YOUTH AND AGE (continued 5)
Reading edition
Although Hodgson was writing under stress of a grievous calamity (yet with a dauntless heart—see verse on Dedication page), his remarks on Ancient Ethics are not, in my opinion, exaggerated.
Herbert Spencer’s remark to Hodgson about examinations may also be noted.
Prometheus. And thou, O Mother Earth! Earth. I hear, I feel Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down Even to the adamantine central gloom Along these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy, And, through my withered, old, and icy frame The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down Circling. Henceforth the many children fair Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants, And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged, And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom Draining the poison of despair, shall take And interchange sweet nutriment. Shelley (Prometheus Unbound, III, 3).
In Shelley’s great poem, Prometheus is not merely the Titan who, having stolen fire from heaven to benefit man, was chained to a pillar while an eagle tore at his vitals, he is the spirit of humanity. Man has (through superstition) given the god, Zeus, great powers which he uses to enslave and oppress man’s own mind and body. Ultimately the god is overthrown, Prometheus, the spirit of man, is released, and the world enters upon its progress towards perfection.
This and the following quotations are from a collection of references to Mother-Earth.
Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess, Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled, Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won thee!... Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement. Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold instincts. Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their channels; Laughed on their shores the wide seas; the yearning ocean swelled upward; Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains, Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches. S. T. Coleridge (Hymn to the Earth).
An imitation of Stolberg’s Hymne an die Erde.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun. Shelley (The Cloud).
For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, ’Twill be time enough to die. Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover. Emerson (Woodnotes).
Long have I loved what I behold, The night that calms, the day that cheers; The common growth of mother-earth Suffices me—her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears. Wordsworth (Peter Bell).
So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother’s lap. Milton (Paradise Lost, XI, 535).
SONG OF PROSERPINE.
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth Thou from whose immortal bosom Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue, Fairest children of the Hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. Shelley.
Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, whilst gathering flowers with her playmates at Enna in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, also called Dis, god of the dead. (For two-thirds, or, according to later writers, one-half of each year, she returns to the earth, bringing spring and summer.)
That fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis Was gathered; which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world. (Paradise Lost, IV, 269).
And ... the rich winds blow, And ... the waters go, And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer, Bowing their heads in the sunny air.... All make a music, gentle and strong, Bound by the heart into one sweet song; And amidst them all, the mother Earth Sits with the children of her birth.... Go forth to her from the dark and the dust And weep beside her, if weep thou must; If she may not hold thee to her breast, Like a weary infant, that cries for rest; At least she will press thee to her knee And tell a low, sweet tale to thee, Till the hue to thy cheek, and the light to thine eye Strength to thy limbs, and courage high To thy fainting heart return amain. G. MacDonald (Phantastes).
Hold thee to her breast, give rest in death.
Ne deeth, allas; ne wol nat han my life; will not take Thus walke I, lyk a restèlees caityf, restless wretch And on the ground, which is my modres gate, mother’s I knokke with my staf, both erly and late, And seyè, “levè moder, leet me in! say, “Dear mother Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin! waste away” Allas! whan shul my bonès be at reste?” Chaucer (1340-1400) (The Pardoner’s Tale).
Like a shadow thrown Softly and lightly from a passing cloud, Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay For noontide solace on the summer grass, The warm lap of his mother earth. Wordsworth (Excursion VII, 286).
And O green bounteous Earth! Bacchante Mother! stern to those Who live not in thy heart of mirth; Death shall I shrink from, loving thee? Into the breast that gives the rose Shall I with shuddering fall? G. Meredith (Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn).
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river. High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.... “This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan, (Laughed while he sat by the river,) “The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed.” Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river. Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,— For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river. E. B. Browning
There is little merit in inventing a happy idea, or attractive situation, so long as it is only the author’s voice which we hear. As a being whom we have called into life by magic arts, as soon as it has received existence, acts independently of the master’s impulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and relates what they do and say. Such creation is poetry in the literal sense of the term, and its possibility is an unfathomable enigma. The gushing fullness of speech belongs to the poet, and it flows from the lips of each of his magic beings in the thoughts and words peculiar to its nature.
Niebuhr (Letters, &c., Vol. III, 196).
Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but, when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.
Shelley (A Defence of Poetry).
Who would loose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night? Milton (Paradise Lost ii., 146)
“Loose”—by committing suicide.
When the white block of marble shines so solid and so costly, who remembers that it was once made up of decaying shell and rotting bones and millions of dying insect-lives, pressed to ashes ere the rare stone was?
(Chandos).
The madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful—except to the future. And for the future, who cares—save those madmen themselves?
... The gods that most of all have pity on man, the gods of the Night and of the Grave.
Our eyes are set to the light, but our feet are fixed in the mire.
(Folle-Farine).
“If the cucumber be bitter, throw it away,” says Antoninus: do the same with a thought.... There is no cucumber so heavy that one cannot throw it over some wall.
Ouida (Tricotrin).
Antoninus, 120-180 A.D., the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, usually known by his first two names Marcus Aurelius, is the author of the well-known Meditations. The quotation is from Bk. VIII., “The gourd is bitter; drop it, then! There are brambles in the path; then turn aside! It is enough. Do not go on to argue, Why pray have these things a place in the world?” etc.
These quotations from Ouida may serve to illustrate the saying of Pliny the Elder, “No book is so bad but some good may be got out of it” (Pliny’s Letters, III., 10)—a saying which was no doubt true until printing let loose on the world such a multitude of worthless writers.
WHEN WE ALL ARE ASLEEP
When He returns, and finds the World so drear— All sleeping,—young and old, unfair and fair, Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear, “Awaken!” or for pity’s sake forbear,— Saying, “How shall I meet their frozen stare Of wonder, and their eyes so full of fear? How shall I comfort them in their despair, If they cry out, ‘Too late! let us sleep here’?” Perchance He will not wake us up, but when He sees us look so happy in our rest, Will murmur, “Poor dead women and dead men! Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest. Wherefore awake them into life again? Let them sleep on untroubled—it is best.” R. Buchanan.
CHORUS
Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite; Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea; And dust of the labouring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. From the winds of the north and the south They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labour and thought, A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight, And beauty and length of days, And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep. Swinburne (Atalanta in Calydon).
She (the ship of Odysseus) came to the limits of the world, to the deep flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had declared to us.
There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine and for the third time with water.... When I had besought the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth, and lo, the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men of many and evil days, and tender maidens with griefs yet fresh at heart; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them. And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me.... I drew the sharp sword from my thigh and sat there, suffering not the strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias....
Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for sacred Ilios. At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias.
Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden sceptre in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me: “Son of Laertes of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what seekest thou now, wretched man—wherefore hast thou left the sunlight and come hither to behold the dead and a land desolate of joy? Nay, hold off from the ditch and draw back thy sharp sword, that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.” So spake he, and I put up my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and when he had drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble seer speak unto me....
Odyssey, Bk. XI. (Butcher & Lang’s translation).
In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias from the under-world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits, including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted—and the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.
What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. It will be observed that the dead live in a dark land, “desolate of joy.”
To the little-travelled Greeks the ocean was a river.
