British Literature in the 18th and 19th Centuries
A Course Reader
THIS COMPILATION:
DÓSA ATTILA
2012
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CONTENTS
WILLIAM BLAKE
Poems
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Poems
From Preface to Lyrical Ballads
S.T. COLERIDGE
Poems
LORD BYRON
Poems
P.B. SHELLEY
Poems
JOHN KEATS
Poems
From The Letters
LORD TENNYSON
Poems
ROBERT BROWNING
Poems
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Poems
From Culture and Anarchy
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WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)
from Songs of Innocence
Introduction
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.
Pipe a song about a Lamb;
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again--So I piped, he wept to hear.
Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear
Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read--So he vanish'd from my sight.
And I pluck'd a hollow reed.
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear
The Lamb
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
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The Chimney Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lambs back, was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe Ned & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm,
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
Holy Thursday
Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow
O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
Nurse's Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still
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Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies
No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly
And the hills are all coverd with sheep
Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills ecchoed
from Songs of Experience
Introduction
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk'd among the ancient trees.
Calling the lapsed Soul
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might controll,
The starry pole;
And fallen fallen light renew!
O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.
Turn away no more:
Why wilt thou turn away
The starry floor
The watry shore
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.
Holy Thursday
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reducd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
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And their ways are fill'd with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
The Chimney Sweeper
A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winters snow:
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy, & dance & sing,
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King
Who make up a heaven of our misery.
Nurse’s Song
When the voices of children, are heard on the green
And whisprings are in the dale:
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Your spring & your day, are wasted in play
And your winter and night in disguise.
The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes!
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
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What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
London
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh,
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
We Are Seven
------ A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
---Her beauty made me glad.
"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said,
And wondering looked at me.
"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."
"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be."
Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."
"You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."
"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.
My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
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And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."
"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply,
"O Master! we are seven."
"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
Lines, Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the
Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798.
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.---Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
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These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:---feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:---that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft--In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart--How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.---I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
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Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.---That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,---both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
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To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance--If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence---wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love---oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
She dwelt among the untrodden ways…
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
---Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
A slumber did my spirit seal…
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
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I wandered lonely…
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Sonnet: Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning, silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
From Preface to Lyrical Ballads
The first Volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published, as an
experiment, which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical
arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and
that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavour to impart.
I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those Poems: I flattered
myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure:
and, on the other hand, I was well aware, that by those who should dislike them, they would be read with
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more than common dislike. The result has differed from my expectation in this only, that a greater
number have been pleased than I ventured to hope I should please.
For the sake of variety, and from a consciousness of my own weakness, I was induced to request
the assistance of a friend,1 who furnished me with the poems of the Ancient Mariner, the FosterMother’s Tale, the Nightingale, and the poem entitled Love. I should not, however, have requested this
assistance, had I not believed that the poems of my friend would in great measure have the same
tendency as my own, and that, though there would be found a difference, there would be found no
discordance in the colours of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely
coincide.
Several of my Friends are anxious for the success of these Poems, from a belief, that, if the
views with which they were composed were indeed realised, a class of Poetry would be produced, well
adapted to interest mankind permanently, and not unimportant in the quality, and in the multiplicity of its
moral relations: and on this account they have advised me to prefix a systematic defence of the theory
upon which the Poems were written. But I was unwilling to undertake the task, knowing that on this
occasion the Reader would look coldly upon my arguments, since I might be suspected of having been
principally influenced by the selfish and foolish hope of reasoning him into an approbation of these
particular Poems: and I was still more unwilling to undertake the task, because, adequately to display the
opinions, and fully to enforce the arguments, would require a space wholly disproportionate to a preface.
For, to treat the subject with the clearness and coherence of which it is susceptible, it would be necessary
to give a full account of the present state of the public taste in this country, and to determine how far this
taste is healthy or depraved; which, again, could not be determined, without pointing out in what manner
language and the human mind act and re-act on each other, and without retracing the revolutions, not of
literature alone, but likewise of society itself. I have therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon
this defence; yet I am sensible, that there would be something like impropriety in abruptly obtruding
upon the Public, without a few words of introduction, Poems so materially different from those upon
which general approbation is at present bestowed.
It is supposed, that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a formal engagement that he
will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprises the Reader that certain
classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. This
exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excited very
different expectations: for example, in the age of Catullus, Terence, and Lucretius, and that of Statius or
Claudian; and in our own country, in the age of Shakspeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and that of
Donne and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope. I will not take upon me to determine the exact import of the
promise which, by the act of writing in verse, an Author, in the present day makes to his reader: but it
will undoubtedly appear to many persons that I have not fulfilled the terms of an engagement thus
voluntarily contracted. They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many
modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to
struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be
induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. I hope
therefore the reader will not censure me for attempting to state what I have proposed to myself to
perform; and also (as far as the limits of a preface will permit) to explain some of the chief reasons which
have determined me in the choice of my purpose: that at least he may be spared any unpleasant feeling of
disappointment, and that I myself may be protected from one of the most dishonourable accusations
which can be brought against an Author; namely, that of an indolence which prevents him from
endeavouring to ascertain what is his duty, or, when his duty is ascertained, prevents him from
performing it.
The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from
common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language
really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination,
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above
all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously,
the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state
of excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential
passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and
speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more
forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and,
from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable;
1
Coleridge.
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and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and
permanent forms of nature. The language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what
appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men
hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and
because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less
under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a
more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it
by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they
separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of
expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation. 1
I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the triviality and meanness, both
of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their
metrical compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is more dishonourable to the
Writer's own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same
time, that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From such verses the Poems in these
volumes will be found distinguished at least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy
purpose. Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formally conceived; but habits of
mediation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as
strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a purpose. If this opinion be
erroneous, I can have little right to the name of a Poet. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never
produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic
sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and
directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by
contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really
important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with
important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind
will be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall
describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connection with each other, that the
understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections
strengthened and purified.
I have said that each of these poems has a purpose. I have also informed my Reader what this
purpose will be found principally to be: namely to illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas
are associated in a state of excitement. But [Note] speaking in less general language, it is to follow the
fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature. This
object I have endeavoured in these short essays to attain by various means; by tracing the maternal
passion through many of its more subtle windings, as in the poems of the Idiot Boy and the Mad
Mother; by accompanying the last struggles of a human being at the approach of death, cleaving in
solitude to life and society, as in the Poem of the Forsaken Indian; by shewing, as in the Stanzas
entitled We Are Seven, the perplexity and obscurity which in childhood attend our notion of death, or
rather our utter inability to admit that notion; or by displaying the strength of fraternal, or to speak more
philosophically, of moral attachment when early associated with the great and beautiful objects of nature,
as in The Brothers; or, as in the Incident of Simon Lee, by placing my Reader in the way of receiving
from ordinary moral sensations another and more salutary impression than we are accustomed to receive
from them. It has also been part of my general purpose to attempt to sketch characters under the influence
of less impassioned feelings, as in the Old Man travelling, The Two Thieves, &c. characters of which
the elements are simple, belonging rather to nature than to manners, such as exist now and will probably
always exist, and which from their constitution may be distinctly and profitably contemplated. I will not
abuse the indulgence of my Reader by dwelling longer upon this subject; but it is proper that I should
mention one other circumstance which distinguishes these Poems from the popular Poetry of the day; it is
this, that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation and not the action and
situation to the feeling. My meaning will be rendered perfectly intelligible by referring my Reader to the
Poems entitled Poor Susan and the Childless Father, particularly to the last Stanza of the latter Poem.
I will not suffer a sense of false modesty to prevent me from asserting, that I point my Reader's
attention to this mark of distinction far less for the sake of these particular Poems than from the general
importance of the subject. The subject is indeed important! For the human mind is capable of excitement
‘It is worth while here to observe that the affecting parts of Chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure and universally
intelligible even to this day.’ Wordsworth.
1
15
without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its
beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know that one being is elevated
above another in proportion as he possesses this capability. It has therefore appeared to me that to
endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a
Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a
multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the
discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of
almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily
taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations
produces a craving for extraordinary incident which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly
gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have
conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of
Shakespear and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies,
and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.---When I think upon this degrading thirst after
outrageous stimulation I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble effort with which I have
endeavoured to counteract it; and reflecting upon the magnitude of the general evil, I should be oppressed
with no dishonorable melancholy, had I not a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible
qualities of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act
upon it which are equally inherent and indestructible; and did I not further add to this impression a belief
that the time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed by men of greater powers and
with far more distinguished success.
Having dwelt thus long on the subjects and aim of these Poems, I shall request the Reader's
permission to apprise him of a few circumstances relating to their style, in order, among other reasons,
that he may not censure me for not having performed what I never attempted. The Reader will find that
personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes; and are utterly rejected, as an ordinary
device to elevate the style, and raise it above prose. My purpose was to imitate, and, as far as is possible,
to adopt the very language of men; and assuredly such personifications do not make any natural or
regular part of that language. They are, indeed, a figure of speech occasionally prompted by passion, and
I have made use of them as such; but have endeavoured utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of
style, or as a family language which Writers in metre seem to lay claim to by prescription. I have wished
to keep the Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him.
Others who pursue a different track will interest him likewise; I do not interfere with their claim, but
wish to prefer a claim of my own. There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually
called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has
been done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men; and further,
because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart, is of a kind very different from that
which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry. Without being culpably particular,
I do not know how to give my Reader a more exact notion of the style in which it was my wish and
intention to write, than by informing him that I have at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my
subject; consequently, there is I hope in these Poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are
expressed in language fitted to their respective importance. Something must have been gained by this
practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, good sense: but it has necessarily cut
me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been
regarded as the common inheritance of Poets. I have also thought it expedient to restrict myself still
further, having abstained from the use of many expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but
which have been foolishly repeated by bad Poets, till such feelings of disgust are connected with them as
it is scarcely possible by any art of association to overpower. If in a poem there should be found a series
of lines, or even a single line, in which the language, though naturally arranged, and according to the
strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of prose, there is a numerous class of critics, who, when
they stumble upon these prosaisms, as they call them, imagine that they have made a notable discovery,
and exult over the Poet as over a man ignorant of his own profession. Now these men would establish a
canon of criticism which the Reader will conclude he must utterly reject, if he wishes to be pleased with
these volumes. And it would be a most easy task to prove to him, that not only the language of a large
portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference
to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good prose, but likewise that some of the most interesting
parts of the best poems will be found to be strictly the language of prose when prose is well written. The
truth of this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost all the poetical
writings, even of Milton himself. To illustrate the subject in a general manner, I will here adduce a short
composition of Gray, who was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to widen the
16
space of separation betwixt Prose and Metrical composition, and was more than any other man curiously
elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction.
