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Document Title: The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1911
Publisher: Ellis
Printer: Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ltd.

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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Manuscript Addition: James Smith / Trin. Coll. / Cambridge. / G3
Editorial Description: Note written in pen in upper right corner.
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THE WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
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D. G. Rossetti

From a Photograph by Downey 1862

Note: First line of the caption is a facsimile reproduction of Rossetti's autograph. The remainder of the caption is in cursive type.
Figure: Photogravure reproduction of photograph of DGR by Downey. Nearly full-length of DGR in overcoat, turned slightly to right. Left hand rests on ornately carved table, right hand upon hip.



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THE WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI



EDITED

WITH PREFACE AND NOTES

BY

WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI

REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION

LONDON

ELLIS: 29 New Bond Street, W.

1911

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PRINTED AND BOUND BY

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD

LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

DIED 9 APRIL 1882 AGED 53

FRANCES MARY LAVINIA ROSSETTI

DIED 8 APRIL 1886 AGED 85


TO

THE MOTHER'S SACRED MEMORY

THIS COLLECTED EDITION OF

THE SON'S WORKS

IS DEDICATED BY

THE SURVIVING SON AND BROTHER

W M R
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more about this work
PREFACE
The most adequate mode of prefacing the Collected Works

of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as of most authors, would probably

be to offer a broad general view of his writings, and to analyse

with some critical precision his relation to other writers,

contemporary or otherwise, and the merits and defects of his

performances. In this case, as in how few others, one would

also have to consider in what degree his mind worked con-

sentaneously or diversely in two several arts—the art of poetry

and the art of painting. But the hand of a brother is not

the fittest to undertake any work of this scope. My preface

will not therefore deal with themes such as these, but will

be confined to minor matters, which may nevertheless be

relevant also within their limits. And first may come a very

brief outline of the few events of an outwardly uneventful

life.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who, at an early stage of

his professional career, modified his name into Dante Gabriel

Rossetti, was born on 12th May 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte

Street (now 110 Hallam Street), Portland Place, London.

In blood he was three-fourths Italian, and only one-fourth

English; being on the father's side wholly Italian (Abruzzese),

and on the mother's side half Italian (Tuscan) and half

English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti, born in 1783 at

Vasto, in the Abruzzi, Adriatic coast, in the then kingdom

of Naples. Gabriele Rossetti (died 1854) was a man of letters,

a custodian of ancient bronzes in the Museo Borbonico of

Naples, and a poet; he distinguished himself by patriotic

lays which fostered the popular movement resulting in the

grant of a constitution by Ferdinand I. of Naples in 1820.

The King, after the fashion of Bourbons and tyrants, revoked

the constitution in 1821, and persecuted the abettors of it,

and Rossetti had to escape for his freedom, or perhaps even

for his life. He settled in London in 1824, married, and
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became Professor of Italian in King's College, London,

publishing also various works of bold speculation in the way

of Dantesque commentary and exposition. His wife was

Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (died 1886), daughter of

Gaetano Polidori (died 1853), a teacher of Italian and literary

man who had in early youth been secretary to the poet

Alfieri, and who published various books, including a com-

plete translation of Milton's poems. Frances Polidori was

English on the side of her mother, whose maiden name was

Pierce. The family of Rossetti and his wife consisted of four

children, born in four successive years—Maria Francesca

(died 1876), Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Christina

Georgina (died 1894). Few more affectionate husbands and

fathers have lived, and no better wife and mother, than

Gabriele and Frances Rossetti. The means of the family

were always strictly moderate, and became scanty towards

1843, when the father's health began to fail. In 1842 (or

perhaps 1841) Dante Gabriel left King's College School, where

he had learned Latin, French, and a beginning of Greek;

and he entered upon the study of the art of painting, to

which he had from earliest childhood exhibited a very marked

bent. After a while he was admitted to the school of the

Royal Academy, but never proceeded beyond its antique

section. In 1848 Rossetti co-operated with two of his fellow-

students in painting, John Everett Millais and William Hol-

man Hunt, and with the sculptor Thomas Woolner, in form-

ing the so-called Præraphaelite Brotherhood. There were

three other members of the Brotherhood—James Collinson,

Frederic George Stephens, and the present writer. Ford

Madox Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti

a little before the Præraphaelite scheme was started, and

bore an important part both in directing his studies and in

upholding the movement, but he did not think fit to join

the Brotherhood in any direct or complete sense. Through

a fellow-painter, Walter Howell Deverell, Rossetti came to

know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a Sheffield cutler,

herself a milliner's assistant, gifted with some artistic and

some poetic faculty: in the Spring of 1860, after a long

engagement, they married. Their wedded life was of short

duration, as she died in February 1862, having meanwhile

given birth to a still-born child. For several years up to this

date Rossetti, designing and painting many works, in oil-
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colour or as yet more frequently in water-colour, had resided

at No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of street

now demolished. In the autumn of 1862 he removed to

No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first certain apartments in

the house were occupied by Mr. George Meredith the novelist,

Mr. Swinburne the poet, and myself. This arrangement did

not last long, although I myself remained a partial inmate of

the house up to 1873. My brother continued domiciled in

Cheyne Walk until his death; but from 1871 he was some-

times away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxfordshire, not far

from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself, and by the poet

Mr. William Morris with his family. From the autumn of

1872 till the summer of 1874 he was wholly settled at

Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London at all. He then returned

to London, and Kelmscot passed out of his ken.
In the early months of 1850 the members of the Præraphae-

lite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of some friends,

brought out a short-lived magazine named The Germ (after-

wards Art and Poetry); here appeared the first verses and

the first prose published by Rossetti, including The Blessed

Damozel and Hand and Soul . In 1856 he contributed a little

to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine , printing there The

Burden of Nineveh and Staff and Scrip. In 1861, during his

married life, he published his volume of translations The

Early Italian Poets , now entitled Dante and his Circle . By

the time therefore of the death of his wife he had a certain

restricted yet far from inconsiderable reputation as a poet,

along with his recognized position as a painter—a non-

exhibiting painter, for, after the first two or three years of

his professional course, he adhered with practical uniformity

to the plan of abstaining from exhibition altogether. He

had contemplated bringing out in or about 1862 a volume of

original poems; but, in the grief and dismay which over-

whelmed him in losing his wife, he determined to sacrifice to

her memory this long-cherished project, and he buried in

her coffin the manuscripts which would have furnished forth

the volume. With the lapse of years he came to see that,

as a final settlement of the matter, this was neither obligatory

nor desirable; so in 1869 the manuscripts were disinterred,

and in 1870 his volume named Poems was issued. For some

considerable while it was hailed with general and lofty praise,

chequered by only moderate stricture or demur; but late
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in 1871 Mr. Robert Buchanan published under a pseudonym,

in the Contemporary Review , a very hostile article named

The Fleshly School of Poetry , attacking the poems on literary

and more especially on moral grounds. The article, in an

enlarged form, was afterwards reissued as a pamphlet. The

assault produced on Rossetti an effect altogether dispropor-

tionate to its intrinsic importance; indeed, it developed in

his character an excess of sensitiveness and of distempered

brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had never

before surmised,—for hitherto he had on the whole had an

ample sufficiency of high spirits, combined with a certain

underlying gloominess or abrupt moodiness of nature and out-

look. Unfortunately there was in him already only too much

of morbid material on which this venom of detraction was

to work. For some years the state of his eyesight had given

very grave cause for apprehension, he himself fancying from

time to time that the evil might end in absolute blindness, a

fate with which our father had been formidably threatened

in his closing years. From this or other causes insomnia had

ensued, coped with by far too free a use of chloral, which may

have begun towards the spring of 1870. In the summer of

1872 he had a dangerous crisis of illness; and from that

time forward, but more especially from the middle of 1874,

he became secluded in his habits of life, and often depressed,

fanciful, and gloomy. Not indeed that there were no in-

tervals of serenity, even of brightness; for in fact he was

often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable companion

with as much bonhomie as acuteness for wiling an evening

away. He continued also to prosecute his pictorial work

with ardour and diligence, and at times he added to his

product as a poet. The second of his original volumes,

Ballads and Sonnets , was published in the autumn of 1881.

About the same time he sought change of air and scene in

the Vale of St. John, near Keswick, Cumberland; but he

returned to town more shattered in health and in mental tone

than he had ever been before. In December a shock of a

quasi-paralytic character struck him down. He rallied

sufficiently to remove to Birchington-on-Sea, near Margate.

The hand of death was then upon him, and was to be relaxed

no more. The last stage of his maladies was uræmia. Tended

by his mother and his sister Christina, with the constant

companionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the
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presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, Mr.

Frederic Shields, and myself, he died on Easter Sunday,

April 9th 1882. His sister-in-law, the daughter of Madox

Brown, arrived immediately after his latest breath had been

drawn. He lies buried in the churchyard of Birchington.
Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared

one another's feelings and thoughts more intimately, in child-

hood, boyhood, and well on into mature manhood, than

Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea of limning his

character here at any length, but will define a few of its

leading traits. He was always and essentially of a dominant

turn, in intellect and in temperament a leader. He was im-

petuous and vehement, and necessarily therefore impatient;

easily angered, easily appeased, although the embittered

feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality to

some extent; constant and helpful as a friend where he per-

ceived constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed and heed-

less of expenditure, whether for himself or for others; in

family affection warm and equable, and (except in relation

to our mother, for whom he had a fondling love) not demon-

strative. Never on stilts in matters of the intellect or of

aspiration, but steeped in the sense of beauty, and loving,

if not always practising, the good; keenly alive also to the

laughable as well as the grave or solemn side of things;

superstitious in grain, and anti-scientific to the marrow.

Throughout his youth and early manhood I considered him

to be markedly free from vanity, though certainly well

equipped in pride; the distinction between these two ten-

dencies was less definite in his closing years. Extremely

natural and therefore totally unaffected in tone and manner,

with the naturalism characteristic of Italian blood; good-

natured and hearty, without being complaisant or accommo-

dating; reserved at times, yet not haughty; desultory enough

in youth, diligent and persistent in maturity; self-centred

always, and brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose

or his bent. He was very generally and very greatly liked

by persons of extremely diverse character; indeed, I think

it can be no exaggeration to say that no one ever disliked

him. Of course I do not here confound the question of liking

a man's personality with that of approving his conduct out-

and-out.
Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague impression.
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I have said that it was natural; it was likewise eminently

easy, and even of the free-and-easy kind. There was a

certain British bluffness, streaking the finely poised Italian

suppleness and facility. As he was thoroughly unconven-

tional, caring not at all to fall in with the humours or pre-

possessions of any particular class of society, or to conciliate

or approximate the socially distinguished, there was little in

him of any veneer or varnish of elegance; none the less he

was courteous and well-bred, meeting all sorts of persons

upon equal terms— i.e., upon his own terms; and I am

satisfied that those who are most exacting in such matters

found in Rossetti nothing to derogate from the standard of

their requirements. In habit of body he was indolent and

lounging, disinclined to any prescribed or trying exertion of

any sort, and very difficult to stir out of his ordinary groove,

yet not wanting in active promptitude whenever it suited

his liking. He often seemed totally unoccupied, especially

of an evening; no doubt the brain was busy enough.
The appearance of my brother was to my eye rather Italian

than English, though I have more than once heard it said

that there was nothing observable to bespeak foreign blood.

He was of rather low middle stature, say five feet seven and

a half, like our father; and, as the years advanced, he re-

sembled our father not a little in a characteristic way, yet

with highly obvious divergences. Meagre in youth, he was

at times decidedly fat in mature age. The complexion, clear

and warm, was also dark, but not dusky or sombre. The

hair was dark and somewhat silky; the brow grandly spacious

and solid; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey; the nose shapely,

decided, and rather projecting, with an aquiline tendency

and large nostrils, and perhaps no detail in the face was more

noticeable at a first glance than the very strong indentation

at the spring of the nose below the forehead; the mouth

moderately well-shaped, but with a rather thick and un-

moulded under-lip; the chin unremarkable; the line of the

jaw, after youth was passed, full, rounded, and sweeping; the

ears well-formed and rather small than large. His lips were

wide, his hands and feet small; the hands very much those

of the artist or author type, white, delicate, plump, and soft

as a woman's. His gait was resolute and rapid, his general

aspect compact and determined, the prevailing expression of

the face that of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated
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into repose. Some people regarded Rossetti as eminently

handsome; few, I think, would have refused him the epithet

of well-looking. It rather surprises me to find from Mr.

Caine's book of Recollections that that gentleman, when he

first saw Rossetti in 1880, considered him to look full ten

years older than he really was,—namely, to look as if sixty-

two years old. To my own eye nothing of the sort was

apparent. He wore moustaches from early youth, shaving his

cheeks; from 1873 or thereabouts he grew whiskers and beard,

moderately full and auburn-tinted, as well as moustaches.

His voice was deep and harmonious; in the reading of poetry,

remarkably rich, with rolling swell and musical cadence.
My brother was very little of a traveller; he disliked

the interruption of his ordinary habits of life, and the flurry

or discomfort, involved in locomotion; moreover, he was a

bad sailor. In boyhood he knew Boulogne: he was in Paris

three or four times, and twice visited some principal cities

of Belgium. This was the whole extent of his foreign travel-

ling. He crossed the Scottish border more than once and

knew various parts of England pretty well—Hastings, Bath,

Oxford, Matlock, Stratford-on-Avon, Newcastle-on-Tyne,

Bognor, Herne Bay; Kelmscot, Keswick, and Birchington-

on-Sea have been already mentioned. From 1878 or there-

abouts he became, until he went to the neighbourhood of

Keswick, an absolute home-keeping recluse, never even

straying outside the large garden of his own house, except to

visit from time to time our mother in the central part of

London.
From an early period of life he had a large circle of friends,

and could always have commanded any amount of inter-

course with any number of ardent or kindly well-wishers, had

he but felt elasticity or cheerfulness of mind enough for the

purpose. I should do injustice to my own feelings if I were

not to mention here some of his leading friends. First and

foremost I name Mr. Madox Brown, his chief intimate through-

out life, on the unexhausted resources of whose affection and

converse he drew incessantly for long years; they were at

last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to Manchester,

for the purpose of painting the Town Hall frescoes. The

Præraphaelites—Millais, Hunt, Woolner, Stephens, Collinson

—were on terms of unbounded familiarity with him in youth;

owing to death or other causes, he lost sight eventually of all
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of them except Mr. Stephens. Mr. William Bell Scott was,

like Mr. Brown, a close friend from a very early period until

the last; Scott being both poet and painter, there was a

strict bond of affinity between him and Rossetti. Mr. Ruskin

was extremely intimate with my brother from 1854 till about

1865, and was of material help to his professional career.

As he rose towards celebrity, Rossetti knew Burne Jones,

and through him Morris and Swinburne, all staunch and

fervently sympathetic friends. Mr. Shields was a rather later

acquaintance, who soon became an intimate, equally re-

spected and cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer the musical critic

(afterwards a close family connection, editor of the Tauchnitz

edition of Rossetti's works), and Dr. Hake the poet. Through

the latter my brother came to know Mr. Theodore Watts-

Dunton, whose intellectual companionship and incessant

assiduity of friendship did more than anything else towards

assuaging the discomforts and depression of his closing years.

In the latest period the most intimate among new acquaint-

ances were Mr. William Sharp and Mr. Hall Caine, both of

them known to Rossettian readers as his biographers. Nor

should I omit to speak of the extremely friendly relation in

which my brother stood to some of the principal purchasers

of his pictures—Mr. Leathart, Mr. Rae, Mr. Leyland, Mr.

Graham, Mr. Valpy, Mr. Turner, and his early associate Mr.

Boyce. Other names crowd upon me—James Hannay, John

Tupper, Patmore, Thomas and John Seddon, Mrs. Bodichon,

Browning, John Marshall, Tebbs, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss Boyd,

Sandys, Whistler, Joseph Knight, Fairfax Murray, Mr. and

Mrs. Stillman, Treffry Dunn, Lord and Lady Mount-Temple,

Oliver Madox Brown, the Marstons, father and son—but I

forbear.
Before proceeding to some brief account of the sequence

etc. of my brother's writings, it may be worth while to speak

of the poets who were particularly influential in nurturing

his mind and educing its own poetic endowment. The first

poet with whom he became partially familiar was Shakespear.

Then followed the usual boyish fancies for Walter Scott and

Byron. The Bible was deeply impressive to him, perhaps

above all Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Apocalypse. Byron gave

place to Shelley when my brother was about sixteen years

of age; and Mrs. Browning and the old English or Scottish

ballads rapidly ensued. It may have been towards this
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date, say 1845, that he first seriously applied himself to

Dante, and drank deep of that inexhaustible well-head of

poesy and thought; for the Florentine, though familiar to

him as a name, and in some sense as a pervading penetrative

influence, from earliest childhood, was not really assimilated

until boyhood was practically past. Bailey's Festus was

enormously relished about the same time—read again and

yet again; also Faust, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset (and

along with them a swarm of French novelists), and Keats,

whom my brother for the most part, though not without

some compunctious visitings now and then, truly preferred

to Shelley. The only classical poet whom he took to in any

degree worth speaking of was Homer, the Odyssey consider-

ably more than the Iliad. Tennyson reigned along with

Keats, and Edgar Poe and Coleridge along with Tennyson.

In the long run he perhaps enjoyed and revered Coleridge

beyond any other modern poet whatsoever; but Coleridge

was not so distinctly or separately in the ascendant, at any

particular period of youth, as several of the others. Blake

likewise had his peculiar meed of homage, and Charles Wells,

the influence of whose prose style, in the Stories after Nature,

I trace to some extent in Rossetti's Hand and Soul . Lastly

came Browning, and for a time, like the serpent-rod of Moses,

swallowed up all the rest. This was still at an early stage

of life; for I think the year 1847 cannot certainly have been

passed before my brother was deep in Browning. The

readings or fragmentary recitations of Bells and Pomegranates,

Paracelsus, and above all Sordello, are something to remember

from a now distant past. My brother lighted upon Pauline

(published anonymously) in the British Museum, copied it

out, recognized that it must be Browning's, and wrote to the

great poet at a venture to say so, receiving a cordial response,

followed by a genial and friendly intercourse for several

years. One prose-work of great influence upon my brother's

mind, and upon his product as a painter, must not be left

unspecified—Malory's Mort d'Arthur, which he knew to some

extent in boyhood, and which engrossed him towards 1856.

The only poet whom I feel it needful to add to the above is

Chatterton. In the last two or three years of his life my

brother entertained an abnormal—I think an exaggerated—

admiration of Chatterton. It appears to me that (to use a

very hackneyed phrase) he “evolved this from his inner
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consciousness” at that late period; certainly in youth and

early manhood he had no such feeling. He then read the

poems of Chatterton with cursory glance and unexcited

spirit, recognizing them as very singular performances for

their date in English literature, and for the author's boyish

years, but beyond that laying no marked stress upon them.
The reader may perhaps be surprised to find some names

unmentioned in this list: I have stated the facts as I re-

member and know them. Chaucer, Spenser, the Elizabethan

dramatists (other than Shakespear), Milton, Dryden, Pope,

Wordsworth, are unnamed. It should not be supposed that

he read them not at all, or cared not for any of them; but,

if we except Chaucer in a rather loose way and (at a late

period of life) Marlowe in some of his non-dramatic poems,

they were comparatively neglected. Thomas Hood he valued

highly; also very highly Burns in mature years, but he was

not a constant reader of the Scottish lyrist. Of Italian poets

he earnestly loved none save Dante: Cavalcanti in his degree,

and also Poliziano and Michelangelo—not Petrarca, Boccaccio,

Ariosto, Tasso, or Leopardi, though in boyhood he delighted

well enough in Ariosto. Of French poets, none beyond

Hugo and Alfred de Musset; except Villon, and partially

Dumas, whose novels ranked among his favourite reading.

In German poetry he read nothing currently in the original,

although (as our pages bear witness) he had in earliest youth

so far mastered the language as to make some translations.

Calderon, in Fitzgerald's version, he admired deeply; but

this was only at a late date. He had no liking for the

specialities of Scandinavian, nor indeed of Teutonic, thought

and work, and little or no curiosity about Oriental—such as

Indian, Persian, or Arabic—poetry. Any writing about

devils, spectres, or the supernatural generally, whether in

poetry or in prose, had always a fascination for him; at one

time, say 1844, his supreme delight was the blood-curdling

romance of Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer.
I now pass to a specification of my brother's own writings.

Of his merely childish or boyish performances I need have

said nothing, were it not that they have been mentioned in

other books regarding Rossetti. First then there was The

Slave , a “drama” which he composed and wrote out in or

about the seventh year of his age. It is of course simple

nonsense. “Slave” and “traitor” were two words which
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he found passim in Shakespear; so he gave to his principal

characters the names of Slave and Traitor. If what they do

is meaningless, what they say (when they deviate from

prose) is not exactly unmetrical. Towards his thirteenth

year he began a romantic prose-tale named Roderick and

Rosalba . I hardly think that he composed anything else

prior to the ballad narrative Sir Hugh the Heron , founded on

a tale by Allan Cunningham. Our grandfather printed it

in 1843, which is some couple of years after the date of its

composition. It is correctly enough versified, but has no

merit, and little that could even be called promise. Soon

afterwards a prose-tale named Sorrentino , in which the devil

played a conspicuous part, was begun, and carried to some

length; it was of course boyish, but it must, I think, have

shown some considerable degree of cleverness. In 1844 there

was the translation of Bürger's Lenore , spirited and fairly

efficient; and in November 1845 was begun a translation of

the Nibelungenlied , almost deserving (if my memory serves me)

to be considered good. Several hundred lines of it must

certainly have been written. My brother was by this time

a practised and competent versifier, at any rate, and his

mere prentice-work may count as finished.
Other original verse, not in any large quantity, succeeded,

along with the version of Der Arme Heinrich , and the begin-

ning of his translations from the early Italians. These must,

I think, have been in full career in the first half of 1847, and

may even have begun in 1845. They show a keen sensitive-

ness to whatsoever is poetic in the originals, and a sinuous

strength and ease in providing English equivalents, with the

command of a rich and romantic vocabulary. In his nine-

teenth year, or before 12th May 1847, he wrote The Blessed

Damozel . As that is universally recognized as one of his

typical or consummate productions, marking the high level

of his faculty whether inventive or executive, I may here

close this record of preliminaries; the poems, with such

slight elucidations as my notes supply, being left to speak

for themselves. I will only add that for some while, more

especially in the latter part of 1848 and in 1849, my brother

practised his pen to no small extent in writing sonnets to

bouts-rimés. He and I would sit together in our bare little

room at the top of No. 50 Charlotte Street, I giving him the

rhymes for a sonnet, and he me the rhymes for another;
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and we would write off our emulous exercises with consider-

able speed, he constantly the more rapid of the two. From

five to eight minutes may have been the average time for

one of his sonnets; not unfrequently more, and sometimes

hardly so much. In fact, the pen scribbled away at its

fastest. Several of his bouts-rimés sonnets still exist in

my possession, a little touched up after the first draft: I

present most of them in this re-edition. Some have a faux

air of intensity of meaning, as well as of expression; but

their real core of significance is necessarily small, the only

wonder being how he could spin so deftly with so weak a

thread. I may be allowed to mention that most of my own

sonnets (and not sonnets alone) published in The Germ were

bouts-rimés experiments such as above described. In poetic

tone they are of course inferior to my brother's work of like

fashioning; in point of sequence or self-congruity of mean-

ing, the comparison might be less to my disadvantage.
Dante Rossetti's published works were as follows: three

volumes, chiefly of poetry. I shall transcribe the title-pages

verbatim.
(1 a) The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to

Dante Alighieri (1100—1200—1300) in the Original Metres.

Together with Dante's Vita Nuova. Translated by D. G.

Rossetti. Part I. Poets chiefly before Dante. Part II.

Dante and his Circle. London: Smith, Elder and Co.

65, Cornhill. 1861. The rights of translation and reproduc-

tion, as regards all editorial parts of this work, are reserved.
(1 b) Dante and his Circle, with the Italian Poets preceding

him (1100—1200—1300). A Collection of Lyrics, edited,

and translated in the original metres, by Dante Gabriel

Rossetti. Revised and rearranged edition. Part I. Dante's

Vita Nuova, &c. Poets of Dante's Circle. Part II. Poets

chiefly before Dante. London: Ellis and White, 29, New

Bond Street. 1874.
(2 a) Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: F. S.

Ellis, 33, King Street, Covent Garden. 1870.
(2 b) Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A new edition.

London: Ellis and White, 29, New Bond Street. 1881.
(3) Ballads and Sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

London: Ellis and White, 29, New Bond Street, W. 1881.
The reader will understand that 1 b is essentially the same

book as 1 a, but altered in arrangement, chiefly by inverting
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the order in which the poems of Dante and of the Dantesque

epoch, and those of an earlier period, are printed. In the

present collection, I reprint 1 b, taking no further count of 1 a.

The volume 2 b is to a great extent the same as 2 a, yet by

no means identical with it. 2 a contained a section named

Sonnets and Songs, towards a work to be called “The House

of Life.” In 1881, when 2 b and 3 were published simul-

taneously, The House of Life was completed, was made to

consist solely of sonnets, and was transferred to 3; while the

gap thus left in 2 b was filled up by other poems. This essential

modification of The House of Life clearly governed my action.
It thus became impossible for me to reproduce 2 a: but the

question had to be considered whether I should reprint 2 b and

3 exactly as they stood in 1881, adding after them a section

of poems not hitherto printed in any one of my brother's

volumes; or whether I should recast, in point of arrange-

ment, the entire contents of 2 b and 3, inserting here and

there, in their most appropriate sequence, the poems hitherto

unprinted. I have chosen the latter alternative, as being

in my own opinion the only arrangement which is thoroughly

befitting for an edition of Collected Works. I am aware that

some readers would have preferred to see the old order— i.e.,

the order of 1881—retained, so that the two volumes of that

year could be perused as they then stood. Indeed, one of

my brother's friends, most worthy, whether as friend or as

critic, to be consulted on such a subject, decidedly advocated

that plan. On the other hand, I found my own view con-

firmed by my sister Christina, who, both as a member of the

family and as a poetess, deserved an attentive hearing. The

reader who inspects my table of contents will be readily able

to follow the method of arrangement which is here adopted.

I have divided the materials into Principal Poems, Miscel-

laneous Poems, Translations, and some minor headings; and

have in each section arranged the poems—and the same has

been done with the prose-writings—in the order of the dates

of their composition. This order of date is certainly near to

being correct; though some allowance, especially in the case

of The House of Life , must be made for differences of period

when the poems were begun and were brought into their final

form. The few translations which were printed in 2 b (as

also in 2 a) have been removed to follow on after 1 b.
There are two poems by my brother which I am unable
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to include among his Collected Works. One of these is a

grotesque ballad about a Dutchman, Jan van Hunks , begun

at a very early date, and finished in his last illness. The

other is a brace of sonnets, interesting in subject, and as

being the very latest thing that he wrote. These works were

presented as a gift of love and gratitude to Mr. Watts-Dunton,

with whom it remains to publish them at his own discretion:

he has already brought out Jan van Hunks in The English

Review .
Dante Rossetti was a very fastidious writer, and, I might

add, a very fastidious painter. He did not indeed “cudgel

his brains” for the idea of a poem or the structure or diction

of a stanza. He wrote out of a large fund or reserve of

thought and consideration, which would culminate in a clear

impulse or (as we say) an inspiration. In the execution he

was always heedful and reflective from the first, and he

spared no after-pains in clarifying and perfecting. He ab-

horred anything straggling, slipshod, profuse, or uncondensed.

He often recurred to his old poems, and was reluctant to

leave them merely as they were. A natural concomitant

of this state of mind was a great repugnance to the notion of

publishing, or of having published after his death, whatever

he regarded as juvenile, petty, or inadequate. As editor of

his Collected Works, I have had to regulate myself to a large

extent by these feelings of his, whether my own entirely

correspond with them or not. The amount of unpublished

work which he left behind him was by no means large; out

of the moderate bulk I have been careful to select only such

examples as I suppose that he would himself have approved

for the purpose, or would, at any rate, not gravely have

objected to. A few, which he might have objected to, figure

as Juvenilia. Some details regarding the new items will be

found among my notes. Some projects or arguments of

poems which he never executed are also printed among his

prose-writings. These particular projects had, I think, been

practically abandoned by him in all the later years of his

life; but there was one subject which he had seriously at

heart, and for which he had collected some materials, and he

would perhaps have put it into shape had he lived a year or

two longer—a ballad on the subject of Joan of Arc to match

The White Ship and The King's Tragedy .
I have not unfrequently heard my brother say that he
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considered himself more essentially a poet than a painter.

To vary the form of expression, he thought that he had

mastered the means of embodying poetical conceptions in the

verbal and rhythmical vehicle more thoroughly than in form

and design, perhaps more thoroughly than in colour.
William M. Rossetti.

London, April 1911.
I add here the dedications to Rossetti's volumes 1 a, 2 a,

2 b, and 3. The dedication to 1 b appears in its proper place.
1 a.— The Early Italian Poets:
Whatever is mine in this book is inscribed to my Wife.—

D.G.R. 1861.
2 a.— Poems , 1870 :
To William Michael Rossetti, these Poems, to so many of

which, so many years back, he gave the first brotherly hearing,

are now at last dedicated.
2 b.— Poems , 1881 :
Same dedication, adding the dates “1870—1881.”
3.— Ballads and Sonnets:
To Theodore Watts, the Friend whom my verse won for me,

these few more pages are affectionately inscribed.
In the Poems, 1881, appeared the ensuing “Advertise-

ment”:

“‘Many poems in this volume were written between 1847 and

1853. Others are of recent date, and a few belong to the inter-

vening period. It has been thought unnecessary to specify the

earlier work, as nothing is included which the author believes to

be immature.’

“The above brief note was prefixed to these poems when first

published in 1870. They have now been for some time out of

print.

“The fifty sonnets of The House of Life , which first appeared

here, are now embodied with the full series in the volume entitled

Ballads and Sonnets .

“The fragment of The Bride's Prelude , now first printed, was

written very early, and is here associated with other work of the

same date; though its publication in an unfinished form needs

some indulgence.”

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CONTENTS
The pieces marked thus * are now printed for the first time;

those marked † have appeared in print before, but are now first in-

cluded in the Collected Works.
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more about Principal Poems
PRINCIPAL POEMS
Sig. 1
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more about The Blessed Damozel
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
  • The blessed damozel leaned out
  • From the gold bar of Heaven;
  • Her eyes were deeper than the depth
  • Of waters stilled at even;
  • She had three lilies in her hand,
  • And the stars in her hair were seven.
  • Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
  • No wrought flowers did adorn,
  • But a white rose of Mary's gift,
  • 10 For service meetly worn;
  • Her hair that lay along her back
  • Was yellow like ripe corn.
  • Herseemed she scarce had been a day
  • One of God's choristers;
  • The wonder was not yet quite gone
  • From that still look of hers;
  • Albeit, to them she left, her day
  • Had counted as ten years.
  • (To one, it is ten years of years.
  • 20 . . . Yet now, and in this place,
  • Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
  • Fell all about my face. . .
  • Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
  • The whole year sets apace.)
  • It was the rampart of God's house
  • That she was standing on;
  • By God built over the sheer depth
  • The which is Space begun;
  • So high, that looking downward thence
  • 30 She scarce could see the sun.
  • It lies in Heaven, across the flood
  • Of ether, as a bridge.
  • Beneath, the tides of day and night
  • With flame and darkness ridge
  • The void, as low as where this earth
  • Spins like a fretful midge.
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  • Around her, lovers, newly met
  • 'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
  • Spoke evermore among themselves
  • 40 Their heart-remembered names;
  • And the souls mounting up to God
  • Went by her like thin flames.
  • And still she bowed herself and stooped
  • Out of the circling charm;
  • Until her bosom must have made
  • The bar she leaned on warm,
  • And the lilies lay as if asleep
  • Along her bended arm.
  • From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
  • 50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
  • Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
  • Within the gulf to pierce
  • Its path; and now she spoke as when
  • The stars sang in their spheres.
  • The sun was gone now; the curled moon
  • Was like a little feather
  • Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
  • She spoke through the still weather.
  • Her voice was like the voice of the stars
  • 60 Had when they sang together.
  • (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
  • Strove not her accents there,
  • Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
  • Possessed the mid-day air,
  • Strove not her steps to reach my side
  • Down all the echoing stair?)
  • “I wish that he were come to me,
  • For he will come,” she said.
  • “Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
  • 70 Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
  • Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
  • And shall I feel afraid?
  • “When round his head the aureole clings,
  • And he is clothed in white,
  • I'll take his hand and go with him
  • To the deep wells of light;
  • As unto a stream we will step down,
  • And bathe there in God's sight.
  • “We two will stand beside that shrine,
  • 80 Occult, withheld, untrod,
  • Whose lamps are stirred continually
  • With prayer sent up to God;
  • And see our old prayers, granted, melt
  • Each like a little cloud.
  • “We two will lie i' the shadow of
  • That living mystic tree
  • Within whose secret growth the Dove
  • Is sometimes felt to be,
  • While every leaf that His plumes touch
  • 90 Saith His Name audibly.
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  • “And I myself will teach to him,
  • I myself, lying so,
  • The songs I sing here; which his voice
  • Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
  • And find some knowledge at each pause,
  • Or some new thing to know.”
  • (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
  • Yea, one wast thou with me
  • That once of old. But shall God lift
  • 100 To endless unity
  • The soul whose likeness with thy soul
  • Was but its love for thee?)
  • “We two,” she said, “will seek the groves
  • Where the lady Mary is,
  • With her five handmaidens, whose names
  • Are five sweet symphonies,
  • Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
  • Margaret and Rosalys.
  • “Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
  • 110 And foreheads garlanded;
  • Into the fine cloth white like flame
  • Weaving the golden thread,
  • To fashion the birth-robes for them
  • Who are just born, being dead.
  • “He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
  • Then will I lay my cheek
  • To his, and tell about our love,
  • Not once abashed or weak:
  • And the dear Mother will approve
  • 120 My pride, and let me speak.
  • “Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
  • To Him round whom all souls
  • Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
  • Bowed with their aureoles:
  • And angels meeting us shall sing
  • To their citherns and citoles.
  • “There will I ask of Christ the Lord
  • Thus much for him and me:—
  • Only to live as once on earth
  • 130 With Love,—only to be,
  • As then awhile, for ever now
  • Together, I and he.”
  • She gazed and listened and then said,
  • Less sad of speech than mild,—
  • “All this is when he comes.” She ceased.
  • The light thrilled towards her, fill'd
  • With angels in strong level flight.
  • Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.
  • (I saw her smile.) But soon their path
  • 140 Was vague in distant spheres:
  • And then she cast her arms along
  • The golden barriers,
  • And laid her face between her hands,
  • And wept. (I heard her tears.)
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more about Dante at Verona.
DANTE AT VERONA
  • Yea, thou shalt learn how salt his food who fares
  • Upon another's bread,—how steep his path
  • Who treadeth up and down another's stairs.
( Div. Com. Parad. xvii.)
  • Behold, even I, even I am Beatrice.
( Div. Com. Purg. xxx.)
  • Of Florence and of Beatrice
  • Servant and singer from of old,
  • O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
  • The knell that gave his Lady peace;
  • And now in manhood flew the dart
  • Wherewith his City pierced his heart.
  • Yet if his Lady's home above
  • Was Heaven, on earth she filled his soul;
  • And if his City held control
  • 10 To cast the body forth to rove,
  • The soul could soar from earth's vain throng,
  • And Heaven and Hell fulfil the song.
  • Follow his feet's appointed way;—
  • But little light we find that clears
  • The darkness of the exiled years.
  • Follow his spirit's journey:—nay,
  • What fires are blent, what winds are blown
  • On paths his feet may tread alone?
  • Yet of the twofold life he led
  • 20 In chainless thought and fettered will
  • Some glimpses reach us,—somewhat still
  • Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,—
  • Of the soul's quest whose stern avow
  • For years had made him haggard now.
  • Alas! the Sacred Song whereto
  • Both heaven and earth had set their hand
  • Not only at Fame's gate did stand
  • Knocking to claim the passage through,
  • But toiled to ope that heavier door
  • 30 Which Florence shut for evermore.
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  • Shall not his birth's baptismal Town
  • One last high presage yet fulfil,
  • And at that font in Florence still
  • His forehead take the laurel-crown?
  • O God! or shall dead souls deny
  • The undying soul its prophecy?
  • Aye, 'tis their hour. Not yet forgot
  • The bitter words he spoke that day
  • When for some great charge far away
  • 40 Her rulers his acceptance sought.
  • “And if I go, who stays?”—so rose
  • His scorn:—“and if I stay, who goes?”
  • “Lo! thou art gone now, and we stay”
  • (The curled lips mutter): “and no star
  • Is from thy mortal path so far
  • As streets where childhood knew the way.
  • To Heaven and Hell thy feet may win,
  • But thine own house they come not in.”
  • Therefore, the loftier rose the song
  • 50 To touch the secret things of God,
  • The deeper pierced the hate that trod
  • On base men's track who wrought the wrong;
  • Till the soul's effluence came to be
  • Its own exceeding agony.
  • Arriving only to depart,
  • From court to court, from land to land,
  • Like flame within the naked hand
  • His body bore his burning heart
  • That still on Florence strove to bring
  • 60 God's fire for a burnt offering.
  • Even such was Dante's mood, when now,
  • Mocked for long years with Fortune's sport,
  • He dwelt at yet another court,
  • There where Verona's knee did bow
  • And her voice hailed with all acclaim
  • Can Grande della Scala's name.
  • As that lord's kingly guest awhile
  • His life we follow; through the days
  • Which walked in exile's barren ways,—
  • 70 The nights which still beneath one smile
  • Heard through all spheres one song increase,—
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice.”
  • At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
  • Due reverence did his steps attend;
  • The ushers on his path would bend
  • At ingoing as at going out;
  • The penmen waited on his call
  • At council-board, the grooms in hall.
  • And pages hushed their laughter down,
  • 80 And gay squires stilled the merry stir,
  • When he passed up the dais-chamber
  • With set brows lordlier than a frown;
  • And tire-maids hidden among these
  • Drew close their loosened bodices.
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  • Perhaps the priests, (exact to span
  • All God's circumference,) if at whiles
  • They found him wandering in their aisles,
  • Grudged ghostly greeting to the man
  • By whom, though not of ghostly guild,
  • 90 With Heaven and Hell men's hearts were fill'd.
  • And the court-poets (he, forsooth,
  • A whole world's poet strayed to court!)
  • Had for his scorn their hate's retort.
  • He'd meet them flushed with easy youth,
  • Hot on their errands. Like noon-flies
  • They vexed him in the ears and eyes.
  • But at this court, peace still must wrench
  • Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
  • By day they held high watch afar,
  • 100 At night they cried across the trench;
  • And still, in Dante's path, the fierce
  • Gaunt soldiers wrangled o'er their spears.
  • But vain seemed all the strength to him,
  • As golden convoys sunk at sea
  • Whose wealth might root out penury:
  • Because it was not, limb with limb,
  • Knit like his heart-strings round the wall
  • Of Florence, that ill pride might fall.
  • Yet in the tiltyard, when the dust
  • 110 Cleared from the sundered press of knights
  • Ere yet again it swoops and smites,
  • He almost deemed his longing must
  • Find force to yield that multitude
  • And hurl that strength the way he would.
  • How should he move them,—fame and gain
  • On all hands calling them at strife?
  • He still might find but his one life
  • To give, by Florence counted vain;
  • One heart the false hearts made her doubt,
  • 120 One voice she heard once and cast out.
  • Oh! if his Florence could but come,
  • A lily-sceptred damsel fair,
  • As her own Giotto painted her
  • On many shields and gates at home,—
  • A lady crowned, at a soft pace
  • Riding the lists round to the dais:
  • Till where Can Grande rules the lists,
  • As young as Truth, as calm as Force,
  • She draws her rein now, while her horse
  • 130 Bows at the turn of the white wrists;
  • And when each knight within his stall
  • Gives ear, she speaks and tells them all:
  • All the foul tale,—truth sworn untrue
  • And falsehood's triumph. All the tale?
  • Great God! and must she not prevail
  • To fire them ere they heard it through,—
  • And hand achieve ere heart could rest
  • That high adventure of her quest?
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  • How would his Florence lead them forth,
  • 140 Her bridle ringing as she went;
  • And at the last within her tent,
  • 'Neath golden lilies worship-worth,
  • How queenly would she bend the while
  • And thank the victors with her smile!
  • Also her lips should turn his way
  • And murmur: “O thou tried and true,
  • With whom I wept the long years through!
  • What shall it profit if I say,
  • Thee I remember? Nay, through thee
  • 150 All ages shall remember me.”
  • Peace, Dante, peace! The task is long,
  • The time wears short to compass it.
  • Within thine heart such hopes may flit
  • And find a voice in deathless song:
  • But lo! as children of man's earth,
  • Those hopes are dead before their birth.
  • Fame tells us that Verona's court
  • Was a fair place. The feet might still
  • Wander for ever at their will
  • 160 In many ways of sweet resort;
  • And still in many a heart around
  • The Poet's name due honour found.
  • Watch we his steps. He comes upon
  • The women at their palm-playing.
  • The conduits round the gardens sing
  • And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
  • Where wearied damsels rest and hold
  • Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.
  • One of whom, knowing well that he,
  • 170 By some found stern, was mild with them,
  • Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
  • Saying, “Messer Dante, pardon me,”—
  • Praying that they might hear the song
  • Which first of all he made, when young.
  • “Donne che avete”* . . . Thereunto
  • Thus would he murmur, having first
  • Drawn near the fountain, while she nurs'd
  • His hand against her side: a few
  • Sweet words, and scarcely those, half said:
  • 180 Then turned, and changed, and bowed his head.
  • For then the voice said in his heart,
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice”;
  • And his whole life would yearn to cease:
  • Till having reached his room, apart
  • Beyond vast lengths of palace-floor,
  • He drew the arras round his door.
Transcribed Footnote (page 9):

* Donne che avete intelletto d'amore:—the first canzone of the Vita Nuova.

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  • At such times, Dante, thou hast set
  • Thy forehead to the painted pane
  • Full oft, I know; and if the rain
  • 190 Smote it outside, her fingers met
  • Thy brow; and if the sun fell there,
  • Her breath was on thy face and hair.
  • Then, weeping, I think certainly
  • Thou hast beheld, past sight of eyne,—
  • Within another room of thine
  • Where now thy body may not be
  • But where in thought thou still remain'st,—
  • A window often wept against:
  • The window thou, a youth, hast sought,
  • 200 Flushed in the limpid eventime,
  • Ending with daylight the day's rhyme
  • Of her; where oftenwhiles her thought
  • Held thee—the lamp untrimmed to write—
  • In joy through the blue lapse of night.
  • At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
  • Guests seldom wept. It was brave sport,
  • No doubt, at Can La Scala's Court,
  • Within the palace and without;
  • Where music, set to madrigals,
  • 210 Loitered all day through groves and halls.
  • Because Can Grande of his life
  • Had not had six-and-twenty years
  • As yet. And when the chroniclers
  • Tell you of that Vicenza strife
  • And of strifes elsewhere,—you must not
  • Conceive for church-sooth he had got
  • Just nothing in his wits but war:
  • Though doubtless 'twas the young man's joy
  • (Grown with his growth from a mere boy,)
  • 220To mark his “Viva Cane!” scare
  • The foe's shut front, till it would reel
  • All blind with shaken points of steel.
  • But there were places—held too sweet
  • For eyes that had not the due veil
  • Of lashes and clear lids—as well
  • In favour as his saddle-seat:
  • Breath of low speech he scorned not there
  • Nor light cool fingers in his hair.
  • Yet if the child whom the sire's plan
  • 230 Made free of a deep treasure-chest
  • Scoffed it with ill-conditioned jest,—
  • We may be sure too that the man
  • Was not mere thews, nor all content
  • With lewdness swathed in sentiment.
  • So you may read and marvel not
  • That such a man as Dante—one
  • Who, while Can Grande's deeds were done,
  • Had drawn his robe round him and thought—
  • Now at the same guest-table far'd
  • 240 Where keen Uguccio wiped his beard.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 10):

* Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was now his fellow-guest at Verona.

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  • Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
  • Left the wine cool within the glass,—
  • They feasting where no sun could pass:
  • And when the women, all as one,
  • Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
  • It was a comely thing, we know.
  • But Dante recked not of the wine;
  • Whether the women stayed or went,
  • His visage held one stern intent:
  • 250 And when the music had its sign
  • To breathe upon them for more ease,
  • Sometimes he turned and bade it cease.
  • And as he spared not to rebuke
  • The mirth, so oft in council he
  • To bitter truth bore testimony:
  • And when the crafty balance shook
  • Well poised to make the wrong prevail,
  • Then Dante's hand would turn the scale.
  • And if some envoy from afar
  • 260 Sailed to Verona's sovereign port
  • For aid or peace, and all the court
  • Fawned on its lord, “the Mars of war,
  • Sole arbiter of life and death,”—
  • Be sure that Dante saved his breath.
  • And Can La Scala marked askance
  • These things, accepting them for shame
  • And scorn, till Dante's guestship came
  • To be a peevish sufferance:
  • His host sought ways to make his days
  • 270 Hateful; and such have many ways.
  • There was a Jester, a foul lout
  • Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
  • Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
  • Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
  • In Folly's horny tympanum
  • Such things as make the wise man dumb.
  • Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
  • One day when Dante felt perplexed
  • If any day that could come next
  • 280 Were worth the waiting for or no,
  • And mute he sat amid their din,—
  • Can Grande called the Jester in.
  • Rank words, with such, are wit's best wealth.
  • Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
  • Twittering with clustered heads, except
  • Some few that took their trains by stealth
  • And went. Can Grande shook his hair
  • And smote his thighs and laughed i' the air.
  • Then, facing on his guest, he cried,—
  • 290 “Say, Messer Dante, how it is
  • I get out of a clown like this
  • More than your wisdom can provide.”
  • And Dante: “'Tis man's ancient whim
  • That still his like seems good to him.”
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  • Also a tale is told, how once,
  • At clearing tables after meat,
  • Piled for a jest at Dante's feet
  • Were found the dinner's well-picked bones;
  • So laid, to please the banquet's lord,
  • 300 By one who crouched beneath the board.
  • Then smiled Can Grande to the rest:—
  • “Our Dante's tuneful mouth indeed
  • Lacks not the gift on flesh to feed!”
  • “Fair host of mine,” replied the guest,
  • “So many bones you'd not descry
  • If so it chanced the dog were I.”*
  • But wherefore should we turn the grout
  • In a drained cup, or be at strife
  • From the worn garment of a life
  • 310 To rip the twisted ravel out?
  • Good needs expounding; but of ill
  • Each hath enough to guess his fill.
  • They named him Justicer-at-Law:
  • Each month to bear the tale in mind
  • Of hues a wench might wear unfin'd
  • And of the load an ox might draw;
  • To cavil in the weight of bread
  • And to see purse-thieves gibbeted.
  • And when his spirit wove the spell
  • 320 (From under even to over-noon
  • In converse with itself alone,)
  • As high as Heaven, as low as Hell,—
  • He would be summoned and must go:
  • For had not Gian stabbed Giacomo?
  • Therefore the bread he had to eat
  • Seemed brackish, less like corn than tares;
  • And the rush-strown accustomed stairs
  • Each day were steeper to his feet;
  • And when the night-vigil was done,
  • 330 His brows would ache to feel the sun.
  • Nevertheless, when from his kin
  • There came the tidings how at last
  • In Florence a decree was pass'd
  • Whereby all banished folk might win
  • Free pardon, so a fine were paid
  • And act of public penance made,—
  • This Dante writ in answer thus,
  • Words such as these: “That clearly they
  • In Florence must not have to say,—
  • 340The man abode aloof from us
  • Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
  • Hither to candleshrift and mulct.
Transcribed Footnote (page 12):

* “ Messere, voi non vedreste tant 'ossa se cane io fossi .” The point of the reproach

is difficult to render, depending as it does on the literal meaning of the name Cane.

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  • “That he was one the Heavens forbid
  • To traffic in God's justice sold
  • By market-weight of earthly gold,
  • Or to bow down over the lid
  • Of steaming censers, and so be
  • Made clean of manhood's obloquy.
  • “That since no gate led, by God's will,
  • 350 To Florence, but the one whereat
  • The priests and money-changers sat,
  • He still would wander; for that still,
  • Even through the body's prison-bars,
  • His soul possessed the sun and stars.”
  • Such were his words. It is indeed
  • For ever well our singers should
  • Utter good words and know them good
  • Not through song only; with close heed
  • Lest, having spent for the work's sake
  • 360 Six days, the man be left to make.
  • Months o'er Verona, till the feast
  • Was come for Florence the Free Town:
  • And at the shrine of Baptist John
  • The exiles, girt with many a priest
  • And carrying candles as they went,
  • Were held to mercy of the saint.
  • On the high seats in sober state,—
  • Gold neck-chains range o'er range below
  • Gold screen-work where the lilies grow,—
  • 370 The Heads of the Republic sate,
  • Marking the humbled face go by
  • Each one of his house-enemy.
  • And as each proscript rose and stood
  • From kneeling in the ashen dust
  • On the shrine-steps, some magnate thrust
  • A beard into the velvet hood
  • Of his front colleague's gown, to see
  • The cinders stuck in the bare knee.
  • Tosinghi passed, Manelli passed,
  • 380 Rinucci passed, each in his place;
  • But not an Alighieri's face
  • Went by that day from first to last
  • In the Republic's triumph; nor
  • A foot came home to Dante's door.
  • (Respublica—a public thing:
  • A shameful shameless prostitute,
  • Whose lust with one lord may not suit,
  • So takes by turn its revelling
  • A night with each, till each at morn
  • 390 Is stripped and beaten forth forlorn,
  • And leaves her, cursing her. If she,
  • Indeed, have not some spice-draught, hid
  • In scent under a silver lid,
  • To drench his open throat with—he
  • Once hard asleep; and thrust him not
  • At dawn beneath the stairs to rot.
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  • Such this Republic!—not the Maid
  • He yearned for; she who yet should stand
  • With Heaven's accepted hand in hand,
  • 400 Invulnerable and unbetray'd:
  • To whom, even as to God, should be
  • Obeisance one with Liberty.)
  • Years filled out their twelve moons, and ceased
  • One in another; and alway
  • There were the whole twelve hours each day
  • And each night as the years increased;
  • And rising moon and setting sun
  • Beheld that Dante's work was done.
  • What of his work for Florence? Well
  • 410 It was, he knew, and well must be.
  • Yet evermore her hate's decree
  • Dwelt in his thought intolerable:—
  • His body to be burned,*—his soul
  • To beat its wings at hope's vain goal.
  • What of his work for Beatrice?
  • Now well-nigh was the third song writ,—
  • The stars a third time sealing it
  • With sudden music of pure peace:
  • For echoing thrice the threefold song,
  • 420 The unnumbered stars the tone prolong.†
  • Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
  • He heard the utter harmony
  • Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
  • Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
  • So that all ended with her eyes,
  • Hell, Purgatory, Paradise.
  • “It is my trust, as the years fall,
  • To write more worthily of her
  • Who now, being made God's minister,
  • 430 Looks on His visage and knows all.”
  • Such was the hope that love dar'd blend
  • With grief's slow fires, to make an end
  • Of the “New Life,” his youth's dear book:
  • Adding thereunto: “In such trust
  • I labour, and believe I must
  • Accomplish this which my soul took
  • In charge, if God, my Lord and hers,
  • Leave my life with me a few years.”
  • The trust which he had borne in youth
  • 440 Was all at length accomplished. He
  • At length had written worthily—
  • Yea even of her; no rhymes uncouth
  • 'Twixt tongue and tongue; but by God's aid
  • The first words Italy had said.
Transcribed Footnote (page 14):

* Such was the last sentence passed by Florence against Dante, as a recalcitrant exile.

Transcribed Footnote (page 14):

† E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.— Inferno.

Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.— Purgatorio.

L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle.— Paradiso.

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  • Ah! haply now the heavenly guide
  • Was not the last form seen by him:
  • But there that Beatrice stood slim
  • And bowed in passing at his side,
  • For whom in youth his heart made moan
  • 450 Then when the city sat alone.*
  • Clearly herself: the same whom he
  • Met, not past girlhood, in the street,
  • Low-bosomed and with hidden feet;
  • And then as woman perfectly,
  • In years that followed, many an once,—
  • And now at last among the suns
  • In that high vision. But indeed
  • It may be memory might recall
  • Last to him then the first of all,—
  • 460 The child his boyhood bore in heed
  • Nine years. At length the voice brought peace,—
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice.”
  • All this, being there, we had not seen.
  • Seen only was the shadow wrought
  • On the strong features bound in thought;
  • The vagueness gaining gait and mien;
  • The white streaks gathering clear to view
  • In the burnt beard the women knew.
  • For a tale tells that on his track,
  • 470 As through Verona's streets he went,
  • This saying certain women sent:—
  • “Lo, he that strolls to Hell and back
  • At will! Behold him, how Hell's reek
  • Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.”
  • “Whereat” (Boccaccio's words) “he smiled
  • For pride in fame.” It might be so:
  • Nevertheless we cannot know
  • If haply he were not beguiled
  • To bitterer mirth, who scarce could tell
  • 480 If he indeed were back from Hell.
  • So the day came, after a space,
  • When Dante felt assured that there
  • The sunshine must lie sicklier
  • Even than in any other place,
  • Save only Florence. When that day
  • Had come, he rose and went his way.
  • He went and turned not. From his shoes
  • It may be that he shook the dust,
  • As every righteous dealer must
  • 490 Once and again ere life can close:
  • And unaccomplished destiny
  • Struck cold his forehead, it may be.
Transcribed Footnote (page 15):

* Quomodo sedet sola civitas!—The words quoted by Dante in the Vita Nuova when

he speaks of the death of Beatrice.

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  • No book keeps record how the Prince
  • Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
  • Nor how the Jester stank in speech:
  • While courtiers, used to cringe and wince,
  • Poets and harlots, all the throng,
  • Let loose their scandal and their song.
  • No book keeps record if the seat
  • 500 Which Dante held at his host's board
  • Were sat in next by clerk or lord,—
  • If leman lolled with dainty feet
  • At ease, or hostage brooded there,
  • Or priest lacked silence for his prayer.
  • Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce
  • We know their deeds now: hands which fed
  • Our Dante with that bitter bread;
  • And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
  • Which, of all paths his feet knew well,
  • 510 Were steeper found than Heaven or Hell.
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Sig. 2
more about The Bride's Prelude.
THE BRIDE'S PRELUDE
  • “Sister,” said busy Amelotte
  • To listless Aloÿse;
  • “Along your wedding-road the wheat
  • Bends as to hear your horse's feet,
  • And the noonday stands still for heat.”
  • Amelotte laughed into the air
  • With eyes that sought the sun:
  • But where the walls in long brocade
  • Were screened, as one who is afraid
  • 10 Sat Aloÿse within the shade.
  • And even in shade was gleam enough
  • To shut out full repose
  • From the bride's 'tiring-chamber, which
  • Was like the inner altar-niche
  • Whose dimness worship has made rich.
  • Within the window's heaped recess
  • The light was counterchanged
  • In blent reflexes manifold
  • From perfume-caskets of wrought gold
  • 20 And gems the bride's hair could not hold,
  • All thrust together: and with these
  • A slim-curved lute, which now,
  • At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
  • Was swept in somewise unaware,
  • And shook to music the close air.
  • Against the haloed lattice-panes
  • The bridesmaid sunned her breast;
  • Then to the glass turned tall and free,
  • And braced and shifted daintily
  • 30 Her loin-belt through her côte-hardie.
  • The belt was silver, and the clasp
  • Of lozenged arm-bearings;
  • A world of mirrored tints minute
  • The rippling sunshine wrought into 't,
  • That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.
  • At least an hour had Aloÿse—
  • Her jewels in her hair—
  • Her white gown, as became a bride,
  • Quartered in silver at each side—
  • 40 Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.
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  • Over her bosom, that lay still,
  • The vest was rich in grain,
  • With close pearls wholly overset:
  • Around her throat the fastenings met
  • Of chevesayle and mantelet.
  • Her arms were laid along her lap
  • With the hands open: life
  • Itself did seem at fault in her:
  • Beneath the drooping brows, the stir
  • 50 Of thought made noonday heavier.
  • Long sat she silent; and then raised
  • Her head, with such a gasp
  • As while she summoned breath to speak
  • Fanned high that furnace in the cheek
  • But sucked the heart-pulse cold and weak.
  • (Oh gather round her now, all ye
  • Past seasons of her fear,—
  • Sick springs, and summers deadly cold!
  • To flight your hovering wings unfold,
  • 60 For now your secret shall be told.
  • Ye many sunlights, barbed with darts
  • Of dread detecting flame,—
  • Gaunt moonlights that like sentinels
  • Went past with iron clank of bells,—
  • Draw round and render up your spells!)
  • “Sister,” said Aloÿse, “I had
  • A thing to tell thee of
  • Long since, and could not. But do thou
  • Kneel first in prayer awhile, and bow
  • 70 Thine heart, and I will tell thee now.”
  • Amelotte wondered with her eyes;
  • But her heart said in her:
  • “Dear Aloÿse would have me pray
  • Because the awe she feels to-day
  • Must need more prayers than she can say.”
  • So Amelotte put by the folds
  • That covered up her feet,
  • And knelt,—beyond the arras'd gloom
  • And the hot window's dull perfume,—
  • 80 Where day was stillest in the room.
  • “Queen Mary, hear,” she said, “and say
  • To Jesus the Lord Christ,
  • This bride's new joy, which He confers,
  • New joy to many ministers,
  • And many griefs are bound in hers.”
  • The bride turned in her chair, and hid
  • Her face against the back,
  • And took her pearl-girt elbows in
  • Her hands, and could not yet begin,
  • 90 But shuddering, uttered, “Urscelyn!”
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  • Most weak she was; for as she pressed
  • Her hand against her throat,
  • Along the arras she let trail
  • Her face, as if all heart did fail,
  • And sat with shut eyes, dumb and pale.
  • Amelotte still was on her knees
  • As she had kneeled to pray.
  • Deeming her sister swooned, she thought,
  • At first, some succour to have brought;
  • 100 But Aloÿse rocked, as one distraught.
  • She would have pushed the lattice wide
  • To gain what breeze might be;
  • But marking that no leaf once beat
  • The outside casement, it seemed meet
  • Not to bring in more scent and heat.
  • So she said only: “Aloÿse,
  • Sister, when happened it
  • At any time that the bride came
  • To ill, or spoke in fear of shame,
  • 110 When speaking first the bridegroom's name?”
  • A bird had out its song and ceased
  • Ere the bride spoke. At length
  • She said: “The name is as the thing:—
  • Sin hath no second christening,
  • And shame is all that shame can bring.
  • “In divers places many an while
  • I would have told thee this;
  • But faintness took me, or a fit
  • Like fever. God would not permit
  • 120 That I should change thine eyes with it.
  • “Yet once I spoke, hadst thou but heard:—
  • That time we wandered out
  • All the sun's hours, but missed our way
  • When evening darkened, and so lay
  • The whole night covered up in hay.
  • “At last my face was hidden: so,
  • Having God's hint, I paused
  • Not long; but drew myself more near
  • Where thou wast laid, and shook off fear,
  • 130 And whispered quick into thine ear
  • “Something of the whole tale. At first
  • I lay and bit my hair
  • For the sore silence thou didst keep:
  • Till, as thy breath came long and deep,
  • I knew that thou hadst been asleep.
  • “The moon was covered, but the stars
  • Lasted till morning broke.
  • Awake, thou told'st me that thy dream
  • Had been of me,—that all did seem
  • 140 At jar,—but that it was a dream.
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  • “I knew God's hand and might not speak.
  • After that night I kept
  • Silence and let the record swell:
  • Till now there is much more to tell
  • Which must be told out ill or well.”
  • She paused then, weary, with dry lips
  • Apart. From the outside
  • By fits there boomed a dull report
  • From where i' the hanging tennis-court
  • 150 The bridegroom's retinue made sport.
  • The room lay still in dusty glare,
  • Having no sound through it
  • Except the chirp of a caged bird
  • That came and ceased: and if she stirred,
  • Amelotte's raiment could be heard.
  • Quoth Amelotte: “The night this chanced
  • Was a late summer night
  • Last year! What secret, for Christ's love,
  • Keep'st thou since then? Mary above!
  • 160 What thing is this thou speakest of?
  • “Mary and Christ! Lest when 'tis told
  • I should be prone to wrath,—
  • This prayer beforehand! How she errs
  • Soe'er, take count of grief like hers,
  • Whereof the days are turned to years!”
  • She bowed her neck, and having said,
  • Kept on her knees to hear;
  • And then, because strained thought demands
  • Quiet before it understands,
  • 170 Darkened her eyesight with her hands.
  • So when at last her sister spoke,
  • She did not see the pain
  • O' the mouth nor the ashamèd eyes,
  • But marked the breath that came in sighs
  • And the half-pausing for replies.
  • This was the bride's sad prelude-strain:—
  • “I' the convent where a girl
  • I dwelt till near my womanhood,
  • I had but preachings of the rood
  • 180 And Aves told in solitude
  • “To spend my heart on: and my hand
  • Had but the weary skill
  • To eke out upon silken cloth
  • Christ's visage, or the long bright growth
  • Of Mary's hair, or Satan wroth.
  • “So when at last I went, and thou,
  • A child not known before,
  • Didst come to take the place I left,—
  • My limbs, after such lifelong theft
  • 190 Of life, could be but little deft
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  • “In all that ministers delight
  • To noble women: I
  • Had learned no word of youth's discourse,
  • Nor gazed on games of warriors,
  • Nor trained a hound, nor ruled a horse.
  • “Besides, the daily life i' the sun
  • Made me at first hold back.
  • To thee this came at once; to me
  • It crept with pauses timidly;
  • 200 I am not blithe and strong like thee.
  • “Yet my feet liked the dances well,
  • The songs went to my voice,
  • The music made me shake and weep;
  • And often, all night long, my sleep
  • Gave dreams I had been fain to keep.
  • “But though I loved not holy things,
  • To hear them scorned brought pain,—
  • They were my childhood; and these dames
  • Were merely perjured in saints' names
  • 210 And fixed upon saints' days for games.
  • “And sometimes when my father rode
  • To hunt with his loud friends,
  • I dared not bring him to be quaff'd,
  • As my wont was, his stirrup-draught,
  • Because they jested so and laughed.
  • “At last one day my brothers said,
  • ‘The girl must not grow thus,—
  • Bring her a jennet,—she shall ride.’
  • They helped my mounting, and I tried
  • 220 To laugh with them and keep their side,
  • “But brakes were rough and bents were steep
  • Upon our path that day:
  • My palfrey threw me; and I went
  • Upon men's shoulders home, sore spent,
  • While the chase followed up the scent.
  • “Our shrift-father (and he alone
  • Of all the household there
  • Had skill in leechcraft) was away
  • When I reached home. I tossed, and lay
  • 230 Sullen with anguish the whole day.
  • “For the day passed ere some one brought
  • To mind that in the hunt
  • Rode a young lord she named, long bred
  • Among the priests, whose art (she said)
  • Might chance to stand me in much stead.
  • “I bade them seek and summon him:
  • But long ere this, the chase
  • Had scattered, and he was not found.
  • I lay in the same weary stound,
  • 240 Therefore, until the night came round.
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Note: There are three identical smudges, caused by inked quads, on this page: line 255 (between “bore” and “our”), line 260 (between “as” and “mine”) and line 265 (between “her” and “mind”)
  • “It was dead night and near on twelve
  • When the horse-tramp at length
  • Beat up the echoes of the court:
  • By then, my feverish breath was short
  • With pain the sense could scarce support.
  • “My fond nurse sitting near my feet
  • Rose softly,—her lamp's flame
  • Held in her hand, lest it should make
  • My heated lids, in passing, ache;
  • 250 And she passed softly, for my sake.
  • “Returning soon, she brought the youth
  • They spoke of. Meek he seemed,
  • But good knights held him of stout heart.
  • He was akin to us in part,
  • And bore our shield, but barred athwart.
  • “I now remembered to have seen
  • His face, and heard him praised
  • For letter-lore and medicine,
  • Seeing his youth was nurtured in
  • 260 Priests' knowledge, as mine own had been.”
  • The bride's voice did not weaken here,
  • Yet by her sudden pause
  • She seemed to look for questioning;
  • Or else (small need though) 'twas to bring
  • Well to her mind the bygone thing.
  • Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
  • Gave her a sick recoil;
  • As, dip thy fingers through the green
  • That masks a pool,—where they have been
  • 270 The naked depth is black between.
  • Amelotte kept her knees; her face
  • Was shut within her hands,
  • As it had been throughout the tale;
  • Her forehead's whiteness might avail
  • Nothing to say if she were pale.
  • Although the lattice had dropped loose,
  • There was no wind; the heat
  • Being so at rest that Amelotte
  • Heard far beneath the plunge and float
  • 280 Of a hound swimming in the moat.
  • Some minutes since, two rooks had toiled
  • Home to the nests that crowned
  • Ancestral ash-trees. Through the glare
  • Beating again, they seemed to tear
  • With that thick caw the woof o' the air.
  • But else, 'twas at the dead of noon
  • Absolute silence; all,
  • From the raised bridge and guarded sconce
  • To green-clad places of pleasaùnce
  • 290 Where the long lake was white with swans.
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  • Amelotte spoke not any word
  • Nor moved she once; but felt
  • Between her hands in narrow space
  • Her own hot breath upon her face,
  • And kept in silence the same place.
  • Aloÿse did not hear at all
  • The sounds without. She heard
  • The inward voice (past help obey'd)
  • Which might not slacken nor be stay'd,
  • 300 But urged her till the whole were said.
  • Therefore she spoke again: “That night
  • But little could be done:
  • My foot, held in my nurse's hands,
  • He swathed up heedfully in bands,
  • And for my rest gave close commands.
  • “I slept till noon, but an ill sleep
  • Of dreams: through all that day
  • My side was stiff and caught the breath;
  • Next day, such pain as sickeneth
  • 310 Took me, and I was nigh to death.
  • “Life strove, Death claimed me for his own
  • Through days and nights: but now
  • 'Twas the good father tended me,
  • Having returned. Still, I did see
  • The youth I spoke of constantly.
  • “For he would with my brothers come
  • To stay beside my couch,
  • And fix my eyes against his own,
  • Noting my pulse; or else alone,
  • 320 To sit at gaze while I made moan.
  • “(Some nights I knew he kept the watch,
  • Because my women laid
  • The rushes thick for his steel shoes.)
  • Through many days this pain did use
  • The life God would not let me lose.
  • “At length, with my good nurse to aid,
  • I could walk forth again:
  • And still, as one who broods or grieves,
  • At noons I'd meet him and at eves,
  • 330 With idle feet that drove the leaves.
  • “The day when I first walked alone
  • Was thinned in grass and leaf,
  • And yet a goodly day o' the year:
  • The last bird's cry upon mine ear
  • Left my brain weak, it was so clear.
  • “The tears were sharp within mine eyes.
  • I sat down, being glad,
  • And wept; but stayed the sudden flow
  • Anon, for footsteps that fell slow;
  • 340 'Twas that youth passed me, bowing low.
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  • “He passed me without speech; but when,
  • At least an hour gone by,
  • Rethreading the same covert, he
  • Saw I was still beneath the tree,
  • He spoke and sat him down with me.
  • “Little we said; nor one heart heard
  • Even what was said within;
  • And, faltering some farewell, I soon
  • Rose up; but then i' the autumn noon
  • 350 My feeble brain whirled like a swoon.
  • “He made me sit. ‘Cousin, I grieve
  • Your sickness stays by you.’
  • ‘I would,’ said I, ‘that you did err
  • So grieving. I am wearier
  • Than death, of the sickening dying year.’
  • “He answered: ‘If your weariness
  • Accepts a remedy,
  • I hold one and can give it you.’
  • I gazed: ‘What ministers thereto,
  • 360 Be sure,’ I said, “that I will do.’
  • “He went on quickly:—'Twas a cure
  • He had not ever named
  • Unto our kin lest they should stint
  • Their favour, for some foolish hint
  • Of wizardry or magic in't:
  • “But that if he were let to come
  • Within my bower that night,
  • (My women still attending me,
  • He said, while he remain'd there,) he
  • 370 Could teach me the cure privily.
  • “I bade him come that night. He came;
  • But little in his speech
  • Was cure or sickness spoken of,
  • Only a passionate fierce love
  • That clamoured upon God above.
  • “My women wondered, leaning close
  • Aloof. At mine own heart
  • I think great wonder was not stirr'd.
  • I dared not listen, yet I heard
  • 380 His tangled speech, word within word.
  • “He craved my pardon first,—all else
  • Wild tumult. In the end
  • He remained silent at my feet
  • Fumbling the rushes. Strange quick heat
  • Made all the blood of my life meet.
  • “And lo! I loved him. I but said,
  • If he would leave me then,
  • His hope some future might forecast.
  • His hot lips stung my hand: at last
  • 390 My damsels led him forth in haste.”
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  • The bride took breath to pause; and turned
  • Her gaze where Amelotte
  • Knelt,—the gold hair upon her back
  • Quite still in all its threads,—the track
  • Of her still shadow sharp and black.
  • That listening without sight had grown
  • To stealthy dread; and now
  • That the one sound she had to mark
  • Left her alone too, she was stark
  • 400 Afraid, as children in the dark.
  • Her fingers felt her temples beat;
  • Then came that brain-sickness
  • Which thinks to scream, and murmureth;
  • And pent between her hands, the breath
  • Was damp against her face like death.
  • Her arms both fell at once; but when
  • She gasped upon the light,
  • Her sense returned. She would have pray'd
  • To change whatever words still stay'd
  • 410 Behind, but felt there was no aid.
  • So she rose up, and having gone
  • Within the window's arch
  • Once more, she sat there, all intent
  • On torturing doubts, and once more bent
  • To hear, in mute bewilderment.
  • But Aloÿse still paused. Thereon
  • Amelotte gathered voice
  • In somewise from the torpid fear
  • Coiled round her spirit. Low but clear
  • 420 She said: “Speak, sister; for I hear.”
  • But Aloÿse threw up her neck
  • And called the name of God:—
  • “Judge, God, 'twixt her and me to-day!
  • She knows how hard this is to say,
  • Yet will not have one word away.”
  • Her sister was quite silent. Then
  • Afresh:—“Not she, dear Lord!
  • Thou be my judge, on Thee I call!”
  • She ceased,—her forehead smote the wall:
  • 430 “Is there a God,” she said “at all”?
  • Amelotte shuddered at the soul,
  • But did not speak. The pause
  • Was long this time. At length the bride
  • Pressed her hand hard against her side,
  • And trembling between shame and pride
  • Said by fierce effort: “From that night
  • Often at nights we met:
  • That night, his passion could but rave:
  • The next, what grace his lips did crave
  • 440 I knew not, but I know I gave.”
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  • Where Amelotte was sitting, all
  • The light and warmth of day
  • Were so upon her without shade
  • That the thing seemed by sunshine made
  • Most foul and wanton to be said.
  • She would have questioned more, and known
  • The whole truth at its worst,
  • But held her silent, in mere shame
  • Of day. 'Twas only these words came:—
  • 450 “Sister, thou hast not said his name.”
  • “Sister,” quoth Aloÿse, “thou know'st
  • His name. I said that he
  • Was in a manner of our kin.
  • Waiting the title he might win,
  • They called him the Lord Urscelyn.”
  • The bridegroom's name, to Amelotte
  • Daily familiar,—heard
  • Thus in this dreadful history,—
  • Was dreadful to her; as might be
  • 460 Thine own voice speaking unto thee.
  • The day's mid-hour was almost full;
  • Upon the dial-plate
  • The angel's sword stood near at One.
  • An hour's remaining yet; the sun
  • Will not decrease till all be done.
  • Through the bride's lattice there crept in
  • At whiles (from where the train
  • Of minstrels, till the marriage-call,
  • Loitered at windows of the wall,)
  • 470 Stray lute-notes, sweet and musical.
  • They clung in the green growths and moss
  • Against the outside stone;
  • Low like dirge-wail or requiem
  • They murmured, lost 'twixt leaf and stem:
  • There was no wind to carry them.
  • Amelotte gathered herself back
  • Into the wide recess
  • That the sun flooded: it o'erspread
  • Like flame the hair upon her head
  • 480 And fringed her face with burning red.
  • All things seemed shaken and at change:
  • A silent place o' the hills
  • She knew, into her spirit came:
  • Within herself she said its name
  • And wondered was it still the same.
  • The bride (whom silence goaded) now
  • Said strongly,—her despair
  • By stubborn will kept underneath:—
  • “Sister, 'twere well thou didst not breathe
  • 490 That curse of thine. Give me my wreath.”
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  • “Sister,” said Amelotte, “abide
  • In peace. Be God thy judge,
  • As thou hast said—not I. For me,
  • I merely will thank God that he
  • Whom thou hast lovèd loveth thee.”
  • Then Aloÿse lay back, and laughed
  • With wan lips bitterly,
  • Saying, “Nay, thank thou God for this,—
  • That never any soul like his
  • 500 Shall have its portion where love is.”
  • Weary of wonder, Amelotte
  • Sat silent: she would ask
  • No more, though all was unexplained:
  • She was too weak; the ache still pained
  • Her eyes,—her forehead's pulse remained.
  • The silence lengthened. Aloÿse
  • Was fain to turn her face
  • Apart, to where the arras told
  • Two Testaments, the New and Old,
  • 510 In shapes and meanings manifold.
  • One solace that was gained, she hid.
  • Her sister, from whose curse
  • Her heart recoiled, had blessed instead:
  • Yet would not her pride have it said
  • How much the blessing comforted.
  • Only, on looking round again
  • After some while, the face
  • Which from the arras turned away
  • Was more at peace and less at bay
  • 520 With shame than it had been that day.
  • She spoke right on, as if no pause
  • Had come between her speech:
  • “That year from warmth grew bleak and pass'd,”
  • She said; “the days from first to last
  • How slow,—woe's me! the nights how fast!
  • “From first to last it was not known:
  • My nurse, and of my train
  • Some four or five, alone could tell
  • What terror kept inscrutable:
  • 530 There was good need to guard it well.
  • “Not the guilt only made the shame,
  • But he was without land
  • And born amiss. He had but come
  • To train his youth here at our home,
  • And, being man, depart therefrom.
  • ‘Of the whole time each single day
  • Brought fear and great unrest:
  • It seemed that all would not avail
  • Some once,—that my close watch would fail,
  • 540 And some sign, somehow, tell the tale.
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  • “The noble maidens that I knew,
  • My fellows, oftentimes
  • Midway in talk or sport, would look
  • A wonder which my fears mistook,
  • To see how I turned faint and shook.
  • “They had a game of cards, where each
  • By painted arms might find
  • What knight she should be given to.
  • Ever with trembling hand I threw
  • 550 Lest I should learn the thing I knew.
  • “And once it came. And Aure d'Honvaulx
  • Held up the bended shield
  • And laughed: ‘Gramercy for our share!—
  • If to our bridal we but fare
  • To smutch the blazon that we bear!’
  • “But proud Denise de Villenbois
  • Kissed me, and gave her wench
  • The card, and said: ‘If in these bowers
  • You women play at paramours,
  • 560 You must not mix your game with ours.’
  • “And one upcast it from her hand:
  • ‘Lo! see how high he'll soar!’
  • But then their laugh was bitterest;
  • For the wind veered at fate's behest
  • And blew it back into my breast.
  • “Oh! if I met him in the day
  • Or heard his voice,—at meals
  • Or at the Mass or through the hall,—
  • A look turned towards me would appal
  • 570 My heart by seeming to know all.
  • “Yet I grew curious of my shame,
  • And sometimes in the church,
  • On hearing such a sin rebuked,
  • Have held my girdle-glass unhooked
  • To see how such a woman looked.
  • “But if at night he did not come,
  • I lay all deadly cold
  • To think they might have smitten sore
  • And slain him, and as the night wore,
  • 580 His corpse be lying at my door.
  • “And entering or going forth,
  • Our proud shield o'er the gate
  • Seemed to arraign my shrinking eyes.
  • With tremors and unspoken lies
  • The year went past me in this wise.
  • “About the spring of the next year
  • An ailing fell on me;
  • (I had been stronger till the spring;)
  • 'Twas mine old sickness gathering,
  • 590 I thought; but 'twas another thing.
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  • “I had such yearnings as brought tears,
  • And a wan dizziness:
  • Motion, like feeling, grew intense;
  • Sight was a haunting evidence
  • And sound a pang that snatched the sense.
  • “It now was hard on that great ill
  • Which lost our wealth from us
  • And all our lands. Accursed be
  • The peevish fools of liberty
  • 600 Who will not let themselves be free!
  • “The Prince was fled into the west:
  • A price was on his blood,
  • But he was safe. To us his friends
  • He left that ruin which attends
  • The strife against God's secret ends.
  • “The league dropped all asunder,—lord,
  • Gentle and serf. Our house
  • Was marked to fall. And a day came
  • When half the wealth that propped our name
  • 610 Went from us in a wind of flame.
  • “Six hours I lay upon the wall
  • And saw it burn. But when
  • It clogged the day in a black bed
  • Of louring vapour, I was led
  • Down to the postern, and we fled.
  • “But ere we fled, there was a voice
  • Which I heard speak, and say
  • That many of our friends, to shun
  • Our fate, had left us and were gone,
  • 620 And that Lord Urscelyn was one.
  • “That name, as was its wont, made sight
  • And hearing whirl. I gave
  • No heed but only to the name:
  • I held my senses, dreading them,
  • And was at strife to look the same.
  • “We rode and rode. As the speed grew,
  • The growth of some vague curse
  • Swarmed in my brain. It seemed to me
  • Numbed by the swiftness, but would be—
  • 630 That still—clear knowledge certainly.
  • “Night lapsed. At dawn the sea was there
  • And the sea-wind: afar
  • The ravening surge was hoarse and loud,
  • And underneath the dim dawn-cloud
  • Each stalking wave shook like a shroud.
  • “From my drawn litter I looked out
  • Unto the swarthy sea,
  • And knew. That voice, which late had cross'd
  • Mine ears, seemed with the foam uptoss'd:
  • 640 I knew that Urscelyn was lost.
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  • “Then I spake all: I turned on one
  • And on the other, and spake:
  • My curse laughed in me to behold
  • Their eyes: I sat up, stricken cold,
  • Mad of my voice till all was told.
  • “Oh! of my brothers, Hugues was mute,
  • And Gilles was wild and loud,
  • And Raoul strained abroad his face,
  • As if his gnashing wrath could trace
  • 650 Even there the prey that it must chase.
  • “And round me murmured all our train,
  • Hoarse as the hoarse-tongued sea;
  • Till Hugues from silence louring woke,
  • And cried: ‘What ails the foolish folk?
  • Know ye not frenzy's lightning-stroke?’
  • “But my stern father came to them
  • And quelled them with his look,
  • Silent and deadly pale. Anon
  • I knew that we were hastening on,
  • 660 My litter closed and the light gone.
  • “And I remember all that day
  • The barren bitter wind
  • Without, and the sea's moaning there
  • That I first moaned with unaware,
  • And when I knew, shook down my hair.
  • “Few followed us or faced our flight:
  • Once only I could hear,
  • Far in the front, loud scornful words,
  • And cries I knew of hostile lords,
  • 670 And crash of spears and grind of swords.
  • “It was soon ended. On that day
  • Before the light had changed
  • We reached our refuge; miles of rock
  • Bulwarked for war; whose strength might mock
  • Sky, sea, or man, to storm or shock.
  • “Listless and feebly conscious, I
  • Lay far within the night
  • Awake. The many pains incurred
  • That day,—the whole, said, seen or heard,—
  • 680 Stayed by in me as things deferred.
  • “Not long. At dawn I slept. In dreams
  • All was passed through afresh
  • From end to end. As the morn heaved
  • Towards noon, I, waking sore aggrieved,
  • That I might die, cursed God, and lived.
  • “Many days went, and I saw none
  • Except my women. They
  • Calmed their wan faces, loving me;
  • And when they wept, lest I should see,
  • 690 Would chaunt a desolate melody.
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  • “Panic unthreatened shook my blood
  • Each sunset, all the slow
  • Subsiding of the turbid light.
  • I would rise, sister, as I might,
  • And bathe my forehead through the night
  • “To elude madness. The stark walls
  • Made chill the mirk: and when
  • We oped our curtains, to resume
  • Sun-sickness after long sick gloom,
  • 700 The withering sea-wind walked the room.
  • “Through the gaunt windows the great gales
  • Bore in the tattered clumps
  • Of waif-weed and the tamarisk-boughs;
  • And sea-mews, 'mid the storm's carouse,
  • Were flung, wild-clamouring, in the house.
  • “My hounds I had not; and my hawk,
  • Which they had saved for me,
  • Wanting the sun and rain to beat
  • His wings, soon lay with gathered feet;
  • 710 And my flowers faded, lacking heat.
  • “Such still were griefs: for grief was still
  • A separate sense, untouched
  • Of that despair which had become
  • My life. Great anguish could benumb
  • My soul,—my heart was quarrelsome.
  • “Time crept. Upon a day at length
  • My kinsfolk sat with me:
  • That which they asked was bare and plain:
  • I answered: the whole bitter strain
  • 720 Was again said, and heard again.
  • “Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turned
  • The point against my breast.
  • I bared it, smiling: ‘To the heart
  • Strike home,’ I said; ‘another dart
  • Wreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.’
  • “'Twas then my sire struck down the sword,
  • And said with shaken lips:
  • ‘She from whom all of you receive
  • Your life, so smiled; and I forgive.’
  • 730 Thus, for my mother's sake, I live.
  • “But I, a mother even as she,
  • Turned shuddering to the wall:
  • For I said: ‘Great God! and what would I do,
  • When to the sword, with the thing I knew,
  • I offered not one life but two!’
  • “Then I fell back from them, and lay
  • Outwearied. My tired sense
  • Soon filmed and settled, and like stone
  • I slept; till something made me moan,
  • 740 And I woke up at night alone.
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  • “I woke at midnight, cold and dazed;
  • Because I found myself
  • Seated upright, with bosom bare,
  • Upon my bed, combing my hair,
  • Ready to go, I knew not where.
  • “It dawned light day,—the last of those
  • Long months of longing days.
  • That noon, the change was wrought on me
  • In somewise,—nought to hear or see,—
  • 750 Only a trance and agony.”
  • The bride's voice failed her, from no will
  • To pause. The bridesmaid leaned,
  • And where the window-panes were white,
  • Looked for the day: she knew not quite
  • If there were either day or night.
  • It seemed to Aloÿse that the whole
  • Day's weight lay back on her
  • Like lead. The hours that did remain
  • Beat their dry wings upon her brain
  • 760 Once in mid-flight, and passed again.
  • There hung a cage of burnt perfumes
  • In the recess: but these,
  • For some hours, weak against the sun,
  • Had simmered in white ash. From One
  • The second quarter was begun.
  • They had not heard the stroke. The air,
  • Though altered with no wind,
  • Breathed now by pauses, so to say:
  • Each breath was time that went away,—
  • 770 Each pause a minute of the day.
  • I' the almonry, the almoner,
  • Hard by, had just dispensed
  • Church-dole and march-dole. High and wide
  • Now rose the shout of thanks, which cried
  • On God that He should bless the bride.
  • Its echo thrilled within their feet,
  • And in the furthest rooms
  • Was heard, where maidens flushed and gay
  • Wove with stooped necks the wreaths alway
  • 780 Fair for the virgin's marriage-day.
  • The mother leaned along, in thought
  • After her child; till tears,
  • Bitter, not like a wedded girl's,
  • Fell down her breast along her curls,
  • And ran in the close work of pearls.
  • The speech ached at her heart. She said:
  • “Sweet Mary, do thou plead
  • This hour with thy most blessed Son
  • To let these shameful words atone,
  • 790 That I may die when I have done.”
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Sig. 3
  • The thought ached at her soul. Yet now:—
  • “Itself—that life” (she said,)
  • “Out of my weary life—when sense
  • Unclosed, was gone. What evil men's
  • Most evil hands had borne it thence
  • “I knew, and cursed them. Still in sleep
  • I have my child; and pray
  • To know if it indeed appear
  • As in my dream's perpetual sphere,
  • 800 That I—death reached—may seek it there.
  • “Sleeping, I wept; though until dark
  • A fever dried mine eyes
  • Kept open; save when a tear might
  • Be forced from the mere ache of sight.
  • And I nursed hatred day and night.
  • “Aye, and I sought revenge by spells;
  • And vainly many a time
  • Have laid my face into the lap
  • Of a wise woman, and heard clap
  • 810 Her thunder, the fiend's juggling trap.
  • “At length I feared to curse them, lest
  • From evil lips the curse
  • Should be a blessing; and would sit
  • Rocking myself and stifling it
  • With babbled jargon of no wit.
  • “But this was not at first: the days
  • And weeks made frenzied months
  • Before this came. My curses, pil'd
  • Then with each hour unreconcil'd,
  • 820 Still wait for those who took my child.”
  • She stopped, grown fainter. “Amelotte,
  • Surely,” she said, “this sun
  • Sheds judgment-fire from the fierce south:
  • It does not let me breathe: the drouth
  • Is like sand spread within my mouth.”
  • The bridesmaid rose. I' the outer glare
  • Gleamed her pale cheeks, and eyes
  • Sore troubled; and aweary weigh'd
  • Her brows just lifted out of shade;
  • 830 And the light jarred within her head.
  • 'Mid flowers fair-heaped there stood a bowl
  • With water. She therein
  • Through eddying bubbles slid a cup,
  • And offered it, being risen up,
  • Close to her sister's mouth, to sup.
  • The freshness dwelt upon her sense,
  • Yet did not the bride drink;
  • But she dipped in her hand anon
  • And cooled her temples; and all wan
  • 840 With lids that held their ache, went on.
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  • “Through those dark watches of my woe,
  • Time, an ill plant, had waxed
  • Apace. That year was finished. Dumb
  • And blind, life's wheel with earth's had come
  • Whirled round: and we might seek our home.
  • “Our wealth was rendered back, with wealth
  • Snatched from our foes. The house
  • Had more than its old strength and fame:
  • But still 'neath the fair outward claim
  • 850 I rankled,—a fierce core of shame.
  • “It chilled me from their eyes and lips
  • Upon a night of those
  • First days of triumph, as I gazed
  • Listless and sick, or scarcely raised
  • My face to mark the sports they praised.
  • “The endless changes of the dance
  • Bewildered me: the tones
  • Of lute and cithern struggled tow'rds
  • Some sense; and still in the last chords
  • 860 The music seemed to sing wild words.
  • “My shame possessed me in the light
  • And pageant, till I swooned.
  • But from that hour I put my shame
  • From me, and cast it over them
  • By God's command and in God's name
  • “For my child's bitter sake. O thou
  • Once felt against my heart
  • With longing of the eyes,—a pain
  • Since to my heart for ever,—then
  • 870 Beheld not, and not felt again!”
  • She scarcely paused, continuing:—
  • “That year drooped weak in March;
  • And April, finding the streams dry,
  • Choked, with no rain, in dust: the sky
  • Shall not be fainter this July.
  • “Men sickened; beasts lay without strength;
  • The year died in the land.
  • But I, already desolate,
  • Said merely, sitting down to wait,—
  • 880 ‘The seasons change and Time wears late.’
  • “For I had my hard secret told,
  • In secret, to a priest;
  • With him I communed; and he said
  • The world's soul, for its sins, was sped,
  • And the sun's courses numberèd.
  • “The year slid like a corpse afloat:
  • None trafficked,—who had bread
  • Did eat. That year our legions, come
  • Thinned from the place of war, at home
  • 890 Found busier death, more burdensome.
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Note: The end-punctuation marks in line 891 below (immediately following the word “them”), line 905 (immediately following the word “know'st”), and line 911 (immediately following the word “house,”) are badly type-damaged. It is unclear whether the marks are commas or periods.
  • “Tidings and rumours came with them,
  • The first for months. The chiefs
  • Sat daily at our board, and in
  • Their speech were names of friend and kin:
  • One day they spoke of Urscelyn.
  • “The words were light, among the rest:
  • Quick glance my brothers sent
  • To sift the speech; and I, struck through,
  • Sat sick and giddy in full view:
  • 900 Yet did none gaze, so many knew.
  • “Because in the beginning, much
  • Had caught abroad, through them
  • That heard my clamour on the coast:
  • But two were hanged; and then the most
  • Held silence wisdom, as thou know'st.
  • “That year the convent yielded thee
  • Back to our home; and thou
  • Then knew'st not how I shuddered cold
  • To kiss thee, seeming to enfold
  • 910 To my changed heart myself of old.
  • “Then there was showing thee the house,
  • So many rooms and doors;
  • Thinking the while how thou wouldst start
  • If once I flung the doors apart
  • Of one dull chamber in my heart.
  • “And yet I longed to open it;
  • And often in that year
  • Of plague and want, when side by side
  • We've knelt to pray with them that died,
  • 920 My prayer was, ‘Show her what I hide!’”
End of Part I
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more about Jenny.
JENNY

Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never name her, child! —(Mrs. Quickly.)

  • Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
  • Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
  • Whose head upon my knee to-night
  • Rests for a while, as if grown light
  • With all our dances and the sound
  • To which the wild tunes spun you round:
  • Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
  • Of kisses which the blush between
  • Could hardly make much daintier;
  • 10 Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
  • Is countless gold incomparable:
  • Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
  • Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
  • Poor flower left torn since yesterday
  • Until to-morrow leave you bare;
  • Poor handful of bright spring-water
  • Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face;
  • Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
  • Thus with your head upon my knee;—
  • 20 Whose person or whose purse may be
  • The lodestar of your reverie?
  • This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
  • A change from mine so full of books,
  • Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
  • So many captive hours of youth,—
  • The hours they thieve from day and night
  • To make one's cherished work come right,
  • And leave it wrong for all their theft,
  • Even as to-night my work was left:
  • 30 Until I vowed that since my brain
  • And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
  • My feet should have some dancing too:—
  • And thus it was I met with you.
  • Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
  • For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
  • You seem too tired to get to bed.
  • It was a careless life I led
  • When rooms like this were scarce so strange
  • Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
  • 40 The many aims or the few years?
  • Because to-night it all appears
  • Something I do not know again.
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  • The cloud's not danced out of my brain—
  • The cloud that made it turn and swim
  • While hour by hour the books grew dim.
  • Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
  • For all your wealth of loosened hair,
  • Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
  • And warm sweets open to the waist,
  • 50 All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
  • You know not what a book you seem,
  • Half-read by lightning in a dream!
  • How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
  • And I should be ashamed to say:—
  • Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
  • But while my thought runs on like this
  • With wasteful whims more than enough,
  • I wonder what you're thinking of.
  • If of myself you think at all,
  • 60 What is the thought?—conjectural
  • On sorry matters best unsolved?—
  • Or inly is each grace revolved
  • To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
  • To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
  • That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
  • And let you rest upon my knee.
  • For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
  • You're thankful for a little rest,—
  • Glad from the crush to rest within,
  • 70 From the heart-sickness and the din
  • Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
  • Mocks you because your gown is rich;
  • And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
  • Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
  • Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak,
  • And other nights than yours bespeak;
  • And from the wise unchildish elf,
  • To schoolmate lesser than himself
  • Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
  • 80 Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
  • From shame and shame's outbraving too,
  • Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
  • But most from the hatefulness of man,
  • Who spares not to end what he began,
  • Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
  • Who, having used you at his will,
  • Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
  • I serve the dishes and the wine.
  • Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up:
  • 90 I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
  • And do not let me think of you,
  • Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
  • What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
  • Your head there, so you do not sleep;
  • But that the weariness may pass
  • And leave you merry, take this glass.
  • Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
  • If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
  • Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!
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  • 100 Behold the lilies of the field,
  • They toil not neither do they spin;
  • (So doth the ancient text begin,—
  • Not of such rest as one of these
  • Can share.) Another rest and ease
  • Along each summer-sated path
  • From its new lord the garden hath,
  • Than that whose spring in blessings ran
  • Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
  • Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
  • 110 The lilies sickened unto death.
  • What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
  • Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
  • Like winter on the garden-bed.
  • But you had roses left in May,—
  • They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
  • But must your roses die, and those
  • Their purfled buds that should unclose?
  • Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
  • Still red as from the broken heart,
  • 120 And here's the naked stem of thorns.
  • Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
  • As yet of winter. Sickness here
  • Or want alone could waken fear,—
  • Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
  • Except when there may rise unsought
  • Haply at times a passing thought
  • Of the old days which seem to be
  • Much older than any history
  • That is written in any book;
  • 130 When she would lie in fields and look
  • Along the ground through the blown grass
  • And wonder where the city was,
  • Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
  • They told her then for a child's tale.
  • Jenny, you know the city now.
  • A child can tell the tale there, how
  • Some things which are not yet enroll'd
  • In market-lists are bought and sold
  • Even till the early Sunday light,
  • 140 When Saturday night is market-night
  • Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
  • And market-night in the Haymarket.
  • Our learned London children know,
  • Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
  • Have seen your lifted silken skirt
  • Advertise dainties through the dirt;
  • Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
  • On virtue; and have learned your look
  • When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
  • 150 Along the streets alone, and there,
  • Round the long park, across the bridge,
  • The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
  • Wind on together and apart,
  • A fiery serpent for your heart.
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Note: Ink smudge on page 39, line 201 (between “a” and “kind”).
  • Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
  • Suppose I were to think aloud,—
  • What if to her all this were said?
  • Why, as a volume seldom read
  • Being opened halfway shuts again,
  • 160 So might the pages of her brain
  • Be parted at such words, and thence
  • Close back upon the dusty sense.
  • For is there hue or shape defin'd
  • In Jenny's desecrated mind,
  • Where all contagious currents meet,
  • A Lethe of the middle street?
  • Nay, it reflects not any face,
  • Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
  • But as they coil those eddies clot,
  • 170 And night and day remember not.
  • Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
  • Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
  • So young and soft and tired; so fair,
  • With chin thus nestled in your hair,
  • Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
  • As if some sky of dreams shone through!
  • Just as another woman sleeps!
  • Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
  • Of doubt and horror,—what to say
  • 180 Or think,—this awful secret sway,
  • The potter's power over the clay!
  • Of the same lump (it has been said)
  • For honour and dishonour made,
  • Two sister vessels. Here is one.
  • My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
  • And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
  • So mere a woman in her ways:
  • And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
  • Are like her lips that tell the truth,
  • 190 My cousin Nell is fond of love.
  • And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
  • Who does not prize her, guard her well?
  • The love of change, in cousin Nell,
  • Shall find the best and hold it dear:
  • The unconquered mirth turn quieter
  • Not through her own, through others' woe:
  • The conscious pride of beauty glow
  • Beside another's pride in her,
  • One little part of all they share.
  • 200 For Love himself shall ripen these
  • In a kind soil to just increase
  • Through years of fertilizing peace.
  • Of the same lump (as it is said)
  • For honour and dishonour made,
  • Two sister vessels. Here is one.
  • It makes a goblin of the sun.
  • So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
  • Of the first common kindred link?
  • Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
  • 210 It seems that all things take their turn;
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  • And who shall say but this fair tree
  • May need, in changes that may be,
  • Your children's children's charity?
  • Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
  • Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
  • Till in the end, the Day of Days,
  • At Judgment, one of his own race,
  • As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
  • His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
  • 220 How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!
  • Might not the dial scorn itself
  • That has such hours to register?
  • Yet as to me, even so to her
  • Are golden sun and silver moon,
  • In daily largesse of earth's boon,
  • Counted for life-coins to one tune.
  • And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
  • Through some one man this life be lost,
  • Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?
  • 230 Fair shines the gilded aureole
  • In which our highest painters place
  • Some living woman's simple face.
  • And the stilled features thus descried
  • As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
  • The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
  • And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
  • With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand
  • To show them to men's souls, might stand,
  • Whole ages long, the whole world through,
  • 240 For preachings of what God can do.
  • What has man done here? How atone,
  • Great God, for this which man has done?
  • And for the body and soul which by
  • Man's pitiless doom must now comply
  • With lifelong hell, what lullaby
  • Of sweet forgetful second birth
  • Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
  • What measure of God's rest endows
  • The many mansions of his house.
  • 250 If but a woman's heart might see
  • Such erring heart unerringly
  • For once! But that can never be.
  • Like a rose shut in a book
  • In which pure women may not look,
  • For its base pages claim control
  • To crush the flower within the soul;
  • Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
  • Pale as transparent Psyche-wings,
  • To the vile text, are traced such things
  • 260 As might make lady's cheek indeed
  • More than a living rose to read;
  • So nought save foolish foulness may
  • Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
  • And so the life-blood of this rose,
  • Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
  • Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
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  • Yet still it keeps such faded show
  • Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
  • That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
  • 270 The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
  • Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
  • Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
  • Love roses better for its sake:—
  • Only that this can never be:—
  • Even so unto her sex is she.
  • Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
  • The woman almost fades from view.
  • A cipher of man's changeless sum
  • Of lust, past, present, and to come,
  • 280 Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
  • To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
  • Like a toad within a stone
  • Seated while Time crumbles on;
  • Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
  • For Man's transgression at the first;
  • Which, living through all centuries,
  • Not once has seen the sun arise;
  • Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
  • The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
  • 290 Which always—whitherso the stone
  • Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
  • Aye, and shall not be driven out
  • Till that which shuts him round about
  • Break at the very Master's stroke,
  • And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
  • And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
  • Even so within this world is Lust.
  • Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
  • Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
  • 300 You'd not believe by what strange roads
  • Thought travels, when your beauty goads
  • A man to-night to think of toads!
  • Jenny, wake up . . . . Why, there's the dawn!
  • And there's an early waggon drawn
  • To market, and some sheep that jog
  • Bleating before a barking dog;
  • And the old streets come peering through
  • Another night that London knew;
  • And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
  • 310 So on the wings of day decamps
  • My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
  • To shiver off as lights creep in
  • Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
  • And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
  • Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
  • Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
  • And in the alcove coolly spread
  • Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
  • And yonder your fair face I see
  • 320 Reflected lying on my knee,
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  • Where teems with first foreshadowings
  • Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:
  • And on your bosom all night worn
  • Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn,
  • But dies not yet this summer morn.
  • And now without, as if some word
  • Had called upon them that they heard,
  • The London sparrows far and nigh
  • Clamour together suddenly;
  • 330 And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake
  • Here in their song his part must take,
  • Because here too the day doth break.
  • And somehow in myself the dawn
  • Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
  • Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
  • But will it wake her if I heap
  • These cushions thus beneath her head
  • Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
  • My Jenny, while you dream. And there
  • 340 I lay among your golden hair,
  • Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
  • These golden coins.
  • For still one deems
  • That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
  • New magic on the magic purse,—
  • Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
  • Between the threads fine fumes arise
  • And shape their pictures in the brain.
  • There roll no streets in glare and rain,
  • Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
  • 350 But delicately sighs in musk
  • The homage of the dim boudoir;
  • Or like a palpitating star
  • Thrilled into song, the opera-night
  • Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
  • Or at the carriage-window shine
  • Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
  • Whirls through its hour of health (divine
  • For her) the concourse of the Park.
  • And though in the discounted dark
  • 360 Her functions there and here are one,
  • Beneath the lamps and in the sun
  • There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
  • Apparelled beyond parallel.
  • Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.
  • For even the Paphian Venus seems
  • A goddess o'er the realms of love,
  • When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
  • Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd
  • But hide Priapus to the waist,
  • 370 And whoso looks on him shall see
  • An eligible deity.
  • Why, Jenny, waking here alone
  • May help you to remember one,
  • Though all the memory's long outworn
  • Of many a double-pillowed morn.
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  • I think I see you when you wake,
  • And rub your eyes for me, and shake
  • My gold, in rising, from your hair,
  • A Danaë for a moment there.
  • 380 Jenny, my love rang true! for still
  • Love at first sight is vague, until
  • That tinkling makes him audible.
  • And must I mock you to the last,
  • Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
  • Because some thoughts not born amiss
  • Rose at a poor fair face like this?
  • Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
  • In my life, as in hers, they show,
  • By a far gleam which I may near,
  • 390 A dark path I can strive to clear.
  • Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.
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more about A Last Confession.
A LAST CONFESSION

( Regno Lombardo-Veneto, 1848)
  • Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
  • Wear daggers in their garters: for they know
  • That they might hate another girl to death
  • Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
  • I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.
  • Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
  • That day in going to meet her,—that last day
  • For the last time, she said;—of all the love
  • And all the hopeless hope that she might change
  • 10 And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
  • At places we both knew along the road,
  • Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
  • Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
  • So close they gathered round me—they would all
  • Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
  • To plead my cause with her against herself
  • So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
  • You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
  • And only then, if God can pardon me.
  • 20 What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.
  • I passed a village-fair upon my road,
  • And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
  • Some little present: such might prove, I said,
  • Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
  • A parting gift. And there it was I bought
  • The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.
  • That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
  • For certain, it must be a parting gift.
  • And, standing silent now at last, I looked
  • 30 Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
  • Still trying hard to din into my ears
  • Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,
  • If only it could make me understand.
  • One moment thus. Another, and her face
  • Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
  • So that I thought, if now she were to speak
  • I could not hear her. Then again I knew
  • All, as we stood together on the sand
  • At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.
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Note: Line 59 contains a typo: “fiftul” is printed instead of “fitful”.
  • 40 “Take it,” I said, and held it out to her,
  • While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
  • “Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said.
  • Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
  • Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
  • Only she put it by from her and laughed.
  • Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
  • But God heard that. Will God remember all?
  • It was another laugh than the sweet sound
  • Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
  • 50 Eleven years before, when first I found her
  • Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
  • Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
  • Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
  • She might have served a painter to pourtray
  • That heavenly child which in the latter days
  • Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
  • I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
  • And hardly fed; and so her words at first
  • Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees
  • 60 And voices in the air that knew my name.
  • And I remember that I sat me down
  • Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
  • Must be all over or had never been,
  • We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
  • Her parents both were gone away from her.
  • I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
  • But when I asked her this, she looked again
  • Into my face and said that yestereve
  • They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
  • 70 And gave her all the bread they had with them,
  • And then had gone together up the hill
  • Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
  • Into the great red light; “and so,” she said,
  • “I have come up here too; and when this evening
  • They step out of the light as they stepped in,
  • I shall be here to kiss them.” And she laughed.
  • Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
  • And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
  • When last I had been there a month ago,
  • 80 Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed
  • By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
  • For wives and mothers walked the public street,
  • Saying aloud that if their husbands feared
  • To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
  • Till they had earned it there. So then this child
  • Was piteous to me; for all told me then
  • Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
  • To man's or to the Church's charity,
  • Because of the great famine, rather than
  • 90 To watch her growing thin between their knees.
  • With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
  • And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
  • And all my childhood found me on the hills;
  • And so I took her with me.
  • I was young.
  • Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gave
  • The wounds I die of now had brought me then
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  • Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
  • As any hiding hunted man must live.
  • It was no easy thing to keep a child
  • 100 In safety; for herself it was not safe,
  • And doubled my own danger: but I knew
  • That God would help me.
  • Yet a little while
  • Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
  • I have been speaking to you of some matters
  • There was no need to speak of, have I not?
  • You do not know how clearly those things stood
  • Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
  • Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
  • Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
  • 110 Clearest where furthest off.
  • I told you how
  • She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
  • A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
  • I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
  • I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
  • Where women walked whose painted images
  • I have seen with candles round them in the church.
  • They bent this way and that, one to another,
  • Playing: and over the long golden hair
  • Of each there floated like a ring of fire
  • 120 Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose
  • Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
  • As if a window had been opened in heaven
  • For God to give His blessing from, before
  • This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
  • I thought our world was setting, and the sun
  • Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
  • The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
  • Then all the blessed maidens who were there
  • Stood up together, as it were a voice
  • 130 That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
  • And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
  • For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
  • To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
  • And looking round, I saw as usual
  • That she was standing there with her long locks
  • Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.
  • For always when I see her now, she laughs.
  • And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
  • The life of this dead terror; as in days
  • 140 When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
  • Something of those days yet before the end.
  • I brought her from the city—one such day
  • When she was still a merry loving child,—
  • The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
  • A little image of a flying Love
  • Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
  • A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
  • And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
  • Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
  • 150 And why the arrow. What I knew I told
  • Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
  • And when she heard that he could rule the loves
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  • Of men and women, still she shook her head
  • And wondered; and, “Nay, nay,” she murmured still,
  • “So strong, and he a younger child than I!”
  • And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
  • Fronting her little bed; and then again
  • She needs must fix him there herself, because
  • I gave him to her and she loved him so,
  • 160 And he should make her love me better yet,
  • If women loved the more, the more they grew.
  • But the fit place upon the wall was high
  • For her, and so I held her in my arms:
  • And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
  • I gave her for a hammer slipped away
  • As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
  • And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
  • Just as she hung the image on the nail,
  • It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
  • 170 And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
  • The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
  • And so her laughter turned to tears: and “Oh!”
  • I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
  • “That I should be the first to make you bleed,
  • Who love and love and love you!”—kissing still
  • The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
  • And still she sobbed,—“not for the pain at all,”
  • She said, “but for the Love, the poor good Love
  • You gave me.” So she cried herself to sleep.
  • 180 Another later thing comes back to me.
  • 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
  • When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
  • Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
  • (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
  • Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
  • His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
  • Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
  • Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
  • That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
  • 190 Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
  • The first I heard of it was a chance shot
  • In the street here and there, and on the stones
  • A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
  • Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
  • My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
  • Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
  • And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
  • Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
  • A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
  • 200 So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.
  • For now, being always with her, the first love
  • I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
  • I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
  • Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
  • The first time I perceived this, I remember,
  • Was once when after hunting I came home
  • Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
  • And sat down at my feet upon the floor
  • Leaning against my side. But when I felt
  • 210 Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
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  • So high as to be laid upon my heart,
  • I turned and looked upon my darling there
  • And marked for the first time how tall she was;
  • And my heart beat with so much violence
  • Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
  • But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
  • And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
  • And when, remembering all and counting back
  • The time, I made out fourteen years for her
  • 220 And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
  • As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
  • And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
  • If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
  • And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
  • Beneath the growing throat the breasts half-globed
  • Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.
  • Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
  • Her image, Father, is not like the sights
  • Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
  • 230 Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
  • Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
  • Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops
  • Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
  • And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
  • Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloud
  • Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
  • Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
  • Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
  • The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
  • 240 That face made wonderful with night and day.
  • Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
  • Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
  • She had, that clung a little where they touched
  • And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
  • That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
  • The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
  • Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
  • Which under the dark lashes evermore
  • Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
  • 250 Between the water and the willow-leaves,
  • And the shade quivers till he wins the light.
  • I was a moody comrade to her then,
  • For all the love I bore her. Italy,
  • The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
  • Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
  • To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
  • Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
  • Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
  • Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
  • 260 Had yielded his. And this had come to be
  • A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
  • To wreak, all things together that a man
  • Needs for his blood to ripen; till at times
  • All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
  • To see such life pass muster and be deemed
  • Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
  • To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
  • Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
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    Sig. 4
  • And though she ruled me always, I remember
  • 270 That once when I was thus and she still kept
  • Leaping about the place and laughing, I
  • Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
  • And putting her two hands into my breast
  • Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
  • 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
  • I thought that song forgotten out of mind;
  • And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
  • All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
  • Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
  • 280 Holding the platter, when the children run
  • To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—
more about Madonna
  • La bella donna*
  • Piangendo disse:
  • “Come son fisse
  • Le stelle in cielo!
  • Quel fiato anelo
  • Dello stanco sole,
  • Quanto m' assonna!
  • E la luna, macchiata
  • 290Come uno specchio
  • Logoro e vecchio,—
  • Faccia affannata,
  • Che cosa vuole?
  • “Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
  • Ciascun m' annoja
  • E m' annojano insieme;
  • Non me ne preme
  • Nè ci prendo gioja.
  • E veramente,
  • 300 Che le spalle sien franche
  • E la braccia bianche
more about She wept, sweet lady
Transcribed Footnote (page 49):
Note: The English poem is printed in two columns, divided by a horizontal line.
  • *She wept, sweet lady,
  • And said in weeping:
  • “What spell is keeping
  • The stars so steady?
  • Why does the power
  • Of the sun's noon-hour
  • To sleep so move me?
  • And the moon in heaven,
  • Stained where she passes
  • 10 As a worn-out glass is,—
  • Wearily driven,
  • Why walks she above me?
  • “Stars, moon, and sun too,
  • I'm tired of either
  • And all together!
  • Whom speak they unto
  • That I should listen?
  • For very surely,
  • Though my arms and shoulders
  • 20 Dazzle beholders,
  • And my eyes glisten,
  • All's nothing purely!
  • What are words said for
  • At all about them,
  • If he they are made for
  • Can do without them?”
  • She laughed, sweet lady,
  • And said in laughing:
  • “His hand clings half in


    • Column Break


  • 30 My own already!
  • Oh! do you love me?
  • Oh! speak of passion
  • In no new fashion,
  • No loud inveighings,
  • But the old sayings
  • You once said of me.
  • “You said: ‘As summer,
  • Through boughs grown brittle,
  • Comes back a little
  • 40 Ere frosts benumb her,—
  • So bring'st thou to me
  • All leaves and flowers,
  • Though autumn's gloomy
  • To-day in the bowers.’
  • “Oh! does he love me,
  • When my voice teaches
  • The very speeches
  • He then spoke of me?
  • Alas! what flavour
  • 50 Still with me lingers?”
  • (But she laughed as my kisses
  • Glowed in her fingers
  • With love's old blisses.)
  • “Oh! what one favour
  • Remains to woo him,
  • Whose whole poor savour
  • Belongs not to him?”
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  • E il seno caldo e tondo,
  • Non mi fa niente.
  • Che cosa al mondo
  • Posso più far di questi
  • Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?”
  • La donna rise
  • E riprese ridendo:—
  • “Questa mano che prendo
  • 310 È dunque mia?
  • Tu m' ami dunque?
  • Dimmelo ancora,
  • Non in modo qualunque,
  • Ma le parole
  • Belle e precise
  • Che dicesti pria.
  • ‘ Siccome suole
  • La state talora
  • (Dicesti) un qualche istante
  • 320 Tornare innanzi inverno,
  • Così tu fai ch' io scerno
  • Le foglie tutte quante,
  • Ben ch' io certo tenessi
  • Per passato l' autunno.’
  • “Eccolo il mio alunno!
  • Io debbo insegnargli
  • Quei cari detti istessi
  • Ch' ei mi disse una volta!
  • Oimè! Che cosa dargli,”
  • 330 (Ma ridea piano piano
  • Dei baci in sulla mano,)
  • “Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?”
  • That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
  • To listen, and such words still left to say!
  • Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
  • As on the very day she sang to me;
  • When, having done, she took out of my hand
  • Something that I had played with all the while
  • And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
  • 340 Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
  • “Weeping or laughing, which was best?” she said.
  • But these are foolish tales. How should I show
  • The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
  • More and more brightly?—when for long years now
  • The very flame that flew about the heart,
  • And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
  • The lapping blaze of hell's environment
  • Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.
  • Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
  • 350 Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
  • Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
  • It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
  • We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
  • If home we had: and in the Duomo there
  • I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
  • An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
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  • In marble by some great Italian hand
  • In the great days when she and Italy
  • Sat on one throne together: and to her
  • 360 And to none else my loved one told her heart.
  • She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
  • Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
  • They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
  • (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
  • Made manifest herself in womanhood.
  • Father, the day I speak of was the first
  • For weeks that I had borne her company
  • Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
  • Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
  • 370 Of some impenetrable restlessness
  • Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
  • And as we entered there that day, I bent
  • My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
  • Within my heart, “Oh turn her heart to me!”
  • And so I left her to her prayers, and went
  • To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
  • Where in the sacristy the light still falls
  • Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
  • On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
  • 380 The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
  • But coming back, I wondered when I saw
  • That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
  • Alone without her; until further off,
  • Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
  • Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
  • I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
  • She rose, and side by side we left the church.
  • I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
  • Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
  • 390 Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
  • And said: “The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
  • She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.”
  • Then silent to the soul I held my way:
  • And from the fountains of the public place
  • Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
  • Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
  • And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
  • She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
  • And hands held light before her; and the face
  • 400 Which long had made a day in my life's night
  • Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
  • Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
  • Beyond my heart to the world made for her.
  • Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
  • The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
  • Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
  • Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
  • The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
  • With his white face, only the two grew red
  • 410 As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
  • White for a livery, that the blood may show
  • Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
  • Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.
  • Give me a draught of water in that cup;
  • My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
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  • But you must hear. If you mistake my words
  • And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
  • Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
  • And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
  • 420 Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
  • With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
  • Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
  • Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
  • 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
  • Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.
  • You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
  • But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
  • Beginning, I have come to the same point
  • And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
  • 430 Which will not let you understand my tale.
  • It is that then we have her with us here,
  • As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
  • To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
  • Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
  • Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
  • And when she wrung them round over the floor,
  • I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;
  • So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
  • Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
  • 440 Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
  • Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
  • Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.
  • At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
  • The sand is black and red. The black was black
  • When what was spilt that day sank into it,
  • And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
  • This night with her, and saw the sand the same.
  • What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
  • How shall I make you know? You have not known
  • 450 The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
  • Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
  • Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
  • Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
  • How the change happened between her and me.
  • Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
  • When most my heart was full of her; and still
  • In every corner of myself I sought
  • To find what service failed her; and no less
  • Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
  • 460 What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
  • For one first year of all eternity
  • All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
  • And then when most your soul is blent with it
  • And all yields song together,—then it stands
  • O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
  • Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
  • Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
  • Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
  • How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
  • 470 Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
  • That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
  • “God! what is left but hell for company,
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  • But hell, hell, hell?”—until the name so breathed
  • Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
  • Even so I stood the day her empty heart
  • Left her place empty in our home, while yet
  • I knew not why she went nor where she went
  • Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
  • When to my prayers at last one sight of her
  • 480 Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
  • With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.
  • O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you,
  • Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
  • Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
  • Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
  • We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
  • As once in childish sorrow: “Not my pain,
  • My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
  • Your broken love!”
  • My Father, have I not
  • 490 Yet told you the last things of that last day
  • On which I went to meet her by the sea?
  • O God, O God! but I must tell you all.
  • Midway upon my journey, when I stopped
  • To buy the dagger at the village fair,
  • I saw two cursed rats about the place
  • I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
  • Was not yet over; for three hours to come
  • I prized my life: and so I looked around
  • For safety. A poor painted mountebank
  • 500 Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.
  • I knew he must have heard my name, so I
  • Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
  • And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
  • Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
  • And brought me out next minute with my face
  • All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
  • And there I handed him his cups and balls
  • And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
  • For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
  • 510 And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
  • Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
  • A woman laughed above me. I looked up
  • And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned
  • Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
  • Some man had come behind her in the room
  • And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
  • With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now
  • He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine
  • Crawled in her back.
  • And three hours afterwards,
  • 520 When she that I had run all risks to meet
  • Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
  • Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
  • Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
  • But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
  • (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
  • Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
  • Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
  • When I had offered her the little knife,
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  • And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
  • 530 And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?
  • “Take it,” I said to her the second time,
  • “Take it and keep it.” And then came a fire
  • That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
  • And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
  • The day was one red blindness; till it seemed,
  • Within the whirling brain's eclipse, that she
  • Or I or all things bled or burned to death.
  • And then I found her laid against my feet
  • And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
  • 540 Her look in falling. For she took the knife
  • Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
  • And fell; and her stiff bodice scooped the sand
  • Into her bosom.
  • And she keeps it, see,
  • Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
  • Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
  • For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
  • The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
  • A dagger as our women of the coast
  • Twist in their garters.
  • Father, I have done:
  • 550 And from her side now she unwinds the thick
  • Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
  • But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.
  • Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
  • I have told all: tell me at once what hope
  • Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
  • Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
  • She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
  • Soon, when she shows the crimson steel to God.
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more about The Burden of Nineveh.
THE BURDEN OF NINEVEH
  • In our Museum galleries
  • To-day I lingered o'er the prize
  • Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
  • Her Art for ever in fresh wise
  • From hour to hour rejoicing me.
  • Sighing I turned at last to win
  • Once more the London dirt and din;
  • And as I made the swing-door spin
  • And issued, they were hoisting in
  • 10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.
  • A human face the creature wore,
  • And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
  • And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
  • 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
  • A dead disbowelled mystery:
  • The mummy of a buried faith
  • Stark from the charnel without scathe,
  • Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
  • Such fossil cerements as might swathe
  • 20 The very corpse of Nineveh.
  • The print of its first rush-wrapping,
  • Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
  • What song did the brown maidens sing,
  • From purple mouths alternating,
  • When that was woven languidly?
  • What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,
  • What songs has the strange image heard?
  • In what blind vigil stood interr'd
  • For ages, till an English word
  • 30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?
  • Oh when upon each sculptured court,
  • Where even the wind might not resort,—
  • O'er which Time passed, of like import
  • With the wild Arab boys at sport,—
  • A living face looked in to see:—
  • Oh seemed it not—the spell once broke—
  • As though the carven warriors woke,
  • As though the shaft the string forsook,
  • The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
  • 40 And there was life in Nineveh?
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  • On London stones our sun anew
  • The beast's recovered shadow threw.
  • (No shade that plague of darkness knew,
  • No light, no shade, while older grew
  • By ages the old earth and sea.)
  • Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
  • Such proof to make thy godhead known?
  • From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;
  • And still thy shadow is thine own,
  • 50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.
  • That day whereof we keep record,
  • When near thy city-gates the Lord
  • Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,
  • This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd
  • Even thus this shadow that I see.
  • This shadow has been shed the same
  • From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
  • For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,
  • The last, while smouldered to a name
  • 60 Sardanapalus' Nineveh.
  • Within thy shadow, haply, once
  • Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
  • Smote him between the altar-stones:
  • Or pale Semiramis her zones
  • Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
  • In love for grace, in war for aid: . . .
  • Ay, and who else? . . . till 'neath thy shade
  • Within his trenches newly made
  • Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—
  • 70 Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 56):

* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their services in the shadow of the great bulls.—( Layard's “ Nineveh,” chap. ix.)

  • Now, thou poor god, within this hall
  • Where the blank windows blind the wall
  • From pedestal to pedestal,
  • The kind of light shall on thee fall
  • Which London takes the day to be:
  • While school-foundations in the act
  • Of holiday, three files compact,
  • Shall learn to view thee as a fact
  • Connected with that zealous tract:
  • 80 “Rome,—Babylon and Nineveh.”
  • Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
  • When, in some mythic chain of verse
  • Which man shall not again rehearse,
  • The faces of thy ministers
  • Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
  • Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god
  • Before whose feet men knelt unshod
  • Deem that in this unblest abode
  • Another scarce more unknown god
  • 90 Should house with him, from Nineveh?
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  • Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
  • From which this pillared pile has grown,
  • Unto man's need how long unknown,
  • Since those thy temples, court and cone,
  • Rose far in desert history?
  • Ah! what is here that does not lie
  • All strange to thine awakened eye?
  • Ah! what is here can testify
  • (Save that dumb presence of the sky)
  • 100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?
  • Why, of those mummies in the room
  • Above, there might indeed have come
  • One out of Egypt to thy home,
  • An alien. Nay, but were not some
  • Of these thine own “antiquity”?
  • And now,—they and their gods and thou
  • All relics here together,—now
  • Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
  • Isis or Ibis, who or how,
  • 110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?
  • The consecrated metals found,
  • And ivory tablets, underground,
  • Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd.
  • When air and daylight filled the mound,
  • Fell into dust immediately.
  • And even as these, the images
  • Of awe and worship,—even as these,—
  • So, smitten with the sun's increase,
  • Her glory mouldered and did cease
  • 120 From immemorial Nineveh.
  • The day her builders made their halt,
  • Those cities of the lake of salt
  • Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,
  • Made proud with pillars of basalt,
  • With sardonyx and porphyry.
  • The day that Jonah bore abroad
  • To Nineveh the voice of God,
  • A brackish lake lay in his road,
  • Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
  • 130 As then in royal Nineveh.
  • The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,
  • Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
  • To Him before whose countenance
  • The years recede, the years advance,
  • And said, Fall down and worship me:—
  • 'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
  • Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
  • Where to the wind the Salt Pools shook,
  • And in those tracts, of life forsook,
  • 140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!
  • Delicate harlot! On thy throne
  • Thou with a world beneath thee prone
  • In state for ages sat'st alone;
  • And needs were years and lustres flown
  • Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:
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  • Whom even thy victor foes must bring,
  • Still royal, among maids that sing
  • As with doves' voices, taboring
  • Upon their breasts, unto the King,—
  • 150 A kingly conquest, Nineveh!
  • . . . Here woke my thought. The wind's slow sway
  • Had waxed; and like the human play
  • Of scorn that smiling spreads away,
  • The sunshine shivered off the day:
  • The callous wind, it seemed to me,
  • Swept up the shadow from the ground:
  • And pale as whom the Fates astound,
  • The god forlorn stood winged and crown'd:
  • Within I knew the cry lay bound
  • 160 Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.
  • And as I turned, my sense half shut
  • Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
  • Go past as marshalled to the strut
  • Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
  • It seemed in one same pageantry
  • They followed forms which had been erst;
  • To pass, till on my sight should burst
  • That future of the best or worst
  • When some may question which was first,
  • 170 Of London or of Nineveh.
  • For as that Bull-god once did stand
  • And watched the burial-clouds of sand,
  • Till these at last without a hand
  • Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
  • And blinded him with destiny:—
  • So may he stand again; till now,
  • In ships of unknown sail and prow,
  • Some tribe of the Australian plough
  • Bear him afar,—a relic now
  • 180 Of London, not of Nineveh!
  • Or it may chance indeed that when
  • Man's age is hoary among men,—
  • His centuries threescore and ten,—
  • His furthest childhood shall seem then
  • More clear than later times may be:
  • Who, finding in this desert place
  • This form, shall hold us for some race
  • That walked not in Christ's lowly ways,
  • But bowed its pride and vowed its praise
  • 190 Unto the God of Nineveh.
  • The smile rose first,—anon drew nigh
  • The thought: . . . Those heavy wings spread high,
  • So sure of flight, which do not fly;
  • That set gaze never on the sky;
  • Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;
  • Its crown, a brow-contracting load;
  • Its planted feet which trust the sod: . . .
  • (So grew the image as I trod:)
  • O Nineveh, was this thy God,—
  • 200 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?
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more about The Staff and Scrip.
THE STAFF AND SCRIP
  • “Who rules these lands?” the Pilgrim said.
  • “Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.”
  • “And who has thus harried them?” he said.
  • “It was Duke Luke did this:
  • God's ban be his!”
  • The Pilgrim said: “Where is your house?
  • I'll rest there, with your will.”
  • “You've but to climb these blackened boughs
  • And you'll see it over the hill,
  • 10 For it burns still.”
  • “Which road, to seek your Queen?” said he.
  • “Nay, nay, but with some wound
  • You'll fly back hither, it may be,
  • And by your blood i' the ground
  • My place be found.”
  • “Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,
  • And mine, where I will go;
  • For He is here and there,” he said.
  • He passed the hill-side, slow.
  • 20 And stood below.
  • The Queen sat idle by her loom;
  • She heard the arras stir,
  • And looked up sadly: through the room
  • The sweetness sickened her
  • Of musk and myrrh.
  • Her women, standing two and two,
  • In silence combed the fleece.
  • The Pilgrim said, “Peace be with you,
  • Lady;” and bent his knees.
  • 30 She answered, “Peace.”
  • Her eyes were like the wave within;
  • Like water-reed the poise
  • Of her soft body, dainty thin;
  • And like the water's noise
  • Her plaintive voice.
  • For him, the stream had never well'd
  • In desert tracts malign
  • So sweet; nor had he ever felt
  • So faint in the sunshine
  • 40 Of Palestine.
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  • Right so, he knew that he saw weep
  • Each night through every dream
  • The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
  • With visages supreme
  • Not known to him.
  • “Lady,” he said, “your lands lie burnt
  • And waste: to meet your foe
  • All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
  • Say that it shall be so,
  • 50 And I will go.”
  • She gazed at him. “Your cause is just,
  • For I have heard the same,”
  • He said: “God's strength shall be my trust.
  • Fall it to good or grame,
  • 'Tis in His name.”
  • “Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
  • Why should you toil to break
  • A grave, and fall therein?” she said.
  • He did not pause but spake:
  • 60 “For my vow's sake.”
  • “Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
  • Not to God's will?” “My vow
  • Remains: God heard me there as here,”
  • He said with reverent brow,
  • “Both then and now.”
  • They gazed together, he and she,
  • The minute while he spoke;
  • And when he ceased, she suddenly
  • Looked round upon her folk
  • 70 As though she woke.
  • “Fight, Sir,” she said; “my prayers in pain
  • Shall be your fellowship.”
  • He whispered one among her train,—
  • “To-morrow bid her keep
  • This staff and scrip.”
  • She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
  • About his body there
  • As sweet as her own arms he felt.
  • He kissed its blade, all bare,
  • 80 Instead of her.
  • She sent him a green banner wrought
  • With one white lily stem,
  • To bind his lance with when he fought.
  • He writ upon the same
  • And kissed her name.
  • She sent him a white shield, whereon
  • She bade that he should trace
  • His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
  • And in a golden space
  • 90 He kissed her face.
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  • Born of the day that died, that eve
  • Now dying sank to rest;
  • As he, in likewise taking leave,
  • Once with a heaving breast
  • Looked to the west.
  • And there the sunset skies unseal'd,
  • Like lands he never knew,
  • Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
  • Lay open out of view
  • 100 To ride into.
  • Next day till dark the women pray'd:
  • Nor any might know there
  • How the fight went: the Queen has bade
  • That there do come to her
  • No messenger.
  • The Queen is pale, her maidens ail;
  • And to the organ-tones
  • They sing but faintly, who sang well
  • The matin-orisons,
  • 110 The lauds and nones.
  • Lo, Father, is thine ear inclin'd,
  • And hath thine angel pass'd?
  • For these thy watchers now are blind
  • With vigil, and at last
  • Dizzy with fast.
  • Weak now to them the voice o' the priest
  • As any trance affords;
  • And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,
  • It seemed that the last chords
  • 120 Still sang the words.
  • “Oh what is the light that shines so red?
  • 'Tis long since the sun set;”
  • Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
  • “'Twas dim but now, and yet
  • The light is great.”
  • Quoth the other: “'Tis our sight is dazed
  • That we see flame i' the air.”
  • But the Queen held her brows and gazed,
  • And said, “It is the glare
  • 130 Of torches there.”
  • “Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?
  • All day it was so still;”
  • Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
  • “Unto the furthest hill
  • The air they fill.”
  • Quoth the other: “'Tis our sense is blurr'd
  • With all the chants gone by.”
  • But the Queen held her breath and heard,
  • And said, “It is the cry
  • 140 Of Victory.”
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  • The first of all the rout was sound,
  • The next were dust and flame,
  • And then the horses shook the ground:
  • And in the thick of them
  • A still band came.
  • “Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,
  • Thus hid beneath these boughs?”
  • “Thy conquering guest returns to-night,
  • And yet shall not carouse,
  • 150 Queen, in thy house.”
  • “Uncover ye his face,” she said.
  • “O changed in little space!”
  • She cried, “O pale that was so red!
  • O God, O God of grace!
  • Cover his face.”
  • His sword was broken in his hand
  • Where he had kissed the blade.
  • “O soft steel that could not withstand!
  • O my hard heart unstayed,
  • 160 That prayed and prayed!”
  • His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
  • Where he had kissed her name.
  • “O east, and west, and north, and south,
  • Fair flew my web, for shame,
  • To guide Death's aim!”
  • The tints were shredded from his shield
  • Where he had kissed her face.
  • “Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
  • Death only keeps its place,
  • 170 My gift and grace!”
  • Then stepped a damsel to her side,
  • And spoke, and needs must weep:
  • “For his sake, lady, if he died,
  • He prayed of thee to keep
  • This staff and scrip.”
  • That night they hung above her bed,
  • Till morning wet with tears.
  • Year after year above her head
  • Her bed his token wears,
  • 180 Five years, ten years.
  • That night the passion of her grief
  • Shook them as there they hung.
  • Each year the wind that shed the leaf
  • Shook them and in its tongue
  • A message flung.
  • And once she woke with a clear mind
  • That letters writ to calm
  • Her soul lay in the scrip; to find
  • Only a torpid balm
  • 190 And dust of palm.
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  • They shook far off with palace sport
  • When joust and dance were rife;
  • And the hunt shook them from the court;
  • For hers, in peace or strife,
  • Was a Queen's life.
  • A Queen's death now: as now they shake
  • To gusts in chapel dim,—
  • Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake,
  • (Carved lovely white and slim),
  • 200 With them by him.
  • Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,
  • Good knight, before His brow
  • Who then as now was here and there,
  • Who had in mind thy vow
  • Then even as now.
  • The lists are set in Heaven to-day,
  • The bright pavilions shine;
  • Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;
  • The trumpets sound in sign
  • 210 That she is thine.
  • Not tithed with days' and years' decease
  • He pays thy wage He owed,
  • But with imperishable peace
  • Here in His own abode
  • Thy jealous God.
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more about Sister Helen.
SISTER HELEN
  • “Why did you melt your waxen man,
  • Sister Helen?
  • To-day is the third since you began.”
  • “The time was long, yet the time ran,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “But if you have done your work aright,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 10You'll let me play, for you said I might.”
  • “Be very still in your play to-night,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
  • Sister Helen;
  • If now it be molten, all is well.”
  • “Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell,
  • Little brother.”
  • 20 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,
  • Sister Helen;
  • How like dead folk he has dropped away!”
  • “Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
  • 30 Sister Helen,
  • Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!”
  • “Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And I'll play without the gallery door.”
  • “Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor,
  • 40 Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
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Sig. 5
  • “Here high up in the balcony,
  • Sister Helen,
  • The moon flies face to face with me.”
  • “Aye, look and say whatever you see,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • 50“Outside it's merry in the wind's wake,
  • Sister Helen;
  • In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.”
  • “Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
  • Sister Helen,
  • Three horsemen that ride terribly.”
  • 60“Little brother, whence come the three,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And one draws nigh, but two are afar.”
  • “Look, look, do you know them who they are,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 70 Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,
  • Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white mane on the blast.”
  • “The hour has come, has come at last,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He has made a sign and called Halloo!
  • Sister Helen,
  • 80And he says that he would speak with you.”
  • “Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That Keith of Ewern's like to die.”
  • “And he and thou, and thou and I,
  • Little brother.”
  • 90 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Three days ago, on his marriage-morn,
  • Sister Helen,
  • He sickened, and lies since then forlorn.”
  • “For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Three days and nights he has lain abed,
  • 100 Sister Helen,
  • And he prays in torment to be dead.”
  • “The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That you should take your curse away.”
  • “ My prayer was heard,—he need but pray,
  • 110 Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “But he says, till you take back your ban,
  • Sister Helen,
  • His soul would pass, yet never can.”
  • “Nay, then shall I slay a living man,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • 120“But he calls for ever on your name,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And says that he melts before a flame.”
  • “My heart for his pleasure fared the same
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,
  • Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white plume on the blast.”
  • 130“The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
  • Sister Helen;
  • But his words are drowned in the wind's course.”
  • “Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 140 What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,
  • Sister Helen,
  • Is ever to see you ere he die.”
  • “In all that his soul sees, there am I,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The soul's one sight, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “He sends a ring and a broken coin,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 150And bids you mind the banks of Boyne.”
  • “What else he broke will he ever join,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • No, never joined, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He yields you these and craves full fain,
  • Sister Helen,
  • You pardon him in his mortal pain.”
  • “What else he took will he give again,
  • Little brother?”
  • 160 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He calls your name in an agony,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That even dead Love must weep to see.”
  • “Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast,
  • 170 Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white hair on the blast.”
  • “The short short hour will soon be past,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He looks at me and he tries to speak,
  • Sister Helen,
  • But oh! his voice is sad and weak!”
  • “What here should the mighty Baron seek,
  • 180 Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
  • Sister Helen,
  • The body dies but the soul shall live.”
  • “Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • 190“Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
  • Sister Helen,
  • To save his dear son's soul alive.”
  • “Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
  • Little brother!
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
  • Sister Helen,
  • To go with him for the love of God!”
  • 200“The way is long to his son's abode,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “A lady's here, by a dark steed brought,
  • Sister Helen,
  • So darkly clad, I saw her not.”
  • “See her now or never see aught,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 210 What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair,
  • Sister Helen,
  • On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair.”
  • “Blest hour of my power and her despair,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 220'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.”
  • “One morn for pride and three days for woe,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head,
  • Sister Helen;
  • With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed.”
  • “What wedding-strains hath her bridal-bed,
  • Little brother?”
  • 230 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,
  • Sister Helen,—
  • She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon.”
  • “Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow,
  • 240 Sister Helen,
  • And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow.”
  • “Let it turn whiter than winter snow,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
  • Sister Helen!
  • More loud than the vesper-chime it fell.”
  • “No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
  • 250 Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
  • Sister Helen;
  • Is it in the sky or in the ground?”
  • “Say, have they turned their horses round,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?)
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  • 260 “They have raised the old man from his knee,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And they ride in silence hastily.”
  • “More fast the naked soul doth flee,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Flank to flank are the three steeds gone,
  • Sister Helen,
  • But the lady's dark steed goes alone.”
  • 270 “And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And weary sad they look by the hill.”
  • “But he and I are sadder still,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 280 Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And the flames are winning up apace!”
  • “Yet here they burn but for a space,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd?
  • Sister Helen?
  • 290 Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?”
  • “A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)
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more about Love's Nocturn.
LOVE'S NOCTURN
  • Master of the murmuring courts
  • Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
  • Lo! my spirit here exhorts
  • All the powers of thy demesne
  • For their aid to woo my queen.
  • What reports
  • Yield thy jealous courts unseen?
  • Vaporous, unaccountable,
  • Dreamworld lies forlorn of light,
  • 10Hollow like a breathing shell.
  • Ah! that from all dreams I might
  • Choose one dream and guide its flight!
  • I know well
  • What her sleep should tell to-night.
  • There the dreams are multitudes:
  • Some that will not wait for sleep,
  • Deep within the August woods;
  • Some that hum while rest may steep
  • Weary labour laid a-heap;
  • 20 Interludes,
  • Some, of grievous moods that weep.
  • Poets' fancies all are there:
  • There the elf-girls flood with wings
  • Valleys full of plaintive air;
  • There breathe perfumes; there in rings
  • Whirl the foam-bewildered springs;
  • Siren there
  • Winds her dizzy hair and sings.
  • Thence the one dream mutually
  • 30 Dreamed in bridal unison,
  • Less than waking ecstasy;
  • Half-formed visions that make moan
  • In the house of birth alone;
  • And what we
  • At death's wicket see, unknown.
  • But for mine own sleep, it lies
  • In one gracious form's control,
  • Fair with honourable eyes,
  • Lamps of a translucent soul:
  • 40 O their glance is loftiest dole,
  • Sweet and wise,
  • Wherein Love descries his goal.
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  • Reft of her, my dreams are all
  • Clammy trance that fears the sky:
  • Changing footpaths shift and fall;
  • From polluted coverts nigh,
  • Miserable phantoms sigh;
  • Quakes the pall,
  • And the funeral goes by.
  • 50Master, is it soothly said
  • That, as echoes of man's speech
  • Far in secret clefts are made,
  • So do all men's bodies reach
  • Shadows o'er thy sunken beach,—
  • Shape or shade
  • In those halls pourtrayed of each?
  • Ah! might I, by thy good grace
  • Groping in the windy stair,
  • (Darkness and the breath of space
  • 60 Like loud waters everywhere,)
  • Meeting mine own image there
  • Face to face,
  • Send it from that place to her!
  • Nay, not I; but oh! do thou,
  • Master, from thy shadowkind
  • Call my body's phantom now:
  • Bid it bear its face declin'd
  • Till its flight her slumbers find,
  • And her brow
  • 70Feel its presence bow like wind.
  • Where in groves the gracile Spring
  • Trembles, with mute orison
  • Confidently strengthening,
  • Water's voice and wind's as one
  • Shed an echo in the sun.
  • Soft as Spring,
  • Master, bid it sing and moan.
  • Song shall tell how glad and strong
  • Is the night she soothes alway;
  • 80Moan shall grieve with that parched tongue
  • Of the brazen hours of day:
  • Sounds as of the springtide they,
  • Moan and song,
  • While the chill months long for May.
  • Not the prayers which with all leave
  • The world's fluent woes prefer,—
  • Not the praise the world doth give,
  • Dulcet fulsome whisperer;—
  • Let it yield my love to her,
  • 90 And achieve
  • Strength that shall not grieve or err.
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  • Wheresoe'er my dreams befall,
  • Both at night-watch, (let it say,)
  • And where round the sundial
  • The reluctant hours of day,
  • Heartless, hopeless of their way,
  • Rest and call;—
  • There her glance doth fall and stay.
  • Suddenly her face is there:
  • 100 So do mounting vapours wreathe
  • Subtle-scented transports where
  • The black firwood sets its teeth.
  • Part the boughs and look beneath,—
  • Lilies share
  • Secret waters there, and breathe.
  • Master, bid my shadow bend
  • Whispering thus till birth of light,
  • Lest new shapes that sleep may send
  • Scatter all its work to flight;—
  • 110 Master, master of the night,
  • Bid it spend
  • Speech, song, prayer, and end aright.
  • Yet, ah me! if at her head
  • There another phantom lean
  • Murmuring o'er the fragrant bed,—
  • Ah! and if my spirit's queen
  • Smile those alien prayers between,—
  • Ah! poor shade!
  • Shall it strive, or fade unseen?
  • 120How should love's own messenger
  • Strive with love and be love's foe?
  • Master, nay! If thus, in her,
  • Sleep a wedded heart should show,—
  • Silent let mine image go,
  • Its old share
  • Of thy spell-bound air to know.
  • Like a vapour wan and mute,
  • Like a flame, so let it pass;
  • One low sigh across her lute,
  • 130 One dull breath against her glass;
  • And to my sad soul, alas!
  • One salute
  • Cold as when Death's foot shall pass.
  • Then, too, let all hopes of mine,
  • All vain hopes by night and day,
  • Slowly at thy summoning sign
  • Rise up pallid and obey.
  • Dreams, if this is thus, were they:—
  • Be they thine,
  • 140 And to dreamworld pine away.
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  • Yet from old time, life, not death,
  • Master, in thy rule is rife:
  • Lo! through thee, with mingling breath,
  • Adam woke beside his wife.
  • O Love, bring me so, for strife,
  • Force and faith,
  • Bring me so not death but life!
  • Yea, to Love himself is pour'd
  • This frail song of hope and fear.
  • 150 Thou art Love, of one accord
  • With kind Sleep to bring her near,
  • Still-eyed, deep-eyed, ah how dear!
  • Master, Lord,
  • In her name implor'd, O hear!
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more about THE HOUSE OF LIFE: A SONNET-SEQUENCE.
THE HOUSE OF LIFE:

A SONNET-SEQUENCE

Part I

YOUTH AND CHANGE

Part II

CHANGE AND FATE
Transcribed Note (page 74):

(The present full series of The House of Life consists of sonnets only. It will be evident

that many among those now first added are still the work of earlier years.—1881.)

more about Introductory Sonnet
  • A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
  • Memorial from the Soul's eternity
  • To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
  • Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
  • Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
  • Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
  • As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
  • Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
  • A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
  • 10 The soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:—
  • Whether for tribute to the august appeals
  • Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
  • It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
  • In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
more about Youth and Change (Part I of House of Life)
Part I.— YOUTH AND CHANGE
more about Love Enthroned.
SONNET I

LOVE ENTHRONED
  • I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
  • Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
  • And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past
  • To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
  • And Youth, with still some single golden hair
  • Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
  • Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
  • And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
  • Love's throne was not with these; but far above
  • 10 All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
  • He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
  • Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
  • And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
  • And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.
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more about Bridal Birth.
SONNET II

BRIDAL BIRTH
  • As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
  • The mother looks upon the newborn child,
  • Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled
  • When her soul knew at length the Love it nurs'd.
  • Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
  • And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
  • Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
  • Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst.
  • Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn
  • 10 Together, as his full-grown feet now range
  • The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:
  • Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
  • Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
  • Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.
more about Love's Testament.
SONNET III

LOVE'S TESTAMENT
  • O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
  • Unto my heart dost evermore present,
  • Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
  • Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
  • The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
  • Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
  • Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
  • And murmured, “I am thine, thou'rt one with me!”
  • O what from thee the grace, to me the prize,
  • 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
  • Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
  • And weary water of the place of sighs,
  • And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
  • Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!
more about Lovesight.
SONNET IV

LOVESIGHT
  • When do I see thee most, beloved one?
  • When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
  • Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
  • The worship of that Love through thee made known?
  • Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
  • Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
  • Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
  • And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
  • O love, my love! if I no more should see
  • 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
  • Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
  • How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
  • The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
  • The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
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more about Heart's Hope.
SONNET V

HEART'S HOPE
  • By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
  • Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
  • Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
  • Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
  • For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
  • Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
  • Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
  • Thee from myself, neither our love from God.
  • Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
  • 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
  • As to all hearts all things shall signify;
  • Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
  • As instantaneous penetrating sense,
  • In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.
more about The Kiss.
SONNET VI

THE KISS
  • What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
  • Or seizure of malign vicissitude
  • Can rob this body of honour, or denude
  • This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
  • For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
  • With these my lips such consonant interlude
  • As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
  • The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
  • I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
  • 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
  • A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
  • A god when all our life-breath met to fan
  • Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
  • Fire within fire, desire in deity.
more about Nuptial Sleep.
SONNET VI a

NUPTIAL SLEEP
  • At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
  • And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
  • From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
  • So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
  • Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
  • Of married flowers to either side outspread
  • From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
  • Fawned on each other where they lay apart.
  • Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
  • 10 And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
  • Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
  • Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
  • Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
  • He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.
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more about Supreme Surrender.
SONNET VII

SUPREME SURRENDER
  • To all the spirits of Love that wander by
  • Along his love-sown harvest-field of sleep
  • My lady lies apparent; and the deep
  • Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
  • The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
  • Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
  • When Fate's control doth from his harvest reap
  • The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.
  • First touched, the hand now warm around my neck
  • 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
  • Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
  • Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
  • And next the heart that trembled for its sake
  • Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.
more about Love's Lovers.
SONNET VIII

LOVE'S LOVERS
  • Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone,
  • And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
  • In idle scornful hours he flings away;
  • And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
  • Do love to vaunt the silver praise their own;
  • Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
  • Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
  • And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.
  • My lady only loves the heart of Love:
  • 10 Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
  • His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
  • There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of
  • Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowing hair above,
  • Seals with thy mouth his immortality.
more about Passion and Worship.
SONNET IX

PASSION AND WORSHIP
  • One flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player
  • Even where my lady and I lay all alone;
  • Saying: “Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
  • Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
  • Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear.”
  • Then said I: “Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone
  • Unto my lady still this harp makes moan,
  • And still she deems the cadence deep and clear.”
  • Then said my lady: “Thou art Passion of Love,
  • 10 And this Love's Worship: both he plights to me.
  • Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
  • But where wan water trembles in the grove
  • And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
  • This harp still makes my name its voluntary.”
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more about The Portrait.
SONNET X

THE PORTRAIT
  • O Lord of all compassionate control,
  • O Love! let this my lady's picture glow
  • Under my hand to praise her name, and show
  • Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
  • That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
  • Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw
  • And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
  • The very sky and sea-line of her soul.
  • Lo! it is done. Above the enthroning throat
  • 10 The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss,
  • The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
  • Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
  • That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
  • They that would look on her must come to me.
more about The Love-Letter.
SONNET XI

THE LOVE-LETTER
  • Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair
  • As close she leaned and poured her heart through thee,
  • Whereof the articulate throbs accompany
  • The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness fair,—
  • Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware,—
  • Oh let thy silent song disclose to me
  • That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree
  • Like married music in Love's answering air.
  • Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought,
  • 10 Her bosom to the writing closelier press'd,
  • And her breast's secrets peered into her breast;
  • When, through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought
  • My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught
  • The words that made her love the loveliest.
more about The Lover's Walk.
SONNET XII

THE LOVERS' WALK
  • Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
  • On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
  • Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd:—
  • An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
  • Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
  • Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land
  • Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd
  • With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—
  • Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
  • 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
  • Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree
  • Together on his heart for ever true,
  • As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue
  • Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.
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more about Youth's Antiphony.
SONNET XIII

YOUTH'S ANTIPHONY
  • “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
  • How much I love you?” “You I love even so,
  • And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
  • How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
  • Your love, so much is all my love's concern.”
  • “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth grow,
  • Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!”
  • Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.
  • Ah! happy they to whom such words as these
  • 10 In youth have served for speech the whole day long,
  • Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng,
  • Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,—
  • What while Love breathed in sighs and silences
  • Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.
more about Youth's Spring-Tribute.
SONNET XIV

YOUTH'S SPRING-TRIBUTE
  • On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
  • I lay, and spread your hair on either side,
  • And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
  • Look through the golden tresses here and there.
  • On these debateable borders of the year
  • Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
  • The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow;
  • And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.
  • But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
  • 10 So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
  • Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
  • Up your warm throat to your warm lips: for this
  • Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
  • With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.
more about The Birth-Bond.
SONNET XV

THE BIRTH-BOND
  • Have you not noted, in some family
  • Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,
  • How still they own their gracious bond, though fed
  • And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
  • How to their father's children they shall be
  • In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
  • Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
  • And in a word complete community?
  • Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
  • 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
  • One nearer kindred than life hinted of.
  • O born with me somewhere that men forget,
  • And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
  • Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!
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more about A Day of Love.
SONNET XVI

A DAY OF LOVE
  • Those envied places which do know her well,
  • And are so scornful of this lonely place,
  • Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
  • Nowhere but here she is: and while Love's spell
  • From his predominant presence doth compel
  • All alien hours, an outworn populace,
  • The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
  • With sweet confederate music favourable.
  • Now many memories make solicitous
  • 10 The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit
  • With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
  • As here between our kisses we sit thus
  • Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
  • Speechless while things forgotten call to us.
more about Beauty's Pageant.
SONNET XVII

BEAUTY'S PAGEANT
  • What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
  • Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
  • What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,
  • Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
  • What glory of change by Nature's hand amass'd
  • Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
  • Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
  • Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?
  • Love's very vesture and elect disguise
  • 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
  • Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
  • Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
  • Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
  • Unborn, that read these words and saw her not.
more about Genius in Beauty.
SONNET XVIII

GENIUS IN BEAUTY
  • Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
  • Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
  • Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
  • Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
  • Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
  • More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeaths
  • Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
  • Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
  • As many men are poets in their youth,
  • 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
  • Even through all change the indomitable song;
  • So in like wise the envenomed years, whose tooth
  • Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
  • Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.
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more about Silent Noon
SONNET XIX

SILENT NOON
  • Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
  • The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
  • Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
  • 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
  • All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
  • Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
  • Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
  • 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
  • Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
  • 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
  • So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
  • Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
  • This close-companioned inarticulate hour
  • When twofold silence was the song of love.
more about Gracious Moonlight.
SONNET XX

GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT
  • Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
  • When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
  • Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
  • So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
  • When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
  • What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
  • Gathers and garners from all things that are
  • Their silent penetrative loveliness?
  • O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
  • 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
  • With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
  • So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
  • Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
  • And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.
more about Love-Sweetness.
SONNET XXI

LOVE-SWEETNESS
  • Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
  • About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
  • In gracious fostering union garlanded;
  • Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
  • Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
  • Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
  • On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
  • Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
  • What sweeter than these things, except the thing
  • 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
  • The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat
  • And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
  • Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
  • The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
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more about Heart's Haven.
SONNET XXII

HEART'S HAVEN
  • Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
  • Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,—
  • With still tears showering and averted face,
  • Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
  • And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
  • I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
  • Against all ills the fortified strong place
  • And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.
  • And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
  • 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
  • All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
  • Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
  • And as soft waters warble to the moon,
  • Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.
more about Love's Baubles.
SONNET XXIII

LOVE'S BAUBLES
  • I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
  • Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
  • And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
  • Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.
  • And from one hand the petal and the core
  • Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
  • Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
  • Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
  • At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
  • 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
  • And as I took them, at her touch they shone
  • With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
  • And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
  • Follies of love are love's true ministers.”
more about Pride of Youth.
SONNET XXIV

PRIDE OF YOUTH
  • Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
  • The dead, but little in his heart can find,
  • Since without need of thought to his clear mind
  • Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
  • Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
  • Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
  • Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
  • Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.
  • There is a change in every hour's recall,
  • 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
  • On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
  • Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
  • The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
  • Even as the beads of a told rosary!
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more about Winged Hours.
SONNET XXV

WINGED HOURS
  • Each hour until we meet is as a bird
  • That wings from far his gradual way along
  • The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
  • Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
  • But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
  • Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
  • Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong
  • Full oft through our contending joys unheard.
  • What of that hour at last, when for her sake
  • 10 No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
  • When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
  • The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
  • And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
  • Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?
more about Mid-Rapture.
SONNET XXVI

MID-RAPTURE
  • Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
  • Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,
  • Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
  • Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
  • All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
  • Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
  • Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
  • Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—
  • What word can answer to thy word,—what gaze
  • 10 To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
  • My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there
  • Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
  • What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
  • O lovely and beloved, O my love?
more about Heart's Compass.
SONNET XXVII

HEART'S COMPASS
  • Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
  • But as the meaning of all things that are;
  • A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
  • Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
  • Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
  • Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
  • Being of its furthest fires oracular;—
  • The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
  • Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
  • 10 Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
  • All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
  • Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
  • And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
  • Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.
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more about Soul-Light.
SONNET XXVIII

SOUL-LIGHT
  • What other woman could be loved like you,
  • Or how of you should love possess his fill?
  • After the fulness of all rapture, still,—
  • As at the end of some deep avenue
  • A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view
  • Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,—
  • Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
  • Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.
  • And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
  • 10 Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings
  • Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
  • From limpid lambent hours of day begun;—
  • Even so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth move
  • My soul with changeful light of infinite love.
more about The Moonstar.
SONNET XXIX

THE MOONSTAR
  • Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
  • Because my lady is more lovely still.
  • Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
  • To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
  • Of delicate life Love labours to assess
  • My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
  • How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
  • But as that beauty's sovereign votaress.”
  • Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
  • 10 And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
  • An emulous star too near the moon will ride,—
  • Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
  • Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
  • Lady, not thou but she was glorified.
more about Last Fire.
SONNET XXX

LAST FIRE
  • Love, through your spirit and mine what summer eve
  • Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
  • Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west
  • And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
  • Awhile now softlier let your bosom heave,
  • As in Love's harbour, even that loving breast,
  • All care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
  • And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.
  • Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
  • 10 Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses
  • Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees,
  • This day at least was Summer's paramour,
  • Sun-coloured to the imperishable core
  • With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease.
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more about Her Gifts.
SONNET XXXI

HER GIFTS
  • High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal
  • Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;
  • A glance like water brimming with the sky
  • Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
  • Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral
  • The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply
  • All music and all silence held thereby;
  • Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal;
  • A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine
  • 10 To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
  • Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,
  • And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:—
  • These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.
  • Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.
more about Equal Troth.
SONNET XXXII

EQUAL TROTH
  • Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
  • For how should I be loved as I love thee?—
  • I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
  • All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;—
  • Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,
  • And crowned with garlands culled from every tree,
  • Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
  • All beauties and all mysteries interwove.
  • But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
  • 10“Then only” (say'st thou) “could I love thee less,
  • When thou couldst doubt my love's equality.”
  • Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
  • Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,—
  • Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.
more about Venus Victrix.
SONNET XXXIII

VENUS VICTRIX
  • Could Juno's self more sovereign presence wear
  • Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace?—
  • Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face
  • O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair?
  • Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair
  • When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance
  • Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance
  • That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring there?
  • Before such triune loveliness divine
  • 10 Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims
  • The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine?
  • Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names;
  • And Venus Victrix to my heart doth bring
  • Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning.
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more about The Dark Glass.
SONNET XXXIV

THE DARK GLASS
  • Not I myself know all my love for thee:
  • How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
  • To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
  • Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
  • As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
  • Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
  • And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
  • And ultimate outpost of eternity?
  • Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
  • 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
  • One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
  • Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
  • And veriest touch of powers primordial
  • That any hour-girt life may understand.
more about The Lamp's Shrine.
SONNET XXXV

THE LAMP'S SHRINE
  • Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault,
  • That I might love thee still in spite of it:
  • Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit
  • Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt?
  • Alas! he can but make my heart's low vault
  • Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit
  • By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite
  • Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt.
  • Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
  • 10 Myself within the beams his brow doth dart
  • Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
  • In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine:
  • For lo! in honour of thine excellencies
  • My heart takes pride to show how poor it is.
more about Life-in-Love.
SONNET XXXVI

LIFE-IN-LOVE
  • Not in thy body is thy life at all,
  • But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
  • Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
  • What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall.
  • Look on thyself without her, and recall
  • The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
  • That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs
  • O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.
  • Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
  • 10 Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
  • For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
  • Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
  • 'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
  • Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death.
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more about The Love Moon.
SONNET XXXVII

THE LOVE-MOON
  • “When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
  • Which once was all the life years held for thee,
  • Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
  • Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
  • How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
  • Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
  • Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
  • Make them of buried troth remembrancers?”
  • “Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
  • 10 Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
  • Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
  • Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
  • In these the culminant changes which approve
  • The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?”
more about The Morrow's Message.
SONNET XXXVIII

THE MORROW'S MESSAGE
  • “Thou Ghost,” I said, “and is thy name To-day?—
  • Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!—
  • And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?”
  • While yet I spoke, the silence answered: “Yea,
  • Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
  • And each beforehand makes such poor avow
  • As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
  • Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away.”
  • Then cried I: “Mother of many malisons,
  • 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!”
  • But therewithal the tremulous silence said:
  • “Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
  • Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
  • And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.”
more about Sleepless Dreams.
SONNET XXXIX

SLEEPLESS DREAMS
  • Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
  • O night desirous as the nights of youth!
  • Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
  • Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
  • Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
  • What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
  • And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
  • Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?
  • Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee
  • 10 Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
  • Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
  • O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
  • A thicket hung with masks of mockery
  • And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?
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more about Severed Selves.
SONNET XL

SEVERED SELVES
  • Two separate divided silences,
  • Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
  • Two glances which together would rejoice
  • In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
  • Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
  • Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
  • Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
  • Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:—
  • Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
  • 10 Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
  • Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
  • An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
  • Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
  • Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.
more about Through Death to Love.
SONNET XLI

THROUGH DEATH TO LOVE
  • Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
  • From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
  • Like multiform circumfluence manifold
  • Of night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
  • Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
  • Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
  • Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
  • Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
  • Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
  • 10 One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
  • Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
  • Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
  • Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
  • Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is Love?
more about Hope Overtaken.
SONNET XLII

HOPE OVERTAKEN
  • I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
  • So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
  • Is passed at length; and garmented in green
  • Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day.
  • Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
  • On all that road our footsteps erst had been
  • Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
  • Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.
  • O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
  • 10 No eyes but hers,—O Love and Hope the same!—
  • Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
  • That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
  • O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
  • Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!
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more about Love and Hope.
SONNET XLIII

LOVE AND HOPE
  • Bless love and hope. Full many a withered year
  • Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday;
  • And clasped together where the blown leaves lay
  • We long have knelt and wept full many a tear.
  • Yet lo! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer,
  • Flutes softly to us from some green byeway:
  • Those years, those tears are dead, but only they:—
  • Bless love and hope, true soul; for we are here.
  • Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand
  • 10 Whether in very truth, when we are dead,
  • Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head
  • Sole sunshine of the imperishable land;
  • Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope,
  • Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope.
more about Cloud and Wind.
SONNET XLIV

CLOUD AND WIND
  • Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
  • Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
  • Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
  • Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
  • Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
  • Her warrant against all her haste might rue?—
  • Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
  • What unsunned gyres of waste eternity?
  • And if I die the first, shall death be then
  • 10 A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep?—
  • Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
  • Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain),
  • The hour when you too learn that all is vain
  • And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?
more about Secret Parting.
SONNET XLV

SECRET PARTING
  • Because our talk was of the cloud-control
  • And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
  • Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate
  • And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal:
  • But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
  • Of joy, which its own hours annihilate,
  • Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late,
  • And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.
  • Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
  • 10 To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
  • Which memory haunts and whither sleep may roam,—
  • They only know for whom the roof of Love
  • Is the still-seated secret of the grove,
  • Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.
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more about Parted Love.
SONNET XLVI

PARTED LOVE
  • What shall be said of this embattled day
  • And armèd occupation of this night
  • By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight
  • Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
  • Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—
  • As every sense to which she dealt delight
  • Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height
  • To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?
  • Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
  • 10 Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
  • Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
  • Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
  • Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
  • And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.
more about Broken Music.
SONNET XLVII

BROKEN MUSIC
  • The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
  • Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
  • But breathless with averted eyes elate
  • She sits, with open lips and open ears,
  • That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
  • Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
  • A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
  • And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.
  • But now, whatever while the soul is fain
  • 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
  • The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,—
  • No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
  • O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
  • Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.
more about Death-in-Love.
SONNET XLVIII

DEATH-IN-LOVE
  • There came an image in Life's retinue
  • That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
  • Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
  • O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
  • Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
  • Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
  • Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
  • When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.
  • But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
  • 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
  • Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing
  • And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
  • And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
  • I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”
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more about Willowwood.
SONNETS XLIX, L, LI, LII

WILLOWWOOD
more about Willowwood. I.
I
  • I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
  • Leaning across the water, I and he;
  • Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
  • But touched his lute wherein was audible
  • The certain secret thing he had to tell:
  • Only our mirrored eyes met silently
  • In the low wave; and that sound came to be
  • The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
  • And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
  • 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
  • He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
  • Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
  • And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
  • Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.
more about Willowwood II.
II
  • And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
  • So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
  • As souls disused in death's sterility
  • May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
  • And I was made aware of a dumb throng
  • That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
  • All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
  • The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
  • They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
  • 10 While fast together, alive from the abyss,
  • Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
  • And pity of self through all made broken moan
  • Which said “For once, for once, for once alone!”
  • And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—
more about Willowwood. III.
III
  • “O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
  • That walk with hollow faces burning white;
  • What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
  • What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
  • Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
  • Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
  • Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
  • Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!
  • Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
  • 10 With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
  • Alas! if ever such a pillow could
  • Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
  • Better all life forget her than this thing,
  • That Willowwood should hold her wandering!”
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more about Willowwood. IV.
IV
  • So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
  • Together cling through the wind's wellaway
  • Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
  • The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
  • So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
  • And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
  • As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
  • Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.
  • Only I know that I leaned low and drank
  • 10A long draught from the water where she sank,
  • Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
  • And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
  • Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
  • Till both our heads were in his aureole.
more about Without Her.
SONNET LIII

WITHOUT HER
  • What of her glass without her? The blank grey
  • There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
  • Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
  • Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
  • Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
  • Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
  • Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace,
  • And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
  • What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
  • 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
  • A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
  • Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
  • Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
  • Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
more about Love's Fatality.
SONNET LIV

LOVE'S FATALITY
  • Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
  • Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
  • Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
  • And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
  • But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
  • I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
  • Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann'd
  • The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.
  • Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
  • 10 Made moan: “Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!
  • Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:
  • And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,—
  • Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,—
  • Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.”
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Note: The twelfth line of the poem “I. Herself” contains an ink smudge just after the emdash.
more about Stillborn Love.
SONNET LV

STILLBORN LOVE
  • The hour which might have been yet might not be,
  • Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
  • Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
  • Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
  • Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
  • It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
  • The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
  • His hours elect in choral consonancy.
  • But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
  • 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
  • With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
  • Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
  • And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
  • “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”
more about True Woman.
SONNETS LVI, LVII, LVIII

TRUE WOMAN
more about True Woman. I. Herself.
I. HERSELF
  • To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
  • A bodily beauty more acceptable
  • Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
  • To be an essence more environing
  • Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
  • More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
  • To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
  • That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!
  • How strange a thing to be what Man can know
  • 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
  • Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow;
  • Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
  • The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of green
  • That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.
more about True Woman. II. Her Love.
II. HER LOVE
  • She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
  • And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
  • A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
  • Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
  • That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
  • And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
  • Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
  • For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.
  • Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
  • 10 And circling arms, she welcomes all command
  • Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
  • Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
  • Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
  • The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?
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more about True Woman. III. Her Heaven.
III. HER HEAVEN
  • If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
  • (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
  • With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
  • True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.
  • Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
  • Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
  • About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
  • Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.
  • The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
  • 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
  • Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
  • Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
  • This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
  • To feel the first kiss and forebode the last.
more about Love's Last Gift.
SONNET LIX

LOVE'S LAST GIFT
  • Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
  • And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
  • Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
  • And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
  • Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
  • Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
  • Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
  • Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.
  • “All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
  • 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
  • But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
  • From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
  • Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
  • Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.”
more about Change and Fate (Part II of House of Life)
Part II.— CHANGE AND FATE
more about Transfigured Life.
SONNET LX

TRANSFIGURED LIFE
  • As growth of form or momentary glance
  • In a child's features will recall to mind
  • The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
  • Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
  • And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
  • The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
  • Till in the blended likeness now we find
  • A separate man's or woman's countenance:—
  • So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
  • 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
  • To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
  • By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
  • And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
  • There comes the sound as of abundant rain.
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more about The Song-Throe.
SONNET LXI

THE SONG-THROE
  • By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
  • O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
  • Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
  • Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
  • Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
  • Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
  • Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
  • That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
  • The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
  • 10 Of thine; thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
  • Fledges his shaft: to no august control
  • Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
  • But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
  • The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.
more about The Soul's Sphere.
SONNET LXII

THE SOUL'S SPHERE
  • Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
  • Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre
  • Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
  • Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
  • Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
  • Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
  • Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . .
  • Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!
  • What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
  • 10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
  • Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd span,—
  • Visions of golden futures: or that last
  • Wild pageant of the accumulated past
  • That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.
more about Inclusiveness.
SONNET LXIII

INCLUSIVENESS
  • The changing guests, each in a different mood,
  • Sit at the roadside table and arise:
  • And every life among them in like wise
  • Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
  • What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
  • How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
  • Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
  • Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
  • May not this ancient room thou sitt'st in dwell
  • 10 In separate living souls for joy or pain?
  • Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
  • Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
  • And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
  • Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.
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more about Ardour and Memory.
SONNET LXIV

ARDOUR AND MEMORY
  • The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
  • The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
  • Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
  • The summer clouds that visit every wing
  • With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
  • The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
  • 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
  • While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—
  • These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown
  • 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
  • The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
  • Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
  • Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;
  • With ditties and with dirges infinite.
more about Known in Vain.
SONNET LXV

KNOWN IN VAIN
  • As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
  • Knows suddenly, to music high and soft,
  • The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
  • Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
  • With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
  • Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
  • In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
  • Together, within hopeless sight of hope
  • For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
  • 10 When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
  • After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
  • Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
  • Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
  • Follow the desultory feet of Death?
more about The Heart of the Night.
SONNET LXVI

THE HEART OF THE NIGHT
  • From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
  • From lethargy to fever of the heart;
  • From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
  • From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
  • Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
  • Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
  • Accept her primal immortality,—
  • The flesh resume its dust whence it began?
  • O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
  • 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
  • Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
  • That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
  • The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
  • This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!
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Sig. 7
more about The Landmark.
SONNET LXVII

THE LANDMARK
  • Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
  • Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
  • But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
  • In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
  • (And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
  • Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
  • The stations of my course should rise unsought,
  • As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.
  • But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
  • 10 And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
  • Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
  • Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
  • As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
  • That the same goal is still on the same track.
more about A Dark Day.
SONNET LXVIII

A DARK DAY
  • The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
  • Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
  • Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
  • Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
  • Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
  • Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
  • Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when thou,
  • O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?
  • How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
  • 10 Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
  • Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
  • Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
  • Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
  • Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.
more about Autumn Idleness.
SONNET LXIX

AUTUMN IDLENESS
  • This sunlight shames November where he grieves
  • In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
  • The day, though bough with bough be over-run.
  • But with a blessing every glade receives
  • High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
  • The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
  • As if, being foresters of old, the sun
  • Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.
  • Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;
  • 10 Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew;
  • Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.
  • And here the lost hours the lost hours renew
  • While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass,
  • Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.
Image of page 98 page: 98
more about The Hill Summit.
SONNET LXX

THE HILL SUMMIT
  • This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
  • In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
  • And I have loitered in the vale too long
  • And gaze now a belated worshipper.
  • Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
  • So journeying, of his face at intervals
  • Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
  • A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
  • And now that I have climbed and won this height,
  • 10 I must tread downward through the sloping shade
  • And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
  • Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
  • And see the gold air and the silver fade
  • And the last bird fly into the last light.
more about The Choice.
SONNETS LXXI, LXXII, LXXIII

THE CHOICE
more about The Choice. I.
I
  • Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  • Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
  • Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
  • Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
  • May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
  • Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
  • We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
  • Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
  • Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
  • 10 My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
  • Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
  • Through many years they toil; then on a day
  • They die not,—for their life was death,—but cease;
  • And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.
more about The Choice. II.
II
  • Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  • Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
  • Is not the day which God's word promiseth
  • To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
  • Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
  • Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
  • Even at this moment haply quickeneth
  • The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
  • Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
  • 10 And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
  • Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
  • Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
  • Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
  • Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
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more about The Choice. III.
III
  • Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  • Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
  • Thou say'st: “Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
  • Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
  • Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
  • Even I, am he whom it was destined for.”
  • How should this be? Art thou then so much more
  • Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
  • Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
  • 10 Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
  • Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
  • Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
  • And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
  • Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
more about Old and New Art.
SONNETS LXXIV, LXXV, LXXVI

OLD AND NEW ART
more about Old and New Art I. St. Luke the Painter.
I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER
  • Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
  • For he it was (the aged legends say)
  • Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
  • Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
  • Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
  • How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
  • Are symbols also in some deeper way,
  • She looked through these to God and was God's priest.
  • And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
  • 10And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
  • To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
  • Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
  • Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
  • Ere the night cometh and she may not work.
more about Old and New Art II. Not as These.
II. NOT AS THESE
  • “I am not as these are,” the poet saith
  • In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
  • At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
  • And shut about with his own frozen breath.
  • To others for whom only rhyme wins faith
  • As poets,—only paint as painters,—then
  • He turns in the cold silence; and again
  • Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.
  • And say that this is so, what follows it?
  • 10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
  • Such words were well; but they see on, and far.
  • Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
  • Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
  • Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”
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more about Old and New Art III. The Husbandmen.
III. THE HUSBANDMEN
  • Though God, as one that is an householder,
  • Called these to labour in His vineyard first,
  • Before the husk of darkness was well burst
  • Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
  • (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
  • Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
  • Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
  • Though God has since found none such as these were
  • To do their work like them:—Because of this
  • 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
  • Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
  • Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his
  • The hand which after the appointed days
  • And hours shall give a Future to their Past?
more about Soul's Beauty.
SONNET LXXVII

SOUL'S BEAUTY
  • Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
  • Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
  • Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
  • I drew it in as simply as my breath.
  • Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
  • The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
  • By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
  • The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.
  • This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
  • 10 Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee
  • By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
  • Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
  • How passionately and irretrievably,
  • In what fond flight, how many ways and days!
more about Body's Beauty.
SONNET LXXVIII

BODY'S BEAUTY
  • Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
  • (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
  • That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
  • And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
  • And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
  • And, subtly of herself contemplative,
  • Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
  • Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
  • The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
  • 10 Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
  • And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
  • Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
  • Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
  • And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
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more about The Monochord
SONNET LXXIX

THE MONOCHORD
  • Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
  • That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
  • And by instinct ineffable decree
  • Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
  • Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
  • That 'mid the tide of all emergency
  • Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
  • Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?
  • Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
  • 10The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
  • The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
  • That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
  • And in regenerate rapture turns my face
  • Upon the devious coverts of dismay?
more about From Dawn to Noon.
SONNET LXXX

FROM DAWN TO NOON
  • As the child knows not if his mother's face
  • Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem
  • What each most is; but as of hill or stream
  • At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
  • Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
  • Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
  • And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
  • In things long past new features now can trace:—
  • Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
  • 10 Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
  • And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
  • And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
  • Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
  • Those unknown things or these things overknown.
more about Memorial Thresholds.
SONNET LXXXI

MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS
  • What place so strange,—though unrevealèd snow
  • With unimaginable fires arise
  • At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
  • Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
  • Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
  • This is the very place which to mine eyes
  • Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
  • 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.
  • City, of thine a single simple door,
  • 10 By some new Power reduplicate, must be
  • Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
  • Even with one presence filled, as once of yore:
  • Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
  • Thee and thy years and these my words and me.
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more about Hoarded Joy.
SONNET LXXXII

HOARDED JOY
  • I said: “Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be:
  • Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
  • But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
  • Sees in the stream its own fecundity
  • And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
  • At the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
  • And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
  • And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?”
  • I say: “Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun
  • 10 Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
  • Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
  • And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
  • Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
  • And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.”
more about Barren Spring.
SONNET LXXXIII

BARREN SPRING
  • Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
  • And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
  • And now before and now again behind
  • Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
  • So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
  • No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
  • With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
  • And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.
  • Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
  • 10 This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
  • To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
  • Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
  • Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
  • The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.
more about Farewell to the Glen.
SONNET LXXXIV

FAREWELL TO THE GLEN
  • Sweet stream-fed glen, why say “farewell” to thee
  • Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
  • The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
  • Nay, do thou rather say “farewell” to me,
  • Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
  • Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe
  • By other streams, what while in fragrant youth
  • The bliss of being sad made melancholy.
  • And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
  • 10 When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
  • And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
  • In hours to come, than when an hour ago
  • Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
  • And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.
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more about Vain Virtues.
SONNET LXXXV

VAIN VIRTUES
  • What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
  • None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
  • Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
  • These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
  • Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
  • Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
  • Of anguish, while the pit's pollution leaves
  • Their refuse maidenhood abominable.
  • Night sucks them down, the tribute of the pit,
  • 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
  • Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
  • And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
  • To gaze, but, yearning, waits his destined wife,
  • The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.
more about Lost Days.
SONNET LXXXVI

LOST DAYS
  • The lost days of my life until to-day,
  • What were they, could I see them on the street
  • Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
  • Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
  • Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
  • Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
  • Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
  • The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
  • I do not see them here; but after death
  • 10 God knows I know the faces I shall see,
  • Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
  • “I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”
  • “And I—and I—thyself,” (lo! each one saith,)
  • “And thou thyself to all eternity!”
more about Death's Songsters.
SONNET LXXXVII

DEATH'S SONGSTERS
  • When first that horse, within whose populous womb
  • The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
  • Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
  • Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home;
  • She whispered, “Friends, I am alone; come, come!”
  • Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
  • And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
  • His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.
  • The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
  • 10 There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
  • Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
  • Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . .
  • Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
  • Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?
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Note: There is a typo in the footnote on p. 104: “Anterca” is printed, instead of the 1881 reading “Anteros”.
more about Hero's Lamp.
SONNET LXXXVIII

HERO'S LAMP.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 104):

* After the deaths of Leander and of Hero, the signal-lamp was dedicated to Anterca,

with the edict that no man should light it unless his love had proved fortunate.