For—see your cellarage! There are forty barrels with Shakespeare’s brand Some five or six are abroach: the rest Stand spigoted, fauceted. Try and test What yourselves call best of the very best! How comes it that still untouched they stand? Why don’t you try tap, advance a stage With the rest in cellarage? For—see your cellarage! There are four big butts of Milton’s brew, How comes it you make old drips and drops Do duty, and there devotion stops? Leave such an abyss of malt and hops Embellied in butts which bungs still glue? You hate your bard! A fig for your rage! Free him from cellarage! R. Browning (Epilogue to Pacchiarotto and other Poems).
Though the seasons of man full of losses Make empty the years full of youth, If but one thing be constant in crosses, Change lays not her hand upon truth; Hopes die, and their tombs are for token That the grief as the joy of them ends Ere time that breaks all men has broken The faith between friends. Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the heaven has one; Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight And the earth dispossessed of the sun, They have moonlight and sleep for repayment, When, refreshed as a bride and set free, With stars and sea-winds in her raiment, Night sinks on the sea. Swinburne (Dedication, 1865).
It is hardly possible for a younger generation to realize the almost intoxicating effect produced upon us by Swinburne’s new melodies. Although the Poems and Ballads were largely erotic, the curious fact is that we were too much carried away by the beauty and swing of his verse to trouble about the sensual element in it. That element was in itself an artificial production and not a reflection of the poet’s own emotions, for he was free from sensuality. It was with us more a question of music. Swinburne himself preferred a musical word or line to one that would more aptly express his meaning; and in the “Dedication,” from which the above verses are quoted, several lines will not bear analysis. However, this was one of our favourites among his poems.
O daughters of dreams and of stories That life is not wearied of yet, Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores, Félise and Yolande and Juliette, Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you, When sleep, that is true or that seems, Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you, O daughters of dreams? They are past as a slumber that passes, As the dew of a dawn of old time; More frail than the shadows on glasses, More fleet than a wave or a rhyme. As the waves after ebb drawing seaward, When their hollows are full of the night, So the birds that flew singing to me-ward Recede out of sight.
He asks that his wild “storm-birds of passion” may find a home in our calmer world:—
In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers, Will you spare not a space for them there Made green with the running of rivers And gracious with temperate air; In the fields and the turreted cities, That cover from sunshine and rain Fair passions and bountiful pities And loves without stain? In a land of clear colours and stories, In a region of shadowless hours, Where earth has a garment of glories And a murmur of musical flowers; In woods where the spring half uncovers The flush of her amorous face, By the waters that listen for lovers For these is there place? Though the world of your hands be more gracious And lovelier in lordship of things Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious Warm heaven of her imminent wings, Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting, For the love of old loves and lost times; And receive in your palace of painting This revel of rhymes.
Then come the final verses quoted above. These are somewhat detached in meaning from the rest, and form a sort of Envoi: “Whatever changes or passes, there is always some beautiful thing that survives.”
As might be expected Swinburne was much parodied (and indeed in the Heptalogia and in the poems lately published he parodied himself). The above poem has been cleverly parodied by a lawyer, Sir Frederick Pollock. (Although parodies go as far back as the Fifth Century B.C. I know of no other lawyer who, qua lawyer, has successfully taken a hand in the game.) In his parody Pollock’s subject was the great changes effected by the Judicature Act, when the old Courts of Common Law, Chancery, and others were consolidated into one Supreme Court, and the various classes of business assigned to different “Divisions.” Also owing to changes in procedure, much of the old technical learning became obsolete. His last verse is as follows (compare with the second verse quoted above):
Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle To divers Divisions of one, And no fire from your face may rekindle The light of old learning undone, We have suitors and briefs for our payment, While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas, We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment, Not sinking the fees.
Wulf died, as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well, as she loved all righteous and noble souls, had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors; and the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop and asked, ‘Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors?’ “In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from the font, and threw his bearskin cloak around him—“He would prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people.” And so he died unbaptized, and went to his own place.
Charles Kingsley (Hypatia).
This story appears in several old chronicles (Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. X, 33), but the name should be Radbod. He was Duke or Chief of the Frisians, and the episode probably occurred in Heligoland, from which island he ruled his people.
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.
R. W. Emerson (Essay on Experience).
The bee draws forth from fruit and flower Sweet dews, that swell his golden dower; But never injures by his kiss Those who have made him rich in bliss. The moth, though tortured by the flame, Still hovers round and loves the same: Nor is his fond attachment less: “Alas!” he whispers, “can it be, Spite of my ceaseless tenderness, That I am doomed to death by thee?” Azy Eddin Elmogadessi (L. S. Costello’s translation).
A pine-tree stands all lonely On a northern hill-top bare, And, wrapped in its snowy mantle, It slumbers peacefully there. Its dreams are of a palm-tree, Far-off in the morning land, Which in lone silence sorrows On a burning, rocky strand. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Many a time At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake. ... Then in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake. Wordsworth (The Prelude, Bk. V).
THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE GRINDER
FRIEND OF HUMANITY. “Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order; Bleak blows the blast—your hat has got a hole in’t, So have your breeches! “Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones, Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road, what hard work ’tis crying all day ‘Knives and Scissors to grind O!’” “Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives? Did some rich man tyrannically use you? Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Or the attorney? “Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining? Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little All in a lawsuit? (“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?) Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your Pitiful story.” KNIFE-GRINDER. “Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir, Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers, This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were Torn in a scuffle. “Constables came up, for to take me into Custody; they took me before the justice; Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish- -stocks for a vagrant. “I should be glad to drink your Honour’s health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir.” FRIEND OF HUMANITY. “I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn’d first— Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance— Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast!” (Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.) George Canning (The Anti-Jacobin).
Written in Sapphics and said to be a parody of a poem of Southey’s, which was afterwards suppressed.
I loved him, but my reason bade prefer Duty to love, reject the tempter’s bribe Of rose and lily when each path diverged, And either I must pace to life’s far end As love should lead me, or, as duty urged, Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend.... But deep within my heart of hearts there hid Ever the confidence, amends for all, That heaven repairs what wrong earth’s journey did, When love from life-long exile comes at call. R. Browning (Bifurcation, 1876)
The lady prefers Duty to Love, but she will remain constant to her lover, and reunion with him in heaven will make amends for all. (In the remainder of the poem Browning puts the case of the lover who, although deserted, is expected to remain constant through life—and who falls. The lady had disobeyed Love, because of the hardship and trouble that would follow, and Browning, whose own married life had been a most happy one, says this was no excuse.)
We are scratched, or we are bitten By the pets to whom we cling; Oh, my Love she is a kitten, And my heart’s a ball of string. Author not traced.
Some man of quality Who—breathing musk from lace-work and brocade, His solitaire amid the flow of frill, Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back, And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist.— Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase, ’Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon Where mirrors multiply the girandole. R. Browning (The Ring and the Book, I).
This and the next five quotations are word-pictures (see p. 85).
“Oh, what are you waiting for here, young man? What are you looking for over the bridge?” A little straw hat with streaming blue ribbons; —And here it comes dancing over the bridge! James Thomson (B.V.) (Sunday up the River).
Down in yonder greenè field There lies a knight slain under his shield; His hounds they lie down at his feet, So well do they their master keep. Anon. (The Three Ravens).