'In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire;
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.'1
It will easily be perceived, that the only part of this Sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed in
Italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word 'fruitless' for
fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of these lines does in no respect differ from that of
prose.
By the foregoing quotation it has been shown that the language of Prose may yet be well
adapted to Poetry; and it was previously asserted, that a large portion of the language of every good poem
can in no respect differ from that of good Prose. We will go further. It may be safely affirmed, that there
neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.
We are fond of tracing the resemblance between Poetry and Painting, and, accordingly, we call them
Sisters: but where shall we find bonds of connection sufficiently strict to typify the affinity betwixt
metrical and prose composition? They both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of
them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost
identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry sheds no tears 2 'such as Angels weep,'3 but
natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor4 that distinguishes her vital juices from those
of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.
. . .
Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word Poet? What is a
Poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be expected from him?---He is a man
speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and
tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are
supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who
rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions
and passions as manifested in the goings-on the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where
he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men
by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed
far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general
sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real
events, than anything which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to
feel in themselves:---whence, and from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in
expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice,
or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there
cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest to him, must often, in liveliness and truth, fall
short of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain
Thomas Gray, ‘Sonnet on the Death of Richard West’.
‘I here used the word “poetry” (though against my own judgement) as opposed to the word prose, and synonymous with metrical
composition. But much confusion has been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of poetry and prose, instead of the
more philosophical one of poetry and matter of fact, or science. The only strict antithesis to prose is metre; nor is this, in truth, a
strict antithesis; because lines and passages of metre so naturally occur in writing prose, that it would be scarcely possible to avoid
them, even were it desirable’, Wordsworth.
3
Milton, Paradise Lost, l. 620.
4
In Greek mythology, the fluid in the veins of the gods.
1
2
17
shadows of which the Poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a notion
we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that while he describes and imitates
passions, his employment is in some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real
and substantial action and suffering. So that it will be the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to
those of the persons whose feelings he describes, nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip
into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the
language which is thus suggested to him by a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that
of giving pleasure. Here, then, he will apply the principle of selection which has been already insisted
upon. He will depend upon this for removing what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in the
passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more industriously
he applies this principle, the deeper will be his faith that no words, which his fancy or imagination can
suggest, will be to be compared with those which are the emanations of reality and truth.
But it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit of these remarks, that, as it is
impossible for the Poet to produce upon all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as
that which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should consider himself as in the situation
of a translator, who does not scruple to substitute excellencies of another kind for those which are
unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends
for the general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage idleness
and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; who
talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely about
a taste for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or
Frontiniac1 or Sherry. Aristotle, I have been told, has said, 2 that Poetry is the most philosophic of all
writing: it is so: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon
external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony, which
gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same
tribunal. Poetry is the image of man and nature. The obstacles which stand in the way of the fidelity of
the Biographer and Historian, and of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which
are to be encountered by the Poet who comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet writes under one
restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that
information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or
a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except this one restriction, there is no object standing between the
Poet and the image of things; between this, and the Biographer and Historian, there are a thousand.
Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the
Poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment
the more sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the
world in the spirit of love: further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the
grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no
sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure: I would not be misunderstood; but wherever we
sympathise with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle
combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the
contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure
alone. The Man of science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may
have had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the
Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no
pleasure he has no knowledge. What then does the Poet? He considers man and the objects that surround
him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure;
he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity
of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions, which from habit acquire
the quality of intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations,
and finding every where objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of
his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment.
To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which,
without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the Poet principally
directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of
man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature. And thus the Poet,
prompted by this feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies,
converses with general nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and length of time,
1
A sweet wine.
Aristotle in fact said that ‘poetry is more philosophic than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas
those of history are singulars’, Poetics 1451b.
2
18
the Man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those particular parts of nature which are
the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of science is pleasure; but the
knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable
inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and
direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. The Man of science seeks truth as a remote and
unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all
human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the
countenance of all Science. Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakspeare hath said of man, 'that
he looks before and after.'1 He is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver,
carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of
language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things
violently destroyed; the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society,
as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are every where;
though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he
can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all
knowledge---it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labours of Men of science should ever create any
material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually
receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the Man
of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the
midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or
Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time
should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are
contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us
as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus
familiarised to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his
divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine
inmate of the household of man.--- It is not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime
notion of Poetry which I have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his
pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts,
the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of his subject.
What has been thus far said applies to Poetry in general; but especially to those parts of
composition where the Poet speaks through the mouths of his characters; and upon this point it appears to
authorise the conclusion that there are few persons of good sense, who would not allow that the dramatic
parts of composition are defective, in proportion as they deviate from the real language of nature, and are
coloured by a diction of the Poet's own, either peculiar to him as an individual Poet or belonging simply
to Poets in general; to a body of men who, from the circumstance of their compositions being in metre, it
is expected will employ a particular language.
It is not, then, in the dramatic parts of composition that we look for this distinction of language;
but still it may be proper and necessary where the Poet speaks to us in his own person and character. To
this I answer by referring the Reader to the description before given of a Poet. Among the qualities there
enumerated as principally conducing to form a Poet, is implied nothing differing in kind from other men,
but only in degree. The sum of what was said is, that the Poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by
a greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and a greater power in
expressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him in that manner. But these passions and
thoughts and feelings are the general passions and thoughts and feelings of men. And with what are they
connected? Undoubtedly with our moral sentiments and animal sensations, and with the causes which
excite these; with the operations of the elements, and the appearances of the visible universe; with storm
and sunshine, with the revolutions of the seasons, with cold and heat, with loss of friends and kindred,
with injuries and resentments, gratitude and hope, with fear and sorrow. These, and the like, are the
sensations and objects which the Poet describes, as they are the sensations of other men, and the objects
which interest them. The Poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human passions. How, then, can his
language differ in any material degree from that of all other men who feel vividly and see clearly? It
might be proved that it is impossible. But supposing that this were not the case, the Poet might then be
allowed to use a peculiar language when expressing his feelings for his own gratification, or that of men
like himself. But Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men. Unless therefore we are advocates for
that admiration which subsists upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do
1
Hamlet, 4.4.37.
19
not understand, the Poet must descend from this supposed height; and, in order to excite rational
sympathy, he must express himself as other men express themselves.
. . .
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of re-action, the tranquillity
gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition
generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in
whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any
passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of
enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet
ought to profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take care, that, whatever passions
he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if his Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should
always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of harmonious metrical
language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind association of pleasure which has been
previously received from works of rhyme or metre of the same or similar construction, an indistinct
perception perpetually renewed of language closely resembling that of real life, and yet, in the
circumstance of metre, differing from it so widely---all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of
delight, which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling always found intermingled
with powerful descriptions of the deeper passions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and
impassioned poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with which the Poet
manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a principal source of the gratification of the Reader. All
that it is necessary to say, however, upon this subject, may be effected by affirming, what few persons
will deny, that, of two descriptions, either of passions, manners, or characters, each of them equally well
executed, the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be read a hundred times where the prose
is read once.
. . .
Nothing would, I know, have so effectually contributed to further the end which I have in view, as to
have shown of what kind the pleasure is, and how that pleasure is produced, which is confessedly
produced by metrical composition essentially different from that which I have here endeavoured to
recommend: for the Reader will say that he has been pleased by such composition; and what more can be
done for him? The power of any art is limited; and he will suspect, that, if it be proposed to furnish him
with new friends, that can be only upon condition of his abandoning his old friends. Besides, as I have
said, the Reader is himself conscious of the pleasure which he has received from such composition,
composition to which he has peculiarly attached the endearing name of Poetry; and all men feel an
habitual gratitude, and something of an honourable bigotry, for the objects which have long continued to
please them: we not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particular way in which we have
been accustomed to be pleased. There is in these feelings enough to resist a host of arguments; and I
should be the less able to combat them successfully, as I am willing to allow, that, in order entirely to
enjoy the Poetry which I am recommending, it would be necessary to give up much of what is ordinarily
enjoyed. But, would my limits have permitted me to point out how this pleasure is produced, many
obstacles might have been removed, and the Reader assisted in perceiving that the powers of language
are not so limited as he may suppose; and that it is possible for poetry to give other enjoyments, of a
purer, more lasting, and more exquisite nature. This part of the subject has not been altogether neglected,
but it has not been so much my present aim to prove, that the interest excited by some other kinds of
poetry is less vivid, and less worthy of the nobler powers of the mind, as to offer reasons for presuming,
that if my purpose were fulfilled, a species of poetry would be produced, which is genuine poetry; in its
nature well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and likewise important in the multiplicity and
quality of its moral relations.
From what has been said, and from a perusal of the Poems, the Reader will be able clearly to
perceive the object which I had in view: he will determine how far it has been attained; and, what is a
much more important question, whether it be worth attaining: and upon the decision of these two
questions will rest my claim to the approbation of the Public.
1800
20
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)
Kubla Khan
Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment.
The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, 1 and, as
far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of
any supposed poetic merits. In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a
lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In
consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell
asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same
substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimage': 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately
garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.' The Author continued
for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the
most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that
indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel
production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On
awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and
paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was
unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and
on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained
some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some
eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a
stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!
Then all the charm
Is broken---all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape['s] the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror. 2
Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for
himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Sameron adion aso: but the to-morrow is yet
to come. As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing
with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
1
2
Lord Byron.
From Coleridge, ‘The Picture; or, the Lover's Resolution’, II. 91-100.