  • That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night,
  • O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
  • To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
  • To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
  • Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
  • On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
  • While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
  • Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.
  • That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
  • 10 Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
  • Till some one man the happy issue see
  • Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
  • Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,
  • O brother, what brought love to them or thee?
more about The Trees of the Garden.
SONNET LXXXIX

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN
  • Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
  • Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
  • And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
  • A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
  • Of some inexorable supremacy
  • Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
  • From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
  • Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?
  • Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
  • 10 The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
  • Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
  • Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
  • Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
  • Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.
more about 'Retro Me, Sathana!'
SONNET XC

“ RETRO ME, SATHANA! ”
  • Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
  • Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
  • Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair,
  • So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
  • Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
  • Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
  • It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
  • Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled,
  • Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
  • 10 Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.
  • Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
  • Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
  • Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
  • For certain years, for certain months and days.
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more about Lost on Both Sides.
SONNET XCI

LOST ON BOTH SIDES
  • As when two men have loved a woman well,
  • Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
  • Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
  • And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;
  • Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
  • At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
  • Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
  • The two lives left that most of her can tell:—
  • So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
  • 10 The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
  • And Peace before their faces perished since:
  • So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
  • They roam together now, and wind among
  • Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
more about The Sun's Shame.
SONNETS XCII, XCIII

THE SUN'S SHAME
more about The Sun's Shame. I.
I
  • Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
  • From life; and mocking pulses that remain
  • When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
  • Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
  • And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
  • On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
  • And longed-for woman longing all in vain
  • For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
  • And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
  • 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
  • None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
  • Beholding these things, I behold no less
  • The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
  • The shame that loads the intolerable day.
more about The Sun's Shame. II.
II
  • As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
  • Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
  • May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,—
  • “Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
  • Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;”—
  • Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
  • And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
  • The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—
  • Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World
  • 10 Perchance one hour must cry: “Woe's me, for whom
  • Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
  • Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd:
  • While thou even as of yore art journeying,
  • All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!”
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more about Michelangelo's Kiss.
SONNET XCIV

MICHELANGELO'S KISS
  • Great Michelangelo, with age grown bleak
  • And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid
  • All grievous memories on his long life shed,
  • This worst regret to one true heart could speak:—
  • That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
  • He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
  • His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,—
  • Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.
  • O Buonarruoti,—good at Art's fire-wheels
  • 10 To urge her chariot!—even thus the Soul,
  • Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
  • Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals
  • Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
  • What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?
more about The Vase of Life.
SONNET XCV

THE VASE OF LIFE
  • Around the vase of Life at your slow pace
  • He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
  • And all its sides already understands.
  • There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
  • Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;
  • Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
  • Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
  • A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.
  • And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
  • 10 With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
  • With watered flowers for buried love most fit;
  • And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
  • Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
  • Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.
more about Life the Beloved.
SONNET XCVI

LIFE THE BELOVED
  • As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
  • Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been
  • Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
  • In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
  • As thy love's death-bound features never dead
  • To memory's glass return, but contravene
  • Frail fugitive days, and alway keep, I ween,
  • Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—
  • So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
  • 10 Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger
  • Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
  • Though pale she lay when in the winter grove
  • Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
  • And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.
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Note: The punctuation mark on p. 107, line 11 of “A Superscription”, between the word “sighs” and the emdash is so type-damaged that it is unreadable. It may possibly be a comma or semicolon.
more about A Superscription.
SONNET XCVII

A SUPERSCRIPTION
  • Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
  • I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
  • Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
  • Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
  • Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
  • Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
  • Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
  • Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
  • Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
  • 10 One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
  • Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs
    Transcription Gap: 1 character (type damage)
    —
  • Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
  • Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
  • Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
more about He and I.
SONNET XCVIII

HE AND I
  • Whence came his feet into my field, and why?
  • How is it that he sees it all so drear?
  • How do I see his seeing, and how hear
  • The name his bitter silence knows it by?
  • This was the little fold of separate sky
  • Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere
  • Drew living light from one continual year:
  • How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?
  • Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,
  • 10 With plaints for every flower, and for each tree
  • A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary:
  • And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield
  • Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd,
  • Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.
more about Newborn Death.
SONNETS XCIX, C

NEWBORN DEATH
more about Newborn Death. I.
I
  • To-day Death seems to me an infant child
  • Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
  • Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
  • If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
  • To find no terrors in a face so mild,—
  • If haply so my weary heart might be
  • Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
  • O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.
  • How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
  • 10 Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand
  • Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
  • What time with thee indeed I reach the strand
  • Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
  • And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?
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more about Newborn Death. II.
II
  • And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
  • With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
  • I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
  • And in fair places found all bowers amiss
  • Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
  • While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
  • Ah, Life! and must I have from thee at last
  • No smile to greet me and no babe but this?
  • Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
  • 10 Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
  • And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair:
  • These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
  • With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there:
  • And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?
more about The One Hope.
SONNET CI

THE ONE HOPE
  • When vain desire at last and vain regret
  • Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
  • What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
  • And teach the unforgetful to forget?
  • Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,—
  • Or may the soul at once in a green plain
  • Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain
  • And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?
  • Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air
  • 10 Between the scriptured petals softly blown
  • Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown,—
  • Ah! let none other alien spell soe'er
  • But only the one Hope's one name be there,—
  • Not less nor more, but even that word alone.
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Note: The period at the end of p. 109, line 4 is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about Eden Bower.
EDEN BOWER
  • It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Not a drop of her blood was human,
  • But she was made like a soft sweet woman.
  • Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden;
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • She was the first that thence was driven;
  • With her was hell and with Eve was heaven.
  • In the ear of the Snake said Lilith:—
  • 10 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • “To thee I come when the rest is over;
  • A snake was I when thou wast my lover.
  • “I was the fairest snake in Eden:
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • By the earth's will, new form and feature
  • Made me a wife for the earth's new creature.
  • “Take me thou as I come from Adam:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Once again shall my love subdue thee;
  • 20The past is past and I am come to thee.
  • “O but Adam was thrall to Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • All the threads of my hair are golden,
  • And there in a net his heart was holden.
  • “O and Lilith was queen of Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • All the day and the night together
  • My breath could shake his soul like a feather.
  • “What great joys had Adam and Lilith!—
  • 30 ( Alas the hour!)
  • Sweet close rings of the serpent's twining,
  • As heart in heart lay sighing and pining.
  • “What bright babes had Lilith and Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
  • Glittering sons and radiant daughters.
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  • “O thou God, the Lord God of Eden!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Say, was this fair body for no man,
  • 40That of Adam's flesh thou mak'st him a woman?
  • “O thou Snake, the King-snake of Eden!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • God's strong will our necks are under,
  • But thou and I may cleave it in sunder.
  • “Help, sweet Snake, sweet lover of Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • And let God learn how I loved and hated
  • Man in the image of God created.
  • “Help me once against Eve and Adam!
  • 50 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Help me once for this one endeavour,
  • And then my love shall be thine for ever!
  • “Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith:
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Nought in heaven or earth may affright Him;
  • But join thou with me and we will smite Him.
  • “Strong is God, the great God of Eden:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Over all He made He hath power;
  • 60But lend me thou thy shape for an hour!
  • “Lend thy shape for the love of Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Look, my mouth and my cheek are ruddy,
  • And thou art cold, and fire is my body.
  • “Lend thy shape for the hate of Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • That he may wail my joy that forsook him,
  • And curse the day when the bride-sleep took him.
  • “Lend thy shape for the shame of Eden!
  • 70 ( Alas the hour!)
  • Is not the foe-God weak as the foeman
  • When love grows hate in the heart of a woman?
  • “Wouldst thou know the heart's hope of Lilith?
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Then bring thou close thine head till it glisten
  • Along my breast, and lip me and listen.
  • “Am I sweet, O sweet Snake of Eden?
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Then ope thine ear to my warm mouth's cooing
  • 80And learn what deed remains for our doing.
  • “Thou didst hear when God said to Adam:—
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • ‘Of all this wealth I have made thee warden;
  • Thou'rt free to eat of the trees of the garden:
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  • “‘Only of one tree eat not in Eden:
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • All save one I give to thy freewill,—
  • The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’
  • “O my love, come nearer to Lilith!
  • 90 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • In thy sweet folds bind me and bend me,
  • And let me feel the shape thou shalt lend me.
  • “In thy shape I'll go back to Eden;
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • In these coils that Tree will I grapple,
  • And stretch this crowned head forth by the apple.
  • “Lo, Eve bends to the breath of Lilith!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • O how then shall my heart desire
  • 100All her blood as food to its fire!
  • “Lo, Eve bends to the words of Lilith!—
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • ‘Nay, this Tree's fruit,—why should ye hate it,
  • Or Death be born the day that ye ate it?
  • “‘Nay, but on that great day in Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • By the help that in this wise Tree is,
  • God knows well ye shall be as He is.’
  • “Then Eve shall eat and give unto Adam;
  • 110 ( Alas the hour!)
  • And then they both shall know they are naked,
  • And their hearts ache as my heart hath achèd.
  • “Ay, let them hide 'mid the trees of Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • As in the cool of the day in the garden
  • God shall walk without pity or pardon.
  • “Hear, thou Eve, the man's heart in Adam!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Of his brave words hark to the bravest:—
  • 120‘This the woman gave that thou gavest.’
  • “Hear Eve speak, yea list to her, Lilith!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Feast thine heart with words that shall sate it—
  • ‘This the serpent gave and I ate it.’
  • “O proud Eve, cling close to thine Adam,
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Driven forth as the beasts of his naming
  • By the sword that for ever is flaming.
  • “Know, thy path is known unto Lilith!
  • 130 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • While the blithe birds sang at thy wedding,
  • There her tears grew thorns for thy treading.
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  • “O my love, thou Love-snake of Eden!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • O to-day and the day to come after!
  • Loose me, love,—give breath to my laughter.
  • “O bright Snake, the Death-worm of Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Wreathe thy neck with my hair's bright tether,
  • 140And wear my gold and thy gold together!
  • “On that day on the skirts of Eden,
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • In thy shape shall I glide back to thee,
  • And in my shape for an instant view thee.
  • “But when thou'rt thou and Lilith is Lilith,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • In what bliss past hearing or seeing
  • Shall each one drink of the other's being!
  • “With cries of ‘Eve!’ and ‘Eden!’ and ‘Adam!’
  • 150 ( Alas the hour!)
  • How shall we mingle our love's caresses,
  • I in thy coils, and thou in my tresses!
  • “With those names, ye echoes of Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Fire shall cry from my heart that burneth,—
  • ‘Dust he is and to dust returneth!’
  • “Yet to-day, thou master of Lilith,—
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Wrap me round in the form I'll borrow
  • 160And let me tell thee of sweet to-morrow.
  • “In the planted garden eastward in Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Where the river goes forth to water the garden,
  • The springs shall dry and the soil shall harden.
  • “Yea, where the bride-sleep fell upon Adam,
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • None shall hear when the storm-wind whistles
  • Through roses choked among thorns and thistles.
  • “Yea, beside the east-gate of Eden,
  • 170 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Where God joined them and none might sever,
  • The sword turns this way and that for ever.
  • “What of Adam cast out of Eden?
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Lo! with care like a shadow shaken,
  • He tills the hard earth whence he was taken.
  • “What of Eve too, cast out of Eden?
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Nay, but she, the bride of God's giving,
  • 180Must yet be mother of all men living.
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Sig. 8
  • “Lo, God's grace, by the grace of Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • To Eve's womb, from our sweet to-morrow,
  • God shall greatly multiply sorrow.
  • “Fold me fast, O God-snake of Eden!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • What more prize than love to impel thee?
  • Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!
  • “Lo! two babes for Eve and for Adam!
  • 190 ( Alas the hour!)
  • Lo! sweet Snake, the travail and treasure,—
  • Two men-children born for their pleasure!
  • “The first is Cain and the second Abel:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • The soul of one shall be made thy brother,
  • And thy tongue shall lap the blood of the other.”
  • ( Alas the hour!)
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more about The Stream's Secret.
THE STREAM'S SECRET
  • What thing unto mine ear
  • Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing,
  • O wandering water ever whispering?
  • Surely thy speech shall be of her.
  • Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
  • What message dost thou bring?
  • Say, hath not Love leaned low
  • This hour beside thy far well-head,
  • And there through jealous hollowed fingers said
  • 10 The thing that most I long to know,—
  • Murmuring with curls all dabbled in thy flow
  • And washed lips rosy red?
  • He told it to thee there
  • Where thy voice hath a louder tone;
  • But where it welters to this little moan
  • His will decrees that I should hear.
  • Now speak: for with the silence is no fear,
  • And I am all alone.
  • Shall Time not still endow
  • 20 One hour with life, and I and she
  • Slake in one kiss the thirst of memory?
  • Say, stream; lest Love should disavow
  • Thy service, and the bird upon the bough
  • Sing first to tell it me.
  • What whisperest thou? Nay, why
  • Name the dead hours? I mind them well:
  • Their ghosts in many darkened doorways dwell
  • With desolate eyes to know them by.
  • The hour that must be born ere it can die,—
  • 30 Of that I'd have thee tell.
  • But hear, before thou speak!
  • Withhold, I pray, the vain behest
  • That while the maze hath still its bower for quest
  • My burning heart should cease to seek.
  • Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek
  • His roadside dells of rest.
  • Stream, when this silver thread
  • In flood-time is a torrent brown
  • May any bulwark bind thy foaming crown?
  • 40 Shall not the waters surge and spread
  • And to the crannied boulders of their bed
  • Still shoot the dead drift down?
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  • Let no rebuke find place
  • In speech of thine: or it shall prove
  • That thou dost ill expound the words of Love,
  • Even as thine eddy's rippling race
  • Would blur the perfect image of his face.
  • I will have none thereof.
  • O learn and understand
  • 50 That 'gainst the wrongs himself did wreak
  • Love sought her aid; until her shadowy cheek
  • And eyes beseeching gave command;
  • And compassed in her close compassionate hand
  • My heart must burn and speak.
  • For then at last we spoke
  • What eyes so oft had told to eyes
  • Through that long-lingering silence whose half-sighs
  • Alone the buried secret broke,
  • Which with snatched hands and lips' reverberate stroke
  • 60 Then from the heart did rise.
  • But she is far away
  • Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar
  • Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
  • The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey
  • And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day
  • When we shall meet once more.
  • Dark as thy blinded wave
  • When brimming midnight floods the glen,—
  • Bright as the laughter of thy runnels when
  • 70 The dawn yields all the light they crave;
  • Even so these hours to wound and that to save
  • Are sisters in Love's ken.
  • Oh sweet her bending grace
  • Then when I kneel beside her feet;
  • And sweet her eyes' o'erhanging heaven; and sweet
  • The gathering folds of her embrace;
  • And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face
  • When breaths and tears shall meet.
  • Beneath her sheltering hair,
  • 80 In the warm silence near her breast,
  • Our kisses and our sobs shall sink to rest;
  • As in some still trance made aware
  • That day and night have wrought to fulness there
  • And Love has built our nest.
  • And as in the dim grove,
  • When the rains cease that hushed them long,
  • 'Mid glistening boughs the song-birds wake to song,—
  • So from our hearts deep-shrined in love,
  • While the leaves throb beneath, around, above,
  • 90 The quivering notes shall throng.
  • Till tenderest words found vain
  • Draw back to wonder mute and deep,
  • And closed lips in closed arms a silence keep,
  • Subdued by memory's circling strain,—
  • The wind-rapt sound that the wind brings again
  • While all the willows weep.
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  • Then by her summoning art
  • Shall memory conjure back the sere
  • Autumnal Springs, from many a dying year
  • 100 Born dead; and, bitter to the heart,
  • The very ways where now we walk apart
  • Who then shall cling so near.
  • And with each thought new-grown,
  • Some sweet caress or some sweet name
  • Low-breathed shall let me know her thought the same;
  • Making me rich with every tone
  • And touch of the dear heaven so long unknown
  • That filled my dreams with flame.
  • Pity and love shall burn
  • 110 In her pressed cheek and cherishing hands;
  • And from the living spirit of love that stands
  • Between her lips to soothe and yearn,
  • Each separate breath shall clasp me round in turn
  • And loose my spirit's bands.
  • Oh passing sweet and dear,
  • Then when the worshipped form and face
  • Are felt at length in darkling close embrace;
  • Round which so oft the sun shone clear,
  • With mocking light and pitiless atmosphere,
  • 120 In many an hour and place.
  • Ah me! with what proud growth
  • Shall that hour's thirsting race be run;
  • While, for each several sweetness still begun
  • Afresh, endures love's endless drouth:
  • Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes, sweet mouth,
  • Each singly wooed and won.
  • Yet most with the sweet soul
  • Shall love's espousals then be knit;
  • For very passion of peace shall breathe from it
  • 130 O'er tremulous wings that touch the goal,
  • As on the unmeasured height of Love's control
  • The lustral fires are lit.
  • Therefore, when breast and cheek
  • Now part, from long embraces free,—
  • Each on the other gazing shall but see
  • A self that has no heed to speak:
  • All things unsought, yet nothing more to seek,—
  • One love in unity.
  • O water wandering past,—
  • 140 Albeit to thee I speak this thing,
  • O water, thou that wanderest whispering,
  • Thou keep'st thy counsel to the last.
  • What spell upon thy bosom should Love cast,
  • His message thence to wring?
  • Nay, must thou hear the tale
  • Of the past days,—the heavy debt
  • Of life that obdurate time withholds,—ere yet
  • To win thine ear these prayers prevail,
  • And by thy voice Love's self with high All-hail
  • 150 Yield up the amulet?
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  • How should all this be told?—
  • All the sad sum of wayworn days;—
  • Heart's anguish in the impenetrable maze;
  • And on the waste uncoloured wold
  • The visible burthen of the sun grown cold
  • And the moon's labouring gaze?
  • Alas! shall hope be nurs'd
  • On life's all-succouring breast in vain,
  • And made so perfect only to be slain?
  • 160 Or shall not rather the sweet thirst
  • Even yet rejoice the heart with warmth dispers'd
  • And strength grown fair again?
  • Stands it not by the door—
  • Love's Hour—till she and I shall meet;
  • With bodiless form and unapparent feet
  • That cast no shadow yet before,
  • Though round its head the dawn begins to pour
  • The breath that makes day sweet?
  • Its eyes invisible
  • 170 Watch till the dial's thin-thrown shade
  • Be born,—yea, till the journeying line be laid
  • Upon the point that wakes the spell,
  • And there in lovelier light than tongue can tell
  • Its presence stand array'd.
  • Its soul remembers yet
  • Those sunless hours that passed it by;
  • And still it hears the night's disconsolate cry,
  • And feels the branches wringing wet
  • Cast on its brow, that may not once forget,
  • 180 Dumb tears from the blind sky.
  • But oh! when now her foot
  • Draws near, for whose sake night and day
  • Were long in weary longing sighed away,—
  • The Hour of Love, 'mid airs grown mute,
  • Shall sing beside the door, and Love's own lute
  • Thrill to the passionate lay.
  • Thou know'st, for Love has told
  • Within thine ear, O stream, how soon
  • That song shall lift its sweet appointed tune.
  • 190 O tell me, for my lips are cold,
  • And in my veins the blood is waxing old
  • Even while I beg the boon.
  • So, in that hour of sighs
  • Assuaged, shall we beside this stone
  • Yield thanks for grace; while in thy mirror shown
  • The twofold image softly lies,
  • Until we kiss, and each in other's eyes
  • Is imaged all alone.
  • Still silent? Can no art
  • 200 Of Love's then move thy pity? Nay,
  • To thee let nothing come that owns his sway:
  • Let happy lovers have no part
  • With thee; nor even so sad and poor a heart
  • As thou hast spurned to-day.
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  • To-day? Lo! night is here.
  • The glen grows heavy with some veil
  • Risen from the earth or fall'n to make earth pale;
  • And all stands hushed to eye and ear,
  • Until the night-wind shake the shade like fear
  • 210 And every covert quail.
  • Ah! by a colder wave
  • On deathlier airs the hour must come
  • Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
  • Between the lips of the low cave
  • Against that night the lapping waters lave,
  • And the dark lips are dumb.
  • But there Love's self doth stand,
  • And with Life's weary wings far-flown,
  • And with Death's eyes that make the water moan,
  • 220 Gathers the water in his hand:
  • And they that drink know nought of sky or land
  • But only love alone.
  • O soul-sequestered face
  • Far off,—O were that night but now!
  • So even beside that stream even I and thou
  • Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace,
  • And in the zone of that supreme embrace
  • Bind aching breast and brow.
  • O water whispering
  • 230 Still through the dark into mine ears,—
  • As with mine eyes, is it not now with hers?—
  • Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring,
  • Wan water, wandering water weltering,
  • This hidden tide of tears.
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more about Rose Mary.
ROSE MARY

Of her two fights with the Beryl-stone

Lost the first, but the second won.

more about Rose Mary. Part I.
PART I
  • “Mary mine that art Mary's Rose
  • Come in to me from the garden-close.
  • The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,
  • And we marked not how the faint moon grew;
  • But the hidden stars are calling you.
  • “Tall Rose Mary, come to my side,
  • And read the stars if you'd be a bride.
  • In hours whose need was not your own,
  • While you were a young maid yet ungrown
  • 10You've read the stars in the Beryl-stone.
  • “Daughter, once more I bid you read;
  • But now let it be for your own need:
  • Because to-morrow, at break of day,
  • To Holy Cross he rides on his way,
  • Your knight Sir James of Heronhaye.
  • “Ere he wed you, flower of mine,
  • For a heavy shrift he seeks the shrine.
  • Now hark to my words and do not fear;
  • Ill news next I have for your ear;
  • 20But be you strong, and our help is here.
  • “On his road, as the rumour's rife,
  • An ambush waits to take his life.
  • He needs will go, and will go alone;
  • Where the peril lurks may not be known;
  • But in this glass all things are shown.”
  • Pale Rose Mary sank to the floor:—
  • “The night will come if the day is o'er!”
  • “Nay, heaven takes counsel, star with star,
  • And help shall reach your heart from afar:
  • 30A bride you'll be, as a maid you are.”
  • The lady unbound her jewelled zone
  • And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone.
  • Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere,—
  • World of our world, the sun's compeer,
  • That bears and buries the toiling year.
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  • With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn
  • Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon:
  • Freaked it was as the bubble's ball,
  • Rainbow-hued through a misty pall
  • 40Like the middle light of the waterfall.
  • Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth
  • Of the known and unknown things of earth;
  • The cloud above and the wave around,—
  • The central fire at the sphere's heart bound,
  • Like doomsday prisoned underground.
  • A thousand years it lay in the sea
  • With a treasure wrecked from Thessaly;
  • Deep it lay 'mid the coiled sea-wrack,
  • But the ocean-spirits found the track:
  • 50A soul was lost to win it back.
  • The lady upheld the wondrous thing:—
  • “Ill fare” (she said) “with a fiend's-faring:
  • But Moslem blood poured forth like wine
  • Can hallow Hell, 'neath the Sacred Sign;
  • And my lord brought this from Palestine.
  • “Spirits who fear the Blessed Rood
  • Drove forth the accursed multitude
  • That heathen worship housed herein,—
  • Never again such home to win,
  • 60Save only by a Christian's sin.
  • “All last night at an altar fair
  • I burnt strange fires and strove with prayer;
  • Till the flame paled to the red sunrise,
  • All rites I then did solemnize;
  • And the spell lacks nothing but your eyes.”
  • Low spake maiden Rose Mary:—
  • “O mother mine, if I should not see!”
  • “Nay, daughter, cover your face no more,
  • But bend love's heart to the hidden lore,
  • 70And you shall see now as heretofore.”
  • Paler yet were the pale cheeks grown
  • As the grey eyes sought the Beryl-stone:
  • Then over her mother's lap leaned she,
  • And stretched her thrilled throat passionately,
  • And sighed from her soul, and said, “I see.”
  • Even as she spoke, they two were 'ware
  • Of music-notes that fell through the air;
  • A chiming shower of strange device,
  • Drop echoing drop, once, twice, and thrice,
  • 80As rain may fall in Paradise.
  • An instant come, in an instant gone,
  • No time there was to think thereon.
  • The mother held the sphere on her knee:—
  • “Lean this way and speak low to me,
  • And take no note but of what you see.”
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  • “I see a man with a besom grey
  • That sweeps the flying dust away.”
  • “Ay, that comes first in the mystic sphere;
  • But now that the way is swept and clear,
  • 90Heed well what next you look on there.”
  • “Stretched aloft and adown I see
  • Two roads that part in waste-country:
  • The glen lies deep and the ridge stands tall;
  • What's great below is above seen small,
  • And the hill-side is the valley-wall.”
  • “Stream-bank, daughter, or moor and moss,
  • Both roads will take to Holy Cross.
  • The hills are a weary waste to wage;
  • But what of the valley-road's presage?
  • 100That way must tend his pilgrimage.”
  • “As 'twere the turning leaves of a book,
  • The road runs past me as I look;
  • Or it is even as though mine eye
  • Should watch calm waters filled with sky
  • While lights and clouds and wings went by.”
  • “In every covert seek a spear;
  • They'll scarce lie close till he draws near.”
  • “The stream has spread to a river now;
  • The stiff blue sedge is deep in the slough,
  • 110But the banks are bare of shrub or bough.’
  • “Is there any roof that near at hand
  • Might shelter yield to a hidden band?”
  • “On the further bank I see but one,
  • And a herdsman now in the sinking sun
  • Unyokes his team at the threshold-stone.”
  • “Keep heedful watch by the water's edge,—
  • Some boat might lurk 'neath the shadowed sedge.”
  • “One slid but now 'twixt the winding shores,
  • But a peasant woman bent to the oars
  • 120And only a young child steered its course.
  • “Mother, something flashed to my sight!—
  • Nay, it is but the lapwing's flight.—
  • What glints there like a lance that flees?—
  • Nay, the flags are stirred in the breeze,
  • And the water's bright through the dart-rushes.
  • “Ah! vainly I search from side to side:—
  • Woe's me! and where do the foemen hide?
  • Woe's me! and perchance I pass them by,
  • And under the new dawn's blood-red sky
  • 130Even where I gaze the dead shall lie.”
  • Said the mother: “For dear love's sake,
  • Speak more low, lest the spell should break.”
  • Said the daughter: “By love's control,
  • My eyes, my words, are strained to the goal;
  • But oh! the voice that cries in my soul!”
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  • “Hush, sweet, hush! be calm and behold.”
  • “I see two floodgates broken and old:
  • The grasses wave o'er the ruined weir,
  • But the bridge still leads to the breakwater;
  • 140And—mother, mother, O mother dear!”
  • The damsel clung to her mother's knee,
  • And dared not let the shriek go free;
  • Low she crouched by the lady's chair,
  • And shrank blindfold in her fallen hair,
  • And whispering said, “The spears are there!”
  • The lady stooped aghast from her place,
  • And cleared the locks from her daughter's face.
  • “More's to see, and she swoons, alas!
  • Look, look again, ere the moment pass!
  • 150One shadow comes but once to the glass.
  • “See you there what you saw but now?”
  • “I see eight men 'neath the willow bough.
  • All over the weir a wild growth's spread:
  • Ah me! it will hide a living head
  • As well as the water hides the dead.
  • “They lie by the broken water-gate
  • As men who have a while to wait.
  • The chief's high lance has a blazoned scroll,—
  • He seems some lord of tithe and toll
  • 160With seven squires to his bannerole.
  • “The little pennon quakes in the air,
  • I cannot trace the blazon there:—
  • Ah! now I can see the field of blue,
  • The spurs and the merlins two and two;—
  • It is the Warden of Holycleugh!”
  • “God be thanked for the thing we know!
  • You have named your good knight's mortal foe.
  • Last Shrovetide in the tourney-game
  • He sought his life by treasonous shame;
  • 170And this way now doth he seek the same.
  • “So, fair lord, such a thing you are!
  • But we too watch till the morning star.
  • Well, June is kind and the moon is clear:
  • Saint Judas send you a merry cheer
  • For the night you lie in Warisweir!
  • “Now, sweet daughter, but one more sight,
  • And you may lie soft and sleep to-night.
  • We know in the vale what perils be:
  • Now look once more in the glass, and see
  • 180If over the hills the road lies free.”
  • Rose Mary pressed to her mother's cheek,
  • And almost smiled but did not speak;
  • Then turned again to the saving spell,
  • With eyes to search and with lips to tell
  • The heart of things invisible.
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  • “Again the shape with the besom grey
  • Comes back to sweep the clouds away.
  • Again I stand where the roads divide;
  • But now all's near on the steep hillside,
  • 190And a thread far down is the rivertide.”
  • “Ay, child, your road is o'er moor and moss,
  • Past Holycleugh to Holy Cross.
  • Our hunters lurk in the valley's wake,
  • As they knew which way the chase would take:
  • Yet search the hills for your true love's sake.”
  • “Swift and swifter the waste runs by,
  • And nought I see but the heath and the sky;
  • No brake is there that could hide a spear,
  • And the gaps to a horseman's sight lie clear;
  • 200Still past it goes, and there's nought to fear.”
  • “Fear no trap that you cannot see,—
  • They'd not lurk yet too warily.
  • Below by the weir they lie in sight,
  • And take no heed how they pass the night
  • Till close they crouch with the morning light.”
  • “The road shifts ever and brings in view
  • Now first the heights of Holycleugh:
  • Dark they stand o'er the vale below,
  • And hide that heaven which yet shall show
  • 210The thing their master's heart doth know.
  • “Where the road looks to the castle steep,
  • There are seven hill-clefts wide and deep:
  • Six mine eyes can search as they list,
  • But the seventh hollow is brimmed with mist:
  • If aught were there, it might not be wist.”
  • “Small hope, my girl, for a helm to hide
  • In mists that cling to a wild moorside:
  • Soon they melt with the wind and sun,
  • And scarce would wait such deeds to be done
  • 220God send their snares be the worst to shun.”
  • “Still the road winds ever anew
  • As it hastens on towards Holycleugh;
  • And ever the great walls loom more near,
  • Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer,
  • Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear.”
  • “Enough, my daughter,” the mother said,
  • And took to her breast the bending head;
  • “Rest, poor head, with my heart below,
  • While love still lulls you as long ago:
  • 230For all is learnt that we need to know.
  • “Long the miles and many the hours
  • From the castle-height to the abbey-towers;
  • But here the journey has no more dread;
  • Too thick with life is the whole road spread
  • For murder's trembling foot to tread.”
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  • She gazed on the Beryl-stone full fain
  • Ere she wrapped it close in her robe again:
  • The flickering shades were dusk and dun
  • And the lights throbbed faint in unison
  • 240Like a high heart when a race is run.
  • As the globe slid to its silken gloom,
  • Once more a music rained through the room;
  • Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray,
  • And sobbed like tears at the heart of May,
  • And died as laughter dies away.
  • The lady held her breath for a space,
  • And then she looked in her daughter's face:
  • But wan Rose Mary had never heard;
  • Deep asleep like a sheltered bird
  • 250She lay with the long spell minister'd.
  • “Ah! and yet I must leave you, dear,
  • For what you have seen your knight must hear.
  • Within four days, by the help of God,
  • He comes back safe to his heart's abode:
  • Be sure he shall shun the valley-road.”
  • Rose Mary sank with a broken moan,
  • And lay in the chair and slept alone,
  • Weary, lifeless, heavy as lead:
  • Long it was ere she raised her head
  • 260And rose up all discomforted.
  • She searched her brain for a vanished thing,
  • And clasped her brows, remembering;
  • Then knelt and lifted her eyes in awe,
  • And sighed with a long sigh sweet to draw:—
  • “Thank God, thank God, thank God I saw!”
  • The lady had left her as she lay,
  • To seek the Knight of Heronhaye.
  • But first she clomb by a secret stair,
  • And knelt at a carven altar fair,
  • 270And laid the precious Beryl there.
  • Its girth was graved with a mystic rune
  • In a tongue long dead 'neath sun and moon:
  • A priest of the Holy Sepulchre
  • Read that writing and did not err;
  • And her lord had told its sense to her.
  • She breathed the words in an undertone:—
  • “ None sees here but the pure alone .”
  • “And oh!” she said, “what rose may be
  • In Mary's bower more pure to see
  • 280Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary?”
more about Beryl-Song. I.
Beryl-Song
  • We whose home is the Beryl,
  • Fire-spirits of dread desire,
  • Who entered in
  • By a secret sin,
  • 'Gainst whom all powers that strive with ours are sterile,—
    Image of page 125 page: 125
  • We cry, Woe to thee, mother!
  • What hast thou taught her, the girl thy daughter,
  • That she and none other
  • Should this dark morrow to her deadly sorrow imperil?
  • 10 What were her eyes
  • But the fiend's own spies,
  • O mother,
  • And shall We not fee her, our proper prophet and seër?
  • Go to her, mother,
  • Even thou, yea thou and none other,
  • Thou, from the Beryl:
  • Her fee must thou take her,
  • Her fee that We send, and make her,
  • Even in this hour, her sin's unsheltered avower.
  • 20 Whose steed did neigh,
  • Riderless, bridleless,
  • At her gate before it was day?
  • Lo! where doth hover
  • The soul of her lover?
  • She sealed his doom, she, she was the sworn approver,—
  • Whose eyes were so wondrous wise,
  • Yet blind, ah! blind to his peril!
  • For stole not We in
  • Through a love-linked sin,
  • 30 'Gainst whom all powers at war with ours are sterile,—
  • Fire-spirits of dread desire,
  • We whose home is the Beryl?
more about Rose Mary. Part II.
PART II
  • “Pale Rose Mary, what shall be done
  • With a rose that Mary weeps upon?”
  • “Mother, let it fall from the tree,
  • And never walk where the strewn leaves be
  • Till winds have passed and the path is free.”
  • “Sad Rose Mary, what shall be done
  • With a cankered flower beneath the sun?”
  • “Mother, let it wait for the night;
  • Be sure its shame shall be out of sight
  • 10Ere the moon pale or the east grow light.”
  • “Lost Rose Mary, what shall be done
  • With a heart that is but a broken one?”
  • “Mother, let it lie where it must;
  • The blood was drained with the bitter thrust,
  • And dust is all that sinks in the dust.”
  • “Poor Rose Mary, what shall I do,—
  • I, your mother, that lovèd you?”
  • “O my mother, and is love gone?
  • Then seek you another love anon:
  • 20Who cares what shame shall lean upon?”
  • Low drooped trembling Rose Mary,
  • Then up as though in a dream stood she.
  • “Come, my heart, it is time to go;
  • This is the hour that has whispered low
  • When thy pulse quailed in the nights we know.
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  • “Yet O my heart, thy shame has a mate
  • Who will not leave thee desolate.
  • Shame for shame, yea and sin for sin:
  • Yet peace at length may our poor souls win
  • 30If love for love be found therein.
  • “O thou who seek'st our shrift to-day,”
  • She cried, “O James of Heronhaye—
  • Thy sin and mine was for love alone;
  • And oh! in the sight of God 'tis known
  • How the heart has since made heavy moan.
  • “Three days yet!” she said to her heart;
  • “But then he comes, and we will not part.
  • God, God be thanked that I still could see!
  • Oh! he shall come back assuredly,
  • 40But where, alas! must he seek for me?
  • “O my heart, what road shall we roam
  • Till my wedding-music fetch me home?
  • For love's shut from us and bides afar,
  • And scorn leans over the bitter bar
  • And knows us now for the thing we are.”
  • Tall she stood with a cheek flushed high
  • And a gaze to burn the heart-strings by.
  • 'Twas the lightning-flash o'er sky and plain
  • Ere labouring thunders heave the chain
  • 50From the floodgates of the drowning rain.
  • The mother looked on the daughter still
  • As on a hurt thing that's yet to kill.
  • Then wildly at length the pent tears came;
  • The love swelled high with the swollen shame,
  • And their hearts' tempest burst on them.
  • Closely locked, they clung without speech,
  • And the mirrored souls shook each to each,
  • As the cloud-moon and the water-moon
  • Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon
  • 60In stormy bowers of the night's mid-noon.
  • They swayed together, shuddering sore,
  • Till the mother's heart could bear no more.
  • 'Twas death to feel her own breast shake
  • Even to the very throb and ache
  • Of the burdened heart she still must break.
  • All her sobs ceased suddenly,
  • And she sat straight up but scarce could see.
  • “O daughter, where should my speech begin?
  • Your heart held fast its secret sin:
  • 70How think you, child, that I read therein?”
  • “Ah me! but I thought not how it came
  • When your words showed that you knew my shame:
  • And now that you call me still your own,
  • I half forget you have ever known.
  • Did you read my heart in the Beryl-stone?”
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  • The lady answered her mournfully:—
  • “The Beryl-stone has no voice for me:
  • But when you charged its power to show
  • The truth which none but the pure may know,
  • 80Did naught speak once of a coming woe?”
  • Her hand was close to her daughter's heart,
  • And it felt the life-blood's sudden start:
  • A quick deep breath did the damsel draw,
  • Llke the struck fawn in the oakenshaw:
  • “O mother,” she cried, “but still I saw!”
  • “O child, my child, why held you apart
  • From my great love your hidden heart?
  • Said I not that all sin must chase
  • From the spell's sphere the spirits of grace,
  • 90And yield their rule to the evil race?
  • “Ah! would to God I had clearly told
  • How strong those powers, accurst of old:
  • Their heart is the ruined house of lies;
  • O girl, they can seal the sinful eyes,
  • Or show the truth by contraries!”
  • The daughter sat as cold as a stone,
  • And spoke no word but gazed alone,
  • Nor moved, though her mother strove a space
  • To clasp her round in a close embrace,
  • 100Because she dared not see her face.
  • “Oh!” at last did the mother cry,
  • “Be sure, as he loved you, so will I!
  • Ah! still and dumb is the bride, I trow;
  • But cold and stark as the winter snow
  • Is the bridegroom's heart, laid dead below!
  • “Daughter, daughter, remember you
  • That cloud in the hills by Holycleugh?
  • 'Twas a Hell-screen hiding truth away:
  • There, not i' the vale, the ambush lay,
  • 110And thence was the dead borne home to-day.”
  • Deep the flood and heavy the shock
  • When sea meets sea in the riven rock:
  • But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea
  • To the prisoned tide of doom set free
  • In the breaking heart of Rose Mary.
  • Once she sprang as the heifer springs
  • With the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings.
  • First 'twas fire in her breast and brain,
  • And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain,
  • 120As she gave one shriek and sank again.
  • In the hair dark-waved the face lay white
  • As the moon lies in the lap of night;
  • And as night through which no moon may dart
  • Lies on a pool in the woods apart,
  • So lay the swoon on the weary heart.
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  • The lady felt for the bosom's stir,
  • And wildly kissed and called on her;
  • Then turned away with a quick footfall,
  • And slid the secret door in the wall,
  • 130And clomb the strait stair's interval.
  • There above in the altar-cell
  • A little fountain rose and fell:
  • She set a flask to the water's flow,
  • And, backward hurrying, sprinkled now
  • The still cold breast and the pallid brow.
  • Scarce cheek that warmed or breath on the air,
  • Yet something told that life was there.
  • “Ah! not with the heart the body dies!”
  • The lady moaned in a bitter wise;
  • 140Then wrung her hands and hid her eyes.
  • “Alas! and how may I meet again
  • In the same poor eyes the selfsame pain?
  • What help can I seek, such grief to guide?
  • Ah! one alone might avail,” she cried—
  • “The priest who prays at the dead man's side.”
  • The lady arose, and sped down all
  • The winding stairs to the castle-hall.
  • Long-known valley and wood and stream,
  • As the loopholes passed, naught else did seem
  • 150Than the torn threads of a broken dream.
  • The hall was full of the castle-folk;
  • The women wept, but the men scarce spoke.
  • As the lady crossed the rush-strewn floor,
  • The throng fell backward, murmuring sore,
  • And pressed outside round the open door.
  • A stranger shadow hung on the hall
  • Than the dark pomp of a funeral.
  • 'Mid common sights that were there alway,
  • As 'twere a chance of the passing day,
  • 160On the ingle-bench the dead man lay.
  • A priest who passed by Holycleugh
  • The tidings brought when the day was new.
  • He guided them who had fetched the dead;
  • And since that hour, unwearièd,
  • He knelt in prayer at the low bier's head.
  • Word had gone to his own domain
  • That in evil wise the knight was slain:
  • Soon the spears must gather apace
  • And the hunt be hard on the hunters' trace;
  • 170But all things yet lay still for a space.
  • As the lady's hurried step drew near,
  • The kneeling priest looked up to her.
  • “Father, death is a grievous thing;
  • But oh! the woe has a sharper sting
  • That craves by me your ministering.
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  • “Alas for the child that should have wed
  • This noble knight here lying dead!
  • Dead in hope, with all blessed boon
  • Of love thus rent from her heart ere noon,
  • 180I left her laid in a heavy swoon.
  • “O haste to the open bower-chamber
  • That's topmost as you mount the stair:
  • Seek her, father, ere yet she wake;
  • Your words, not mine, be the first to slake
  • This poor heart's fire, for Christ's sweet sake!
  • “God speed!” she said as the priest passed through,
  • “And I ere long will be with you.”
  • Then low on the hearth her knees sank prone;
  • She signed all folk from the threshold-stone,
  • 190And gazed in the dead man's face alone.
  • The fight for life found record yet
  • In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set;
  • The wrath from the bent brow was not gone
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  • And stark in the eyes the hate still shone
  • Of that they last had looked upon.
  • The blazoned coat was rent on his breast
  • Where the golden field was goodliest;
  • But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell
  • That the blood shed round him where he fell
  • 200Was not all his in the distant dell.
  • The lady recked of the corpse no whit,
  • But saw the soul and spoke to it:
  • A light there was in her steadfast eyes,—
  • The fire of mortal tears and sighs
  • That pity and love immortalize.
  • “By thy death have I learnt to-day
  • Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye!
  • Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine;
  • And haply God hath wrought for a sign
  • 210By our blind deed this doom of thine.
  • “Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win;
  • But may death shrive thy soul herein!
  • Full well do I know thy love should be
  • Even yet—had life but stayed with thee—
  • Our honour's strong security.”
  • She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir,—
  • “Peace be thine,—but what peace for her?”
  • But ere to the brow her lips were press'd,
  • She marked, half-hid in the riven vest,
  • 220A packet close to the dead man's breast.
  • 'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail
  • It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale.
  • The clot hung round it, dull and dense,
  • And a faintness seized her mortal sense
  • As she reached her hand and drew it thence.
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  • 'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high
  • From the heart it there had rested by:
  • 'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay,—
  • A shred by spear-thrust rent away
  • 230From the heron-wings of Heronhaye.
  • She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne:—
  • “Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine!
  • Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain,
  • And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain,
  • And when shall the other throb again?”
  • She opened the packet heedfully;
  • The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be.
  • She found but a folded paper there,
  • And round it, twined with tenderest care,
  • 240A long bright tress of golden hair.
  • Even as she looked, she saw again
  • That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain:
  • It seemed a snake with a golden sheath
  • Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth,
  • And stung her daughter's heart to death.
  • She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake
  • As though indeed she had touched a snake;
  • And next she undid the paper's fold,
  • But that too trembled in her hold,
  • 250And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told.
  • “My heart's sweet lord,” ('twas thus she read,)
  • “At length our love is garlanded.
  • At Holy Cross, within eight days' space,
  • I seek my shrift; and the time and place
  • Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace.
  • “From Holycleugh on the seventh day
  • My brother rides, and bides away:
  • And long or e'er he is back, mine own,
  • Afar where the face of fear's unknown
  • 260We shall be safe with our love alone.
  • “Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow,
  • I shear one tress for our holy vow.
  • As round these words these threads I wind,
  • So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined,
  • Says my lord's poor lady, Jocelind.”
  • She read it twice, with a brain in thrall,
  • And then its echo told her all.
  • O'er brows low-fall'n her hands she drew:—
  • “O God!” she said, as her hands fell too,—
  • 270“The Warden's sister of Holycleugh!”
  • She rose upright with a long low moan,
  • And stared in the dead man's face new-known.
  • Had it lived indeed? She scarce could tell:
  • 'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,—
  • A mask that hung on the gate of Hell.
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  • She lifted the lock of gleaming hair
  • And smote the lips and left it there.
  • “Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll!
  • Full well hath thy treason found its goal,
  • 280O thou dead body and damnèd soul!”
  • She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near,
  • And she knew that some one called to her.
  • On many a column fair and tall
  • A high court ran round the castle-hall;
  • And thence it was that the priest did call.
  • “I sought your child where you bade me go,
  • And in rooms around and rooms below;
  • But where, alas! may the maiden be?
  • Fear nought,—we shall find her speedily,—
  • 290But come, come hither, and seek with me.”
  • She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing,
  • But hastened upward murmuring
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    —
  • “Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see;
  • But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee,
  • Thou broken heart of Rose Mary!”
more about Beryl-Song. II.
Beryl-Song
  • We whose throne is the Beryl,
  • Dire-gifted spirits of fire,
  • Who for a twin
  • Leash Sorrow to Sin,
  • Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril,—
  • We cry,—O desolate daughter!
  • Thou and thy mother share newer shame with each other
  • Than last night's slaughter.
  • Awake and tremble, for our curses assemble!
  • 10 What more, that thou know'st not yet,—
  • That life nor death shall forget?
  • No help from Heaven,—thy woes heart-riven are sterile!
  • O once a maiden,
  • With yet worse sorrow can any morrow be laden?
  • It waits for thee,
  • It looms, it must be,
  • O lost among women,—
  • It comes and thou canst not flee.
  • Amen to the omen,
  • 20 Says the voice of the Beryl.
  • Thou sleep'st? Awake,—
  • What dar'st thou yet for his sake,
  • Who each for other did God's own Future imperil?
  • Dost dare to live
  • 'Mid the pangs each hour must give?
  • Nay, rather die,—
  • With him thy lover 'neath Hell's cloud-cover to fly,—
  • Hopeless, yet not apart,
  • Cling heart to heart,
  • 30 And beat through the nether storm-eddying winds together?
  • Shall this be so?
  • There thou shalt meet him, but mayst thou greet him? ah no !
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  • He loves, but thee he hoped nevermore to see,—
  • He sighed as he died,
  • But with never a thought for thee.
  • Alone!
  • Alone, for ever alone,—
  • Whose eyes were such wondrous spies for the fate foreshown!
  • Lo! have not We leashed the twin
  • 40 Of endless Sorrow to Sin,—
  • Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril,—
  • Dire-gifted spirits of fire,
  • We whose throne is the Beryl?
more about Rose Mary. Part III.
PART III
  • A swoon that breaks is the whelming wave
  • When help comes late but still can save.
  • With all blind throes is the instant rife,—
  • Hurtling clangour and clouds at strife,—
  • The breath of death, but the kiss of life.
  • The night lay deep on Rose Mary's heart,
  • For her swoon was death's kind counterpart:
  • The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul,—
  • No hill-crown's heavenly aureole,
  • 10But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal.
  • Her senses gasped in the sudden air,
  • And she looked around, but none was there.
  • She felt the slackening frost distil
  • Through her blood the last ooze dull and chill:
  • Her lids were dry and her lips were still.
  • Her tears had flooded her heart again;
  • As after a long day's bitter rain,
  • At dusk when the wet flower-cups shrink,
  • The drops run in from the beaded brink,
  • 20And all the close-shut petals drink.
  • Again her sighs on her heart were rolled;
  • As the wind that long has swept the wold,—
  • Whose moan was made with the moaning sea,—
  • Beats out its breath in the last torn tree,
  • And sinks at length in lethargy.
  • She knew she had waded bosom-deep
  • Along death's bank in the sedge of sleep:
  • All else was lost to her clouded mind;
  • Nor, looking back, could she see defin'd
  • 30O'er the dim dumb waste what lay behind.
  • Slowly fades the sun from the wall
  • Till day lies dead on the sun-dial:
  • And now in Rose Mary's lifted eye
  • 'Twas shadow alone that made reply
  • To the set face of the soul's dark sky.
  • Yet still through her soul there wandered past
  • Dread phantoms borne on a wailing blast,—
  • Death and sorrow and sin and shame;
  • And, murmured still, to her lips there came
  • 40Her mother's and her lover's name.
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  • How to ask, and what thing to know?
  • She might not stay and she dared not go.
  • From fires unseen these smoke-clouds curled;
  • But where did the hidden curse lie furled?
  • And how to seek through the weary world?
  • With toiling breath she rose from the floor
  • And dragged her steps to an open door:
  • 'Twas the secret panel standing wide,
  • As the lady's hand had let it bide
  • 50In hastening back to her daughter's side.
  • She passed, but reeled with a dizzy brain
  • And smote the door which closed again.
  • She stood within by the darkling stair,
  • But her feet might mount more freely there,—
  • 'Twas the open light most blinded her.
  • Within her mind no wonder grew
  • At the secret path she never knew:
  • All ways alike were strange to her now,—
  • One field bare-ridged from the spirit's plough,
  • 60One thicket black with the cypress-bough.
  • Once she thought that she heard her name;
  • And she paused, but knew not whence it came.
  • Down the shadowed stair a faint ray fell
  • That guided the weary footsteps well
  • Till it led her up to the altar-cell.
  • No change there was on Rose Mary's face
  • As she leaned in the portal's narrow space:
  • Still she stood by the pillar's stem,
  • Hand and bosom and garment's hem,
  • 70As the soul stands by at the requiem.
  • The altar-cell was a dome low-lit,
  • And a veil hung in the midst of it:
  • At the pole-points of its circling girth
  • Four symbols stood of the world's first birth,—
  • Air and water and fire and earth.
  • To the north, a fountain glittered free;
  • To the south, there glowed a red fruit-tree;
  • To the east, a lamp flamed high and fair;
  • To the west, a crystal casket rare
  • 80Held fast a cloud of the fields of air.
  • The painted walls were a mystic show
  • Of time's ebb-tide and overflow;
  • His hoards long-locked and conquering key,
  • His service-fires that in heaven be,
  • And earth-wheels whirled perpetually.
  • Rose Mary gazed from the open door
  • As on idle things she cared not for,—
  • The fleeting shapes of an empty tale;
  • Then stepped with a heedless visage pale,
  • 90And lifted aside the altar-veil.
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  • The altar stood from its curved recess
  • In a coiling serpent's life-likeness:
  • Even such a serpent evermore
  • Lies deep asleep at the world's dark core
  • Till the last Voice shake the sea and shore.
  • From the altar-cloth a book rose spread
  • And tapers burned at the altar-head;
  • And there in the altar-midst alone,
  • 'Twixt wings of a sculptured beast unknown,
  • 100Rose Mary saw the Beryl-stone.
  • Firm it sat 'twixt the hollowed wings,
  • As an orb sits in the hand of kings:
  • And lo! for that Foe whose curse far-flown
  • Had bound her life with a burning zone,
  • Rose Mary knew the Beryl-stone.
  • Dread is the meteor's blazing sphere
  • When the poles throb to its blind career;
  • But not with a light more grim and ghast
  • Thereby is the future doom forecast,
  • 110Than now this sight brought back the past.
  • The hours and minutes seemed to whirr
  • In a clanging swarm that deafened her;
  • They stung her heart to a writhing flame,
  • And marshalled past in its glare they came,—
  • Death and sorrow and sin and shame.
  • Round the Beryl's sphere she saw them pass
  • And mock her eyes from the fated glass:
  • One by one in a fiery train
  • The dead hours seemed to wax and wane,
  • 120And burned till all was known again.
  • From the drained heart's fount there rose no cry,
  • There sprang no tears, for the source was dry.
  • Held in the hand of some heavy law,
  • Her eyes she might not once withdraw,
  • Nor shrink away from the thing she saw.
  • Even as she gazed, through all her blood
  • The flame was quenched in a coming flood:
  • Out of the depth of the hollow gloom
  • On her soul's bare sands she felt it boom,—
  • 130The measured tide of a sea of doom.
  • Three steps she took through the altar-gate,
  • And her neck reared and her arms grew straight:
  • The sinews clenched like a serpent's throe,
  • And the face was white in the dark hair's flow,
  • As her hate beheld what lay below.
  • Dumb she stood in her malisons,—
  • A silver statue tressed with bronze:
  • As the fabled head by Perseus mown,
  • It seemed in sooth that her gaze alone
  • 140Had turned the carven shapes to stone.
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  • O'er the altar-sides on either hand
  • There hung a dinted helm and brand:
  • By strength thereof, 'neath the Sacred Sign,
  • That bitter gift o'er the salt sea-brine
  • Her father brought from Palestine.
  • Rose Mary moved with a stern accord
  • And reached her hand to her father's sword;
  • Nor did she stir her gaze one whit
  • From the thing whereon her brows were knit;
  • 150But gazing still, she spoke to it.
  • “O ye, three times accurst,” she said,
  • “By whom this stone is tenanted!
  • Lo! here ye came by a strong sin's might;
  • Yet a sinner's hand that's weak to smite
  • Shall send you hence ere the day be night.
  • “This hour a clear voice bade me know
  • My hand shall work your overthrow:
  • Another thing in mine ear it spake,—
  • With the broken spell my life shall break.
  • 160I thank Thee, God, for the dear death's sake!
  • “And he Thy heavenly minister
  • Who swayed erewhile this spell-bound sphere,—
  • My parting soul let him haste to greet,
  • And none but he be guide for my feet
  • To where Thy rest is made complete.”
  • Then deep she breathed, with a tender moan:—
  • “My love, my lord, my only one!
  • Even as I held the cursed clue,
  • When thee, through me, these foul ones slew,—
  • 170By mine own deed shall they slay me too!
  • “Even while they speed to Hell, my love,
  • Two hearts shall meet in Heaven above.
  • Our shrift thou sought'st, but might'st not bring:
  • And oh! for me 'tis a blessed thing
  • To work hereby our ransoming.
  • “One were our hearts in joy and pain,
  • And our souls e'en now grow one again.
  • And O my love, if our souls are three,
  • O thine and mine shall the third soul be,—
  • 180One threefold love eternally.”
  • Her eyes were soft as she spoke apart,
  • And the lips smiled to the broken heart:
  • But the glance was dark and the forehead scored
  • With the bitter frown of hate restored,
  • As her two hands swung the heavy sword.
  • Three steps back from her Foe she trod:—
  • “Love, for thy sake! In Thy Name, O God!”
  • In the fair white hands small strength was shown;
  • Yet the blade flashed high and the edge fell prone,
  • 190And she cleft the heart of the Beryl-stone.
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  • What living flesh in the thunder-cloud
  • Hath sat and felt heaven cry aloud?
  • Or known how the levin's pulse may beat?
  • Or wrapped the hour when the whirlwinds meet
  • About its breast for a winding-sheet?
  • Who hath crouched at the world's deep heart
  • While the earthquake rends its loins apart?
  • Or walked far under the seething main
  • While overhead the heavens ordain
  • 200The tempest-towers of the hurricane?
  • Who hath seen or what ear hath heard
  • The secret things unregister'd
  • Of the place where all is past and done,
  • And tears and laughter sound as one
  • In Hell's unhallowed unison?
  • Nay, is it writ how the fiends despair
  • In earth and water and fire and air?
  • Even so no mortal tongue may tell
  • How to the clang of the sword that fell
  • 210The echoes shook the altar-cell.
  • When all was still on the air again
  • The Beryl-stone lay cleft in twain;
  • The veil was rent from the riven dome;
  • And every wind that's winged to roam
  • Might have the ruined place for home.
  • The fountain no more glittered free;
  • The fruit hung dead on the leafless tree;
  • The flame of the lamp had ceased to flare;
  • And the crystal casket shattered there
  • 220Was emptied now of its cloud of air.
  • And lo! on the ground Rose Mary lay,
  • With a cold brow like the snows ere May,
  • With a cold breast like the earth till Spring,
  • With such a smile as the June days bring
  • When the year grows warm with harvesting.
  • The death she had won might leave no trace
  • On the soft sweet form and gentle face:
  • In a gracious sleep she seemed to lie;
  • And over her head her hand on high
  • 230Held fast the sword she triumphed by.
  • 'Twas then a clear voice said in the room:—
  • “Behold the end of the heavy doom.
  • O come,—for thy bitter love's sake blest;
  • By a sweet path now thou journeyest,
  • And I will lead thee to thy rest.
  • “Me thy sin by Heaven's sore ban
  • Did chase erewhile from the talisman:
  • But to my heart, as a conquered home,
  • In glory of strength thy footsteps come
  • 240Who hast thus cast forth my foes therefrom.
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  • “Already thy heart remembereth
  • No more his name thou sought'st in death:
  • For under all deeps, all heights above,—
  • So wide the gulf in the midst thereof,—
  • Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love.
  • “Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer
  • To blessed Mary's rose-bower:
  • Warmed and lit is thy place afar
  • With guerdon-fires of the sweet Love-star
  • 250Where hearts of steadfast lovers are:—
  • “Though naught for the poor corpse lying here
  • Remain to-day but the cold white bier,
  • But burial-chaunt and bended knee,
  • But sighs and tears that heaviest be,
  • But rent rose-flower and rosemary.”
more about Beryl-Song. III.
Beryl-Song
  • We, cast forth from the Beryl,
  • Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
  • Whose pangs begin
  • With God's grace to sin,
  • For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile,—
  • Woe! must We behold this mother
  • Find grace in her dead child's face, and doubt of none other
  • But that perfect pardon, alas! hath assured her guerdon?
  • Woe! must We behold this daughter,
  • 10 Made clean from the soil of sin wherewith We had fraught her,
  • Shake off a man's blood like water?
  • Write up her story
  • On the Gate of Heaven's glory,
  • Whom there We behold so fair in shining apparel,
  • And beneath her the ruin
  • Of our own undoing!
  • Alas, the Beryl!
  • We had for a foeman
  • But one weak woman;
  • 20 In one day's strife,
  • Her hope fell dead from her life;
  • And yet no iron,
  • Her soul to environ,
  • Could this manslayer, this false soothsayer imperil!
  • Lo, where she bows
  • In the Holy House!
  • Who now shall dissever her soul from its joy for ever
  • While every ditty
  • Of love and plentiful pity
  • 30 Fills the White City,
  • And the floor of Heaven to her feet for ever is given?
  • Hark, a voice cries “Flee!”
  • Woe! woe! what shelter have We,
  • Whose pangs begin
  • With God's grace to sin,
  • For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile,
  • Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
  • We, cast forth from the Beryl?
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more about The White Ship (Henry I of England 25 November 1120
THE WHITE SHIP

Henry I. of England.—25th November 1120
  • By none but me can the tale be told,
  • The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
  • ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne. )
  • 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
  • Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
  • ( The sea hath no King but God alone. )
  • King Henry held it as life's whole gain
  • That after his death his son should reign.
  • 'Twas so in my youth I heard men say,
  • 10And my old age calls it back to-day.
  • King Henry of England's realm was he,
  • And Henry Duke of Normandy.
  • The times had changed when on either coast
  • “Clerkly Harry” was all his boast.
  • Of ruthless strokes full many an one
  • He had struck to crown himself and his son;
  • And his elder brother's eyes were gone.
  • And when to the chase his court would crowd,
  • The poor flung ploughshares on his road,
  • 20And shrieked: “Our cry is from King to God!”
  • But all the chiefs of the English land
  • Had knelt and kissed the Prince's hand.
  • And next with his son he sailed to France
  • To claim the Norman allegiance:
  • And every baron in Normandy
  • Had taken the oath of fealty.
  • 'Twas sworn and sealed, and the day had come
  • When the King and the Prince might journey home:
  • For Christmas cheer is to home hearts dear,
  • 30And Christmas now was drawing near.
  • Stout Fitz-Stephen came to the King,—
  • A pilot famous in seafaring;
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  • And he held to the King, in all men's sight,
  • A mark of gold for his tribute's right.
  • “Liege Lord! my father guided the ship
  • From whose boat your father's foot did slip
  • When he caught the English soil in his grip,
  • “And cried: ‘By this clasp I claim command
  • O'er every rood of English land!’
  • 40“He was borne to the realm you rule o'er now
  • In that ship with the archer carved at her prow:
  • “And thither I'll bear, an it be my due,
  • Your father's son and his grandson too.
  • “The famed White Ship is mine in the bay;
  • From Harfleur's harbour she sails to-day,
  • “With masts fair-pennoned as Norman spears
  • And with fifty well-tried mariners.”
  • Quoth the King: “My ships are chosen each one,
  • But I'll not say nay to Stephen's son.
  • 50“My son and daughter and fellowship
  • Shall cross the water in the White Ship.”
  • The King set sail with the eve's south wind,
  • And soon he left that coast behind.
  • The Prince and all his, a princely show,
  • Remained in the good White Ship to go.
  • With noble knights and with ladies fair,
  • With courtiers and sailors gathered there,
  • Three hundred living souls we were:
  • And I Berold was the meanest hind
  • 60In all that train to the Prince assign'd.
  • The Prince was a lawless shameless youth;
  • From his father's loins he sprang without ruth:
  • Eighteen years till then he had seen,
  • And the devil's dues in him were eighteen.
  • And now he cried: “Bring wine from below;
  • Let the sailors revel ere yet they row:
  • “Our speed shall o'ertake my father's flight
  • Though we sail from the harbour at midnight.”
  • The rowers made good cheer without check;
  • 70The lords and ladies obeyed his beck;
  • The night was light, and they danced on the deck.
  • But at midnight's stroke they cleared the bay,
  • And the White Ship furrowed the water-way.
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  • The sails were set, and the oars kept tune
  • To the double flight of the ship and the moon:
  • Swifter and swifter the White Ship sped
  • Till she flew as the spirit flies from the dead:
  • As white as a lily glimmered she
  • Like a ship's fair ghost upon the sea.
  • 80And the Prince cried, “Friends, 'tis the hour to sing!
  • Is a songbird's course so swift on the wing?”
  • And under the winter stars' still throng,
  • From brown throats, white throats, merry and strong,
  • The knights and the ladies raised a song.
  • A song,—nay, a shriek that rent the sky,
  • That leaped o'er the deep!—the grievous cry
  • Of three hundred living that now must die.
  • An instant shriek that sprang to the shock
  • As the ship's keel felt the sunken rock.
  • 90'Tis said that afar—a shrill strange sigh—
  • The King's ships heard it and knew not why.
  • Pale Fitz-Stephen stood by the helm
  • 'Mid all those folk that the waves must whelm.
  • A great King's heir for the waves to whelm,
  • And the helpless pilot pale at the helm!
  • The ship was eager and sucked athirst,
  • By the stealthy stab of the sharp reef pierc'd:
  • And like the moil round a sinking cup
  • The waters against her crowded up.
  • 100A moment the pilot's senses spin,—
  • The next he snatched the Prince 'mid the din,
  • Cut the boat loose, and the youth leaped in.
  • A few friends leaped with him, standing near.
  • “Row! the sea's smooth and the night is clear!”
  • “What! none to be saved but these and I?”
  • “Row, row as you'd live! All here must die!”
  • Out of the churn of the choking ship,
  • Which the gulf grapples and the waves strip,
  • They struck with the strained oars' flash and dip.
  • 110'Twas then o'er the splitting bulwarks' brim
  • The Prince's sister screamed to him.
  • He gazed aloft, still rowing apace,
  • And through the whirled surf he knew her face.
  • To the toppling decks clave one and all
  • As a fly cleaves to a chamber-wall.
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  • I Berold was clinging anear;
  • I prayed for myself and quaked with fear,
  • But I saw his eyes as he looked at her.
  • He knew her face and he heard her cry,
  • 120And he said, “Put back! she must not die!”
  • And back with the current's force they reel
  • Like a leaf that's drawn to a water-wheel.
  • 'Neath the ship's travail they scarce might float,
  • But he rose and stood in the rocking boat.
  • Low the poor ship leaned on the tide:
  • O'er the naked keel as she best might slide,
  • The sister toiled to the brother's side.
  • He reached an oar to her from below,
  • And stiffened his arms to clutch her so.
  • 130But now from the ship some spied the boat,
  • And “Saved!” was the cry from many a throat.
  • And down to the boat they leaped and fell:
  • It turned as a bucket turns in a well,
  • And nothing was there but the surge and swell.
  • The Prince that was and the King to come,
  • There in an instant gone to his doom,
  • Despite of all England's bended knee
  • And maugre the Norman fealty!
  • He was a Prince of lust and pride;
  • 140He showed no grace till the hour he died.
  • When he should be King, he oft would vow,
  • He'd yoke the peasant to his own plough.
  • O'er him the ships score their furrows now.
  • God only knows where his soul did wake,
  • But I saw him die for his sister's sake.
  • By none but me can the tale be told,
  • The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
  • ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne. )
  • 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
  • 150Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
  • ( The sea hath no King but God alone. )
  • And now the end came o'er the waters' womb
  • Like the last great Day that's yet to come.
  • With prayers in vain and curses in vain,
  • The White Ship sundered on the mid-main:
  • And what were men and what was a ship
  • Were toys and splinters in the sea's grip.
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  • I Berold was down in the sea;
  • And passing strange though the thing may be,
  • 160Of dreams then known I remember me.
  • Blithe is the shout on Harfleur's strand
  • When morning lights the sails to land:
  • And blithe is Honfleur's echoing gloam
  • When mothers call the children home:
  • And high do the bells of Rouen beat
  • When the Body of Christ goes down the street.
  • These things and the like were heard and shown
  • In a moment's trance 'neath the sea alone;
  • And when I rose, 'twas the sea did seem,
  • 170And not these things, to be all a dream.
  • The ship was gone and the crowd was gone,
  • And the deep shuddered and the moon shone,
  • And in a strait grasp my arms did span
  • The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran;
  • And on it with me was another man.
  • Where lands were none 'neath the dim sea-sky,
  • We told our names, that man and I.
  • “O I am Godefroy de l'Aigle hight,
  • And son I am to a belted knight.”
  • 180“And I am Berold the butcher's son
  • Who slays the beasts in Rouen town.”
  • Then cried we upon God's name, as we
  • Did drift on the bitter winter sea.
  • But lo! a third man rose o'er the wave,
  • And we said, “Thank God! us three may He save!”
  • He clutched to the yard with panting stare,
  • And we looked and knew Fitz-Stephen there.
  • He clung, and “What of the Prince?” quoth he.
  • “Lost, lost!” we cried. He cried, “Woe on me!”
  • 190And loosed his hold and sank through the sea.
  • And soul with soul again in that space
  • We two were together face to face:
  • And each knew each, as the moments sped,
  • Less for one living than for one dead:
  • And every still star overhead
  • Seemed an eye that knew we were but dead.
  • And the hours passed; till the noble's son
  • Sighed, “God be thy help! my strength's foredone!
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  • “O farewell, friend, for I can no more!”
  • 200“Christ take thee!” I moaned; and his life was o'er.
  • Three hundred souls were all lost but one,
  • And I drifted over the sea alone.
  • At last the morning rose on the sea
  • Like an angel's wing that beat tow'rds me.
  • Sore numbed I was in my sheepskin coat;
  • Half dead I hung, and might nothing note,
  • Till I woke sun-warmed in a fisher-boat.
  • The sun was high o'er the eastern brim
  • As I praised God and gave thanks to Him.
  • 210That day I told my tale to a priest,
  • Who charged me, till the shrift were releas'd,
  • That I should keep it in mine own breast.
  • And with the priest I thence did fare
  • To King Henry's court at Winchester.
  • We spoke with the King's high chamberlain,
  • And he wept and mourned again and again,
  • As if his own son had been slain:
  • And round us ever there crowded fast
  • Great men with faces all aghast:
  • 220And who so bold that might tell the thing
  • Which now they knew to their lord the King?
  • Much woe I learnt in their communing.
  • The King had watched with a heart sore stirred
  • For two whole days, and this was the third:
  • And still to all his court would he say,
  • “What keeps my son so long away?”
  • And they said: “The ports lie far and wide
  • That skirt the swell of the English tide;
  • “And England's cliffs are not more white
  • 230Than her women are, and scarce so light
  • Her skies as their eyes are blue and bright;
  • “And in some port that he reached from France
  • The Prince has lingered for his pleasaùnce.”
  • But once the King asked: “What distant cry
  • Was that we heard 'twixt the sea and sky?”
  • And one said: “With suchlike shouts, pardie!
  • Do the fishers fling their nets at sea.”
  • And one: “Who knows not the shrieking quest
  • When the sea-mew misses its young from the nest?”
  • 240'Twas thus till now they had soothed his dread,
  • Albeit they knew not what they said:
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  • But who should speak to-day of the thing
  • That all knew there except the King?
  • Then pondering much they found a way,
  • And met round the King's high seat that day:
  • And the King sat with a heart sore stirred,
  • And seldom he spoke and seldom heard.
  • 'Twas then through the hall the King was 'ware
  • Of a little boy with golden hair,
  • 250As bright as the golden poppy is
  • That the beach breeds for the surf to kiss:
  • Yet pale his cheek as the thorn in Spring,
  • And his garb black like the raven's wing.
  • Nothing heard but his foot through the hall,
  • For now the lords were silent all.
  • And the King wondered, and said, “Alack!
  • Who sends me a fair boy dressed in black?
  • “Why, sweet heart, do you pace through the hall
  • As though my court were a funeral?”
  • 260Then lowly knelt the child at the dais,
  • And looked up weeping in the King's face.
  • “O wherefore black, O King, ye may say,
  • For white is the hue of death to-day.
  • “Your son and all his fellowship
  • Lie low in the sea with the White Ship.”
  • King Henry fell as a man struck dead;
  • And speechless still he stared from his bed
  • When to him next day my rede I read.
  • There's many an hour must needs beguile
  • 270A King's high heart that he should smile,—
  • Full many a lordly hour, full fain
  • Of his realm's rule and pride of his reign:—
  • But this King never smiled again.
  • By none but me can the tale be told,
  • The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
  • ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne. )
  • 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
  • Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
  • ( The sea hath no King but God alone. )
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Sig. 10
more about The King's Tragedy (James I of Scots - 20 February 1437)
THE KING'S TRAGEDY

James I. of Scots.—20th February 1437
Transcribed Note (page 145):

NOTE

Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honour of her heroic act when she barred the

door with her arm against the murderers of James the First of Scots, received popularly

the name of “Barlass.” This name remains to her descendants, the Barlas family, in

Scotland, who bear for their crest a broken arm. She married Alexander Lovell of

Bolunnie.

A few stanzas from King James's lovely poem, known as The King's Quair, are quoted

in the course of this ballad. The writer must express regret for the necessity which has

compelled him to shorten the ten-syllabled lines to eight syllables, in order that they

might harmonise with the ballad metre.

