 
 Tennyson, Charles, 31 
 Tennyson, Frederick, 23, 31 
 Tennyson, Lord Alfred, i, 8, 11, 13, 
 
 20, 23, 28, 30-36, 109, 128, 233, 238, 
 
 257, 297, 324, 349, 353 
 "Thalassius," 157-158 
 "That's my last Duchess painted on 
 
 the wall," i8i 
 "That well-nigh wept for wonder," 
 
 158 
 "Then stepped a damsel to her side," 
 
 76 
 "Then, with weak hasty fingers," 332 
 "They made the chamber sweet with 
 
 flowers," 19 
 "They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee," 
 
 "This is her picture as she was," 65 
 "Thomas the Rhymer," 365, 369 
 Thompson, Maurice, 14 
 "Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, The," 
 
 326 
 "Three Fishers, The," 280 
 "Three Silences," 349-351 
 "Through the long winter the rough 
 
 wind tears," 124 
 "Thyrsis," 332 
 "Time crept. Upon a day at length," 
 
 116 
 " 'Tis a world of silences," 350 
 "Tithonus," 34 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 269, 274 
 Watson, William, 352-358 
 "Weakly her mistress was," 381 
 "Weird Lady, The," 283 
 "Welcome wild North-easter! Shame 
 
 it is to see," 285-286 
 "Well, here's the platform, here's the 
 
 proper place," 207 
 "West London," 325 
 "What is it to grow old," 316 
 "What made my heart, at Newstead," 
 
 331 
 "What mortal when he saw life's 
 
 voyage done," 306 
 "When Spring grows old, and sleepy 
 
 winds," 14 
 "When the wind is in the East," 285 
 "Which," 216-219 
 "White Ship, The," 80, 94-96 
 Whitman, Walt, 136 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 287, 289 
 "Who rules these lands? the Pilgrim 
 
 said," 67 
 "Why did you melt your waxen man," 
 
 "Why hast thou nothing in thy face," 
 
 387 
 "Willowwood," 120 
 "Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean," 
 
 151 
 "Wind flapped loose, The," 40 
 "Wind, The," 254, 255 
 "Woodspurge, The," 40 
 Wordsworth, William, i, 30, 31, 32, 
 
 291, 302, 352, 386 
 
408 INDEX 
 
 "Worldly Place," 327 "You are sick, thaf s sure," they say, 
 
 "World-Strangeness," 358 237 
 
 "Would that the structure brave," 196 Yriarte, Charles Emile, 187 
 
 "Yes, write it in the rock," 329 Zola, Emile, 131 
 
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