21
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
1798.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
In Seven Parts1
Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium
familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt?
quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat,
interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem
contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas
cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a
nocte, distinguamus. ---T. Burnet, Archaeol. Phil. p. 68.2
1
From The Complete Poetical Works (1912).
‘I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible Natures in the Universe. But who will explain for us the family of all
these beings, and the ranks and relations and distinguishing features and functions of each? What do they do? What places do the
inhabit? The human mind has always sought the knowledge of these things, but never attained it. Meanwhile I do not deny that it is
helpful sometime to contemplate in the mind, as on a tablet, the image of a greater and better world, lest the intellect, habituated to
the petty things of daily life, narrow itself and sink wholly into trivial thoughts. But at the same time we must be watchful for the
truth and keep a sense of proportion, so that we may distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night.’
2
22
ARGUMENT
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole;
and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the
strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.
Part I1
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.2
He holds him with his glittering eye--The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.3
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon---'
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon. 4
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
1
An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a weddingfeast, and detaineth one.
The Wedding-Guest is spellbound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the line.
4
The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale.
2
3
23
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.1
'And now the Storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.2
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross,3
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind; 4
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'
'God save thee, ancient Mariner!5
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--Why look'st thou so?'---With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.
1
The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen.
3
Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.
4
And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.
5
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.
2
24
Part II
The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners' hollo!
And I had done a hellish thing,1
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!
Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, 2
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 3
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 4
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,5
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
1
His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck.
But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime.
3
The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.
4
The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.
5
And the Albatross begins to be avenged.
2
25
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.
And some in dreams assuréd were 1
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks2
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
Part III
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.3
At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,4
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:5
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.
1
A Spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the
learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there
is no climate or element without one or more.
2
The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof they hang the dead
sea-bird round his neck.
3
The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off.
4
At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst.
5
A flash of joy…
26
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!1
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
The western wave was all a-flame.
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, 2
(Heaven's Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered
With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!3
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres?
Are those her ribs through which the Sun4
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that woman's mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,5
Her locks were yellow as gold:6
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:7
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
We listened and looked sideways up!8
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip--Till clomb above the eastern bar
The hornéd Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.
…and horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide?
It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.
3
And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun.
4
The Spectre-Woman and her Deathmate, and no other on board the skeleton ship.
5
Like vessel, like crew!
6
Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner.
7
No twilight within the courts of the Sun.
8
At the rising of the Moon…
1
2
27
One after one,1 by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
Four times fifty living men, 2
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
The souls did from their bodies fly,---3
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!
Part IV
'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!4
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.'---5
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.6
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.7
I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.
I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.8
…one after another…
…his shipmates drop down dead.
3
But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.
4
The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him…
5
…but the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.
6
He despiseth the creatures of the calm…
7
…and envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.
8
But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.
1
2
28
The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.
An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
The moving Moon went up the sky. 1
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside--Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charméd water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,2
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue 3
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart, 4
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;5
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
1
In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward;
and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes,
which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.
2
By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm.
3
Their beauty and their happiness.
4
He blesseth them in his heart.
5
The spell begins to break.
29
Part V
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
The silly buckets on the deck,1
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light---almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blesséd ghost.
And soon I heard a roaring wind:2
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain poured down from one black cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
The loud wind never reached the ship,3
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up-blew;
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
1
By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.
He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element.
3
The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired [inspirited] and the ship moves on.
2
30
Where they were wont to do;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools--We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother's son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me.
'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!'1
Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawned---they dropped their arms,
And clustered round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies passed.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!
And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
Under the keel nine fathom deep,2
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
1
But not by the souls of the men, nor by demons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the
invocation of the guardian saint.
2
The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth
vengeance.
31
The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed her to the ocean:
But in a minute she 'gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion--Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
How long in that same fit I lay,1
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life returned,
I heard and in my soul discerned
Two voices in the air.
'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man?
By him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low
The harmless Albatross.
The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow.'
The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.'
Part VI
FIRST VOICE
'But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing--What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the ocean doing?'
SECOND VOICE
'Still as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast--If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.'
FIRST VOICE2
'But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?'
1
The Polar Spirit's fellow-demons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to
the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.
2
The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could
endure.
32
SECOND VOICE
'The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner's trance is abated.'
I woke, and we were sailing on1
As in a gentle weather:
'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
And now this spell was snapt: once more2
I viewed the ocean green,
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen--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.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring--It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--On me alone it blew.
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed3
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?
We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
1
The supernatural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.
The curse is finally expiated.
3
And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.
2
33
And I with sobs did pray--O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the Moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
And the bay was white with silent light,
Till rising from the same,1
A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deck--Oh, Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light;
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart--No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
But soon I heard the dash of oars,
I heard the Pilot's cheer;
My head was turned perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.
The Pilot and the Pilot's boy,
I heard them coming fast:
Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third---I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good!
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away
The Albatross's blood.
1
The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, full many shapes, that shadows were, in crimson colours came, and appear in their own
forms of light.
34
Part VII
This Hermit good lives in that wood1
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve--He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,
'Why, this is strange, I trow!
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?'
'Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said---2
'And they answered not our cheer!
The planks looked warped! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along;
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf's young.'
'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look--(The Pilot made reply)
I am a-feared'---'Push on, push on!'
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.
Under the water it rumbled on,3
Still louder and more dread:
It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.
Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,4
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drowned
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot's boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
The Hermit of the Wood…
…approacheth the ship with wonder.
The ship suddenly sinketh.
4
The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.
1
2
3
35
I moved my lips---the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.
I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.'
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!'1
The Hermit crossed his brow.
'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say--What manner of man art thou?'
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,2
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!---
1
2
The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.
And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land…
36
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends
And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell1
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
1797-1798.
1
…and to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.
37
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)
When We Two Parted
1
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
2
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow--It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.
3
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me--Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:--Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
4
In secret we met--In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?--With silence and tears.
She Walks in Beauty
I
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
II
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
38
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
III
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
June 12, 1814.
Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went---and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires---and the thrones,
The palaces of crownéd kings---the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the World contained;
Forests were set on fire---but hour by hour
They fell and faded---and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash---and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past World; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless---they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:---a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
All earth was but one thought---and that was Death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails---men
39
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress---he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects---saw, and shrieked, and died--Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--A lump of death---a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge--The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them---She was the Universe.
Diodati, July, 1816.
From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
From Canto 1
I
Oh, thou! in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,
Muse! formed or fabled at the Minstrel's will!
Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,
Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred Hill:
Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill;
Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine,1
Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;
1
The little village of Castri stands partially on the site of Delphi. Along the path of the mountain, from Chrysso, are the remains of
sepulchres hewn in and from the rock:--- "One," said the guide, "of a king who broke his neck hunting." His majesty had certainly
chosen the fittest spot for such an achievement. A little above Castri is a cave, supposed the Pythian, of immense depth; the upper
part of it is paved, and now a cowhouse. On the other side of Castri stands a Greek monastery; some way above which is the cleft in
the rock, with a range of caverns difficult of ascent, and apparently leading to the interior of the mountain; probably to the Corycian
Cavern mentioned by Pausanias. From this part descend the fountain and the "Dews of Castalie."
40
Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine
To grace so plain a tale---this lowly lay of mine.
II
Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth,
Who ne in Virtue's ways did take delight;
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.
Ah me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;
Few earthly things found favour in his sight
Save concubines and carnal companie,
And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.
III
Childe Harold was he hight:---but whence his name
And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,
And had been glorious in another day:
But one sad losel soils a name for ay,
However mighty in the olden time;
Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,
Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme,
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.
IV
Childe Harold basked him in the Noontide sun,
Disporting there like any other fly;
Nor deemed before his little day was done
One blast might chill him into misery.
But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
Worse than Adversity the Childe befell;
He felt the fulness of Satiety:
Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
Which seemed to him more lone than Eremite's sad cell.
V
For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,
Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
Had sighed to many though he loved but one,
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.
Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.
VI
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,
And from his fellow Bacchanals would flee;
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But Pride congealed the drop within his ee:
Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
41
From Canto 3
I
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,---not as now we part,
But with a hope.--Awaking with a start,
The waters heave around me; and on high
The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.
II
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!
Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,
Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.
III
In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years
Plod the last sands of life,---where not a flower appears.
IV
Since my young days of passion---joy, or pain--Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string--And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
I would essay as I have sung to sing:
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness---so it fling
Forgetfulness around me---it shall seem
To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.
V
He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him---nor below
Can Love or Sorrow, Fame, Ambition, Strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance---he can tell
Why Thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the Soul's haunted cell.
42
VI
'Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, even as I do now--What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth.
VII
Yet must I think less wildly:---I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poisoned. 'Tis too late:
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what Time can not abate,
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.
VIII
Something too much of this:---but now 'tis past,
And the spell closes with its silent seal--Long absent Harold re-appears at last;
He of the breast which fain no more would feel,
Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal;
Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him
In soul and aspect as in age: years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
IX
His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found
The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again,
And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
And deemed its spring perpetual---but in vain!
Still round him clung invisibly a chain
Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen,
And heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain,
Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,
Entering with every step he took through many a scene.
X
Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed
Again in fancied safety with his kind,
And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed
And sheathed with an invulnerable mind,
That, if no joy, no sorrow lurked behind;
And he, as one, might 'midst the many stand
Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
Fit speculation---such as in strange land
He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand.
XI
But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek
To wear it? who can curiously behold
The smoothness and the sheen of Beauty's cheek,
Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?
43
Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?
Harold, once more within the vortex, rolled
On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
Yet with a nobler aim than in his Youth's fond prime.
XII
But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man, with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To Spirits against whom his own rebelled,
Proud though in desolation---which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.
XIII
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake.
XIV
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this clay will sink
Its spark immortal, envying it the light
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.
XV
But in Man's dwellings he became a thing
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage---so the heat
Of his impeded Soul would through his bosom eat.
XVI
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
With nought of Hope left---but with less of gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though 'twere wild,---as on the plundered wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,--Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check.
44
XVII
Stop!---for thy tread is on an Empire's dust!
An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below!
Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?
Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
None; but the moral's truth tells simpler so.--As the ground was before, thus let it be;--How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!
And is this all the world has gained by thee,
Thou first and last of Fields! king-making Victory?
XVIII
And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,
The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!
How in an hour the Power which gave annuls
Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!--In "pride of place" here last the Eagle flew, 1
Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain,
Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through;
Ambition's life and labours all were vain--He wears the shattered links of the World's broken chain.
XIX
Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit
And foam in fetters;---but is Earth more free?
Did nations combat to make One submit?
Or league to teach all Kings true Sovereignty?
What! shall reviving Thraldom again be
The patched-up Idol of enlightened days?
Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we
Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze
And servile knees to Thrones? No! prove before ye praise!
XX
If not, o'er one fallen Despot boast no more!
In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears
For Europe's flowers long rooted up before
The trampler of her vineyards; in vain, years
Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears,
Have all been borne, and broken by the accord
Of roused-up millions: all that most endears
Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a Sword,
Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant Lord.
XXI
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's Capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry---and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
XXII
Did ye not hear it?---No---'twas but the Wind,
1
"Pride of place" is a term of falconry, and means the highest pitch of flight.
45
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet--But hark!---that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer---clearer---deadlier than before!
Arm! Arm! it is---it is---the cannon's opening roar!
XXIII
Within a windowed niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated Chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.
XXIV
Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro--And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness--And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!
XXV
And there was mounting in hot haste---the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war--And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the Morning Star;
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
Or whispering, with white lips---"The foe! They come! they come!"
XXVI
And wild and high the "Cameron's Gathering" rose!
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills
Have heard, and, heard, too, have her Saxon foes:--How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With the fierce native daring which instils
The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evan's---Donald's fame rings in
each clansman's ears!
XXVII
And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, 1
Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass--1
The wood of Soignies is supposed to be a remnant of the forest of Ardennes, famous in Bojardo's Orlando, and immortal in
Shakspeare's As You Like It. It is also celebrated in Tacitus, as being the spot of successful defence by the Germans against the
Roman encroachments. I have ventured to adopt the name connected with nobler associations than those of mere slaughter.
46
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave,---alas!
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
Of living Valour, rolling on the foe
And burning with high Hope, shall moulder cold and low.
XXVIII
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life;--Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;
The Midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
The Morn the marshalling in arms,---the Day
Battle's magnificently-stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,---friend,---foe,---in one red burial blent!
XXIX
Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,
And partly that I did his Sire some wrong,
And partly that bright names will hallow song;
And his was of the bravest, and when showered
The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
Even where the thickest of War's tempest lowered,
They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!
XXX
There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring. 1
XXXI
I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each
And one as all a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake
Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Fame
May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake
1
My guide from Mount St. Jean over the field seemed intelligent and accurate. The place where Major Howard fell was not far
from two tall and solitary trees (there was a third cut down, or shivered in the battle), which stand a few yards from each other at a
pathway's side. Beneath these he died and was buried. The body has since been removed to England. A small hollow for the present
marks where it lay, but will probably soon be effaced; the plough has been upon it, and the grain is. After pointing out the different
spots where Picton and other gallant men had perished; the guide said, "Here Major Howard lay: I was near him when wounded." I
told him my relationship, and he seemed then still more anxious to point out the particular spot and circumstances. The place is one
of the most marked in the field, from the peculiarity of the two trees above mentioned. I went on horseback twice over the field,
comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain, Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action,
though this may be mere imagination: I have viewed with attention those of Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Cheronea, and
Marathon; and the field around Mount St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better cause, and that undefinable but
impressive halo which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of these, except, perhaps,
the last mentioned.
47
The fever of vain longing, and the name
So honoured but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim.
XXXII
They mourn, but smile at length---and, smiling, mourn:
The tree will wither long before it fall;
The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn;
The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall
In massy hoariness; the ruined wall
Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
The bars survive the captive they enthral;
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
XXXIII
Even as a broken Mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies---and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same---and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise; and still, and cold,
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,
Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.
XXXIV
There is a very life in our despair,
Vitality of poison,---a quick root
Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were
As nothing did we die; but Life will suit
Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit,
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore, 1
All ashes to the taste: Did man compute
Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er
Such hours 'gainst years of life,---say, would he name threescore?
XXXV
The Psalmist numbered out the years of man:
They are enough; and if thy tale be true,
Thou, who didst grudge him even that fleeting span,
More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo!
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children's lips shall echo them, and say--"Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day!"
And this is much---and all---which will not pass away.
XXXVI
There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
Whose Spirit, antithetically mixed,
One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixed;
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For Daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st
Even now to re-assume the imperial mien,
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!
1
The (fabled) apples on the brink of the lake Asphaltites were said to be fair without, and, within, ashes.
48
XXXVII
Conqueror and Captive of the Earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now
That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who wooed thee once, thy Vassal, and became
The flatterer of thy fierceness---till thou wert
A God unto thyself; nor less the same
To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.
XXXVIII
Oh, more or less than man---in high or low--Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield;
An Empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of War,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest Star.
XXXIX
Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it Wisdom, Coldness, or deep Pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;--When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.
XL
Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
Ambition steeled thee on too far to show
That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
Till they were turned unto thine overthrow:
'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.
XLI
If, like a tower upon a headlong rock,
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;
But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
Their admiration thy best weapon shone;
The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
(Unless aside thy Purple had been thrown)
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men--For sceptred Cynics Earth were far too wide a den.1
1
The great error of Napoleon, "if we have writ our annals true," was a continued obtrusion on mankind of his want of all
community of feeling for or with them; perhaps more offensive to human vanity than the active cruelty of more trembling and
suspicious tyranny. Such were his speeches to public assemblies as well as individuals; and the single expression which he is said
to have used on returning to Paris after the Russian winter had destroyed his army, rubbing his hands over a fire, "This is pleasanter
than Moscow," would probably alienate more favour from his cause than the destruction and reverses which led to the remark.
49
XLII
But Quiet to quick bosoms is a Hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the Soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
XLIII
This makes the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach Mankind the lust to shine or rule:
XLIV
Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
XLV
He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the Sun of Glory glow,
And far beneath the Earth and Ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.
LII
Thus Harold inly said, and passed along,
Yet not insensible to all which here
Awoke the jocund birds to early song
In glens which might have made even exile dear:
Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
And tranquil sternness, which had ta'en the place
Of feelings fierier far but less severe--Joy was not always absent from his face,
But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace.
LIII
Nor was all Love shut from him, though his days
Of Passion had consumed themselves to dust.
It is in vain that we would coldly gaze
On such as smile upon us; the heart must
50
Leap kindly back to kindness, though Disgust
Hath weaned it from all worldlings: thus he felt,
For there was soft Remembrance, and sweet Trust
In one fond breast, to which his own would melt,
And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.
LIV
And he had learned to love,---I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood,--The helpless looks of blooming Infancy,
Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
But thus it was; and though in solitude
Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.
LV
And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
Than the church links withal; and---though unwed,
That love was pure---and, far above disguise,
Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;
But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour!
LXVIII
Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
There is too much of Man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold.
LXIX
To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.
LXX
There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own Soul turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of Night;
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
To those that walk in darkness: on the sea
The boldest steer but where their ports invite--But there are wanderers o'er Eternity
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.
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LXXI
Is it not better, then, to be alone,
And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, 1
Or the pure bosom of its nursing Lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;--Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?
LXXII
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see
Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky---the peak---the heaving plain
Of Ocean, or the stars, mingle---and not in vain.
LXXIII
And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:--I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife,
Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,
To act and suffer, but remount at last
With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the Blast
Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.
LXXIV
And when, at length, the mind shall be all free
From what it hates in this degraded form,
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
Existent happier in the fly and worm,--When Elements to Elements conform,
And dust is as it should be, shall I not
Feel all I see less dazzling but more warm?
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?
Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?
LXXV
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my Soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turned below,
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?
1
The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the
Mediterranean and Archipelago.
52
LXXVI
But this is not my theme; and I return
To that which is immediate, and require
Those who find contemplation in the urn,
To look on One, whose dust was once all fire,--A native of the land where I respire
The clear air for a while---a passing guest,
Where he became a being,---whose desire
Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest,
The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.
LXXVII
Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,
The apostle of Affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over Passion, and from Woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew
The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew
How to make Madness beautiful, and cast
O'er erring deeds and thoughts, a heavenly hue
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past
The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.
LXXVIII
His love was Passion's essence---as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal Beauty, which became
In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.
LXXXV
Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn Ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
LXXXVI
It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.
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LXXXVII
He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At interyals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy---for the Starlight dews
All silently their tears of Love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.
LXXXVIII
Ye Stars! which are the poetry of Heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,---'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A Beauty and a Mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That Fortune,---Fame,---Power,---Life, have named themselves a Star.
LXXXIX
All Heaven and Earth are still---though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:--All Heaven and Earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentered in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of Being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.
XC
Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of Music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty;---'twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.
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XCI
Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places, and the peak
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take 1
A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek
The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak
Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings---Goth or Greek--With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air--Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!
XCII
The sky is changed!---and such a change! Oh Night,2
And Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in Woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
XCIII
And this is in the Night:---Most glorious Night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,--A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black,---and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young Earthquake's birth.