  • I Catherine am a Douglas born,
  • A name to all Scots dear;
  • And Kate Barlass they've called me now
  • Through many a waning year.
  • This old arm's withered now. 'Twas once
  • Most deft 'mong maidens all
  • To rein the steed, to wing the shaft,
  • To smite the palm-play ball.
  • In hall adown the close-linked dance
  • 10It has shone most white and fair;
  • It has been the rest for a true lord's head,
  • And many a sweet babe's nursing-bed,
  • And the bar to a King's chambère.
  • Aye, lasses, draw round Kate Barlass,
  • And hark with bated breath
  • How good King James, King Robert's son,
  • Was foully done to death.
  • Through all the days of his gallant youth
  • The princely James was pent,
  • 20By his friends at first and then by his foes,
  • In long imprisonment.
  • For the elder Prince, the kingdom's heir,
  • By treason's murderous brood
  • Was slain; and the father quaked for the child
  • With the royal mortal blood.
  • I' the Bass Rock fort, by his father's care,
  • Was his childhood's life assured;
  • And Henry the subtle Bolingbroke,
  • Proud England's King, 'neath the southron yoke
  • 30His youth for long years immured.
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  • Yet in all things meet for a kingly man
  • Himself did he approve;
  • And the nightingale through his prison-wall
  • Taught him both lore and love.
  • For once, when the bird's song drew him close
  • To the opened window-pane,
  • In her bower beneath a lady stood,
  • A light of life to his sorrowful mood,
  • Like a lily amid the rain.
  • 40And for her sake, to the sweet bird's note,
  • He framed a sweeter Song,
  • More sweet than ever a poet's heart
  • Gave yet to the English tongue.
  • She was a lady of royal blood;
  • And when, past sorrow and teen,
  • He stood where still through his crownless years
  • His Scotish realm had been,
  • At Scone were the happy lovers crowned,
  • A heart-wed King and Queen.
  • 50But the bird may fall from the bough of youth,
  • And song be turned to moan,
  • And Love's storm-cloud be the shadow of Hate,
  • When the tempest-waves of a troubled State
  • Are beating against a throne.
  • Yet well they loved; and the god of Love,
  • Whom well the King had sung,
  • Might find on the earth no truer hearts
  • His lowliest swains among.
  • From the days when first she rode abroad
  • 60With Scotish maids in her train,
  • I Catherine Douglas won the trust
  • Of my mistress sweet Queen Jane.
  • And oft she sighed, “To be born a King!”
  • And oft along the way
  • When she saw the homely lovers pass
  • She has said, “Alack the day!”
  • Years waned,—the loving and toiling years:
  • Till England's wrong renewed
  • Drove James, by outrage cast on his crown,
  • 70To the open field of feud.
  • 'Twas when the King and his host were met
  • At the leaguer of Roxbro' hold,
  • The Queen o' the sudden sought his camp
  • With a tale of dread to be told.
  • And she showed him a secret letter writ
  • That spoke of treasonous strife,
  • And how a band of his noblest lords
  • Were sworn to take his life.
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  • “And it may be here or it may be there,
  • 80In the camp or the court,” she said:
  • “But for my sake come to your people's arms
  • And guard your royal head.”
  • Quoth he, “'Tis the fifteenth day of the siege,
  • And the castle's nigh to yield.”
  • “O face your foes on your throne,” she cried,
  • “And show the power you wield;
  • And under your Scotish people's love
  • You shall sit as under your shield.”
  • At the fair Queen's side I stood that day
  • 90When he bade them raise the siege,
  • And back to his Court he sped to know
  • How the lords would meet their Liege.
  • But when he summoned his Parliament,
  • The louring brows hung round,
  • Like clouds that circle the mountain-head
  • Ere the first low thunders sound.
  • For he had tamed the nobles' lust
  • And curbed their power and pride,
  • And reached out an arm to right the poor
  • 100Through Scotland far and wide;
  • And many a lordly wrong-doer
  • By the headsman's axe had died.
  • 'Twas then upspoke Sir Robert Græme,
  • The bold o'ermastering man:—
  • “O King, in the name of your Three Estates
  • I set you under their ban!
  • “For, as your lords made oath to you
  • Of service and fealty,
  • Even in like wise you pledged your oath
  • 110Their faithful sire to be:—
  • “Yet all we here that are nobly sprung
  • Have mourned dear kith and kin
  • Since first for the Scotish Barons' curse
  • Did your bloody rule begin.”
  • With that he laid his hands on his King:—
  • “Is this not so, my lords?”
  • But of all who had sworn to league with him
  • Not one spake back to his words.
  • Quoth the King:—“Thou speak'st but for one Estate,
  • 120Nor doth it avow thy gage.
  • Let my liege lords hale this traitor hence!”
  • The Græme fired dark with rage:—
  • “Who works for lesser men than himself,
  • He earns but a witless wage!”
  • But soon from the dungeon where he lay
  • He won by privy plots,
  • And forth he fled with a price on his head
  • To the country of the Wild Scots.
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Note: There are two vertical lines caused by inked quads on page 148: one is in line 132, between the words “in” and “thee”, and the other is in line 171, between the words “her” and “eyes”.
  • And word there came from Sir Robert Græme
  • 130To the King at Edinbro':—
  • “No Liege of mine thou art; but I see
  • From this day forth alone in thee
  • God's creature, my mortal foe.
  • “Through thee are my wife and children lost,
  • My heritage and lands;
  • And when my God shall show me a way,
  • Thyself my mortal foe will I slay
  • With these my proper hands.”
  • Against the coming of Christmastide
  • 140That year the King bade call
  • I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
  • A solemn festival.
  • And we of his household rode with him
  • In a close-ranked company;
  • But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
  • Did we reach the Scotish Sea.
  • That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
  • 'Neath a toilsome moon half seen;
  • The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
  • 150And where there was a line of the sky,
  • Wild wings loomed dark between.
  • And on a rock of the black beach-side,
  • By the veiled moon dimly lit,
  • There was something seemed to heave with life
  • As the King drew nigh to it.
  • And was it only the tossing furze
  • Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
  • Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
  • When near we came, we knew it at last
  • 160For a woman tattered and old.
  • But it seemed as though by a fire within
  • Her writhen limbs were wrung;
  • And as soon as the King was close to her,
  • She stood up gaunt and strong.
  • 'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack
  • On high in her hollow dome;
  • And still as aloft with hoary crest
  • Each clamorous wave rang home,
  • Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
  • 170Amid the champing foam.
  • And the woman held his eyes with her eyes:—
  • “O King, thou art come at last;
  • But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea
  • To my sight for four years past.
  • “Four years it is since first I met,
  • 'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu,
  • A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,
  • And that shape for thine I knew.
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  • “A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle
  • 180I saw thee pass in the breeze,
  • With the cerecloth risen above thy feet
  • And wound about thy knees.
  • “And yet a year, in the Links of Forth,
  • As a wanderer without rest,
  • Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud
  • That clung high up thy breast.
  • “And in this hour I find thee here,
  • And well mine eyes may note
  • That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast
  • 190And risen around thy throat.
  • “And when I meet thee again, O King,
  • That of death hast such sore drouth,—
  • Except thou turn again on this shore,—
  • The winding-sheet shall have moved once more
  • And covered thine eyes and mouth.
  • “O King, whom poor men bless for their King,
  • Of thy fate be not so fain;
  • But these my words for God's message take,
  • And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake
  • 200Who rides beside thy rein!”
  • While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared
  • As if it would breast the sea,
  • And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale
  • The voice die dolorously.
  • When the woman ceased, the steed was still,
  • But the King gazed on her yet,
  • And in silence save for the wail of the sea
  • His eyes and her eyes met.
  • At last he said:—“God's ways are His own;
  • 210Man is but shadow and dust.
  • Last night I prayed by His altar-stone;
  • To-night I wend to the Feast of His Son;
  • And in Him I set my trust.
  • “I have held my people in sacred charge,
  • And have not feared the sting
  • Of proud men's hate,—to His will resign'd
  • Who has but one same death for a hind
  • And one same death for a King.
  • “And if God in His wisdom have brought close
  • 220The day when I must die,
  • That day by water or fire or air
  • My feet shall fall in the destined snare
  • Wherever my road may lie.
  • “What man can say but the Fiend hath set
  • Thy sorcery on my path,
  • My heart with the fear of death to fill,
  • And turn me against God's very will
  • To sink in His burning wrath?”
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  • The woman stood as the train rode past,
  • 230And moved nor limb nor eye;
  • And when we were shipped, we saw her there
  • Still standing against the sky.
  • As the ship made way, the moon once more
  • Sank slow in her rising pall;
  • And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King,
  • And I said, “The Heavens know all.”
  • And now, ye lasses, must ye hear
  • How my name is Kate Barlass:—
  • But a little thing, when all the tale
  • 240Is told of the weary mass
  • Of crime and woe which in Scotland's realm
  • God's will let come to pass.
  • 'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth
  • That the King and all his Court
  • Were met, the Christmas Feast being done,
  • For solace and disport.
  • 'Twas a wind-wild eve in February,
  • And against the casement-pane
  • The branches smote like summoning hands,
  • 250And muttered the driving rain.
  • And when the wind swooped over the lift
  • And made the whole heaven frown,
  • It seemed a grip was laid on the walls
  • To tug the housetop down.
  • And the Queen was there, more stately fair
  • Than a lily in garden set;
  • And the King was loth to stir from her side;
  • For as on the day when she was his bride,
  • Even so he loved her yet.
  • 260And the Earl of Athole, the King's false friend,
  • Sat with him at the board;
  • And Robert Stuart the chamberlain
  • Who had sold his sovereign Lord.
  • Yet the traitor Christopher Chaumber there
  • Would fain have told him all,
  • And vainly four times that night he strove
  • To reach the King through the hall.
  • But the wine is bright at the goblet's brim
  • Though the poison lurk beneath;
  • 270And the apples still are red on the tree
  • Within whose shade may the adder be
  • That shall turn thy life to death.
  • There was a knight of the King's fast friends
  • Whom he called the King of Love;
  • And to such bright cheer and courtesy
  • That name might best behove.
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  • And the King and Queen both loved him well
  • For his gentle knightliness;
  • And with him the King, as that eve wore on,
  • 280Was playing at the chess.
  • And the King said, (for he thought to jest
  • And soothe the Queen thereby;)—
  • “In a book 'tis writ that this same year
  • A King shall in Scotland die.
  • “And I have pondered the matter o'er,
  • And this have I found, Sir Hugh,—
  • There are but two Kings on Scotish ground,
  • And those Kings are I and you.
  • “And I have a wife and a newborn heir,
  • 290And you are yourself alone;
  • So stand you stark at my side with me
  • To guard our double throne.
  • “For here sit I and my wife and child,
  • As well your heart shall approve,
  • In full surrender and soothfastness,
  • Beneath your Kingdom of Love.”
  • And the Knight laughed, and the Queen too smiled;
  • But I knew her heavy thought,
  • And I strove to find in the good King's jest
  • 300What cheer might thence be wrought.
  • And I said, “My Liege, for the Queen's dear love
  • Now sing the song that of old
  • You made, when a captive Prince you lay,
  • And the nightingale sang sweet on the spray,
  • In Windsor's castle-hold.”
  • Then he smiled the smile I knew so well
  • When he thought to please the Queen;
  • The smile which under all bitter frowns
  • Of fate that rose between
  • 310For ever dwelt at the poet's heart
  • Like the bird of love unseen.
  • And he kissed her hand and took his harp,
  • And the music sweetly rang;
  • And when the song burst forth, it seemed
  • 'Twas the nightingale that sang.
  • “ Worship, ye lovers, on this May:
  • Of bliss your kalends are begun:
  • Sing with us, Away, Winter, away!
  • Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun!
  • 320 Awake for shame,—your heaven is won,—
  • And amorously your heads lift all:
  • Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call! ”
  • But when he bent to the Queen, and sang
  • The speech whose praise was hers,
  • It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring
  • And the voice of the bygone years.
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  • “ The fairest and the freshest flower
  • That ever I saw before that hour,
  • The which o' the sudden made to start
  • 330 The blood of my body to my heart.
  • Ah sweet, are ye a worldly creature
  • Or heavenly thing in form of nature?”
  • And the song was long, and richly stored
  • With wonder and beauteous things;
  • And the harp was tuned to every change
  • Of minstrel ministerings;
  • But when he spoke of the Queen at the last,
  • Its strings were his own heart-strings.
  • “ Unworthy but only of her grace,
  • 340 Upon Love's rock that's easy and sure,
  • In guerdon of all my lovè's space
  • She took me her humble creäture.
  • Thus fell my blissful aventure
  • In youth of love that from day to day
  • Flowereth aye new, and further I say.
  • “ To reckon all the circumstance
  • As it happed when lessen gan my sore,
  • Of my rancour and woful chance,
  • It were too long,—I have done therefor.
  • 350 And of this flower I say no more,
  • But unto my help her heart hath tended
  • And even from death her man defended.”
  • “Aye, even from death,” to myself I said;
  • For I thought of the day when she
  • Had borne him the news, at Roxbro' siege,
  • Of the fell confederacy.
  • But Death even then took aim as he sang
  • With an arrow deadly bright;
  • And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof,
  • 360And the wings were spread far over the roof
  • More dark than the winter night.
  • Yet truly along the amorous song
  • Of Love's high pomp and state,
  • There were words of Fortune's trackless doom
  • And the dreadful face of Fate.
  • And oft have I heard again in dreams
  • The voice of dire appeal
  • In which the King then sang of the pit
  • That is under Fortune's wheel.
  • 370“ And under the wheel beheld I there
  • An ugly Pit as deep as hell,
  • That to behold I quaked for fear:
  • And this I heard, that who therein fell
  • Came no more up, tidings to tell:
  • Whereat, astound of the fearful sight,
  • I wist not what to do for fright.”
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  • And oft has my thought called up again
  • These words of the changeful song:—
  • “ Wist thou thy pain and thy travàil
  • 380 To come, well might'st thou weep and wail!”
  • And our wail, O God! is long.
  • But the song's end was all of his love;
  • And well his heart was grac'd
  • With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes
  • As his arm went round her waist.
  • And on the swell of her long fair throat
  • Close clung the necklet-chain
  • As he bent her pearl-tir'd head aside,
  • And in the warmth of his love and pride
  • 390He kissed her lips full fain.
  • And her true face was a rosy red,
  • The very red of the rose
  • That, couched on the happy garden-bed,
  • In the summer sunlight glows.
  • And all the wondrous things of love
  • That sang so sweet through the song
  • Were in the look that met in their eyes,
  • And the look was deep and long.
  • 'Twas then a knock came at the outer gate,
  • 400And the usher sought the King.
  • “The woman you met by the Scotish Sea,
  • My Liege, would tell you a thing;
  • And she says that her present need for speech
  • Will bear no gainsaying.”
  • And the King said: “The hour is late;
  • To-morrow will serve, I ween.”
  • Then he charged the usher strictly, and said:
  • “No word of this to the Queen.”
  • But the usher came again to the King.
  • 410“Shall I call her back?” quoth he:
  • “For as she went on her way, she cried,
  • ‘Woe! Woe! then the thing must be!’”
  • And the King paused, but he did not speak.
  • Then he called for the Voidee-cup:
  • And as we heard the twelfth hour strike,
  • There by true lips and false lips alike
  • Was the draught of trust drained up.
  • So with reverence meet to King and Queen,
  • To bed went all from the board;
  • 420And the last to leave of the courtly train
  • Was Robert Stuart the chamberlain
  • Who had sold his sovereign lord.
  • And all the locks of the chamber-door
  • Had the traitor riven and brast;
  • And that Fate might win sure way from afar,
  • He had drawn out every bolt and bar
  • That made the entrance fast.
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  • And now at midnight he stole his way
  • To the moat of the outer wall,
  • 430And laid strong hurdles closely across
  • Where the traitors' tread should fall.
  • But we that were the Queen's bower-maids
  • Alone were left behind;
  • And with heed we drew the curtains close
  • Against the winter wind.
  • And now that all was still through the hall,
  • More clearly we heard the rain
  • That clamoured ever against the glass
  • And the boughs that beat on the pane.
  • 440But the fire was bright in the ingle-nook,
  • And through empty space around
  • The shadows cast on the arras'd wall
  • 'Mid the pictured kings stood sudden and tall
  • Like spectres sprung from the ground.
  • And the bed was dight in a deep alcove;
  • And as he stood by the fire
  • The King was still in talk with the Queen
  • While he doffed his goodly attire.
  • And the song had brought the image back
  • 450Of many a bygone year;
  • And many a loving word they said
  • With hand in hand and head laid to head;
  • And none of us went anear.
  • But Love was weeping outside the house,
  • A child in the piteous rain;
  • And as he watched the arrow of Death,
  • He wailed for his own shafts close in the sheath
  • That never should fly again.
  • And now beneath the window arose
  • 460A wild voice suddenly:
  • And the King reared straight, but the Queen fell back
  • As for bitter dule to dree;
  • And all of us knew the woman's voice
  • Who spoke by the Scotish Sea.
  • “O King,” she cried, “in an evil hour
  • They drove me from thy gate;
  • And yet my voice must rise to thine ears;
  • But alas! it comes too late!
  • “Last night at mid-watch, by Aberdour,
  • 470When the moon was dead in the skies,
  • O King, in a death-light of thine own
  • I saw thy shape arise.
  • “And in full season, as erst I said,
  • The doom had gained its growth;
  • And the shroud had risen above thy neck
  • And covered thine eyes and mouth.
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  • “And no moon woke, but the pale dawn broke,
  • And still thy soul stood there;
  • And I thought its silence cried to my soul
  • 480As the first rays crowned its hair.
  • “Since then have I journeyed fast and fain
  • In very despite of Fate,
  • Lest Hope might still be found in God's will:
  • But they drove me from thy gate.
  • “For every man on God's ground, O King,
  • His death grows up from his birth
  • In a shadow-plant perpetually;
  • And thine towers high, a black yew-tree,
  • O'er the Charterhouse of Perth!”
  • 490That room was built far out from the house;
  • And none but we in the room
  • Might hear the voice that rose beneath,
  • Nor the tread of the coming doom.
  • For now there came a torchlight-glare,
  • And a clang of arms there came;
  • And not a soul in that space but thought
  • Of the foe Sir Robert Græme.
  • Yea, from the country of the Wild Scots,
  • O'er mountain, valley, and glen,
  • 500He had brought with him in murderous league
  • Three hundred armèd men.
  • The King knew all in an instant's flash;
  • And like a King did he stand;
  • But there was no armour in all the room,
  • Nor weapon lay to his hand.
  • And all we women flew to the door
  • And thought to have made it fast;
  • But the bolts were gone and the bars were gone
  • And the locks were riven and brast.
  • 510And he caught the pale pale Queen in his arms
  • As the iron footsteps fell,—
  • Then loosed her, standing alone, and said,
  • “Our bliss was our farewell!”
  • And 'twixt his lips he murmured a prayer,
  • And he crossed his brow and breast;
  • And proudly in royal hardihood
  • Even so with folded arms he stood,—
  • The prize of the bloody quest.
  • Then on me leaped the Queen like a deer:—
  • 520“O Catherine, help!” she cried.
  • And low at his feet we clasped his knees
  • Together side by side.
  • “Oh! even a King, for his people's sake,
  • From treasonous death must hide!”
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  • “For her sake most!” I cried, and I marked
  • The pang that my words could wring.
  • And the iron tongs from the chimney-nook
  • I snatched and held to the king:—
  • “Wrench up the plank! and the vault beneath
  • 530Shall yield safe harbouring.”
  • With brows low-bent, from my eager hand
  • The heavy heft did he take;
  • And the plank at his feet he wrenched and tore;
  • And as he frowned through the open floor,
  • Again I said, “For her sake!”
  • Then he cried to the Queen, “God's will be done!”
  • For her hands were clasped in prayer.
  • And down he sprang to the inner crypt;
  • And straight we closed the plank he had ripp'd
  • 540And toiled to smooth it fair.
  • (Alas! in that vault a gap once was
  • Wherethro' the King might have fled:
  • But three days since close-walled had it been
  • By his will; for the ball would roll therein
  • When without at the palm he play'd.)
  • Then the Queen cried, “Catherine, keep the door,
  • And I to this will suffice!”
  • At her word I rose all dazed to my feet,
  • And my heart was fire and ice.
  • 550And louder ever the voices grew,
  • And the tramp of men in mail;
  • Until to my brain it seemed to be
  • As though I tossed on a ship at sea
  • In the teeth of a crashing gale.
  • Then back I flew to the rest; and hard
  • We strove with sinews knit
  • To force the table against the door;
  • But we might not compass it.
  • Then my wild gaze sped far down the hall
  • 560To the place of the hearthstone-sill;
  • And the Queen bent ever above the floor,
  • For the plank was rising still.
  • And now the rush was heard on the stair,
  • And “God, what help?” was our cry.
  • And was I frenzied or was I bold?
  • I looked at each empty stanchion-hold,
  • And no bar but my arm had I!
  • Like iron felt my arm, as through
  • The staple I made it pass:—
  • 570Alack! it was flesh and bone—no more!
  • 'Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,
  • But I fell back Kate Barlass.
  • With that they all thronged into the hall,
  • Half dim to my failing ken;
  • And the space that was but a void before
  • Was a crowd of wrathful men.
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  • Behind the door I had fall'n and lay,
  • Yet my sense was wildly aware,
  • And for all the pain of my shattered arm
  • 580I never fainted there.
  • Even as I fell, my eyes were cast
  • Where the King leaped down to the pit;
  • And lo! the plank was smooth in its place,
  • And the Queen stood far from it.
  • And under the litters and through the bed
  • And within the presses all
  • The traitors sought for the King, and pierced
  • The arras around the wall.
  • And through the chamber they ramped and stormed
  • 590Like lions loose in the lair,
  • And scarce could trust to their very eyes,—
  • For behold! no King was there.
  • Then one of them seized the Queen, and cried,—
  • “Now tell us, where is thy lord?”
  • And he held the sharp point over her heart:
  • She drooped not her eyes nor did she start,
  • But she answered never a word.
  • Then the sword half pierced the true true breast:
  • But it was the Græme's own son
  • 600Cried, “This is a woman,—we seek a man!”
  • And away from her girdle-zone
  • He struck the point of the murderous steel;
  • And that foul deed was not done.
  • And forth flowed all the throng like a sea
  • And 'twas empty space once more;
  • And my eyes sought out the wounded Queen
  • As I lay behind the door.
  • And I said: “Dear Lady, leave me here,
  • For I cannot help you now:
  • 610But fly while you may, and none shall reck
  • Of my place here lying low.”
  • And she said, “My Catherine, God help thee!”
  • Then she looked to the distant floor,
  • And clasping her hands, “O God help him,”
  • She sobbed, “for we can no more!”
  • But God He knows what help may mean,
  • If it mean to live or to die;
  • And what sore sorrow and mighty moan
  • On earth it may cost ere yet a throne
  • 620Be filled in His house on high.
  • And now the ladies fled with the Queen;
  • And through the open door
  • The night-wind wailed round the empty room
  • And the rushes shook on the floor.
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  • And the bed drooped low in the dark recess
  • Whence the arras was rent away;
  • And the firelight still shone over the space
  • Where our hidden secret lay.
  • And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit
  • 630The window high in the wall,—
  • Bright beams that on the plank that I knew
  • Through the painted pane did fall,
  • And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland's crown
  • And shield armorial.
  • But then a great wind swept up the skies
  • And the climbing moon fell back;
  • And the royal blazon fled from the floor,
  • And nought remained on its track;
  • And high in the darkened window-pane
  • 640The shield and the crown were black.
  • And what I say next I partly saw
  • And partly I heard in sooth,
  • And partly since from the murderers' lips
  • The torture wrung the truth.
  • For now again came the armèd tread,
  • And fast through the hall it fell;
  • But the throng was less; and ere I saw,
  • By the voice without I could tell
  • That Robert Stuart had come with them
  • 650Who knew that chamber well.
  • And over the space the Græme strode dark
  • With his mantle round him flung;
  • And in his eye was a flaming light
  • But not a word on his tongue.
  • And Stuart held a torch to the floor,
  • And he found the thing he sought;
  • And they slashed the plank away with their swords;
  • And O God! I fainted not!
  • And the traitor held his torch in the gap,
  • 660All smoking and smouldering;
  • And through the vapour and fire, beneath
  • In the dark crypt's narrow ring,
  • With a shout that pealed to the room's high roof
  • They saw their naked King.
  • Half naked he stood, but stood as one
  • Who yet could do and dare:
  • With the crown, the King was stript away,—
  • The Knight was 'reft of his battle-array,—
  • But still the Man was there.
  • 670From the rout then stepped a villain forth,—
  • Sir John Hall was his name;
  • With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault
  • Beneath the torchlight-flame.
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  • Of his person and stature was the King
  • A man right manly strong,
  • And mightily by the shoulder-blades
  • His foe to his feet he flung.
  • Then the traitor's brother, Sir Thomas Hall,
  • Sprang down to work his worst;
  • 680And the King caught the second man by the neck
  • And flung him above the first.
  • And he smote and trampled them under him;
  • And a long month thence they bare
  • All black their throats with the grip of his hands
  • When the hangman's hand came there.
  • And sore he strove to have had their knives,
  • But the sharp blades gashed his hands.
  • Oh James! so armed, thou hadst battled there
  • Till help had come of thy bands;
  • 690And oh! once more thou hadst held our throne
  • And ruled thy Scotish lands!
  • But while the King o'er his foes still raged
  • With a heart that nought could tame,
  • Another man sprang down to the crypt;
  • And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp'd,
  • There stood Sir Robert Græme.
  • (Now shame on the recreant traitor's heart
  • Who durst not face his King
  • Till the body unarmed was wearied out
  • 700With two-fold combating!
  • Ah! well might the people sing and say,
  • As oft ye have heard aright:—
  • “ O Robert Græme, O Robert Græme ,
  • Who slew our King, God give thee shame!”
  • For he slew him not as a knight.)
  • And the naked King turned round at bay,
  • But his strength had passed the goal,
  • And he could but gasp:—“Mine hour is come;
  • But oh! to succour thine own soul's doom,
  • 710Let a priest now shrive my soul!”
  • And the traitor looked on the King's spent strength,
  • And said:—“Have I kept my word?—
  • Yea, King, the mortal pledge that I gave?
  • No black friar's shrift thy soul shall have,
  • But the shrift of this red sword!”
  • With that he smote his King through the breast;
  • And all they three in that pen
  • Fell on him and stabbed and stabbed him there
  • Like merciless murderous men.
  • 720Yet seemed it now that Sir Robert Græme,
  • Ere the King's last breath was o'er,
  • Turned sick at heart with the deadly sight
  • And would have done no more.
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  • But a cry came from the troop above:—
  • “If him thou do not slay,
  • The price of his life that thou dost spare
  • Thy forfeit life shall pay!”
  • O God! what more did I hear or see,
  • Or how should I tell the rest?
  • 730But there at length our King lay slain
  • With sixteen wounds in his breast.
  • O God! and now did a bell boom forth,
  • And the murderers turned and fled;—
  • Too late, too late, O God, did it sound!—
  • And I heard the true men mustering round,
  • And the cries and the coming tread.
  • But ere they came, to the black death-gap
  • Somewise did I creep and steal;
  • And lo! or ever I swooned away,
  • 740Through the dusk I saw where the white face lay
  • In the Pit of Fortune's Wheel.
  • And now, ye Scotish maids who have heard
  • Dread things of the days grown old,—
  • Even at the last, of true Queen Jane
  • May somewhat yet be told,
  • And how she dealt for her dear lord's sake
  • Dire vengeance manifold.
  • 'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth,
  • In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,
  • 750That the slain King's corpse on bier was laid
  • With chaunt and requiem-knell.
  • And all with royal wealth of balm
  • Was the body purified;
  • And none could trace on the brow and lips
  • The death that he had died.
  • In his robes of state he lay asleep
  • With orb and sceptre in hand;
  • And by the crown he wore on his throne
  • Was his kingly forehead spann'd.
  • 760And, girls, 'twas a sweet sad thing to see
  • How the curling golden hair,
  • As in the day of the poet's youth,
  • From the King's crown clustered there.
  • And if all had come to pass in the brain
  • That throbbed beneath those curls,
  • Then Scots had said in the days to come
  • That this their soil was a different home
  • And a different Scotland, girls!
  • And the Queen sat by him night and day,
  • 770And oft she knelt in prayer,
  • All wan and pale in the widow's veil
  • That shrouded her shining hair.
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Sig. 11
  • And I had got good help of my hurt:
  • And only to me some sign
  • She made; and save the priests that were there,
  • No face would she see but mine.
  • And the month of March wore on apace;
  • And now fresh couriers fared
  • Still from the country of the Wild Scots
  • 780With news of the traitors snared.
  • And still as I told her day by day,
  • Her pallor changed to sight,
  • And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
  • That burnt her visage white.
  • And evermore as I brought her word,
  • She bent to her dead King James,
  • And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
  • She spoke the traitors' names.
  • But when the name of Sir Robert Græme
  • 790Was the one she had to give,
  • I ran to hold her up from the floor;
  • For the froth was on her lips, and sore
  • I feared that she could not live.
  • And the month of March wore nigh to its end,
  • And still was the death-pall spread;
  • For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
  • Till his slayers all were dead.
  • And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
  • And of torments fierce and dire;
  • 800And nought she spake,—she had ceased to speak,—
  • But her eyes were a soul on fire.
  • But when I told her the bitter end
  • Of the stern and just award,
  • She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times
  • She kissed the lips of her lord.
  • And then she said,—“My King, they are dead!”
  • And she knelt on the chapel-floor,
  • And whispered low with a strange proud smile,—
  • “James, James, they suffered more!”
  • 810Last she stood up to her queenly height,
  • But she shook like an autumn leaf,
  • As though the fire wherein she burned
  • Then left her body, and all were turned
  • To winter of life-long grief.
  • And “O James!” she said,—“My James!” she said,—
  • “Alas for the woful thing,
  • That a poet true and a friend of man,
  • In desperate days of bale and ban,
  • Should needs be born a King!”
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more about II.--Miscellaneous Poems.
II.—MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
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more about My Sister's Sleep.
MY SISTER'S SLEEP
  • She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
  • At length the long-ungranted shade
  • Of weary eyelids overweigh'd
  • The pain nought else might yet relieve.
  • Our mother, who had leaned all day
  • Over the bed from chime to chime,
  • Then raised herself for the first time,
  • And as she sat her down, did pray.
  • Her little work-table was spread
  • 10 With work to finish. For the glare
  • Made by her candle, she had care
  • To work some distance from the bed.
  • Without, there was a cold moon up,
  • Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
  • The hollow halo it was in
  • Was like an icy crystal cup.
  • Through the small room, with subtle sound
  • Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
  • And reddened. In its dim alcove
  • 20 The mirror shed a clearness round.
  • I had been sitting up some nights,
  • And my tired mind felt weak and blank;
  • Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank
  • The stillness and the broken lights.
  • Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
  • Heard in each hour, crept off; and then
  • The ruffled silence spread again,
  • Like water that a pebble stirs.
  • Our mother rose from where she sat:
  • 30 Her needles, as she laid them down,
  • Met lightly, and her silken gown
  • Settled: no other noise than that.
  • “Glory unto the Newly Born!”
  • So, as said angels, she did say;
  • Because we were in Christmas Day,
  • Though it would still be long till morn.
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  • Just then in the room over us
  • There was a pushing back of chairs,
  • As some who had sat unawares
  • 40 So late, now heard the hour, and rose.
  • With anxious softly-stepping haste
  • Our mother went where Margaret lay,
  • Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they
  • Have broken her long watched-for rest!
  • She stooped an instant, calm, and turned;
  • But suddenly turned back again;
  • And all her features seemed in pain
  • With woe, and her eyes gazed and yearned.
  • For my part, I but hid my face,
  • 50 And held my breath, and spoke no word:
  • There was none spoken; but I heard
  • The silence for a little space.
  • Our mother bowed herself and wept:
  • And both my arms fell, and I said,
  • “God knows I knew that she was dead.”
  • And there, all white, my sister slept.
  • Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
  • A little after twelve o'clock,
  • We said, ere the first quarter struck,
  • 60 “Christ's blessing on the newly born!”
more about For an Annunciation. Early German
FOR

AN ANNUNCIATION

EARLY GERMAN
  • The lilies stand before her like a screen
  • Through which, upon this warm and solemn day,
  • God surely hears. For there she kneels to pray
  • Who wafts our prayers to God—Mary the Queen
  • She was Faith's Present, parting what had been
  • From what began with her, and is for aye.
  • On either hand, God's twofold system lay:
  • With meek bowed face a Virgin prayed between.
  • So prays she, and the Dove flies in to her,
  • 10 And she has turned. At the low porch is one
  • Who looks as though deep awe made him to smile.
  • Heavy with heat, the plants yield shadow there;
  • The loud flies cross each other in the sun;
  • And the aisled pillars meet the poplar-aisle.
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Note: On page 167, line 34, the letter “t” in word “first” is badly type-damaged.
more about Ave.
AVE
  • Mother of the Fair Delight,
  • Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight,
  • Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
  • Thyself a woman-Trinity,—
  • Being a daughter born to God,
  • Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
  • And wife unto the Holy Ghost:—
  • Oh when our need is uttermost,
  • Think that to such as death may strike
  • 10 Thou once wert sister sisterlike!
  • Thou headstone of humanity,
  • Groundstone of the great Mystery,
  • Fashioned like us, yet more than we!
  • Mind'st thou not (when June's heavy breath
  • Warmed the long days in Nazareth,)
  • That eve thou didst go forth to give
  • Thy flowers some drink that they might live
  • One faint night more amid the sands?
  • Far off the trees were as pale wands
  • 20 Against the fervid sky: the sea
  • Sighed further off eternally
  • As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
  • Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
  • As of a day to which all days
  • Were footsteps in God's secret ways:
  • Until a folding sense, like prayer,
  • Which is, as God is, everywhere,
  • Gathered about thee; and a voice
  • Spake to thee without any noise,
  • 30 Being of the silence:—“Hail,” it said,
  • “Thou that art highly favourèd;
  • The Lord is with thee here and now;
  • Blessed among all women thou.”
  • Ah! knew'st thou of the end, when first
  • That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd?—
  • Or when He tottered round thy knee
  • Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee?—
  • And through His boyhood, year by year
  • Eating with Him the Passover,
  • 40 Didst thou discern confusedly
  • That holier sacrament, when He,
  • The bitter cup about to quaff,
  • Should break the bread and eat thereof?—
  • Or came not yet the knowledge, even
  • Till on some day forecast in Heaven
  • His feet passed through thy door to press
  • Upon His Father's business?—
  • Or still was God's high secret kept?
  • Nay, but I think the whisper crept
  • 50 Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
  • Things common to the course of day,
  • Awed thee with meanings unfulfill'd;
  • And all through girlhood, something still'd
  • Thy senses like the birth of light,
  • When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
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  • Or washed thy garments in the stream;
  • To whose white bed had come the dream
  • That He was thine and thou wast His
  • Who feeds among the field-lilies.
  • 60 O solemn shadow of the end
  • In that wise spirit long contain'd!
  • O awful end! and those unsaid
  • Long years when It was Finishèd!
  • Mind'st thou not (when the twilight gone
  • Left darkness in the house of John,)
  • Between the naked window-bars
  • That spacious vigil of the stars?—
  • For thou, a watcher even as they,
  • Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
  • 70 Thou wroughtest raiment for His poor;
  • And, finding the fixed terms endure
  • Of day and night which never brought
  • Sounds of His coming chariot,
  • Wouldst lift through cloud-waste unexplor'd
  • Those eyes which said, “How long, O Lord?”
  • Then that disciple whom He loved,
  • Well heeding, haply would be moved
  • To ask thy blessing in His name;
  • And that one thought in both, the same
  • 80 Though silent, then would clasp ye round
  • To weep together,—tears long bound,
  • Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
  • Yet, “Surely I come quickly,”—so
  • He said, from life and death gone home.
  • Amen: even so, Lord Jesus, come!
  • But oh! what human tongue can speak
  • That day when Michael came* to break
  • From the tir'd spirit, like a veil,
  • Its covenant with Gabriel
  • 90 Endured at length unto the end?
  • What human thought can apprehend
  • That mystery of motherhood
  • When thy Beloved at length renew'd
  • The sweet communion severèd,—
  • His left hand underneath thine head
  • And His right hand embracing thee?—
  • Lo! He was thine, and this is He!
  • Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
  • That lets me see her standing up
  • 100 Where the light of the Throne is bright?
  • Unto the left, unto the right,
  • The cherubim, succinct, conjoint,
  • Float inward to a golden point,
  • And from between the seraphim
  • The glory issues for a hymn.
  • O Mary Mother, be not loth
  • To listen,—thou whom the stars clothe,
  • Who seëst and mayst not be seen!
  • Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
  • 110 Into our shadow bend thy face,
  • Bowing thee from the secret place,
  • O Mary Virgin, full of grace!
Transcribed Footnote (page 168):

* A Church legend of the Blessed Virgin's death.

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more about The Portrait.
THE PORTRAIT
  • This is her picture as she was:
  • It seems a thing to wonder on,
  • As though mine image in the glass
  • Should tarry when myself am gone.
  • I gaze until she seems to stir,—
  • Until mine eyes almost aver
  • That now, even now, the sweet lips part
  • To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
  • And yet the earth is over her.
  • 10 Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
  • That makes the prison-depths more rude,—
  • The drip of water night and day
  • Giving a tongue to solitude.
  • Yet only this, of love's whole prize,
  • Remains; save what in mournful guise
  • Takes counsel with my soul alone,—
  • Save what is secret and unknown,
  • Below the earth, above the skies.
  • In painting her I shrined her face
  • 20 'Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
  • Hardly at all; a covert place
  • Where you might think to find a din
  • Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
  • Wandering, and many a shape whose name
  • Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
  • And your own footsteps meeting you,
  • And all things going as they came.
  • A deep dim wood; and there she stands
  • As in that wood that day: for so
  • 30 Was the still movement of her hands
  • And such the pure line's gracious flow.
  • And passing fair the type must seem,
  • Unknown the presence and the dream.
  • 'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
  • Less than her shadow on the grass
  • Or than her image in the stream.
  • That day we met there, I and she
  • One with the other all alone;
  • And we were blithe; yet memory
  • 40 Saddens those hours, as when the moon
  • Looks upon daylight. And with her
  • I stopped to drink the spring-water,
  • Athirst where other waters sprang:
  • And where the echo is, she sang,—
  • My soul another echo there.
  • But when that hour my soul won strength
  • For words whose silence wastes and kills,
  • Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
  • Thundered the heat within the hills.
  • 50 That eve I spoke those words again
  • Beside the pelted window-pane;
  • And there she hearkened what I said,
  • With under-glances that surveyed
  • The empty pastures blind with rain.
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  • Next day the memories of these things,
  • Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
  • Still vibrated with Love's warm wings;
  • Till I must make them all my own
  • And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease
  • 60 Of talk and sweet long silences,
  • She stood among the plants in bloom
  • At windows of a summer room,
  • To feign the shadow of the trees.
  • And as I wrought, while all above
  • And all around was fragrant air,
  • In the sick burthen of my love
  • It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there
  • Beat like a heart among the leaves.
  • O heart that never beats nor heaves,
  • 70 In that one darkness lying still,
  • What now to thee my love's great will
  • Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?
  • For now doth daylight disavow
  • Those days—nought left to see or hear.
  • Only in solemn whispers now
  • At night-time these things reach mine ear;
  • When the leaf-shadows at a breath
  • Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
  • Forest and water, far and wide,
  • 80 In limpid starlight glorified,
  • Lie like the mystery of death.
  • Last night at last I could have slept,
  • And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
  • Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
  • For unawares I came upon
  • Those glades where once she walked with me:
  • And as I stood there suddenly,
  • All wan with traversing the night,
  • Upon the desolate verge of light
  • 90 Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.
  • Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
  • The beating heart of Love's own breast,—
  • Where round the secret of all spheres
  • All angels lay their wings to rest,—
  • How shall my soul stand rapt and awed,
  • When, by the new birth borne abroad
  • Throughout the music of the suns,
  • It enters in her soul at once
  • And knows the silence there for God!
  • 100 Here with her face doth memory sit
  • Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,
  • Till other eyes shall look from it,
  • Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,
  • Even than the old gaze tenderer:
  • While hopes and aims long lost with her
  • Stand round her image side by side,
  • Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
  • About the Holy Sepulchre.
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more about For 'Our Lady of the Rocks' by Leonardo Da Vinci.
FOR

OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS

BY LEONARDO DA VINCI
  • Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
  • The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
  • Infinite imminent Eternity?
  • And does the death-pang by man's seed sustained
  • In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
  • Its silent prayer upon the Son, while He
  • Blesses the dead with His hand silently
  • To His long day which hours no more offend?
  • Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
  • 10 Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
  • Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
  • Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
  • Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
  • Amid the bitterness of things occult.
more about At the Sun-Rise in 1848
AT THE SUN-RISE IN 1848
  • God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
  • Then heard we sounds as though the Earth did sing
  • And the Earth's angel cried upon the wing:
  • We saw priests fall together and turn white:
  • And covered in the dust from the sun's sight,
  • A king was spied, and yet another king.
  • We said: “The round world keeps its balancing;
  • On this globe, they and we are opposite,—
  • If it is day with us, with them 'tis night.”
  • 10 Still, Man, in thy just pride, remember this:—
  • Thou hadst not made that thy sons' sons shall ask
  • What the word king may mean in their day's task,
  • But for the light that led: and if light is,
  • It is because God said, Let there be light.
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more about Autumn Song
AUTUMN SONG
  • Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
  • How the heart feels a languid grief
  • Laid on it for a covering,
  • And how sleep seems a goodly thing
  • In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
  • And how the swift beat of the brain
  • Falters because it is in vain,
  • In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
  • Knowest thou not? and how the chief
  • 10Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
  • Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
  • How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
  • Bound up at length for harvesting,
  • And how death seems a comely thing
  • In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
more about The Lady's Lament
THE LADY'S LAMENT
  • Never happy any more!
  • Aye, turn the saying o'er and o'er,
  • It says but what it said before,
  • And heart and life are just as sore.
  • The wet leaves blow aslant the floor
  • In the rain through the open door.
  • No, no more.
  • Never happy any more!
  • The eyes are weary and give o'er,
  • 10 But still the soul weeps as before.
  • And always must each one deplore
  • Each once, nor bear what others bore?
  • This is now as it was of yore.
  • No, no more.
  • Never happy any more!
  • Is it not but a sorry lore
  • That says, “Take strength, the worst is o'er”?
  • Shall the stars seem as heretofore?
  • The day wears on more and more—
  • 20 While I was weeping the day wore.
  • No, no more.
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  • Never happy any more!
  • In the cold behind the door
  • That was the dial striking four:
  • One for joy the past hours bore,
  • Two for hope and will cast o'er,
  • One for the naked dark before.
  • No, no more.
  • Never happy any more!
  • Put the light out, shut the door,
  • 30 Sweep the wet leaves from the floor.
  • Even thus Fate's hand has swept her floor,
  • Even thus Love's hand has shut the door
  • Through which his warm feet passed of yore.
  • Shall it be opened any more?
  • No, no, no more.
more about Mary's Girlhood. (For a Picture).
MARY'S GIRLHOOD

( For a Picture)
more about Mary's Girlhood (For a Picture) I.
I
  • This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
  • God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
  • Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
  • Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
  • Profound simplicity of intellect,
  • And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
  • Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
  • Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.
  • So held she through her girlhood; as it were
  • 10 An angel-watered lily, that near God
  • Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home
  • She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
  • At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed:
  • Because the fulness of the time was come.
more about Mary's Girlhood (For a Picture) II.
II
  • These are the symbols. On that cloth of red
  • I' the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each,
  • Except the second of its points, to teach
  • That Christ is not yet born. The books—whose head
  • Is golden Charity, as Paul hath said—
  • Those virtues are wherein the soul is rich:
  • Therefore on them the lily standeth, which
  • Is Innocence, being interpreted.
  • The seven-thorn'd briar and the palm seven-leaved
  • 10 Are her great sorrow and her great reward.
  • Until the end be full, the Holy One
  • Abides without. She soon shall have achieved
  • Her perfect purity: yea, God the Lord
  • Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son.
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more about The Card-Dealer.
THE CARD-DEALER
  • Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
  • Yet though its splendour swoon
  • Into the silence languidly
  • As a tune into a tune,
  • Those eyes unravel the coiled night
  • And know the stars at noon.
  • The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
  • In truth rich prize it were;
  • And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
  • 10 With magic stillness there;
  • And he were rich who should unwind
  • That woven golden hair.
  • Around her, where she sits, the dance
  • Now breathes its eager heat;
  • And not more lightly or more true
  • Fall there the dancers' feet
  • Than fall her cards on the bright board
  • As 'twere a heart that beat.
  • Her fingers let them softly through,
  • 20 Smooth polished silent things;
  • And each one as it falls reflects
  • In swift light-shadowings,
  • Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
  • The great eyes of her rings.
  • Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
  • Those gems upon her hand;
  • With me, who search her secret brows;
  • With all men, bless'd or bann'd.
  • We play together, she and we,
  • 30 Within a vain strange land:
  • A land without any order,—
  • Day even as night, (one saith,)—
  • Where who lieth down ariseth not
  • Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
  • A land of darkness as darkness itself
  • And of the shadow of death.
  • What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
  • The heart, that doth but crave
  • More, having fed; the diamond,
  • 40 Skilled to make base seem brave;
  • The club, for smiting in the dark;
  • The spade, to dig a grave.
Image of page 175 page: 175
  • And do you ask what game she plays?
  • With me 'tis lost or won;
  • With thee it is playing still; with him
  • It is not well begun;
  • But 'tis a game she plays with all
  • Beneath the sway o' the sun.
  • Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
  • 50 The card that followeth:
  • Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
  • As ebbs thy daily breath:
  • When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
  • And know she calls it Death.
more about Vox Ecclesiae, Vox Christi (Epigraph from Rev. vi 9-10)
VOX ECCLESIÆ, VOX CHRISTI

I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for

the testimony which they held; and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long,

O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell

on the earth?—Rev. vi. 9, 10.

  • Not 'neath the altar only,—yet, in sooth,
  • There more than elsewhere,—is the cry, “How long?”
  • The right sown there hath still borne fruit in wrong—
  • The wrong waxed fourfold. Thence, (in hate of truth)
  • O'er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth
  • From evil age, the word hath hissed along:—
  • “Ye are the Lord's: go forth, destroy, be strong:
  • Christ's Church absolves ye from Christ's law of ruth.”
  • Therefore the wine-cup at the altar is
  • 10 As Christ's own blood indeed, and as the blood
  • Of Christ's elect, at divers seasons spilt
  • On the altar-stone, that to man's church, for this,
  • Shall prove a stone of stumbling,—whence it stood
  • To be rent up ere the true Church be built.
more about On Refusal of Aid Between Nations.
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS
  • Not that the earth is changing, O my God!
  • Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,—
  • Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
  • Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,—
  • Not therefore are we certain that the rod
  • Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
  • Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
  • So many kings:—not therefore, O my God!—
  • But because Man is parcelled out in men
  • 10 To-day; because, for any wrongful blow
  • No man not stricken asks, “I would be told
  • Why thou dost thus;” but his heart whispers then,
  • “He is he, I am I.” By this we know
  • That our earth falls asunder, being old.
Image of page 176 page: 176
more about Shakespear
SHAKESPEAR

Probably there is no character in which is so much of Shakespear himself as in Hamlet

except in Falstaff.

  • Dear friend, if there be any bond
  • Which friendship wins not much beyond—
  • So old and fond, since thought began—
  • It may be that whose subtle span
  • Binds Shakespear to an English man.
more about Blake. Epitaph
BLAKE

To the memory of William Blake, a Painter and Poet, whose greatness may be named

even here since it was equalled by his goodness, this tablet is now erected,——years

after his death, at the age of sixty-eight, on August 12th, 1827, in poverty and neglect,

by one who honours his life and works.

Epitaph
  • All beauty to pourtray,
  • Therein his duty lay,
  • And still through toilsome strife
  • Duty to him was life—
  • Most thankful still that duty
  • Lay in the paths of beauty.
more about A Trip to Paris and Belgium
A TRIP TO PARIS AND BELGIUM
more about London to Folkstone (half-past one to half-past five)
I

LONDON TO FOLKESTONE

( Half-past one to half-past five)
  • A constant keeping-past of shaken trees,
  • And a bewildered glitter of loose road;
  • Banks of bright growth, with single blades atop
  • Against white sky; and wires—a constant chain—
  • That seem to draw the clouds along with them
  • (Things which one stoops against the light to see
  • Through the low window; shaking by at rest,
  • Or fierce like water as the swiftness grows);
  • And, seen through fences or a bridge far off,
  • 10Trees that in moving keep their intervals
  • Still one 'twixt bar and bar; and then at times
  • Long reaches of green level, where one cow,
  • Feeding among her fellows that feed on,
  • Lifts her slow neck, and gazes for the sound.
  • There are six of us: I that write away;
  • Hunt reads Dumas, hard-lipped, with heavy jowl
  • And brows hung low, and the long ends of hair
  • Standing out limp. A grazier at one end
    • Image of page 177 page: 177
    Sig. 12
  • (Thank luck not my end!) has blocked out the air,
  • 20And sits in heavy consciousness of guilt.
  • The poor young muff who's face to face with me
  • Is pitiful in loose collar and black tie,
  • His latchet-button shaking as we go.
  • There are flowers by me, half upon my knees,
  • Owned by a dame who's fair in soul, no doubt:
  • The wind that beats among us carries off
  • Their scent, but still I have them for my eye.
  • Fields mown in ridges; and close garden-crops
  • Of the earth's increase; and a constant sky
  • 30Still with clear trees that let you see the wind;
  • And snatches of the engine-smoke, by fits
  • Tossed to the wind against the landscape, where
  • Rooks stooping heave their wings upon the day.
  • Brick walls we pass between, passed so at once
  • That for the suddenness I cannot know
  • Or what, or where begun, or where at end.
  • Sometimes a Station in grey quiet; whence,
  • With a short gathered champing of pent sound,
  • We are let out upon the air again.
  • 40Now nearly darkness; knees and arms and sides
  • Feel the least touch, and close about the face
  • A wind of noise that is along like God.
  • Pauses of water soon, at intervals,
  • That has the sky in it;—the reflexes
  • O' the trees move towards the bank as we go by,
  • Leaving the water's surface plain. I now
  • Lie back and close my eyes a space; for they
  • Smart from the open forwardness of thought
  • Fronting the wind——
  • ——I did not scribble more,
  • 50Be certain, after this; but yawned, and read,
  • And nearly dozed a little, I believe;
  • Till, stretching up against the carriage-back,
  • I was roused altogether, and looked out
  • To where, upon the desolate verge of light,
  • Yearned, pale and vast, the iron-coloured sea.
more about Boulogne to Amiens and Paris
II

BOULOGNE TO AMIENS AND PARIS

(3 to 11 P.M.; 3 rd class)
  • Strong extreme speed, that the brain hurries with,
  • Further than trees, and hedges, and green grass
  • Whitened by distance,—further than small pools
  • Held among fields and gardens,—further than
  • Haystacks and windmill-sails and roofs and herds,—
  • The sea's last margin ceases at the sun.
  • The sea has left us, but the sun remains.
  • Sometimes the country spreads aloof in tracts
  • Smooth from the harvest; sometimes sky and land
  • 10Are shut from the square space the window leaves
  • By a dense crowd of trees, stem behind stem
    • Image of page 178 page: 178
  • Passing across each other as we pass:
  • Sometimes tall poplar-wands stand white, their heads
  • Outmeasuring the distant hills. Sometimes
  • The ground has a deep greenness; sometimes brown
  • In stubble; and sometimes no ground at all,
  • For the close strength of crops that stand unreaped.
  • The water-plots are sometimes all the sun's,—
  • Sometimes quite green through shadows filling them,
  • 20Or islanded with growths of reeds,—or else
  • Masked in grey dust like the wide face o' the fields.
  • And still the swiftness lasts; that to our speed
  • The trees seem shaken like a press of spears.
  • There is some count of us:—folks travelling-capped,
  • Priesthood, and lank hard-featured soldiery,
  • Females (no women), blouses, Hunt, and I.
  • We are relayed at Amiens. The steam
  • Snorts, chafes, and bridles, like three-hundred horse,
  • And flings its dusky mane upon the air.
  • 30Our company is thinned, and lamps alight:
  • But still there are the folks in travelling-caps—
  • No priesthood now, but always soldiery,
  • And babies to make up for show in noise,
  • Females (no women), blouses, Hunt, and I.
  • Our windows at one side are shut for warmth;
  • Upon the other side, a leaden sky,
  • Hung in blank glare, makes all the country dim,
  • Which too seems bald and meagre,—be it truth,
  • Or of the waxing darkness. Here and there
  • 40The shade takes light, where in thin patches stand
  • The unstirred dregs of water.
  • Hunt can see
  • A moon, he says; but I am too far back.
  • Still the same speed and thunder. We are stopped
  • Again, and speech tells clearer than in day.
  • Hunt has just stretched to tell me that he fears
  • I and my note-book may be taken for
  • The stuff that goes to make an “émissaire
  • De la perfide.” Let me abate my zeal:
  • There is a stout gendarme within the coach.
  • 50This cursed pitching is too bad. My teeth
  • Jingle together in it; and my legs
  • (Which I got wet at Boulogne this good day
  • Wading for star-fish) are so chilled that I
  • Would don my coat, were not these seats too hard
  • To spare it from beneath me, and were not
  • The love of ease less than the love of sloth.
  • Hunt has just told me it is nearly eight:
  • We do not reach till half-past ten. Drat verse,
  • And steam, and Paris, and the fins of Time!
  • 60Marry, for me, look you, I will go sleep.
  • Most of them slept; I could not—held awake
  • By jolting clamour, with shut eyes; my head
  • Willing to nod and fancy itself vague.
  • Only at Stations I looked round me, when
    • Image of page 179 page: 179
  • Short silence paused among us, and I felt
  • A creeping in my feet from abrupt calm.
  • At such times Hunt would jerk himself, and then
  • Tumble uncouthly forward in his sleep.
  • This lasted near three hours. The darkness now
  • 70Stayeth behind us on the sullen road,
  • And all this light is Paris. Dieu merci.


Paris. Saturday Night, 29.
  • Send me, dear William, by return of post,
  • As much as you can manage of that rhyme
  • Incurred at Ventnor. Bothers and delays
  • Have still prevented me from copying this
  • Till now; now that I do so, let it be
  • Anticipative compensation.
  • Numéro 4 Rue Geoffroy Marie,
  • Faubourg Montmartre, près des Boulevards.
  • 80Dear William, labelled thus the thing will reach.
more about The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris
III

THE STAIRCASE OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS
  • As one who, groping in a narrow stair,
  • Hath a strong sound of bells upon his ears,
  • Which, being at a distance off, appears
  • Quite close to him because of the pent air:
  • So with this France. She stumbles file and square
  • Darkling and without space for breath: each one
  • Who hears the thunder says: “It shall anon
  • Be in among her ranks to scatter her.”
  • This may be; and it may be that the storm
  • 10 Is spent in rain upon the unscathed seas,
  • Or wasteth other countries ere it die:
  • Till she,—having climbed always through the swarm
  • Of darkness and of hurtling sound,—from these
  • Shall step forth on the light in a still sky.
more about Place de la Bastille, Paris
IV

PLACE DE LA BASTILLE, PARIS
  • How dear the sky has been above this place!
  • Small treasures of this sky that we see here
  • Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year;
  • Eyed with a painful prayer upon God's grace
  • To save, and tears which stayed along the face
  • Lifted at sunset. Yea, how passing dear
  • Those nights when through the bars a wind left clear
  • The heaven, and moonlight soothed the limpid space!
  • So was it, till one night the secret kept
  • 10 Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor
  • Was blown abroad on gospel-tongues of flame.
  • O ways of God, mysterious evermore!
  • How many on this spot have cursed and wept
  • That all might stand here now and own Thy Name.
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more about On a Handful of French Money
V

ON A HANDFUL OF FRENCH MONEY
  • These coins that jostle on my hand do own
  • No single image: each name here and date
  • Denoting in man's consciousness and state
  • New change. In some, the face is clearly known,—
  • In others marred. The badge of that old throne
  • Of Kings is on the obverse; or this sign
  • Which says, “I France am all—lo, I am mine!”
  • Or else the Eagle that dared soar alone.
  • Even as these coins, so are these lives and years
  • 10 Mixed and bewildered; yet hath each of them
  • No less its part in what is come to be
  • For France. Empire, Republic, Monarchy,—
  • Each clamours or keeps silence in her name,
  • And lives within the pulse that now is hers.
more about To the P. R. B.
VI

TO THE P.R.B.
  • Woolner and Stephens, Collinson, Millais,
  • And my first brother, each and every one,
  • What portion is theirs now beneath the sun
  • Which, even as here, in England makes to-day?
  • For most of them life runs not the same way
  • Always, but leaves the thought at loss: I know
  • Merely that Woolner keeps not even the show
  • Of work, nor is enough awake for play.
  • Meanwhile Hunt and myself race at full speed
  • 10 Along the Louvre, and yawn from school to school,
  • Wishing worn-out those masters known as old.
  • And no man asks of Browning; though indeed
  • (As the book travels with me) any fool
  • Who would might hear Sordello's story told.
more about In the Train, and at Versailles
VII

IN THE TRAIN, AND AT VERSAILLES
  • In a dull swiftness we are carried by
  • With bodies left at sway and shaking knees.
  • The wind has ceased, or is a feeble breeze
  • Warm in the sun. The leaves are not yet dry
  • From yesterday's dense rain. All, low and high,
  • A strong green country; but, among its trees,
  • Ruddy and thin with Autumn. After these
  • There is the city still before the sky.
  • Versailles is reached. Pass we the galleries
  • 10 And seek the gardens. A great silence here,
  • Through the long planted alleys, to the long
  • Distance of water. More than tune or song,
  • Silence shall grow to awe within thine eyes,
  • Till thy thought swim with the blue turning sphere.
Image of page 181 page: 181
more about Last Visit to the Louvre
VIII

LAST VISIT TO THE LOUVRE

The Cry of the P.R.B., after a careful Examination of the

Canvases of Rubens, Correggio, et hoc genus omne.
  • Non noi pittori! God of Nature's truth,
  • If these, not we! Be it not said, when one
  • Of us goes hence: “As these did, he hath done;
  • His feet sought out their footprints from his youth.”
  • Because, dear God! the flesh Thou madest smooth
  • These carked and fretted, that it seemed to run
  • With ulcers; and the daylight of thy sun
  • They parcelled into blots and glares, uncouth
  • With stagnant grouts of paint. Men say that these
  • 10 Had further sight than man's, but that God saw
  • Their works were good. God that didst know them foul!
  • In such a blindness, blinder than the owl,
  • Leave us! Our sight can reach unto thy seas
  • And hills: and 'tis enough for tears of awe.
more about Last Sonnets at Paris
IX

LAST SONNETS AT PARIS
more about Last Sonnets at Paris. I.
I
  • Chins that might serve the new Jerusalem;
  • Streets footsore; minute whisking milliners,
  • Dubbed graceful, but at whom one's eye demurs,
  • Knowing of England; ladies, much the same;
  • Bland smiling dogs with manes—a few of them
  • At pains to look like sporting characters;
  • Vast humming tabbies smothered in their furs;
  • Groseille, orgeat, meringues à la crême—
  • Good things to study; ditto bad—the maps
  • 10 Of sloshy colour in the Louvre; cinq-francs
  • The largest coin; and at the restaurants
  • Large Ibrahim Pachas in Turkish caps
  • To pocket them. Un million d'habitants:
  • Cast up, they'll make an Englishman—perhaps.
more about Last Sonnets at Paris. II.
II
  • Tiled floors in bedrooms; trees (now run to seed—
  • Such seed as the wind takes) of Liberty;
  • Squares with new names that no one seems to see;
  • Scrambling Briarean passages, which lead
  • To the first place you came from; urgent need
  • Of unperturbed nasal philosophy;
  • Through Paris (what with church and gallery)
  • Some forty first-rate paintings,—or indeed
  • Fifty mayhap; fine churches; splendid inns;
  • 10 Fierce sentinels (toy-size without the stands)
  • Who spit their oaths at you and grind their r's
  • If at a fountain you would wash your hands;
  • One Frenchman (this is fact) who thinks he spars:—
  • Can even good dinners cover all these sins?
Image of page 182 page: 182
Note: On page 182, line 4 up from the bottom: the letter “s” in the word “days” is badly type-damaged.
more about Last Sonnets at Paris. III.
III
  • Yet in the mighty French metropolis
  • Our time has not gone from us utterly
  • In waste. The wise man saith, “An ample fee
  • For toil, to work thine end.” Aye that it is.
  • Should England ask, “Was narrow prejudice
  • Stretched to its utmost point unflinchingly,
  • Even unto lying, at all times, by ye?”
  • We can say firmly: “Lord, thou knowest this,
  • Our soil may own us.” Having but small French,
  • 10 Hunt passed for a stern Spartan all the while,
  • Uncompromising, of few words: for me—
  • I think I was accounted generally
  • A fool, and just a little cracked. Thy smile
  • May light on us, Britannia, healthy wench.
more about From Paris to Brussels
X

FROM PARIS TO BRUSSELS

(11 P.M. 15 October to half-past 1 P.M. 16)

Proem at the Paris Station
  • In France (to baffle thieves and murderers)
  • A journey takes two days of passport work
  • At least. The plan's sometimes a tedious one,
  • But bears its fruit. Because, the other day,
  • In passing by the Morgue, we saw a man
  • (The thing is common, and we never should
  • Have known of it, only we passed that way)
  • Who had been stabbed and tumbled in the Seine,
  • Where he had stayed some days. The face was black,
  • 10And, like a negro's, swollen; all the flesh
  • Had furred, and broken into a green mould.
  • Now, very likely, he who did the job
  • Was standing among those who stood with us,
  • To look upon the corpse. You fancy him—
  • Smoking an early pipe, and watching, as
  • An artist, the effect of his last work.
  • This always if it had not struck him that
  • 'Twere best to leave while yet the body took
  • Its crust of rot beneath the Seine. It may:
  • 20But, if it did not, he can now remain
  • Without much fear. Only, if he should want
  • To travel, and have not his passport yet,
  • (Deep dogs these French police!) he may be caught.
  • Therefore you see (lest, being murderers,
  • We should not have the sense to go before
  • The thing were known, or to stay afterwards)
  • There is good reason why—having resolved
  • To start for Belgium—we were kept three days
  • To learn about the passports first, then do
  • 30As we had learned. This notwithstanding, in
  • The fullness of the time 'tis come to pass.
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more about On the Road
XI

ON THE ROAD
  • October, and eleven after dark:
  • Both mist and night. Among us in the coach
  • Packed heat on which the windows have been shut:
  • Our backs unto the motion—Hunt's and mine.
  • The last lamps of the Paris Station move
  • Slow with wide haloes past the clouded pane;
  • The road in secret empty darkness. One
  • Who sits beside me, now I turn, has pulled
  • A nightcap to his eyes. A woman here,
  • 10Knees to my knees—a twenty-nine-year-old—
  • Smiles at the mouth I open, seeing him:
  • I look her gravely in the jaws, and write.
  • Already while I write heads have been leaned
  • Upon the wall,—the lamp that's overhead
  • Dropping its shadow to the waist and hands.
  • Some time 'twixt sleep and wake. A dead pause then,
  • With giddy humming silence in the ears.
  • It is a Station. Eyes are opening now,
  • And mouths collecting their propriety.
  • 20From one of our two windows, now drawn up,
  • A lady leans, hawks a clear throat, and spits.
  • Hunt lifts his head from my cramped shoulder where
  • It has been lying—long stray hairs from it
  • Crawling upon my face and teazing me.
  • Ten minutes' law. Our feet are in the road.
  • A weak thin dimness at the sky, whose chill
  • Lies vague and hard. The mist of crimson heat
  • Hangs, a spread glare, about our engine's bulk.
  • I shall get in again, and sleep this time.
  • 30A heavy clamour that fills up the brain
  • Like thought grown burdensome; and in the ears
  • Speed that seems striving to o'ertake itself;
  • And in the pulses torpid life, which shakes
  • As water to a stir of wind beneath.
  • Poor Hunt, who has the toothache and can't smoke,
  • Has asked me twice for brandy. I would sleep;
  • But man proposes, and no more. I sit
  • With open eyes, and a head quite awake,
  • But which keeps catching itself lolled aside
  • 40And looking sentimental. In the coach,
  • If any one tries talking, the voice jolts,
  • And stuns the ear that stoops for it.
  • Amiens.
  • Half-an-hour's rest. Another shivering walk
  • Along the station, waiting for the bell.
  • Ding-dong. Now this time, by the Lord, I'll sleep.
  • I must have slept some while. Now that I wake,
  • Day is beginning in a kind of haze
  • White with grey trees. The hours have had their lapse.
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  • A sky too dull for cloud. A country lain
  • 50In fields, where teams drag up the furrow yet;
  • Or else a level of trees, the furthest ones
  • Seen like faint clouds at the horizon's point.
  • Quite a clear distance, though in vapour. Mills
  • That turn with the dry wind. Large stacks of hay
  • Made to look bleak. Dead autumn, and no sun.
  • The smoke upon our course is borne so near
  • Along the earth, the earth appears to steam.
  • Blanc-Misseron, the last French station, passed.
  • We are in Belgium. It is just the same:—
  • 60Nothing to write of, and no good in verse.
  • Curse the big mounds of sand-weed! curse the miles
  • Of barren chill,—the twentyfold relays!
  • Curse every beastly Station on the road!
  • As well to write as swear. Hunt was just now
  • Making great eyes because outside the pane
  • One of the stokers passed whom he declared
  • A stunner. A vile mummy with a bag
  • Is squatted next me: a disgusting girl
  • Broad opposite. We have a poet, though,
  • 70Who is a gentleman, and looks like one;
  • Only he seems ashamed of writing verse,
  • And heads each new page with “ Mon cher Ami .”
  • Hunt's stunner has just come into the coach,
  • And set us hard agrin from ear to ear.
  • Another Station. There's a stupid horn
  • Set wheezing. Now I should just like to know
  • —Just merely for the whim—what good that is.
  • These Stations for the most part are a kind
  • Of London coal-merchant's back premises;
  • 80Whitewashed, but as by hands of coal-heavers;
  • Grimy themselves, and always circled in
  • With foul coke-loads that make the nose aroint.
  • Here is a Belgian village,—no, a town
  • Moated and buttressed. Next, a water-track
  • Lying with draggled reeds in a flat slime.
  • Next, the old country, always all the same.
  • Now by Hans Hemmling and by John Van Eyck,
  • You'll find, till something's new, I write no more.
(4 Hours)
  • There is small change of country; but the sun
  • 90Is out, and it seems shame this were not said:
  • For upon all the grass the warmth has caught;
  • And betwixt distant whitened poplar-stems
  • Makes greener darkness; and in dells of trees
  • Shows spaces of a verdure that was hid;
  • And the sky has its blue floated with white,
  • And crossed with falls of the sun's glory aslant
  • To lay upon the waters of the world;
  • And from the road men stand with shaded eyes
  • To look; and flowers in gardens have grown strong,
  • 100And our own shadows here within the coach
  • Are brighter; and all colour has more bloom.
Image of page 185 page: 185
  • So, after the sore torments of the route:—
  • Toothache, and headache, and the ache of wind,
  • And huddled sleep, and smarting wakefulness,
  • And night, and day, and hunger sick at food,
  • And twentyfold relays, and packages
  • To be unlocked, and passports to be found,
  • And heavy well-kept landscape;—we were glad
  • Because we entered Brussels in the sun.
more about On the Road to Waterloo: 17 October
XII

ON THE ROAD TO WATERLOO: 17 October

(En vigilante, 2 hours)
  • It is grey tingling azure overhead
  • With silver drift. Beneath, where from the green
  • The trees are reared, the distance stands between
  • At peace: and on this side the whole is spread
  • For sowing and for harvest, subjected
  • Clear to the sky and wind. The sun's slow height
  • Holds it through noon, and at the furthest night
  • It lies to the moist starshine and is fed.
  • Sometimes there is no country seen (for miles
  • 10 You think) because of the near roadside path
  • Dense with long forest. Where the waters run
  • They have the sky sunk into them—a bath
  • Of still blue heat; and in their flow, at whiles,
  • There is a blinding vortex of the sun.
more about A Half-Way Pause
XIII

A HALF-WAY PAUSE
  • The turn of noontide has begun.
  • In the weak breeze the sunshine yields.
  • There is a bell upon the fields.
  • On the long hedgerow's tangled run
  • A low white cottage intervenes:
  • Against the wall a blind man leans,
  • And sways his face to have the sun.
  • Our horses' hoofs stir in the road,
  • Quiet and sharp. Light hath a song
  • 10 Whose silence, being heard, seems long.
  • The point of noon maketh abode,
  • And will not be at once gone through.
  • The sky's deep colour saddens you,
  • And the heat weighs a dreamy load.
more about On the Field of Waterloo
XIV

ON THE FIELD OF WATERLOO
  • So then, the name which travels side by side
  • With English life from childhood—Waterloo—
  • Means this. The sun is setting. “Their strife grew
  • Till the sunset, and ended,” says our guide.
    • Image of page 186 page: 186
  • It lacked the “chord” by stage-use sanctified,
  • Yet I believe one should have thrilled. For me,
  • I grinned not, and 'twas something;—certainly
  • These held their point, and did not turn but died:
  • So much is very well. “Under each span
  • 10 Of these ploughed fields” ('tis the guide still) “there rot
  • Three nations' slain, a thousand-thousandfold.”
  • Am I to weep? Good sirs, the earth is old:
  • Of the whole earth there is no single spot
  • But hath among its dust the dust of man.
more about Returning to Brussels
XV

RETURNING TO BRUSSELS
  • Upon a Flemish road, when noon was deep,
  • I passed a little consecrated shrine,
  • Where, among simple pictures ranged in line,
  • The blessed Mary holds her child asleep.
  • To kneel here, shepherd-maidens leave their sheep
  • When they feel grave because of the sunshine,
  • And again kneel here in the day's decline;
  • And here, when their life ails them, come to weep.
  • Night being full, I passed on the same road
  • 10 By the same shrine; within, a lamp was lit
  • Which through the silence of clear darkness glowed.
  • Thus, when life's heat is past and doubts arise
  • Darkling, the lamp of Faith must strengthen it,
  • Which sometimes will not light and sometimes dies.
more about Antwerp to Ghent
XVI

ANTWERP TO GHENT
  • We are upon the Scheldt. We know we move
  • Because there is a floating at our eyes
  • Whatso they seek; and because all the things
  • Which on our outset were distinct and large
  • Are smaller and much weaker and quite grey,
  • And at last gone from us. No motion else.
  • We are upon the road. The thin swift moon
  • Runs with the running clouds that are the sky,
  • And with the running water runs—at whiles
  • 10Weak 'neath the film and heavy growth of reeds.
  • The country swims with motion. Time itself
  • Is consciously beside us, and perceived.
  • Our speed is such the sparks our engine leaves
  • Are burning after the whole train has passed.
  • The darkness is a tumult. We tear on,
  • The roll behind us and the cry before,
  • Constantly, in a lull of intense speed
  • And thunder. Any other sound is known
  • Merely by sight. The shrubs, the trees your eye
  • 20Scans for their growth, are far along in haze.
  • The sky has lost its clouds, and lies away
  • Oppressively at calm: the moon has failed:
    • Image of page 187 page: 187
  • Our speed has set the wind against us. Now
  • Our engine's heat is fiercer, and flings up
  • Great glares alongside. Wind and steam and speed
  • And clamour and the night. We are in Ghent.
more about Antwerp and Bruges
XVII

ANTWERP AND BRUGES
  • I climbed the stair in Antwerp church,
  • What time the circling thews of sound
  • At sunset seem to heave it round.
  • Far up, the carillon did search
  • The wind, and the birds came to perch
  • Far under, where the gables wound.
  • In Antwerp harbour on the Scheldt
  • I stood along, a certain space
  • Of night. The mist was near my face;
  • 10Deep on, the flow was heard and felt.
  • The carillon kept pause, and dwelt
  • In music through the silent place.
  • John Memmeling and John van Eyck
  • Hold state at Bruges. In sore shame
  • I scanned the works that keep their name.
  • The carillon, which then did strike
  • Mine ears, was heard of theirs alike:
  • It set me closer unto them.
  • I climbed at Bruges all the flight
  • 20 The belfry has of ancient stone.
  • For leagues I saw the east wind blown;
  • The earth was grey, the sky was white.
  • I stood so near upon the height
  • That my flesh felt the carillon.
more about On Leaving Bruges
XVIII

ON LEAVING BRUGES
  • The city's steeple-towers remove away,
  • Each singly; as each vain infatuate Faith
  • Leaves God in heaven, and passes. A mere breath
  • Each soon appears, so far. Yet that which lay
  • The first is now scarce further or more grey
  • Than the last is. Now all are wholly gone.
  • The sunless sky has not once had the sun
  • Since the first weak beginning of the day.
  • The air falls back as the wind finishes,
  • 10 And the clouds stagnate. On the water's face
  • The current breathes along, but is not stirred.
  • There is no branch that thrills with any bird.
  • Winter is to possess the earth a space,
  • And have its will upon the extreme seas.
Image of page 188 page: 188
more about Ashore at Dover
XIX

ASHORE AT DOVER
  • On landing, the first voice one hears is from
  • An English police-constable; a man
  • Respectful, conscious that at need he can
  • Enforce respect. Our custom-house at home
  • Strict too, but quiet. Not the foul-mouthed scum
  • Of passport-mongers who in Paris still
  • Preserve the Reign of Terror; not the till
  • Where the King haggles, all through Belgium.
  • The country somehow seems in earnest here,
  • 10 Grave and sufficient:— England, so to speak;
  • No other word will make the thing as clear.
  • “Ah! habit,” you exclaim, “and prejudice!”
  • If so, so be it. One don't care to shriek,
  • “Sir, this shall be! ” But one believes it is.
more about For a Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione (in the Louvre).
FOR

A VENETIAN PASTORAL

BY GIORGIONE

( In the Louvre)
  • Water, for anguish of the solstice:—nay,
  • But dip the vessel slowly,—nay, but lean
  • And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
  • Reluctant. Hush! beyond all depth away
  • The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
  • Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
  • That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
  • Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
  • Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
  • 10 And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
  • Is cool against her naked side? Let be:—
  • Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
  • Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,—
  • Life touching lips with Immortality.
more about For an Allegorical Dance of Women, by Andrea Mantegna (In the Louvre).
FOR

AN ALLEGORICAL DANCE OF WOMEN

BY ANDREA MANTEGNA

( In the Louvre)
  • Scarcely, I think; yet it indeed may be
  • The meaning reached him, when this music rang
  • Clear through his frame, a sweet possessive pang,
  • And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea.
  • But I believe that, leaning tow'rds them, he
  • Just felt their hair carried across his face
  • As each girl passed him; nor gave ear to trace
  • How many feet; nor bent assuredly
    • Image of page 189 page: 189
  • His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought
  • 10 To know the dancers. It is bitter glad
  • Even unto tears. Its meaning filleth it,
  • A secret of the wells of Life: to wit:—
  • The heart's each pulse shall keep the sense it had
  • With all, though the mind's labour run to nought.
more about For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres.
FOR

“ RUGGIERO AND ANGELICA”

BY INGRES
more about For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres. I.
I
  • A remote sky, prolonged to the sea's brim:
  • One rock-point standing buffeted alone,
  • Vexed at its base with a foul beast unknown,
  • Hell-birth of geomaunt and teraphim:
  • A knight, and a winged creature bearing him,
  • Reared at the rock: a woman fettered there,
  • Leaning into the hollow with loose hair
  • And throat let back and heartsick trail of limb.
  • The sky is harsh, and the sea shrewd and salt:
  • 10 Under his lord the griffin-horse ramps blind
  • With rigid wings and tail. The spear's lithe stem
  • Thrills in the roaring of those jaws: behind,
  • That evil length of body chafes at fault.
  • She does not hear nor see—she knows of them.
more about For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres. II.
II
  • Clench thine eyes now,—'tis the last instant, girl:
  • Draw in thy senses, set thy knees, and take
  • One breath for all: thy life is keen awake,—
  • Thou mayst not swoon. Was that the scattered whirl
  • Of its foam drenched thee?—or the waves that curl
  • And split, bleak spray wherein thy temples ache?
  • Or was it his the champion's blood to flake
  • Thy flesh?—or thine own blood's anointing, girl?
  • Now, silence: for the sea's is such a sound
  • 10 As irks not silence; and except the sea,
  • All now is still. Now the dead thing doth cease
  • To writhe, and drifts. He turns to her: and she,
  • Cast from the jaws of Death, remains there, bound,
  • Again a woman in her nakedness.
Image of page 190 page: 190
more about For a Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmelinck; in the Academy of Bruges
FOR

A VIRGIN AND CHILD

BY HANS MEMMELINCK

( In the Academy of Bruges)
  • Mystery: God, man's life, born into man
  • Of woman. There abideth on her brow
  • The ended pang of knowledge, the which now
  • Is calm assured. Since first her task began
  • She hath known all. What more of anguish than
  • Endurance oft hath lived through, the whole space
  • Through night till day, passed weak upon her face
  • While the heard lapse of darkness slowly ran?
  • All hath been told her touching her dear Son,
  • 10 And all shall be accomplished. Where He sits
  • Even now, a babe, He holds the symbol fruit
  • Perfect and chosen. Until God permits,
  • His soul's elect still have the absolute
  • Harsh nether darkness, and make painful moan.
more about For a Marriage of St. Catherine, by the same (Hans Memmeling)
FOR

A MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE

BY THE SAME

( In the Hospital of St. John at Bruges)
  • Mystery: Catherine the bride of Christ.
  • She kneels, and on her hand the holy Child
  • Now sets the ring. Her life is hushed and mild,
  • Laid in God's knowledge—ever unenticed
  • From God, and in the end thus fitly priced.
  • Awe, and the music that is near her, wrought
  • Of angels, have possessed her eyes in thought:
  • Her utter joy is hers, and hath sufficed.
  • There is a pause while Mary Virgin turns
  • 10 The leaf, and reads. With eyes on the spread book,
  • That damsel at her knees reads after her.
  • John whom He loved, and John His harbinger,
  • Listen and watch. Whereon soe'er thou look,
  • The light is starred in gems and the gold burns.
Image of page 191 page: 191
more about The Sea-Limits.
THE SEA-LIMITS
  • Consider the sea's listless chime:
  • Time's self it is, made audible,—
  • The murmur of the earth's own shell.
  • Secret continuance sublime
  • Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
  • No furlong further. Since time was,
  • This sound hath told the lapse of time.
  • No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
  • The mournfulness of ancient life,
  • 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
  • As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
  • Its painful pulse is in the sands.
  • Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
  • Grey and not known, along its path.
  • Listen alone beside the sea,
  • Listen alone among the woods;
  • Those voices of twin solitudes
  • Shall have one sound alike to thee:
  • Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
  • 20 Surge and sink back and surge again,—
  • Still the one voice of wave and tree.
  • Gather a shell from the strown beach
  • And listen at its lips: they sigh
  • The same desire and mystery,
  • The echo of the whole sea's speech.
  • And all mankind is thus at heart
  • Not anything but what thou art:
  • And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
more about World's Worth.
WORLD'S WORTH
  • 'Tis of the Father Hilary.
  • He strove, but could not pray; so took
  • The steep-coiled stair, where his feet shook
  • A sad blind echo. Ever up
  • He toiled. 'Twas a sick sway of air
  • That autumn noon within the stair,
  • As dizzy as a turning cup.
  • His brain benumbed him, void and thin;
  • He shut his eyes and felt it spin;
  • 10 The obscure deafness hemmed him in.
  • He said: “O world, what world for me?”
  • He leaned unto the balcony
  • Where the chime keeps the night and day;
  • It hurt his brain, he could not pray.
  • He had his face upon the stone:
  • Deep 'twixt the narrow shafts, his eye
  • Passed all the roofs to the stark sky,
  • Swept with no wing, with wind alone.
  • Close to his feet the sky did shake
  • 20 With wind in pools that the rains make;
  • The ripple set his eyes to ache.
  • He said: “O world, what world for me?”
Image of page 192 page: 192
Note: On page 192, line 6 up from the bottom (line 15 of “Sacrament Hymn”): it is unclear whether the end punctuation mark is a type-damaged comma or a period.
  • He stood within the mystery
  • Girding God's blessed Eucharist:
  • The organ and the chaunt had ceas'd.
  • The last words paused against his ear
  • Said from the altar: drawn round him
  • The gathering rest was dumb and dim.
  • And now the sacring-bell rang clear
  • 30 And ceased; and all was awe,—the breath
  • Of God in man that warranteth
  • The inmost utmost things of faith.
  • He said: “O God, my world in Thee!”
more about Song and Music
SONG AND MUSIC
  • O leave your hand where it lies cool
  • Upon the eyes whose lids are hot:
  • Its rosy shade is bountiful
  • Of silence, and assuages thought.
  • O lay your lips against your hand
  • And let me feel your breath through it,
  • While through the sense your song shall fit
  • The soul to understand.
  • The music lives upon my brain,
  • 10 Between your hands, within mine eyes;
  • It stirs your lifted throat like pain,
  • An aching pulse of melodies.
  • Lean nearer, let the music pause:
  • The soul may better understand
  • Your music, shadowed in your hand,
  • Now while the song withdraws.
more about Sacrament Hymn
SACRAMENT HYMN
  • On a fair Sabbath day, when His banquet is spread,
  • It is pleasant to feast with my Lord:
  • His stewards stand robed at the foot and the head
  • Of the soul-filling, life-giving board.
  • All the guests here had burthens; but by the King's grant
  • We left them behind when we came;
  • The burthen of wealth and the burthen of want,
  • And even the burthen of shame.
  • And oh, when we take them again at the gate,
  • 10 Though still we must bear them awhile,
  • Much smaller they'll seem in the lane that grows strait,
  • And much lighter to lift at the stile.
  • For that which is in us is life to the heart,
  • Is dew to the soles of the feet,
  • Fresh strength to the loins, giving ease from their smart,
  • Warmth in frost, and a breeze in the heat.
  • No feast where the belly alone hath its fill,—
  • He gives me His body and blood;
  • The blood and the body (I'll think of it still)
  • 20 Of my Lord, which is Christ, which is God.
Image of page 193 page: 193
Sig. 13
more about Dennis Shand.
DENNIS SHAND
  • The shadows fall along the wall,
  • It's night at Haye-la-Serre;
  • The maidens weave since day grew eve,
  • The lady's in her chair.
  • O passing slow the long hours go
  • With time to think and sigh,
  • When weary maidens weave beneath
  • A listless lady's eye.
  • It's two days that Earl Simon's gone
  • 10 And it's the second night;
  • At Haye-la-Serre the lady's fair,
  • In June the moon is light.
  • O it's “Maids, ye'll wake till I come back,”
  • And the hound's i' the lady's chair:
  • No shuttles fly, the work stands by,
  • It's play at Haye-la-Serre.
  • The night is worn, the lamp's forlorn,
  • The shadows waste and fail;
  • There's morning air at Haye-la-Serre,
  • 20 The watching maids look pale.
  • O all unmarked the birds at dawn
  • Where drowsy maidens be;
  • But heard too soon the lark's first tune
  • Beneath the trysting tree.
  • “Hold me thy hand, sweet Dennis Shand,”
  • Says the Lady Joan de Haye,
  • “That thou to-morrow do forget
  • To-day and yesterday.
  • “For many a weary month to come
  • 30 My lord keeps house with me,
  • And sighing summer must lie cold
  • In winter's company.
  • “And many an hour I'll pass thee by
  • And see thee and be seen;
  • Yet not a glance must tell by chance
  • How sweet these hours have been.
  • “We've all to fear; there's Maud the spy,
  • There's Ann whose face I scor'd,
  • There's Blanch tells Huot everything,
  • 40 And Huot loves my lord.
  • “But O and it's my Dennis 'll know,
  • When my eyes look weary dim,
  • Who finds the gold for his girdle-fee
  • And who keeps love for him.”
  • The morrow's come and the morrow-night,
  • It's feast at Haye-la-Serre,
  • And Dennis Shand the cup must hand
  • Beside Earl Simon's chair.
Image of page 194 page: 194
  • And still when the high pouring's done
  • 50 And cup and flagon clink,
  • Till his lady's lips have touched the brim
  • Earl Simon will not drink.
  • But it's, “Joan my wife,” Earl Simon says,
  • “Your maids are white and wan.”
  • And it's, “O,” she says, “they've watched the night
  • With Maud's sick sister Ann.”
  • But it's, “Lady Joan and Joan my bird,
  • Yourself look white and wan.”
  • And it's, “O, I've walked the night myself
  • 60 To pull the herbs for Ann:
  • “And some of your knaves were at the hutch
  • And some in the cellarage,
  • But the only one that watched with us
  • Was Dennis Shand your page.
  • “Look on the boy, sweet honey lord,
  • How drooped his eyelids be:
  • The rosy colour's not yet back
  • That paled in serving me.”
  • O it's, “Wife, your maids are foolish jades,
  • 70 And you're a silly chuck,
  • And the lazy knaves shall get their staves
  • About their ears for luck:
  • “But Dennis Shand may take the cup
  • And pour the wine to his hand;
  • Wife, thou shalt touch it with thy lips,
  • And drink thou, Dennis Shand!”
more about The Mirror
THE MIRROR
  • She knew it not:—most perfect pain
  • To learn: this too she knew not. Strife
  • For me, calm hers, as from the first.
  • 'Twas but another bubble burst
  • Upon the curdling draught of life,—
  • My silent patience mine again.
  • As who, of forms that crowd unknown
  • Within a distant mirror's shade,
  • Deems such an one himself, and makes
  • 10 Some sign; but when the image shakes
  • No whit, he finds his thought betray'd,
  • And must seek elsewhere for his own.
Image of page 195 page: 195
more about A Young Fir-Wood.
A YOUNG FIR-WOOD
  • These little firs to-day are things
  • To clasp into a giant's cap,
  • Or fans to suit his lady's lap.
  • From many winters many springs
  • Shall cherish them in strength and sap
  • Till they be marked upon the map,
  • A wood for the wind's wanderings.
  • All seed is in the sower's hands:
  • And what at first was trained to spread
  • 10 Its shelter for some single head,—
  • Yea, even such fellowship of wands,—
  • May hide the sunset, and the shade
  • Of its great multitude be laid
  • Upon the earth and elder sands.
more about During Music
DURING MUSIC
  • O cool unto the sense of pain
  • That last night's sleep could not destroy;
  • O warm unto the sense of joy,
  • That dreams its life within the brain.
  • What though I lean o'er thee to scan
  • The written music cramped and stiff;—
  • 'Tis dark to me, as hieroglyph
  • On those weird bulks Egyptian.
  • But as from those, dumb now and strange,
  • 10 A glory wanders on the earth,
  • Even so thy tones can call a birth
  • From these, to shake my soul with change.
  • O swift, as in melodious haste
  • Float o'er the keys thy fingers small;
  • O soft, as is the rise and fall
  • Which stirs that shade within thy breast.
more about On the 'Vita Nuova' of Dante.
ON THE VITA NUOVA OF DANTE
  • As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
  • And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
  • And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
  • And the mild fire of precious life wax warm:
  • So I, long bound within the threefold charm
  • Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood,
  • Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
  • How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.
  • At length within this book I found pourtrayed
  • 10 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
  • And simple like a child; with whose clear aid
  • I understood. To such a child as this,
  • Christ, charging well His chosen ones, forbade
  • Offence: “for lo! of such my kingdom is.”
Image of page 196 page: 196
more about Wellington's Funeral.
WELLINGTON'S FUNERAL

18 th November 1852
  • “Victory!”
  • So once more the cry must be.
  • Duteous mourning we fulfil
  • In God's name; but by God's will,
  • Doubt not, the last word is still
  • “Victory!”
  • Funeral,
  • In the music round this pall,
  • Solemn grief yields earth to earth;
  • 10 But what tones of solemn mirth
  • In the pageant of new birth
  • Rise and fall?
  • For indeed,
  • If our eyes were openèd,
  • Who shall say what escort floats
  • Here, which breath nor gleam denotes,—
  • Fiery horses, chariots
  • Fire-footed?
  • Trumpeter,
  • 20 Even thy call he may not hear;
  • Long-known voice for ever past,
  • Till with one more trumpet-blast
  • God's assuring word at last
  • Reach his ear.
  • Multitude,
  • Hold your breath in reverent mood:
  • For while earth's whole kindred stand
  • Mute even thus on either hand,
  • This soul's labour shall be scann'd
  • 30 And found good.
  • Cherubim,
  • Lift ye not even now your hymn?
  • Lo! once lent for human lack,
  • Michael's sword is rendered back.
  • Thrills not now the starry track,
  • Seraphim?
  • Gabriel,
  • Since the gift of thine “All hail!”
  • Out of Heaven no time hath brought
  • 40 Gift with fuller blessing fraught
  • Than the peace which this man wrought
  • Passing well.
  • Be no word
  • Raised of bloodshed Christ-abhorr'd.
  • Say: “'Twas thus in His decrees
  • Who Himself, the Prince of Peace,
  • For His harvest's high increase
  • Sent a sword.”
Image of page 197 page: 197
  • Veterans,
  • 50 He by whom the neck of France
  • Then was given unto your heel,
  • Timely sought, may lend as well
  • To your sons his terrible
  • Countenance.
  • Waterloo!
  • As the last grave must renew,
  • Ere fresh death, the banshee-strain,—
  • So methinks upon thy plain
  • Falls some presage in the rain,
  • 60 In the dew.
  • And O thou,
  • Watching, with an exile's brow
  • Unappeased, o'er death's dumb flood:—
  • Lo! the saving strength of God
  • In some new heart's English blood
  • Slumbers now.
  • Emperor,
  • Is this all thy work was for?—
  • Thus to see thy self-sought aim,
  • 70 Yea thy titles, yea thy name,
  • In another's shame, to shame
  • Bandied o'er? *
  • Wellington,
  • Thy great work is but begun.
  • With quick seed his end is rife
  • Whose long tale of conquering strife
  • Shows no triumph like his life
  • Lost and won.
Transcribed Footnote (page 197):

* Date of the Coup d'Etat: 2nd December 1851.

more about Sonnet to Thomas Woolner (First Snow, 9 February 1853)
TO THOMAS WOOLNER

First Snow, 9 February 1853
  • Woolner, to-night it snows for the first time.
  • Our feet know well the path where in this snow
  • Mine leave one track: how all the ways we know
  • Are hoary in the long-unwonted rime!
  • Grey as their ghosts which now in your new clime
  • Must haunt you while those singing spirits reap
  • All night the field of hospitable sleep—
  • Whose song, past the whole sea, finds counter-chime.
  • Can the year change, and I not think of thee,
  • 10 With whom so many changes of the year
  • So many years were watched—our love's degree
  • Alone the same? Ah still for thee and me,
  • Winter or summer, Woolner, here or there,
  • One grief, one joy, one loss, one victory.
Image of page 198 page: 198
more about The Church-Porches
THE CHURCH-PORCHES
more about The Church-Porches I (to M.F.R)
I

( TO M.F.R. )
  • Sister, first shake we off the dust we have
  • Upon our feet, lest it defile the stones
  • Inscriptured, covering their sacred bones
  • Who lie i' the aisles which keep the names they gave,
  • Their trust abiding round them in the grave;
  • Whom painters paint for visible orisons,
  • And to whom sculptors pray in stone and bronze;
  • Their voices echo still like a spent wave.
  • Without here, the church-bells are but a tune,
  • 10And on the carven church-door this hot noon
  • Lays all its heavy sunshine here without:
  • But having entered in, we shall find there
  • Silence, and sudden dimness, and deep prayer,
  • And faces of crowned angels all about.
more about The Church-Porches II (to C.G.R.)
II

( TO C.G.R. )
  • Sister, arise: We have no more to sing
  • Or say. The priest abideth as is meet
  • To minister. Rise up out of thy seat,
  • Though peradventure 'tis an irksome thing
  • To cross again the threshold of our King
  • Where His doors stand against the evil street,
  • And let each step increase upon our feet
  • The dust we shook from them at entering.
  • Must we of very sooth go home? The air,
  • 10 Whose heat outside makes mist that can be seen,
  • Is very clear and cool where we have been.
  • The priest abideth ministering. Lo!
  • As he for service, why not we for prayer?
  • It is so bidden, sister, let us go.
more about Penumbra
PENUMBRA
  • I did not look upon her eyes,
  • (Though scarcely seen, with no surprise,
  • 'Mid many eyes a single look,)
  • Because they should not gaze rebuke,
  • At night, from stars in sky and brook.
  • I did not take her by the hand,
  • (Though little was to understand
  • From touch of hand all friends might take,)
  • Because it should not prove a flake
  • 10 Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.
  • I did not listen to her voice,
  • (Though none had noted, where at choice
  • All might rejoice in listening,)
  • Because no such a thing should cling
  • In the wood's moan at evening.
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  • I did not cross her shadow once,
  • (Though from the hollow west the sun's
  • Last shadow runs along so far,)
  • Because in June it should not bar
  • 20 My ways, at noon when fevers are.
  • They told me she was sad that day,
  • (Though wherefore tell what love's soothsay,
  • Sooner than they, did register?)
  • And my heart leapt and wept to her,
  • And yet I did not speak nor stir.
  • So shall the tongues of the sea's foam
  • (Though many voices therewith come
  • From drowned hope's home to cry to me,)
  • Bewail one hour the more, when sea
  • 30 And wind are one with memory.
more about The Honeysuckle.
THE HONEYSUCKLE
  • I plucked a honeysuckle where
  • The hedge on high is quick with thorn,
  • And climbing for the prize, was torn,
  • And fouled my feet in quag-water;
  • And by the thorns and by the wind
  • The blossom that I took was thinn'd,
  • And yet I found it sweet and fair.
  • Thence to a richer growth I came,
  • Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,
  • 10 The honeysuckles sprang by scores,
  • Not harried like my single stem,
  • All virgin lamps of scent and dew.
  • So from my hand that first I threw,
  • Yet plucked not any more of them.
more about Words on the Window-pane
WORDS ON THE WINDOW-PANE*
  • Did she in summer write it, or in spring,
  • Or with this wail of autumn at her ears,
  • Or in some winter left among old years
  • Scratched it through tettered cark? A certain thing
  • That round her heart the frost was hardening,
  • Not to be thawed of tears, which on this pane
  • Channelled the rime, perchance, in fevered rain,
  • For false man's sake and love's most bitter sting.
  • Howbeit, between this last word and the next
  • 10 Unwritten, subtly seasoned was the smart,
  • And here at least the grace to weep: if she,
  • Rather, midway in her disconsolate text,
  • Rebelled not, loathing from the trodden heart
  • That thing which she had found man's love to be.
Transcribed Footnote (page 199):

* For a woman's fragmentary inscription.