When we cam’ in by Glasgow toun, We were a comely sight to see; My Love was clad in the black velvet, And I mysel’ in cramasie. crimson Anon. (O waly, waly, up the bank).
They see the Heroes Sitting in the dark ship On the foamless, long-heaving, Violet sea, At sunset nearing The Happy Islands. M. Arnold (The Strayed Reveller).
Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. Coleridge (The Ancient Mariner).
The above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 85.)
We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom; and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man—not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.
Bacon.
Cunning, being the ape of wisdom, is the most distant from it that can be. And as an ape for the likeness it has to a man—wanting what really should make him so—is by so much the uglier, cunning is only the want of understanding, which, because it cannot compass its ends by direct ways, would do it by a trick and circumvention.
John Locke (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693).
A rogue is a roundabout fool; a fool in circumbendibus.
S. T. Coleridge.
It is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown men can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder.
George Eliot (Mill on the Floss).
Let its teaching (the teaching of scientific and other books of information, the “literature of knowledge”) be even partially revised, let it be expanded, nay, even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of power (poetry and what is generally known as literature), surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men.... The Iliad, the Prometheus of Æschylus—the Othello or King Lear—the Hamlet or Macbeth—and the Paradise Lost, are triumphant for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or variations, even if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo.
De Quincey (Alexander Pope).
De Quincey’s division of literature into “literature of power” and “literature of knowledge” still remains a useful classification.
A man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is in him.
Sydney Smith.
How brew the brave drink, Life? Take of the herb hight morning joy, Take of the herb hight evening rest, Pour in pain, lest bliss should cloy, Shake in sin to give it zest— Then down with the brave drink, Life! Author not traced.
I had this attributed to Robert Burton, but cannot find it in the Anatomy of Melancholy. It may possibly be from Richard Brathwaite, whose works I think were at one time attributed to Burton; but I have no opportunity of consulting them.
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good work, therefore, I can do or show to any fellow creature, let me do it now! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn.
I find that there has been much discussion in Notes and Queries and elsewhere as to the origin of this quotation, and it is now usually attributed to the French-American Quaker, Stephen Grellet. As, however, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations gives “I shall not pass this way again” as a favourite saying of William Penn’s, it seems more reasonable to consider him the author of the above.
Youth is a blunder, Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
Disraeli (Coningsby).
She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple pie. Just then, a great she-bear coming down the street poked its nose into the shop-window. “What! no soap?” So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing Catch-who-catch-can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
Samuel Foote, 1720-1777.
Charles Macklin (1699-1797), actor and playwright, said in a lecture on oratory that by practice he had brought his memory to such perfection that he could learn anything by rote on once hearing or reading it. Foote (a more important dramatist and actor) wrote out the above and handed it up to Macklin to read and then repeat from memory! The passage was very familiar to us from Miss Edgeworth’s Harry and Lucy; and also from Verdant Green, by Cuthbert Bede (Edward Bradley) where it was set in the bogus examination paper “To be turned into Latin after the manner of the Animals of Tacitus.”
You feel o’er you stealing The old familiar, warm, champagny, brandy-punchy, feeling. J. R. Lowell (Old College Rooms).
The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat One’s self. P. J. Bailey (Festus, “Anywhere”).
Truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, and should be regarded as their most serious actions.
Montaigne.
Boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable to man; so that tops and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like the sun and moon; and the harmless art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the United States.
R. L. Stevenson (The Lantern-Bearers).
Says Chloe, “Though tears it may cost, It is time we should part, my dear Sue; For your character’s totally lost, And I’ve not sufficient for two!” Anon.
This was taken from a poor collection of epigrams by C. S. Carey (1872), no author being given. Andrew Lang quoted it in his Presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research, and it was duly inscribed in the Proceedings. I, with some diffidence, follow an illustrious example.
I cannot say, in Eastern style, Where’er she treads the pansy blows; Nor call her eyes twin-stars, her smile A sunbeam, and her mouth a rose. Nor can I, as your bridegrooms do, Talk of my raptures. Oh, how sore The fond romance of twenty-two Is parodied ere thirty-four! To-night I shake hands with the past,— Familiar years, adieu, adieu! An unknown door is open cast, An empty future wide and new Stands waiting. O ye naked rooms, Void, desolate, without a charm, Will Love’s smile chase your lonely glooms, And drape your walls, and make them warm? Alexander Smith (1830-1867) (The Night before the Wedding).
In my notes, this strange poem is stated to have been actually written by Smith on the night before his wedding; but it is difficult to believe this. In the poem, the poet sits until dawn on his wedding-eve thinking of the “long-lost passions of his youth,” and comparing them with his calm and unimpassioned love, “pale blossom of the snow,” for the bride of the morrow. He even fears that his wife’s tenderness will keep alive the memories of his youthful loves:
It may be that your loving wiles Will call a sigh from far-off years; It may be that your happiest smiles Will brim my eyes with hopeless tears; It may be that my sleeping breath Will shake with painful visions wrung; And, in the awful trance of death, A stranger’s name be on my tongue.
This is sufficiently gruesome. However he finally comes to the conclusion (although it seems dragged in to save a very difficult situation) that his love for his future bride may become more satisfactory to him:
For, as the dawning sweet and fast Through all the heaven spreads and flows, Within life’s discord rude and vast Love’s subtle music grows and grows. My love, pale blossom of the snow, Has pierced earth, wet with wintry showers— O may it drink the sun, and blow, And be followed by all the year of flowers!
Smith, with P. J. Bailey, Sydney Dobell and others, belonged to what was called the “Spasmodic” school which the Britannica says is “now fallen into oblivion.” I do not know what this means. Smith, Bailey, and Dobell no doubt wrote extravagantly, but they have all written good verses. Take for example the following from Smith’s first poem, “A Life Drama,” written at twenty-two years of age:
All things have something more than barren use; There is a scent upon the brier, A tremulous splendour in the autumn dews, Cold morns are fringed with fire; The clodded earth goes up in sweet-breath’d flowers, In music dies poor human speech, And into beauty blow those hearts of ours, When Love is born in each.
Smith was also a charming essayist. See quotations elsewhere.
And so on to the end (and the end draws nearer) When our souls may be freer, our senses clearer, (’Tis an old-world creed which is nigh forgot), When the eyes of the sleepers may waken in wonder, And hearts may be joined that were riven asunder, And Time and Love shall be merged—in what? Author not traced.
Soft music came to mine ear. It was like the rising breeze, that whirls, at first, the thistle’s beard; then flies, dark-shadowy, over the grass. It was the maid of Füarfed wild: she raised the nightly song; for she knew that my soul was a stream, that flowed at pleasant sounds.
James Macpherson (1736-1796).
Macpherson alleged that he had discovered poems by the Gaelic bard, Ossian, who lived in the Third Century, and he published translations of them. Actually the poems were his own, but they were beautiful and had a considerable effect upon literature.
I dare not guess: but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream. It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery. Shelley (The Sensitive Plant).
I should like to make every man, woman, and child discontented with themselves, even as I am discontented with myself. I should like to waken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.
Charles Kingsley (The Science of Health, 1872).