XCIV
Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted:
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage
Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:---
1
It is to be recollected, that the most beautiful and impressive doctrines of the divine Founder of Christianity were delivered, not in
the Temple, but on the Mount. To waive the question of devotion, and turn to human eloquence,---the most effectual and splendid
specimens were not pronounced within walls. Demosthenes addressed the public and popular assemblies. Cicero spoke in the
forum. That this added to their effect on the mind of both orator and hearers, may be conceived from the difference between what
we read of the emotions then and there produced, and those we ourselves experience in the perusal in the closet. It is one thing to
read the Iliad at Sigeum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above, and the plain and rivers and Archipelago
around you; and another to trim your taper over it in a snug library---this I know. Were the early and rapid progress of what is
called Methodism to be attributed to any cause beyond the enthusiasm excited by its vehement faith and doctrines (the truth or error
of which I presume neither to canvass nor to question), I should venture to ascribe it to the practice of preaching in the fields, and
the unstudied and extemporaneous effusions of its teachers. The Mussulmans, whose erroneous devotion (at least in the lower
orders) is most sincere, and therefore impressive, are accustomed to repeat their prescribed orisons and prayers, wherever they may
be, at the stated hours---of course, frequently in the open air, kneeling upon a light mat (which they carry for the purpose of a bed
or cushion as required); the ceremony lasts some minutes, during which they are totally absorbed, and only living in their
supplication: nothing can disturb them. On me the simple and entire sincerity of these men, and the spirit which appeared to be
within and upon them, made a far greater impression than any general rite which was ever performed in places of worship, of which
I have seen those of almost every persuasion under the sun; including most of our own sectaries, and the Greek, the Catholic, the
Armenian, the Lutheran, the Jewish, and the Mahometan. Many of the negroes, of whom there are numbers in the Turkish empire,
are idolaters, and have free exercise of their belief and its rites; some of these I had a distant view of at Patras; and, from what I
could make out of them, they appeared to be of a truly Pagan description, and not very agreeable to a spectator.
2
The thunder-storm to which these lines refer occurred on the 13th of June, 1816, at midnight. I have seen, among the
Acroceraunian mountains of Chimari, several more terrible, but none more beautiful.
55
Itself expired, but leaving them an age
Of years all winters,---war within themselves to wage:
XCV
Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand:
For here, not one, but many, make their play,
And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand,
Flashing and cast around: of all the band,
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings,---as if he did understand,
That in such gaps as Desolation worked,
There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.
XCVI
Sky---Mountains---River---Winds---Lake---Lightnings! ye!
With night, and clouds, and thunder---and a Soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices, is the knoll
Of what in me is sleepless,---if I rest.
But where of ye, O Tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?
Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?
XCVII
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,---could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul---heart---mind---passions---feelings---strong or weak--All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel---and yet breathe---into one word,
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.
XCVIII
The Morn is up again, the dewy Morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom--Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,--And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence: and thus I,
Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room
And food for meditation, nor pass by
Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly.
CXIII
I have not loved the World, nor the World me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coined my cheek to smiles,---nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo: in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such---I stood
Among them, but not of them---in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.1
1
“If't be so, For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind.” Macbeth.
56
CXIV
I have not loved the World, nor the World me,--But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,---hopes which will not deceive,
And Virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing; I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve---1
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,--That Goodness is no name---and Happiness no dream.
CXV
My daughter! with thy name this song begun!
My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end!--I see thee not---I hear thee not---but none
Can be so wrapt in thee; Thou art the Friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend:
Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold,
My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart,---when mine is cold,--A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
CXVI
To aid thy mind's developement,---to watch
Thy dawn of little joys,---to sit and see
Almost thy very growth,---to view thee catch
Knowledge of objects,---wonders yet to thee!
To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,--This, it should seem, was not reserved for me--Yet this was in my nature:---as it is,
I know not what is there, yet something like to this.
CXVII
Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me: though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us,---'twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me---though to drain
My blood from out thy being were an aim,
And an attainment,---all would be in vain,--Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain.
CXVIII
The child of Love! though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in Convulsion! Of thy sire
These were the elements,---and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee,---but thy fire
Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher!
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
As---with a sigh---I deem thou might'st have been to me!
1
It is said by Rochefoucault, that "there is always something in the misfortunes of men's best friends not displeasing to them."
57
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Sonnet: England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,---mud from a muddy spring,--Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless---a book sealed;
A Senate,---Time's worst statute unrepealed,--Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Ode to the West Wind1
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
1
This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous
wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They
began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to
the Cisalpine regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation
at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently
influenced by the winds which announce it.
58
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
59
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
from A Defence of Poetry
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and
imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to
another, however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to colour them with
its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself
the principle of its own integrity. The one 1 is the to poiein,2 or the principle of synthesis, and has for its
objects those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself; the other3 is the to
logizein,4 or principle of analysis, and its action regards the relations of things, simply as relations;
considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical representations which conduct to
certain general results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the
perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the
differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to the imagination as the instrument to
the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.
[…]
In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in these
actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe
not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of
language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm
belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator
receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order
has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which
approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results: but the diversity is not
sufficiently marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances where the
predominance of this faculty of approximation to the beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the
relation between this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists in excess are
poets, in the most universal sense of the word; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they
1
Imagination.
‘Making.’ (Greek.)
Reason.
4
‘Calculating.’ (Greek.)
2
3
60
express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds, communicates itself to others, and
gathers a sort or reduplication from that community. Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it
marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension, until the words
which represent them become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures
of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have
been thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse. These
similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be 'the same footsteps of nature impressed upon
the various subjects of the world'; 1 and he considers the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse
of axioms common to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because
language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good
which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between
perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic
poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and
are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.
But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of
language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors
of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw
into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the
invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of
allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of
the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or
prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely
the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but
he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest
time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the
form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition, which would
make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in
the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are
not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and the
distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry; and
the choruses of Aeschylus, and the book of Job, and Dante's Paradise, would afford, more than any other
writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of
sculpture, painting, and music, are illustrations still more decisive.
[…]
A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a
story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time,
place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable
forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other
minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of
events which can never again recur; the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of a
relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which
destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest
them, augments that of poetry, and for ever develops new and wonderful applications of the eternal truth
which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the poetry of it.
A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful:
poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as a whole being a poem.
A single sentence may be a considered as a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of
unassimilated portions: a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus all the
great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets; and although, the plan of these writers, especially
that of Livy, restrained them; from developing this faculty in its highest degree, they made copious and
ample amends for their subjection, by filling all the interstices of their subjects with living images.
[…]
The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the
manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the
elements which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic
life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and
subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind
1
De Augmentis Scientarium, I.3.
61
itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts
the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it
reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward
in the minds of those who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted content
which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is
love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists
in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and
comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures
of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry
administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination
by replenishing it with thought of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating
to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever
craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the
same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own
conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical creations,
which participate in neither By this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect in which
perhaps after all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he would resign a glory in a participation in the
cause. There was little danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets should have so far misunderstood
themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty,
though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a moral aim,
and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to
advert to this purpose.
[…]
It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of
apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the
pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being.
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the
highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a
shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is
inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of
pleasure itself. And hence the saying, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of
mirth.'1 Not that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and
friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation
of poetry, is often wholly unalloyed.
The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true utility. Those who produce
and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical philosophers.
[…]
The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold; by one it creates new materials of knowledge
and power and pleasure; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them
according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good. The cultivation
of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating
principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of
assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that
which animates it.
Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is
that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time
the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which
adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world
the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate
surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the elements
which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption.
What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship—what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which
we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and what were our aspirations beyond
it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty
of calculation dare not ever soar? 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
1
Ecclesiastes, 7.2.
62
and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures 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. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not
an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and the
delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of
the inspired moments, and an artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the
intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical
faculty itself; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions; We
have his own authority also for the muse having 'dictated' to him the 'unpremeditated song'. 1 And let this
be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando
Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of
the poetical faculty, is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture
grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb; and the very mind which directs the
hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the
process.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are
aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person,
sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but
elevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that even in the desire and regret they leave, there
cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the
interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the
sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves
it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate
sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with
every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with
such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only
subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they
combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or
a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these
emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best
and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life,
and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of
kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from
the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the
visitations of the divinity in man.
Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it
adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity
and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it
touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to
an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous
waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare
the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
All things exist as they are perceived; at least in relation to the percipient. 'The mind is its own
place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'2 But poetry defeats the curse which binds
us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured
curtain, or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being
within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It
reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward
sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that
which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been
annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and
true words of Tasso: Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.3
A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he
ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory,
let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of human life be comparable to
1
Paradise Lost, 9.21-24.
From Satan’s speech, Paradise Lost, 1.254-55.
3
“No one merits the name of Creator except God and the Poet.”
2
63
that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally
incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate
prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the
exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be
found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the
arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own persons the incompatible characters of
accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that certain
motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not soar', 1 are reprehensible. Let us assume that
Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso a madman, that
Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is
inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to
the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the
balance; if their sins 'were as scarlet, they are now white as snow'; 2 they have been washed in the blood
of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputation of real or
fictitious crime have been confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider
how little is, as it appears—or appears, as it is; look to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be
judged.
Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of
the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the
consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these are the necessary conditions of all
mental causation, when mental effects are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to them. The
frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of
order and harmony correlative with its own nature and its effects upon other minds. But in the intervals
of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned
to the sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately
organized than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree
unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this
difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the circumstances
under which these objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another's
garments.
But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and
the passions purely evil, have never formed any portion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.
I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down these remarks according to
the order in which they were suggested to my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of
observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which they contain be just, they will be
found to involve a refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of
the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent
writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned, by the
Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were,
insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.
The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements and principles; and it has
been shown, as well as the narrow limits assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, in a
restricted sense, has a common source with all other forms of order and of beauty, according to which the
materials of human life are susceptible of being arranged, and which is poetry in a universal sense.
The second part will have for its object an application of these principles to the present state of
the cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and
opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty. For the literature
of England, an energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free
development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted
envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual
achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who
have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing herald,
companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or
institution, is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and
receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The persons in whom this
power resides may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent
correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and
1
2
Paradise Lost, 4.829.
Isaiah, 1.18.
64
abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. It is
impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being
startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound
the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves
perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the
age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows
which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets
which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets
are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
(1821)
65
JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)
Sonnet: When I have fears that I may cease to be…
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;---then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
I
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
III
I see a lilly on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
IV
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
V
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.
VI
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
66
VII
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.
VIII
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--So kiss'd to sleep.
IX
And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.
X
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd---"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
XI
I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
XII
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
1
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
2
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
67
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
3
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
4
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
5
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"---that is all
Ode to a Nightingale
1
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,--That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
2
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
68
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
3
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
4
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
5
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
6
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstacy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--To thy high requiem become a sod.
7
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
69
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
8
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:---Do I wake or sleep?