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more about On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree; Planted by Wm Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.
ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY-TREE;

Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell
  • This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death
  • Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son,
  • Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
  • Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
  • Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
  • Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
  • Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
  • This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!
  • We'll search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
  • 10 And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd
  • For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
  • Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
  • Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
  • Some Starveling's ninth allotment of a ghost.
more about A Match with the Moon.
A MATCH WITH THE MOON
  • Weary already, weary miles to-night
  • I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,
  • I dogged the flying moon with similes.
  • And like a wisp she doubled on my sight
  • In ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite;
  • And in a globe of film all liquorish
  • Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish;—
  • Last like a bubble shot the welkin's height
  • Where my road turned, and got behind me, and sent
  • 10 My wizened shadow craning round at me,
  • And jeered, “So, step the measure,—one two three!”
  • And if I faced on her, looked innocent.
  • But just at parting, halfway down a dell,
  • She kissed me for good-night. So you'll not tell.
more about Sudden Light.
SUDDEN LIGHT
  • I have been here before,
  • But when or how I cannot tell:
  • I know the grass beyond the door,
  • The sweet, keen smell,
  • The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
  • You have been mine before,—
  • How long ago I may not know:
  • But just when at that swallow's soar
  • Your neck turned so,
  • 10 Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
  • Has this been thus before?
  • And shall not thus time's eddying flight
  • Still with our lives our love restore
  • In death's despite,
  • And day and night yield one delight once more?
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more about Stratton Water.
STRATTON WATER
  • “O have you seen the Stratton flood
  • That's great with rain to-day?
  • It runs beneath your wall, Lord Sands,
  • Full of the new-mown hay.
  • “I led your hounds to Hutton bank
  • To bathe at early morn:
  • They got their bath by Borrowbrake
  • Above the standing corn.”
  • Out from the castle-stair Lord Sands
  • 10 Looked up the western lea;
  • The rook was grieving on her nest,
  • The flood was round her tree.
  • Over the castle-wall Lord Sands
  • Looked down the eastern hill:
  • The stakes swam free among the boats,
  • The flood was rising still.
  • “What's yonder far below that lies
  • So white against the slope?”
  • “O it's a sail o' your bonny barks
  • 20 The waters have washed up.”
  • “But I have never a sail so white,
  • And the water's not yet there.”
  • “O it's the swans o' your bonny lake
  • The rising flood doth scare.”
  • “The swans they would not hold so still,
  • So high they would not win.”
  • “O it's Joyce my wife has spread her smock
  • And fears to fetch it in.”
  • “Nay, knave, it's neither sail nor swans,
  • 30 Nor aught that you can say;
  • For though your wife might leave her smock,
  • Herself she'd bring away.”
  • Lord Sands has passed the turret-stair,
  • The court, and yard, and all;
  • The kine were in the byre that day,
  • The nags were in the stall.
  • Lord Sands has won the weltering slope
  • Whereon the white shape lay:
  • The clouds were still above the hill,
  • 40 And the shape was still as they.
  • Oh pleasant is the gaze of life
  • And sad is death's blind head;
  • But awful are the living eyes
  • In the face of one thought dead!
  • “In God's name, Janet, is it me
  • Thy ghost has come to seek?”
  • “Nay, wait another hour, Lord Sands,—
  • Be sure my ghost shall speak.”
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  • A moment stood he as a stone,
  • 50 Then grovelled to his knee.
  • “O Janet, O my love, my love,
  • Rise up and come with me!”
  • “O once before you bade me come,
  • And it's here you have brought me!
  • “O many's the sweet word, Lord Sands,
  • You've spoken oft to me;
  • But all that I have from you to-day
  • Is the rain on my body.
  • “And many's the good gift, Lord Sands,
  • 60 You've promised oft to me;
  • But the gift of yours I keep to-day
  • Is the babe in my body.
  • “O it's not in any earthly bed
  • That first my babe I'll see;
  • For I have brought my body here
  • That the flood may cover me.”
  • His face was close against her face,
  • His hands of hers were fain:
  • O her wet cheeks were hot with tears,
  • 70 Her wet hands cold with rain.
  • “They told me you were dead, Janet,—
  • How could I guess the lie?”
  • “They told me you were false, Lord Sands,—
  • What could I do but die?”
  • “Now keep you well, my brother Giles,—
  • Through you I deemed her dead!
  • As wan as your towers seem to-day,
  • To-morrow they'll be red.
  • “Look down, look down, my false mother,
  • 80 That bade me not to grieve:
  • You'll look up when our marriage fires
  • Are lit to-morrow eve:
  • “O more than one and more than two
  • The sorrow of this shall see:
  • But it's to-morrow, love, for them,—
  • To-day's for thee and me.”
  • He's drawn her face between his hands
  • And her pale mouth to his:
  • No bird that was so still that day
  • 90 Chirps sweeter than his kiss.
  • The flood was creeping round their feet.
  • “O Janet, come away!
  • The hall is warm for the marriage-rite,
  • The bed for the birthday.”
  • “Nay, but I hear your mother cry,
  • ‘Go bring this bride to bed!
  • And would she christen her babe unborn,
  • So wet she comes to wed?’
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  • “I'll be your wife to cross your door
  • 100 And meet your mother's e'e.
  • We plighted troth to wed i' the kirk,
  • And it's there you'll wed with me.”
  • He's ta'en her by the short girdle
  • And by the dripping sleeve:
  • “Go fetch Sir Jock my mother's priest,—
  • You'll ask of him no leave.
  • “O it's one half-hour to reach the kirk
  • And one for the marriage-rite;
  • And kirk and castle and castle-lands
  • 110 Shall be our babe's to-night.”
  • “The flood's in the kirkyard, Lord Sands,
  • And round the belfry-stair.”
  • “I bade you fetch the priest,” he said,
  • “Myself shall bring him there.
  • “It's for the lilt of wedding bells
  • We'll have the hail to pour,
  • And for the clink of bridle-reins
  • The plashing of the oar.”
  • Beneath them on the nether hill
  • 120 A boat was floating wide:
  • Lord Sands swam out and caught the oars
  • And rowed to the hill-side.
  • He's wrapped her in a green mantle
  • And set her softly in;
  • Her hair was wet upon her face,
  • Her face was grey and thin;
  • And “Oh!” she said, “lie still, my babe,
  • It's out you must not win!”
  • But woe's my heart for Father John
  • 130 As hard as he might pray,
  • There seemed no help but Noah's ark
  • Or Jonah's fish that day.
  • The first strokes that the oars struck
  • Were over the broad leas;
  • The next strokes that the oars struck
  • They pushed beneath the trees;
  • The last stroke that the oars struck,
  • The good boat's head was met,
  • And there the gate of the kirk-yard
  • 140 Stood like a ferry-gate.
  • He's set his hand upon the bar
  • And lightly leaped within:
  • He's lifted her to his left shoulder,
  • Her knees beside his chin.
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  • The graves lay deep beneath the flood
  • Under the rain alone;
  • And when the foot-stone made him slip,
  • He held by the head-stone.
  • The empty boat thrawed i' the wind,
  • 150 Against the postern tied.
  • “Hold still, you've brought my love with me,
  • You shall take back my bride.”
  • But woe's my heart for Father John
  • And the saints he clamoured to!
  • There's never a saint but Christopher
  • Might hale such buttocks through!
  • And “Oh!” she said, “on men's shoulders
  • I well had thought to wend,
  • And well to travel with a priest,
  • 160 But not to have cared or ken'd.
  • “And oh!” she said, “it's well this way
  • That I thought to have fared,—
  • Not to have lighted at the kirk
  • But stopped in the kirkyard.
  • “For it's oh and oh I prayed to God,
  • Whose rest I hoped to win,
  • That when to-night at your board-head
  • You'd bid the feast begin,
  • This water past your window-sill
  • 170 Might bear my body in.”
  • Now make the white bed warm and soft
  • And greet the merry morn;
  • The night the mother should have died,
  • The young son shall be born.
more about Beauty and the Bird.
BEAUTY AND THE BIRD
  • She fluted with her mouth as when one sips,
  • And gently waved her golden head, inclin'd
  • Outside his cage close to the window-blind;
  • Till her fond bird, with little turns and dips,
  • Piped low to her of sweet companionships.
  • And when he made an end, some seed took she
  • And fed him from her tongue, which rosily
  • Peeped as a piercing bud between her lips.
  • And like the child in Chaucer, on whose tongue
  • 10 The Blessed Mary laid, when he was dead,
  • A grain,—who straightway praised her name in song:
  • Even so, when she, a little lightly red,
  • Now turned on me and laughed, I heard the throng
  • Of inner voices praise her golden head.
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more about Dawn on the Night Journey
DAWN ON THE NIGHT-JOURNEY
  • Till dawn the wind drove round me. It is past
  • And still, and leaves the air to lisp of bird,
  • And to the quiet that is almost heard
  • Of the new-risen day, as yet bound fast
  • In the first warmth of sunrise. When the last
  • Of the sun's hours to-day shall be fulfilled,
  • There shall another breath of time be stilled
  • For me, which now is to my senses cast
  • As much beyond me as eternity,
  • 10 Unknown, kept secret. On the newborn air
  • The moth quivers in silence. It is vast,
  • Yea, even beyond the hills upon the sea,
  • The day whose end shall give this hour as sheer
  • As chaos to the irrevocable Past.
more about The Woodspurge.
THE WOODSPURGE
  • The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
  • Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
  • I had walked on at the wind's will,—
  • I sat now, for the wind was still.
  • Between my knees my forehead was,—
  • My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
  • My hair was over in the grass,
  • My naked ears heard the day pass.
  • My eyes, wide open, had the run
  • 10 Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
  • Among those few, out of the sun,
  • The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
  • From perfect grief there need not be
  • Wisdom or even memory:
  • One thing then learnt remains to me,—
  • The woodspurge has a cup of three.
more about After the French Liberation of Italy
AFTER THE FRENCH LIBERATION OF ITALY
  • As when the last of the paid joys of love
  • Has come and gone; and with a single kiss
  • At length, and with one laugh of satiate bliss,
  • The wearied man a minute rests above
  • The wearied woman, no more urged to move
  • In those long throes of longing, till they glide,
  • Now lightlier clasped, each to the other's side,
  • In joys past acting, not past dreaming of:—
  • So Europe now beneath this paramour
  • 10 Lies for a little out of use,—full oft
  • Submissive to his lust, a loveless whore.
  • He wakes, she sleeps, the breath falls slow and soft.
  • Wait: the bought body holds a birth within,
  • An harlot's child, to scourge her for her sin.
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more about Even So.
EVEN SO
  • So it is, my dear.
  • All such things touch secret strings
  • For heavy hearts to hear.
  • So it is, my dear.
  • Very like indeed:
  • Sea and sky, afar, on high,
  • Sand and strewn seaweed,—
  • Very like indeed.
  • But the sea stands spread
  • 10 As one wall with the flat skies,
  • Where the lean black craft like flies
  • Seem well-nigh stagnated,
  • Soon to drop off dead.
  • Seemed it so to us
  • When I was thine and thou wast mine,
  • And all these things were thus,
  • But all our world in us?
  • Could we be so now?
  • Not if all beneath heaven's pall
  • 20 Lay dead but I and thou,
  • Could we be so now!
more about A Little While.
A LITTLE WHILE
  • A little while a little love
  • The hour yet bears for thee and me
  • Who have not drawn the veil to see
  • If still our heaven be lit above.
  • Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
  • Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
  • And I have heard the night-wind cry
  • And deemed its speech mine own.
  • A little while a little love
  • 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
  • Whose bower is not yet ruinous
  • Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
  • Only across the shaken boughs
  • We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
  • And deep in both our hearts they rouse
  • One wail for thee and me.
  • A little while a little love
  • May yet be ours who have not said
  • The word it makes our eyes afraid
  • 20 To know that each is thinking of.
  • Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
  • In smiles a little season yet:
  • I'll tell thee, when the end is come,
  • How we may best forget.
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more about A New-Year's Burden.
A NEW-YEAR'S BURDEN
  • Along the grass sweet airs are blown
  • Our way this day in Spring.
  • Of all the songs that we have known
  • Now which one shall we sing?
  • Not that, my love, ah no!—
  • Not this, my love? why, so!—
  • Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.
  • The grove is all a pale frail mist,
  • The new year sucks the sun.
  • 10 Of all the kisses that we kissed
  • Now which shall be the one?
  • Not that my love, ah no!—
  • Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
  • For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!
  • The branches cross above our eyes,
  • The skies are in a net:
  • And what's the thing beneath the skies
  • We two would most forget?
  • Not birth, my love, no, no,—
  • 20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
  • The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.
more about The Song of the Bower.
THE SONG OF THE BOWER
  • Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
  • Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
  • Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
  • Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
  • Free love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
  • Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
  • Fettered love, motionless, can but remember,
  • Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
  • Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
  • 10 What does it find there that knows it again?
  • There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
  • Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
  • Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,—
  • What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
  • Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
  • And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
  • What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
  • This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
  • Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
  • 20 Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
  • Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!)
  • Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
  • My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
  • My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
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  • What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,—
  • My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
  • Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—
  • Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
  • Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
  • 30 The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
  • Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
  • The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
  • Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
  • One day when all days are one day to me?—
  • Thinking, “I stirred not, and yet had the power!”—
  • Yearning, “Ah God, if again it might be!”
  • Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
  • So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
  • Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. . . .
  • 40 Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?
more about On Certain Elizabethan Revivals
ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS
  • O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth,
  • Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine,
  • Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine—
  • What would we with such skittle-plays at death?
  • Say, must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe,
  • Or to their reeking wit our ears incline,
  • Because all Castaly flowed crystalline
  • In gentle Shakspeare's modulated breath?
  • What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie,
  • 10 Nor the scene close while one is left to kill?
  • Shall this be poetry? And thou—thou man
  • Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban,
  • What shall be said of thee? A poet?—Fie!
  • “An honourable murderer, if you will.”
more about Dantis Tenebrae. (In Memory of my Father.)
DANTIS TENEBRÆ

( In Memory of my Father)
  • And didst thou know indeed, when at the font
  • Together with thy name thou gav'st me his,
  • That also on thy son must Beatrice
  • Decline her eyes according to her wont,
  • Accepting me to be of those that haunt
  • The vale of magical dark mysteries
  • Where to the hills her poet's foot-track lies,
  • And wisdom's living fountain to his chaunt
  • Trembles in music? This is that steep land
  • 10 Where he that holds his journey stands at gaze
  • Tow'rd sunset, when the clouds like a new height
  • Seem piled to climb. These things I understand:
  • For here, where day still soothes my lifted face,
  • On thy bowed head, my father, fell the night.
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Sig. 14
more about The Seed of David (For a Picture)
THE SEED OF DAVID

( For a Picture)
  • Christ sprang from David Shepherd, and even so
  • From David King, being born of high and low.
  • The Shepherd lays his crook, the King his crown,
  • Here at Christ's feet, and high and low bow down.
more about Aspecta Medusa.
ASPECTA MEDUSA

( For a Drawing)
  • Andromeda, by Perseus saved and wed,
  • Hankered each day to see the Gorgon's head:
  • Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
  • And mirrored in the wave was safely seen
  • That death she lived by.
  • Let not thine eyes know
  • Any forbidden thing itself, although
  • It once should save as well as kill: but be
  • Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
more about Plighted Promise.
PLIGHTED PROMISE
  • In a soft-complexioned sky,
  • Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
  • Have you seen Aurora fly
  • At the break of day?
  • So my maiden, so my plighted may
  • Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
  • Lifts to look my way.
  • Where the inmost leaf is stirred
  • With the heart-beat of the grove,
  • 10 Have you heard a hidden bird
  • Cast her note above?
  • So my lady, so my lovely love,
  • Echoing Cupid's prompted word,
  • Makes a tune thereof.
  • Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
  • In the moon-rack's ebb and tide,
  • Venus leap forth burning white,
  • Dian pale and hide?
  • So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride,
  • 20 One sweet night, when fear takes flight,
  • Shall leap against my side.
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more about The Passover in the Holy Family. (For a Drawing.)
THE PASSOVER IN THE HOLY FAMILY

( For a Drawing*)
more about The Passover in the Holy Family. (For a Drawing.)
Transcribed Footnote (page 210):

* The scene is in the house-porch, where Christ holds a bowl of blood from which

Zacharias is sprinkling the posts and lintel. Joseph has brought the lamb and Elizabeth

lignts the pyre. The shoes which John fastens and the bitter herbs which Mary is gather-

ing form part of the ritual.

Note: There is a typo in this footnote: the word “lights” at the beginning of the third line has been printed as “lignts”.

  • Here meet together the prefiguring day
  • And day prefigured. “Eating, thou shalt stand,
  • Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand,
  • With blood-stained door and lintel,”—did God say
  • By Moses' mouth in ages passed away.
  • And now, where this poor household doth comprise
  • At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,—
  • Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.
  • The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained,
  • 10 What shadow of Death the Boy's fair brow subdues
  • Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
  • By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
  • He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
  • And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.
more about Venus Verticordia.
VENUS VERTICORDIA

( For a Picture)
  • She hath the apple in her hand for thee,
  • Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;
  • She muses, with her eyes upon the track
  • Of that which in thy spirit they can see.
  • Haply, “Behold, he is at peace,” saith she;
  • “Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
  • That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
  • The wandering of his feet perpetually!”
  • A little space her glance is still and coy;
  • 10 But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
  • Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
  • Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell,
  • And her far seas moan as a single shell,
  • And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.
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more about Pandora. (For a Picture.)
PANDORA

( For a Picture)
  • What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
  • The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
  • Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
  • In its own likeness make thee half divine?
  • Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign
  • For ever? and the mien of Pallas be
  • A deadly thing? and that all men might see
  • In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?
  • What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
  • 10 The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
  • Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
  • Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go
  • Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know
  • If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.
more about A Sea-Spell (for a Picture)
A SEA-SPELL

( For a Picture)
  • Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
  • While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
  • Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,
  • The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
  • But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
  • What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,
  • In answering echoes from what planisphere,
  • Along the wind, along the estuary?
  • She sinks into her spell: and when full soon
  • 10 Her lips move and she soars into her song,
  • What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
  • In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune;
  • Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
  • And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?
more about For 'The Wine of Circe' by Edward Burne Jones.
FOR

“ THE WINE OF CIRCE”

BY EDWARD BURNE JONES
  • Dusk-haired and gold-robed o'er the golden wine
  • She stoops, wherein, distilled of death and shame,
  • Sink the black drops; while, lit with fragrant flame,
  • Round her spread board the golden sunflowers shine.
  • Doth Helios here with Hecaté combine
  • (O Circe, thou their votaress!) to proclaim
  • For these thy guests all rapture in Love's name,
  • Till pitiless Night give Day the countersign?
  • Lords of their hour, they come. And by her knee
  • 10 Those cowering beasts, their equals heretofore,
  • Wait; who with them in new equality
  • To-night shall echo back the sea's dull roar
  • With a vain wail from passion's tide-strown shore
  • Where the dishevelled seaweed hates the sea.
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more about Love-Lily.
LOVE-LILY
  • Between the hands, between the brows,
  • Between the lips of Love-Lily,
  • A spirit is born whose birth endows
  • My blood with fire to burn through me;
  • Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
  • Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
  • At whose least touch my colour flies,
  • And whom my life grows faint to hear.
  • Within the voice, within the heart,
  • 10 Within the mind of Love-Lily,
  • A spirit is born who lifts apart
  • His tremulous wings and looks at me;
  • Who on my mouth his finger lays,
  • And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
  • That Eden of Love's watered ways
  • Whose winds and spirits worship her.
  • Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
  • Kisses and words of Love-Lily,—
  • Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
  • 20 Till riotous longing rest in me!
  • Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
  • But find in her its gracious goal,
  • Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
  • Nor Love her body from her soul.
more about English May
ENGLISH MAY
  • Would God your health were as this month of May
  • Should be, were this not England,—and your face
  • Abroad, to give the gracious sunshine grace
  • And laugh beneath the budding hawthorn-spray.
  • But here the hedgerows pine from green to grey
  • While yet May's lyre is tuning, and her song
  • Is weak in shade that should in sun be strong;
  • And your pulse springs not to so faint a lay.
  • If in my life be breath of Italy,
  • 10 Would God that I might yield it all to you!
  • So, when such grafted warmth had burgeoned through
  • The languor of your Maytime's hawthorn-tree,
  • My spirit at rest should walk unseen and see
  • The garland of your beauty bloom anew.
Image of page 213 page: 213
more about Cassandra. (For a Drawing.)
CASSANDRA

( For a Drawing *)
more about Cassandra. (For a Drawing.) I.
I
  • Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
  • Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine hands, and cry
  • From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
  • See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
  • He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
  • Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
  • This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
  • The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.
  • What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
  • 10 Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
  • On tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave?
  • He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
  • Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
  • Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.
more about Cassandra. (For a Drawing.) II.
II
  • “O Hector, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee
  • Two chariots wait, in Troy long bless'd and curs'd;
  • And Grecian spear and Phrygian sand athirst
  • Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
  • Lo! long upon our hearth the brand had we,
  • Lit for the roof-tree's ruin: and to-day
  • The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
  • And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.
  • “O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
  • 10 Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
  • Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
  • Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
  • Within thy curls at last, and while Troy glows
  • Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 213):

* The subject shows Cassandra prophesying among her kindred, as Hector leaves

them for his last battle. They are on the platform of a fortress, from which the Trojan

troops are marching out. Helen is arming Paris; Priam soothes Hecuba; and Andro-

mache holds the child to her bosom.

Image of page 214 page: 214
more about Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (For a Drawing).
MARY MAGDALENE

At the Door of Simon the Pharisee

( For a Drawing *)
more about Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (For a Drawing).
Transcribed Footnote (page 214):

* In the drawing Mary has left a procession of revellers, and is ascending by a sudden

impulse the steps of the house where she sees Christ. Her lover has followed her, and is

trying to turn her back.

  • “Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?
  • Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek.
  • Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek;
  • See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.
  • This delicate day of love we two will share
  • Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak.
  • What, sweet one,—hold'st thou still the foolish freak?
  • Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.”
  • “Oh loose me! Seest thou not my Bridegroom's face
  • 10 That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss,
  • My hair, my tears He craves to-day:—and oh!
  • What words can tell what other day and place
  • Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His?
  • He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!”
more about Michael Scott's Wooing (For a Drawing)
MICHAEL SCOTT'S WOOING

( For a Drawing)
  • Rose-sheathed beside the rosebud tongue
  • Lurks the young adder's tooth;
  • Milk-mild from new-born hemlock-bluth
  • The earliest drops are wrung:
  • And sweet the flower of his first youth
  • When Michael Scott was young.
more about Troy Town.
TROY TOWN
  • Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's queen,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
  • The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
  • All Love's lordship lay between.
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • 10Saying, “A little gift is mine,
  • A little gift for a heart's desire.
  • Hear me speak and make me a sign!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
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  • “Look, I bring thee a carven cup;
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • See it here as I hold it up,—
  • Shaped it is to the heart's desire,
  • Fit to fill when the gods would sup.
  • 20 ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “It was moulded like my breast;
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • He that sees it may not rest,
  • Rest at all for his heart's desire.
  • O give ear to my heart's behest!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “See my breast, how like it is;
  • 30 ( O Troy Town!)
  • See it bare for the air to kiss!
  • Is the cup to thy heart's desire?
  • O for the breast, O make it his!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Yea, for my bosom here I sue;
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Thou must give it where 'tis due,
  • Give it there to the heart's desire.
  • 40Whom do I give my bosom to?
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Each twin breast is an apple sweet.
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Once an apple stirred the beat
  • Of thy heart with the heart's desire:—
  • Say, who brought it then to thy feet?
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • 50“They that claimed it then were three:
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • For thy sake two hearts did he
  • Make forlorn of the heart's desire.
  • Do for him as he did for thee!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Mine are apples grown to the south,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Grown to taste in the days of drouth,
  • 60Taste and waste to the heart's desire:
  • Mine are apples meet for his mouth.”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
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  • Venus looked on Helen's gift,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Looked and smiled with subtle drift,
  • Saw the work of her heart's desire:—
  • “There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • 70 Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Venus looked in Helen's face,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Knew far off an hour and place,
  • And fire lit from the heart's desire;
  • Laughed and said, “Thy gift hath grace!”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Cupid looked on Helen's breast,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • 80Saw the heart within its nest,
  • Saw the flame of the heart's desire,—
  • Marked his arrow's burning crest.
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Cupid took another dart,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Fledged it for another heart,
  • Winged the shaft with the heart's desire,
  • Drew the string and said, “Depart!”
  • 90 ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Paris turned upon his bed,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Turned upon his bed and said,
  • Dead at heart with the heart's desire—
  • “Oh to clasp her golden head!”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
more about First Love Remembered.
FIRST LOVE REMEMBERED
  • Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er
  • It be, a holy place:
  • The thought still brings my soul such grace
  • As morning meadows wear.
  • Whether it still be small and light,
  • A maid's who dreams alone,
  • As from her orchard-gate the moon
  • Its ceiling showed at night:
  • Or whether, in a shadow dense
  • 10 As nuptial hymns invoke,
  • Innocent maidenhood awoke
  • To married innocence:
  • There still the thanks unheard await
  • The unconscious gift bequeathed:
  • For there my soul this hour has breathed
  • An air inviolate.
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more about An Old Song Ended.
AN OLD SONG ENDED
  • “ How should I your true love know
  • From another one?”
  • “ By his cockle-hat and staff
  • And his sandal-shoon.”
  • “And what signs have told you now
  • That he hastens home?”
  • “Lo! the spring is nearly gone,
  • He is nearly come.”
  • “For a token is there nought,
  • 10 Say, that he should bring?”
  • “He will bear a ring I gave
  • And another ring.”
  • “How may I, when he shall ask,
  • Tell him who lies there?”
  • “Nay, but leave my face unveiled
  • And unbound my hair.”
  • “Can you say to me some word
  • I shall say to him?“
  • “Say I'm looking in his eyes
  • 20 Though my eyes are dim.”
more about After the German Subjugation of France
AFTER THE GERMAN SUBJUGATION OF FRANCE, 1871
  • Lo the twelfth year—the wedding-feast come round
  • With years for months—and lo the babe new-born;
  • Out of the womb's rank furnace cast forlorn,
  • And with contagious effluence seamed and crown'd.
  • To hail this birth, what fiery tongues surround
  • Hell's Pentecost—what clamour of all cries
  • That swell, from Absalom's scoff to Shimei's,
  • One scornful gamut of tumultuous sound!
  • For now the harlot's heart on a new sleeve
  • 10 Is prankt; and her heart's lord of yesterday
  • (Spurned from her bed, whose worm-spun silks o'erlay
  • Such fretwork as that other worm can weave)
  • Takes in his ears the vanished world's last yell,
  • And in his flesh the closing teeth of Hell.
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more about Down Stream.
DOWN STREAM
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • The river-reaches wind,
  • The whispering trees accept the breeze,
  • The ripple's cool and kind;
  • With love low-whispered 'twixt the shores,
  • With rippling laughters gay,
  • With white arms bared to ply the oars,
  • On last year's first of May.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • 10 The river's brimmed with rain,
  • Through close-met banks and parted banks
  • Now near, now far again:
  • With parting tears caressed to smiles,
  • With meeting promised soon,
  • With every sweet vow that beguiles,
  • On last year's first of June.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • The river's flecked with foam,
  • 'Neath shuddering clouds that hang in shrouds
  • 20 And lost winds wild for home:
  • With infant wailings at the breast,
  • With homeless steps astray,
  • With wanderings shuddering tow'rds one rest
  • On this year's first of May.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • The summer river flows
  • With doubled flight of moons by night
  • And lilies' deep repose:
  • With lo! beneath the moon's white stare
  • 30 A white face not the moon,
  • With lilies meshed in tangled hair,
  • On this year's first of June.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • A troth was given and riven,
  • From heart's trust grew one life to two,
  • Two lost lives cry to Heaven:
  • With banks spread calm to meet the sky,
  • With meadows newly mowed,
  • The harvest-paths of glad July,
  • 40 The sweet school-children's road.
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Note: The period at the end of p. 219, line 1 up from the bottom (“That we shall know one day.”) is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about The Cloud Confines.
THE CLOUD CONFINES
  • The day is dark and the night
  • To him that would search their heart;
  • No lips of cloud that will part
  • Nor morning song in the light:
  • Only, gazing alone,
  • To him wild shadows are shown,
  • Deep under deep unknown
  • And height above unknown height.
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • 10“Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • The Past is over and fled;
  • Named new, we name it the old;
  • Thereof some tale hath been told
  • But no word comes from the dead;
  • Whether at all they be,
  • Or whether as bond or free,
  • Or whether they too were we,
  • 20Or by what spell they have sped.
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • What of the heart of hate
  • That beats in thy breast, O Time?—
  • Red strife from the furthest prime,
  • And anguish of fierce debate;
  • War that shatters her slain,
  • 30And peace that grinds them as grain,
  • And eyes fixed ever in vain
  • On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • What of the heart of love
  • That bleeds in thy breast, O Man?—
  • Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
  • 40Of fangs that mock them above;
  • Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
  • Thy hope that a breath dispels,
  • Thy bitter forlorn farewells
  • And the empty echoes thereof?
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
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  • The sky leans dumb on the sea,
  • 50Aweary with all its wings;
  • And oh! the song the sea sings
  • Is dark everlastingly.
  • Our past is clean forgot,
  • Our present is and is not,
  • Our future's a sealed seedplot,
  • And what betwixt them are we?—
  • We who say as we go—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • 60That shall we know one day.”
more about Sunset Wings.
SUNSET WINGS
  • To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings
  • Cleaving the western sky;
  • Winged too with wind it is, and winnowings
  • Of birds; as if the day's last hour in rings
  • Of strenuous flight must die.
  • Sun-steeped in fire, the homeward pinions sway
  • Above the dovecote-tops;
  • And clouds of starlings, ere they rest with day,
  • Sink, clamorous like mill-waters, at wild play,
  • 10By turns in every copse:
  • Each tree heart-deep the wrangling rout receives,—
  • Save for the whirr within,
  • You could not tell the starlings from the leaves;
  • Then one great puff of wings, and the swarm heaves
  • Away with all its din.
  • Even thus Hope's hours, in ever-eddying flight,
  • To many a refuge tend;
  • With the first light she laughed, and the last light
  • Glows round her still; who natheless in the night
  • 20At length must make an end.
  • And now the mustering rooks innumerable
  • Together sail and soar,
  • While for the day's death, like a tolling knell,
  • Unto the heart they seem to cry, Farewell,
  • No more, farewell, no more!
  • Is Hope not plumed, as 'twere a fiery dart?
  • And oh! thou dying day,
  • Even as thou goest must she too depart,
  • And Sorrow fold such pinions on the heart
  • 30As will not fly away?
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more about Soothsay
SOOTHSAY
  • Let no man ask thee of anything
  • Not yearborn between Spring and Spring.
  • More of all worlds than he can know,
  • Each day the single sun doth show.
  • A trustier gloss than thou canst give
  • From all wise scrolls demonstrative,
  • The sea doth sigh and the wind sing.
  • Let no man awe thee on any height
  • Of earthly kingship's mouldering might.
  • 10The dust his heel holds meet for thy brow
  • Hath all of it been what both are now;
  • And thou and he may plague together
  • A beggar's eyes in some dusty weather
  • When none that is now knows sound or sight.
  • Crave thou no dower of earthly things
  • Unworthy Hope's imaginings.
  • To have brought true birth of Song to be
  • And to have won hearts to Poesy,
  • Or anywhere in the sun or rain
  • 20To have loved and been beloved again,
  • Is loftiest reach of Hope's bright wings.
  • The wild waifs cast up by the sea
  • Are diverse ever seasonably.
  • Even so the soul-tides still may land
  • A different drift upon the sand.
  • But one the sea is evermore:
  • And one be still, 'twixt shore and shore,
  • As the sea's life, thy soul in thee.
  • Say, hast thou pride? How then may fit
  • 30Thy mood with flatterers' silk-spun wit?
  • Haply the sweet voice lifts thy crest,
  • A breeze of fame made manifest.
  • Nay, but then chaf'st at flattery? Pause:
  • Be sure thy wrath is not because
  • It makes thee feel thou lovest it.
  • Let thy soul strive that still the same
  • Be early friendship's sacred flame.
  • The affinities have strongest part
  • In youth, and draw men heart to heart:
  • 40As life wears on and finds no rest,
  • The individual in each breast
  • Is tyrannous to sunder them.
  • In the life-drama's stern cue-call,
  • A friend's a part well-prized by all:
  • And if thou meet an enemy,
  • What art thou that none such should be?
  • Even so: but if the two parts run
  • Into each other and grow one,
  • Then comes the curtain's cue to fall.
Image of page 222 page: 222
  • 50Whate'er by other's need is claimed
  • More than by thine,—to him unblamed
  • Resign it: and if he should hold
  • What more than he thou lack'st, bread, gold,
  • Or any good whereby we live,—
  • To thee such substance let him give
  • Freely: nor he nor thou be shamed.
  • Strive that thy works prove equal: lest
  • That work which thou hast done the best
  • Should come to be to thee at length
  • 60(Even as to envy seems the strength
  • Of others) hateful and abhorr'd,—
  • Thine own above thyself made lord,—
  • Of self-rebuke the bitterest.
  • Unto the man of yearning thought
  • And aspiration, to do nought
  • Is in itself almost an act,—
  • Being chasm-fire and cataract
  • Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd.
  • Yet woe to thee if once thou yield
  • 70Unto the act of doing nought!
  • How callous seems beyond revoke
  • The clock with its last listless stroke!
  • How much too late at length!—to trace
  • The hour on its forewarning face,
  • The thing thou hast not dared to do! . . .
  • Behold, this may be thus! Ere true
  • It prove, arise and bear thy yoke.
  • Let lore of all Theology
  • Be to thy soul what it can be:
  • 80But know,—the Power that fashions man
  • Measured not out thy little span
  • For thee to take the meting-rod
  • In turn, and so approve on God
  • Thy science of Theometry.
  • To God at best, to chance at worst,
  • Give thanks for good things, last as first.
  • But windstrown blossom is that good
  • Whose apple is not gratitude.
  • Even if no prayer uplift thy face,
  • 90Let the sweet right to render grace
  • As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.
  • Didst ever say, “Lo, I forget”?
  • Such thought was to remember yet.
  • As in a gravegarth, count to see
  • The monuments of memory.
  • Be this thy soul's appointed scope:—
  • Gaze onward without claim to hope,
  • Nor, gazing backward, court regret.
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more about Winter
WINTER
  • How large that thrush looks on the bare thorn-tree!
  • A swarm of such, three little months ago,
  • Had hidden in the leaves and let none know
  • Save by the outburst of their minstrelsy.
  • A white flake here and there—a snow-lily
  • Of last night's frost—our naked flower-beds hold;
  • And for a rose-flower on the darkling mould
  • The hungry redbreast gleams. No bloom, no bee.
  • The current shudders to its ice-bound sedge;
  • 10 Nipped in their bath, the stark reeds one by one
  • Flash each its clinging diamond in the sun:
  • 'Neath winds which for this winter's sovereign pledge
  • Shall curb great king-masts to the ocean's edge
  • And leave memorial forest-kings o'erthrown.
more about Spring
SPRING
  • Soft-littered is the new-year's lambing-fold,
  • And in the hollowed haystack at its side
  • The shepherd lies o' nights now, wakeful-eyed
  • At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold.
  • The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o' the old:
  • And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,
  • By her spring-cry the moorhen's nest is found,
  • Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.
  • Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
  • 10 And chill the current where the young reeds stand
  • As green and close as the young wheat on land:
  • Yet here the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower
  • Plight to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour
  • Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.
more about Untimely Lost
UNTIMELY LOST

Oliver Madox Brown. Born 1855; Died 1874
  • Upon the landscape of his coming life
  • A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair:
  • The heights of work, the floods of praise, were there.
  • What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife?—
  • All things to come. The fanned springtime was rife
  • With imminent solstice; and the ardent air
  • Had summer sweets and autumn fires to bear;—
  • Heart's ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife.
  • A mist has risen: we see the youth no more:
  • 10Does he see on and strive on? And may we
  • Late-tottering world-worn hence, find his to be
  • The young strong hand which helps us up that shore?
  • Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore,
  • Must Night be ours and his? We hope: and he?
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more about Parted Presence
PARTED PRESENCE
  • Love, I speak to your heart,
  • Your heart that is always here.
  • Oh draw me deep to its sphere,
  • Though you and I are apart,
  • And yield, by the spirit's art,
  • Each distant gift that is dear.
  • O love, my love, you are here!
  • Your eyes are afar to-day,
  • Yet, love, look now in mine eyes.
  • 10 Two hearts sent forth may despise
  • All dead things by the way.
  • All between is decay,
  • Dead hours and this hour that dies.
  • O love, look deep in mine eyes!
  • Your hands to-day are not here,
  • Yet lay them, love, in my hands.
  • The hourglass sheds its sands
  • All day for the dead hours' bier;
  • But now, as two hearts draw near,
  • 20 This hour like a flower expands.
  • O love, your hands in my hands!
  • Your voice is not on the air,
  • Yet, love, I can hear your voice:
  • It bids my heart to rejoice
  • As knowing your heart is there,—
  • A music sweet to declare
  • The truth of your steadfast choice.
  • O love, how sweet is your voice!
  • To-day your lips are afar,
  • 30 Yet draw my lips to them, love.
  • Around, beneath, and above,
  • Is frost to bind and to bar;
  • But where I am and you are,
  • Desire and the fire thereof.
  • O kiss me, kiss me, my love!
  • Your heart is never away,
  • But ever with mine, for ever,
  • For ever without endeavour,
  • To-morrow, love, as to-day;
  • 40Two blent hearts never astray,
  • Two souls no power may sever,
  • Together, O my love, for ever!
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Sig. 15
more about A Death-Parting
A DEATH-PARTING
  • Leaves and rain and the days of the year,
  • ( Water-willow and wellaway,)
  • All these fall, and my soul gives ear,
  • And she is hence who once was here.
  • ( With a wind blown night and day .)
  • Ah! but now, for a secret sign,
  • ( The willow's wan and the water white ,)
  • In the held breath of the day's decline
  • Her very face seemed pressed to mine.
  • 10 ( With a wind blown day and night .)
  • O love, of my death my life is fain;
  • ( The willows wave on the water-way,)
  • Your cheek and mine are cold in the rain,
  • But warm they'll be when we meet again.
  • ( With a wind blown night and day .)
  • Mists are heaved and cover the sky;
  • ( The willows wail in the waning light ,)
  • O loose your lips, leave space for a sigh,—
  • They seal my soul, I cannot die.
  • 20 ( With a wind blown day and night .)
  • Leaves and rain and the days of the year,
  • ( Water-willow and wellaway,)
  • All still fall, and I still give ear,
  • And she is hence, and I am here.
  • ( With a wind blown night and day .)
more about Three Shadows
THREE SHADOWS
  • I looked and saw your eyes
  • In the shadow of your hair,
  • As a traveller sees the stream
  • In the shadow of the wood;
  • And I said, “My faint heart sighs,
  • Ah me! to linger there,
  • To drink deep and to dream
  • In that sweet solitude.”
  • I looked and saw your heart
  • 10 In the shadow of your eyes,
  • As a seeker sees the gold
  • In the shadow of the stream;
  • And I said, “Ah me! what art
  • Should win the immortal prize,
  • Whose want must make life cold
  • And Heaven a hollow dream?”
  • I looked and saw your love
  • In the shadow of your heart,
  • As a diver sees the pearl
  • 20 In the shadow of the sea;
  • And I murmured, not above
  • My breath, but all apart,—
  • “Ah! you can love, true girl,
  • And is your love for me?”
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more about Adieu
ADIEU
  • Waving whispering trees,
  • What do you say to the breeze
  • And what says the breeze to you?
  • 'Mid passing souls ill at ease,
  • Moving murmuring trees,
  • Would ye ever wave an Adieu?
  • Tossing turbulent seas,
  • Winds that wrestle with these,
  • Echo heard in the shell,—
  • 10'Mid fleeting life ill at ease,
  • Restless ravening seas,—
  • Would the echo sigh Farewell?
  • Surging sumptuous skies,
  • For ever a new surprise,
  • Clouds eternally new,—
  • Is every flake that flies,
  • Widening wandering skies,
  • For a sign—Farewell, Adieu?
  • Sinking suffering heart
  • 20That know'st how weary thou art,—
  • Soul so fain for a flight,—
  • Aye, spread your wings to depart,
  • Sad soul and sorrowing heart,—
  • Adieu, Farewell, Good-night.
more about Astarte Syriaca (for a Picture)
ASTARTE SYRIACA

( For a Picture)
  • Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
  • Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
  • Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
  • Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
  • Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:
  • And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
  • Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean
  • The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.
  • Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
  • 10 All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea
  • The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
  • That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
  • Amulet, talisman, and oracle,—
  • Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.
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more about Chimes
CHIMES
more about Chimes I. Honey-flowers to the honey-comb
I
  • Honey-flowers to the honey-comb,
  • And the honey-bee's from home.
  • A honey-comb and a honey-flower,
  • And the bee shall have his hour.
  • A honeyed heart for the honey-comb,
  • And the humming bee flies home.
  • A heavy heart in the honey-flower,
  • And the bee has had his hour.
more about Chimes II. A honey-cell's in the honeysuckle
II
  • A honey-cell's in the honeysuckle,
  • 10And the honey-bee knows it well.
  • The honey-comb has a heart of honey,
  • And the humming bee's so bonny.
  • A honey-flower's the honeysuckle,
  • And the bee's in the honey-bell.
  • The honeysuckle is sucked of honey,
  • And the bee is heavy and bonny.
more about Chimes III. Brown shell first for the butterfly
III
  • Brown shell first for the butterfly,
  • And a bright wing by and by.
  • Butterfly, good-bye to your shell,
  • 20 And, bright wings, speed you well.
  • Bright lamplight for the butterfly
  • And a burnt wing by and by.
  • Butterfly, alas for your shell,
  • And, bright wings, fare you well.
more about Chimes IV. Lost love-labour and lullaby
IV
  • Lost love-labour and lullaby,
  • And lowly let love lie.
  • Lost love-morrow and love fellow
  • And love's life lying low.
  • Lovelorn labour and life laid by,
  • 30 And lowly let love lie.
  • Late love-longing and life-sorrow
  • And love's life lying low.
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more about Chimes V. Beauty's body and benison
V
  • Beauty's body and benison
  • With a bosom-flower new-blown.
  • Bitter beauty and blessing bann'd
  • With a breast to burn and brand.
  • Beauty's bower in the dust o'erblown
  • With a bare white breast of bone.
  • Barren beauty and bower of sand
  • 40 With a blast on either hand.
more about Chimes VI. Buried bars in the breakwater
VI
  • Buried bars in the breakwater
  • And bubble of the brimming weir.
  • Body's blood in the breakwater
  • And a buried body's bier.
  • Buried bones in the breakwater
  • And bubble of the brawling weir.
  • Bitter tears in the breakwater
  • And a breaking heart to bear.
more about Chimes VII. Hollow heaven and the hurricane
VII
  • Hollow heaven and the hurricane
  • 50 And hurry of the heavy rain.
  • Hurried clouds in the hollow heaven
  • And a heavy rain hard-driven.
  • The heavy rain it hurries amain
  • And heaven and the hurricane.
  • Hurrying wind o'er the heaven's hollow
  • And the heavy rain to follow.
more about To Philip Bourke Marston, inciting me to poetic work
TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, INCITING ME TO

POETIC WORK
  • Sweet Poet, thou of whom these years that roll
  • Must one day yet the burdened birthright learn,
  • And by the darkness of thine eyes discern
  • How piercing was the sight within thy soul;—
  • Gifted apart, thou goest to the great goal,
  • A cloud-bound radiant spirit, strong to earn,
  • Light-reft, that prize for which fond myriads yearn
  • Vainly light-blest,—the Seër's aureole.
  • And doth thine ear, divinely dowered to catch
  • 10 All spheral sounds in thy song blent so well,
  • Still hearken for my voice's slumbering spell
  • With wistful love? Ah! let the Muse now snatch
  • My wreath for thy young brows, and bend to watch
  • Thy veiled transfiguring sense's miracle.
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more about The Last Three from Trafalgar (At the Anniversary Banquet, 21st October 187-
THE LAST THREE FROM TRAFALGAR

AT THE ANNIVERSARY BANQUET, 21ST OCTOBER 187–
  • In grappled ships around The Victory,
  • Three boys did England's Duty with stout cheer,
  • While one dread truth was kept from every ear,
  • More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea:
  • For in the flag-ship's weltering cockpit, he
  • Who was the Battle's Heart without a peer,
  • He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear,
  • Was passing from all life save Victory.
  • And round the old memorial board to-day,
  • 10 Three greybeards—each a warworn British Tar—
  • View through the mist of years that hour afar:
  • Who soon shall greet, 'mid memories of fierce fray,
  • The impassioned soul which on its radiant way
  • Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar.
more about Fiammetta (for a Picture)
FIAMMETTA

( For a Picture)
  • Behold Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.
  • Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands;
  • And as she sways the branches with her hands,
  • Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,
  • In separate petals shed, each like a tear;
  • While from the quivering bough the bird expands
  • His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands
  • Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn near.
  • All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:
  • 10 The angel circling round her aureole
  • Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:
  • While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,
  • A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere
  • On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.
more about Mnemosyne
MNEMOSYNE

( For a Picture)
  • Thou fill'st from the winged chalice of the soul
  • Thy lamp, O Memory, fire-winged to its goal.
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more about IV. John Keats.
JOHN KEATS
  • The weltering London ways where children weep
  • And girls whom none call maidens laugh,—strange road
  • Miring his outward steps, who inly trode
  • The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep:—
  • Even such his life's cross-paths; till deathly deep
  • He toiled through sands of Lethe; and long pain,
  • Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
  • In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.
  • O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
  • 10And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,—
  • Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,—
  • Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ
  • But rumour'd in water, while the fame of it
  • Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore.
more about I. Thomas Chatterton.
THOMAS CHATTERTON
  • With Shakspeare's manhood at a boy's wild heart,—
  • Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied,
  • And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride,—
  • At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart;
  • And to the dear new bower of England's art,—
  • Even to that shrine Time else had deified,
  • The unuttered heart that soared against his side,—
  • Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart.
  • Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton;
  • 10 The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace
  • Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space
  • Thy gallant sword-play:—these to many an one
  • Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown
  • And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.
more about II. William Blake.
WILLIAM BLAKE

( To Frederick Shields, on his sketch of Blake's work-room and death-room ,

3 Fountain Court, Strand )
  • This is the place. Even here the dauntless soul,
  • The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook,
  • As on that very bed, his life partook
  • New birth, and passed. Yon river's dusky shoal,
  • Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll,
  • Faced his work-window, whence his eyes would stare,
  • Thought-wandering, unto nought that met them there,
  • But to the unfettered irreversible goal.
  • This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud
  • 10 Of his soul writ and limned; this other one,
  • His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode
  • Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone,
  • Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,
  • The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.
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more about The Day-Dream. (For a Picture.)
THE DAY-DREAM

( For a Picture)
  • The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore
  • Still bear young leaflets half the summer through;
  • From when the robin 'gainst the unhidden blue
  • Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,
  • The embowered throstle's urgent wood-notes soar
  • Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new;
  • Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew
  • Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.
  • Within the branching shade of Reverie
  • 10Dreams even may spring till autumn; yet none be
  • Like woman's budding day-dream spirit-fann'd.
  • Lo! tow'rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,
  • She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
  • Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.
more about III. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
  • His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove
  • The father-songster plies the hour-long quest),
  • To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;
  • But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above
  • Their callow fledgling progeny still hove
  • With tented roof of wings and fostering breast
  • Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest
  • From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love.
  • Yet ah! Like desert pools that show the stars
  • 10 Once in long leagues,—even such the scarce-snatched hours
  • Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers:—
  • Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.
  • Six years, from sixty saved! Yet kindling skies
  • Own them, a beacon to our centuries.
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more about For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli. (In the Accademia of Florence.)
FOR

SPRING

BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI

( In the Accademia of Florence)
  • What masque of what old wind-withered New-Year
  • Honours this Lady?* Flora, wanton-eyed
  • For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied:
  • Aurora, Zephyrus, with mutual cheer
  • Of clasp and kiss: the Graces circling near,
  • 'Neath bower-linked arch of white arms glorified:
  • And with those feathered feet which hovering glide
  • O'er Spring's brief bloom, Hermes the harbinger.
  • Birth-bare, not death-bare yet, the young stems stand
  • 10 This Lady's temple-columns: o'er her head
  • Love wings his shaft. What mystery here is read
  • Of homage or of hope? But how command
  • Dead Springs to answer? And how question here
  • These mummers of that wind-withered New-Year?
Transcribed Footnote (page 232):

* The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is evidently the subject of

a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the Pourtalès collection in Paris. This portrait is

inscribed “Smeralda Bandinelli.”

more about For The Holy Family, By Michelangelo. (In the National Gallery.)
FOR

THE HOLY FAMILY

BY MICHELANGELO.

( In the National Gallery †)
  • Turn not the prophet's page, O Son! He knew
  • All that Thou hast to suffer, and hath writ.
  • Not yet Thine hour of knowledge. Infinite
  • The sorrows that Thy manhood's lot must rue
  • And dire acquaintance of Thy grief. That clue
  • The spirits of Thy mournful ministerings
  • Seek through yon scroll in silence. For these things
  • The angels have desired to look into.
  • Still before Eden waves the fiery sword,—
  • 10 Her Tree of Life unransomed: whose sad Tree
  • Of Knowledge yet to growth of Calvary
  • Must yield its Tempter,—Hell the earliest dead
  • Of Earth resign,—and yet, O Son and Lord,
  • The seed o' the woman bruise the serpent's head.
Transcribed Footnote (page 232):

† In this picture the Virgin Mother is seen withholding from the Child Saviour the

prophetic writings in which His sufferings are foretold. Angelic figures beside them

examine a scroll.

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more about Tiber, Nile and Thames.
TIBER, NILE, AND THAMES
  • The head and hands of murdered Cicero,
  • Above his seat high in the Forum hung,
  • Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung
  • Of a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,
  • Fulvia, Mark Antony's shameless wife, with show
  • Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,
  • Bade her sharp needle pierce that god-like tongue
  • Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber's flow.
  • And thou, Cleopatra's Needle, that hadst thrid
  • 10Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid
  • Dead hope!—hast thou too reached, surviving death,
  • A city of sweet speech scorned,—on whose chill stone
  • Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton,
  • Breadless, with poison froze the God-fired breath?
more about 'Found.' (For a Picture.)
“FOUND”

( For a Picture)
  • “There is a budding morrow in midnight:”—
  • So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
  • And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
  • In London's smokeless resurrection-light,
  • Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight
  • Of Love deflowered and sorrow of none avail,
  • Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
  • Can day from darkness ever again take flight?
  • Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
  • 10Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge
  • In gloaming courtship? And, O God! to-day
  • He only knows he holds her;—but what part
  • Can life now take? She cries in her locked heart,—
  • “Leave me—I do not know you—go away!”
more about Czar Alexander the Second. (13th March, 1881.)
CZAR ALEXANDER THE SECOND

(13 TH MARCH 1881)
  • From him did forty million serfs, endow'd
  • Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive
  • Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave
  • Their country's harvest. These to-day aloud
  • Demand of Heaven a Father's blood,—sore bow'd
  • With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they grieve,
  • On every guilty head would fain achieve
  • All torment by his edicts disallow'd.
  • He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; and first
  • 10 Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go
  • White to the tomb. While he,—laid foully low
  • With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst
  • Willed kingly freedom,—'gainst the deed accurst
  • To God bears witness of his people's woe.
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Note: The comma at the end of p. 234, line 7 up from the bottom (“Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,”) is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about 'Alas, So Long!'
ALAS, SO LONG!
  • Ah! dear one, we were young so long,
  • It seemed that youth would never go,
  • For skies and trees were ever in song
  • And water in singing flow
  • In the days we never again shall know.
  • Alas, so long!
  • Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
  • Nay, but we were young and together.
  • Ah! dear one, I've been old so long,
  • 10 It seems that age is loth to part,
  • Though days and years have never a song,
  • And oh! have they still the art
  • That warmed the pulses of heart to heart?
  • Alas, so long!
  • Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
  • Nay, but we were young and together.
  • Ah! dear one, you've been dead so long,—
  • How long until we meet again,
  • Where hours may never lose their song
  • 20 Nor flowers forget the rain
  • In glad noonlight that never shall wane?
  • Alas, so long!
  • Ah! shall it be then Spring weather,
  • And ah! shall we be young together?
more about Insomnia.
INSOMNIA
  • Thin are the night-skirts left behind
  • By daybreak hours that onward creep,
  • And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
  • That wavers with the spirit's wind:
  • But in half-dreams that shift and roll
  • And still remember and forget,
  • My soul this hour has drawn your soul
  • A little nearer yet.
  • Our lives, most dear, are never near,
  • 10 Our thoughts are never far apart,
  • Though all that draws us heart to heart
  • Seems fainter now and now more clear.
  • To-night Love claims his full control,
  • And with desire and with regret
  • My soul this hour has drawn your soul
  • A little nearer yet.
  • Is there a home where heavy earth
  • Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
  • Where water leaves no thirst again
  • 20And springing fire is Love's new birth?
  • If faith long bound to one true goal
  • May there at length its hope beget,
  • My soul that hour shall draw your soul
  • For ever nearer yet.
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Note: The period at the end of p. 235, line 1 up from the bottom (“His spirit to the only land unknown.”) is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about Possession.
POSSESSION
  • There is a cloud above the sunset hill,
  • That wends and makes no stay,
  • For its goal lies beyond the fiery west;
  • A lingering breath no calm can chase away,
  • The onward labour of the wind's last will;
  • A flying foam that overleaps the crest
  • Of the top wave: and in possession still
  • A further reach of longing; though at rest
  • From all the yearning years,
  • 10Together in the bosom of that day
  • Ye cling, and with your kisses drink your tears.
more about V. Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Inscription for the couch, still preserved, on which he passed the last night of his life.)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

( Inscription for the couch, still preserved, on which he passed the

last night of his life.)
  • 'Twixt those twin worlds,—the world of Sleep, which gave
  • No dream to warn,—the tidal world of Death,
  • Which the earth's sea, as the earth, replenisheth,—
  • Shelley, Song's orient sun, to breast the wave,
  • Rose from this couch that morn. Ah! did he brave
  • Only the sea?—or did man's deed of hell
  • Engulph his bark 'mid mists impenetrable? . . .
  • No eye discerned, nor any power might save.
  • When that mist cleared, O Shelley! what dread veil
  • 10 Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth
  • Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless youth?
  • Was the Truth thy Truth, Shelley?—Hush! All-Hail!
  • Past doubt, thou gav'st it; and in Truth's bright sphere
  • Art first of praisers, being most praisèd here.
more about Raleigh's Cell in the Tower.
RALEIGH'S CELL IN THE TOWER
  • Here writ was the World's History by his hand
  • Whose steps knew all the earth; albeit his world
  • In these few piteous paces then was furl'd.
  • Here daily, hourly, have his proud feet spann'd
  • This smaller speck than the receding land
  • Had ever shown his ships; what time he hurl'd
  • Abroad o'er new-found regions spiced and pearl'd
  • His country's high dominion and command.
  • Here dwelt two spheres. The vast terrestrial zone
  • 10His spirit traversed; and that spirit was
  • Itself the zone celestial, round whose birth
  • The planets played within the zodiac's girth;
  • Till hence, through unjust death unfeared, did pass
  • His spirit to the only land unknown.
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more about Spheral Change.
SPHERAL CHANGE
  • In this new shade of Death, the show
  • Passes me still of form and face;
  • Some bent, some gazing as they go,
  • Some swiftly, some at a dull pace,
  • Not one that speaks in any case.
  • If only one might speak!—the one
  • Who never waits till I come near;
  • But always seated all alone
  • As listening to the sunken air,
  • 10 Is gone before I come to her.
  • O dearest! while we lived and died
  • A living death in every day,
  • Some hours we still were side by side,
  • When where I was you too might stay
  • And rest and need not go away.
  • O nearest, furthest! Can there be
  • At length some hard-earned heart-won home,
  • Where,—exile changed for sanctuary,—
  • Our lot may fill indeed its sum,
  • 20 And you may wait and I may come?
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more about Versicles and Fragments
VERSICLES AND FRAGMENTS
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more about God's Graal
GOD'S GRAAL
  • The ark of the Lord of Hosts
  • Whose name is called by the name of Him
  • Who dwelleth between the Cherubim.
  • O Thou that in no house dost dwell,
  • But walk'st in tent and tabernacle.
  • For God of all strokes will have one
  • In every battle that is done.
  • Lancelot lay beside the well:
  • (God's Graal is good)
  • 10Oh my soul is sad to tell
  • The weary quest and the bitter quell;
  • For he was the lord of lordlihood,
  • And sleep on his eyelids fell.
  • Lancelot lay before the shrine;
  • (The apple tree's in the wood)
  • There was set Christ's very sign,
  • The bread unknown and the unknown wine
  • That the soul's life for a livelihood
  • Craves from his wheat and vine.
  • As much as in a hundred years, she's dead:
  • Yet is to-day the day on which she died.
more about On Burns
ON BURNS
  • In whomsoe'er, since Poesy began,
  • A Poet most of all men we may scan,
  • Burns of all poets is the most a Man.
more about The Orchard-pit
THE ORCHARD-PIT
  • Piled deep below the screening apple-branch
  • They lie with bitter apples in their hands:
  • And some are only ancient bones that blanch,
  • And some had ships that last year's wind did launch,
  • And some were yesterday the lords of lands.
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  • In the soft dell, among the apple-trees,
  • High up above the hidden pit she stands,
  • And there for ever sings, who gave to these,
  • That lie below, her magic hour of ease,
  • 10 And those her apples holden in their hands.
  • This in my dreams is shown me; and her hair
  • Crosses my lips and draws my burning breath;
  • Her song spreads golden wings upon the air,
  • Life's eyes are gleaming from her forehead fair,
  • And from her breasts the ravishing eyes of Death.
  • Men say to me that sleep hath many dreams,
  • Yet I knew never but this dream alone:
  • There, from a dried-up channel, once the stream's,
  • The glen slopes up; even such in sleep it seems
  • 20 As to my waking sight the place well known.
  • My love I call her, and she loves me well:
  • But I love her as in the maelstrom's cup
  • The whirled stone loves the leaf inseparable
  • That clings to it round all the circling swell,
  • And that the same last eddy swallows up.
TO ART
  • I loved thee ere I loved a woman, Love.
more about Fior di Maggio
FIOR DI MAGGIO
  • Oh! May sits crowned with hawthorn-flower,
  • And is Love's month, they say;
  • And Love's the fruit that is ripened best
  • By ladies' eyes in May.
more about 'I saw the Sibyl at Cumae' [with epigraph by Petronius]

And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at Cumæ, hanging in a jar;

and, when the boys asked her, “What would you, Sibyl?” she answered, “I would die.”

—Petronius.

  • “I saw the Sibyl at Cumæ”
  • (One said) “with mine own eye.
  • She hung in a cage, and read her rune
  • To all the passers-by.
  • Said the boys, ‘What wouldst thou, Sibyl?’
  • She answered, ‘I would die.’”
  • As balmy as the breath of her you love
  • When deep between her breasts it comes to you.
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Sig. 16
  • “Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies?”
  • “Nay, who but infants question in such wise?
  • 'Twas one of my most intimate enemies.”
  • If I could die like the British Queen
  • Who faced the Roman war,
  • Or hang in a cage for my country's sake
  • Like Black Bess of Dunbar!
more about [My Lady Greensleeves]
  • She bound her green sleeve on my helm,
  • Sweet pledge of love's sweet meed:
  • Warm was her bared arm round my neck
  • As well she bade me speed;
  • And her kiss clings still between my lips,
  • Heart's beat and strength at need.
  • Where is the man whose soul has never waked
  • To sudden pity of the poor torn past?
  • At her step the water-hen
  • Springs from her nook, and skimming the clear stream,
  • Ripples its waters in a sinuous curve,
  • And dives again in safety.
  • Would God I knew there were a God to thank
  • When thanks rise in me!
  • I shut myself in with my soul,
  • And the shapes come eddying forth.
more about 'I hate' says over and above
  • “I hate” says over and above
  • “This is a soul that I might love.”
  • None lightly says “My friend”: even so
  • Be jealous of that name “My foe.”
  • An enemy for an enemy,
  • But dogs for what a dog can be.
  • Hold those at heart, and time shall prove.
  • Do still thy best, albeit the clue
  • Be snapt of that thou strovest to;
  • Do still thy best, though direful hate
  • Should toil to leave thee desolate.
  • Do still thy best whom Fate would damn.
  • Say—such as I was made I am,
  • And did even such as I could do.
  • Anomalies against all rules
  • Acknowledge, though beyond the schools:—
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  • 10Those passionate states when to know true
  • Some thing, and to believe, are two;
  • And that extraordinary sect
  • Whom no amount of intellect
  • Can save, alas, from being fools.
  • The bitter stage of life
  • Where friend and foe are parts alternated.
  • The winter garden-beds all bare,
  • Save only where the redbreast lingering there
  • Brings back one flower-like gleam 'mid the dark mould.
  • Who shall say what is said in me,
  • With all that I might have been dead in me?
  • Who knoweth not love's sounds and silences?
  • Where the poets all—
  • Echoes of singing nature—list her call.
A BAD OMEN
  • On the first day the priest
  • Could find no heart in the beast,
  • And two on the second day.
  • Even as the dreariest swamps, in sweet Springtide,
  • Are most with Mary-flowers beatified.
  • Or reading in some sunny nook
  • Where grass-blade shadows fall across your book.
  • Aye, we'll shake hands, though scarce for love, we two:
  • But I hate hatred worse than I hate you.
  • And heavenly things in your eyes have place,
  • Those breaks of sky in the twilight face.
  • Though all the rest go by—
  • Ditties and dirges of the unanswering sky.
more about [The Zodiac of All Beauty]
  • What face but thine has taught me all that art
  • Can be, and still be Nature's counterpart—
  • The zodiac of all beauty?
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  • With furnaces
  • Of instant flame, and petals of pure light.
  • And love and faith, the vehement heart of all.
  • For this can love, and does love, and loves me.
(or)
  • For this can love, and does, and loves but me.
  • The forehead veiled and the veiled throat of Death.
  • Thou that beyond thy real self dost see
  • A self ideal, bid thy heart beware.
  • And plaintive days that haunt the haggard hills
  • With bleak unspoken woe.
  • To know for certain that we do not know
  • Is the first step in knowledge.
  • Think through this silence how when we are old
  • We two shall think upon this place and day.
  • An ant-sting's prickly at first,
  • But the pain soon dies away;
  • A gnat-sting's worse the next day;
  • But a wasp 'tis stings the worst.
  • And mad revulsion of the tarnished light.
  • His face, in Fortune's favours sunn'd,
  • Was radiantly rubicund.
  • The glass stands empty of all things it knew.
  • O thou whose name, being alone, aloud
  • I utter oft, and though thou art not there,
  • Toward thine imaged presence kiss the air.
  • I saw the love which was my life flow past
  • 'Twixt shadowed reaches, like a murmuring stream:—
  • I was awake, and lo it was a dream.
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  • Or give ten years of life's most bitter wane
  • To see the loved one as she was again.
  • And of the cup of human agony
  • Enough to fill the sea.
  • Even as the moon grows clearer on the sky
  • While the sky darkens, and her Venus-star
  • Thrills with a keener radiance from afar.
  • (The Imperial Cloak—Paludamentum).
  • Imperatorial car,
  • And purple-dyed paludament of war.
more about My Lady (Canzone)
MY LADY (Canzone)
  • I'll tell you of my Lady all I know;
  • And, if my lady knew
  • That I would tell this, she would etc. etc.
  • And say, “Why, all is his, so let him tell.”
She is full of incidents, like all beautiful Nature.
Then follow descriptive lines about her different attitudes, expres-

sions, etc. Perhaps to wind up by saying that nothing one can say

is so expressive of her as her own name, which means herself only:

and that cannot be said for others to hear.
LAST LOVE (Canzone)
  • Love hath a chamber all of imagery;
  • And there is one dim nook,
  • A little storied web wherein my heart
  • From leaf to leaf is read as in a book.
One part in the middle of the web begun and left unfinished; a

face with ravelled threads falling over it and hiding it. Love says

that the time has come to resume and finish this part of the web,

though much has come between since it was begun.
  • For the garlands of heaven were all laid by,
  • And the Daylight sucked at the breasts of a Lie.
  • The wounded hart and the dying swan
  • Were side by side
  • Where the rushes coil with the turn of the tide—
  • The hart and the swan.
(In the alternate stanzas—The swan and the hart.)
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Note: It is unclear whether the end punctuation mark on page 245, line 1 is a comma or a period.
  • Within those eyes the sedulous yearning throe,
  • And all the evil of my heart
  • A thousand times forgotten.
  • Ah if you had been lost for many years,
  • And from the dead to-day were risen again!
ON THE TWO BRIDAL-BIERS
  • How sweet a solace is the bridal-bed—
  • Dawn as prepared, evening as hallowèd.
  • Fashioned with intricate infinity.
  • Ah dear one, we were young so long
  • I thought that youth would never wane—
  • Ah dear one, I've been old so long,
  • How long until we meet again?
more about Joan of Arc
JOAN OF ARC
  • This word had Merlin said from of old:—
  • That out of the Oak Tree Shade
  • In the day of France's direst dule,
  • God's hand should send a Maid.
  • And where Domremy, by Burgundy,
  • Sits crowned with its oakenshaw,
  • Even there Joan d'Arc, the Maid of God's Ark,
  • The light of the day first saw.
  • Where spirits go, what man may know?
  • 10 Yet this may of man be said:—
  • That, when Time is o'er and all hath sufficed,
  • Shall the world's chief Christ-fire rise to Christ
  • From the ashes of Joan the Maid.
  • The tombless fossil of deep-buried days.
  • And 'mid the budding branches' sway
  • Our antlers met in battle-play
  • When our fetlocks felt the Spring.
  • In galliard gardens of strange aventine,
  • Or sway of tidal night.
  • When we are senseless grown, to make stones speak.
  • Or, stamped with the snake's coil, it be
  • The imperial image of Eternity.
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  • Could Keats but have a day or two on earth
  • Once every year!
more about Dis Manibus
DÎS MANIBUS
  • Gustave Flaubert, whose honoured rôle
  • Was to be scribe to Nero's soul,
  • And make French flesh to creep and crow
  • O'er Carthaginian Salammbô,
  • Lies here—in body, as in the brain,
  • Like Morgue-corpse tumid from the Seine.
  • What shall be writ above his grave?
  • Vitellius', Nero's dying stave?
  • “Fui Imperator,” shall it flow,
  • 10 Or “Qualis artifex pereo”?
  • “Ah lads, I knew your father.” What wide world
  • Of meaning in those words! They mean that he,
  • Being gone before, has known that mystery
  • From living Plato and Socrates fast-furl'd.
  • This little day—a bird that flew to me—
  • Has swiftly flown out of my hand again.
  • Ah have I listened to its fugitive strain
  • For what its tidings of the sky may be?
  • No ship came near: aloof with heed
  • They tacked, as still as death;
  • For round our walls the sea was dense
  • With reefs whose sharp circumference
  • Was the great stronghold's sure defence.
  • And plaintive days that haunt the haggard hills
  • With bleak unspoken woe.
  • Inexplicable blight
  • And mad revulsion of the tarnished light.
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more about Foreign (With Some English Translations)
FOREIGN

(With some English Translations)
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more about Motto to The Card Dealer (2)
MOTTO TO THE CARD DEALER
  • Ambition, Cupidité,
  • Et délicieuse Volupté,
  • Sont les sœurs de la Destinée
  • Après la vingt-première année.


