Volume 12 — SYDNEY DOBELL
Reading edition
(1824-1874)
ydney Dobell, the son of a wine merchant, was born at Cranbrook in Kent. His parents, both persons of strong individuality, believed in home training, and not one of their eight children went either to school or to university. They belonged to the Broad Church Community founded by Sydney's maternal grandfather, Samuel Thompson; a church intended to recall in its principles the primitive Christian ages. The parents looked upon Sydney, their eldest-born, as destined to become the apostle of this creed. He grew up in a kind of religious fervor, with his precocious mind unnaturally stimulated; a course of conduct which materially weakened his constitution, and made him a chronic invalid at the early age of thirty-three. He read whatever books came to hand, many of them far beyond his years. At the age of eight he filled his diary with theological discussions.
Entering his father's counting-house as a mere lad, he remained to the end of his life a business man of great energy. Notwithstanding his rare poetic endowments, he never seems to have entertained a single-minded purpose to be a poet and nothing more. On the contrary, he thought the ideal and the practical life perfectly compatible, and he strove to unite in himself the poet and the man of affairs. He wrote habitually until 1856, when regular literary work was forbidden by his physicians. With characteristic energy he now turned his thoughts into other channels; identified himself with the affairs of Gloucester, where he was living, looked after his business, and was one of the first to adopt the system of industrial co-operation. The last four years of his life, a period of suffering and helplessness, he spent at Barton-End House, above the Stroud valley, where he died in the spring of 1874.
In the work of Dobell it is curious to find so few traces of the influences under which he grew up. He had every encouragement to become a writer of religious poetry; yet much of his work is philosophic and recondite. His delicate health is in a measure responsible for his failure to achieve the success which his natural endowments promised. All his literary work was done between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-three. 'The Roman,' his first long poem, appeared in 1850. Dedicated to the Italian struggle for liberty, it showed his breadth of sympathy. In 'Balder,' finished in 1853, Dobell is at his best both as thinker and as poet. Yet its many fine passages, its wealth of metaphor, and the exquisite songs of Amy, hardly counterbalance the remoteness of its theme, and its over-subtle analysis of morbid psychic states. It is a poem to be read in fragments, and has aptly been called a mine for poets.
With Alexander Smith he published in 1855 a series of sonnets inspired by the Crimean War. This was followed in 1856 by 'England in War Time,' a collection of Dobell's lyrical and descriptive poems, which possess more general human interest than any other of his books.
After continuous work was interdicted, he still contributed verse and prose to the periodicals. His essays have been collected by Professor Nichol, under the title 'Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and Religion.' As a poet Dobell belongs to the so-called "spasmodic school," a school "characterized by an undercurrent of discontent with the mystery of existence, by vain effort, unrewarded struggle, skeptical unrest, and an uneasy striving after some incomprehensible end.... Poetry of this kind is marked by an excess of metaphor which darkens rather than illustrates, and by a general extravagance of language. On the other hand, it manifests freshness and originality, and a rich natural beauty." Dobell's descriptions of scenery are among the finest in English literature. His senses were abnormally acute, like those of a savage, a condition which intensified his appreciation of natural beauty. Possessing a vivid imagination and wide sympathies, he was often over-subtle and obscure. He strove to realize in himself his ideal of a poet, and during his years of ill-health gave himself up to promoting the welfare of his fellow-men; but of his seventeen years of inactivity he says:—"The keen perception of all that should be done, and that so bitterly cries for doing, accompanies the consciousness of all that I might but cannot do."
EPIGRAM ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD FORBES
Nature, a jealous mistress, laid him low. He wooed and won her; and, by love made bold, She showed him more than mortal man should know— Then slew him lest her secret should be told.
HOW'S MY BOY?
"Ho, sailor of the sea! How's my boy—my boy?"— "What's your boy's name, good wife, And in what good ship sailed he?" "My boy John— He that went to sea— What care I for the ship, sailor? My boy's my boy to me. "You come back from the sea, And not know my John? I might as well have asked some landsman, Yonder down in the town. There's not an ass in all the parish But knows my John. "How's my boy—my boy? And unless you let me know, I'll swear you are no sailor, Blue jacket or no— Brass buttons or no, sailor, Anchor and crown or no— "Sure, his ship was the Jolly Briton—" "Speak low, woman, speak low! "And why should I speak low, sailor, About my own boy John? If I was loud as I am proud I'd sing him over the town! Why should I speak low, sailor?"— "That good ship went down." "How's my boy—my boy? What care I for the ship, sailor? I was never aboard her. Be she afloat or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound Her owners can afford her! I say, how's my John?"— "Every man on board went down, Every man aboard her." "How's my boy—my boy? What care I for the men, sailor? I'm not their mother. How's my boy—my boy? Tell me of him and no other! How's my boy—my boy?"