To Autumn
1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
2
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
70
From The Letters
From 32: To George and Thomas Keats (Sunday 21 Dec. 1817)
My dear Brothers,
I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this. …. I spent Friday evening with Wells, and went
next morning to see Death on the Pale Horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered;
But there is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality--The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their
being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth. Examine 'King Lear', and you will find this
exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of
speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness---The picture is larger than 'Christ rejected'. I
dined with Haydon the Sunday after you left, and had a very pleasant day, I dined too (for I have been
out too much lately) with Horace Smith, and met his two Brothers, with Hill and Kingston, and one Du
Bois. They only served to convince me, how superior humour is to wit in respect to enjoyment---These
men say things which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike; their manners are alike;
they all know fashionables; they have a mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere
handling a Decanter---They talked of Kean and his low company---Would I were with that Company
instead of yours, said I to myself! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me, and yet I am going
to Reynolds on Wednesday. Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime.
I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my
mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature,
and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously ---I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is
capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason--Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium 1 of
mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes
would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every
other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. Shelley's poem 2 is out, and there are words
about its being objected to as much as "Queen Mab" was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his Quota of good
qualities, in sooth la!! Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate Brother,
John.
1
2
The innermost and most secret parts of a temple
Laon and Cythna, 1817
71
LORD ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892)
Ulysses1
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle--Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
1
Carlyle wrote to me when he read Ulysses: "These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole
Lachrymatories as I read." Cf. Odyssey, xi. 100-137, and Dante, Inferno, Canto xxvi. 90 foll. The poem was written soon after
Arthur Hallam's death, and it gives the feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply
than anything in In Memoriam.
72
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The Lady of Shalott1
PART I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the world and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;2
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
1
Taken from an Italian novelette, Donna di Scalotta. Shalott and Astolat are the same words. The Lady of Shalott is evidently the
Elaine of the Morte d' Arthur, but I do not think that I had ever heard of the latter when I wrote the former. Shalott was a softer
sound than "Scalott." Stalott would have been nearer Astolat.
2
(Unlike the Camelot of the Celtic legends) is on the sea in the Italian story.
73
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers ''Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.'
PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.
PART III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
74
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
'Tirra lirra,' by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--With a glassy countenance
75
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--The leaves upon her falling light--Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, 'She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.'
The Lotos-Eaters1
'Courage!' he said, and pointed toward the land,
'This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.'
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
1
The treatment of (Oenone and The Lotos-Eaters is, as far as I know, original. Of course the subject of The Lotos-Eaters is taken
from the Odyssey, ix. 82 foll.
76
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem'd the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, 'We will return no more;'
And all at once they sang, 'Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'
CHORIC SONG.
I.
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II.
Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
77
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
'There is no joy but calm!'
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III.
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV.
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
V.
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whisper'd speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
78
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI.
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile:
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII.
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill--To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.
VIII.
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotosdust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foamfountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
79
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer---some, 'tis whisper'd---down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)
My Last Duchess. Ferrara
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
"Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
"Must never hope to reproduce the faint
"Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace---all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,---good! but thanked
Somehow---I know not how---as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech---(which I have not)---to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark"---and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
---E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
80
Whene'er I passed her, but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Fra Lippo Lippi
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what 's to blame? you think you see a monk!
What, 't is past midnight, and you go the rounds,
And here you catch me at an alley's end
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,
Do,---harry out, if you must show your zeal,
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,
And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,
Weke, weke, that 's crept to keep him company!
Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take
Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat,
And please to know me likewise. Who am I?
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off---he's a certain . . . how d' ye call?
Master---a . . . Cosimo of the Medici,
I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!
Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,
How you affected such a gullet's-gripe!
But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves
Pick up a manner nor discredit you:
Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets
And count fair prize what comes into their net?
He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!
Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health
Of the munificent House that harbours me
(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)
And all's come square again. I'd like his face--His, elbowing on his comrade in the door
With the pike and lantern,---for the slave that holds
John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair
With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)
And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!
It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,
A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!
Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.
What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,
You know them and they take you? like enough!
I saw the proper twinkle in your eye--'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.
81
Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.
Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands
To roam the town and sing out carnival,
And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints
And saints again. I could not paint all night--Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song,--Flower o' the broom,
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!
Flower o' the quince,
I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?
Flower o' the thyme---and so on. Round they went.
Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,---three slim shapes,
And a face that looked up . . zooks, sir, flesh and blood,
That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,
Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,
All the bed-furniture---a dozen knots,
There was a ladder! Down I let myself,
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,
And after them. I came up with the fun
Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met,--Flower o' the rose,
If I've been merry, what matter who knows?
And so as I was stealing back again
To get to bed and have a bit of sleep
Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work
On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,
You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!
Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head--Mine's shaved---a monk, you say---the sting's in that!
If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!
I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat,
The wind doubled me up and down I went.
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)
And so along the wall, over the bridge,
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,
While I stood munching my first bread that month:
"So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father
Wiping his own mouth, 't was refection-time,--"To quit this very miserable world?
"Will you renounce" . . . "the mouthful of bread?" thought I;
By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;
I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,
Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,
Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici
Have given their hearts to---all at eight years old.
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,
'T was not for nothing---the good bellyful,
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The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,
And day-long blessed idleness beside!
"Let's see what the urchin's fit for"---that came next.
Not overmuch their way, I must confess.
Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:
Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!
Flower o' the clove,
All the Latin I construe is, "amo" I love!
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together, as my fortune was,
Watching folk's faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse or kick him for his pains,--Which gentleman processional and fine,
Holding a candle to the Sacrament,
Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch
The droppings of the wax to sell again,
Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,--How say I?---nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street,--Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonition from the hunger-pinch.
I had a store of such remarks, be sure,
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.
I drew men's faces on my copy-books,
Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,
Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,
And made a string of pictures of the world
Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,
On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.
"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d' ye say?
"In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.
"What if at last we get our man of parts,
"We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese
"And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine
"And put the front on it that ought to be!"
And hereupon he bade me daub away.
Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,
Never was such prompt disemburdening.
First, every sort of monk, the black and white,
I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church,
From good old gossips waiting to confess
Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,--To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim's son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of Christ
(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years)
Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,
(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve
On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,
Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers
(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone.
I painted all, then cried "'T is ask and have;
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"Choose, for more 's ready!" ---laid the ladder flat,
And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall
The monks closed in a circle and praised loud
Till checked, taught what to see and not to see,
Being simple bodies,---"That 's the very man!
"Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!
"That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes
"To care about his asthma: it's the life!"
But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked;
Their betters took their turn to see and say:
The Prior and the learned pulled a face
And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here?
"Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!
"Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true
"As much as pea and pea! it 's devil's-game!
"Your business is not to catch men with show,
"With homage to the perishable clay,
"But lift them over it, ignore it all,
"Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.
"Your business is to paint the souls of men--"Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke . . . no, it's not . . .
"It's vapour done up like a new-born babe--"(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)
"It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul!
"Give us no more of body than shows soul!
"Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,
"That sets us praising,---why not stop with him?
"Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head
"With wonder at lines, colours, and what not?
"Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!
"Rub all out, try at it a second time.
"Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,
"She's just my niece . . . Herodias, I would say,--"Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!
"Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask?
A fine way to paint soul, by painting body
So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further
And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white
When what you put for yellow's simply black,
And any sort of meaning looks intense
When all beside itself means and looks nought.
Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,
Left foot and right foot, go a double step,
Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,
Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,
The Prior's niece . . . patron-saint---is it so pretty
You can't discover if it means hope, fear,
Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these?
Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,
Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,
And then add soul and heighten them threefold?
Or say there's beauty with no soul at all--(I never saw it---put the case the same---)
If you get simple beauty and nought else,
You get about the best thing God invents:
That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,
Within yourself, when you return him thanks.
"Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short,
And so the thing has gone on ever since.
I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds:
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You should not take a fellow eight years old
And make him swear to never kiss the girls.
I'm my own master, paint now as I please--Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!
Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front--Those great rings serve more purposes than just
To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse!
And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyes
Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work,
The heads shake still---"It's art's decline, my son!
"You're not of the true painters, great and old;
"Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find;
"Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:
"Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!"
Flower o' the pine,
You keep your mistr . . . manners, and I'll stick to mine!
I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know!
Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,
They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,
Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint
To please them---sometimes do and sometimes don't;
For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come
A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints--A laugh, a cry, the business of the world--(Flower o' the peach,
Death for us all, and his own life for each!)
And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over,
The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,
And I do these wild things in sheer despite,
And play the fooleries you catch me at,
In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grass
After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,
Although the miller does not preach to him
The only good of grass is to make chaff.
What would men have? Do they like grass or no--May they or mayn't they? all I want's the thing
Settled for ever one way. As it is,
You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:
You don't like what you only like too much,
You do like what, if given you at your word,
You find abundantly detestable.
For me, I think I speak as I was taught;
I always see the garden and God there
A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,
The value and significance of flesh,
I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards,
You understand me: I'm a beast, I know.
But see, now---why, I see as certainly
As that the morning-star's about to shine,
What will hap some day. We've a youngster here
Comes to our convent, studies what I do,
Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:
His name is Guidi---he'll not mind the monks--They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk--He picks my practice up---he'll paint apace,
I hope so---though I never live so long,
I know what's sure to follow. You be judge!
You speak no Latin more than I, belike,
However, you're my man, you've seen the world
---The beauty and the wonder and the power,
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The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
Changes, surprises,---and God made it all!
---For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,
For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,
The mountain round it and the sky above,
Much more the figures of man, woman, child,
These are the frame to? What's it all about?
To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,
Wondered at? oh, this last of course!---you say.
But why not do as well as say,---paint these
Just as they are, careless what comes of it?
God's works---paint anyone, and count it crime
To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His works
"Are here already; nature is complete:
"Suppose you reproduce her---(which you can't)
"There's no advantage! you must beat her, then."
For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted---better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,
Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,
And trust me but you should, though! How much more,
If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,
Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,
It makes me mad to see what men shall do
And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
"Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"
Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain
"It does not say to folk---remember matins,
"Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for this
What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,
A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.
I painted a Saint Laurence six months since
At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:
"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"
I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns--"Already not one phiz of your three slaves
"Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,
"but's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,
"The pious people have so eased their own
"With coming to say prayers there in a rage:
"We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.