Calendrier de la Vie, 1630.
more about Messer Dante a Messer Bruno
MESSER DANTE A MESSER BRUNO
  • Essendo pazzo, il bue al guado intoppa,
  • E volta e sfugge e d'acqua và digiuno:
  • E tu, pittor, che come lui sei Bruno,
  • Temendo un detto, dici cosa zoppa.
  • Acqua di guado no, ma vino in coppa,
  • Domanda il labbro al timoroso core
  • Dovendo nominare il creditore;
  • E manca il dir, chè la paura è troppa.
  • “Fatto” lo chiami; e più tremendo fatto
  • 10Che il creditore non dimostra il sole
  • Ad uomo sano, ovvero a bue ch'è matto.
  • Impazziti voltiamo le parole
  • Ieroglificamente in “gufo” o “gatto”;
  • E l'uom non osa dir quel che gli duole.
more about Con Manto d'Oro, etc.
  • Con manto d'oro, collana, ed anelli,
  • Le piace aver con quelli
  • Non altro che una rosa ai suoi capelli.
more about With Golden Mantle, etc.
  • With golden mantle, rings, and necklace fair,
  • It likes her best to wear
  • Only a rose within her golden hair.
more about Robe d'Or, etc.
  • Robe d'or, mais rien ne veut
  • Qu'une rose à ses cheveux.
more about A Golden Robe Etc.
  • A golden robe, yet will she wear
  • Only a rose in her golden hair.
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more about For an Oil-Portrait of Mrs. William Morris
FOR

AN OIL-PORTRAIT OF MRS. WILLIAM MORRIS
  • Conjuge clara poetâ et præclarissima formâ,
  • Denique picturâ clara sit illa meâ.
more about Thomae Fides
THOMÆ FIDES
  • “Digitum tuum, Thoma,
  • Infer, et vide manûs!
  • Manum tuam, Thoma,
  • Affer, et mitte in latus.”
  • “Dominus et Deus,
  • Deus,” dixit,
  • “Et Dominus meus.”
  • “Quia me vidisti,
  • Thoma, credidisti.
  • 10Beati qui non viderunt,
  • Thoma, et crediderunt.”
  • “Dominus et Deus,
  • Deus,” dixit,
  • “Et Dominus meus.”
more about Gioventu e Signoria
GIOVENTU E SIGNORÌA
  • E giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama molte cose,—
  • I canti, le rose,
  • La forza e l'amore.
  • Quel che più vuole
  • Ancor non osa:
  • Ahi più che il sole,
  • Più ch' ogni rosa,
  • La cara cosa,
  • 10Donna a gioire.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama quelle cose
  • Che ardor dispose
  • In cuore all' amore.
  • Bella fanciulla,
  • Guardalo in viso;
  • Non mancar nulla,
  • Motto o sorriso;
  • Ma viso a viso
  • 20Guarda a gradire.
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  • E giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama tutte cose,
  • Vezzose, giojose,
  • Tenenti all' amore.
  • Prendilo in braccio
  • Adesso o mai;
  • Per più mi taccio,
  • Chè tu lo sai;
  • Bacialo e l'avrai,
  • 30Ma non lo dire.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama ben le cose
  • Che Amor nascose,
  • Che mostragli Amore.
  • Deh trionfando
  • Non farne pruova;
  • Ahimè! che quando
  • Gioja più giova,
  • Allor si trova
  • 40Presso al finire.
  • E giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama tante cose,
  • Le rose, le spose,
  • Quante gli dona Amore.
more about Youth and Lordship (Italian Street Song)
YOUTH AND LORDSHIP

( Italian Street-Song)
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of earth and sky above,
  • Of youth's sway and youth's play,
  • Of songs and flowers and love.
  • Yet for love's desire
  • Green youth lacks the daring;
  • Though one dream of fire,
  • All his hours ensnaring,
  • Burns the boy past bearing—
  • 10 The dream that girls inspire.
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of every burning thought
  • That Love's will, that Love's skill
  • Within his breast has wrought.
  • Lovely girl, look on him
  • Soft as music's measure;
  • Yield him, when you've won him,
  • Joys and toys at pleasure;
  • But to win your treasure,
  • 20 Softly look upon him.
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  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of every tender grace
  • That woman, to woo man,
  • Can wear in form or face.
  • Take him to your bosom
  • Now, girl, or never;
  • Let not your new blossom
  • Of sweet kisses sever;
  • Only guard for ever
  • 30 Your boast within your bosom.
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of every secret thing,
  • Love-hidden, love-bidden
  • This day to banqueting.
  • Lovely girl, with vaunting
  • Never tempt to-morrow:
  • From all shapes enchanting
  • Any joy can borrow,
  • Still the spectre Sorrow
  • 40 Rises up for haunting.
  • And now my lord's the lover
  • Of ah! so many a sweet,—
  • Of roses, of spouses,
  • As many as love may greet.
more about Proserpina. (Per un Quadro.)
PROSERPINA

(PER UN QUADRO)
  • Lungi è la luce che in sù questo muro
  • Rifrange appena, un breve istante scorta
  • Del rio palazzo alla soprana porta.
  • Lungi quei fiori d'Enna, O lido oscuro,
  • Dal frutto tuo fatal che omai m'è duro.
  • Lungi quel cielo dal tartareo manto
  • Che quì mi cuopre: e lungì ahi lungi ahi quanto
  • Le notti che saran dai dì che furo.
  • Lungi da me mi sento; e ognor sognando
  • 10Cerco e ricerco, e resto ascoltatrice;
  • E qualche cuore a qualche anima dice,
  • (Di cui mi giunge il suon da quando in quando.
  • Continuamente insieme sospirando,)—
  • “Oimè per te, Proserpina infelice!”
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more about Proserpina (for a Picture)
PROSERPINA

( For a Picture)
  • Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
  • Unto this wall,—one instant and no more
  • Admitted at my distant palace-door.
  • Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
  • Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
  • Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
  • That chills me: and afar, how far away,
  • The nights that shall be from the days that were.
  • Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
  • 10 Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
  • And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
  • (Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,
  • Continually together murmuring,)—
  • “Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”
more about La Bella Mano. (Per un Quadro.)
LA BELLA MANO

(PER UN QUADRO)
  • O bella Mano, che ti lavi e piaci
  • In quel medesmo tuo puro elemento
  • Donde la Dea dell' amoroso avvento
  • Nacque, (e dall' onda s'infuocar le faci
  • Di mille inispegnibili fornaci):—
  • Come a Venere a te l'oro e l'argento
  • Offron gli Amori; e ognun riguarda attento
  • La bocca che sorride e te che taci.
  • In dolce modo dove onor t' invii
  • 10Vattene adorna, e porta insiem fra tante
  • Di Venere e di vergine sembiante;
  • Umilemente in luoghi onesti e pii
  • Bianca e soave ognora; infin che sii,
  • O Mano, mansueta in man d'amante.
more about La Bella Mano. (For a Picture.)
LA BELLA MANO

( For a Picture)
  • O lovely hand, that thy sweet self dost lave
  • In that thy pure and proper element,
  • Whence erst the Lady of Love's high advènt
  • Was born, and endless fires sprang from the wave:—
  • Even as her Loves to her their offerings gave,
  • For thee the jewelled gifts they bear; while each
  • Looks to those lips, of music-measured speech
  • The fount, and of more bliss than man may crave.
  • In royal wise ring-girt and bracelet-spann'd,
  • 10 A flower of Venus' own virginity,
  • Go shine among thy sisterly sweet band;
  • In maiden-minded converse delicately
  • Evermore white and soft; until thou be,
  • O hand! heart-handsel'd in a lover's hand.
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more about Barcarola
BARCAROLA
  • Per carità,
  • Mostrami amore:
  • Mi punge il cuore,
  • Ma non si sa
  • Dove è amore.
  • Che mi fa
  • La bella età,
  • Sè non si sa
  • Come amerà?
  • 10Ahi me solingo!
  • Il cuor mi stringo!
  • Non più ramingo,
  • Per carità!
  • Per carità,
  • Mostra mi il cielo:
  • Tutto è un velo,
  • E non si sa
  • Dove è il cielo.
  • Se si sta
  • 20Così colà,
  • Non si sa
  • Se non si va.
  • Ahi me lontano!
  • Tutto è in vano!
  • Prendimi in mano,
  • Per carità!
more about Barcarola
BARCAROLA
  • Oltre tomba
  • Qualche cosa?
  • E che ne dici?
  • Saremo felici?
  • Terra mai posa,
  • E mar rimbomba.
more about Bambino Fasciato
BAMBINO FASCIATO
  • A Pippo Pipistrello
  • Farfalla la fanciulla:
  • “O vedi quanto è bello
  • Ridendo in questa culla!
  • E noi l'abbiamo fatto,
  • Noi due insiem d' un tratto,
  • E senza noi fia nulla.”
more about ET les larmes, comme le sang
  • Et les larmes, comme le sang,
  • Grisent ceux qui les font couler.
more about PRO hoste hostem, canes pro canibus affer
  • Pro hoste hostem, canes pro canibus affer.
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more about IL faut que tu le tiennes pour dit
  • Il faut que tu le tiennes pour dit,
  • Car je ne t'aime plus, ma mie.
more about DEL mare il susurro sonoro
  • Del mare il susurro sonoro.
more about La Ricordanza
LA RICORDANZA
  • Maggior dolore è ben la Ricordanza,
  • O nell' amaro inferno amena stanza?
more about Memory
MEMORY
  • Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
  • Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?
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Sig. 17
more about Juvenilia and Grotesques.
JUVENILIA AND GROTESQUES
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more about Algernon Stanhope. Sacred to the Memory of ALGERNON R. G. STANHOPE (natus est 1838--obit 1847).
ALGERNON STANHOPE

Sacred

To the Memory

of

ALGERNON R. G. STANHOPE

(natus est 1838—obiit 1847)
  • “The silver cord is loosed,” he said,
  • “The golden bowl is broken;
  • A few more prayers having been prayed,
  • A few more love-words spoken,
  • I shall turn my face unto the wall,
  • And sleeping, not be woken.”
  • “Is it a better place, my child,
  • That thou art gone unto?
  • Upon this earth that thou hast left
  • 10 Hadst thou not much to do?
  • Would not thy joys have been a crowd
  • And thy troubles small and few?
  • “Beauty and rank and friends and wealth,
  • Genius and excellence,—
  • Could not all these, thy heritage,
  • Win thee from hastening hence?
  • Was the soul so much more unto thee
  • Than joys of mind and sense?
  • “And, bending with an English grace,
  • 20 The ladies of our isle,
  • With their soft curls and their virgin eyes
  • Which look so sweet the while,
  • Had given thee for thy nobleness
  • A precious golden smile.
  • “These will not now be thine: thy life's
  • Appointed period
  • Being past o'er, thou liest on
  • The folded pinions broad
  • Of the Seraph who is bearing thee
  • 30 Up through the sun to God.
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  • “It has a solemn sound—‘to God’;
  • And strange high thoughts it weaves
  • Of a garden where the Tree of Life
  • Its mystic shadow gives,
  • And the music of the rapid worlds
  • Is the wind that stirs the leaves.
  • “Surely, it is a better place:
  • Wealth shuts not there his ken
  • From woes his heart yearns to assuage;
  • 40 Nor noble origin
  • Wounds him by lessening trust betwixt
  • Him and his fellow-men.
  • “Nor friends die from him, but instead
  • Come to him where he is;
  • Nor Passion, rank with evil joys
  • And worse satieties,
  • Pouting her crimson lips at him
  • Layeth her cheek to his.
  • “Nor priests be there, like a bad dream
  • 50 That at your bed's foot stands
  • All night (and yet it goes at last);
  • Nor moans of king-curst lands
  • Make his breast heave and his pale brow
  • To drop into his hands.
  • “But Love walks always with him now;
  • And Faith, not chained but free;
  • And Hope, bent forward, and with hair
  • Held back continually
  • To hear the distant chariot-wheels;
  • 60 And wise calm Charity.”
more about An Epitaph for Keats
AN EPITAPH FOR KEATS
  • Through one, years since hanged and forgot
  • Who stabbed backs by the Quarter,
  • Here lieth one who—while Time's stream
  • Runneth, as God hath taught her,
  • Bearing man's fame to men,—will have
  • His great name writ in water.
more about To Mary in Summer
TO MARY IN SUMMER
  • Lay your head here, Mary,
  • Lay your head here,
  • While the blown grass, Mary,
  • With timid voice and wary,
  • Sings in your ear:—
  • The grass which round us, Mary,
  • Shuts like a nest;
  • By your dear limbs, dear Mary,
  • Lighter than limbs of Faery,
  • 10 Daintily press'd.
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  • Back with it all though, Mary,
  • Back and aside;
  • The wind comes this way, Mary,
  • And here the trees are airy
  • And the skies are wide.
  • What do your eyes fear, Mary,
  • So grave and soft?
  • I love to see them, Mary,
  • In whimsical vagary
  • 20 Lifted aloft.
  • Mary, Mary, Mary,
  • Laugh in my face:
  • You know now, my own Mary,
  • No eyes can laugh so rarely
  • Or grant such grace.
  • Your cheek is pale now, Mary,
  • And red, by turns.
  • Why should the hand be chary
  • Of that to give which, Mary,
  • 30 The heart so yearns?
  • Give me your hand, ah Mary,
  • Give me your hand:
  • In city or in prairie
  • There is none kinder, Mary,
  • From land to land.
  • Your lips to my lips, Mary,
  • Your lips to mine:
  • High up in Hebe's dairy
  • No milk so sweet, my Mary,
  • 40 On earth no wine.
  • Lay your head here, Mary,
  • Lay your head here;
  • While my heart now, Mary,
  • The pleasant tune to vary,
  • Beats in your ear.
more about The English Revolution of 1848
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1848

( No connection with over the way)

“Some unprincipled persons endeavour to impose upon the public by such phrases

as ‘It's all one,’ ‘It's the same concern,’ etc.”— Moses & Son.

  • Ho ye that nothing have to lose! ho rouse ye, one and all!
  • Come from the sinks of the New Cut, the purlieus of Vauxhall!
  • Did ye not hear the mighty sound boom by ye as it went—
  • The Seven Dials strike the hour of man's enfranchisement?
  • Ho cock your eyes, my gallant pals, and swing your heavy staves:
  • Remember—Kings and Queens being out, the great cards will be
  • Knaves.
  • And when the pack is ours—oh then at what a slapping pace
  • Shall the tens be trodden down to five, and the fives kicked down
  • to ace!
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  • It was but yesterday the Times and Post and Telegraph
  • 10Told how from France King Louy-Phil. was shaken out like chaff;
  • To-morrow, boys, the National, the Siècle, and the Débats,
  • Shall have to tell the self-same tale of “La Reine Victoria.”
  • What! shall our incomes we've not got be taxed by puny John?
  • Shall the policeman keep Time back by bidding us move on?
  • Shall we too follow in the steps of that poor sneak Cochrane?
  • Shall it be said, “They came, they saw,—and bolted back again”?
  • Not so! albeit great men have been among us, and are floor'd—
  • (Frost, Williams, Jones, and other ones who now reside abroad)—
  • Among the master-spirits of the age there still are those
  • 20Who'll pick up fame—even though, when smelt, it makes men hold
  • the nose.
  • What ho there! clear the way! make room for him, the “fly” and
  • wise,
  • Who wrote in mystic grammar about London's “Mysteries,”—
  • For him who takes a proud delight to wallow in our kennels,—
  • For Mr. A. B. C. D. E. F. G. M. W. Reynolds!
  • Come, hoist him up! his pockets will afford convenient hold
  • To grab him by; and, if inside there silver is or gold,
  • And should it be found sticking to our hands when they're drawn out,
  • Why, 'twere a chance not fair to say ill-natured things about.
  • Silence! Hear, hear! He says that we're the sovereign people, we!
  • 30And now? And now he states the fact that one and one make three!
  • Now he makes casual mention of a certain Miscellany!
  • He says that he's the editor! He says it costs a penny!
  • O thou great Spirit of the World! shall not the lofty things
  • He saith be borne unto all time for noble lessonings?
  • Shall not our sons tell to their sons what we could do and dare
  • In this the great year Forty-eight and in Trafalgar Square?
  • Swathed in foul wood, yon column stood 'mid London's thousand
  • marts;
  • And at their wine Committeemen grinned as they drank “The Arts”:
  • But our good flint-stones have bowled down each poster-hidden board,
  • 40And from their hoarded malice our strong hands have stript the hoard.
  • Yon column is a prouder thing than Cæsar's triumph-arch!
  • It shall be called “The Column of the Glorious Days of March!”
  • And stonemasons' apprentices shall grow rich men therewith,
  • By contract-chiselling the names of Jones and Brown and Smith.
  • Upon what point of London, say, shall our next vengeance burst?
  • Shall the Exchange, or Parliament, be immolated first?
  • Which of the Squares shall we burn down?—which of the Palaces?
  • ( The speaker is nailed by a policeman )
  • Oh please sir, don't! It isn't me. It's him. Oh don't, sir, please!
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more about Bouts RimÉs
more about The Sin of Detection
THE SIN OF DETECTION
  • She bowed her face among them all, as one
  • By one they rose and went. A little scorn
  • They showed—a very little. More forlorn
  • She seemed because of that: she might have grown
  • Proud else in her turn, and have so made known
  • What she well knew—that the free-hearted corn,
  • Kissed by the hot air freely all the morn,
  • Is better than the weed which has its own
  • Foul glut in secret. Both her white breasts heaved
  • 10 Like heaving water with their weight of lace;
  • And her long tresses, full of musk and myrrh,
  • Were shaken from the braids her fingers weaved,
  • So that they hid the shame in her pale face.
  • Then I stept forth, and bowed addressing her.
more about Afterwards
AFTERWARDS
  • She opened her moist crimson lips to sing;
  • And from her throat that is so white and full
  • The notes leaped like a fountain. A smooth lull
  • Was o'er my heart: as when—a viol-string
  • Having been broken—the first musical ring
  • Once over, all the rest is but a dull
  • Crude dissonance, howe'er thou twist and pull
  • The sundered fragments. A most weary thing
  • It is within the perished heart to seek
  • 10 Pain, and not find it, but a clinging pall
  • Like sleep upon the mind. The mere set plan
  • Of life then comes, and grief that is not weak
  • Because it has no tears. Life's all-in-all
  • Was certainly at end when this began.
more about One of Time's Riddles
ONE OF TIME'S RIDDLES
  • In her deep bosom the pride settled down—
  • That pride which is a brackish thing like salt;
  • And the life in her pulses seemed to halt.
  • About her temples for an iron crown
  • She set stern patience. She did never frown,
  • But her long gaze was gentle to a fault;
  • And, looking deep into her eyes, you had call'd
  • Their lustre nothing but a mild clear brown.
  • She lives and moves and is a mystery.
  • 10 That which she hath been the thought cannot touch;
  • Only, beholding what she is, it hath
  • Glimpses of something she is yet to be;
  • And at the least it knows of her thus much:—
  • She bides her season with a solemn faith.
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more about Another Love
ANOTHER LOVE
  • Of her I thought who now is gone so far:
  • And, the thought passing over, to fall thence
  • Was like a fall from spirit into sense
  • Or from the heaven of heavens to sun and star.
  • None other than Love's self ordained the bar
  • 'Twixt her and me; so that if, going hence,
  • I met her, it could only seem a dense
  • Film of the brain,—just nought, as phantoms are.
  • Now when I passed your threshold and came in,
  • 10 And glanced where you were sitting, and did see
  • Your tresses in these braids and your hands thus,—
  • I knew that other figure, grieved and thin,
  • That seemed there, yea that was there, could not be,
  • Though like God's wrath it stood dividing us.
more about The World's Doing
THE WORLD'S DOING
  • One scarce would think that we can be the same
  • Who used, in those first childish Junes, to creep
  • With held breath through the underwood, and leap
  • Outside into the sun. Since this mine aim
  • Took me unto itself, the joy which came
  • Into my eyes at once sits hushed and deep;
  • Nor even the sorrow moans, but falls asleep
  • And has ill dreams. For you—your very name
  • Seems altered in mine ears, and cannot send
  • 10 Heat through my heart, as in those days afar
  • Wherein we lived indeed with the real life.
  • Yet why should we feel shame, my dear sweet friend?
  • Are they most honoured who without a scar
  • Pace forth, all trim and fresh, from the splashed strife?
more about Almost Over
ALMOST OVER
  • You say I should not think upon her now:
  • But then I have stood beside her listening,
  • And watched her rose-breathed lips when she would sing:
  • And I can scarcely yet imagine how
  • I ever should despise that stately brow
  • And flowering breast that is so pure a thing.
  • Alas for all the weary blood-running
  • When from the heart love strives to tear a vow!
  • And yet perchance—even as you tell me—soon
  • 10 Her spirit of my spirit will leave hold,
  • And, when I hear her tread, I shall not blush
  • Doubly, for love and shame. But then the moon
  • Assuredly will rise, and Sleep shall fold
  • Her hair round me, and Death will whisper Hush!
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more about Hidden Harmony
HIDDEN HARMONY
  • The thoughts in me are very calm and high
  • That think upon your love: yet by your leave
  • You shall not greatly marvel that this eve
  • Or nightfall—yet scarce nightfall—the strong sky
  • Leaves me thus sad. Now if you ask me why,
  • I cannot teach you, dear; but I believe
  • It is that man will always interweave
  • Life with fresh want, with wish or fear to die.
  • It may be therefore,—though the matter touch
  • 10 Nowise our love,—that I so often look
  • Sad in your presence, often feeling so.
  • And of the reason I can tell thus much:—
  • Man's soul is like the music in a book
  • Which were not music but for high and low.
more about An Altar-Flame
AN ALTAR-FLAME
  • Even as when utter summer makes the grain
  • Bow heavily along through the whole land
  • It seems to me whatever while I stand
  • Where thou art standing; and upon my brain
  • Thy presence weighs like a most awful strain
  • Of music, heard in some cathedral fanned
  • With the deep breath of prayer, while the priest's hand
  • Uplifts the solemn sign which shall remain
  • After the world. Thy beauty perfecteth
  • 10 A noble calmness in me; it doth send
  • Through my weak heart to my strong mind a rule
  • Of life that they shall keep till shut of death:
  • Death—an arched path too long to see the end,
  • But which hath shadows that seem pure and cool.
more about Height in Depth
HEIGHT IN DEPTH
  • He turned his face apart, and gave a sigh
  • And a strange whimper—such a pitiful thing
  • As haunts the heart for days. “Yes, Love can bring
  • Unto a pass so low that it seems high:
  • And, when we see a brave and strong man cry
  • With a poor infant's feeble sorrowing,
  • It is a nobler passion than to wing
  • Shafts of small angers and small prides,” thought I.
  • There is a love so deaf that it can hear
  • 10 Not even its own voice which bids it seek
  • A name for its own meanness: it would find
  • The outlet else. But thus it is a sheer
  • Humility—an earnestness so meek
  • That your knees bow and sharp tears make you blind.
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more about At Issue
AT ISSUE
  • That voice I hear,—how heard I cannot tell,—
  • Although my home is this, seems from my home:
  • There . . . still it trails along and murmurs “Come”;
  • Like the slow death of sound within a bell,
  • Or like the humming whine in some pink shell
  • Wet with the brittle beadage of the foam
  • Which bird-eyed damsels stoop for when they roam
  • By the old sea. Were't not exceeding well
  • To shake my soul out of this tiresome life
  • 10 For a call any-whence and any-whither?
  • That voice knows all the life I have or had,
  • And mocks me not,—it's whisper is too sad.
  • Even to attain calm sorrow lures me thither,
  • Since here this search for joy wearies like strife.
more about Praise and Prayer
PRAISE AND PRAYER
  • Doubt spake no word in me as there I kneeled.
  • Loathing, I could not praise: I could not thank
  • God for the cup of evil that I drank:
  • I dared not cry upon His strength to shield
  • My soul from weapons it was bent to wield
  • Itself against itself. And so I sank
  • Into the furnished phrases smooth and blank
  • Which we all learn in childhood,—and did yield
  • A barren prayer for life. My voice might mix
  • 10 With hers, but mingled not. Hers was a full
  • Grand burst of music, which the crownèd Seven
  • Must have leaned sideways from their seats to fix
  • In their calm minds. The seraph-songs fell dull
  • Doubtless, when heard again, throughout all heaven.
more about The Turning-Point
THE TURNING-POINT
  • At length I sickened, standing in the sun
  • Truthful and for the Truth, whose only fees
  • Are madness and sharp death. I bowed my knees
  • And said: “As long as the world's years have run,
  • These accents have been sa id and these things done:
  • That which is mine abasement is their ease:
  • They say, ‘Go to—all this is as we please:
  • Shall we, being many, step aside for one?’
  • “And thus it is that though the air be new,
  • 10 And my brow finds the coolness it hath sought
  • Through the slow-stricken night,—the daily curse
  • Weighs on my soul of what I waken to:
  • For though I loathe the price, this must be bought.”
  • . . . Thou fool! Would'st buy from man what God confers?
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more about A Foretaste
A FORETASTE
  • At length the then of my long hope was now;
  • Yet had my spirit an extreme unrest:
  • I knew the good from better was grown best
  • At length, but could not just as yet tell how.
  • So I lay straight along, and thrust my brow
  • Under the heights of grass. Hours struck. The West,
  • I knew, must be at change; but gazed not, lest
  • The heat against my naked face (no bough
  • For shade) should tease me mad, like poisoned spice.
  • 10 I lay along, letting my whole self think,
  • Pressing my brow down that the thoughts might fix:
  • Just as a dicer who holds loaded dice,
  • Sure of his cast, keeps trifling with his drink
  • Ere he will throw, and still must taste and mix.
more about Idle Blessedness
IDLE BLESSEDNESS
  • I know not how it is, I have the knack,
  • In lazy moods, of seeking no excuse;
  • But holding that man's ease must be the juice
  • Of man's philosophy, I give the sack
  • To thought, and lounge at shuffle on the track
  • Of what employment seems of the least use:
  • And in such ways I find a constant sluice
  • For drowzy humours. Be thou loth to rack
  • And hack thy brain for thought, which may lurk there
  • 10 Or may not. Without pain of thought, the eyes
  • Can see, the ears can hear, the sultry mouth
  • Can taste the summer's favour. Towards the South
  • Let earth sway round, while this my body lies
  • In warmth, and has the sun on face and hair.
more about 'Twas Thus'
“'TWAS THUS”
  • “'Twas thus, thus is, and thus shall be:
  • The Beautiful—the Good—
  • Still mirror to the Human Soul
  • Its own intensitude!”
more about A Prayer
A PRAYER
  • Lady, in thy proud eyes
  • There is a weary look,
  • As if the spirit we know through them
  • Were daunted with rebuke
  • To think that the heart of man henceforth
  • Is read like a read book.
  • Lady, in thy lifted face
  • The solitude is sore;
  • The true solitude follows the crowd.
  • 10 Will it be less or more
  • When the words have been spoken to thee
  • Which my heart is seeking for?
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  • Lady, canst thou not guess
  • The words which my thoughts seek?
  • Perhaps thou deem'st them well to spurn
  • And better not to speak.
  • Oh thou must know my love is strong,
  • Hearing my voice so weak.
  • Lady, ah go not thus:
  • 20 Lady, give ear again:
  • Lady, oh learn from me that yet
  • There may one thing remain
  • Which stands not in the knowledge thou hast
  • And in thy lore of men.
  • Lady, the darkness lasteth long
  • Ere the dawn touch the skies;
  • Many are the leagues of wilderness
  • Till ye come where the green lies;
  • Nay often betwixt doubt and doubt
  • 30 Death whispers and makes wise.
  • Lady, has not my thought
  • Dared much? For I would be
  • The ending of darkness and the dawn
  • Of a new day to thee,
  • And thine oăsis, and thy place of rest,
  • And thy time of peace, lady.
more about On Browning's Sordello
ON BROWNING'S SORDELLO
  • “Sordello's story,” the Sphinx yawned and said,
  • “Who would has heard.” Is that enough? Who could,
  • 'Twere not amiss to add, has understood:
  • Who understood perhaps has profited.
  • For my part I could tell a tale instead
  • Of one who, dreaming of no likelihood
  • Even that the “Book” was going to end for good,
  • Turned the last page, and lo the book was read.
more about The Can-Can at Valentino's
THE CAN-CAN AT VALENTINO'S
Note: As WMR explains in a note on page 674, he felt it necessary to “omit some lines” of this sonnet which he decided were “not presentable in print.” He replaced the two suppressed lines with two lines of asterisks.
(N.B.—The numerical characteristics refer to the danseuses.)
  • The first, a mare; the second, 'twixt bow-wow
  • And pussy-cat, a cross; the third, a beast
  • To baffle Buffon; the fourth, not the least
  • In hideousness, nor last; the fifth, a cow;
  • The sixth, Chimera; the seventh, Sphinx; . . . Come now,
  • One woman, France, ere this frog-hop have ceased,
  • And it shall be enough. A toothsome feast
  • Of blackguardism . . . and bald row,
  • No doubt for such as love those same. For me,
  • 10I confess, William, and avow to thee,
  • (Soft in thine ear) that such sweet female whims
  • Are not a passion of mine naturally.
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more about At the Station of the Versailles Railway
AT THE STATION OF THE VERSAILLES RAILWAY
  • I waited for the train unto Versailles.
  • I hung with bonnes and gamins on the bridge
  • Watching the gravelled road where, ridge with ridge,
  • Under black arches gleam the iron rails
  • Clear in the darkness, till the darkness fails
  • And they press on to light again—again
  • To reach the dark. I waited for the train
  • Unto Versailles; I leaned over the bridge,
  • And wondered, cold and drowsy, why the knave
  • 10 Claude is in worship; and why (sense apart)
  • Rubens preferred a mustard vehicle.
  • The wind veered short. I turned upon my heel
  • Saying, “Correggio was a toad”; then gave
  • Three dizzy yawns, and knew not of the Art.
more about L'Envoi: Brussels, Hotel du Midi
L'ENVOI: BRUSSELS, HÔTEL DU MIDI

18 October
  • It's copied out at last: very poor stuff
  • Writ in the cold, with pauses of the cramp.
  • Direct, dear William, to the Poste Restante
  • At Ghent—here written Gand—Gong, Hunticè.
  • We go to Antwerp first, but shall not stay;
  • After, to Ghent and Bruges; and after that
  • To Ostend, and thence home. To Waterloo
  • Was yesterday. Thither, and there, and back,
  • I managed to scrawl something,—most of it
  • 10Bad, and the sonnet at the close mere slosh.
  • 'Twas only made because I was knocked up,
  • And it helped yawning. Take it, and the rest.
more about Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Antwerp)
SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS (Antwerp)
  • “ Messieurs, le Dieu des peintres ”: We felt odd:
  • 'Twas Rubens, sculptured. A mean florid church
  • Was the next thing we saw,—from vane to porch
  • His drivel. The museum: as we trod
  • Its steps, his bust held us at bay. The clod
  • Has slosh by miles along the wall within.
  • (“I say, I somehow feel my gorge begin
  • To rise.”)—His chair in a glass case, by God!
  • . . . To the Cathedral. Here too the vile snob
  • 10 Has fouled in every corner. (“Wherefore brave
  • Our fate? Let's go.”) There is a monument
  • We pass. “Messieurs, you tread upon the grave
  • Of the great Rubens.” “Well, that's one good job!
  • What time this evening is the train for Ghent?”
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more about Between Ghent and Bruges
BETWEEN GHENT AND BRUGES

( Wednesday night, 24 October)
  • Ah yes, exactly so; but when a man
  • Has trundled out of England into France
  • And half through Belgium, always in this prance
  • Of steam, and still has stuck to his first plan—
  • Blank verse or sonnets; and as he began
  • Would end;—why, even the blankest verse may chance
  • To falter in default of circumstance,
  • And even the sonnet miss its mystic span.
  • Trees will be trees, grass grass, pools merely pools,
  • 10 Unto the end of time and Belgium—points
  • Of fact which Poets (very abject fools)
  • Get scent of—once their epithets grown tame
  • And scarce. Even to these foreign rails—my joints
  • Begin to find their jolting much the same.
more about Verses to John Tupper
VERSES TO JOHN TUPPER
  • Dear Jack
  • Alack!
  • A few days back
  • I bound myself by oath to smack
  • My lips o'er sloshy tea, and attack
  • White, brown, or black
  • Bread, and vile jokes to crack,
  • This night with brutes whose knack
  • Would squeeze a pun in Syriac.
  • 10 And for to-morrow, alack!
  • I have a model on my track,
  • So that I may not pack.
  • Of course I writhe upon the rack:
  • Though as to Nature, Jack,
  • (Poor dear old hack!)
  • Touching sky, sun, stone, stick, and stack,
  • I guess I'm half a quack;
  • For whom ten lines of Browning whack
  • The whole of the Zodiac.
  • 20 Nevertheless, alack!
  • Seeing this time I must send back
  • To Prince and Baron, Stephens and Jack
  • (Spec-cadav Rex, hic hæc hoc hac),
  • And to the Maniac,
  • The sack.
  • This much from D.G.R. (in black,
  • I.e., with coal-ash cloth-of-sack.)
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more about St. Wagnes' Eve
ST. WAGNES' EVE
  • The hop-shop is shut up: the night doth wear.
  • Here, early, Collinson this evening fell
  • “Into the gulfs of sleep”; and Deverell
  • Has turned upon the pivot of his chair
  • The whole of this night long; and Hancock there
  • Has laboured to repeat, in accents screechy,
  • “Guardami ben, ben son, ben son Beatrice”;
  • And Bernhard Smith still beamed, serene and square.
  • By eight, the coffee was all drunk. At nine
  • 10 We gave the cat some milk. Our talk did shelve,
  • Ere ten, to gasps and stupor. Helpless grief
  • Made, towards eleven, my inmost spirit pine,
  • Knowing North's hour. And Hancock, hard on twelve,
  • Showed an engraving of his bas-relief.
more about Parody on 'Uncle Ned'
PARODY ON “UNCLE NED”
  • Dere was an old nigger, and him name was Uncle Tom,
  • And him tale was rather slow;
  • Me try to read de whole, but me only read some,
  • Because me found it no go.
  • Den hang up de auther Mrs. Stowe,
  • And kick de volume wid your toe—
  • And dere's no more public for poor Uncle Tom,
  • He am gone whar de trunk-lining go.
  • Him tale dribbles on and on widout a break,
  • 10 Till you hab no eyes for to see;
  • When I reached Chapter 4 I had got a headache,
  • So I had to let Chapter 4 be.
  • Den hang up, etc.
  • De demand one fine morning for Uncle Tom died,
  • De tears down Mrs. Stowe's face ran like rain;
  • For she knew berry well, now dey'd laid him on de shelf,
  • Dat she'd neber get a publisher again.
  • Den hang up, etc.
more about Duns Scotus
DUNS SCOTUS
  • Here lies Duns Scotus
  • Who died of lotus.
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more about MacCracken (Parody on Tennyson's 'Kraken')
MacCRACKEN

( Parody on Tennyson's “Kraken”)
  • Getting his pictures, like his supper, cheap,
  • Far, far away in Belfast by the sea,
  • His watchful one-eyed uninvaded sleep
  • MacCracken sleepeth. While the P.R.B.
  • Must keep the shady side, he walks a swell
  • Through spungings of perennial growth and height:
  • And far away in Belfast out of sight,
  • By many an open do and secret sell,
  • Fresh daubers he makes shift to scarify,
  • 10 And fleece with pliant shears the slumbering “green.”
  • There he has lied, though aged, and will lie,
  • Fattening on ill-got pictures in his sleep,
  • Till some Præraphael prove for him too deep.
  • Then, once by Hunt and Ruskin to be seen,
  • Insolvent he will turn, and in the Queen's Bench die.
more about Valentine-To Lizzie Siddal
VALENTINE—TO LIZZIE SIDDAL
  • Yesterday was St. Valentine.
  • Thought you at all, dear dove divine,
  • Upon the beard in sorry trim
  • And rueful countenance of him,
  • That Orson who's your Valentine?
  • He daubed, you know, as usual.
  • The stick would slip, the brush would fall:
  • Yet daubed he till the lamplighter
  • Set those two seedy flames astir;
  • 10 But growled all day at slow St. Paul.
  • The bore was heard ere noon; the dun
  • Was at the door by half-past one:
  • At least 'tis thought so, but the clock—
  • No Lizzy there to help its stroke—
  • Struck work before the day begun.
  • At length he saw St. Paul's bright orb
  • Flash back—the serried tide absorb
  • That burning West which it sucked up,
  • Like wine poured in a water cup;—
  • 20 And one more twilight toned his daub.
  • Some time over the fire he sat,
  • So lonely that he missed his cat;
  • Then wildly rushed to dine on tick,—
  • Nine minutes swearing for his stick,
  • And thirteen minutes for his hat.
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Sig. 18
  • And now another day is gone:
  • Once more that intellectual one
  • Desists from high-minded pursuits,
  • And hungry, staring at his boots,
  • 30 Has not the strength to pull them on.
  • Come back, dear Liz, and looking wise
  • In that arm-chair which suits your size
  • Through some fresh drawing scrape a hole.
  • Your Valentine & Orson's soul
  • Is sad for those two friendly eyes.
more about Address to the D--l (Dalziel brothers)
ADDRESS TO THE DALZIEL BROTHERS
  • “O Woodman, spare that block,
  • Oh gash not anyhow!
  • It took ten days by clock,
  • I'd fain protect it now.”
  • Chorus—Wild Laughter from Dalziel's Workshop.
more about The Wombat
THE WOMBAT
  • Oh how the family affections combat
  • Within this heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
  • My burning soul! Neither from owl nor from bat
  • Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat.
more about Limericks
LIMERICKS
more about There is a big artist named Val
  • There is a big artist named Val,
  • The roughs' and the prize-fighters' pal:
  • The mind of a groom
  • And the head of a broom
  • Were Nature's endowments to Val.
more about There is a Creator named God
  • There is a Creator named God
  • Whose creations are sometimes quite odd:
  • I maintain—and I shall—
  • The creation of Val
  • Reflects little credit on God.
more about There is a dull Painter named Wells
  • There is a dull Painter named Wells
  • Who is duller than any one else:
  • With the face of a horse
  • He sits by you and snorts—
  • Which is very offensive in Wells.
more about There's an infantine Artist named Hughes
  • There's an infantine Artist named Hughes—
  • Him and his the R.A.'s did refuse:
  • At length, though, among
  • The lot, one was hung—
  • But it was himself in a noose.
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more about There's a babyish party named Burges
  • There's a babyish party named Burges
  • Who from infancy hardly emerges:
  • If you had not been told
  • He's disgracefully old,
  • You would offer a bull's-eye to Burges.
more about There is a young person named Georgie
  • There is a young person named Georgie
  • Who indulges each night in an orgy:
  • Soda-water and brandy
  • Are always kept handy
  • To efface the effects of that orgy.
more about There is a young Artist named Jones
  • There is a young Artist named Jones
  • Whose conduct no genius atones:
  • His behaviour in life
  • Is a pang to the wife
  • And a plague to the neighbours of Jones.
more about There is a young Painter called Jones
  • There is a young Painter called Jones
  • (A cheer here, and hisses, and groans):
  • The state of his mind
  • Is a shame to mankind,
  • But a matter of triumph to Jones.
more about There's a Painter of Portraits named Chapman
  • There's a Painter of Portraits named Chapman
  • Who in vain would catch woman or trap man
  • To be painted life-size
  • More preposterous guys
  • Than they care to be painted by Chapman.
more about There's a combative Artist named Whistler
  • There's a combative Artist named Whistler
  • Who is, like his own hog-hairs, a bristler:
  • A tube of white lead
  • And a punch on the head
  • Offer varied attractions to Whistler.
more about There's a publishing party named Ellis
  • There's a publishing party named Ellis
  • Who's addicted to poets with bellies:
  • He has at least two—
  • One in fact, one in view—
  • And God knows what will happen to Ellis.
more about There's a Portuguese person named Howell
  • There's a Portuguese person named Howell
  • Who lays-on his lies with a trowel:
  • Should he give-over lying,
  • 'Twill be when he's dying,
  • For living is lying with Howell.
more about There is a mad Artist named Inchbold
  • There is a mad Artist named Inchbold
  • With whom you must be at a pinch bold:
  • Or else you may score
  • The brass plate on your door
  • With the name of J. W. Inchbold.
more about A Historical Painter named Brown
  • A Historical Painter named Brown
  • Was in manners and language a clown:
  • At epochs of victual
  • Both pudden and kittle
  • Were expressions familiar to Brown.
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more about There was a young rascal called Nolly
  • There was a young rascal called Nolly
  • Whose habits though dirty were jolly;
  • And when this book comes
  • To be marked with his thumbs
  • You may know that its owner is Nolly.
more about There are dealers in pictures named Agnew
  • There are dealers in pictures named Agnew
  • Whose soft soap would make an old rag new:
  • The Father of Lies
  • With his tail to his eyes
  • Cries—“Go it, Tom Agnew, Bill Agnew!”
more about There's a solid fat German called Huffer
  • There's a solid fat German called Huffer
  • A hypochondriacal buffer:
  • To declaim Schopenhauer
  • From the top of a tower
  • Is the highest ambition of Huffer.
more about There's a Scotch correspondent named Scott
  • There's a Scotch correspondent named Scott
  • Thinks a penny for postage a lot:
  • Books, verses, and letters,
  • Too good for his betters,
  • Cannot screw out an answer from Scott.
more about There's a foolish old Scotchman called Scotus
  • There's a foolish old Scotchman called Scotus,
  • Most justly a Pictor Ignotus:
  • For what he best knew
  • He never would do,
  • This stubborn [old] donkey called Scotus.
more about There once was a painter named Scott
  • There once was a painter named Scott
  • Who seemed to have hair, but had not.
  • He seemed too to have sense:
  • 'Twas an equal pretence
  • On the part of the painter named Scott.
more about There's the Irishman Arthur O'Shaughnessy
  • There's the Irishman Arthur O'Shaughnessy—
  • On the chessboard of poets a pawn is he:
  • Though a bishop or king
  • Would be rather the thing
  • To the fancy of Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
more about There is a young Artist named Knewstub
  • There is a young Artist named Knewstub,
  • Who for personal cleaning will use tub:
  • But in matters of paint
  • Not the holiest Saint
  • Was ever so dirty as Knewstub.
more about There is a poor sneak called Rossetti
  • There is a poor sneak called Rossetti:
  • As a painter with many kicks met he—
  • With more as a man—
  • But sometimes he ran,
  • And that saved the rear of Rossetti.
more about As a critic, the Poet Buchanan
  • As a critic, the Poet Buchanan
  • Thinks Pseudo much safer than Anon.
  • Into Maitland he shrunk,
  • But the smell of the skunk
  • Guides the shuddering nose to Buchanan.
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more about On William Morris
ON WILLIAM MORRIS
  • Enter Skald, moored in a punt,
  • And jacks and tenches exeunt.
more about The Brothers: By a Scotch Bard and English Reviewer
THE BROTHERS:

BY A SCOTCH BARD AND ENGLISH REVIEWER
  • I am two brothers with one face,
  • So which is the real man who can trace?
  • (My wrongs are raging inside of me.)
  • Here are some poets and they sell,
  • Therefore revenge becomes me well.
  • (Oh Robert-Thomas is dread to see.)
  • Of course you know it's a burning shame,
  • But of my last books the press makes game!
  • (My wrongs are boiling inside of me.)
  • 10 So at least all other bards I'll slate
  • Till no one sells but the Laureate.
  • (Oh Robert-Thomas is dread to see.)
  • I took a beast of a poet's tome
  • And nailed a cheque, and brought them home;
  • (My wrongs were howling inside of me.)
  • And after supper, in lieu of bed,
  • I wound wet towels round my head.
  • (Oh Robert-Thomas is dread to see.)
  • Of eyelids kissed and all the rest,
  • 20 And rosy cheeks that lie on one's breast,
  • (My wrongs were yelling inside of me)
  • I told the worst that pen can tell,—
  • And Strahan and Company loved me well.
  • (Oh Robert-Thomas is dread to see.)
  • I crowed out loud in the silent night,
  • I made my digs so sharp and bright:
  • (My wrongs were gnashing inside of me.)
  • In our Contemptible Review
  • I struck the beggar through and through.
  • 30 (Oh Robert-Thomas is dread to see.)
  • I tanned his hide and combed his head,
  • And that bard, for one, I left for dead.
  • (My wrongs are hooting inside of me.)
  • And now he's wrapped in a printer's sheet,
  • Let's fling him at our Public's feet.
  • (Oh Robert-Thomas is dread to see.)
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more about Smithereens
SMITHEREENS
  • Uncertain-aged Miss Thereabouts,
  • Tough fossil of her teens,
  • Has lifted up with saving hand
  • The ruined Smithereens.
  • Down the dark steps of debt that hand
  • Sped like an angel's wing,
  • Deep-dowered with gold, and for itself
  • Brought back a golden ring.
  • Ah lovely Lucy Lovandove,
  • 10 That ring's a snake, and means
  • Woe without end: therein lies crushed
  • Thy heart—to smithereens.
more about On Christina Rossetti
ON CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
  • There's a female bard, grim as a fakier,
  • Who daily grows shakier and shakier.
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more about Translations
TRANSLATIONS
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Note: blank page
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more about Dante and His Circle
DANTE AND HIS CIRCLE

With the Italian Poets preceding Him

(1100—1200—1300)

A COLLECTION OF LYRICS

TRANSLATED IN THE ORIGINAL METRES

PART I

Dante's Vita Nuova, etc.

Poets of Dante's Circle

PART II

Poets chiefly before Dante
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TO MY MOTHER

I DEDICATE THIS NEW EDITION

OF A BOOK PRIZED BY HER LOVE
more about Advertisement to the Edition of 1874
Advertisement to the Edition of 1874
In re-entitling and re-arranging this book (originally published in

1861 as The Early Italian Poets ,) my object has been to make more

evident at a first glance its important relation to Dante. The Vita

Nuova, together with the many among Dante's lyrics and those of

his contemporaries which elucidate their personal intercourse, are

here assembled, and brought to my best ability into clear connection,

in a manner not elsewhere attempted even by Italian or German

editors.
more about Preface to 'The Early Italian Poets'
Preface to the First Edition (1861)
I need not dilate here on the characteristics of the first epoch of

Italian Poetry; since the extent of my translated selections is sufficient

to afford a complete view of it. Its great beauties may often remain

unapproached in the versions here attempted; but, at the same

time, its imperfections are not all to be charged to the translator.

Among these I may refer to its limited range of subject and continual

obscurity, as well as to its monotony in the use of rhymes or frequent

substitution of assonances. But to compensate for much that is

incomplete and inexperienced, these poems possess, in their degree,

beauties of a kind which can never again exist in art; and offer,

besides, a treasure of grace and variety in the formation of their

metres. Nothing but a strong impression, first of their poetic value,

and next of the biographical interest of some of them (chiefly of those

in my first division), would have inclined me to bestow the time and

trouble which have resulted in this collection.
Much has been said, and in many respects justly, against the value

of metrical translation. But I think it would be admitted that the

tributary art might find a not illegitimate use in the case of poems

which come down to us in such a form as do these early Italian ones.

Struggling originally with corrupt dialect and imperfect expression,

and hardly kept alive through centuries of neglect, they have reached
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that last and worst state in which the coup-de-grâce has almost been

dealt them by clumsy transcription and pedantic superstructure. At

this stage the task of talking much more about them in any language

is hardly to be entered upon; and a translation (involving as it does the

necessity of settling many points without discussion,) remains perhaps

the most direct form of commentary.
The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment,—

that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true

motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a

fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty.

Poetry not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether

secondary to this chief law. I say literality,—not fidelity, which is

by no means the same thing. When literality can be combined with

what is thus the primary condition of success, the translator is for-

tunate, and must strive his utmost to unite them; when such object

can only be attained by paraphrase, that is his only path.
Any merit possessed by these translations is derived from an effort

to follow this principle; and, in some degree, from the fact that such

painstaking in arrangement and descriptive heading as is often in-

dispensable to old and especially to “occasional” poetry, has here

been bestowed on these poets for the first time.
That there are many defects in this collection, or that the above

merit is its defect, or that it has no merits but only defects, are dis-

coveries so sure to be made if necessary (or perhaps here and there

in any case), that I may safely leave them in other hands. The

series has probably a wider scope than some readers might look for,

and includes now and then (though I believe in rare instances) matter

which may not meet with universal approval; and whose introduction,

needed as it is by the literary aim of my work, is I know inconsistent

with the principles of pretty bookmaking. My wish has been to give

a full and truthful view of early Italian poetry; not to make it appear

to consist only of certain elements to the exclusion of others equally

belonging to it.
Of the difficulties I have had to encounter,—the causes of imper-

fections for which I have no other excuse,—it is the reader's best

privilege to remain ignorant; but I may perhaps be pardoned for

briefly referring to such among these as concern the exigencies of

translation. The task of the translator (and with all humility be it

spoken) is one of some self-denial. Often would he avail himself of

any special grace of his own idiom and epoch, if only his will belonged

to him: often would some cadence serve him but for his author's

structure—some structure but for his author's cadence: often the

beautiful turn of a stanza must be weakened to adopt some rhyme

which will tally, and he sees the poet revelling in abundance of lan-

guage where himself is scantily supplied. Now he would slight the

matter for the music, and now the music for the matter; but no,—he

must deal to each alike. Sometimes too a flaw in the work galls him,

and he would fain remove it, doing for the poet that which his age

denied him; but no,—it is not in the bond. His path is like that of

Aladdin through the enchanted vaults: many are the precious fruits

and flowers which he must pass by unheeded in search for the lamp

alone; happy if at last, when brought to light, it does not prove that

his old lamp has been exchanged for a new one,—glittering indeed to

the eye, but scarcely of the same virtue nor with the same genius at

its summons.
In relinquishing this work (which, small as it is, is the only contri-

bution I expect to make to our English knowledge of old Italy), I

feel, as it were, divided from my youth. The first associations I have

are connected with my father's devoted studies, which, from his own

point of view, have done so much towards the general investigation

of Dante's writings. Thus, in those early days, all around me partook
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of the influence of the great Florentine; till, from viewing it as a

natural element, I also, growing older, was drawn within the circle.

I trust that from this the reader may place more confidence in a work

not carelessly undertaken, though produced in the spare-time of other

pursuits more closely followed. He should perhaps be told that it

has occupied the leisure moments of not a few years; thus affording,

often at long intervals, every opportunity for consideration and

revision; and that on the score of care, at least, he has no need to

mistrust it. Nevertheless, I know there is no great stir to be made

by launching afresh, on high-seas busy with new traffic, the ships which

have been long outstripped and the ensigns which are grown strange.
It may be well to conclude this short preface with a list of the works

which have chiefly contributed to the materials of the present volume.

An array of modern editions hardly looks so imposing as might a

reference to Allacci, Crescimbeni, etc.; but these older collections

would be found less accessible, and all they contain has been reprinted.
  • I. Poeti del primo secolo della Lingua Italiana. 2 vol. (Firenze.

    1816.)
  • II. Raccolta di Rime antiche Toscane. 4 vol. (Palermo. 1817.)
  • III. Manuale della Letteratura del primo Secolo, del Prof. V.

    Nannucci. 3 vol. (Firenze. 1843.)
  • IV. Poesie Italiane inedite di Dugento Autori: raccolte da Fran-

    cesco Trucchi. 4 vol. (Prato. 1846.)
  • V. Opere Minori di Dante. Edizione di P. I. Fraticelli. (Firenze.

    1843, etc.)
  • VI. Rime di Guido Cavalcanti; raccolte da A. Cicciaporci. (Fir-

    enze. 1813.)
  • VII. Vita e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoia. Edizione di S.

    Ciampi. (Pisa. 1813.)
  • VIII. Documenti d'Amore; di Francesco da Barberino. Annotati

    da F. Ubaldini. (Roma. 1640.)
  • IX. Del Reggimento e dei Costumi delle Donne; di Francesco da

    Barberino. (Roma. 1815.)
  • X. Il Dittamondo di Fazio degli Uberti. (Milano. 1826.)
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CONTENTS
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Sig. 19
INDEX OF FIRST LINES

( ENGLISH AND ITALIAN)
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more about Dante and His Circle.
DANTE AND HIS CIRCLE
more about Introduction to Dante and His Circle
INTRODUCTION TO PART I
In the first division of this volume are included all the poems I could

find which seemed to have value as being personal to the circle of

Dante's friends, and as illustrating their intercourse with each other.

Those who know the Italian collections from which I have drawn

these pieces (many of them most obscure) will perceive how much

which is in fact elucidation is here attempted to be embodied in them-

selves, as to their rendering, arrangement, and heading: since the

Italian editors have never yet paid any of them, except of course

those by Dante, any such attention; but have printed and reprinted

them in a jumbled and disheartening form, by which they can serve

little purpose except as testi di lingua—dead stock by whose help

the makers of dictionaries may smother the language with decayed words.

Appealing now I believe for the first time in print, though in a new

idiom, from their once living writers to such living readers as they

may find, they require some preliminary notice.
The Vita Nuova (the Autobiography or Autopsychology of Dante's

youth till about his twenty-seventh year) is already well known to

many in the original, or by means of essays and of English versions

partial or entire. It is, therefore, and on all accounts, unnecessary

to say much more of the work here than it says for itself. Wedded

to its exquisite and intimate beauties are personal peculiarities which

excite wonder and conjecture, best replied to in the words which

Beatrice herself is made to utter in the Commedia: “Questi fù tal

nella sua vita nuova.”* Thus then young Dante was. All that

seemed possible to be done here for the work was to translate it in as

free and clear a form as was consistent with fidelity to its meaning;

to ease it, as far as possible, from notes and encumbrances; and to

accompany it for the first time with those poems from Dante's own

lyrical series which have reference to its events, as well as with such

native commentary (so to speak) as might be afforded by the writings

of those with whom its author was at that time in familiar intercourse.

Not chiefly to Dante, then, of whom so much is known to all or may

readily be found written, but to the various other members of his

circle, these few pages should be devoted.
It may be noted here, however, how necessary a knowledge of the

Vita Nuova is to the full comprehension of the part borne by Beatrice

in the Commedia. Moreover, it is only from the perusal of its earliest

and then undivulged self-communings that we can divine the whole

bitterness of wrong to such a soul as Dante's, its poignant sense of

abandonment, or its deep and jealous refuge in memory. Above

all, it is here that we find the first manifestations of that wisdom of
Transcribed Footnote (page 296):

* Purgatorio, C. xxx.

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obedience, that natural breath of duty, which afterwards, in the

Commedia, lifted up a mighty voice for warning and testimony.

Throughout the Vita Nuova there is a strain like the first falling murmur

which reaches the ear in some remote meadow, and prepares us to

look upon the sea.
Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, tells us that the great poet, in later

life, was ashamed of this work of his youth. Such a statement hardly

seems reconcilable with the allusions to it made or implied in the

Commedia; but it is true that the Vita Nuova is a book which only

youth could have produced, and which must chiefly remain sacred to

the young; to each of whom the figure of Beatrice, less lifelike than

lovelike, will seem the friend of his own heart. Nor is this, perhaps,

its least praise. To tax its author with effeminacy on account of the

extreme sensitiveness evinced by this narrative of his love, would be

manifestly unjust, when we find that, though love alone is the theme

of the Vita Nuova, war already ranked among its author's experiences

at the period to which it relates. In the year 1289, the one preceding

the death of Beatrice, Dante served with the foremost cavalry in the

great battle of Campaldino, on the eleventh of June, when the Floren-

tines defeated the people of Arezzo. In the autumn of the next year,

1290, when for him, by the death of Beatrice, the city as he says “sat

solitary,” such refuge as he might find from his grief was sought in

action and danger: for we learn from the Commedia (Hell, C. xxi.) that

he served in the war then waged by Florence upon Pisa, and was

present at the surrender of Caprona. He says, using the reminiscence

to give life to a description, in his great way:—
  • “I've seen the troops out of Caprona go
  • On terms, affrighted thus, when on the spot
  • They found themselves with foemen compass'd so.”
(Cayley's Translation.)
A word should be said here of the title of Dante's autobiography.

The adjective Nuovo, nuova, or Novello, novella, literally New, is often

used by Dante and other early writers in the sense of young. This

has induced some editors of the Vita Nuova to explain the title as

meaning Early Life . I should be glad on some accounts to adopt

this supposition, as everything is a gain which increases clearness to

the modern reader; but on consideration I think the more mystical

interpretation of the words, as New Life (in reference to that revulsion

of his being which Dante so minutely describes as having occurred simul-

taneously with his first sight of Beatrice), appears the primary one,

and therefore the most necessary to be given in a translation. The

probability may be that both were meant, but this I cannot convey.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 297):

* I must hazard here (to relieve the first page of my translation from a long note)

a suggestion as to the meaning of the most puzzling passage in the whole Vita Nuova,

—that sentence just at the outset which says, “La gloriosa donna della mia mente, la

quale fù chiamata da molti Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare.” On this

passage all the commentators seem helpless, turning it about and sometimes adopting

alterations not to be found in any ancient manuscript of the work. The words mean

literally, “The glorious lady of my mind who was called Beatrice by many who knew

not how she was called.” This presents the obvious difficulty that the lady's name

really was Beatrice, and that Dante throughout uses that name himself. In the text

of my version I have adopted, as a rendering, the one of the various compromises which

seemed to give the most beauty to the meaning. But it occurs to me that a less irrational

escape out of the difficulty than any I have seen suggested may possibly be found by

linking this passage with the close of the sonnet at page 332 of the Vita Nuova, beginning,

“I felt a spirit of Love begin to stir,” in the last line of which sonnet Love is made to

assert that the name of Beatrice is Love. Dante appears to have dwelt on this fancy

with some pleasure, from what is said in an earlier sonnet (page 315) about “Love in

his proper form” (by which Beatrice seems to be meant) bending over a dead lady. And

it is in connection with the sonnet where the name of Beatrice is said to be Love, that

Dante, as if to show us that the Love he speaks of is only his own emotion, enters into

an argument as to Love being merely an accident in substance,—in other words, “Amore

e il cor gentil son una cosa.” This conjecture may be pronounced extravagant; but

the Vita Nuova, when examined, proves so full of intricate and fantastic analogies, even

in the mere arrangement of its parts (much more than appears on any but the closest

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Transcribed Footnote (page 298):



scrutiny), that it seems admissible to suggest even a whimsical solution of a difficulty

which remains unconquered. Or to have recourse to the much more welcome means

of solution afforded by simple inherent beauty: may not the meaning be merely that

any person looking on so noble and lovely a creation, without knowledge of her name,

must have spontaneously called her Beatrice,— i.e., the giver of blessing? This would be

analogous by antithesis to the translation I have adopted in my text.

Among the poets of Dante's circle, the first in order, the first in

power, and the one whom Dante has styled his “first friend,” is Guido

Cavalcanti, born about 1250, and thus Dante's senior by some fifteen

years. It is therefore probable that there is some inaccuracy about

the statement, often repeated, that he was Dante's fellow-pupil under

Brunetto Latini; though it seems certain that they both studied,

probably Guido before Dante, with the same teacher. The Cavalcanti

family was among the most ancient in Florence; and its importance

may be judged by the fact that in 1280, on the occasion of one of the

various missions sent from Rome with the view of pacifying the Floren-

tine factions, the name of “Guido the son of Messer Cavalcante de'

Cavalcanti” appears as one of the sureties offered by the city for the

quarter of San Piero Scheraggio. His father must have been notori-

ously a sceptic in matters of religion, since we find him placed by Dante

in the sixth circle of Hell, in one of the fiery tombs of the unbelievers.

That Guido shared this heresy was the popular belief, as is plain from

an anecdote in Boccaccio which I shall give; and some corroboration

of such reports, at any rate as applied to Guido's youth, seems capable

of being gathered from an extremely obscure poem, which I have

translated on that account (at page 376) as clearly as I found possible.

It must be admitted, however, that there is to the full as much devo-

tional as sceptical tendency implied here and there in his writings;

while the presence of either is very rare. We may also set against

such a charge the fact that Dino Compagni refers, as will be seen, to

his having undertaken a religious pilgrimage. But indeed he seems

to have been in all things of that fitful and vehement nature which would

impress others always strongly, but often in opposite ways. Self-

reliant pride gave its colour to all his moods; making his exploits

as a soldier frequently abortive through the head-strong ardour of

partisanship, and causing the perversity of a logician to prevail in

much of his amorous poetry. The writings of his contemporaries, as

well as his own, tend to show him rash in war, fickle in love, and pre-

sumptuous in belief; but also, by the same concurrent testimony, he

was distinguished by great personal beauty, high accomplishments

of all kinds, and daring nobility of soul. Not unworthy, for all the

weakness of his strength, to have been the object of Dante's early

emulation, the first friend of his youth, and his precursor and fellow-

labourer in the creation of Italian Poetry.
In the year 1267, when Guido cannot have been much more than

seventeen years of age, a last attempt was made in Florence to recon-

cile the Guelfs and Ghibellines. With this view several alliances were

formed between the leading families of the two factions; and among

others, the Guelf Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti wedded his son Guido to

a daughter of the Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti. The peace was of

short duration; the utter expulsion of the Ghibellines (through French

intervention solicited by the Guelfs) following almost immediately.

In the subdivision, which afterwards took place, of the victorious

Guelfs into so-called “Blacks” and “Whites,” Guido embraced

the White party, which tended strongly to Ghibellinism, and whose chief

was Vieri de' Cerchi, while Corso Donati headed the opposite faction.

Whether his wife was still living at the time when the events of the

Vita Nuova occurred is probably not ascertainable; but about that

time Dante tells us that Guido was enamoured of a lady named Giovanna

or Joan, and whose Christian name is absolutely all that we know of

her. However, on the occasion of his pilgrimage to Thoulouse, recorded
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by Dino Compagni, he seems to have conceived a fresh passion for a

lady of that city named Mandetta, who first attracted him by a striking

resemblance to his Florentine mistress. Thoulouse had become a

place of pilgrimage from its laying claim to the possession of the body,

or part of the body, of St. James the Greater; though the same sup-

posed distinction had already made the shrine of Compostella in Galicia

one of the most famous throughout all Christendom. That this devout

journey of Guido's had other results besides a new love will be seen by

the passage from Compagni's Chronicle. He says:
more about Excerpt from Compagni's Chronicle
“A young and noble knight named Guido, son of Messer Cavalcante Cavalcanti,—

full of courage and courtesy, but disdainful, solitary, and devoted to study,—was a foe

to Messer Corso (Donati) and had many times cast about to do him hurt. Messer Corso

feared him exceedingly, as knowing him to be of a great spirit, and sought to assassinate

him on a pilgrimage which Guido made to the shrine of St. James; but he might not

compass it. Wherefore, having returned to Florence and being made aware of this,

Guido incited many youths against Messer Corso, and these promised to stand by him.

Who being one day on horseback with certain of the house of the Cerchi, and having

a javelin in his hand, spurred his horse against Messer Corso, thinking to be followed

by the Cerchi that so their companies might engage each other; and he running in on

his horse cast the javelin, which missed its aim. And with Messer Corso were Simon,

his son, a strong and daring youth, and Cecchino de' Bardi, who with many others pur-

sued Guido with drawn swords; but not overtaking him they threw stones after him, and

also others were thrown at him from the windows, whereby he was wounded in the hand.

And by this matter hate was increased. And Messer Corso spoke great scorn of Messer

Vieri, calling him the Ass of the Gate; because, albeit a very handsome man, he was

but of blunt wit and no great speaker. And therefore Messer Corso would say often,

‘To-day the Ass of the Gate has brayed,’ and so greatly disparage him; and Guido

he called Cavicchia.* And thus it was spread abroad of the jongleurs; and especially

one named Scampolino reported worse things than were said, that so the Cerchi might

be provoked to engage the Donati.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 299):

* A nickname chiefly chosen, no doubt, for its resemblance to Cavalcanti. The word

cavicchia, cavicchio, or caviglia, means a wooden peg or pin. A passage in Boccaccio

says, “He had tied his ass to a strong wooden pin” ( caviglia). Thus Guido, from his

mental superiority, might be said to be the Pin to which the Ass, Messer Vieri, was tethered

at the Gate, (that is, the gate of San Pietro, near which he lived). However, it seems

quite as likely that the nickname was founded on a popular phrase by which one who

fails in any undertaking is said “to run his rear on a peg” ( dare del culo in un cavicchio ).

The haughty Corso Donati himself went by the name of Malefammi or “Do-me-harm.”

For an account of his death in 1307, which proved in keeping with his turbulent life, see

Dino Compagni's Chronicle, or the Pecorone of Giovanni Fiorentino (Gior. xxiv. Nov. 2).

The praise which Compagni, his contemporary, awards to Guido

at the commencement of the foregoing extract, receives additional

value when viewed in connection with the sonnet addressed to him

by the same writer (see page 368), where we find that he could tell him

of his faults.
Such scenes as the one related above had become common things

in Florence, which kept on its course from bad to worse till Pope

Boniface VIII. resolved on sending a legate to propose certain amend-

ments in its scheme of government by Priori, or representatives of the

various arts and companies. These proposals, however, were so ill

received that the legate, who arrived in Florence in the month of

June 1300, departed shortly afterwards greatly incensed, leaving the

city under a papal interdict. In the ill-considered tumults which

ensued we again hear of Guido Cavalcanti.
more about Excerpt from Giovanni Villani's History of Florence
“It happened” (says Giovanni Villani in his History of Florence) “that in the month

of December (1300) Messer Corso Donati with his followers, and also those of the house

of the Cerchi and their followers, going armed to the funeral of a lady of the Frescobaldi

family, this party defying that by their looks would have assailed the one the other;

whereby all those who were at the funeral having risen up tumultuously and fled each

to his house, the whole city got under arms, both factions assembling in great numbers,

at their respective houses. Messer Gentile de' Cerchi, Guido Cavalcanti, Baldinuccio

and Corso Adimari, Baschiero della Tosa and Naldo Gherardini, with their comrades and

adherents on horse and on foot, hastened to St. Peter's Gate to the house of the Donati.

Not finding them there they went on to San Pier Maggiore, where Messer Corso was with

his friends and followers; by whom they were encountered and put to flight, with many

wounds and with much shame to the party of the Cerchi and to their adherents.”
By this time we may conjecture as probable that Dante, in the

a rduous position which he then filled as chief of the nine Priori on whom
Note: There is an extra space between the “a” and the remainder of the word “arduous” near the bottom of page 299.
Image of page 300 page: 300


the Government of Florence devolved, had resigned for far other cares

the sweet intercourse of thought and poetry which he once held with

that first friend of his who had now become so factious a citizen. Yet

it is impossible to say how much of the old feeling may still have

survived in Dante's mind when, at the close of the year 1300 or be-

ginning of 1301, it became his duty, as a faithful magistrate of the

republic, to add his voice to those of his colleagues in pronouncing a

sentence of banishment on the heads of both the Black and White

factions, Guido Cavalcanti being included among the latter. The

Florentines had been at last provoked almost to demand this course

from their governors, by the discovery of a conspiracy, at the head

of which was Corso Donati (while among its leading members was

Simone de' Bardi, once the husband of Beatrice Portinari), for the

purpose of inducing the Pope to subject the republic to a French

peace-maker ( Paciere), and so shamefully free it from its intestine

broils. It appears therefore that the immediate cause of the exile

to which both sides were subjected lay entirely with the “Black”

party, the leaders of which were banished to the Castello della Pieve

in the wild district of Massa Traberia, while those of the “White”

faction were sent to Sarzana, probably (for more than one place bears

the name) in the Genovesato. “But this party” (writes Villani)

“remained a less time in exile, being recalled on account of the un-

healthiness of the place, which made that Guido Cavalcanti returned

with a sickness, whereof he died. And of him was a great loss; seeing

that he was a man, as in philosophy, so in many things deeply versed;

but therewithal too fastidious and prone to take offence.*” His

death apparently took place in 1301.
When the discords of Florence ceased, for Guido, in death, Dante

also had seen their native city for the last time. Before Guido's return

he had undertaken that embassy to Rome which bore him the bitter

fruit of unjust and perpetual exile: and it will be remembered that

a chief accusation against him was that of favour shown to the White

party on the banishment of the factions.
Besides the various affectionate allusions to Guido in the Vita

Nuova , Dante has unmistakably referred to him in at least two passages

of the Commedia. One of these references is to be found in those

famous lines of the Purgatory (C. xi.) where he awards him the palm

of poetry over Guido Guinicelli (though also of the latter he speaks

elsewhere with high praise), and implies at the same time, it would

seem, a consciousness of his own supremacy over both.
  • “Against all painters Cimabue thought
  • To keep the field. Now Giotto has the cry,
  • And so the fame o' the first wanes nigh to nought.
  • Thus one from the other Guido took the high
  • Glory of language; and perhaps is born
  • He who from both shall bear it by-and-bye.”


The other mention of Guido is in that pathetic passage of the Hell

(C. x.) where Dante meets among the lost souls Cavalcante de' Caval-

canti:—
  • “All roundabout he looked, as though he had
  • Desire to see if one was with me else.
  • But after his surmise was all extinct,
  • He weeping said: ‘If through this dungeon blind
  • Thou goest by loftiness of intellect,—
  • Where is my son, and wherefore not with thee?’
  • And I to him: ‘Of myself come I not:
  • He who there waiteth leads me thoro' here,
  • Whom haply in disdain your Guido had.’†
Transcribed Footnote (page 300):

* “Troppo tenero e stizzoso.” I judge that “tenero” here is rather to be interpreted

as above than as meaning “impressionable” in love affairs, but cannot be certain.

Transcribed Footnote (page 300):

† Virgil, Dante's guide through Hell. Any prejudice which Guido entertained against

Virgil depended, no doubt, only on his strong desire to see the Latin language give place,

in poetry and literature, to a perfected Italian idiom.

Image of page 301 page: 301
  • Raised upright of a sudden, cried he: ‘How
  • Didst say He had? Is he not living still?
  • Doth not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?’
  • When he perceived a certain hesitance
  • Which I was making ere I should reply,
  • He fell supine, and forth appeared no more.”


Dante, however, conveys his answer afterwards to the spirit of Guido's

father, through another of the condemned also related to Guido,

Farinata degli Uberti, with whom he has been speaking meanwhile:—
  • “Then I, as in compunction for my fault,
  • Said: ‘Now then shall ye tell that fallen one
  • His son is still united with the quick.
  • And, if I erst was dumb to the response,
  • I did it, make him know, because I thought
  • Yet on the error you have solved for me.’”
(W. M. Rossetti's Translation.)

The date which Dante fixes for his vision is Good Friday of the year

1300. A year later, his answer must have been different. The love

and friendship of his Vita Nuova had then both left him. For ten

years Beatrice Portinari had been dead, or (as Dante says in the Con-

vito ) “lived in heaven with the angels and on earth with his soul.”

And now, distant and probably estranged from him, Guido Cavalcanti

was gone too.
Among the Tales of Franco Sacchetti, and in the Decameron of

Boccaccio, are two anecdotes relating to Guido. Sacchetti tells us

how, one day that he was intent on a game at chess, Guido (who is

described as “one who perhaps had not his equal in Florence”) was

disturbed by a child playing about, and threatened punishment if

the noise continued. The child, however, managed slily to nail Guido's

coat to the chair on which he sat, and so had the laugh against him

when he rose soon afterwards to fulfil his threat. This may serve

as an amusing instance of Guido's hasty temper, but is rather a dis-

appointment after its magniloquent heading, which sets forth how

“Guido Cavalcanti, being a man of great valour and a philosopher,

is defeated by the cunning of a child.”
The ninth Tale of the sixth Day of the Decameron relates a repartee

of Guido's, which has all the profound platitude of mediæval wit. As

the anecdote, however, is interesting on other grounds, I translate it

here.
more about Excerpt from the Ninth Tale of the Sixth Day of Boccaccio's Decameron
“You must know that in past times there were in our city certain goodly and praise-

worthy customs no one of which is now left, thanks to avarice, which has so increased

with riches that it has driven them all away. Among the which was one whereby the

gentlemen of the outskirts were wont to assemble together in divers places throughout

Florence, and to limit their fellowships to a certain number, having heed to compose

them of such as could fitly discharge the expense. Of whom to-day one, and to-morrow

another, and so all in turn, laid tables each on his own day for all the fellowship. And

in such wise often they did honour to strangers of worship and also to citizens. They

all dressed alike at least once in the year, and the most notable among them rode together

through the city; also at seasons they held passages of arms, and specially on the

principal feast-days, or whenever any news of victory or other glad tidings had reached

the city. And among these fellowships was one headed by Messer Betto Brunelleschi,

into the which Messer Betto and his companions had often intrigued to draw Guido di

Messer Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti; and this not without cause, seeing that not only

he was one of the best logicians that the world held, and a surpassing natural philosopher

(for the which things the fellowship cared little), but also he exceeded in beauty and

courtesy, and was of great gifts as a speaker; and everything that it pleased him

to do, and that best became a gentleman, he did better than any other; and was exceed-

ing rich and knew well to solicit with honourable words whomsoever he deemed worthy.

But Messer Betto had never been able to succeed in enlisting him; and he and his com-

panions believed that this was through Guido's much pondering which divided him

from other men. Also because he held somewhat of the opinion of the Epicureans, it

was said among the vulgar sort that his speculations were only to cast about whether he

might find that there was no God. Now on a certain day Guido having left Or San Michele,

and held along the Corso degli Adimari as far as San Giovanni (which oftentimes was his

walk); and coming to the great marble tombs which now are in the Church of Santa

Reparata, but were then with many others in San Giovanni; he being between the

porphyry columns which are there among those tombs, and the gate of San Giovanni

which was locked;—it so chanced that Messer Betto and his fellowship came riding up
Image of page 302 page: 302


by the Piazza di Santa Reparata, and seeing Guido among the sepulchres, said, ‘Let us

go and engage him.’ Whereupon, spurring their horses in the fashion of a pleasant

assault, they were on him almost before he was aware, and began to say to him, ‘Thou,

Guido, wilt none of our fellowship; but lo now! when thou shalt have found that there

is no God, what wilt thou have done?’ To whom Guido, seeing himself hemmed in

among them, readily replied, ‘Gentlemen, ye are at home here, and may say what ye

please to me.’ Wherewith, setting his hand on one of those high tombs, being very light

of his person, he took a leap and was over on the other side; and so having freed himself

from them, went his way. And they all remained bewildered, looking on one another;

and began to say that he was but a shallow-witted fellow, and that the answer he had

made was as though one should say nothing; seeing that where they were, they had not

more to do than other citizens, and Guido not less than they. To whom Messer Betto

turned and said thus: ‘Ye yourselves are shallow-witted if ye have not understood

him. He has civilly and in a few words said to us the most uncivil thing in the world;

for if ye look well to it, these tombs are the homes of the dead, seeing that in them the

dead are set to dwell; and here he says that we are at home; giving us to know that

we and all other simple unlettered men, in comparison of him and the learned, are even

as dead men; wherefore, being here, we are at home.’ Thereupon each of them under-

stood what Guido had meant, and was ashamed; nor ever again did they set themselves

to engage him. Also from that day forth they held Messer Betto to be a subtle and

understanding knight.”
In the above story mention is made of Guido Cavalcanti's wealth,

and there seems no doubt that at that time the family was very rich

and powerful. On this account I am disposed to question whether the

Canzone at page 374 (where the author speaks of his poverty) can

really be Guido's work, though I have included it as being interesting

if rightly attributed to him; and it is possible that, when exiled, he

may have suffered for the time in purse as well as person. About

three years after his death, on the 10th June, 1304, the Black party

plotted together and set fire to the quarter of Florence chiefly held

by their adversaries. In this conflagration the houses and possessions

of the Cavalcanti were almost entirely destroyed; the flames in that

neighbourhood (as Dino Compagni records) gaining rapidly in conse-

quence of the great number of waxen images in the Virgin's shrine

at Or San Michele; one of which, no doubt, was the very image re-

sembling his lady to which Guido refers in a sonnet (see page 359).

After this, their enemies succeeded in finally expelling from Florence

the Cavalcanti family,* greatly impoverished by this monstrous fire,

in which nearly two thousand houses were consumed.
Guido appears, by various evidence, to have written, besides his

poems, a treatise on Philosophy and another on Oratory, but his

poems only have survived to our day. As a poet, he has more

individual life of his own than belongs to any of his predecessors; by far

the best of his pieces being those which relate to himself, his loves

and hates. The best known, however, and perhaps the one for whose

sake the rest have been preserved, is the metaphysical canzone on the

Nature of Love, beginning “Donna mi priega,” and intended, it is

said, as an answer to a sonnet by Guido Orlandi, written as though

coming from a lady, and beginning, “Onde si muove e donde nasce

Amore?” On this canzone of Guido's there are known to exist no

fewer than eight commentaries, some of them very elaborate, and

written by prominent learned men of the middle ages and renaissance;

the earliest being that by Egidio Colonna, a beatified churchman who

died in 1316; while most of the too numerous Academic writers on

Italian literature speak of this performance with great admiration as

Guido's crowning work. A love-song which acts as such a fly-catcher

for priests and pedants looks very suspicious; and accordingly, on

examination, it proves to be a poem beside the purpose of poetry,

filled with metaphysical jargon, and perhaps the very worst of Guido's
Transcribed Footnote (page 302):

* With them were expelled the still more powerful Gherardini, also great sufferers

by the conflagration; who, on being driven from their own country, became the founders

of the ancient Geraldine family in Ireland. The Cavalcanti reappear now and then in

later European history; and especially we hear of a second Guido Cavalcanti, who also

cultivated poetry, and travelled to collect books for the Ambrosian Library; and who,

in 1563, visited England as Ambassador to the court of Elizabeth from Charles IX. of

France.

Image of page 303 page: 303


productions. Its having been written by a man whose life and works

include so much that is impulsive and real, is easily accounted for by

scholastic pride in those early days of learning. I have not translated

it, as being of little true interest; but was pleased lately, nevertheless,

to meet with a remarkably complete translation of it by the Rev.

Charles T. Brooks, of Cambridge, United States.* The stiffness and

cold conceits which prevail in this poem may be found disfiguring

much of what Guido Cavalcanti has left, while much besides is blunt,

obscure, and abrupt: nevertheless, if it need hardly be said how far

he falls short of Dante in variety and personal directness, it may be

admitted that he worked worthily at his side, and perhaps before him,

in adding those qualities to Italian poetry. That Guido's poems

dwelt in the mind of Dante is evident by his having appropriated lines

from them (as well as from those of Guinicelli) with little alteration,

more than once, in the Commedia.
Towards the close of his life, Dante, in his Latin treatise De Vulgari

Eloquio , again speaks of himself as the friend of a poet,—this time

of Cino da Pistoia. In an early passage of that work he says that

“those who have most sweetly and subtly written poems in modern

Italian are Cino da Pistoia and a friend of his.” This friend we after-

wards find to be Dante himself; as among the various poetical examples

quoted are several by Cino followed in three instances by lines from

Dante's own lyrics, the author of the latter being again described

merely as “Amicus ejus.” In immediate proximity to these, or

coupled in two instances with examples from Dante alone, are various

quotations taken from Guido Cavalcanti; but in none of these cases

is anything said to connect Dante with him who was once “the first

of his friends.Ӡ As commonly between old and new, the change of

Guido's friendship for Cino's seems doubtful gain. Cino's poetry, like

his career, is for the most part smoother than that of Guido, and in

some instances it rises into truth and warmth of expression: but it

conveys no idea of such powers, for life or for work, as seem to have

distinguished the “Cavicchia” of Messer Corso Donati. However,

his one talent (reversing the parable) appears generally to be made

the most of, while Guido's two or three remain uncertain through

the manner of their use.
Cino's Canzone addressed to Dante on the death of Beatrice, as

well as his answer to the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova, indicate that the

two poets must have become acquainted in youth, though there is no

earlier mention of Cino in Dante's writings than those which occur

in his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue. It might perhaps be inferred

with some plausibility that their acquaintance was revived after an

interruption by the sonnet and answer at page 354, and that they

afterwards corresponded as friends till the period of Dante's death,
Transcribed Footnote (page 303):

* This translation occurs in the Appendix to an Essay on the Vita Nuova of Dante,

including extracts, by my friend Mr. Charles E. Norton, of Cambridge, U.S.,—a work of

high delicacy and appreciation, which originally appeared by portions in the Atlantic

Monthly , but has since been augmented by the author and privately printed in a volume

which is a beautiful specimen of American typography.

Transcribed Footnote (page 303):

† It is also noticeable that in this treatise Dante speaks of Guido Guinicelli on one

occasion as Guido Maximus, thus seeming to contradict the preference of Cavalcanti

which is usually supposed to be implied in the passage I have quoted from the Purgatory.

It has been sometimes surmised (perhaps for this reason) that the two Guidos there spoken

of may be Guittone d'Arezzo and Guido Guinicelli, the latter being said to surpass the

former, of whom Dante elsewhere in the Purgatory has expressed a low opinion. But

I should think it doubtful whether the name Guittone, which (if not a nickname, as some

say) is substantially the same as Guido, could be so absolutely identified with it: at that

rate Cino da Pistoia even might be classed as one Guido, his full name, Guittoncino,

being the diminutive of Guittone. I believe it more probable that Guinicelli and Caval-

canti were then really meant, and that Dante afterwards either altered his opinion, or

may (conjecturably) have chosen to imply a change of preference in order to gratify

Cino da Pistoia, whom he so markedly distinguishes as his friend throughout the treatise,

and between whom and Cavalcanti some jealousy appears to have existed, as we may

gather from one of Cino's sonnets (at page 386); nor is Guido mentioned anywhere with

praise by Cino, as other poets are.

Image of page 304 page: 304


when Cino wrote his elegy. Of the two sonnets in which Cino expresses

disapprobation of what he thinks the partial judgments of Dante's

Commedia, the first seems written before the great poet's death, but

I should think that the second dated after that event, as the Paradise,

to which it refers, cannot have become fully known in its author's

lifetime. Another sonnet sent to Dante elicited a Latin epistle in

reply, where we find Cino addressed as “frater carissime.” Among

Cino's lyrical poems are a few more written in correspondence with

Dante, which I have not translated as being of little personal interest.
Guittoncino de' Sinibuldi (for such was Cino's full name) was born

in Pistoia, of a distinguished family, in the year 1270. He devoted

himself early to the study of law, and in 1307 was Assessor of Civil

Causes in his native city. In this year, and in Pistoia, first cradle of

the “Black” and “White” factions, their endless contest again

sprang into activity; the “Blacks” and Guelfs of Florence and Lucca

driving out the “Whites” and Ghibellines, who had ruled in the city

since 1300. With their accession to power came many iniquitous

laws in favour of their own party; so that Cino, as a lawyer of

Ghibelline opinions, soon found it necessary or advisable to leave

Pistoia, for it seems uncertain whether his removal was voluntary or

by proscription. He directed his course towards Lombardy, on whose

confines the chief of the “White” party, in Pistoia, Filippo Vergiolesi,

still held the fortress of Pitecchio. Hither Vergiolesi had retreated

with his family and adherents when resistance in the city became no

longer possible; and it may be supposed that Cino came to join him,

not on account of political sympathy alone; as Selvaggia Vergiolesi,

his daughter, is the lady celebrated throughout the poet's compositions.