The origin of the expression “divine discontent.”
He first deceas’d; she for a little tried To live without him: liked it not, and died. Sir Henry Wotton (Reliquiae Wottonianae, 1685).
Is the yellow bird dead? Lay your dear little head Close, close to my heart, and weep, precious one, there, While your beautiful hair On my bosom lies light, like a sun-lighted cloud; No, you need not keep still, You may sob as you will; There is some little comfort in crying aloud. But the days they must come, When your grief will be dumb; Grown women like me must take care how they cry. You will learn by and by ’Tis a womanly art to hide pain out of sight, To look round with a smile, Though your heart aches the while And to keep back your tears till you’ve blown out the light. Marian Douglas (Picture Poems for Young Folks).
My Lord St. Albans said that wise nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high; and, therefore, that exceeding tall men had ever empty heads.
Bacon (Apothegms).
That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred’s soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million. Misses a unit. That, has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. R. Browning (A Grammarian’s Funeral).
See The Inn Album (IV) where Browning makes his heroine say:
Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed As, God be thanked, I do not!
There is a secret belief among some men that God is displeased with man’s happiness; and in consequence they slink about creation, ashamed and afraid to enjoy anything.
Sir A. Helps (Companions of my Solitude).
O eloquent, just, and mightie Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!
Sir Walter Raleigh (Historie of the World).
A REQUIEM
Thou hast lived in pain and woe, Thou hast lived in grief and fear; Now thine heart can dread no blow, Now thine eyes can shed no tear: Storms round us shall beat and rave; Thou art sheltered in the grave. Thou for long, long years hast borne, Bleeding through Life’s wilderness, Heavy loss and wounding scorn; Now thine heart is burdenless: Vainly rest for ours we crave; Thine is quiet in the grave. James Thomson (“B.V.”).
AMPHIBIAN
The fancy I had to-day, Fancy which turned a fear! I swam far out in the bay, Since waves laughed warm and clear. I lay and looked at the sun, The noon-sun looked at me: Between us two, no one Live creature, that I could see. Yes! There came floating by Me, who lay floating too, Such a strange butterfly! Creature as dear as new: Because the membraned wings So wonderful, so wide, So sun-suffused, were things Like soul and nought beside.... What if a certain soul Which early slipped its sheath, And has for its home the whole Of heaven, thus look beneath. Thus watch one who, in the world, But lives and likes life’s way, Nor wishes the wings unfurled That sleep in the worm, they say? But sometimes when the weather Is blue, and warm waves tempt To free oneself of tether, And try a life exempt From worldly noise and dust, In the sphere which overbrims With passion and thought,—why, just Unable to fly, one swims!... Emancipate through passion And thought, with sea for sky, We substitute, in a fashion, For heaven—poetry: Which sea, to all intent, Gives flesh such noon-disport As a finer element Affords the spirit sort. Whatever they are, we seem: Imagine the thing they know; All deeds they do, we dream; Can heaven be else but so? And meantime, yonder streak Meets the horizon’s verge; That is the land, to seek If we tire or dread the surge: Land the solid and safe— To welcome again (confess!) When, high and dry, we chafe The body, and don the dress. Does she look, pity, wonder At one who mimics flight, Swims—heaven above, sea under, Yet always earth in sight? R. Browning (Prologue to Fifine at the Fair).
This is not one of Browning’s best poems, but it is interesting. The butterfly in the air over the poet swimming is compared to a ‘certain soul,’ Mrs. Browning, looking down upon him from heaven. The ‘flying,’ free and entirely released from the earth, is the life of the soul, to which the poet cannot attain; but during periods of inspiration he lives a life free of ‘worldly noise and dust,’ which approaches that of the soul. Such periods of inspiration are likened to ‘swimming’ with the land always in sight, as compared with the ‘flying’ of the soul in the far-removed celestial regions. “We substitute, in a fashion, For heaven—poetry.”
Whatever they are we seem: during inspiration the poet’s life is a reflex of or approach to the heavenly life.
Amphibian, because the poet is of earth and yet can “swim” in the sea of imagination. Charles Lamb speaks of his charming Child Angel, half-angel, half-human, as Amphibium. Browning’s poem may have been an unconscious development of a passage from Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici:—“Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.”
The sixth and last verses are interesting. Browning, while in the world “Both lives and likes life’s way,” nor is anxious that his “wings” should be “unfurled”; and he wonders how his angel-wife regards him, content with his “mimic flight.”—See p. 114.
We work so hard, we age so soon, We live so swiftly, one and all, That ere our day be fairly noon, The shadows eastward seem to fall. Some tender light may gild them yet, As yet, ’tis not so very cold, And, on the whole, I won’t regret My slender chance of growing old. W. J. Prowse (1836-1870) (My Lost Old Age).
Prowse wrote excellent verses before he was 20 and he died at 34.
Calm Soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine Man did not make, and cannot mar. Matthew Arnold (Lines written in Kensington Gardens).
A woman needs to be wooed long after she is won, and the husband who ceases to court his wife is courting disaster.
Author not traced.
TO A GIPSY CHILD BY THE SEASHORE
Who taught this pleading to unpractised eyes? Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom? Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise? Who mass’d, round that slight brow, these clouds of doom?... Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known: Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth. Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own: Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth. What mood wears like complexion to thy woe? His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day, Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below? —Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray. Some exile’s, mindful how the past was glad? Some angel’s, in an alien planet born? —No exile’s dream was ever half so sad, Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn. Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore; But in disdainful silence turn away, Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more? Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope, Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give —Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope, Forseen thy harvest, yet proceed’st to live.... Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star, Match that funereal aspect with her pall, I think, thou wilt have fathom’d life too far, Have known too much—or else forgotten all. The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps; Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale Of grief, and eased us with a thousand sleeps. Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use, Not daily labour’s dull, Lethaean spring, Oblivion in lost angels can infuse Of the soil’d glory, and the trailing wing; And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may. In the throng’d fields where winning comes by strife; And though the just sun gild, as mortals pray, Some reaches of thy storm-vext stream of life; ... Once, ere thy day go down, thou shalt discern, Oh once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain! Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return, And wear this majesty of grief again. Matthew Arnold.
Animula, vagula, blandula. Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, frigida, nudula; Nec, ut soles, dabis joca! Spartianus (Life of Hadrian).
These lines, put into the mouth of the dying Emperor, have been translated by Vaughan, Prior, Byron and others. Mr. Clodd (The Question—If a Man Die) gives this version, without naming the translator:—
Soul of mine, thou fleeting, clinging thing, Long my body’s mate and guest, Ah! now whither wilt thou wing, Pallid, naked, shivering, Never more to speak and jest.
In all these versions pallidula, etc., are applied to animula, but, as Mr. Alfred S. West points out to me, they appear to be epithets of loca thus:—“Fleeting, winsome soul, my body’s guest and comrade, that art now about to set out for regions wan, cold and bare, no more to jest according to thy wont.”
This wretched Inn, where we scarce stay to bait, We call our Dwelling-place: But angels in their full enlightened state, Angels, who Live, and know what ’tis to Be, Who all the nonsense of our language see, Who speak things, and our words—their ill-drawn pictures—scorn, When we, by a foolish figure, say, “Behold an old man dead!” then they Speak properly, and cry, “Behold a man-child born!” Abraham Cowley, 1618-1667 (Life).