"Expect another job this time next year,
"For pity and religion grow i' the crowd--"Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!
---That is---you'll not mistake an idle word
Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, Got wot,
Tasting the air this spicy night which turns
The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!
Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!
It's natural a poor monk out of bounds
Should have his apt word to excuse himself:
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And hearken how I plot to make amends.
I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece
. . . There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see
Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!
They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint
God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,
Ringed by a bowery flowery angel-brood,
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
As puff on puff of grated orris-root
When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.
And then i' the front, of course a saint or two--Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,
Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white
The convent's friends and gives them a long day,
And Job, I must have him there past mistake,
The man of Uz (and Us without the z,
Painters who need his patience). Well, all these
Secured at their devotion, up shall come
Out of a corner when you least expect,
As one by a dark stair into a great light,
Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!--Mazed, motionless and moonstruck---I'm the man!
Back I shrink---what is this I see and hear?
I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,
My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,
I, in this presence, this pure company!
Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?
Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing
Forward, puts out a soft palm---"Not so fast!"
---Addresses the celestial presence, "nay--"He made you and devised you, after all,
"Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw--"His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?
"We come to brother Lippo for all that,
"Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile--I shuffle sideways with my blushing face
Under the cover of a hundred wings
Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,
Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops
The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off
To some safe bench behind, not letting go
The palm of her, the little lily thing
That spoke the good word for me in the nick,
Like the Prior's niece . . Saint Lucy I would say.
And so all's saved for me, and for the church
A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!
Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights!
The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,
Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning. Zooks!
Andrea Del Sarto. (Called "The Faultless Painter.")
But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
Treat his own subject after his own way,
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Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
Oh, I'll content him,---but to-morrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems
As if---forgive now---should you let me sit
Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!
Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.
Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve
For each of the five pictures we require:
It saves a model. So! keep looking so--My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!
---How could you ever prick those perfect ears,
Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet--My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,
Which everybody looks on and calls his,
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looks---no one's: very dear, no less.
You smile? why, there's my picture ready made,
There's what we painters call our harmony!
A common greyness silvers everything,--All in a twilight, you and I alike
---You, at the point of your first pride in me
(That's gone you know),---but I, at every point;
My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down
To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
That length of convent-wall across the way
Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do,
A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.
How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead;
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example---turn your head--All that's behind us! You don't understand
Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people speak:
And that cartoon, the second from the door
---It is the thing, Love! so such things should be--Behold Madonna!---I am bold to say.
I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep--Do easily, too---what I say, perfectly,
I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
Who listened to the Legate's talk last week,
And just as much they used to say in France.
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At any rate 't is easy, all of it!
No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
---Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive---you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)---so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
The sudden blood of these men! at a word--Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
I know both what I want and what might gain,
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
"Had I been two, another and myself,
"Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt.
Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth
The Urbinate who died five years ago.
('T is copied, George Vasari sent it me.)
Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
Above and through his art---for it gives way;
That arm is wrongly put---and there again--A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,
He means right---that, a child may understand.
Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:
But all the play, the insight and the stretch--Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,
We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!
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!
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Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
"God and the glory! never care for gain.
"The present by the future, what is that?
"Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
"Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
I might have done it for you. So it seems:
Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;
The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhat---somewhat, too, the power--And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,
God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
'T is safer for me, if the award be strict,
That I am something underrated here,
Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.
I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,
For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
The best is when they pass and look aside;
But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.
Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,
And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!
I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,
Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,
In that humane great monarch's golden look,--One finger in his beard or twisted curl
Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile,
One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,
The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,
I painting proudly with his breath on me,
All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,
Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls
Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,--And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,
This in the background, waiting on my work,
To crown the issue with a last reward!
A good time, was it not, my kingly days?
And had you not grown restless . . . but I know--'T is done and past; 't was right, my instinct said;
Too live the life grew, golden and not grey,
And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart.
The triumph was---to reach and stay there; since
I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
"Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
"The Roman's is the better when you pray,
"But still the other's Virgin was his wife---"
Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
My better fortune, I resolve to think.
For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . .
(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
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Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
Too lifted up in heart because of it)
"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub
"Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
"Who, were he set to plan and execute
"As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
"Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"
To Rafael's!---And indeed the arm is wrong.
I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see,
Give the chalk here---quick, thus the line should go!
Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!
Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
Do you forget already words like those?)
If really there was such a chance, so lost,--Is, whether you're---not grateful---but more pleased.
Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!
This hour has been an hour! Another smile?
If you would sit thus by me every night
I should work better, do you comprehend?
I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star;
Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall,
The cue-owls speak the name we call them by,
Come from the window, love,---come in, at last,
Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with. God is just.
King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights
When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,
The walls become illumined, brick from brick
Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,
That gold of his I did cement them with!
Let us but love each other. Must you go?
That Cousin here again? he waits outside?
Must see you---you, and not with me? Those loans?
More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?
Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?
While hand and eye and something of a heart
Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?
I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
The grey remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
How I could paint, were I but back in France,
One picture, just one more---the Virgin's face,
Not yours this time! I want you at my side
To hear them---that is, Michel Agnolo--Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.
I take the subjects for his corridor,
Finish the portrait out of hand---there, there,
And throw him in another thing or two
If he demurs; the whole should prove enough
To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside,
What's better and what's all I care about,
Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!
Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
The Cousin! what does he to please you more?
I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.
I regret little, I would change still less.
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Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
The very wrong to Francis!---it is true
I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
And built this house and sinned, and all is said.
My father and my mother died of want.
Well, had I riches of my own? you see
How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.
They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:
And I have laboured somewhat in my time
And not been paid profusely. Some good son
Paint my two hundred pictures---let him try!
No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,
You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance--Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel's reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me
To cover---the three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So---still they overcome
Because there's still Lucrezia,---as I choose.
Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.
A Toccata of Galuppi’s
I
Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 't is with such a heavy mind!
II
Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
III
Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 't is arched by . . . what you call
. . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England---it's as if I saw it all.
IV
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to midday,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
V
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,--On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?
VI
Well, and it was graceful of them---they'd break talk off and afford
---She, to bite her mask's black velvet---he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?
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VII
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions---"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths---"Life might last! we can but try!"
VIII
"Were you happy?"---"Yes."---"And are you still as happy?"---"Yes. And you?"
---"Then, more kisses!"---"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
IX
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
"I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play?"
X
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
XI
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.
XII
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
"The soul, doubtless, is immortal---where a soul can be discerned.
XIII
"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
"Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
"Butterflies may dread extinction,---you'll not die, it cannot be!
XIV
"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
"Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV
"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too---what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
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MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;---on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
1851
From Culture and Anarchy
From Chapter 1
The impulse of the English race towards moral development and self-conquest has nowhere so
powerfully manifested itself as in Puritanism; nowhere has Puritanism found so adequate an expression
as in the religious organisation of the Independents. The modern Independents have a newspaper, the
Nonconformist, written with great sincerity and ability. The motto, the standard, the profession of faith
which this organ of theirs carries aloft, is: "The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the
Protestant religion." There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of complete harmonious human
perfection! One need not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge it. Religion, with its instinct
for perfection, supplies language to judge it: "Finally, be of one mind, united in feeling," says St. Peter.
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There is an ideal which judges the Puritan ideal,---"The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of
the Protestant religion!" And religious organisations like this are what people believe in, rest in, would
give their lives for! Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of having
conquered even the plain faults of our animality, that the religious organisation which has helped us to do
it can seem to us something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it wears such a brand of
imperfection on its forehead as this. And men have got such a habit of giving to the language of religion
a special application, of making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation which religion itself passes
on the shortcomings of their religious organisations they have no ear; they are sure to cheat themselves
and to explain this condemnation away. They can only be reached by the criticism which culture, like
poetry, speaking a language not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing these organisations by the ideal
of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies to them.
But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again failing, and failing
conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our
animality, which it is the glory of these religious organisations to have helped us to subdue. True, they do
often so fail: they have often been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has been one
of their dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too much neglected the practice of his
virtues. I will not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense; they have often failed in morality,
and morality is indispensable; they have been punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded
for his performance. They have been punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of beauty and
sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of perfection
still; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did
well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage,
they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakspeare or
Virgil,---souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane, were eminent,--accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company Shakspeare and Virgil would
have found them! In the same way let us judge the religious organisations which we see all around us. Do
not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see
clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true goal. As I said with
regard to wealth,---let us look at the life of those who live in and for it;---so I say with regard to the
religious organisations. Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonconformist;---a life of
jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it
as an ideal of a human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness,
light, and perfection!
. . .
From Chapter 2
When I began to speak of culture, I insisted on our bondage to machinery, on our proneness to value
machinery as an end in itself, without looking beyond it to the end for which alone, in truth, it is
valuable. Freedom, I said, was one of those things which we thus worshipped in itself, without enough
regarding the ends for which freedom is to be desired. In our common notions and talk about freedom,
we eminently show our idolatry of machinery. Our prevalent notion is,---and I quoted a number of
instances to prove it,---that it is a most happy and important thing for a man merely to be able to do as he
likes. On what he is to do when he is thus free to do as he likes, we do not lay so much stress. Our
familiar praise of the British Constitution under which we live, is that it is a system of checks,---a system
which stops and paralyses any power in interfering with the free action of individuals. To this effect Mr.
Bright, who loves to walk in the old ways of the Constitution, said forcibly in one of his great speeches,
what many other people are every day saying less forcibly, that the central idea of English life and
politics is the assertion of personal liberty. Evidently this is so; but evidently, also, as feudalism, which
with its ideas and habits of subordination was for many centuries silently behind the British Constitution,
dies out, and we are left with nothing but our system of checks, and our notion of its being the great right
and happiness of an Englishman to do as far as possible what he likes, we are in danger of drifting
towards anarchy. We have not the notion, so familiar on the Continent and to antiquity, of the State---the
nation, in its collective and corporate character, entrusted with stringent powers for the general
advantage, and controlling individual wills in the name of an interest wider than that of individuals. We
say, what is very true, that this notion is often made instrumental to tyranny; we say that a State is in
reality made up of the individuals who compose it, and that every individual is the best judge of his own
interests. Our leading class is an aristocracy, and no aristocracy likes the notion of a State-authority
greater than itself, with a stringent administrative machinery superseding the decorative inutilities of
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lord-lieutenancy, deputy-lieutenancy, and the posse comitatûs, which are all in its own hands. Our
middle-class, the great representative of trade and Dissent, with its maxims of every man for himself in
business, every man for himself in religion, dreads a powerful administration which might somehow
interfere with it; and besides, it has its own decorative inutilities of vestrymanship and guardianship,
which are to this class what lord-lieutenancy and the county magistracy are to the aristocratic class, and a
stringent administration might either take these functions out of its hands, or prevent its exercising them
in its own comfortable, independent manner, as at present.