Three years later, the Vergiolesi and their followers, finding Pitecchio

untenable, fortified themselves on the Monte della Sambuca, a lofty

peak on the Apennines; which again they were finally obliged to

abandon, yielding it to the Guelfs of Pistoia at the price of eleven

thousand lire. Meanwhile the bleak air of the Sambuca had proved

fatal to the lady Selvaggia, who remained buried there, or, as Cino

expresses it in one of his poems,
  • “Cast out upon the steep path of the mountains,
  • Where Death has shut her in between hard stones.”
Over her cheerless tomb Cino bent and mourned, as he has told us,

when, after a prolonged absence spent partly in France, he returned

through Tuscany on his way to Rome. He had not been with Sel-

vaggia's family at the time of her death; and it is probable that, on

his return to the Sambuca, the fortress was already surrendered, and

her grave almost the only record left there of the Vergiolesi.
Cino's journey to Rome was on account of his having received a

high office under Louis of Savoy, who preceded the Emperor Henry VII.

when he went thither to be crowned in 1310. In another three years

the last blow was dealt to the hopes of the exiled and persecuted

Ghibellines, by the death of the Emperor, caused almost surely by

poison. This death Cino has lamented in a canzone. It probably

determined him to abandon a cause which seemed dead, and return,

when possible, to his native city. This he succeeded in doing before

1319, as in that year we find him deputed, together with six other citizens,

by the Government of Pistoia to take possession of a stronghold recently

yielded to them. He had now been for some time married to Mar-

gherita degli Ughi, of a very noble Pistoiese family, who bore him a

son named Mino, and four daughters, Diamante, Beatrice, Giovanna,

and Lombarduccia. Indeed, this marriage must have taken place

before the death of Selvaggia in 1310, as in 1325-26 his son Mino was

one of those by whose aid from within the Ghibelline Castruccio Antel-

minelli obtained possession of Pistoia, which he held in spite of revolts
Image of page 305 page: 305
Sig. 20


till his death some two or three years afterwards, when it again reverted

to the Guelfs.
After returning to Pistoia, Cino's whole life was devoted to the

attainment of legal and literary fame. In these pursuits he reaped

the highest honours, and taught at the universities of Siena, Perugia,

and Florence; having for his disciples men who afterwards became

celebrated, among whom rumour has placed Petrarch, though on

examination this seems very doubtful. A sonnet by Petrarch exists,

however, commencing “Piangete donne e con voi pianga Amore,”

written as a lament on Cino's death, and bestowing the highest praise

on him. He and his Selvaggia are also coupled with Dante and Beatrice

in the same poet's Trionfi d' Amore (cap. 4).
Though established again in Pistoia, Cino resided there but little

till about the time of his death, which occurred in 1336-7. His

monument, where he is represented as a professor among his disciples,

still exists in the Cathedral of Pistoia, and is a mediæval work of great

interest. Messer Cino de' Sinibuldi was a prosperous man, of whom

we have ample records, from the details of his examinations as a

student, to the inventory of his effects after death, and the curious

items of his funeral expenses. Of his claims as a poet it may be said

that he filled creditably the interval which elapsed between the death

of Dante and the full blaze of Petrarch's success. Most of his poems

in honour of Selvaggia are full of an elaborate and mechanical tone of

complaint which hardly reads like the expression of a real love; never-

theless there are some, and especially the sonnet on her tomb (at page

384), which display feeling and power. The finest, as well as the

most interesting, of all his pieces, is the very beautiful canzone in

which he attempts to console Dante for the death of Beatrice. Though

I have found much fewer among Cino's poems than among Guido's

which seem to call for translation, the collection of the former is a

larger one. Cino produced legal writings also, of which the chief one

that has survived is a Commentary on the Statutes of Pistoia, said to

have great merit, and whose production in the short space of two

years was accounted an extraordinary achievement.
Having now spoken of the chief poets of this division, it remains

to notice the others of whom less is known.
Dante da Maiano (Dante being, as with Alighieri, the short of

Durante, and Maiano in the neighbourhood of Fiesole) had attained

some reputation as a poet before the career of his great namesake

began; his Sicilian lady Nina (herself, it is said, a poetess, and not

personally known to him) going by the then unequivocal title of “La

Nina di Dante.” This priority may also be inferred from the con-

temptuous answer sent by him to Dante Alighieri's dream sonnet in

the Vita Nuova (see page 388). All the writers on early Italian poetry

seem to agree in specially censuring this poet's rhymes as coarse and

trivial in manner; nevertheless, they are sometimes distinguished by

a careless force not to be despised, and even by snatches of real beauty.

Of Dante da Maiano's life no record whatever has come down to us.
Most literary circles have their prodigal, or what in modern phrase

might be called their “scamp”; and among our Danteans, this place

is indisputably filled by Cecco Angliolieri, of Siena. Nearly all his

sonnets (and no other pieces by him have been preserved) relate either

to an unnatural hatred of his father, or to an infatuated love for the

daughter of a shoemaker, a certain married Becchina. It would

appear that Cecco was probably enamoured of her before her marriage

as well as afterwards, and we may surmise that his rancour against

his father may have been partly dependent, in the first instance, on

the disagreements arising from such a connection. However, from an

amusing and lifelike story in the Decameron (Gior. ix. Nov. 4) we learn

that on one occasion Cecco's father paid him six months' allowance in

advance, in order that he might proceed to the Marca d'Ancona, and
Image of page 306 page: 306


join the suite of a Papal Legate who was his patron; which looks,

after all, as if the father had some care of his graceless son. The

story goes on to relate how Cecco (whom Boccaccio describes as a

handsome and well-bred man) was induced to take with him as his

servant a fellow-gamester with whom he had formed an intimacy

purely on account of the hatred which each of the two bore his own

father, though in other respects they had little in common. The

result was that this fellow, during the journey, while Cecco was asleep

at Buonconvento, took all his money and lost it at the gaming table,

and afterwards managed by an adroit trick to get possession of his

horse and clothes, leaving him nothing but his shirt. Cecco then,

ashamed to return to Siena, made his way, in a borrowed suit and

mounted on his servant's sorry hack, to Corsignano, where he had

relations; and there he stayed till his father once more (surely much

to his credit) made him a remittance of money. Boccaccio seems to

say in conclusion that Cecco ultimately had his revenge on the thief.
In reading many both of Cecco's love-sonnets and hate-sonnets,

it is impossible not to feel some pity for the indications they contain

of self-sought poverty, unhappiness, and natural bent to ruin. Alto-

gether they have too much curious individuality to allow of their

being omitted here: especially as they afford the earliest prominent

example of a naturalism without afterthought in the whole of Italian

poetry. Their humour is sometimes strong, if not well chosen; their

passion always forcible from its evident reality: nor indeed are several

among them devoid of a certain delicacy. This quality is also to be

discerned in other pieces which I have not included as having less

personal interest; but it must be confessed that for the most part the

sentiments expressed in Cecco's poetry are either impious or licentious.

Most of the sonnets of his which are in print are here given;* the

selections concluding with an extraordinary one in which he proposes

a sort of murderous crusade against all those who hate their fathers.

This I have placed last (exclusive of the Sonnet to Dante in exile) in

order to give the writer the benefit of the possibility that it was written

last, and really expressed a still rather blood-thirsty contrition; be-

longing at best, I fear, to the content of self-indulgence when he came

to enjoy his father's inheritance. But most likely it is to be received

as an expression of impudence alone, unless perhaps of hypocrisy.
Cecco Angiolieri seems to have had poetical intercourse with Dante

early as well as later in life; but even from the little that remains, we

may gather that Dante soon put an end to any intimacy which may

have existed between them. That Cecco already poetized at the

time to which the Vita Nuova relates is evident from a date given

in one of his sonnets,—the 20th June 1291, and from his sonnet raising

objections to the one at the close of Dante's autobiography. When

the latter was written he was probably on good terms with the young

Alighieri; but within no great while afterwards they had discovered

that they could not agree, as is shown by a sonnet in which Cecco can

find no words bad enough for Dante, who has remonstrated with him

about Becchina.† Much later, as we may judge, he again addresses

Dante in an insulting tone, apparently while the latter was living in

exile at the court of Can Grande della Scala. No other reason can well

be assigned for saying that he had “turned Lombard”; while some

of the insolent allusions seem also to point to the time when Dante
Transcribed Footnote (page 306):

* It may be mentioned (as proving how much of the poetry of this period still remains

in MS.) that Ubaldini, in his Glossary to Barberino, published in 1640, cites as grammatical

examples no fewer than twenty-three short fragments from Cecco Angiolieri, one of which

alone is to be found among the sonnets which I have seen, and which I believe are the only

ones in print. Ubaldini quotes them from the Strozzi MSS.

Transcribed Footnote (page 306):

† Of this sonnet I have seen two printed versions, in both of which the text is so corrupt

as to make them very contradictory in important points; but I believe that by comparing

the two I have given its meaning correctly. (See page 395.)

Image of page 307 page: 307


learnt by experience “how bitter is another's bread and how steep

the stairs of his house.”
Why Cecco in this sonnet should describe himself as having become

a Roman, is more puzzling. Boccaccio certainly speaks of his luckless

journey to join a Papal legate, but does not tell us whether fresh clothes

and the wisdom of experience served him in the end to become so far

identified with the Church of Rome. However, from the sonnet on

his father's death he appears (though the allusion is desperately obscure)

to have been then living at an abbey; and also, from the one men-

tioned above, we may infer that he himself, as well as Dante, was

forced to sit at the tables of others: coincidences which almost seem

to afford a glimpse of the phenomenal fact that the bosom of the

Church was indeed for a time the refuge of this shorn lamb. If so,

we may further conjecture that the wonderful crusade-sonnet was an

amende honorable then imposed on him, accompanied probably with

more fleshly penance.
Though nothing indicates the time of Cecco Angiolieri's death, I will

venture to surmise that he outlived the writing and revision of Dante's

Inferno, if only by the token that he is not found lodged in one of its

meaner circles. It is easy to feel sure that no sympathy can ever have

existed for long between Dante and a man like Cecco; however arro-

gantly the latter, in his verses, might attempt to establish a likeness

and even an equality. We may accept the testimony of so reverent a

biographer as Boccaccio, that the Dante of later years was far other

than the silent and awe-struck lover of the Vita Nuova; but he was still

(as he proudly called himself) “the singer of Rectitude,” and his

that “indignant soul” which made blessed the mother who had borne

him.*
Leaving to his fate (whatever that may have been) the Scamp of

Dante's Circle, I must risk the charge of a confirmed taste for slang by

describing Guido Orlandi as its Bore. No other word could present

him so fully. Very few pieces of his exist besides the five I have given.

In one of these,† he rails against his political adversaries; in three,‡

falls foul of his brother poets; and in the remaining one,§ seems some-

what appeased (I think) by a judicious morsel of flattery. I have

already referred to a sonnet of his which is said to have led to the

composition of Guido Cavalcanti's Canzone on the Nature of Love.

He has another sonnet beginning, Per troppa sottiglianza il fil si

rompe,” || in which he is certainly enjoying a fling at somebody, and I

suspect at Cavalcanti in rejoinder to the very poem which he himself

had instigated. If so, this stamps him a master-critic of the deepest

initiation. Of his life nothing is recorded; but no wish perhaps need

be felt to know much of him, as one would probably have dropped

his acquaintance. We may be obliged to him, however, for his char-

acter of Guido Cavalcanti (at page 366), which is boldly and vividly

drawn.
Next follow three poets of whom I have given one specimen apiece.

By Bernardo da Bologna (page 367) no other is known to exist, nor

can anything be learnt of his career. Gianni Alfani was a noble and

distinguished Florentine, a much graver man, it would seem, than one

could judge from this sonnet of his (page 367), which belongs rather to

the school of Sir Pandarus of Troy.
Dino Compagni, the chronicler of Florence, is represented here by
Transcribed Footnote (page 307):
  • * “Alma sdegnosa,
  • Benedetta colei che in te s' incinse!”
( Inferno, C. viii.)
Transcribed Footnote (page 307):

† Page 401.

Transcribed Footnote (page 307):

‡ Pages 359, 366, 389.

Transcribed Footnote (page 307):

§ Page 369.

Transcribed Footnote (page 307):

|| This sonnet, as printed, has a gap in the middle; let us hope (in so immaculate

a censor) from unfitness for publication.

Image of page 308 page: 308


a sonnet addressed to Guido Cavalcanti,* which is all the more interest-

ing, as the same writer's historical work furnishes so much of the

little known about Guido. Dino, though one of the noblest citizens

of Florence, was devoted to the popular cause, and held successively

various high offices in the state. The date of his birth is not fixed,

but he must have been at least thirty in 1289, as he was one of the

Priori in that year, a post which could not be held by a younger man.

He died at Florence in 1323. Dino has rather lately assumed for the

modern reader a much more important position than he occupied

before among the early Italian poets. I allude to the valuable dis-

covery, in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence, of a poem by him

in nona rima, containing 309 stanzas. It is entitled “L'Intelligenza,”

and is of an allegorical nature interspersed with historical and legendary

abstracts.†
I have placed Lapo Gianni in this second division on account of

the sonnet by Dante (page 361), in which he seems undoubtedly to be the

Lapo referred to. It has been supposed by some that Lapo degli

Uberti (father of Fazio, and brother-in-law of Guido Cavalcanti) is

meant; but this is hardly possible. Dante and Guido seem to have

been in familiar intercourse with the Lapo of the sonnet at the time

when it and others were written; whereas no Uberti can have been

in Florence after the year 1267, when the Ghibellines were expelled; the

Uberti family (as I have mentioned elsewhere) being the one of all

others which was most jealously kept afar and excluded from every

amnesty. The only information which I can find respecting Lapo

Gianni is the statement that he was a notary by profession. I have

also seen it somewhere asserted (though where I cannot recollect, and

am sure no authority was given), that he was a cousin of Dante. We

may equally infer him to have been the Lapo mentioned by Dante in

his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue, as being one of the few who up to

that time had written verses in pure Italian.
Dino Frescobaldi's claim to the place given him here will not be

disputed when it is remembered that by his pious care the seven first

cantos of Dante's Hell were restored to him in exile, after the Casa

Alighieri in Florence had been given up to pillage; by which restoration

Dante was enabled to resume his work. This sounds strange when

we reflect that a world without Dante would be a poorer planet. Mean-

while, beyond this great fact of Dino's life, which perhaps hardly

occupied a day of it, there is no news to be gleaned of him.
Giotto falls by right into Dante's circle, as one great man comes

naturally to know another. But he is said actually to have lived in

great intimacy with Dante, who was about twelve years older than

himself; Giotto having been born in or near the year 1276, at Ve-

spignano, fourteen miles from Florence. He died in 1336, fifteen

years after Dante. On the authority of Benvenuto da Imola (an early

commentator on the Commedia), of Vasari, and others, it is said that

Dante visited Giotto while he was painting at Padua; that the

great poet furnished the great painter with the conceptions of a series

of subjects from the Apocalypse, which he painted at Naples; and

that Giotto, finally, passed some time with Dante in the exile's last

refuge at Ravenna. There is a tradition that Dante also studied

drawing with Giotto's master Cimabue; and that he practised it in

some degree is evident from the passage in the Vita Nuova, where he

speaks of his drawing an angel. The reader will not need to be re-

minded of Giotto's portrait of the youthful Dante, painted in the

Bargello at Florence, then the chapel of the Podestà. This is the author
Transcribed Footnote (page 308):

* Crescimbeni ( Ist. d. Volg. Poes.) gives this sonnet from a MS., where it is headed

“To Guido Guinicelli”; but he surmises, and I have no doubt correctly, that Cavalcanti

is really the person addressed in it.

Transcribed Footnote (page 308):

† See Documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire littéraire de l'Italie, &c. , par A. F.

Ozanam (Paris, 1850), where the poem is printed entire.

Image of page 309 page: 309


of the Vita Nuova. That other portrait shown us in the posthumous

mask,—a face dead in exile after the death of hope,—should front the

first page of the Sacred Poem to which heaven and earth had set their

hands, but which might never bring him back to Florence, though it

had made him haggard for many years.*
Giotto's Canzone on the doctrine of voluntary poverty,—the only

poem we have of his,—is a protest against a perversion of gospel

teaching which had gained ground in his day to the extent of becoming

a popular frenzy. People went literally mad upon it; and to the

reaction against this madness may also be assigned (at any rate partly)

Cavalcanti's poem on Poverty, which, as we have seen, is otherwise

not easily explained, if authentic. Giotto's canzone is all the more

curious when we remember his noble fresco at Assisi, of Saint Francis

wedded to Poverty.† It would really almost seem as if the poem had

been written as a sort of safety-valve for the painter's true feelings,

during the composition of the picture. At any rate, it affords another

proof of the strong common sense and turn for humour which all

accounts attribute to Giotto.
I have next introduced, as not inappropriate to the series of poems

connected with Dante, Simone dall' Antella's fine sonnet relating

to the last enterprises of Henry of Luxembourg, and to his then ap-

proaching end,—that deathblow to the Ghibelline hopes which Dante

so deeply shared. This one sonnet is all we know of its author, besides

his name.
Giovanni Quirino is another name which stands forlorn of any

personal history. Fraticelli (in his well-known and valuable edition

of Dante's Minor Works) says that there lived about 1250 a bishop of

that name, belonging to a Venetian family. It is true that the tone

of the sonnet which I give (and which is the only one attributed to

this author) seems foreign at least to the confessions of bishops. It

might seem credibly thus ascribed, however, from the fact that Dante's

sonnet probably dates from Ravenna, and that his correspondent

writes from some distance; while the poet might well have formed

a friendship with a Venetian bishop at the court of Verona.
For me Quirino's sonnet has great value; as Dante's answer‡ to

it enables me to wind up this series with the name of its great chief;

and, indeed, with what would almost seem to have been his last utter-

ance in poetry, at that supreme juncture when he
  • “Slaked in his heart the fervour of desire,”
as at last he neared the very home
  • “Of Love which sways the sun and all the stars.” §
I am sorry to see that this necessary introduction to my first division

is longer than I could have wished. Among the severely-edited books

which had to be consulted in forming this collection, I have often

suffered keenly from the buttonholders of learned Italy, who will not

let one go on one's way; and have contracted a horror of those editions

where the text, hampered with numerals for reference, struggles

through a few lines at the top of the page only to stick fast at the
Transcribed Footnote (page 309):
  • * “Se mai continga che il poema sacro
  • Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,
  • Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
  • Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra,” etc.
( Parad. C. xxv.)
Transcribed Footnote (page 309):

† See Dante's reverential treatment of this subject. ( Parad. C. xi.)

Transcribed Footnote (page 309):

‡ In the case of the above two sonnets, and of all others interchanged between two

poets, I have thought it best to place them together among the poems of one or the other

correspondent, wherever they seemed to have most biographical value; and the same

with several epistolary sonnets which have no answer.

Transcribed Footnote (page 309):

§ The last line of the Paradise (Cayley's Translation).

Image of page 310 page: 310


bottom in a slough of verbal analysis. It would seem unpardonable

to make a book which should be even as these; and I have thus found

myself led on to what I fear forms, by its length, an awkward inter-

mezzo to the volume, in the hope of saying at once the most of what

was to say; that so the reader may not find himself perpetually worried

with footnotes during the consideration of something which may

require a little peace. The glare of too many tapers is apt to render

the altar-picture confused and inharmonious, even when their smoke

does not obscure or deface it.
Image of page 311 page: 311
DANTE ALIGHIERI
more about The New Life. (La Vita Nuova).
THE NEW LIFE

( LA VITA NUOVA )
In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that

can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova.* Under

such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which

I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least

their substance.
Nine times already since my birth had the heaven of light returned

to the selfsame point almost, as concerns its own revolution, when

first the glorious Lady of my mind was made manifest to mine eyes;

even she who was called Beatrice by many who knew not wherefore.†

She had already been in this life for so long as that, within her time,

the starry heaven had moved towards the Eastern quarter one of the

twelve parts of a degree; so that she appeared to me at the beginning

of her ninth year almost, and I saw her almost at the end of my ninth

year. Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble colour, a subdued

and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited

with her very tender age. At that moment, I say most truly that the

spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the

heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body

shook therewith; and in trembling it said these words: Ecce deus

fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi .‡ At that moment the animate

spirit, which dwelleth in the lofty chamber whither all the senses

carry their perceptions, was filled with wonder, and speaking more

especially unto the spirits of the eyes, said these words: Apparuit

jam beatitudo vestra .§ At that moment the natural spirit, which

dwelleth there where our nourishment is administered, began to weep,

and in weeping said these words: Heu miser! quia frequenter im-

peditus ero deinceps.||
I say that, from that time forward, Love quite governed my soul;

which was immediately espoused to him, and with so safe and un-

disputed a lordship (by virtue of strong imagination) that I had nothing

left for it but to do all his bidding continually. He oftentimes com-

manded me to seek if I might see this youngest of the Angels: where-

fore I in my boyhood often went in search of her, and found her so

noble and praiseworthy that certainly of her might have been said
Transcribed Footnote (page 311):

* “Here beginneth the new life.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 311):

† In reference to the meaning of the name, “She who confers blessing.” We learn

from Boccaccio that this first meeting took place at a May Feast, given in the year 1274

by Folco Portinari, father of Beatrice, who ranked among the principal citizens of

Florence: to which feast Dante accompanied his father, Alighiero Alighieri.

Transcribed Footnote (page 311):

‡ “Here is a deity stronger than I; who, coming, shall rule over me.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 311):

§ “Your beatitude hath now been made manifest unto you.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 311):

|| “Woe is me! for that often I shall be disturbed from this time forth!”

Image of page 312 page: 312


those words of the poet Homer, “She seemed not to be the daughter

of a mortal man, but of God.”* And albeit her image, that was with

me always, was an exultation of Love to subdue me, it was yet of so

perfect a quality that it never allowed me to be overruled by Love

without the faithful counsel of reason, whensoever such counsel was

useful to be heard. But seeing that were I to dwell overmuch on the

passions and doings of such early youth, my words might be counted

something fabulous, I will therefore put them aside; and passing

many things that may be conceived by the pattern of these, I will

come to such as are writ in my memory with a better distinctness.
After the lapse of so many days that nine years exactly were com-

pleted since the above-written appearance of this most gracious being,

on the last of those days it happened that the same wonderful lady

appeared to me dressed all in pure white, between two gentle ladies

elder than she. And passing through a street, she turned her eyes

thither where I stood sorely abashed: and by her unspeakable courtesy,

which is now guerdoned in the Great Cycle, she saluted me with so

virtuous a bearing that I seemed then and there to behold the very

limits of blessedness. The hour of her most sweet salutation was

exactly the ninth of that day; and because it was the first time that

any words from her reached mine ears, I came into such sweetness

that I parted thence as one intoxicated. And betaking me to the

loneliness of mine own room, I fell to thinking of this most courteous

lady; thinking of whom I was overtaken by a pleasant slumber, wherein

a marvellous vision was presented for me; for there appeared to be

in my room a mist of the colour of fire, within the which I discerned

the figure of a lord of terrible aspect to such as should gaze upon him,

but who seemed therewithal to rejoice inwardly that it was a marvel

to see. Speaking he said many things, among the which I could

understand but few; and of these, this: Ego dominus tuus.† In

his arms it seemed to me that a person was sleeping, covered only

with a blood-coloured cloth; upon whom looking very attentively, I

knew that it was the lady of the salutation who had deigned the day

before to salute me. And he who held her held also in his hand a

thing that was burning in flames; and he said to me, Vide cor tuum.‡

But when he had remained with me a little while, I thought that he

set himself to awaken her that slept; after the which he made her to

eat that thing which flamed in his hand; and she ate as one fearing.

Then, having waited again a space, all his joy was turned into most

bitter weeping; and as he wept he gathered the lady into his arms,

and it seemed to me that he went with her up towards heaven: whereby

such a great anguish came upon me that my light slumber could not

endure through it, but was suddenly broken. And immediately

having considered, I knew that the hour wherein this vision had been

made manifest to me was the fourth hour (which is to say, the first

of the nine last hours) of the night.
Then, musing on what I had seen, I proposed to relate the same to

many poets who were famous in that day: and for that I had myself

in some sort the art of discoursing with rhyme, I resolved on making

a sonnet, in the which, having saluted all such as are subject unto

Love, and entreated them to expound my vision, I should write unto

them those things which I had seen in my sleep. And the sonnet I

made was this:—
more about SONNET. To every heart which the sweet pain doth move
  • To every heart which the sweet pain doth move,
  • And unto which these words may now be brought
Transcribed Footnote (page 312):
  • * Οὐδὲ ἐῴκει
  • Ἀνδρός γε θνητοϋ παϊς ἔμμεναι, ἀλλὰ θεοϊο.
( Iliad, xxiv. 258.)
Transcribed Footnote (page 312):

† “I am thy master.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 312):

‡ “Behold thy heart.”

Image of page 313 page: 313
Note: On page 313, the semicolon immediately following the word “favour” in line 4 of the third (unitalicized) paragraph is so type-damaged that it resembles a colon.
  • For true interpretation and kind thought,
  • Be greeting in our Lord's name, which is Love.
  • Of those long hours wherein the stars above
  • Wake and keep watch, the third was almost nought,
  • When Love was shown me with such terrors fraught
  • As may not carelessly be spoken of.
  • He seemed like one who is full of joy, and had
  • 10 My heart within his hand, and on his arm
  • My lady, with a mantle round her, slept;
  • Whom (having wakened her) anon he made
  • To eat that heart; she ate, as fearing harm.
  • Then he went out; and as he went, he wept.
This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first part I give greeting,

and ask an answer; in the second, I signify what thing has to be answered

to. The second part commences here: “ Of those long hours.”
To this sonnet I received many answers, conveying many different

opinions; of the which one was sent by him whom I now call the

first among my friends, and it began thus, “Unto my thinking thou

beheld'st all worth.”* And indeed, it was when he learned that I

was he who had sent those rhymes to him, that our friendship com-

menced. But the true meaning of that vision was not then perceived

by any one, though it be now evident to the least skilful.
From that night forth, the natural functions of my body began to

be vexed and impeded, for I was given up wholly to thinking of this

most gracious creature: whereby in short space I became so weak

and so reduced that it was irksome to many of my friends to look

upon me; while others, being moved by spite, went about to discover

what it was my wish should be concealed. Wherefore I (perceiving

the drift of their unkindly questions), by Love's will, who directed me

according to the counsels of reason, told them how it was Love himself

who had thus dealt with me: and I said so, because the thing was so

plainly to be discerned in my countenance that there was no longer

any means of concealing it. But when they went on to ask, “And

by whose help hath Love done this?” I looked in their faces smiling,

and spake no word in return.
Now it fell on a day, that this most gracious creature was sitting

where words were to be heard of the Queen of Glory;† and I was in

a place whence mine eyes could behold their beatitude: and betwixt

her and me, in a direct line, there sat another lady of a pleasant favour;

who looked round at me many times, marvelling at my continued

gaze which seemed to have her for its object. And many perceived

that she thus looked; so that departing thence, I heard it whispered

after me, “Look you to what a pass such a lady hath brought him”;

and in saying this they named her who had been midway between the

most gentle Beatrice and mine eyes. Therefore I was reassured, and

knew that for that day my secret had not become manifest. Then

immediately it came into my mind that I might make use of this lady

as a screen to the truth: and so well did I play my part that the most

of those who had hitherto watched and wondered at me, now imagined

they had found me out. By her means I kept my secret concealed

till some years were gone over; and for my better security, I even

made divers rhymes in her honour; whereof I shall here write only

as much as concerneth the most gentle Beatrice, which is but a very

little. Moreover, about the same time while this lady was a screen

for so much love on my part, I took the resolution to set down the

name of this most gracious creature accompanied with many other

women's names, and especially with hers whom I spake of. And to
Transcribed Footnote (page 313):

* The friend of whom Dante here speaks was Guido Cavalcanti. For his answer,

and those of Cino da Pistoia and Dante da Maiano, see their poems further on.

Transcribed Footnote (page 313):

† I.e. in a church.

Image of page 314 page: 314


this end I put together the names of sixty the most beautiful ladies in

that city where God had placed mine own lady; and these names I

introduced in an epistle in the form of a sirvent, which it is not my

intention to transcribe here. Neither should I have said anything of

this matter, did I not wish to take note of a certain strange thing,

to wit: that having written the list, I found my lady's name would

not stand otherwise than ninth in order among the names of these

ladies.
Now it so chanced with her by whose means I had thus long time

concealed my desire, that it behoved her to leave the city I speak of,

and to journey afar: wherefore I, being sorely perplexed at the loss

of so excellent a defence, had more trouble than even I could before

have supposed. And thinking that if I spoke not somewhat mourn-

fully of her departure, my former counterfeiting would be the more

quickly perceived, I determined that I would make a grievous sonnet*

thereof; the which I will write here, because it hath certain words

in it whereof my lady was the immediate cause, as will be plain to him

that understands. And the sonnet was this:—
more about SONNET. All ye pass among Love's trodden way.
  • All ye that pass along Love's trodden way,
  • Pause ye awhile and say
  • If there be any grief like unto mine:
  • I pray you that you hearken a short space
  • Patiently, if my case
  • Be not a piteous marvel and a sign.
  • Love (never, certes, for my worthless part,
  • But of his own great heart),
  • Vouchsafed to me a life so calm and sweet
  • 10That oft I heard folk question as I went
  • What such great gladness meant:—
  • They spoke of it behind me in the street.
  • But now that fearless bearing is all gone
  • Which with Love's hoarded wealth was given me;
  • Till I am grown to be
  • So poor that I have dread to think thereon.
  • And thus it is that I, being like as one
  • Who is ashamed and hides his poverty,
  • Without seem full of glee,
  • 20And let my heart within travail and moan.
This poem has two principal parts; for, in the first, I mean to call the

Faithful of Love in those words of Jeremias the Prophet , “O vos omnes

qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus,”

and to pray them to stay and hear me. In the second I tell where Love

had placed me, with a meaning other than that which the last part of the

poem shows, and I say what I have lost. The second part begins here,

“ Love, (never, certes.)”
A certain while after the departure of that lady, it pleased the

Master of the Angels to call into His glory a damsel, young and of a

gentle presence, who had been very lovely in the city I speak of: and

I saw her body lying without its soul among many ladies, who held a

pitiful weeping. Whereupon, remembering that I had seen her in the

company of excellent Beatrice, I could not hinder myself from a few

tears; and weeping, I conceived to say somewhat of her death, in
Transcribed Footnote (page 314):

* It will be observed that this poem is not what we now call a sonnet. Its structure,

however, is analogous to that of the sonnet, being two sextetts followed by two quatrains,

instead of two quatrains followed by two triplets. Dante applies the term sonnet to

both these forms of composition, and to no other.

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guerdon of having seen her somewhile with my lady; which thing I

spake of in the latter end of the verses that I writ in this matter, as

he will discern who understands. And I wrote two sonnets, which are

these:
more about SONNET. Weep Lovers sith Love's very self doth weep
I
  • Weep, Lovers, sith Love's very self doth weep,
  • And sith the cause for weeping is so great;
  • When now so many dames, of such estate
  • In worth, show with their eyes a grief so deep:
  • For Death the churl has laid his leaden sleep
  • Upon a damsel who was fair of late,
  • Defacing all our earth should celebrate,—
  • Yea all save virtue, which the soul doth keep.
  • Now hearken how much Love did honour her.
  • 10 I myself saw him in his proper form
  • Bending above the motionless sweet dead,
  • And often gazing into Heaven; for there
  • The soul now sits which when her life was warm
  • Dwelt with the joyful beauty that is fled.
This first sonnet is divided into three parts. In the first, I call and

beseech the Faithful of Love to weep; and I say that their Lord weeps,

and that they, hearing the reason why he weeps, shall be more minded

to listen to me. In the second, I relate this reason. In the third, I speak

of honour done by Love to this Lady. The second part begins here,

“ When now so many dames” ; the third here, “ Now hearken.”
more about SONNET. Death, alway cruel, Pity's foe in chief.
II
  • Death, alway cruel, Pity's foe in chief,
  • Mother who brought forth grief,
  • Merciless judgment and without appeal!
  • Since thou alone hast made my heart to feel
  • This sadness and unweal,
  • My tongue upbraideth thee without relief.
  • And now (for I must rid thy name of ruth)
  • Behoves me speak the truth
  • Touching thy cruelty and wickedness:
  • 10 Not that they be not known; but ne'ertheless
  • I would give hate more stress
  • With them that feed on love in very sooth.
  • Out of this world thou hast driven courtesy,
  • And virtue, dearly prized in womanhood;
  • And out of youth's gay mood
  • The lovely lightness is quite gone through thee.
  • Whom now I mourn, no man shall learn from me
  • Save by the measure of these praises given.
  • Whoso deserves not Heaven
  • 20May never hope to have her company.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 315):

* The commentators assert that the last two lines here do not allude to the dead lady,

but to Beatrice. This would make the poem very clumsy in construction; yet there

must be some covert allusion to Beatrice, as Dante himself intimates. The only form

in which I can trace it consists in the implied assertion that such person as had enjoyed

the dead lady's society was worthy of heaven, and that person was Beatrice. Or indeed

the allusion to Beatrice might be in the first poem, where he says that Love “ in forma

vera” (that is, Beatrice,) mourned over the corpse: as he afterwards says of Beatrice,

“ Quella ha nome Amor .” Most probably both allusions are intended.

Image of page 316 page: 316
This poem is divided into four parts. In the first I address Death

by certain proper names of hers. In the second, speaking to her, I tell

the reason why I am moved to denounce her. In the third, I rail against

her. In the fourth, I turn to speak to a person undefined, although defined

in my own conception. The second part commences here, “ Since thou

alone” ; the third here, “ And now (for I must)” ; the fourth here,

“ Whoso deserves not.”
Some days after the death of this lady, I had occasion to leave

the city I speak of, and to go thitherwards where she abode who had

formerly been my protection; albeit the end of my journey reached

not altogether so far. And notwithstanding that I was visibly in

the company of many, the journey was so irksome that I had scarcely

sighing enough to ease my heart's heaviness; seeing that as I went,

I left my beatitude behind me. Wherefore it came to pass that he

who ruled me by virtue of my most gentle lady was made visible to

my mind, in the light habit of a traveller, coarsely fashioned. He

appeared to me troubled, and looked always on the ground; saving

only that sometimes his eyes were turned towards a river which was

clear and rapid, and which flowed along the path I was taking. And

then I thought that Love called me and said to me these words: “I

come from that lady who was so long thy surety; for the matter of

whose return, I know that it may not be. Wherefore I have taken

that heart which I made thee leave with her, and do bear it unto

another lady, who, as she was, shall be thy surety;” (and when he

named her I knew her well.) “And of these words I have spoken, if

thou shouldst speak any again, let it be in such sort as that none shall

perceive thereby that thy love was feigned for her, which thou must

now feign for another.” And when he had spoken thus, all my imagin-

ing was gone suddenly, for it seemed to me that Love became a part

of myself: so that, changed as it were in mine aspect, I rode on full

of thought the whole of that day, and with heavy sighing. And the

day being over, I wrote this sonnet:—
more about SONNET. A day agone, as I rode sullenly.
  • A day agone, as I rode sullenly
  • Upon a certain path that liked me not,
  • I met Love midway while the air was hot,
  • Clothed lightly as a wayfarer might be.
  • And for the cheer he showed, he seemed to me
  • As one who hath lost lordship he had got;
  • Advancing tow'rds me full of sorrowful thought,
  • Bowing his forehead so that none should see.
  • Then as I went, he called me by my name,
  • 10 Saying: “I journey since the morn was dim
  • Thence where I made thy heart to be: which now
  • I needs must bear unto another dame.”
  • Wherewith so much passed into me of him
  • That he was gone, and I discerned not how.
This sonnet has three parts. In the first part, I tell how I met Love,

and of his aspect. In the second, I tell what he said to me, although not

in full, through the fear I had of discovering my secret. In the third, I

say how he disappeared. The second part commences here, “ Then as I

went” ; the third here, “ Wherewith so much.”
On my return, I set myself to seek out that lady whom my master

had named to me while I journeyed sighing. And because I would

be brief, I will now narrate that in a short while I made her my surety,

in such sort that the matter was spoken of by many in terms scarcely

courteous; through the which I had oftenwhiles many troublesome

hours. And by this it happened (to wit: by this false and evil rumour

which seemed to misfame me of vice) that she who was the destroyer
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of all evil and the queen of all good, coming where I was, denied

me her most sweet salutation, in the which alone was my blessedness.
And here it is fitting for me to depart a little from this present

matter, that it may be rightly understood of what surpassing virtue

her salutation was to me. To the which end I say that when she

appeared in any place, it seemed to me, by the hope of her excellent

salutation, that there was no man mine enemy any longer; and such

warmth of charity came upon me that most certainly in that moment

I would have pardoned whosoever had done me an injury; and if

one should then have questioned me concerning any matter, I could

only have said unto him “Love,” with a countenance clothed in

humbleness. And what time she made ready to salute me, the spirit

of Love, destroying all other perceptions, thrust forth the feeble spirits

of my eyes, saying, “Do homage unto your mistress,” and putting

itself in their place to obey: so that he who would, might then have

beheld Love, beholding the lids of my eyes shake. And when this

most gentle lady gave her salutation, Love, so far from being a medium

beclouding mine intolerable beatitude, then bred in me such an over-

powering sweetness that my body, being all subjected thereto, remained

many times helpless and passive. Whereby it is made manifest that

in her salutation alone was there any beatitude for me, which then

very often went beyond my endurance.
And now, resuming my discourse, I will go on to relate that when,

for the first time, this beatitude was denied me, I became possessed

with such grief that, parting myself from others, I went into a lonely

place to bathe the ground with most bitter tears: and when, by

this heat of weeping, I was somewhat relieved, I betook myself to my

chamber, where I could lament unheard. And there, having prayed

to the Lady of all Mercies, and having said also, “O Love, aid thou

thy servant,” I went suddenly asleep like a beaten sobbing child. And

in my sleep, towards the middle of it, I seemed to see in the room,

seated at my side, a youth in very white raiment, who kept his eyes

fixed on me in deep thought. And when he had gazed some time,

I thought that he sighed and called to me in these words: “ Fili mi,

tempus est ut prætermittantur simulata nostra .”* And thereupon I

seemed to know him; for the voice was the same wherewith he had

spoken at other times in my sleep. Then looking at him, I perceived

that he was weeping piteously, and that he seemed to be waiting

for me to speak. Wherefore, taking heart, I began thus: “Why

weepest thou, Master of all honour?” And he made answer to me:

“ Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ

partes: tu autem non sic .Ӡ And thinking upon his words, they

seemed to me obscure; so that again compelling myself unto speech,

I asked of him: “What thing is this, Master, that thou hast spoken

thus darkly?” To the which he made answer in the vulgar tongue:

“Demand no more than may be useful to thee.” Whereupon I began

to discourse with him concerning her salutation which she had denied

me; and when I had questioned him of the cause, he said these words: “Our Beatrice hath heard from certain persons, that the lady whom

I named to thee while thou journeyedst full of sighs is sorely dis-

quieted by thy solicitations: and therefore this most gracious creature,
Transcribed Footnote (page 317):

* “My son, it is time for us to lay aside our counterfeiting.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 317):

† “I am as the centre of a circle, to the which all parts of the circumference bear an

equal relation: but with thee it is not thus.” This phrase seems to have remained

as obscure to commentators as Dante found it at the moment. No one, as far as I know,

has even fairly tried to find a meaning for it. To me the following appears a not unlikely

one. Love is weeping on Dante's account, and not on his own. He says, “I am the

centre of a circle ( Amor che muove il sole e l' altre stelle): therefore all lovable objects,

whether in heaven or earth, or any part of the circle's circumference, are equally near to

me. Not so thou, who wilt one day lose Beatrice when she goes to heaven.” The phrase

would thus contain an intimation of the death of Beatrice, accounting for Dante being

next told not to inquire the meaning of the speech—“Demand no more than may be

useful to thee.”

Image of page 318 page: 318
who is the enemy of all disquiet, being fearful of such disquiet, refused

to salute thee. For the which reason (albeit, in very sooth, thy secret

must needs have become known to her by familiar observation) it

is my will that thou compose certain things in rhyme, in the which

thou shalt set forth how strong a mastership I have obtained over

thee, through her; and how thou wast hers even from thy childhood.

Also do thou call upon him that knoweth these things to bear witness

to them, bidding him to speak with her thereof; the which I, who am

he, will do willingly. And thus she shall be made to know thy desire;

knowing which, she shall know likewise that they were deceived who

spake of thee to her. And so write these things, that they shall seem

rather to be spoken by a third person; and not directly by thee to

her, which is scarce fitting. After the which, send them, not without

me, where she may chance to hear them; but have them fitted with

a pleasant music, into the which I will pass whensoever it needeth.” With this speech he was away, and my sleep was broken up.
Whereupon, remembering me, I knew that I had beheld this vision

during the ninth hour of the day; and I resolved that I would make a

ditty, before I left my chamber, according to the words my master

had spoken. And this is the ditty that I made:—
more about DITTY. Song, 'tis my will that thou do seek Love.
  • Song, 'tis my will that thou do seek out Love,
  • And go with him where my dear lady is;
  • That so my cause, the which thy harmonies
  • Do plead, his better speech may clearly prove.
  • Thou goest, my Song, in such a courteous kind,
  • That even companionless
  • Thou mayst rely on thyself anywhere.
  • And yet, an thou wouldst get thee a safe mind,
  • First unto Love address
  • 10 Thy steps; whose aid, mayhap, 'twere ill to spare,
  • Seeing that she to whom thou mak'st thy prayer
  • Is, as I think, ill-minded unto me,
  • And that if Love do not companion thee,
  • Thou'lt have perchance small cheer to tell me of.
  • With a sweet accent, when thou com'st to her,
  • Begin thou in these words,
  • First having craved a gracious audience:
  • “He who hath sent me as his messenger,
  • Lady, thus much records,
  • 20 An thou but suffer him, in his defence.
  • Love, who comes with me, by thine influence
  • Can make this man do as it liketh him:
  • Wherefore, if this fault is or doth but seem
  • Do thou conceive: for his heart cannot move.”
  • Say to her also: “Lady, his poor heart
  • Is so confirmed in faith
  • That all its thoughts are but of serving thee:
  • 'Twas early thine, and could not swerve apart.”
  • Then, if she wavereth,
  • 30 Bid her ask Love, who knows if these things be.
  • And in the end, beg of her modestly
  • To pardon so much boldness: saying too:—
  • “If thou declare his death to be thy due,
  • The thing shall come to pass, as doth behove.’
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  • Then pray thou of the Master of all ruth,
  • Before thou leave her there,
  • That he befriend my cause and plead it well.
  • “In guerdon of my sweet rhymes and my truth”
  • (Entreat him) “stay with her;
  • 40 Let not the hope of thy poor servant fail;
  • And if with her thy pleading should prevail,
  • Let her look on him and give peace to him.”
  • Gentle my Song, if good to thee it seem,
  • Do this: so worship shall be thine and love.
This ditty is divided into three parts. In the first, I tell it whither to

go, and I encourage it, that it may go the more confidently, and I tell it

whose company to join if it would go with confidence and without any

danger. In the second, I say that which it behoves the ditty to set forth.

In the third, I give it leave to start when it pleases, recommending its course

to the arms of Fortune. The second part begins here, “ With a sweet

accent” ; the third here, “ Gentle my Song.” Some might contradict

me, and say that they understand not whom I address in the second person,

seeing that the ditty is merely the very words I am speaking. And there-

fore I say that this doubt I intend to solve and clear up in this little book

itself, at a more difficult passage, and then let him understand who now

doubts, or would now contradict as aforesaid.
After this vision I have recorded, and having written those words

which Love had dictated to me, I began to be harassed with many

and divers thoughts, by each of which I was sorely tempted; and in

especial, there were four among them that left me no rest. The first

was this: “Certainly the lordship of Love is good; seeing that it

diverts the mind from all mean things.” The second was this: “Cer-

tainly the lordship of Love is evil; seeing that the more homage his

servants pay to him, the more grievous and painful are the torments

wherewith he torments them.” The third was this: “The name

of Love is so sweet in the hearing that it would not seem possible for

its effects to be other than sweet; seeing that the name must needs

be like unto the thing named: as it is written: Nomina sunt conse-

quentia rerum.”* And the fourth was this: “The lady whom Love

hath chosen out to govern thee is not as other ladies, whose hearts

are easily moved.”
And by each one of these thoughts I was so sorely assailed that

I was like unto him who doubteth which path to take, and wishing

to go, goeth not. And if I bethought myself to seek out some point

at the which all these paths might be found to meet, I discerned but

one way, and that irked me; to wit, to call upon Pity, and to com-

mend myself unto her. And it was then that, feeling a desire to

write somewhat thereof in rhyme, I wrote this sonnet:—
more about SONNET. All my thoughts always speak to me of Love.
  • All my thoughts always speak to me of Love,
  • Yet have between themselves such difference
  • That while one bids me bow with mind and sense,
  • A second saith, “Go to: look thou above”;
  • The third one, hoping, yields me joy enough;
  • And with the last come tears, I scarce know whence:
  • All of them craving pity in sore suspense,
  • Trembling with fears that the heart knoweth of.
  • And thus, being all unsure which path to take,
  • 10 Wishing to speak I know not what to say,
  • And lose myself in amorous wanderings:
  • Until, (my peace with all of them to make,)
  • Unto mine enemy I needs must pray,
  • My Lady Pity, for the help she brings.
Transcribed Footnote (page 319):

* “Names are the consequents of things.”

Image of page 320 page: 320
This sonnet may be divided into four parts. In the first, I say and

propound that all my thoughts are concerning Love. In the second, I

say that they are diverse, and I relate their diversity. In the third, I say

wherein they all seem to agree. In the fourth, I say that, wishing to speak

of Love, I know not from which of these thoughts to take my argument;

and that if I would take it from all, I shall have to call upon mine enemy,

my Lady Pity. “ Lady,” I say, as in a scornful mode of speech. The

second begins here, “ Yet have between themselves” ; the third, “ All of

them craving” ; the fourth, “ And thus.”
After this battling with many thoughts, it chanced on a day that

my most gracious lady was with a gathering of ladies in a certain place;

to the which I was conducted by a friend of mine; he thinking to

do me a great pleasure by showing me the beauty of so many women.

Then I, hardly knowing whereunto he conducted me, but trusting in

him (who yet was leading his friend to the last verge of life), made

question: “To what end are we come among these ladies?” and he

answered: “To the end that they may be worthily served.” And

they were assembled around a gentlewoman who was given in marriage

on that day; the custom of the city being that these should bear her

company when she sat down for the first time at table in the house

of her husband. Therefore I, as was my friend's pleasure, resolved

to stay with him and do honour to those ladies.
But as soon as I had thus resolved, I began to feel a faintness and

a throbbing at my left side, which soon took possession of my whole

body. Whereupon I remember that I covertly leaned my back unto

a painting that ran round the walls of that house; and being fearful

lest my trembling should be discerned of them, I lifted mine eyes to

look on those ladies, and then first perceived among them the excellent

Beatrice. And when I perceived her, all my senses were overpowered

by the great lordship that Love obtained, finding himself so near unto

that most gracious being, until nothing but the spirits of sight remained

to me; and even these remained driven out of their own instruments

because Love entered in that honoured place of theirs, that so he

might the better behold her. And although I was other than at first,

I grieved for the spirits so expelled, which kept up a sore lament,

saying: “If he had not in this wise thrust us forth, we also should

behold the marvel of this lady.” By this, many of her friends, having

discerned my confusion, began to wonder; and together with herself,

kept whispering of me and mocking me. Whereupon my friend, who

knew not what to conceive, took me by the hands, and drawing me

forth from among them, required to know what ailed me. Then,

having first held me at quiet for a space until my perceptions were

come back to me, I made answer to my friend: “Of a surety I have

now set my feet on that point of life, beyond the which he must not

pass who would return.”*
Afterwards, leaving him, I went back to the room where I had

wept before; and again weeping and ashamed, said: “If this lady

but knew of my condition, I do not think that she would thus mock

at me; nay, I am sure that she must needs feel some pity.” And in

my weeping I bethought me to write certain words, in the which,

speaking to her, I should signify the occasion of my disfigurement,

telling her also how I knew that she had no knowledge thereof; which,

if it were known, I was certain must move others to pity. And then,

because I hoped that peradventure it might come into her hearing,

I wrote this sonnet:—
Transcribed Footnote (page 320):

* It is difficult not to connect Dante's agony at this wedding-feast, with our knowledge

that in her twenty-first year Beatrice was wedded to Simone de' Bardi. That she herself

was the bride on this occasion might seem out of the question, from the fact of its not

being in any way so stated: but on the other hand, Dante's silence throughout the Vita

Nuova as regards her marriage (which must have brought deep sorrow even to his ideal

love) is so startling, that we might almost be led to conceive in this passage the only

intimation of it which he thought fit to give.

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Sig. 21
more about SONNET. Even as the others mock, thou mockest me.
  • Even as the others mock, thou mockest me;
  • Not dreaming, noble lady, whence it is
  • That I am taken with strange semblances,
  • Seeing thy face which is so fair to see:
  • For else, compassion would not suffer thee
  • To grieve my heart with such harsh scoffs as these.
  • Lo! Love, when thou art present, sits at ease,
  • And bears his mastership so mightily
  • That all my troubled senses he thrusts out,
  • 10 Sorely tormenting some, and slaying some,
  • Till none but he is left and has free range
  • To gaze on thee. This makes my face to change
  • Into another's; while I stand all dumb,
  • And hear my senses clamour in their rout.
This sonnet I divide not into parts, because a division is only made

to open the meaning of the thing divided: and this, as it is sufficiently

manifest through the reasons given, has no need of division. True it is

that, amid the words whereby is shown the occasion of this sonnet, dubious

words are to be found; namely, when I say that Love fills all my spirits,

but that the visual remain in life, only outside of their own instruments.

And this difficulty it is impossible for any to solve who is not in equal

guise liege unto Love; and, to those who are so, that is manifest which

would clear up the dubious words. And therefore it were not well for

me to expound this difficulty, inasmuch as my speaking would be either

fruitless or else superfluous.
A while after this strange disfigurement, I became possessed with a

strong conception which left me but very seldom, and then to return

quickly. And it was this: “Seeing that thou comest into such

scorn by the companionship of this lady, wherefore seekest thou to

behold her? If she should ask thee this thing, what answer couldst

thou make unto her? yea, even though thou wert master of all thy

faculties, and in no way hindered from answering.” Unto the which,

another very humble thought said in reply: “If I were master of

all my faculties, and in no way hindered from answering, I would tell

her that no sooner do I image to myself her marvellous beauty than

I am possessed with the desire to behold her, the which is of so great

strength that it kills and destroys in my memory all those things

which might oppose it; and it is therefore that the great anguish I have

endured thereby is yet not enough to restrain me from seeking to

behold her.” And then, because of these thoughts, I resolved to write

somewhat, wherein, having pleaded mine excuse, I should tell her

of what I felt in her presence. Whereupon I wrote this sonnet:—
more about SONNET. The thoughts are broken in my memory.
  • The thoughts are broken in my memory,
  • Thou lovely Joy, whene'er I see thy face;
  • When thou art near me, Love fills up the space,
  • Often repeating, “If death irk thee, fly.”
  • My face shows my heart's colour, verily,
  • Which, fainting, seeks for any leaning-place;
  • Till, in the drunken terror of disgrace,
  • The very stones seem to be shrieking, “Die!”
  • It were a grievous sin, if one should not
  • 10 Strive then to comfort my bewildered mind
  • (Though merely with a simple pitying)
  • For the great anguish which thy scorn has wrought
  • In the dead sight o' the eyes grown nearly blind,
  • Which look for death as for a blessed thing.
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This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, I tell the cause why

I abstain not from coming to this lady. In the second, I tell what befalls

me through coming to her; and this part begins here, “ When thou art

near.” And also this second part divides into five distinct statements.

For, in the first, I say what Love, counselled by Reason, tells me when I

am near the Lady. In the second, I set forth the state of my heart by the

example of the face. In the third, I say how all ground of trust fails me.

In the fourth, I say that he sins who shows not pity of me, which would

give me some comfort. In the last, I say why people should take pity;

namely, for the piteous look which comes into mine eyes; which piteous

look is destroyed, that is, appeareth not unto others, through the jeering

of this lady, who draws to the like action those who peradventure would

see this piteousness. The second part begins here, “ My face shows” ;

the third, “ Till, in the drunken terror” ; the fourth, “ It were a grievous

sin” ; the fifth, “ For the great anguish.”
Thereafter, this sonnet bred in me desire to write down in verse four

other things touching my condition, the which things it seemed to me

that I had not yet made manifest. The first among these was the

grief that possessed me very often, remembering the strangeness which

Love wrought in me; the second was, how Love many times assailed

me so suddenly and with such strength that I had no other life re-

maining except a thought which spake of my lady; the third was,

how, when Love did battle with me in this wise, I would rise up all

colourless, if so I might see my lady, conceiving that the sight of her

would defend me against the assault of Love, and altogether forgetting

that which her presence brought unto me; and the fourth was, how,

when I saw her, the sight not only defended me not, but took away the

little life that remained to me. And I said these four things in a

sonnet, which is this:—
more about SONNET. At whiles (yea oftentimes) I muse over.
  • At whiles (yea oftentimes) I muse over
  • The quality of anguish that is mine
  • Through Love: then pity makes my voice to pine,
  • Saying, “Is any else thus, anywhere?”
  • Love smiteth me, whose strength is ill to bear;
  • So that of all my life is left no sign
  • Except one thought; and that, because 'tis thine,
  • Leaves not the body but abideth there.
  • And then if I, whom other aid forsook,
  • 10 Would aid myself, and innocent of art
  • Would fain have sight of thee as a last hope,
  • No sooner do I lift mine eyes to look
  • Than the blood seems as shaken from my heart,
  • And all my pulses beat at once and stop.
This sonnet is divided into four parts, four things being therein narrated;

and as these are set forth above, I only proceed to distinguish the parts

by their beginnings. Wherefore I say that the second part begins, “ Love

smiteth me” ; the third, “ And then if I” ; the fourth, “ No sooner do I

lift.”
After I had written these three last sonnets, wherein I spake unto

my lady, telling her almost the whole of my condition, it seemed to

me that I should be silent, having said enough concerning myself.

But albeit I spake not to her again, yet it behoved me afterward to

write of another matter, more noble than the foregoing. And for

that the occasion of what I then wrote may be found pleasant in the

hearing, I will relate it as briefly as I may.
Through the sore change in mine aspect, the secret of my heart

was now understood of many. Which thing being thus, there came

a day when certain ladies to whom it was well known (they having

been with me at divers times in my trouble) were met together for the
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pleasure of gentle company. And as I was going that way by chance,

(but I think rather by the will of fortune,) I heard one of them call

unto me, and she that called was a lady of very sweet speech. And

when I had come close up with them, and perceived that they had

not among them mine excellent lady, I was reassured; and saluted

them, asking of their pleasure. The ladies were many; divers of

whom were laughing one to another, while divers gazed at me as

though I should speak anon. But when I still spake not, one of them,

who before had been talking with another, addressed me by my name,

saying, “To what end lovest thou this lady, seeing that thou canst not

support her presence? Now tell us this thing, that we may know it:

for certainly the end of such a love must be worthy of knowledge.”

And when she had spoken these words, not she only, but all they that

were with her, began to observe me, waiting for my reply. Whereupon

I said thus unto them: “Ladies, the end and aim of my Love was

but the salutation of that lady of whom I conceive that ye are speaking;

wherein alone I found that beatitude which is the goal of desire. And

now that it hath pleased her to deny me this, Love, my Master, of

his great goodness, hath placed all my beatitude there where my hope

will not fail me.” Then those ladies began to talk closely together;

and as I have seen snow fall among the rain, so was their talk mingled

with sighs. But after a little, that lady who had been the first to

address me, addressed me again in these words: “We pray thee that

thou wilt tell us wherein abideth this thy beatitude.” And answering,

I said but thus much: “In those words that do praise my lady.”

To the which she rejoined: “If thy speech were true, those words

that thou didst write concerning thy condition would have been

written with another intent.”
Then I, being almost put to shame because of her answer, went

out from among them; and as I walked, I said within myself:

“Seeing that there is so much beatitude in those words which do

praise my lady, wherefore hath my speech of her been different?”

And then I resolved that thenceforward I would choose for the theme

of my writings only the praise of this most gracious being. But when

I had thought exceedingly, it seemed to me that I had taken to myself

a theme which was much too lofty, so that I dared not begin; and I

remained during several days in the desire of speaking, and the fear

of beginning. After which it happened, as I passed one day along

a path which lay beside a stream of very clear water, that there came

upon me a great desire to say somewhat in rhyme: but when I began

thinking how I should say it, methought that to speak of her were

unseemly, unless I spoke to other ladies in the second person; which

is to say, not to any other ladies, but only to such as are so called

because they are gentle, let alone for mere womanhood. Whereupon

I declare that my tongue spake as though by its own impulse, and

said, “Ladies that have intelligence in love.” These words I laid up

in my mind with great gladness, conceiving to take them as my com-

mencement. Wherefore, having returned to the city I spake of, and

considered thereof during certain days, I began a poem with this

beginning, constructed in the mode which will be seen below in its

division. The poem begins here:—
more about Ladies that have intelligence in Love.
  • Ladies that have intelligence in love,
  • Of mine own lady I would speak with you;
  • Not that I hope to count her praises through,
  • But telling what I may, to ease my mind.
  • And I declare that when I speak thereof,
  • Love sheds such perfect sweetness over me
  • That if my courage failed not, certainly
  • To him my listeners must be all resign'd.
  • Wherefore I will not speak in such large kind
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  • 10That mine own speech should foil me, which were base;
  • But only will discourse of her high grace
  • In these poor words, the best that I can find,
  • With you alone, dear dames and damozels:
  • 'Twere ill to speak thereof with any else.
  • An Angel, of his blessed knowledge, saith
  • To God: “Lord, in the world that Thou hast made,
  • A miracle in action is display'd,
  • By reason of a soul whose splendours fare
  • Even hither: and since Heaven requireth
  • 20 Nought saving her, for her it prayeth Thee,
  • Thy Saints crying aloud continually.”
  • Yet Pity still defends our earthly share
  • In that sweet soul; God answering thus the prayer:
  • “My well-belovèd, suffer that in peace
  • Your hope remain, while so My pleasure is,
  • There where one dwells who dreads the loss of her:
  • And who in Hell unto the doomed shall say,
  • ‘I have looked on that for which God's chosen pray.’”
  • My lady is desired in the high Heaven:
  • 30 Wherefore, it now behoveth me to tell,
  • Saying: Let any maid that would be well
  • Esteemed keep with her: for as she goes by,
  • Into foul hearts a deathly chill is driven
  • By Love, that makes ill thought to perish there:
  • While any who endures to gaze on her
  • Must either be ennobled, or else die.
  • When one deserving to be raised so high
  • Is found, 'tis then her power attains its proof,
  • Making his heart strong for his soul's behoof
  • 40 With the full strength of meek humility.
  • Also this virtue owns she, by God's will:
  • Who speaks with her can never come to ill.
  • Love saith concerning her: “How chanceth it
  • That flesh, which is of dust, should be thus pure?”
  • Then, gazing always, he makes oath: “Forsure,
  • This is a creature of God till now unknown.”
  • She hath that paleness of the pearl that's fit
  • In a fair woman, so much and not more;
  • She is as high as Nature's skill can soar;
  • 50 Beauty is tried by her comparison.
  • Whatever her sweet eyes are turned upon,
  • Spirits of love do issue thence in flame,
  • Which through their eyes who then may look on them
  • Pierce to the heart's deep chamber every one.
  • And in her smile Love's image you may see;
  • Whence none can gaze upon her steadfastly.
  • Dear Song, I know thou wilt hold gentle speech
  • With many ladies, when I send thee forth:
  • Wherefore (being mindful that thou hadst thy birth
  • 60 From Love, and art a modest, simple child),
  • Whomso thou meetest, say thou this to each:
  • “Give me good speed! To her I wend along
  • In whose much strength my weakness is made strong.”
  • And if, i' the end, thou wouldst not be beguiled
  • Of all thy labour, seek not the defiled
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  • And common sort; but rather choose to be
  • Where man and woman dwell in courtesy.
  • So to the road thou shalt be reconciled,
  • And find the lady, and with the lady, Love.
  • 70Commend thou me to each, as doth behove.
This poem, that it may be better understood, I will divide more subtly

than the others preceding; and therefore I will make three parts of it.

The first part is a proem to the words following. The second is the matter

treated of. The third is, as it were, a handmaid to the preceding words.

The second begins here, “ An angel” ; the third here, “ Dear Song, I

know.” The first part is divided into four. In the first, I say to whom

I mean to speak of my Lady, and wherefore I will so speak. In the second,

I say what she appears to myself to be when I reflect upon her excellence,

and what I would utter if I lost not courage. In the third, I say what it

is I purpose to speak so as not to be impeded by faintheartedness. In

the fourth, repeating to whom I purpose speaking, I tell the reason why

I speak to them. The second begins here, “ And I declare” ; the third

here, “ Wherefore I will not speak” ; the fourth here, “ With you alone.”

Then, when I say “ An angel,” I begin treating of this lady: and this

part is divided into two. In the first, I tell what is understood of her

in heaven. In the second, I tell what is understood of her on earth: here,

“ My lady is desired.” This second part is divided into two; for, in

the first, I speak of her as regards the nobleness of her soul, relating some

of her virtues proceeding from her soul; in the second, I speak of her as

regards the nobleness of her body, narrating some of her beauties: here,

“ Love saith concerning her.” This second part is divided into two, for,

in the first, I speak of certain beauties which belong to the whole person;

in the second, I speak of certain beauties which belong to a distinct part

of the person: here, “ Whatever her sweet eyes.” This second part is

divided into two; for, in the one, I speak of the eyes, which are the beginning

of love; in the second, I speak of the mouth, which is the end of love.

And that every vicious thought may be discarded herefrom, let the reader

remember that it is above written that the greeting of this lady, which was

an act of her mouth, was the goal of my desires, while I could receive it.

Then, when I say, “ Dear Song, I know,” I add a stanza as it were hand-

maid to the others, wherein I say what I desire from this my poem. And

because this last part is easy to understand, I trouble not myself with more

divisions. I say, indeed, that the further to open the meaning of this

poem, more minute divisions ought to be used; but nevertheless he who

is not of wit enough to understand it by these which have been already

made is welcome to leave it alone; for certes, I fear I have communicated

its sense to too many by these present divisions, if it so happened that

many should hear it.
When this song was a little gone abroad, a certain one of my friends,

hearing the same, was pleased to question me, that I should tell him

what thing love is; it may be, conceiving from the words thus heard

a hope of me beyond my desert. Wherefore I, thinking that after

such discourse it were well to say somewhat of the nature of Love,

and also in accordance with my friend's desire, proposed to myself

to write certain words in the which I should treat of this argument.

And the sonnet that I then made is this:—
more about SONNET. Love and the gentle heart are one same thing.
  • Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,
  • Even as the wise man* in his ditty saith:
  • Each, of itself, would be such life in death
  • As rational soul bereft of reasoning.
Transcribed Footnote (page 325):

* Guido Guinicelli, in the canzone which begins, “Within the gentle heart Love shelters

him.” (See page 432.)

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  • 'Tis Nature makes them when she loves: a king
  • Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth
  • Is called the Heart; there draws he quiet breath
  • At first, with brief or longer slumbering.
  • Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind
  • 10 Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart
  • Send the desiring of the eyes again;
  • Where often it abides so long enshrin'd
  • That Love at length out of his sleep will start.
  • And women feel the same for worthy men.
This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, I speak of him

according to his power. In the second, I speak of him according as his

power translates itself into act. The second part begins here, “ Then

beauty seen.” The first is divided into two. In the first, I say in what

subject this power exists. In the second, I say how this subject and this

power are produced together, and how the one regards the other, as form

does matter. The second begins here, “ 'Tis Nature.” Afterwards when

I say, “ Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind,” I say how this

power translates itself into act; and, first, how it so translates itself in a man,

then how it so translates itself in a woman: here, “ And women feel.”
Having treated of love in the foregoing, it appeared to me that I

should also say something in praise of my lady, wherein it might be

set forth how love manifested itself when produced by her; and

how not only she could awaken it where it slept, but where it was

not she could marvellously create it. To the which end I wrote another

sonnet; and it is this:—
more about SONNET. My lady carries love within her eyes.
  • My lady carries love within her eyes;
  • All that she looks on is made pleasanter;
  • Upon her path men turn to gaze at her;
  • He whom she greeteth feels his heart to rise,
  • And droops his troubled visage, full of sighs,
  • And of his evil heart is then aware:
  • Hate loves, and pride becomes a worshipper.
  • O women, help to praise her in somewise.
  • Humbleness, and the hope that hopeth well,
  • 10 By speech of hers into the mind are brought,
  • And who beholds is blessèd oftenwhiles.
  • The look she hath when she a little smiles
  • Cannot be said, nor holden in the thought;
  • 'Tis such a new and gracious miracle.
This sonnet has three sections. In the first, I say how this lady brings

this power into action by those most noble features, her eyes; and, in

the third, I say this same as to that most noble feature, her mouth. And

between these two sections is a little section, which asks, as it were, help

for the previous section and the subsequent; and it begins here, “ O

women, help.” The third begins here, “ Humbleness.” The first is

divided into three; for, in the first, I say how she with power makes noble

that which she looks upon; and this is as much as to say that she brings

Love, in power, thither where he is not. In the second, I say how she

brings Love, in act, into the hearts of all those whom she sees. In the

third, I tell what she afterwards, with virtue, operates upon their hearts.

The second begins, “ Upon her path” ; the third, “ He whom she greeteth.”

Then, when I say, “ O women, help,” I intimate to whom it is my inten-

tion to speak, calling on women to help me to honour her. Then, when I

say, “ Humbleness,” I say that same which is said in the first part, re-

garding two acts of her mouth, one whereof is her most sweet speech, and

the other her marvellous smile. Only, I say not of this last how it operates
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upon the hearts of others, because memory cannot retain this smile, nor

its operation.
Not many days after this (it being the will of the most High God,

who also from Himself put not away death), the father of wonderful

Beatrice, going out of this life, passed certainly into glory. Thereby

it happened, as of very sooth it might not be otherwise, that this

lady was made full of the bitterness of grief: seeing that such a parting

is very grievous unto those friends who are left, and that no other

friendship is like to that between a good parent and a good child;

and furthermore considering that this lady was good in the supreme

degree, and her father (as by many it hath been truly averred) of

exceeding goodness. And because it is the usage of that city that men

meet with men in such a grief, and women with women, certain ladies

of her companionship gathered themselves unto Beatrice, where she

kept alone in her weeping: and as they passed in and out, I could

hear them speak concerning her, how she wept. At length two of

them went by me, who said: “Certainly she grieveth in such sort

that one might die for pity, beholding her.” Then, feeling the tears

upon my face, I put up my hands to hide them: and had it not been

that I hoped to hear more concerning her (seeing that where I sat,

her friends passed continually in and out), I should assuredly have

gone thence to be alone, when I felt the tears come. But as I still

sat in that place, certain ladies again passed near me, who were saying

among themselves: “Which of us shall be joyful any more, who have

listened to this lady in her piteous sorrow?” And there were others

who said as they went by me: “He that sitteth here could not weep

more if he had beheld her as we have beheld her;” and again: “He

is so altered that he seemeth not as himself.” And still as the ladies

passed to and fro, I could hear them speak after this fashion of her

and of me.
Wherefore afterwards, having considered and perceiving that there

was herein matter for poesy, I resolved that I would write certain

rhymes in the which should be contained all that those ladies had said.

And because I would willingly have spoken to them if it had not been

for discreetness, I made in my rhymes as though I had spoken and

they had answered me. And thereof I wrote two sonnets; in the first

of which I addressed them as I would fain have done; and in the

second related their answer, using the speech that I had heard from

them, as though it had been spoken unto myself. And the sonnets

are these:—
more about SONNET. You that thus wear a modest countenance.
I
  • You that thus wear a modest countenance
  • With lids weigh'd down by the heart's heaviness,
  • Whence come you, that among you every face
  • Appears the same, for its pale troubled glance?
  • Have you beheld my lady's face, perchance,
  • Bow'd with the grief that Love makes full of grace?
  • Say now, “This thing is thus”; as my heart says,
  • Marking your grave and sorrowful advance.
  • And if indeed you come from where she sighs
  • 10 And mourns, may it please you (for his heart's relief)
  • To tell how it fares with her unto him
  • Who knows that you have wept, seeing your eyes,
  • And is so grieved with looking on your grief
  • That his heart trembles and his sight grows dim.
This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, I call and ask

these ladies whether they come from her, telling them that I think they do,

because they return the nobler. In the second, I pray them to tell me of

her; and the second begins here, “ And if indeed.”
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more about SONNET. Canst thou indeed be he that still would sing.
II
  • Canst thou indeed be he that still would sing
  • Of our dear lady unto none but us?
  • For though thy voice confirms that it is thus,
  • Thy visage might another witness bring.
  • And wherefore is thy grief so sore a thing
  • That grieving thou mak'st others dolorous?
  • Hast thou too seen her weep, that thou from us
  • Canst not conceal thine inward sorrowing?
  • Nay, leave our woe to us: let us alone:
  • 10 'Twere sin if one should strive to soothe our woe,
  • For in her weeping we have heard her speak:
  • Also her look's so full of her heart's moan
  • That they who should behold her, looking so,
  • Must fall aswoon, feeling all life grow weak.
This sonnet has four parts, as the ladies in whose person I reply had

four forms of answer. And, because these are sufficiently shown above,

I stay not to explain the purport of the parts, and therefore I only dis-

criminate them. The second begins here, “ And wherefore is thy grief” ;

the third here, “ Nay, leave our woe” ; the fourth, “ Also her look.”
A few days after this, my body became afflicted with a painful

infirmity, whereby I suffered bitter anguish for many days, which at

last brought me unto such weakness that I could no longer move.

And I remember that on the ninth day, being overcome with intolerable

pain, a thought came into my mind concerning my lady: but when

it had a little nourished this thought, my mind returned to its brooding

over mine enfeebled body. And then perceiving how frail a thing

life is, even though health keep with it, the matter seemed to me so

pitiful that I could not choose but weep; and weeping I said within

myself: “Certainly it must some time come to pass that the very

gentle Beatrice will die.” Then, feeling bewildered, I closed mine

eyes; and my brain began to be in travail as the brain of one frantic,

and to have such imaginations as here follow.
And at the first, it seemed to me that I saw certain faces of women

with their hair loosened, which called out to me, “Thou shalt surely

die”; after the which, other terrible and unknown appearances said

unto me, “Thou art dead.” At length, as my phantasy held on in

its wanderings, I came to be I knew not where, and to behold a throng

of dishevelled ladies wonderfully sad, who kept going hither and

thither weeping. Then the sun went out, so that the stars showed

themselves, and they were of such a colour that I knew they must be

weeping: and it seemed to me that the birds fell dead out of the

sky, and that there were great earthquakes. With that, while I

wondered in my trance, and was filled with a grievous fear, I con-

ceived that a certain friend came unto me and said: “Hast thou not

heard? She that was thine excellent lady hath been taken out of

life.” Then I began to weep very piteously; and not only in mine

imagination, but with mine eyes, which were wet with tears. And I

seemed to look towards Heaven, and to behold a multitude of angels

who were returning upwards, having before them an exceedingly

white cloud: and these angels were singing together gloriously, and

the words of their song were these: “ Osanna in excelsis”; and there

was no more that I heard. Then my heart that was so full of love

said unto me: “It is true that our lady lieth dead;” and it seemed

to me that I went to look upon the body wherein that blessed and

most noble spirit had had its abiding-place. And so strong was this

idle imagining, that it made me to behold my lady in death, whose

head certain ladies seemed to be covering with a white veil; and who

was so humble of her aspect that it was as though she had said, “I
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have attained to look on the beginning of peace.” And therewithal

I came unto such humility by the sight of her, that I cried out upon

Death, saying: “Now come unto me, and be not bitter against me

any longer: surely, there where thou hast been, thou hast learned

gentleness. Wherefore come now unto me who do greatly desire

thee: seest thou not that I wear thy colour already?” And when

I had seen all those offices performed that are fitting to be done unto

the dead, it seemed to me that I went back unto mine own chamber,

and looked up towards Heaven. And so strong was my phantasy

that I wept again in very truth, and said with my true voice: “O

excellent soul! how blessed is he that now looketh upon thee!”
And as I said these words, with a painful anguish of sobbing and

another prayer unto Death, a young and gentle lady, who had been

standing beside me where I lay, conceiving that I wept and cried out

because of the pain of mine infirmity, was taken with trembling and

began to shed tears. Whereby other ladies, who were about the

room, becoming aware of my discomfort by reason of the moan that

she made (who indeed was of my very near kindred), led her away

from where I was, and then set themselves to awaken me, thinking

that I dreamed, and saying: “Sleep no longer, and be not disquieted.”
Then, by their words, this strong imagination was brought suddenly

to an end, at the moment that I was about to say, “O Beatrice! peace

be with thee.” And already I had said, “O Beatrice!” when being

aroused, I opened mine eyes, and knew that it had been a deception.

But albeit I had indeed uttered her name, yet my voice was so broken

with sobs, that it was not understood by these ladies; so that in spite

of the sore shame that I felt, I turned towards them by Love's counsel-

ling. And when they beheld me, they began to say, “He seemeth as

one dead,” and to whisper among themselves, “Let us strive if we

may not comfort him.” Whereupon they spake to me many soothing

words, and questioned me moreover touching the cause of my fear.

Then I, being somewhat reassured, and having perceived that it was

a mere phantasy, said unto them, “This thing it was that made me

afeard;” and told them of all that I had seen, from the beginning

even unto the end, but without once speaking the name of my lady.

Also, after I had recovered from my sickness, I bethought me to write

these things in rhyme; deeming it a lovely thing to be known. Whereof

I wrote this poem:
more about POEM. A very pitiful lady, very young.
  • A very pitiful lady, very young,
  • Exceeding rich in human sympathies,
  • Stood by, what time I clamour'd upon Death;
  • And at the wild words wandering on my tongue
  • And at the piteous look within mine eyes
  • She was affrighted, that sobs choked her breath.
  • So by her weeping where I lay beneath,
  • Some other gentle ladies came to know
  • My state, and made her go:
  • 10Afterward, bending themselves over me,
  • One said, “Awaken thee!”
  • And one, “What thing thy sleep disquieteth?”
  • With that, my soul woke up from its eclipse,
  • The while my lady's name rose to my lips:
  • But utter'd in a voice so sob-broken,
  • So feeble with the agony of tears,
  • That I alone might hear it in my heart;
  • And though that look was on my visage then
  • Which he who is ashamed so plainly wears,
  • 20 Love made that I through shame held not apart,
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  • But gazed upon them. And my hue was such
  • That they look'd at each other and thought of death;
  • Saying under their breath
  • Most tenderly, “O let us comfort him:”
  • Then unto me: “What dream
  • Was thine, that it hath shaken thee so much?”
  • And when I was a little comforted,
  • “This, ladies, was the dream I dreamt,” I said.
  • “I was a-thinking how life fails with us
  • 30 Suddenly after such a little while;
  • When Love sobb'd in my heart, which is his home.
  • Whereby my spirit wax'd so dolorous
  • That in myself I said, with sick recoil:
  • ‘Yea, to my lady too this Death must come.’
  • And therewithal such a bewilderment
  • Possess'd me, that I shut mine eyes for peace;
  • And in my brain did cease
  • Order of thought, and every healthful thing.
  • Afterwards, wandering
  • 40 Amid a swarm of doubts that came and went,
  • Some certain women's faces hurried by,
  • And shrieked to me, ‘Thou too shalt die, shalt die!’
  • “Then saw I many broken hinted sights
  • In the uncertain state I stepp'd into.
  • Meseem'd to be I know not in what place,
  • Where ladies through the streets, like mournful lights,
  • Ran with loose hair, and eyes that frighten'd you,
  • By their own terror, and a pale amaze:
  • The while, little by little, as I thought,
  • 50The sun ceased, and the stars began to gather,
  • And each wept at the other;
  • And birds dropp'd in mid-flight out of the sky;
  • And earth shook suddenly;
  • And I was 'ware of one, hoarse and tired out,
  • Who ask'd of me: ‘Hast thou not heard it said? . . .
  • Thy lady, she that was so fair, is dead.’
  • “Then lifting up mine eyes, as the tears came,
  • I saw the Angels, like a rain of manna,
  • In a long flight flying back Heavenward;
  • 60Having a little cloud in front of them,
  • After the which they went and said, ‘Hosanna’;
  • And if they had said more, you should have heard.
  • Then Love said, ‘Now shall all things be made clear:
  • Come and behold our lady where she lies.’
  • These 'wildering phantasies
  • Then carried me to see my lady dead.
  • Even as I there was led,
  • Her ladies with a veil were covering her;
  • And with her was such very humbleness
  • 70That she appeared to say, ‘I am at peace.’
  • “And I became so humble in my grief,
  • Seeing in her such deep humility,
  • That I said: ‘Death, I hold thee passing good
  • Henceforth, and a most gentle sweet relief,
  • Since my dear love has chosen to dwell with thee:
  • Pity, not hate, is thine, well understood.
    • Image of page 331 page: 331
  • Lo! I do so desire to see thy face
  • That I am like as one who nears the tomb;
  • My soul entreats thee, Come.’
  • 80Then I departed, having made my moan;
  • And when I was alone
  • I said, and cast my eyes to the High Place:
  • ‘Blessed is he, fair soul, who meets thy glance!’
  • . . . Just then you woke me, of your complaisaùnce.”
This poem has two parts. In the first, speaking to a person undefined,

I tell how I was aroused from a vain phantasy by certain ladies, and how

I promised them to tell what it was. In the second, I say how I told them.

The second part begins here, “ I was a-thinking.” The first part divides

into two. In the first, I tell that which certain ladies, and which one singly,

did and said because of my phantasy, before I had returned into my right

senses. In the second, I tell what these ladies said to me after I had

left off this wandering: and it begins here, “ But uttered in a voice.”

Then, when I say, “ I was a-thinking,” I say how I told them this my

imagination; and concerning this I have two parts. In the first, I tell,

in order, this imagination. In the second, saying at what time they called

me, I covertly thank them: and this part begins here, “ Just then you

woke me.”
After this empty imagining, it happened on a day, as I sat thought-

ful, that I was taken with such a strong trembling at the heart, that

it could not have been otherwise in the presence of my lady. Where-

upon I perceived that there was an appearance of Love beside me,

and I seemed to see him coming from my lady; and he said, not aloud

but within my heart: “Now take heed that thou bless the day when

I entered into thee; for it is fitting that thou shouldst do so.” And

with that my heart was so full of gladness, that I could hardly believe

it to be of very truth mine own heart and not another.
A short while after these words which my heart spoke to me with

the tongue of Love, I saw coming towards me a certain lady who

was very famous for her beauty, and of whom that friend whom I have

already called the first among my friends had long been enamoured.

This lady's right name was Joan; but because of her comeliness (or

at least it was so imagined) she was called of many Primavera (Spring),

and went by that name among them. Then looking again, I perceived

that the most noble Beatrice followed after her. And when both

these ladies had passed by me, it seemed to me that Love spake again

in my heart, saying: “She that came first was called Spring, only

because of that which was to happen on this day. And it was I myself

who caused that name to be given her; seeing that as the Spring

cometh first in the year, so should she come first on this day,* when

Beatrice was to show herself after the vision of her servant. And even

if thou go about to consider her right name, it is also as one should

say, ‘She shall come first’: inasmuch as her name, Joan, is taken from

that John who went before the True Light, saying: ‘ Ego vox clamantis

in deserto: Parate viam Domini .’”† And also it seemed to me that

he added other words, to wit: “He who should inquire delicately

touching this matter could not but call Beatrice by mine own name,

which is to say, Love; beholding her so like unto me.”
Then I, having thought of this, imagined to write it with rhymes

and send it unto my chief friend; but setting aside certain words‡
Transcribed Footnote (page 331):

* There is a play in the original upon the words Primavera (Spring) and prima verrà

(she shall come first), to which have given as near an equivalent as I could.

Transcribed Footnote (page 331):

† “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’”

Transcribed Footnote (page 331):

‡ That is (as I understand it), suppressing, from delicacy towards his friend, the words

in which Love describes Joan as merely the forerunner of Beatrice. And perhaps in the

latter part of this sentence a reproach is gently conveyed to the fickle Guido Cavalcanti,

who may already have transferred his homage (though Dante had not then learned it)

from Joan to Mandetta. (See his Poems.)