THE SAILOR'S RETURN
This morn I lay a-dreaming, This morn, this merry morn; When the cock crew shrill from over the hill, I heard a bugle horn. And through the dream I was dreaming, There sighed the sigh of the sea, And through the dream I was dreaming, This voice came singing to me:— "High over the breakers, Low under the lee, Sing ho! The billow, And the lash of the rolling sea! "Boat, boat, to the billow, Boat, boat, to the lee! Love, on thy pillow, Art thou dreaming of me? "Billow, billow, breaking, Land us low on the lee! For sleeping or waking, Sweet love, I am coming to thee! "High, high, o'er the breakers, Low, low, on the lee, Sing ho! The billow That brings me back to thee!"
AFLOAT AND ASHORE
"Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort, Like a whale to starboard, a whale to port; Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort, And the steamer steams thro' the sea, love!" "I see the ship on the sea, love; I stand alone On this rock; The sea does not shock The stone; The waters around it are swirled, But under my feet I feel it go down To where the hemispheres meet At the adamant heart of the world. Oh that the rock would move! Oh that the rock would roll To meet thee over the sea, love! Surely my mighty love Should fill it like a soul, And it should bear me to thee, love; Like a ship on the sea, love, Bear me, bear me, to thee, love!" "Guns are thundering, seas are sundering, crowds are wondering, Low on our lee, love. Over and over the cannon-clouds cover brother and lover, but over and over The whirl-wheels trundle the sea, love; And on through the loud pealing pomp of her cloud The great ship is going to thee, love, Blind to her mark, like a world through the dark, Thundering, sundering, to the crowds wondering, Thundering over to thee, love." "I have come down to thee coming to me, love; I stand, I stand On the solid sand; I see thee coming to me, love; The sea runs up to me on the sand: I start—'tis as if thou hadst stretched thine hand And touched me through the sea, love. I feel as if I must die, For there's something longs to fly, Fly and fly, to thee, love. As the blood of the flower ere she blows Is beating up to the sun, And her roots do hold her down, And it blushes and breaks undone In a rose, So my blood is beating in me, love! I see thee nigh and nigher; And my soul leaps up like sudden fire, My life's in the air To meet thee there, To meet thee coming to me, love! Over the sea, Coming to me, Coming, and coming to me, love!" "The boats are lowered: I leap in first, Pull, boys, pull! or my heart will burst! More! more!—lend me an oar!— I'm thro' the breakers! I'm on the shore! I see thee waiting for me, love!" "A sudden storm Of sighs and tears, A clenching arm, A look of years. In my bosom a thousand cries, A flash like light before my eyes, And I am lost in thee, love!"
THE SOUL
From 'Balder'
And as the mounting and descending bark, Borne on exulting by the under deep, Gains of the wild wave something not the wave, Catches a joy of going and a will Resistless, and upon the last lee foam Leaps into air beyond it,—so the soul Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tossed, Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged To darkness, and, still wet with drops of death, Held into light eternal, and again Cast down, to be again uplift in vast And infinite succession, cannot stay The mad momentum.
ENGLAND
From 'Balder'
This dear English land! This happy England, loud with brooks and birds, Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees, And bloomed from hill to dell: but whose best flowers Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart; Whose forests stronger than her native oaks Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes, Forever calm, the unforgotten dead In quiet grave-yards willowed seemly round, O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face. Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old Through unremembered years, around whose base The ever-surging peoples roll and roar Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains, Souls that from this mere footing of the earth Lift their great virtues through all clouds of Fate Up to the very heavens, and make them rise To keep the gods above us!
AMERICA
Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye Who north or south, or east or western land, Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth, Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God For God; O ye who in eternal youth Speak with a living and creative flood This universal English, and do stand Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand Heroic utterance—parted, yet a whole, Far, yet unsevered,—children brave and free Of the great Mother tongue, and ye shall be Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare's soul, Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme, And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream.
AMY'S SONG OF THE WILLOW
From 'Balder'
The years they come, and the years they go, Like winds that blow from sea to sea; From dark to dark they come and go, All in the dew-fall and the rain. Down by the stream there be two sweet willows, —Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,— One hale, one blighted, two wedded willows, All in the dew-fall and the rain. She is blighted, the fair young willow; —Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,— She hears the spring-blood beat in the bark; She hears the spring-leaf bud on the bough; But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow, All in the dew-fall and the rain. The stream runs sparkling under the willow, —Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,— The summer rose-leaves drop in the stream; The winter oak-leaves drop in the stream; But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow, All in the dew-fall and the rain. Sometimes the wind lifts the bright stream to her, —Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,— The false stream sinks, and her tears fall faster; Because she touched it her tears fall faster; Over the stream her tears fall faster, All in the sunshine or the rain. The years they come, and the years they go; Sing well-away, sing well-away! And under mine eyes shines the bright life-river; Sing well-away, sing well-away! Sweet sounds the spring in the hale green willow, The goodly green willow, the green waving willow, Sweet in the willow, the wind-whispering willow; Sing well-away, sing well-away! But I bend blighted, the wan weeping willow, All in the sun, and the dew, and the rain.