Here now I am: the house is fast; I am shut in from all but Thee; Great witness of my privacy, Dare I unshamed my soul undress, And, like a child, seek Thy caress, Thou Ruler of a realm so vast? T. T. Lynch.
The dog walked off to play with a black beetle. The beetle was hard at work trying to roll home a great ball of dung it had been collecting all the morning; but Doss broke the ball, and ate the beetle’s hind legs, and then bit off its head. And it was all play, and no one could tell what it had lived and worked for. A striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing.
Olive Schreiner (The Story of an African Farm).
The author is depicting the sadness of life.
GRACE FOR A CHILD
Here a little child I stand, Heaving up my either hand; Cold as Paddocks though they be, frogs Here I lift them up to Thee, For a benison to fall blessing On our meat, and on us all. Amen. Robert Herrick (1591-1674).
As the moon’s soft splendour O’er the faint cold starlight of Heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given Its own.... Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one. Shelley (To Jane).
While I listen to thy voice, Chloris! I feel my life decay: That pow’rful noise Calls my fleeting soul away. Oh! suppress that magic sound, Which destroys without a wound. Peace, Chloris, peace! or singing die; That, together, you and I To heaven may go: For all we know Of what the Blessèd do above Is, that they sing, and that they love. Edmund Waller (1606-1687).
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
O. W. Holmes.
From letter to Julia Ward Howe in 1889 on her seventieth birthday. Mrs. Howe wrote the fine “Battle Hymn of the American Republic,” beginning:—
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.
INSOMNIA
A house of sleepers, I alone unblest Am still awake and empty vigil keep: When those who share Life’s day with me find rest, Oh, let me not be last to fall, asleep. Anna Reeve Aldrich.
She did “fall asleep” at the early age of twenty-six in June, 1892.
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, and the rest willing to let them.
Author not traced.
“THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY”
What we, when face to face we see The Father of our souls, shall be, John tells us, doth not yet appear; Ah! did he tell what we are here! A mind for thoughts to pass into, A heart for loves to travel through, Five senses to detect things near, Is this the whole that we are here? Ah yet, when all is thought and said The heart still overrules the head; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us receive; Must still believe, for still we hope That in a world of larger scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone. My child, we still must think, when we That ampler life together see, Some true result will yet appear Of what we are, together, here. A. H. Clough.
Plus je vois les hommes, plus j’admire les chiens.
(The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.)
Author not traced.
He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation next to that which cometh from heaven. “What, softer than woman?” whispers the young reader. Young reader, woman teases as well as consoles. Woman makes half the sorrows which she boasts the privilege of soothing. On the whole, then, woman in this scale, the weed in that—Jupiter! hang out thy balance and weigh them both; and, if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee, O Jupiter, try the weed!
Bulwer Lytton (What will He do with It?)
Compare Kipling in “The Betrothed”:—
A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
Il y a toujours l’un qui baise, et l’autre qui tend la joue.
(There is always one who kisses and the other who offers the cheek.)
Author not traced.
Ah, wasteful woman, she who may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing he cannot choose but pay, How has she cheapen’d paradise; How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine, Which, spent with due respective thrift, Had made brutes men, and men divine! C. Patmore (The Angel in the House).
Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think— More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler’s pipe and follows to the snare— Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged “God and the glory! never care for gain.” I might have done it for you. R. Browning (Andrea del Sarto).
The painter says that his wife, instead of urging him to work for immediate gain, might have incited him to nobler efforts.
CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS
Once on a time, when sunny May Was kissing up the April showers, I saw fair Childhood hard at play Upon a bank of blushing flowers; Happy—he knew not whence or how— And smiling,—who could choose but love him? For not more glad than Childhood’s brow, Was the blue heaven that beamed above him. Old Time, in most appalling wrath, That valley’s green repose invaded; The brooks grew dry upon his path, The birds were mute, the lilies faded. But Time so swiftly winged his flight, In haste a Grecian tomb to batter, That Childhood watched his paper kite, And knew just nothing of the matter.... Then stepped a gloomy phantom up, Pale, cypress-crowned, Night’s awful daughter, And proffered him a fearful cup Full to the brim of bitter water: Poor Childhood bade her tell her name; And when the beldame muttered, “Sorrow,” He said, “Don’t interrupt my game; I’ll taste it, if I must, to-morrow.” ... Then Wisdom stole his bat and ball, And taught him with most sage endeavour, Why bubbles rise and acorns fall, And why no toy may last for ever. She talked of all the wondrous laws Which Nature’s open book discloses, And Childhood, ere she made a pause Was fast asleep among the roses. Sleep on, sleep on! Oh! Manhood’s dreams Are all of earthly pain or pleasure, Of Glory’s toils, Ambition’s schemes, Of cherished love, or hoarded treasure: But to the couch where Childhood lies A more delicious trance is given, Lit up by rays from seraph eyes, And glimpses of remembered Heaven! W. M. Praed.
Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again. G. MacDonald (Phantastes).
L’ENVOI
There’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield And the ricks stand grey to the sun, Singing:—“Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover And your English summer’s done.” You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song—how long! how long! Pull out on the trail again! Ha’ done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass, We’ve seen the seasons through, And it’s time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. It’s North you may run to the rime-ringed sun Or South to the blind Horn’s hate; Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay, Or West to the Golden Gate; Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass, And the wildest tales are true, And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, And life runs large on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. The days are sick and cold, and the skies are grey and old, And the twice-breathed airs blow damp; And I’d sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll Of a black Bilboa tramp; With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass, And a drunken Dago crew, And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail From Cadiz Bar on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake, Or the way of a man with a maid; But the sweetest way to me is a ship’s upon the sea In the heel of the North-East trade, Can you hear the crash on her bows, dear lass, And the drum of the racing screw, As she ships it green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, As she lifts and ’scends on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. See the shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore, And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave; It’s “Gang-plank up and in,” dear lass, It’s “Hawsers warp her through!” And it’s “All clear aft” on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We’re backing down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new.... O the mutter overside, when the port-fog holds us tied, And the sirens hoot their dread! When foot by foot we creep o’er the hueless viewless deep To the sob of the questing lead! It’s down by the Lower Hope, dear lass, With the Gunfleet Sands in view, Till the Mouse swings green on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, And the Gull Light lifts on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light That holds the hot sky tame, And the steady fore-foot snores through the planet-powder’d floors Where the scared whale flukes in flame! Her plates are scarr’d by the sun, dear lass, And her ropes are taut with the dew, For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We’re sagging south on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. Then home, get her home, when the drunken rollers comb, And the shouting seas drive by, And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing, And the Southern Cross rides high! Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass, That blaze in the velvet blue, They’re all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, They’re God’s own guides on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start— We’re steaming all too slow, And it’s twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle Where the trumpet-orchids blow! You have heard the call of the off-shore wind And the voice of the deep-sea rain: You have heard the song—how long! how long! Pull out on the trail again! The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass, And the deuce knows what we may do— But we’re back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We’re down, hull down on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. Rudyard Kipling.