Then as to our working-class. This class, pressed constantly by the hard daily compulsion of
material wants, is naturally the very centre and stronghold of our national idea, that it is man's ideal right
and felicity to do as he likes. I think I have somewhere related how Monsieur Michelet said to me of the
people of France, that it was "a nation of barbarians civilised by the conscription." He meant that through
their military service the idea of public duty and of discipline was brought to the mind of these masses, in
other respects so raw and uncultivated. Our masses are quite as raw and uncultivated as the French; and,
so far from their having the idea of public duty and of discipline, superior to the individual's self-will,
brought to their mind by a universal obligation of military service, such as that of the conscription,---so
far from their having this, the very idea of a conscription is so at variance with our English notion of the
prime right and blessedness of doing as one likes, that I remember the manager of the Clay Cross works
in Derbyshire told me during the Crimean war, when our want of soldiers was much felt and some people
were talking of a conscription, that sooner than submit to a conscription the population of that district
would flee to the mines, and lead a sort of Robin Hood life under ground.
For a long time, as I have said, the strong feudal habits of subordination and deference
continued to tell upon the working-class. The modern spirit has now almost entirely dissolved those
habits, and the anarchical, tendency of our worship of freedom in and for itself, of our superstitious faith,
as I say, in machinery, is becoming very manifest. More and more, because of this our blind faith in
machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which
machinery is valuable, this and that man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are
beginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes; his right to march where
he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he
likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy; and though a number of excellent people, and particularly my
friends of the liberal or progressive party, as they call themselves, are kind enough to reassure us by
saying that these are trifles, that a few transient outbreaks of rowdyism signify nothing, that our system
of liberty is one which itself cures all the evils which it works, that the educated and intelligent classes
stand in overwhelming strength and majestic repose, ready, like our military force in riots, to act at a
moment's notice,---yet one finds that one's liberal friends generally say this because they have such faith
in themselves and their nostrums, when they shall return, as the public welfare requires, to place and
power. But this faith of theirs one cannot exactly share, when one has so long had them and their
nostrums at work, and sees that they have not prevented our coming to our present embarrassed
condition; and one finds, also, that the outbreaks of rowdyism tend to become less and less of trifles, to
become more frequent rather than less frequent; and that meanwhile our educated and intelligent classes
remain in their majestic repose, and somehow or other, whatever happens, their overwhelming strength,
like our military force in riots, never does act.
How, indeed, should their overwhelming strength act, when the man who gives an inflammatory
lecture, or breaks down the Park railings, or invades a Secretary of State's office, is only following an
Englishman's impulse to do as he likes; and our own conscience tells us that we ourselves have always
regarded this impulse as something primary and sacred? Mr. Murphy lectures at Birmingham, and
showers on the Catholic population of that town "words," says Mr. Hardy, "only fit to be addressed to
thieves or murderers." What then? Mr. Murphy has his own reasons of several kinds. He suspects the
Roman Catholic Church of designs upon Mrs. Murphy; and he says, if mayors and magistrates do not
care for their wives and daughters, he does. But, above all, he is doing as he likes, or, in worthier
language, asserting his personal liberty. "I will carry out my lectures if they walk over my body as a dead
corpse; and I say to the Mayor of Birmingham that he is my servant while I am in Birmingham, and as
my servant he must do his duty and protect me." Touching and beautiful words, which find a sympathetic
chord in every British bosom! The moment it is plainly put before us that a man is asserting his personal
liberty, we are half disarmed; because we are believers in freedom, and not in some dream of a right
reason to which the assertion of our freedom is to be subordinated. Accordingly, the Secretary of State
had to say that although the lecturer's language was "only fit to be addressed to thieves or murderers,"
yet, "I do not think he is to be deprived, I do not think that anything I have said could justify the
inference that he is to be deprived, of the right of protection in a place built by him for the purpose of
these lectures; because the language was not language which afforded grounds for a criminal
prosecution." No, nor to be silenced by Mayor, or Home Secretary, or any administrative authority on
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earth, simply on their notion of what is discreet and reasonable! This is in perfect consonance with our
public opinion, and with our national love for the assertion of personal liberty.
. . .
From Chapter 5
Sweetness and light evidently have to do with the bent or side in humanity which we call Hellenic. Greek
intelligence has obviously for its essence the instinct for what Plato calls the true, firm, intelligible law of
things; the love of light, of seeing things as they are. Even in the natural sciences, where the Greeks had
not time and means adequately to apply this instinct, and where we have gone a great deal further than
they did, it is this instinct which is the root of the whole matter and the ground of all our success; and this
instinct the world has mainly learnt of the Greeks, inasmuch as they are humanity's most signal
manifestation of it. Greek art, again, Greek beauty, have their root in the same impulse to see things as
they really are, inasmuch as Greek art and beauty rest on fidelity to nature,---the best nature,---and on a
delicate discrimination of what this best nature is. To say we work for sweetness and light, then, is only
another way of saying that we work for Hellenism. But, oh! cry many people, sweetness and light are not
enough; you must put strength or energy along with them, and make a kind of trinity of strength,
sweetness and light, and then, perhaps, you may do some good. That is to say, we are to join Hebraism,
strictness of the moral conscience, and manful walking by the best light we have, together with
Hellenism, inculcate both, and rehearse the praises of both.
Or, rather, we may praise both in conjunction, but we must be careful to praise Hebraism most.
"Culture," says an acute, though somewhat rigid critic, Mr. Sidgwick, "diffuses sweetness and light. I do
not undervalue these blessings, but religion gives fire and strength, and the world wants fire and strength
even more than sweetness and light." By religion, let me explain, Mr. Sidgwick here means particularly
that Puritanism on the insufficiency of which I have been commenting and to which he says I am unfair.
Now, no doubt, it is possible to be a fanatical partisan of light and the instincts which push us to it, a
fanatical enemy of strictness of moral conscience and the instincts which push us to it. A fanaticism of
this sort deforms and vulgarises the well-known work, in some respects so remarkable, of the late Mr.
Buckle. Such a fanaticism carries its own mark with it, in lacking sweetness; and its own penalty, in that,
lacking sweetness, it comes in the end to lack light too. And the Greeks,---the great exponents of
humanity's bent for sweetness and light united, of its perception that the truth of things must be at the
same time beauty,---singularly escaped the fanaticism which we moderns, whether we Hellenise or
whether we Hebraise, are so apt to show, and arrived,---though failing, as has been said, to give adequate
practical satisfaction to the claims of man's moral side,--- at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of
the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of
a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for
us moderns. So we ought to have no difficulty in conceding to Mr. Sidgwick that manful walking by the
best light one has,---fire and strength as he calls it,---has its high value as well as culture, the endeavour
to see things in their truth and beauty, the pursuit of sweetness and light. But whether at this or that time,
and to this or that set of persons, one ought to insist most on the praises of fire and strength, or on the
praises of sweetness and light, must depend, one would think, on the circumstances and needs of that
particular time and those particular persons. And all that we have been saying, and indeed any glance at
the world around us, shows that with us, with the most respectable and strongest part of us, the ruling
force is now, and long has been, a Puritan force, the care for fire and strength, strictness of conscience,
Hebraism, rather than the care for sweetness and light, spontaneity of consciousness, Hellenism.
Well, then, what is the good of our now rehearsing the praises of fire and strength to ourselves,
who dwell too exclusively on them already? When Mr. Sidgwick says so broadly, that the world wants
fire and strength even more than sweetness and light, is he not carried away by a turn for powerful
generalisation? does he not forget that the world is not all of one piece, and every piece with the same
needs at the same time? It may be true that the Roman world at the beginning of our era, or Leo the
Tenth's Court at the time of the Reformation, or French society in the eighteenth century, needed fire and
strength even more than sweetness and light. But can it be said that the Barbarians who overran the
empire, needed fire and strength even more than sweetness and light; or that the Puritans needed them
more; or that Mr. Murphy, the Birmingham lecturer, and the Rev. W. Cattle and his friends, need them
more?
The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession of a rule telling him the
unum necessarium, or one thing needful, and that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception
of what this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he has now knowledge and henceforth needs only
to act, and, in this dangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a
number of the instincts of his ordinary self. Some of the instincts of his ordinary self he has, by the help
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of his rule of life, conquered; but others which he has not conquered by this help he is so far from
perceiving to need subjugation, and to be instincts of an inferior self, that he even fancies it to be his right
and duty, in virtue of having conquered a limited part of himself, to give unchecked swing to the
remainder. He is, I say, a victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to cultivate strictness of conscience rather
than spontaneity of consciousness. And what he wants is a larger conception of human nature, showing
him the number of other points at which his nature must come to its best, besides the points which he
himself knows and thinks of. There is no unum necessarium, or one thing needful, which can free human
nature from the obligation of trying to come to its best at all these points. The real unum necessarium for
us is to come to our best at all points. Instead of our "one thing needful," justifying in us vulgarity,
hideousness, ignorance, violence,---our vulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many
touchstones which try our one thing needful, and which prove that in the state, at any rate, in which we
ourselves have it, it is not all we want. And as the force which encourages us to stand staunch and fast by
the rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so the force which encourages us to go back upon this rule, and
to try the very ground on which we appear to stand, is Hellenism,---a turn for giving our consciousness
free play and enlarging its range. And what I say is, not that Hellenism is always for everybody more
wanted than Hebraism, but that for the Rev. W. Cattle at this particular moment, and for the great
majority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more wanted.
1868,1869
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