A great sea-song; we are on board passing through scene after scene and feeling the very movement of the ship and its gear.
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou soul that art the eternity of thought That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul; Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, But with high objects, with enduring things— With life and nature—purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying, by such discipline, Both pain and fear, until we recognize A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. Wordsworth (The Prelude, Bk. I).
The Quakers have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help smiling at the conceit, that, if the taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-coloured creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason).
This quotation reminds me of an interesting passage in Professor Bateson’s Presidential Address to the British Association at Melbourne in 1914. Although it has not a very close connection with the quotation the reader will not object to my giving it a place here:—
“Everyone must have a preliminary sympathy with the aims of eugenists both abroad and at home. Their efforts at the least are doing something to discover and spread truth as to the physiological structure of society. The spread of such organizations, however, almost of necessity suffers from a bias towards the accepted and the ordinary, and if they had power it would go hard with many ingredients of society that could be ill-spared. I notice an ominous passage in which even Galton, the founder of eugenics, feeling perhaps some twinge of his Quaker ancestry, remarks that ‘as the Bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes, the happier for mankind.’ It is not the eugenists who will give us what Plato has called ‘divine releases from the common ways.’ If some fancier with the catholicity of Shakespeare would take us in hand, well and good; but I would not trust Shakespeares, meeting as a committee. Let us remember that Beethoven’s father was an habitual drunkard and that his mother died of consumption. From the genealogy of the patriarchs also we learn—what may very well be the truth—that the fathers of such as dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp or organ, and the instructor of every artificer in brass or iron—the founders, that is to say, of the arts and the sciences—came in direct descent from Cain, and not in the posterity of the irreproachable Seth, who is to us, as he probably was also in the narrow circle of his own contemporaries, what naturalists call a nomen nudum.”
Nomen nudum is a bare name without further particulars, but Donne, no doubt on the authority of Josephus (I. 2.3), attributes Astronomy to Seth (“The Progresse of the Soule”):—
Wonder with mee Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, Or most of those Arts whence our lives are blest, By cursed Cain’s race invented be, And blest Seth vext us with Astronomie.
Donne (1573-1631) is “vext” with Astronomy, presumably because at that time Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642) were affirming the Copernican system and making other discoveries supposed to be dangerous to religion.
Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday And thank his wings to-day that he is flown. D. G. Rossetti (Love’s Lovers).
A SONNET
Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud’s thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp and mountains steep: And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes, The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst: At other times—good Lord! I’d rather be Quite unacquainted with the A.B.C. Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst. James Kenneth Stephen (1859-1893).
“Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,” is Wordsworth’s fine sonnet on the subjugation of Switzerland.
It is certainly extraordinary how the great poet at times dropped into the most prosaic language and commonplace verse. This, however, was only in his earlier poems and only in a few of those poems. His theory at that time was that poetic language should be natural, such as used by ordinary men, and not essentially different from prose. Actually, however, at the root of the matter was his want of any sense of humour. Only so can we account for his beginning a poem “Spade! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands,” or writing absurdly babyish verses. The one instance on record in which he did apparently exhibit a grotesque kind of humour was in a verse of Peter Bell:—
Is it a party in a parlour? Cramm’d just as they on earth were cramm’d— Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, But, as you by their faces see, All silent and all damn’d.
But this he no doubt wrote quite seriously and without any idea that the verse was humorous. Shelley placed this verse at the head of his parody of Peter Bell, and Wordsworth omitted it from the poem after 1819.
And, were I not, as a man may say, cautious How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous, I could favour you with sundry touches Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess Heightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness (To get on faster) until at last her Cheek grew to be one master-plaster Of mucus and fucus from mere use of ceruse; In short, she grew from scalp to udder Just the object to make you shudder. R. Browning (The Flight of the Duchess).
Day is dying! Float, O Song, Down the westward river, Requiem chanting to the Day— Day, the mighty Giver. Pierced by shafts of Time he bleeds, Melted rubies sending Through the river and the sky, Earth and heaven blending; All the long-drawn earthy banks Up to cloud-land lifting: Slow between them drifts the swan, ’Twixt two heavens drifting. Wings half open, like a flow’r Inly deeper flushing, Neck and breast as virgin’s pure— Virgin proudly blushing. Day is dying! Float, O swan, Down the ruby river; Follow, song, in requiem To the mighty Giver. George Eliot (The Spanish Gypsy).
Nature, and nature’s laws, lay hid in night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. Pope
Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. ’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh, life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that we want. Tennyson (The Two Voices).
It is, perhaps, true that no one at any time longs for death; and that our desire is for “more life and fuller.” But men have for various reasons longed to die, though they may not have longed for death. There are those to whom the remainder of life will be one torment of pain to themselves and a continuous mental distress to their friends; and there have been men of firm religious belief who desired to pass into a nobler life beyond the grave. Again, Richard Hodgson definitely assured me in 1897 that he wished to die. He was absolutely satisfied with the evidence of survival after death, which he had had in connection with the Society for Psychical Research; and his desire was to “pass over” and be with the friends with whom for years he had been in communication. Hodgson was incapable of saying anything insincere.
Remember what Simonides said—that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.
Plutarch (Morals).
Not the truth of which a man is or believes himself to be possessed, but the earnest efforts which he has made to attain truth, make the worth of the man. For it is not through the possession of, but through the search for truth, that he develops those powers in which alone consists his ever-growing perfection. Possession makes the mind stagnant, indolent, proud.
If God held in His right hand all truth, and in His left the ever-living desire for truth—although with the condition that I should remain in error for ever—and if He said to me “Choose,” I should humbly bow before His left hand, and say “Father, give; pure truth is for Thee alone.”
Lessing (1729-1781) Wolfenbüttel Fragments
When Lessing wrote this famous passage he was contending that criticism should be absolutely free in regard to religious, as to all other, subjects. “The argument on which he chiefly relies is that the Bible cannot be considered necessary to a belief in Christianity, since Christianity was a living and conquering power before the New Testament in its present form was recognised by the church. The true evidence for what is essential in Christianity, he contends, is its adaptation to the wants of human nature; hence the religious spirit is undisturbed by the speculations of the boldest thinkers.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
The light of every soul burns upward. Let us allow for atmospheric disturbance.
G. Meredith (Diana of the Crossways).
Human life may be painted according to two methods. There is the stage method. According to that, each character is duly marshalled at first, and ticketed; we know with an immutable certainty that, at the right crises, each one will reappear and act his part, and, when the curtain falls, all will stand before it bowing. There is a sense of satisfaction in this—and of completeness. But there is another method—the method of the life we all lead. Here nothing can be prophesied. There is a strange coming and going of feet. Men appear, act and re-act upon each other, and pass away. When the crisis comes, the man who would fit it does not return. When the curtain falls, no one is ready. When the footlights are brightest they are blown out; and what the name of the play is no one knows. If there sits a spectator who knows, he sits so high that the players in the gaslight cannot hear his breathing.
Olive Schreiner (The Story of an African Farm).
This is from the preface to the second edition. This book must be unique, for surely no other girl in her teens has written a book so brilliant in itself and indicating such originality and genius. It is a great loss to literature that the writer became entirely absorbed in South African politics and controversy.
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Alexander Pope.
NIGHT AND DEATH
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened in man’s view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad’st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? J. Blanco White (1775-1841).
(See preface.) This sonnet, apart from its great excellence, is a remarkable literary curiosity. By this one poem alone Blanco White achieved a lasting reputation as a poet. The point is that this is his only poem. He certainly had previously written a sonnet of little merit on survival after death, but “Night and Death” was apparently an inspired transfiguration of his earlier effort. It is a startling instance of inspiration coming to a man once only in his life—and then coming in its very highest form. There are other poets, whose work is generally of poor quality, but who have each produced one surprisingly good poem which alone keeps their memory alive. An instance of this is Christopher Smart (1722-1771), who wrote several volumes of verse but only one fine poem, the “Song of David.” Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) is also known only by his “Burial of Sir John Moore,” but his other poems, though forgotten, are said to have had some merit.
The sonnet is also interesting for another reason. White’s family had settled in Spain for two generations, his grandfather having changed his name to Blanco. His mother was Spanish, he was educated in Spain, and became a Spanish priest, and he did not leave for England until 1810, when thirty-five years of age. Yet White’s beautiful thought could hardly be expressed in finer language. There is, however, one defect in the words “fly and leaf and insect.” (William Sharp courageously altered “fly” into “flower.”)
Coleridge thought this “the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language.” Leigh Hunt said that in point of thought it “stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language: nor can we ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence.”
I sleep, I eat and drink, I read and meditate, I walk in my neighbour’s pleasant fields and see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights—that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God Himself. And he, that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns.
Jeremy Taylor.
In my Progress travelling Northward, Taking farewell of the Southward, To Banbury came I, O prophane-One! Where I saw a Puritane-One Hanging of his Cat on Monday, For killing of a Mouse on Sunday. R. Brathwaite (1638) (Drunken Barnaby).
O the Spring will come, And once again the wind be in the West, Breathing the odour of the sea; and life, Life that was ugly, and work that grew a curse, Be God’s best gifts again, and in your heart You’ll find once more the dreams you thought were dead. H. D. Lowry (In Covent Garden).
Of such as he was, there be few on Earth; Of such as he is, there are many in Heaven; And Life is all the sweeter that he lived, And all he loved more sacred for his sake: And Death is all the brighter that he died, And Heaven is all the happier that he’s there. Gerald Massey (In Memoriam).
ONLY SEVEN
(A Pastoral Story, after Wordsworth.)
I marvelled why a simple child That lightly draws its breath Should utter groans so very wild, And look as pale as Death. Adopting a parental tone, I asked her why she cried; The damsel answered, with a groan, “I’ve got a pain inside. “I thought it would have sent me mad Last night about eleven.” Said I, “What is it makes you bad? How many apples have you had?” She answered, “Only seven!” “And are you sure you took no more, My little maid?” quoth I. “Oh! please sir, mother gave me four, But they were in a pie!” “If that’s the case,” I stammered out, “Of course you’ve had eleven.” The maiden answered, with a pout, “I ain’t had more nor seven!” I wondered hugely what she meant, And said, “I’m bad at riddles, But I know where little girls are sent For telling tarrididdles. “Now, if you don’t reform,” said I, “You’ll never go to heaven.” But all in vain; each time I try, That little idiot makes reply, “I ain’t had more nor seven”!
POSTSCRIPT.
To borrow Wordsworth’s name was wrong, Or slightly misapplied; And so I’d better call my song, “Lines after Ache-inside.” Henry Sambrooke Leigh.
It seems wicked to travesty Wordsworth’s tender little poem, but Leigh’s verses amused us greatly when they appeared. Mark Akenside (1721-1770) is a poet now almost forgotten.
The hour, which might have been, yet might not be, Which man’s and woman’s heart conceived and bore Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore Bides it the breaking of Time’s weary sea? D. G. Rossetti (Stillborn Love).
Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in those far-off days which live in us, and transform our perception into love.
George Eliot (Mill on the Floss).
The firmaments of daisies since to me Have had those mornings in their opening eyes; The bunched cowslip’s pale transparency Carries that sunshine of sweet memories, And wild-rose branches take their finest scent From those blest hours of infantine content. George Eliot (Brother and Sister).
It will be observed that the thought is the same in both passages.
Get thee behind the man I am now, You man that I used to be. R. Browning (Martin Relph).
For my own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They walk the earth with us, but it seems they must be of different clay. They hear the clock strike the same hour, yet surely of a different epoch. They travel by steam conveyance, yet with such baggage of old Asiatic thoughts and superstitions as might check the locomotive in its course. Whatever is thought within the circuit of the Great Wall; what the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches in the hamlets round Pekin; religions so old that our language looks a halfling boy alongside; philosophy so wise that our best philosophers find things therein to wonder at; all this travelled alongside of me for thousands of miles over plain and mountain. Heaven knows if we had one common thought or fancy all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet were formed upon the same design, beheld the same world out of the railway windows. And when either of us turned his thoughts to home and childhood, what a strange dissimilarity must there not have been in these pictures of the mind—when I beheld that old, gray, castled city, high throned above the firth, with the flag of Britain flying, and the red-coat sentry pacing over all; and the man in the next car to me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same affection, home.
R. L. Stevenson (Across the Plains).
I always wanted to make a clean breast of it; And now it is made—why, my heart’s blood, that went trickle, Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets, Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle, And genially floats me about the giblets. R. Browning (The Flight of the Duchess).
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.
Alexander Pope.
We have all of us considerable regard for our past self, and are not fond of casting reflections on that respected individual by a total negation of his opinions.
George Eliot (Scenes from Clerical Life).
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH
Say not, the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main; And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes; comes in the light; In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright! A. H. Clough.
The gravest fish is an oyster, The gravest bird is an owl, The gravest beast is a donkey, And the gravest man is a fool. Scotch Proverb.
... Fear No petty customs nor appearances; But think what others only dreamed about; And say what others did but think; and do What others did but say; and glory in What others dared but do. Philip J. Bailey (My Lady).
The Cynic in society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The large embrace of sympathy, which fails him as interpreter of human life, will no less be wanting when he reads the meaning of the universe. The harmony of the great whole escapes him in his hunt for little discords here and there. He is blind to the august balance of nature, in his preoccupation with some creaking show of defect. He misses the comprehensive march of advancing purpose, because while he himself is in it, he has found some halting member that seems to lag behind. He picks holes in the universal order; he winds through its tracks as a detective, and makes scandals of all that is not to his mind; trusts nothing that he cannot see: and he sees chiefly the exceptional, the dubious, the harsh. The glory of the midnight heavens affects him not, for thinking of a shattered planet or the uninhabitable moon. He makes more of the flood which sweeps the crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds it year by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills, peering through the young green woods, does but dress up a stony desert with deceitful beauty; and in the new birth of summer, he cannot yield himself to the exuberance of glad existence for wonder why insects tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, nothing so imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope.... In selfish minds the same temper resorts to the pettiest reasons for the most desolating thoughts: “If God were good, why should I be born with a club-foot? If the world were justly governed how could my merits be so long overlooked?”
J. Martineau (Hours of Thought, I, 97).
Reverting to this subject later, Martineau says (Hours of Thought II., 354) “Wherever he moves, he empties the space around him of its purest elements; with his low thought he roofs it over from the heavenly light and the sweet air; and then complains of the world as a close-breathed and stifling place.”
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb’s feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves.
George Meredith (The Egoist).
And there’s none of them, but would as soon Criticize the Almighty as not, And see that the angels kept tune And watch that the sun and the moon Did not squander the light they have got. W. C. Smith (Borland Hall).
Love, that is first and last of all things made, The light that has the living world for shade, The spirit that for temporal veil has on The souls of all men woven in unison, One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought ... Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime; Love, that is blood within the veins of time.... Love, that sounds loud or light in all men’s ears, Whence all men’s eyes take fire from sparks of tears, That binds on all men’s feet or chains or wings; Love, that is root and fruit of terrene things; Love, that the whole world’s waters shall not drown, The whole world’s fiery forces not burn down; Love, that what time his own hands guard his head The whole world’s wrath and strength shall not strike dead; Love, that if once his own hands make his grave The whole world’s pity and sorrow shall not save ... Love that is fire within thee and light above, And lives by grace of nothing but of love. Swinburne (Tristram of Lyonesse).
My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting, its roses. E. A. Poe (For Annie).
Now, for myself, when once the wick is crushed, I ask not where the light is, which is not, Nor where the music, when the harp is hushed, Nor where the memory, which is clean forgot. W. C. Smith (Borland Hall).
Goethe says somewhere there is something in every man for which, if we only knew it, we would hate him. I would prefer to say that there is something in every man for which, if we only knew it, we would love him.
R. Hodgson (Letter).
For us no shadow on life’s solemn dial Goes back to give us peace; There is no resting-place in the stern trial Until the heart-throbs cease; We cannot hold Time fast, and bid him bless us, And not for us the sun, When shades fall fast, and doubts and woes oppress us, Stands still in Gibeon. E. H. Sears.
Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him This same unseen friend, before I knew: Dream there was none like him, none above him,— Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.... All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier, For that dream’s sake! How forget the thrill Through and through me as I thought “The gladlier Lives my friend because I love him still!” R. Browning (Fears and Scruples).
The “Friend” is God. The lines “All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier, For that dream’s sake,” seem to me very beautiful. In so few words Browning, with dramatic insight, expresses the feeling of a Renan or George Eliot after they had lost their faith in Christianity.
The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance—by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow....
In proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. They are the kings of the world who give the colour of their present thought to all nature and all art.... The great man makes the great thing.... Linnæus makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman; Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon.
Emerson (The American Scholar).
Cantat Deo, qui vivit Deo.
(He sings to God, who lives to God.)
Author not traced.
Jenny Lind used to say, “I sing to God.”
A CONSERVATIVE
The garden beds I wandered by One bright and cheerful morn, When I found a new-fledged butterfly, A-sitting on a thorn, A black and crimson butterfly, All doleful and forlorn. I thought that life could have no sting To infant butterflies, So I gazed on this unhappy thing With wonder and surprise, While sadly with his waving wing He wiped his weeping eyes. Said I, “What can the matter be? Why weepest thou so sore, With garden fair and sunlight free And flowers in goodly store?”— But he only turned away from me And burst into a roar. Cried he, “My legs are thin and few Where once I had a swarm! Soft fuzzy fur—a joy to view— Once kept my body warm, Before these flapping wing-things grew, To hamper and deform!” At that outrageous bug I shot The fury of mine eye; Said I, in scorn all burning hot, In rage and anger high, “You ignominious idiot! Those wings are made to fly!” “I do not want to fly,” said he, “I only want to squirm!” And he dropped his wings dejectedly, But still his voice was firm: “I do not want to be a fly! I want to be a worm!” O yesterday of unknown lack! To-day of unknown bliss! I left my fool in red and black, The last I saw was this,— The creature madly climbing back Into his chrysalis. Charlotte Perkins Stetson.
The very fiends weave ropes of sand Rather than taste pure hell in idleness. R. Browning (A Forgiveness).
He had formed several ingenious plans by which he meant to circumvent people of large fortune and small capacity; but then he never met with exactly the right people under exactly the right circumstances.... It is possible to pass a great many bad half-pennies and bad half-crowns, but I believe there has no instance been known of passing a half-penny or a half-crown for a sovereign.
George Eliot (Brother Jacob).
In the old times Death was a feverish sleep, In which men walked. The other world was cold And thinly-peopled, so life’s emigrants Came back to mingle with the crowds of earth: But now great cities are transplanted thither, Memphis, and Babylon, and either Thebes, And Priam’s towery town with its one beech. The dead are most and merriest: so be sure There will be no more haunting, till their towns Are full to the garret; then they’ll shut their gates, To keep the living out, and perhaps leave A dead or two between both kingdoms. T. L. Beddoes (Death’s Jest-Book, III, 3).
This is one of the queer fancies in a curious poem.
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.
Emerson (Essay on Experience).
De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.
(We make for ourselves a ladder of our vices, when we tread under foot the vices themselves.)
St. Augustine (De Ascensione).
I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. Tennyson (In Memoriam).
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! Longfellow (The Ladder of St. Augustine).
The trials that beset you, The sorrows ye endure, The manifold temptations That death alone can cure, What are they but His jewels Of right celestial worth? What are they but the ladder Set up to Heav’n on earth? J. M. Neale (O Happy Band of Pilgrims).
I can bear it no longer—this diabolical invention of gentility, which kills natural kindliness and honest friendship. Proper pride, indeed! Rank and precedence, forsooth! The table of ranks and degrees is a lie, and should be flung into the fire. Organize rank and precedence! That was well for the masters of ceremonies of former ages. Come forward, some great marshal, and organize Equality in society.
Thackeray (Book of Snobs).
Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil’s booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking: ’Tis heaven alone that is given away, ’Tis only God may be had for the asking. J. R. Lowell (The Vision of Sir Launfal).
... The too susceptible Tupman, who, to the wisdom and experience of maturer years, superadded the enthusiasm and ardour of a boy, in the most interesting and pardonable of human weaknesses, love. Time and feeding had expanded that once romantic form; the black silk waistcoat had become more and more developed; inch by inch had the gold watch-chain beneath it disappeared from within the range of Tupman’s vision; and gradually had the capacious chin encroached upon the borders of the white cravat; but the soul of Tupman had known no change.
Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers).
The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality. And the worst of all this is, that love and friendship may be the outcome of a certain condition of knowledge; increase the knowledge, and love and friendship beat their wings and go. Every man’s road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings. Intimacy is frequently the road to indifference; and marriage a parricide.
Alexander Smith (The Importance of a Man to Himself).
I think sometimes how good it were had I some one by me to listen when I am tempted to read a passage aloud. Yes, but is there any mortal in the whole world upon whom I could invariably depend for sympathetic understanding—nay, who would even generally be at one with me in my appreciation? Such harmony of intelligences is the rarest thing. All through life we long for it ... and, after all, we learn that the vision is illusory. To every man is it decreed: Thou shalt live alone.