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which seemed proper to be set aside, because I believed that his heart

still regarded the beauty of her that was called Spring. And I wrote

this sonnet:—
more about SONNET. I felt a spirit of love begin to stir.
  • I felt a spirit of love begin to stir
  • Within my heart, long time unfelt till then;
  • And saw Love coming towards me fair and fain,
  • (That I scarce knew him for his joyful cheer),
  • Saying, “Be now indeed my worshipper!”
  • And in his speech he laugh'd and laugh'd again.
  • Then, while it was his pleasure to remain,
  • I chanced to look the way he had drawn near,
  • And saw the Ladies Joan and Beatrice
  • 10 Approach me, this the other following,
  • One and a second marvel instantly.
  • And even as now my memory speaketh this,
  • Love spake it then: “The first is christen'd Spring;
  • The second Love, she is so like to me.”
This sonnet has many parts: whereof the first tells how I felt awakened

within my heart the accustomed tremor, and how it seemed that Love

appeared to me joyful from afar. The second says how it appeared to

me that Love spake within my heart, and what was his aspect. The third

tells how, after he had in such wise been with me a space, I saw and heard

certain things. The second part begins here, “ Saying, ‘ Be now’” ;

the third here, “ Then, while it was his pleasure.” The third part divides

into two. In the first, I say what I saw. In the second, I say what I

heard; and it begins here, “ Love spake it then.”
It might be here objected unto me, (and even by one worthy of

controversy,) that I have spoken of Love as though it were a thing

outward and visible: not only a spiritual essence, but as a bodily

substance also. The which thing, in absolute truth, is a fallacy;

Love not being of itself a substance, but an accident of substance.

Yet that I speak of Love as though it were a thing tangible and even

human, appears by three things which I say thereof. And firstly,

I say that I perceived Love coming towards me; whereby, seeing that

to come bespeaks locomotion, and seeing also how philosophy teacheth

us that none but a corporeal substance hath locomotion, it seemeth

that I speak of Love as of a corporeal substance. And secondly, I

say that Love smiled: and thirdly, that Love spake; faculties (and

especially the risible faculty) which appear proper unto man: whereby

it further seemeth that I speak of Love as of a man. Now that this

matter may be explained, (as is fitting), it must first be remembered

that anciently they who wrote poems of Love wrote not in the vulgar

tongue, but rather certain poets in the Latin tongue. I mean, among

us, although perchance the same may have been among others, and

although likewise, as among the Greeks, they were not writers of

spoken language, but men of letters treated of these things.* And

indeed it is not a great number of years since poetry began to be

made in the vulgar tongue; the writing of rhymes in spoken language

corresponding to the writing in metre of Latin verse, by a certain

analogy. And I say that it is but a little while, because if we examine

the language of oco and the language of sì,† we shall not find in those
Transcribed Footnote (page 332):

* On reading Dante's treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, it will be found that the distinction

which he intends here is not between one language, or dialect, and another; but between

“vulgar speech” (that is, the language handed down from mother to son without any

conscious use of grammar or syntax), and language as regulated by grammarians and the

laws of literary composition, and which Dante calls simply “Grammar.” A great deal

might be said on the bearings of the present passage, but it is no part of my plan to enter

on such questions.

Transcribed Footnote (page 332):

† I.e., the languages of Provence and Tuscany.

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tongues any written thing of an earlier date than the last hundred

and fifty years. Also the reason why certain of a very mean sort

obtained at the first some fame as poets is, that before them no man

has written verses in the language of sì: and of these, the first was

moved to the writing of such verses by the wish to make himself

understood of a certain lady, unto whom Latin poetry was difficult.

This thing is against such as rhyme concerning other matters than

love; that mode of speech having been first used for the expression

of love alone.* Wherefore, seeing that poets have a license allowed

them that is not allowed unto the writers of prose, and seeing also that

they who write in rhyme are simply poets in the vulgar tongue, it

becomes fitting and reasonable that a larger license should be given

to these than to other modern writers; and that any metaphor or

rhetorical similitude which is permitted unto poets, should also be

counted not unseemly in the rhymers of the vulgar tongue. Thus,

if we perceive that the former have caused inanimate things to speak

as though they had sense and reason, and to discourse one with an-

other; yea, and not only actual things, but such also as have no real

existence (seeing that they have made things which are not, to speak;

and oftentimes written of those which are merely accidents as though

they were substances and things human); it should therefore be

permitted to the latter to do the like; which is to say, not inconsider-

ately, but with such sufficient motive as may afterwards be set forth

in prose.
That the Latin poets have done thus, appears through Virgil, where

he saith that Juno (to wit, a goddess hostile to the Trojans) spake

unto Æolus, master of the Winds; as it is written in the first book

of the Æneid, Æole, namque tibi, etc.; and that this master of the

Winds made reply: Tuus, o regina, quid optes—Explorare labor, mihi

jussa capessere fas est. And through the same poet, the inanimate

thing speaketh unto the animate, in the third book of the Æneid,

where it is written: Dardanidæ duri, etc. With Lucan, the animate

thing speaketh to the inanimate; as thus: Multum, Roma, tamen

debes civilibus armis. In Horace, man is made to speak to his own

intelligence as unto another person: (and not only hath Horace

done this, but herein he followeth the excellent Homer,) as thus in

his Poetics: Dic mihi, Musa, virum, etc. Through Ovid, Love speaketh

as a human creature, in the beginning of his discourse De Remediis

Amoris: as thus: Bella mihi, video, bella parantur, ait. By which

ensamples this thing shall be made manifest unto such as may be

offended at any part of this my book. And lest some of the common

sort should be moved to jeering hereat, I will here add, that neither

did these ancient poets speak thus without consideration, nor should

they who are makers of rhyme in our day write after the same fashion,

having no reason in what they write; for it were a shameful thing

if one should rhyme under the semblance of metaphor or rhetorical

similitude, and afterwards, being questioned thereof, should be unable

to rid his words of such semblance, unto their right understanding.

Of whom, (to wit, of such as rhyme thus foolishly,) myself and the

first among my friends do know many.
But returning to the matter of my discourse. This excellent lady

of whom I spake in what hath gone before, came at last into such

favour with all men, that when she passed anywhere folk ran to behold

her; which thing was a deep joy to me: and when she drew near

unto any, so much truth and simpleness entered into his heart, that
Transcribed Footnote (page 333):

* It strikes me that this curious passage furnishes a reason, hitherto (I believe) over-

looked, why Dante put such of his lyrical poems as relate to philosophy into the form of

love-poems. He liked writing in Italian rhyme rather than Latin metre; he thought

Italian rhyme ought to be confined to love-poems: therefore whatever he wrote (at this

age) had to take the form of a love-poem. Thus any poem by Dante not concerning

love is later than his twenty-seventh year (1291–2), when he wrote the prose of the Vita

Nuova ; the poetry having been written earlier, at the time of the events referred to.

Image of page 334 page: 334


he dared neither to lift his eyes nor to return her salutation: and

unto this, many who have felt it can bear witness. She went along

crowned and clothed with humility, showing no whit of pride in all

that she heard and saw: and when she had gone by, it was said of

many, “This is not a woman, but one of the beautiful angels of

Heaven:” and there were some that said: “This is surely a miracle;

blessed be the Lord, who hath power to work thus marvellously.”

I say, of very sooth, that she showed herself so gentle and so full

of all perfection, that she bred in those who looked upon her a soothing

quiet beyond any speech; neither could any look upon her without

sighing immediately. These things, and things yet more wonderful,

were brought to pass through her miraculous virtue. Wherefore I,

considering thereof and wishing to resume the endless tale of her

praises, resolved to write somewhat wherein I might dwell on her

surpassing influence; to the end that not only they who had beheld

her, but others also, might know as much concerning her as words

could give to the understanding. And it was then that I wrote this

sonnet:—
more about SONNET. My lady looks so gentle and so pure.
  • My lady looks so gentle and so pure
  • When yielding salutation by the way,
  • That the tongue trembles and has nought to say,
  • And the eyes, which fain would see, may not endure.
  • And still, amid the praise she hears secure,
  • She walks with humbleness for her array;
  • Seeming a creature sent from Heaven to stay
  • On earth, and show a miracle made sure.
  • She is so pleasant in the eyes of men
  • 10That through the sight the inmost heart doth gain
  • A sweetness which needs proof to know it by:
  • And from between her lips there seems to move
  • A soothing essence that is full of love,
  • Saying for ever to the spirit, “Sigh!”
This sonnet is so easy to understand, from what is afore narrated,

that it needs no division; and therefore, leaving it, I say also that

this excellent lady came into such favour with all men, that not only

she herself was honoured and commended, but through her companion-

ship, honour and commendation came unto others. Wherefore I,

perceiving this, and wishing that it should also be made manifest

to those that beheld it not, wrote the sonnet here following; wherein

is signified the power which her virtue had upon other ladies:—
more about SONNET. For certain he hath seen all perfectness.
  • For certain he hath seen all perfectness
  • Who among other ladies hath seen mine:
  • They that go with her humbly should combine
  • To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
  • So perfect is the beauty of her face
  • That it begets in no wise any sign
  • Of envy, but draws round her a clear line
  • Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness.
  • Merely the sight of her makes all things bow:
  • 10 Not she herself alone is holier
  • Than all; but hers, through her, are raised above.
  • From all her acts such lovely graces flow
  • That truly one may never think of her
  • Without a passion of exceeding love.
This sonnet has three parts. In the first, I say in what company this

lady appeared most wondrous. In the second, I say how gracious was
Image of page 335 page: 335
her society. In the third, I tell of the things which she, with power, worked

upon others. The second begins here, “ They that go with her” ; the

third there, “ So perfect.” This last part divides into three. In the first,

I tell what she operated upon women, that is, by their own faculties. In

the second, I tell what she operated in them through others. In the third,

I say how she not only operated in women, but in all people; and not

only while herself present, but, by memory of her, operated wondrously.

The second begins here, “ Merely the sight” ; the third here, “ From all

her acts.”
Thereafter on a day, I began to consider that which I had said

of my lady: to wit, in these two sonnets aforegone: and becoming

aware that I had not spoken of her immediate effect on me at that

especial time, it seemed to me that I had spoken defectively. Where-

upon I resolved to write somewhat of the manner wherein I was then

subject to her influence, and of what her influence then was. And

conceiving that I should not be able to say these things in the small

compass of a sonnet, I began therefore a poem with this beginning:—
more about SONNET. Love hath so long possess'd me for his own.
  • Love hath so long possessed me for his own
  • And made his lordship so familiar
  • That he, who at first irked me, is now grown
  • Unto my heart as its best secrets are.
  • And thus, when he in such sore wise doth mar
  • My life that all its strength seems gone from it,
  • Mine inmost being then feels throughly quit
  • Of anguish, and all evil keeps afar.
  • Love also gathers to such power in me
  • 10 That my sighs speak, each one a grievous thing,
  • Always soliciting
  • My lady's salutation piteously.
  • Whenever she beholds me, it is so,
  • Who is more sweet than any words can show.
Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo! facta est quasi vidua domina

gentium!*
I was still occupied with this poem, (having composed thereof only

the above written stanza,) when the Lord God of justice called my

most gracious lady unto Himself, that she might be glorious under

the banner of that blessed Queen Mary, whose name had always

a deep reverence in the words of holy Beatrice. And because haply

it might be found good that I should say somewhat concerning her

departure, I will herein declare what are the reasons which make

that I shall not do so.
And the reasons are three. The first is, that such matter belongeth

not of right to the present argument; if one consider the opening of

this little book. The second is, that even though the present argument

required it, my pen doth not suffice to write in a fit manner of this

thing. And the third is, that were it both possible and of absolute

necessity, it would still be unseemly for me to speak thereof, seeing

that thereby it must behove me to speak also mine own praises: a

thing that in whosoever doeth it is worthy of blame. For the which

reasons, I will leave this matter to be treated of by some other than

myself.
Nevertheless, as the number nine, which number hath often had

mention in what hath gone before, (and not, as it might appear, with-

out reason,) seems also to have borne a part in the manner of her

death: it is therefore right that I should say somewhat thereof.
Transcribed Footnote (page 335):

* “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a

widow, she that was great among the nations!”— Lamentations of Jeremiah, i. 1.

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And for this cause, having first said what was the part it bore herein,

I will afterwards point out a reason which made that this number was

so closely allied unto my lady.
I say, then, that according to the division of time in Italy her most

noble spirit departed from among us in the first hour of the ninth day

of the month; and according to the division of time in Syria, in the

ninth month of the year: seeing that Tismim, which with us is October,

is there the first month. Also she was taken from among us in that

year of our reckoning (to wit, of the years of our Lord) in which the

perfect number was nine times multiplied within that century wherein

she was born into the world: which is to say, the thirteenth century

of Christians.*
And touching the reason why this number was so closely allied unto

her, it may peradventure be this. According to Ptolemy, (and also

to the Christian verity,) the revolving heavens are nine; and according

to the common opinion among astrologers, these nine heavens together

have influence over the earth. Wherefore it would appear that this

number was thus allied unto her for the purpose of signifying that,

at her birth, all these nine heavens were at perfect unity with each

other as to their influence. This is one reason that may be brought:

but more narrowly considering, and according to the infallible truth,

this number was her own self: that is to say, by similitude. As thus.

The number three is the root of the number nine; seeing that without

the interposition of any other number, being multiplied merely by

itself, it produceth nine, as we manifestly perceive that three times

three are nine. Thus, three being of itself the efficient of nine, and

the Great Efficient of Miracles being of Himself Three Persons (to

wit: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), which, being Three,

are also One:—this lady was accompanied by the number nine to

the end that men might clearly perceive her to be a nine, that is, a

miracle, whose only root is the Holy Trinity. It may be that a more

subtile person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtilty:

but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.
After this most gracious creature had gone out from among us,

the whole city came to be as it were widowed and despoiled of all

dignity. Then I, left mourning in this desolate city, wrote unto the

principal persons thereof, in an epistle, concerning its condition;

taking for my commencement those words of Jeremias: Quomodo

sedet sola civitas! etc. And I make mention of this, that none may

marvel wherefore I set down these words before, in beginning to treat

of her death. Also if any should blame me, in that I do not transcribe

that epistle whereof I have spoken, I will make it mine excuse that

I began this little book with the intent that it should be written alto-

gether in the vulgar tongue; wherefore, seeing that the epistle I

speak of is in Latin, it belongeth not to mine undertaking: more

especially as I know that my chief friend, for whom I write this

book, wished also that the whole of it should be in the vulgar

tongue.
When mine eyes had wept for some while, until they were so weary

with weeping that I could no longer through them give ease to my

sorrow, I bethought me that a few mournful words might stand me

instead of tears. And therefore I proposed to make a poem, that

weeping I might speak therein of her for whom so much sorrow had

destroyed my spirit; and I then began “The eyes that weep.”
That this poem may seem to remain the more widowed at its close, I

will divide it before writing it; and this method I will observe hence-
Transcribed Footnote (page 336):

* Beatrice Portinari will thus be found to have died during the first hour of the 9th of

June, 1290. And from what Dante says at the commencement of this work, (viz. that

she was younger than himself by eight or nine months,) it may also be gathered that

her age, at the time of her death, was twenty-four years and three months. The “perfect

number” mentioned in the present passage is the number ten.

Image of page 337 page: 337
Sig. 22
forward. I say that this poor little poem has three parts. The first is

a prelude. In the second, I speak of her. In the third, I speak pitifully

to the poem. The second begins here, “ Beatrice is gone up” ; the third

here, “ Weep, pitiful Song of mine.” The first divides into three. In

the first, I say what moves me to speak. In the second, I say to whom

I mean to speak. In the third, I say of whom I mean to speak. The

second begins here, “ And because often, thinking” ; the third here,

“ And I will say.” Then, when I say, “ Beatrice is gone up,” I speak

of her; and concerning this I have two parts. First, I tell the cause

why she was taken away from us: afterwards, I say how one weeps her

parting; and this part commences here, “ Wonderfully.” This part

divides into three. In the first, I say who it is that weeps her not. In

the second, I say who it is that doth weep her. In the third, I speak of

my condition. The second begins here, “ But sighing comes, and grief” ;

the third, “ With sighs.” Then, when I say, “ Weep, pitiful Song of

mine,” I speak to this my song, telling it what ladies to go to, and stay

with.
more about SONG. The eyes that weep for pity of the heart.
  • The eyes that weep for pity of the heart
  • Have wept so long that their grief languisheth,
  • And they have no more tears to weep withal:
  • And now, if I would ease me of a part
  • Of what, little by little, leads to death,
  • It must be done by speech, or not at all.
  • And because often, thinking, I recall
  • How it was pleasant, ere she went afar,
  • To talk of her with you, kind damozels,
  • 10 I talk with no one else,
  • But only with such hearts as women's are.
  • And I will say,—still sobbing as speech fails,—
  • That she hath gone to Heaven suddenly,
  • And hath left Love below, to mourn with me.
  • Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven,
  • The kingdom where the angels are at peace;
  • And lives with them: and to her friends is dead.
  • Not by the frost of winter was she driven
  • Away, like others; nor by summer-heats;
  • 20 But through a perfect gentleness, instead.
  • For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead
  • Such an exceeding glory went up thence
  • That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,
  • Until a sweet desire
  • Entered Him for that lovely excellence,
  • So that He bade her to Himself aspire;
  • Counting this weary and most evil place
  • Unworthy of a thing so full of grace.
  • Wonderfully out of the beautiful form
  • 30 Soared her clear spirit, waxing glad the while;
  • And is in its first home, there where it is.
  • Who speaks thereof, and feels not the tears warm
  • Upon his face, must have become so vile
  • As to be dead to all sweet sympathies.
  • Out upon him! an abject wretch like this
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  • May not imagine anything of her,—
  • He needs no bitter tears for his relief.
  • But sighing comes, and grief,
  • And the desire to find no comforter,
  • 40 (Save only Death, who makes all sorrow brief,)
  • To him who for a while turns in his thought
  • How she hath been among us, and is not.
  • With sighs my bosom always laboureth
  • In thinking, as I do continually,
  • Of her for whom my heart now breaks apace;
  • And very often when I think of death,
  • Such a great inward longing comes to me
  • That it will change the colour of my face;
  • And, if the idea settles in its place,
  • 50All my limbs shake as with an ague-fit:
  • Till, starting up in wild bewilderment,
  • I do become so shent
  • That I go forth, lest folk misdoubt of it.
  • Afterward, calling with a sore lament
  • On Beatrice, I ask, “Canst thou be dead?”
  • And calling on her, I am comforted.
  • Grief with its tears, and anguish with its sighs,
  • Come to me now whene'er I am alone;
  • So that I think the sight of me gives pain.
  • 60And what my life hath been, that living dies,
  • Since for my lady the New Birth's begun,
  • I have not any language to explain.
  • And so, dear ladies, though my heart were fain,
  • I scarce could tell indeed how I am thus.
  • All joy is with my bitter life at war;
  • Yea, I am fallen so far
  • That all men seem to say, “Go out from us,”
  • Eyeing my cold white lips, how dead they are.
  • But she, though I be bowed unto the dust,
  • 70Watches me; and will guerdon me, I trust.
  • Weep, pitiful Song of mine, upon thy way,
  • To the dames going and the damozels
  • For whom and for none else
  • Thy sisters have made music many a day.
  • Thou, that art very sad and not as they,
  • Go dwell thou with them as a mourner dwells.
After I had written this poem, I received the visit of a friend whom

I counted as second unto me in the degrees of friendship, and who,

moreover, had been united by the nearest kindred to that most gracious

creature. And when we had a little spoken together, he began to

solicit me that I would write somewhat in memory of a lady who

had died; and he disguised his speech, so as to seem to be speaking

of another who was but lately dead: wherefore I, perceiving that his

speech was of none other than that blessed one herself, told him that

it should be done as he required. Then afterwards, having thought

thereof, I imagined to give vent in a sonnet to some part of my hidden

lamentations; but in such sort that it might seem to be spoken by

this friend of mine, to whom I was to give it. And the sonnet saith

thus: “Stay now with me,” etc.
Image of page 339 page: 339
This sonnet has two parts. In the first, I call the Faithful of Love

to hear me. In the second, I relate my miserable condition. The second

begins here, “ Mark how they force.”
more about SONNET. Stay now with me, and listen to my sighs.
  • Stay now with me, and listen to my sighs,
  • Ye piteous hearts, as pity bids ye do.
  • Mark how they force their way out and press through;
  • If they be once pent up, the whole life dies.
  • Seeing that now indeed my weary eyes
  • Oftener refuse than I can tell to you
  • (Even though my endless grief is ever new,)
  • To weep and let the smothered anguish rise.
  • Also in sighing ye shall hear me call
  • 10 On her whose blessed presence doth enrich
  • The only home that well befitteth her:
  • And ye shall hear a bitter scorn of all
  • Sent from the inmost of my spirit in speech
  • That mourns its joy and its joy's minister.
But when I had written this sonnet, bethinking me who he was

to whom I was to give it, that it might appear to be his speech, it

seemed to me that this was but a poor and barren gift for one of her

so near kindred. Wherefore, before giving him this sonnet, I wrote

two stanzas of a poem: the first being written in very sooth as though

it were spoken by him, but the other being mine own speech, albeit,

unto one who should not look closely, they would both seem to be

said by the same person. Nevertheless, looking closely, one must

perceive that it is not so, inasmuch as one does not call this most

gracious creature his lady, and the other does, as is manifestly apparent.

And I gave the poem and the sonnet unto my friend, saying that I

had made them only for him.
The poem begins, “ Whatever while,” and has two parts. In the first,

that is, in the first stanza, this my dear friend, her kinsman, laments.

In the second, I lament; that is, in the other stanza, which begins, “ For

ever.” And thus it appears that in this poem two persons lament, of

whom one laments as a brother, the other as a servant.
more about SONNET. Whatever while the thought comes over me.
  • Whatever while the thought comes over me
  • That I may not again
  • Behold that lady whom I mourn for now,
  • About my heart my mind brings constantly
  • So much of extreme pain
  • That I say, Soul of mine, why stayest thou?
  • Truly the anguish, Soul, that we must bow
  • Beneath, until we win out of this life,
  • Gives me full oft a fear that trembleth:
  • 10 So that I call on Death
  • Even as on Sleep one calleth after strife,
  • Saying, Come unto me. Life showeth grim
  • And bare; and if one dies, I envy him.
  • For ever, among all my sighs which burn,
  • There is a piteous speech
  • That clamours upon death continually:
  • Yea, unto him doth my whole spirit turn
  • Since first his hand did reach
  • My lady's life with most foul cruelty.
  • 20 But from the height of woman's fairness, she,
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Note: There is a typo on page 340, line 5 of the sonnet “That lady of all gentle memories” (not the “Second Commencement”): the word “he” is printed, rather than “be.”
  • Going up from us with the joy we had,
  • Grew perfectly and spiritually fair;
  • That so she spreads even there
  • A light of Love which makes the Angels glad,
  • And even unto their subtle minds can bring
  • A certain awe of profound marvelling.
Note: The preceding two works are not “sonnets” per se, consisting of thirteen-line stanzas.
On that day which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made

of the citizens of eternal life, remembering me of her as I sat alone,

I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain

tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head, I perceived

that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given

courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did: also

I learned afterwards that they had been there a while before I perceived

them. Perceiving whom, I arose for salutation, and said: “Another

was with me.”*
Afterwards, when they had left me, I set myself again to mine

occupation, to wit, to the drawing figures of angels: in doing which,

I conceived to write of this matter in rhyme, as for her anniversary,

and to address my rhymes unto those who had just left me. It was

then that I wrote the sonnet which saith, “That lady”: and as this

sonnet hath two commencements, it behoveth me to divide it with

both of them here.
I say that, according to the first, this sonnet has three parts. In the

first, I say that this lady was then in my memory. In the second, I tell

what Love therefore did with me. In the third, I speak of the effects of

Love. The second begins here, “ Love knowing” ; the third here, “ Forth

went they.” This part divides into two. In the one, I say that all my

sighs issued speaking. In the other, I say how some spoke certain words

different from the others. The second begins here, “ And still.” In this

same manner is it divided with the other beginning, save that, in the first

part, I tell when this lady had thus come into my mind, and this I say not

in the other.
more about SONNET. That lady of all gentle memories.
  • That lady of all gentle memories
  • Had lighted on my soul;—whose new abode
  • Lies now, as it was well ordained of God,
  • Among the poor in heart, where Mary is.
  • Love, knowing that dear image to he his,
  • Woke up within the sick heart sorrow-bow'd,
  • Unto the sighs which are its weary load
  • Saying, “Go forth.” And they went forth, I wis;
  • Forth went they from my breast that throbbed and ached;
  • 10 With such a pang as oftentimes will bathe
  • Mine eyes with tears when I am left alone.
  • And still those sighs which drew the heaviest breath
  • Came whispering thus: “O noble intellect!
  • It is a year to-day that thou art gone.”
Second Commencement
  • That lady of all gentle memories
  • Had lighted on my soul;—for whose sake flowed
  • The tears of Love; in whom the power abode
  • Which led you to observe while I did this.
  • Love, knowing that dear image to be his, etc.
Transcribed Footnote (page 340):

* Thus according to some texts. The majority, however, add the words, “And there-

fore was I in thought:” but the shorter speech is perhaps the more forcible and pathetic.

Image of page 341 page: 341
Then, having sat for some space sorely in thought because of the

time that was now past, I was so filled with dolorous imaginings that

it became outwardly manifest in mine altered countenance. Where-

upon, feeling this and being in dread lest any should have seen me,

I lifted mine eyes to look; and then perceived a young and very

beautiful lady, who was gazing upon me from a window with a gaze

full of pity, so that the very sum of pity appeared gathered together

in her. And seeing that unhappy persons, when they beget compassion

in others, are then most moved unto weeping, as though they also

felt pity for themselves, it came to pass that mine eyes began to be

inclined unto tears. Wherefore, becoming fearful lest I should make

manifest mine abject condition, I rose up, and went where I could

not be seen of that lady; saying afterwards within myself: “Cer-

tainly with her also must abide most noble Love.” And with that,

I resolved upon writing a sonnet, wherein, speaking unto her, I should

say all that I have just said. And as this sonnet is very evident,

I will not divide it:—
more about SONNET. Mine eyes beheld the blessed pity spring.
  • Mine eyes beheld the blessed pity spring
  • Into thy countenance immediately
  • A while agone, when thou beheldst in me
  • The sickness only hidden grief can bring;
  • And then I knew thou wast considering
  • How abject and forlorn my life must be;
  • And I became afraid that thou shouldst see
  • My weeping, and account it a base thing.
  • Therefore I went out from thee; feeling how
  • 10 The tears were straightway loosened at my heart
  • Beneath thine eyes' compassionate control;
  • And afterwards I said within my soul:
  • “Lo! with this lady dwells the counterpart
  • Of the same Love who holds me weeping now.”
It happened after this that whensoever I was seen of this lady,

she became pale and of a piteous countenance, as though it had been

with love; whereby she remembered me many times of my own most

noble lady, who was wont to be of a like paleness. And I know that

often, when I could not weep nor in any way give ease unto mine

anguish, I went to look upon this lady, who seemed to bring the tears

into my eyes by the mere sight of her. Of the which thing I bethought

me to speak unto her in rhyme, and then made this sonnet: which

begins, “Love's pallor,” and which is plain without being divided,

by its exposition aforesaid:—
more about SONNET. Love's pallor and the semblance of deep ruth.
  • Love's pallor and the semblance of deep ruth
  • Were never yet shown forth so perfectly
  • In any lady's face, chancing to see
  • Grief's miserable countenance uncouth,
  • As in thine, lady, they have sprung to soothe,
  • When in mine anguish thou hast looked on me;
  • Until sometimes it seems as if, through thee,
  • My heart might almost wander from its truth.
  • Yet so it is, I cannot hold mine eyes
  • 10 From gazing very often upon thine
  • In the sore hope to shed those tears they keep;
  • And at such time, thou mak'st the pent tears rise
  • Even to the brim, till the eyes waste and pine;
  • Yet cannot they, while thou art present, weep.
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At length, by the constant sight of this lady, mine eyes began to

be gladdened overmuch with her company; through which thing

many times I had much unrest, and rebuked myself as a base person:

also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastness of mine eyes, and said

to them inwardly: “Was not your grievous condition of weeping

wont one while to make others weep? And will ye now forget this

thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merely in

compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady.

But whatso ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I

make you remember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye

make an end of your weeping.” And when I had spoken thus unto

mine eyes, I was taken again with extreme and grievous sighing. And

to the end that this inward strife which I had undergone might not

be hidden from all saving the miserable wretch who endured it, I

proposed to write a sonnet, and to comprehend in it this horrible con-

dition. And I wrote this which begins, “The very bitter weeping.”
The sonnet has two parts. In the first, I speak to my eyes, as my heart

spoke within myself. In the second, I remove a difficulty, showing who

it is that speaks thus: and this part begins here, “ So far.” It well

might receive other divisions also; but this would be useless, since it is

manifest by the preceding exposition.
more about SONNET. The very bitter weeping that ye made.
  • “The very bitter weeping that ye made
  • So long a time together, eyes of mine,
  • Was wont to make the tears of pity shine
  • In other eyes full oft, as I have said.
  • But now this thing were scarce rememberèd
  • If I, on my part, foully would combine
  • With you, and not recall each ancient sign
  • Of grief, and her for whom your tears were shed.
  • It is your fickleness that doth betray
  • 10 My mind to fears, and makes me tremble thus
  • What while a lady greets me with her eyes.
  • Except by death, we must not any way
  • Forget our lady who is gone from us.”
  • So far doth my heart utter, and then sighs.
The sight of this lady brought me into so unwonted a condition

that I often thought of her as of one too dear unto me; and I began

to consider her thus: “This lady is young, beautiful, gentle, and

wise: perchance it was Love himself who set her in my path, that

so my life might find peace.” And there were times when I thought

yet more fondly, until my heart consented unto its reasoning. But

when it had so consented, my thought would often turn round upon

me, as moved by reason, and cause me to say within myself: “What

hope is this which would console me after so base a fashion, and which

hath taken the place of all other imagining?” Also there was another

voice within me, that said: “And wilt thou, having suffered so much

tribulation through Love, not escape while yet thou mayst from so

much bitterness? Thou must surely know that this thought carries

with it the desire of Love, and drew its life from the gentle eyes of

that lady who vouchsafed thee so much pity.” Wherefore I, having

striven sorely and very often with myself, bethought me to say some-

what thereof in rhyme. And seeing that in the battle of doubts,

the victory most often remained with such as inclined towards the

lady of whom I speak, it seemed to me that I should address this

sonnet unto her: in the first line whereof, I call that thought which
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spake of her a gentle thought, only because it spoke of one who was

gentle; being of itself most vile.*
In this sonnet I make myself into two, according as my thoughts were

divided one from the other. The one part I call Heart, that is, appetite;

the other, Soul, that is, reason; and I tell what one saith to the other.

And that it is fitting to call the appetite Heart, and the reason Soul, is

manifest enough to them to whom I wish this to be open. True it is that,

in the preceding sonnet, I take the part of the Heart against the Eyes;

and that appears contrary to what I say in the present; and therefore

I say that, there also, by the Heart I mean appetite, because yet greater

was my desire to remember my most gentle lady than to see this other,

although indeed I had some appetite towards her, but it appeared slight:

wherefrom it appears that the one statement is not contrary to the other.

This sonnet has three parts. In the first, I begin to say to this lady how

my desires turn all towards her. In the second, I say how the Soul, that

is the reason, speaks to the Heart, that is, to the appetite. In the third,

I say how the latter answers. The second begins here, “ And what is

this?” the third here, “ And the heart answers.”
more about SONNET. A gentle thought there is will often start.
  • A gentle thought there is will often start,
  • Within my secret self, to speech of thee:
  • Also of Love it speaks so tenderly
  • That much in me consents and takes its part.
  • “And what is this,” the soul saith to the heart,
  • “That cometh thus to comfort thee and me,
  • And thence where it would dwell, thus potently
  • Can drive all other thoughts by its strange art?”
  • And the heart answers: “Be no more at strife
  • 10 'Twixt doubt and doubt: this is Love's messenger
  • And speaketh but his words, from him received;
  • And all the strength it owns and all the life
  • It draweth from the gentle eyes of her
  • Who, looking on our grief, hath often grieved.”
But against this adversary of reason, there rose up in me on a certain

day, about the ninth hour, a strong visible phantasy, wherein I seemed

to behold the most gracious Beatrice, habited in that crimson raiment

which she had worn when I had first beheld her; also she appeared

to me of the same tender age as then. Whereupon I fell into a deep

thought of her: and my memory ran back, according to the order

of time, unto all those matters in the which she had borne a part;

and my heart began painfully to repent of the desire by which it had

so basely let itself be possessed during so many days, contrary to the

constancy of reason.
And then, this evil desire being quite gone from me, all my thoughts

turned again unto their excellent Beatrice. And I say most truly

that from that hour I thought constantly of her with the whole humbled

and ashamed heart; the which became often manifest in sighs, that

had among them the name of that most gracious creature, and how

she departed from us. Also it would come to pass very often, through

the bitter anguish of some one thought, that I forgot both it, and

myself, and where I was. By this increase of sighs, my weeping,

which before had been somewhat lessened, increased in like manner;

so that mine eyes seemed to long only for tears and to cherish them,

and came at last to be circled about with red as though they had suffered
Transcribed Footnote (page 343):

* Boccaccio tells us that Dante was married to Gemma Donati about a year after the

death of Beatrice. Can Gemma then be “the lady of the window,” his love for whom

Dante so contemns? Such a passing conjecture (when considered together with the

interpretation of this passage in Dante's later work, the Convito) would of course imply

an admission of what I believe to lie at the heart of all true Dantesque commentary;

that is, the existence always of the actual events even where the allegorical superstructure

has been raised by Dante himself.

Image of page 344 page: 344


martyrdom: neither were they able to look again upon the beauty

of any face that might again bring them to shame and evil: from

which things it will appear that they were fitly guerdoned for their

unsteadfastness. Wherefore I (wishing that mine abandonment of

all such evil desires and vain temptations should be certified and made

manifest, beyond all doubts which might have been suggested by

the rhymes aforewritten) proposed to write a sonnet wherein I should

express this purport. And I then wrote, “Woe's me!”
I said, “ Woe's me!” because I was ashamed of the trifling of mine

eyes. This sonnet I do not divide, since its purport is manifest enough .
more about SONNET. Woe's me by dint of all these sighs that come.
  • Woe's me! by dint of all these sighs that come
  • Forth of my heart, its endless grief to prove,
  • Mine eyes are conquered, so that even to move
  • Their lids for greeting is grown troublesome,
  • They wept so long that now they are grief's home,
  • And count their tears all laughter far above;
  • They wept till they are circled now by Love
  • With a red circle in sign of martyrdom.
  • These musings, and the sighs they bring from me,
  • 10 Are grown at last so constant and so sore
  • That love swoons in my spirit with faint breath;
  • Hearing in those sad sounds continually
  • The most sweet name that my dead lady bore,
  • With many grievous words touching her death.
About this time, it happened that a great number of persons under-

took a pilgrimage, to the end that they might behold that blessed

portraiture bequeathed unto us by our Lord Jesus Christ as the image

of His beautiful countenance* (upon which countenance my dear lady

now looketh continually). And certain among these pilgrims, who

seemed very thoughtful, passed by a path which is well-nigh in the

midst of the city where my most gracious lady was born, and abode,

and at last died.
Then I, beholding them, said within myself: “These pilgrims seem

to be come from very far; and I think they cannot have heard speak

of this lady, or know anything concerning her. Their thoughts are

not of her, but of other things; it may be, of their friends who are

far distant, and whom we, in our turn, know not.” And I went on

to say: “I know that if they were of a country near unto us, they

would in some wise seem disturbed, passing through this city which

is so full of grief.” And I said also: “If I could speak with them a

space, I am certain that I should make them weep before they went

forth of this city; for those things that they would hear from me

must needs beget weeping in any.”
And when the last of them had gone by me, I bethought me to

write a sonnet, showing forth mine inward speech; and that it might

seem the more pitiful, I made as though I had spoken it indeed unto

them. And I wrote this sonnet, which beginneth: “Ye pilgrim-
Transcribed Footnote (page 344):

* The Veronica ( Vera icon, or true image); that is, the napkin with which a woman

was said to have wiped our Saviour's face on His way to the cross, and which miraculously

retained its likeness. Dante makes mention of it also in the Commedia (Parad. xxi. 103),

where he says:—

  • “ Qual è colui che forse di Croazia
  • Viene a veder la Veronica nostra
  • Che per l'antica fama non si sazia
  • Ma dice nel pensier fin che si mostra:
  • Signor mio Gesù Cristo, Iddio verace,
  • Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?” etc.

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folk.” I made use of the word pilgrim for its general signification;

for “pilgrim” may be understood in two senses, one general, and

one special. General, so far as any man may be called a pilgrim who

leaveth the place of his birth; whereas, more narrowly speaking, he

only is a pilgrim who goeth towards or frowards the House of St.

James. For there are three separate denominations proper unto those

who undertake journeys to the glory of God. They are called Palmers

who go beyond the seas eastward, whence often they bring palm-

branches. And Pilgrims, as I have said, are they who journey unto

the holy House of Gallicia; seeing that no other apostle was buried

so far from his birth-place as was the blessed Saint James. And there

is a third sort who are called Romers; in that they go whither those

whom I have called pilgrims went: which is to say, unto Rome.
This sonnet is not divided, because its own words sufficiently declare it.
more about SONNET. Ye pilgrim-folk, advancing pensively.
  • Ye pilgrim-folk, advancing pensively
  • As if in thought of distant things, I pray,
  • Is your own land indeed so far away—
  • As by your aspect it would seem to be—
  • That this our heavy sorrow leaves you free
  • Though passing through the mournful town mid-way;
  • Like unto men that understand to-day
  • Nothing at all of her great misery?
  • Yet if ye will but stay, whom I accost,
  • 10 And listen to my words a little space,
  • At going ye shall mourn with a loud voice.
  • It is her Beatrice that she hath lost;
  • Of whom the least word spoken holds such grace
  • That men weep hearing it, and have no choice.
A while after these things, two gentle ladies sent unto me, praying

that I would bestow upon them certain of these my rhymes. And I

(taking into account their worthiness and consideration), resolved that

I would write also a new thing, and send it them together with those

others, to the end that their wishes might be more honourably fulfilled.

Therefore I made a sonnet, which narrates my condition, and which

I caused to be conveyed to them, accompanied by the one preceding,

and with that other which begins, “Stay now with me and listen to

my sighs.” And the new sonnet is, “Beyond the sphere.”
This sonnet comprises five parts. In the first, I tell whither my thought

goeth, naming the place by the name of one of its effects. In the second,

I say wherefore it goeth up, and who makes it go thus. In the third, I

tell what it saw, namely, a lady honoured. And I then call it a “ Pilgrim

Spirit,” because it goes up spiritually, and like a pilgrim who is out of

his known country. In the fourth, I say how the spirit sees her such

(that is, in such quality) that I cannot understand her; that is to say,

my thought rises into the quality of her in a degree that my intellect cannot

comprehend, seeing that our intellect is, towards those blessed souls, like

our eye weak against the sun; and this the Philosopher says in the Second

of the Metaphysics. In the fifth, I say that, although I cannot see there

whither my thought carries me—that is, to her admirable essence—I at

least understand this, namely, that it is a thought of my lady, because

I often hear her name therein. And, at the end of this fifth part, I say,

“ Ladies mine,” to show that they are ladies to whom I speak. The

second part begins, “ A new perception” ; the third, “ When it hath

reached” ; the fourth, “ It sees her such” ; the fifth, “ And yet I know.”

It might be divided yet more nicely, and made yet clearer; but this division

may pass, and therefore I stay not to divide it further.
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more about SONNET. Beyond the sphere which spreads to widest space.
  • Beyond the sphere which spreads to widest space
  • Now soars the sigh that my heart sends above;
  • A new perception born of grieving Love
  • Guideth it upward the untrodden ways.
  • When it hath reached unto the end, and stays,
  • It sees a lady round whom splendours move
  • In homage; till, by the great light thereof
  • Abashed, the pilgrim spirit stands at gaze.
  • It sees her such, that when it tells me this
  • 10 Which it hath seen, I understand it not,
  • It hath a speech so subtile and so fine.
  • And yet I know its voice within my thought
  • Often remembereth me of Beatrice:
  • So that I understand it, ladies mine.
After writing this sonnet, it was given unto me to behold a very

wonderful vision:* wherein I saw things which determined me that I

would say nothing further of this most blessed one, until such time as

I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I

labour all I can; as she well knoweth. Wherefore if it be His pleasure

through whom is the life of all things, that my life continue with me

a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what

hath not before been written of any woman. After the which, may it

seem good unto Him who is the Master of Grace, that my spirit should

go hence to behold the glory of its lady: to wit, of that blessed Beatrice

who now gazeth continually on His countenance qui est per omnia

sæcula benedictus .† Laus Deo.
Transcribed Footnote (page 346):

* This we may believe to have been the Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which

furnished the triple argument of the Divina Commedia. The Latin words ending the

Vita Nuova are almost identical with those at the close of the letter in which Dante, on

concluding the Paradise, and accomplishing the hope here expressed, dedicates his great

work to Can Grande della Scala.

Transcribed Footnote (page 346):

† “Who is blessed throughout all ages.”

THE END OF THE NEW LIFE
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more about SONNET (TO BRUNETTO LATINI). Sent with the Vita Nuova.
I

TO BRUNETTO LATINI

Sonnet

Sent with the Vita Nuova
  • Master Brunetto, this my little maid
  • Is come to spend her Easter-tide with you;
  • Not that she reckons feasting as her due,—
  • Whose need is hardly to be fed, but read.
  • Not in a hurry can her sense be weighed,
  • Nor mid the jests of any noisy crew:
  • Ah! and she wants a little coaxing too
  • Before she'll get into another's head.
  • But if you do not find her meaning clear,
  • 10 You've many Brother Alberts* hard at hand,
  • Whose wisdom will respond to any call,
  • Consult with them and do not laugh at her;
  • And if she still is hard to understand,
  • Apply to Master Janus last of all.
more about SONNET. Of Beatrice de'Portinari, on All Saints' Day.
II

Sonnet†

Of Beatrice de' Portinari, on All Saints' Day
  • Last All Saints' holy-day, even now gone by,
  • I met a gathering of damozels:
  • She that came first, as one doth who excels,
  • Had Love with her, bearing her company:
  • A flame burned forward through her steadfast eye,
  • As when in living fire a spirit dwells:
  • So, gazing with the boldness which prevails
  • O'er doubt, I knew an angel visibly.
  • As she passed on, she bowed her mild approof
  • 10 And salutation to all men of worth,
  • Lifting the soul to solemn thoughts aloof.
  • In Heaven itself that lady had her birth,
  • I think, and is with us for our behoof:
  • Blessed are they who meet her on the earth.
Transcribed Footnote (page 347):

* Probably in allusion to Albert of Cologne. Giano (Janus), which follows, was in use

as an Italian name, as for instance Giano della Bella; but it seems probable that Dante

is merely playfully advising his preceptor to avail himself of the twofold insight of Janus

the double-faced.

Transcribed Footnote (page 347):

† This and the six following pieces (with the possible exception of the canzone at page

349) seem so certainly to have been written at the same time as the poetry of the Vita

Nuova , that it becomes difficult to guess why they were omitted from that work. Other

poems in Dante's Canzoniere refer in a more general manner to his love for Beatrice, but

each among those I allude to bears the impress of some special occasion.

Image of page 348 page: 348
more about SONNET. To certain Ladies; when Beatrice was lamenting her Father's Death.
III

Sonnet

To certain Ladies; when Beatrice was lamenting

her Father's Death*
  • Whence come you, all of you so sorrowful?
  • An it may please you, speak for courtesy.
  • I fear for my dear lady's sake, lest she
  • Have made you to return thus filled with dule.
  • O gentle ladies, be not hard to school
  • In gentleness, but to some pause agree,
  • And something of my lady say to me,
  • For with a little my desire is full.
  • Howbeit it be a heavy thing to hear:
  • 10 For Love now utterly has thrust me forth,
  • With hand for ever lifted, striking fear.
  • See if I be not worn unto the earth;
  • Yea, and my spirit must fail from me here,
  • If, when you speak, your words are of no worth.
more about SONNET. To the same Ladies; with their Answer.
IV

Sonnet

To the same Ladies; with their Answer
  • Ye ladies, walking past me piteous-eyed,
  • Who is the lady that lies prostrate here?
  • Can this be even she my heart holds dear?
  • Nay, if it be so, speak, and nothing hide.
  • Her very aspect seems itself beside,
  • And all her features of such altered cheer
  • That to my thinking they do not appear
  • Hers who makes others seem beatified.
  • “If thou forget to know our lady thus,
  • 10 Whom grief o'ercomes, we wonder in no wise,
  • For also the same thing befalleth us.
  • Yet if thou watch the movement of her eyes,
  • Of her thou shalt be straightway conscious.
  • O weep no more; thou art all wan with sighs.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 348):

* See the Vita Nuova, at page 327.

Image of page 349 page: 349
more about BALLATA. He will gaze upon Beatrice.
V

Ballata

He will gaze upon Beatrice
  • Because mine eyes can never have their fill
  • Of looking at my lady's lovely face,
  • I will so fix my gaze
  • That I may become blessed, beholding her.
  • Even as an angel, up at his great height
  • Standing amid the light,
  • Becometh bless'd by only seeing God:—
  • So, though I be a simple earthly wight,
  • Yet none the less I might,
  • 10 Beholding her who is my heart's dear load,
  • Be bless'd, and in the spirit soar abroad.
  • Such power abideth in that gracious one;
  • Albeit felt of none
  • Save of him who, desiring, honours her.
more about CANZONE. A Complaint of his Lady's scorn.
VI

Canzone*

A Complaint of his Lady's scorn
  • Love, since it is thy will that I return
  • 'Neath her usurped control
  • Who is thou know'st how beautiful and proud;
  • Enlighten thou her heart, so bidding burn
  • Thy flame within her soul
  • That she rejoice not when my cry is loud.
  • Be thou but once endowed
  • With sense of the new peace, and of this fire,
  • And of the scorn wherewith I am despised,
  • 10And wherefore death is my most fierce desire;
  • And then thou'lt be apprised
  • Of all. So if thou slay me afterward,
  • Anguish unburthened shall make death less hard.
  • O Lord, thou knowest very certainly
  • That thou didst make me apt
  • To serve thee. But I was not wounded yet,
  • When under heaven I beheld openly
  • The face which thus hath rapt
  • My soul. Then all my spirits ran elate
  • 20 Upon her will to wait.
  • And she, the peerless one who o'er all worth
  • Is still her proper beauty's worshipper,
  • Made semblance then to guide them safely forth:
  • And they put faith in her:
  • Till, gathering them within her garment all,
  • She turned their blessed peace to tears and gall.
Transcribed Footnote (page 349):

* This poem seems probably referable to the time during which Beatrice denied her

salutation to Dante. (See the Vita Nuova, at page 317 et seq.)

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  • Then I (for I could hear how they complained,)
  • As sympathy impelled,
  • Full oft to seek her presence did arise.
  • 30And mine own soul (which better had refrained)
  • So much my strength upheld
  • That I could steadily behold her eyes.
  • This in thy knowledge lies,
  • Who then didst call me with so mild a face
  • That I hoped solace from my greater load:
  • And when she turned the key on my dark place,
  • Such ruth thy grace bestowed
  • Upon my grief, and in such piteous kind,
  • That I had strength to bear, and was resign'd.
  • 40For love of the sweet favour's comforting
  • Did I become her thrall;
  • And still her every movement gladdened me
  • With triumph that I served so sweet a thing:
  • Pleasures and blessings all
  • I set aside, my perfect hope to see:
  • Till her proud contumely—
  • That so mine aim might rest unsatisfied—
  • Covered the beauty of her countenance.
  • So straightway fell into my living side,
  • 50 To slay me, the swift lance:
  • While she rejoiced and watched my bitter end,
  • Only to prove what succour thou wouldst send.
  • I therefore, weary with my love's constraint,
  • To death's deliverance ran,
  • That out of terrible grief I might be brought:
  • For tears had broken me and left me faint
  • Beyond the lot of man,
  • Until each sigh must be my last, I thought.
  • Yet still this longing wrought
  • 60So much of torment for my soul to bear,
  • That with the pang I swooned and fell to earth.
  • Then, as in trance, 'twas whispered at mine ear,
  • How in this constant girth
  • Of anguish, I indeed at length must die:
  • So that I dreaded Love continually.
  • Master, thou knowest now
  • The life which in thy service I have borne:
  • Not that I tell it thee to disallow
  • Control, who still to thy behest am sworn.
  • 70 Yet if through this my vow
  • I remain dead, nor help they will confer,
  • Do thou at least, for God's sake, pardon her.
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more about CANZONE. He beseeches Death for the Life of Beatrice.
VII

Canzone

He beseeches Death for the Life of Beatrice
  • Death, since I find not one with whom to grieve,
  • Nor whom this grief of mine may move to tears,
  • Whereso I be or whitherso I turn:
  • Since it is thou who in my soul wilt leave
  • No single joy, but chill'st it with just fears
  • And makest it in fruitless hopes to burn:
  • Since thou, Death, and thou only, canst decern
  • Wealth to my life, or want, at thy free choice:—
  • It is to thee that I lift up my voice,
  • 10 Bowing my face that's like a face just dead.
  • I come to thee, as to one pitying,
  • In grief for that sweet rest which nought can bring
  • Again, if thou but once be entered
  • Into her life whom my heart cherishes
  • Even as the only portal of its peace.
  • Death, how most sweet the peace is that thy grace
  • Can grant to me, and that I pray thee for,
  • Thou easily mayst know by a sure sign,
  • If in mine eyes thou look a little space
  • 20 And read in them the hidden dread they store,—
  • If upon all thou look which proves me thine.
  • Since the fear only maketh me to pine
  • After this sort,—what will mine anguish be
  • When her eyes close, of dreadful verity,
  • In whose light is the light of mine own eyes?
  • But now I know that thou wouldst have my life
  • As hers, and joy'st thee in my fruitless strife.
  • Yet I do think this which I feel implies
  • That soon, when I would die to flee from pain,
  • 30I shall find none by whom I may be slain.
  • Death, if indeed thou smite this gentle one
  • Whose outward worth but tells the intellect
  • How wondrous is the miracle within,—
  • Thou biddest Virtue rise up and begone,
  • Thou dost away with Mercy's best effect,
  • Thou spoil'st the mansion of God's sojourning.
  • Yea, unto naught her beauty thou dost bring
  • Which is above all other beauties, even
  • In so much as befitteth one whom Heaven
  • 40 Sent upon earth in token of its own.
  • Thou dost break through the perfect trust which hath
  • Been alway her companion in Love's path:
  • The light once darkened which was hers alone,
  • Love needs must say to them he ruleth o'er,
  • “I have lost the noble banner that I bore.”
Image of page 352 page: 352
  • Death, have some pity then for all the ill
  • Which cannot choose but happen if she die,
  • And which will be the sorest ever known.
  • Slacken the string, if so it be thy will,
  • 50 That the sharp arrow leave it not,—thereby
  • Sparing her life, which if it flies is flown.
  • O Death, for God's sake, be some pity shown!
  • Restrain within thyself, even at its height,
  • The cruel wrath which moveth thee to smite
  • Her in whom God hath set so much of grace.
  • Show now some ruth if 'tis a thing thou hast!
  • I seem to see Heaven's gate, that is shut fast,
  • Open, and angels filling all the space
  • About me,—come to fetch her soul whose laud
  • 60Is sung by saints and angels before God.
  • Song, thou must surely see how fine a thread
  • This is that my last hope is holden by,
  • And what I should be brought to without her.
  • Therefore for thy plain speech and lowlihead
  • Make thou no pause: but go immediately,
  • (Knowing thyself for my heart's minister,)
  • And with that very meek and piteous air
  • Thou hast, stand up before the face of Death,
  • To wrench away the bar that prisoneth
  • 70 And win unto the place of the good fruit.
  • And if indeed thou shake by thy soft voice
  • Death's mortal purpose,—haste thee and rejoice
  • Our lady with the issue of thy suit.
  • So yet awhile our earthly nights and days
  • Shall keep the blessed spirit that I praise.
more about SONNET. On the 9th of June, 1290.
VIII

Sonnet

On the 9 th of June 1290
  • Upon a day, came Sorrow in to me,
  • Saying, “I've come to stay with thee a while;”
  • And I perceived that she had ushered Bile
  • And Pain into my house for company.
  • Wherefore I said, “Go forth—away with thee!”
  • But like a Greek she answered, full of guile,
  • And went on arguing in an easy style.
  • Then, looking, I saw Love come silently,
  • Habited in black raiment, smooth and new,
  • 10 Having a black hat set upon his hair;
  • And certainly the tears he shed were true.
  • So that I asked, “What ails thee, trifler?”
  • Answering he said: “A grief to be gone through;
  • For our own lady's dying, brother dear.”
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Sig. 23
more about SONNET (TO CINO DA PISTOIA). He rebukes Cino for Fickleness.
IX

TO CINO DA PISTOIA

Sonnet

He rebukes Cino for Fickleness
  • I thought to be for ever separate,
  • Fair Master Cino, from these rhymes of yours;
  • Since further from the coast, another course,
  • My vessel now must journey with her freight.*
  • Yet still, because I hear men name your state
  • As his whom every lure doth straight beguile,
  • I pray you lend a very little while
  • Unto my voice your ear grown obdurate.
  • The man after this measure amorous,
  • 10 Who still at his own will is bound and loosed,
  • How slightly Love him wounds is lightly known.
  • If on this wise your heart in homage bows,
  • I pray you for God's sake it be disused,
  • So that the deed and the sweet words be one.
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He answers Dante, confessing his unsteadfast Heart.
CINO DA PISTOIA TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He answers Dante, confessing his unsteadfast heart
  • Dante, since I from my own native place
  • In heavy exile have turned wanderer,
  • Far distant from the purest joy which e'er
  • Had issued from the Fount of joy and grace,
  • I have gone weeping through the world's dull space,
  • And me proud Death, as one too mean, doth spare;
  • Yet meeting Love, Death's neighbour, I declare
  • That still his arrows hold my heart in chase.
  • Nor from his pitiless aim can I get free,
  • 10 Nor from the hope which comforts my weak will,
  • Though no true aid exists which I could share.
  • One pleasure ever binds and looses me;
  • That so, by one same Beauty lured, I still
  • Delight in many women here and there.
Transcribed Footnote (page 353):

* This might seem to suggest that the present sonnet was written about the same time

as the close of the Vita Nuova, and that an allusion may also here be intended to the

first conception of Dante's great work.

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more about SONNET (TO CINO DA PISTOIA). Written in Exile.
X

TO CINO DA PISTOIA

Sonnet

Written in Exile
  • Because I find not whom to speak withal
  • Anent that lord whose I am as thou art,
  • Behoves that in thine ear I tell some part
  • Of this whereof I gladly would say all.
  • And deem thou nothing else occasional
  • Of my long silence while I kept apart,
  • Except this place, so guilty at the heart
  • That the right has not who will give it stall.
  • Love comes not here to any woman's face,
  • 10 Nor any man here for his sake will sigh,
  • For unto such, “Thou fool!” were straightway said.
  • Ah! Master Cino, how the time turns base,
  • And mocks at us, and on our rhymes says “Fie!”
  • Since truth has been thus thinly harvested.
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He answers the foregoing Sonnet (Dante's 'SONNET. To Cino Da Pistoia. Written in Exile'), and prays him, in the name of Beatrice, to continue his great Poem.
CINO DA PISTOIA TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He answers the foregoing Sonnet, and prays Dante, in the

name of Beatrice, to continue his great Poem
  • I know not, Dante, in what refuge dwells
  • The truth, which with all men is out of mind;
  • For long ago it left this place behind,
  • Till in its stead at last God's thunder swells.
  • Yet if our shifting life most clearly tells
  • That here the truth has no reward assign'd,—
  • 'Twas God, remember, taught it to mankind,
  • And even among the fiends preached nothing else.
  • Then, though the kingdoms of the earth be torn,
  • 10 Where'er thou set thy feet, from Truth's control,
  • Yet unto me thy friend this prayer accord:—
  • Beloved, O my brother, sorrow-worn,
  • Even in that lady's name who is thy goal,
  • Sing on till thou redeem thy plighted word!*
Transcribed Footnote (page 354):

* That is, the pledge given at the end of the Vita Nuova. This may perhaps have been

written in the early days of Dante's exile, before his resumption of the interrupted

Commedia.

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more about SONNET. Of Beauty and Duty.
XI

Sonnet

Of Beauty and Duty
  • Two ladies to the summit of my mind
  • Have clomb, to hold an argument of love.
  • The one has wisdom with her from above,
  • For every noblest virtue well designed:
  • The other, beauty's tempting power refined
  • And the high charm of perfect grace approve:
  • And I, as my sweet Master's will doth move,
  • At feet of both their favours am reclined.
  • Beauty and Duty in my soul keep strife,
  • 10 At question if the heart such course can take
  • And 'twixt two ladies hold its love complete.
  • The fount of gentle speech yields answer meet,
  • That Beauty may be loved for gladness' sake,
  • And Duty in the lofty ends of life.
more about SESTINA. Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni.
XII

Sestina*

Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni
  • To the dim light and the large circle of shade
  • I have clomb, and to the whitening of the hills,
  • There where we see no colour in the grass.
  • Nathless my longing loses not its green,
  • It has so taken root in the hard stone
  • Which talks and hears as though it were a lady.
  • Utterly frozen is this youthful lady,
  • Even as the snow that lies within the shade;
  • For she is no more moved than is the stone
  • 10By the sweet season which makes warm the hills
  • And alters them afresh from white to green,
  • Covering their sides again with flowers and grass.
  • When on her hair she sets a crown of grass
  • The thought has no more room for other lady;
  • Because she weaves the yellow with the green
  • So well that Love sits down there in the shade,—
  • Love who has shut me in among low hills
  • Faster than between walls of granite-stone.
  • She is more bright than is a precious stone;
  • 20The wound she gives may not be healed with grass:
  • I therefore have fled far o'er plains and hills
  • For refuge from so dangerous a lady;
  • But from her sunshine nothing can give shade,—
  • Not any hill, nor wall, nor summer-green.
Transcribed Footnote (page 355):

* I have translated this piece both on account of its great and peculiar beauty, and

also because it affords an example of a form of composition which I have met with in no

Italian writer before Dante's time, though it is not uncommon among the Provençal

poets (see Dante, De Vulg. Eloq.). I have headed it with the name of a Paduan lady,

to whom it is surmised by some to have been addressed during Dante's exile; but this

must be looked upon as a rather doubtful conjecture, and I have adopted the name chiefly

to mark it at once as not referring to Beatrice.

Image of page 356 page: 356
  • A while ago, I saw her dressed in green,—
  • So fair, she might have wakened in a stone
  • This love which I do feel even for her shade;
  • And therefore, as one woos a graceful lady,
  • I wooed her in a field that was all grass
  • 30Girdled about with very lofty hills.
  • Yet shall the streams turn back and climb the hills
  • Before Love's flame in this damp wood and green
  • Burn, as it burns within a youthful lady,
  • For my sake, who would sleep away in stone
  • My life, or feed like beasts upon the grass,
  • Only to see her garments cast a shade.
  • How dark soe'er the hills throw out their shade,
  • Under her summer-green the beautiful lady
  • Covers it, like a stone covered in grass.
more about SONNET. A Curse for a fruitless Love.
XIII

Sonnet*

A Curse for a fruitless Love
  • My curse be on the day when first I saw
  • The brightness in those treacherous eyes of thine,—
  • The hour when from my heart thou cam'st to draw
  • My soul away, that both might fail and pine:
  • My curse be on the skill that smooth'd each line
  • Of my vain songs,—the music and just law
  • Of art, by which it was my dear design
  • That the whole world should yield thee love and awe.
  • Yea, let me curse mine own obduracy,
  • 10 Which firmly holds what doth itself confound—
  • To wit, thy fair perverted face of scorn:
  • For whose sake Love is oftentimes forsworn
  • So that men mock at him: but most at me
  • Who would hold fortune's wheel and turn it round.
Transcribed Footnote (page 356):

* I have separated this sonnet from the pieces bearing on the Vita Nuova, as it is

naturally repugnant to connect it with Beatrice. I cannot, however, but think it possible

that it may have been the bitter fruit of some bitterest moment in those hours when

Dante endured her scorn.

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GUIDO CAVALCANTI
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He interprets Dante's Dream, revealed in the first Sonnet of the Vita Nuova.
I

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He interprets Dante's Dream, related in the first Sonnet of

the Vita Nuova*
  • Unto my thinking, thou beheld'st all worth,
  • All joy, as much of good as man may know,
  • If thou wert in his power who here below
  • Is honour's righteous lord throughout this earth.
  • Where evil dies, even there he has his birth,
  • Whose justice out of pity's self doth grow.
  • Softly to sleeping persons he will go,
  • And, with no pain to them, their hearts draw forth.
  • Thy heart he took, as knowing well, alas!
  • 10 That Death had claimed thy lady for a prey:
  • In fear whereof, he fed her with thy heart.
  • But when he seemed in sorrow to depart,
  • Sweet was thy dream; for by that sign, I say,
  • Surely the opposite shall come to pass.†
more about SONNET. To his Lady Joan, of Florence.
II

Sonnet

To his Lady Joan, of Florence
  • Flowers hast thou in thyself, and foliage,
  • And what is good, and what is glad to see;
  • The sun is not so bright as thy visàge;
  • All is stark naught when one hath looked on thee;
  • There is not such a beautiful personage
  • Anywhere on the green earth verily;
  • If one fear love, thy bearing sweet and sage
  • Comforteth him, and no more fear hath he.
  • Thy lady friends and maidens ministering
  • 10 Are all, for love of thee, much to my taste:
  • And much I pray them that in everything
  • They honour thee even as thou meritest,
  • And have thee in their gentle harbouring:
  • Because among them all thou art the best.
Transcribed Footnote (page 357):

* See the Vita Nuova, at page 312.

Transcribed Footnote (page 357):

† This may refer to the belief that, towards morning, dreams go by contraries

Transcription Gap: 1 character (type damage)

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more about SONNET. He compares all Things with his Lady, and finds them wanting.
III

Sonnet

He compares all Things with his Lady, and finds them

wanting
  • Beauty in woman; the high will's decree;
  • Fair knighthood armed for manly exercise;
  • The pleasant song of birds; love's soft replies;
  • The strength of rapid ships upon the sea;
  • The serene air when light begins to be;
  • The white snow, without wind that falls and lies;
  • Fields of all flower; the place where waters rise;
  • Silver and gold; azure in jewellery:—
  • Weighed against these, the sweet and quiet worth
  • 10 Which my dear lady cherishes at heart
  • Might seem a little matter to be shown;
  • Being truly, over these, as much apart
  • As the whole heaven is greater than this earth.
  • All good to kindred natures cleaveth soon.
more about SONNET. A Rapture concerning his Lady.
IV

Sonnet

A Rapture concerning his Lady
  • Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon,
  • Who makes the air all tremulous with light,
  • And at whose side is Love himself? that none
  • Dare speak, but each man's sighs are infinite.
  • Ah me! how she looks round from left to right,
  • Let Love discourse: I may not speak thereon.
  • Lady she seems of such high benison
  • As makes all others graceless in men's sight.
  • The honour which is hers cannot be said;
  • 10 To whom are subject all things virtuous,
  • While all things beauteous own her deity.
  • Ne'er was the mind of man so nobly led,
  • Nor yet was such redemption granted us
  • That we should ever know her perfectly.
more about BALLATA. Of his Lady among other Ladies.
V

Ballata

Of his Lady among other Ladies
  • With other women I beheld my love;—
  • Not that the rest were women to mine eyes,
  • Who only as her shadows seemed to move.
  • I do not praise her more than with the truth,
  • Nor blame I these if it be rightly read.
  • But while I speak, a thought I may not soothe
  • Says to my senses: “Soon shall ye be dead,
  • If for my sake your tears ye will not shed.”
  • And then the eyes yield passage, at that thought,
  • 10 To the heart's weeping, which forgets her not.
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more about SONNET (TO GUIDO ORLANDI). Of a Consecrated Image resembling his Lady.
VI

TO GUIDO ORLANDI

Sonnet

Of a consecrated Image resembling his Lady
  • Guido, an image of my lady dwells
  • At San Michele in Orto, consecrate
  • And duly worshipped. Fair in holy state
  • She listens to the tale each sinner tells:
  • And among them that come to her, who ails
  • The most, on him the most doth blessing wait.
  • She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;
  • Over the curse of blindness she prevails,
  • And heals sick languors in the public squares.
  • 10 A multitude adores her reverently:
  • Before her face two burning tapers are;
  • Her voice is uttered upon paths afar.
  • Yet through the Lesser Brethren's* jealousy
  • She is named idol; not being one of theirs.
more about MADRIGAL (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). In answer to the foregoing Sonnet. (Cavalcanti's 'SONNET. Of a consecrated Image resembling his Lady').
GUIDO ORLANDI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Madrigal

In answer to the foregoing Sonnet
  • If thou hadst offered, friend, to blessed Mary
  • A pious voluntary,
  • As thus: “Fair rose, in holy garden set”:
  • Thou then hadst found a true similitude:
  • Because all truth and good
  • Are hers, who was the mansion and the gate
  • Wherein abode our High Salvation,
  • Conceived in her, a Son,
  • Even by the angel's greeting whom she met.
  • 10 Be thou assured that if one cry to her,
  • Confessing, “I did err,”
  • For death she gives him life; for she is great.
  • Ah! how mayst thou be counselled to implead
  • With God thine own misdeed,
  • And not another's? Ponder what thou art;
  • And humbly lay to heart
  • That Publican who wept his proper need.
  • The Lesser Brethren cherish the divine
  • Scripture and church-doctrine;
  • 20 Being appointed keepers of the faith
  • Whose preaching succoureth:
  • For what they preach is our best medicine.
Transcribed Footnote (page 359):

* The Franciscans, in profession of deeper poverty and humility than belonged to other

Orders, called themselves Fratres minores.

Image of page 360 page: 360
more about SONNET. Of the Eyes of a certain Mandetta, of Thoulouse, which resemble those of his Lady Joan of Florence.
VII

Sonnet

Of the Eyes of a certain Mandetta, of Thoulouse, which

resemble those of his Lady Joan, of Florence
  • A certain youthful lady in Thoulouse,
  • Gentle and fair, of cheerful modesty,
  • Is in her eyes, with such exact degree,
  • Of likeness unto mine own lady, whose
  • I am, that through the heart she doth abuse
  • The soul to sweet desire. It goes from me
  • To her; yet, fearing, saith not who is she
  • That of a truth its essence thus subdues.
  • This lady looks on it with the sweet eyes
  • 10 Whose glance did erst the wounds of Love anoint
  • Through its true lady's eyes which are as they.
  • Then to the heart returns it, full of sighs,
  • Wounded to death by a sharp arrow's point
  • Wherewith this lady speeds it on its way.
more about BALLATA. He reveals, in a Dialogue, his increasing Love for Mandetta.
VIII

Ballata

He reveals, in a Dialogue, his increasing Love for Mandetta
  • Being in thought of love, I chanced to see
  • Two youthful damozels.
  • One sang: “Our life inhales
  • All love continually.”
  • Their aspect was so utterly serene,
  • So courteous, of such quiet nobleness,
  • That I said to them: “Yours, I may well ween,
  • 'Tis of all virtue to unlock the place.
  • Ah! damozels, do not account him base
  • 10 Whom thus his wound subdues:
  • Since I was at Thoulouse,
  • My heart is dead in me.”
  • They turned their eyes upon me in so much
  • As to perceive how wounded was my heart;
  • While, of the spirits born of tears, one such
  • Had been begotten through the constant smart.
  • Then seeing me, abashed, to turn apart,
  • One of them said, and laugh'd:
  • “Love, look you, by his craft
  • 20 Holds this man thoroughly.”
  • But with grave sweetness, after a brief while,
  • She who at first had laughed on me replied,
  • Saying: “This lady, who by Love's great guile
  • Her countenance in thy heart has glorified,
  • Look'd thee so deep within the eyes, Love sigh'd
  • And was awakened there.
  • If it seem ill to bear,
  • In him thy hope must be.”
Image of page 361 page: 361
  • The second piteous maiden, of all ruth,
  • 30 Fashioned for sport in Love's own image, said:
  • “This stroke, whereof thy heart bears trace in sooth,
  • From eyes of too much puïssance was shed,
  • Whence in thy heart such brightness enterèd,
  • Thou mayst not look thereon.
  • Say, of those eyes that shone
  • Canst thou remember thee?”
  • Then said I, yielding answer therewithal
  • Unto this virgin's difficult behest:
  • “A lady of Thoulouse, whom Love doth call
  • 40 Mandetta, sweetly kirtled and enlac'd,
  • I do remember to my sore unrest.
  • Yea, by her eyes indeed
  • My life has been decreed
  • To death inevitably.”
  • Go, Ballad, to the city, even Thoulouse,
  • And softly entering the Daurade,* look round
  • And softly call, that so there may be found
  • Some lady who for compleasaunce may choose
  • To show thee her who can my life confuse.
  • 50 And if she yield thee way,
  • Lift thou thy voice and say:
  • “For grace I come to thee.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 361):

* The ancient church of the Daurade still exists at Thoulouse. It was so called from

the golden effect of the mosaics adorning it.

more about SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). He imagines a pleasant Voyage for Guido, Lapo Gianni, and himself, with their three Ladies.
DANTE ALIGHIERI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Sonnet

He imagines a pleasant Voyage for Guido, Lapo Gianni, and

himself, with their three Ladies
  • Guido, I wish that Lapo, thou, and I,
  • Could be by spells conveyed, as it were now,
  • Upon a barque, with all the winds that blow
  • Across all seas at our good will to hie.
  • So no mischance nor temper of the sky
  • Should mar our course with spite or cruel slip;
  • But we, observing old companionship,
  • To be companions still should long thereby.
  • And Lady Joan, and Lady Beatrice,
  • 10 And her the thirtieth on my roll,† with us
  • Should our good wizard set, o'er seas to move
  • And not to talk of anything but love:
  • And they three ever to be well at ease,
  • As we should be, I think, if this were thus.
Transcribed Footnote (page 361):

† That is, his list of the sixty most beautiful ladies of Florence, referred to in the Vita

Nuova; among whom Lapo Gianni's lady, Lagia, would seem to have stood thirtieth.

Image of page 362 page: 362
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He answers the foregoing Sonnet (by Dante), speaking with Shame of his changed Love.
IX

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

Guido answers the foregoing Sonnet, speaking with shame of

his changed Love
  • If I were still that man, worthy to love,
  • Of whom I have but the remembrance now,
  • Or if the lady bore another brow,
  • To hear this thing might bring me joy thereof.
  • But thou, who in Love's proper court dost move,
  • Even there where hope is born of grace,—see how
  • My very soul within me is brought low:
  • For a swift archer, whom his feats approve,
  • Now bends the bow, which Love to him did yield,
  • 10 In such mere sport against me, it would seem
  • As though he held his lordship for a jest.
  • Then hear the marvel which is sorriest:—
  • My sorely wounded soul forgiveth him,
  • Yet knows that in his act her strength is kill'd.
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He reports, in a feigned Vision, the successful Issue of Lapo Gianni's Love.
X

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He reports, in a feigned Vision, the successful Issue of

Lapo Gianni's Love
  • Dante, a sigh that rose from the heart's core
  • Assailed me, while I slumbered, suddenly:
  • So that I woke o' the instant, fearing sore
  • Lest it came thither in Love's company:
  • Till, turning, I beheld the servitor
  • Of Lady Lagia: “Help me,” so said he,
  • “O help me, Pity.” Though he said no more,
  • So much of Pity's essence entered me,
  • That I was ware of Love, those shafts he wields
  • 10 A-whetting, and preferred the mourner's quest
  • To him, who straightway answered on this wise:
  • “Go tell my servant that the lady yields,
  • And that I hold her now at his behest:
  • If he believe not, let him note her eyes.”
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more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He mistrusts the Love of Lapo Gianni.
XI

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He mistrusts the Love of Lapo Gianni
  • I pray thee, Dante, shouldst thou meet with Love
  • In any place where Lapo then may be,
  • That there thou fail not to mark heedfully
  • If Love with lover's name that man approve;
  • If to our Master's will his lady move
  • Aright, and if himself show fealty:
  • For ofttimes, by ill custom, ye may see
  • This sort profess the semblance of true love.
  • Thou know'st that in the court where Love holds sway
  • 10 A law subsists, that no man who is vile
  • Can service yield to a lost woman there.
  • If suffering aught avail the sufferer,
  • Thou straightway shalt discern our lofty style,
  • Which needs the badge of honour must display.
more about SONNET. On the Detection of a false Friend.
XII

Sonnet

On the Detection of a false Friend *
  • Love and the Lady Lagia, Guido and I,
  • Unto a certain lord are bounden all,
  • Who has released us—know ye from whose thrall?
  • Yet I'll not speak, but let the matter die:
  • Since now these three no more are held thereby,
  • Who in such homage at his feet did fall
  • That I myself was not more whimsical,
  • In him conceiving godship from on high.
  • Let Love be thanked the first, who first discern'd
  • 10 The truth; and that wise lady afterward,
  • Who in fit time took back her heart again;
  • And Guido next, from worship wholly turn'd;
  • And I, as he. But if ye have not heard,
  • I shall not tell how much I loved him then.
Transcribed Footnote (page 363):

* I should think, from the mention of Lady Lagia, that this might refer again to Lapo

Gianni, who seems (one knows not why) to have fallen into disgrace with his friends. The

Guido mentioned is probably Guido Orlandi.

Image of page 364 page: 364
more about SONNET. He speaks of a third Love of his.
XIII

Sonnet

He speaks of a third Love of his
  • O thou that often hast within thine eyes
  • A Love who holds three shafts,—know thou from me
  • That this my sonnet would commend to thee
  • (Come from afar) a soul in heavy sighs,
  • Which even by Love's sharp arrow wounded lies.
  • Twice did the Syrian archer shoot, and he
  • Now bends his bow the third time, cunningly,
  • That, thou being here, he wound me in no wise.
  • Because the soul would quicken at the core
  • 10 Thereby, which now is near to utter death,
  • From those two shafts, a triple wound that yield.
  • The first gives pleasure, yet disquieteth;
  • And with the second is the longing for
  • The mighty gladness by the third fulfill'd.
more about BALLATA. Of a continual Death in Love.
XIV

Ballata

Of a continual Death in Love
  • Though thou, indeed, hast quite forgotten ruth,
  • Its steadfast truth my heart abandons not;
  • But still its thought yields service in good part
  • To that hard heart in thee.
  • Alas! who hears believes not I am so.
  • Yet who can know? of very surety, none.
  • From Love is won a spirit, in some wise,
  • Which dies perpetually:
  • And, when at length in that strange ecstasy
  • 10 The heavy sigh will start,
  • There rains upon my heart
  • A love so pure and fine,
  • That I say: “Lady, I am wholly thine.”*
Transcribed Footnote (page 364):

* I may take this opportunity of mentioning that, in every case where an abrupt

change of metre occurs in one of my translations, it is so also in the original poem.

Image of page 365 page: 365
more about SONNET. To a Friend who does not pity his Love.
XV

Sonnet

To a Friend who does not pity his Love
  • If I entreat this lady that all grace
  • Seem not unto her heart an enemy,
  • Foolish and evil thou declarest me,
  • And desperate in idle stubbornness.
  • Whence is such cruel judgment thine, whose face,
  • To him that looks thereon, professeth thee
  • Faithful, and wise, and of all courtesy,
  • And made after the way of gentleness?
  • Alas! my soul within my heart doth find
  • 10 Sighs, and its grief by weeping doth enhance,
  • That, drowned in bitter tears, those sighs depart:
  • And then there seems a presence in the mind,
  • As of a lady's thoughtful countenance
  • Come to behold the death of the poor heart.
more about BALLATA. He perceives that his highest Love is gone from him.
XVI

Ballata

He perceives that his highest Love is gone from him
  • Through this my strong and new misaventure,
  • All now is lost to me
  • Which most was sweet in Love's supremacy.
  • So much of life is dead in its control,
  • That she, my pleasant lady of all grace,
  • Is gone out of the devastated soul:
  • I see her not, nor do I know her place;
  • Nor even enough of virtue with me stays
  • To understand, ah me!
  • 10 The flower of her exceeding purity.
  • Because there comes—to kill that gentle thought
  • With saying that I shall not see her more—
  • This constant pain wherewith I am distraught,
  • Which is a burning torment very sore,
  • Wherein I know not whom I should implore.
  • Thrice thanked the Master be
  • Who turns the grinding wheel of misery!
  • Full of great anquish in a place of fear
  • The spirit of my heart lies sorrowing,
  • 20 Through Fortune's bitter craft. She lured it here,
  • And gave it o'er to Death, and barbed the sting;
  • She wrought that hope which was a treacherous thing;
  • In Time, which dies from me,
  • She made me lose mine hour of ecstasy.
  • For you, perturbed and fearful words of mine,
  • Whither yourselves may please, even thither go;
  • But always burthened with shame's troublous sign,
  • And on my lady's name still calling low.
  • For me, I must abide in such deep woe
  • 30 That all who look shall see
  • Death's shadow on my face assuredly.
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more about SONNET. Of his Pain from a new Love.
XVII

Sonnet

Of his Pain from a new Love
  • Why from the danger did mine eyes not start,—
  • Why not become even blind,—ere through my sight
  • Within my soul thou ever couldst alight
  • To say: “Dost thou not hear me in thy heart?”
  • New torment then, the old torment's counterpart,
  • Filled me at once with such a sore affright,
  • That, Lady, lady, (I said,) destroy not quite
  • Mine eyes and me! O help us where thou art!
  • Thou hast so left mine eyes, that love is fain—
  • 10 Even Love himself—with pity uncontroll'd
  • To bend above them, weeping for their loss:
  • Saying: “If any man feel heavy pain,
  • This man's more painful heart let him behold:
  • Death has it in her hand, cut like a cross.”
more about PROLONGED SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). He finds fault with the Conceits of the foregoing Sonnet (Cavalcanti's 'SONNET. Of his Pain from a new Love').
GUIDO ORLANDI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Prolonged Sonnet

He finds fault with the Conceits of the foregoing Sonnet
Note: The following poem is not, in the strict sense, a “sonnet,” and is designated by Rossetti a “prolonged sonnet,” consisting as it does of a fourteen-line stanza and a couplet.
  • Friend, well I know thou knowest well to bear
  • Thy sword's-point, that it pierce the close-locked mail:
  • And like a bird to flit from perch to pale:
  • And out of difficult ways to find the air:
  • Largely to take and generously to share:
  • Thrice to secure advantage: to regale
  • Greatly the great, and over lands prevail.
  • In all thou art, one only fault is there:
  • For still among the wise of wit thou say'st
  • 10 That Love himself doth weep for thine estate;
  • And yet, no eyes no tears: lo now, thy whim!
  • Soft, rather say: This is not held in haste;
  • But bitter are the hours and passionate
  • To him that loves, and love is not for him.
  • For me, (by usage strengthened to forbear
  • From carnal love,) I fall not in such snare.
Image of page 367 page: 367
Note: In the last line of the footnote on page 367, immediately following the word “time,” the punctuation mark, probably a comma, is type-damaged, so that it resembles a period.
more about SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). On the part of a Lady of Pisa.
GIANNI ALFANI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Sonnet*

On the part of a Lady of Pisa
  • Guido, that Gianni who, a day agone,
  • Sought thee, now greets thee (ay and thou mayst laugh!)
  • On that same Pisan beauty's sweet behalf
  • Who can deal love-wounds even as thou hast done.
  • She asked me whether thy good will were prone
  • For service unto Love who troubles her,
  • If she to thee in suchwise should repair
  • That, save by him and Gualtier, 'twere not known:—
  • For thus her kindred of ill augury
  • 10 Should lack the means wherefrom there might be plann'd
  • Worse harm than lying speech that smites afar.
  • I told her that thou hast continually
  • A goodly sheaf of arrows to thy hand,
  • Which well should stead her in such gentle war.
more about SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). He writes to Guido, telling him of the Love which a certain Pinella showed on seeing him.
BERNARDO DA BOLOGNA TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Sonnet

He writes to Guido, telling him of the Love which a certain

Pinella showed on seeing him
  • Unto that lowly lovely maid, I wis,
  • So poignant in the heart was thy salute,
  • That she changed countenance, remaining mute.
  • Wherefore I asked: “Pinella, how is this?
  • Hast heard of Guido? know'st thou who he is?”
  • She answered, “Yea;” then paused, irresolute;
  • But I saw well how the love-wounds acute
  • Were widened, and the star which Love calls his
  • Filled her with gentle brightness perfectly.
  • 10 “But, friend, an't please thee, I would have it told,”
  • She said, “how I am known to him through thee.
  • Yet since, scarce seen, I knew his name of old,—
  • Even as the riddle is read, so must it be.
  • Oh! send him love of mine a thousand-fold!”
Transcribed Footnote (page 367):

* From a passage in Ubaldini's Glossary (1640) to the “Documenti d'Amore” of

Francesco Barberino (1300), I judge that Guido answered the above sonnet, and that

Alfani made a rejoinder, from which a scrap there printed appears to be taken. The

whole piece existed, in Ubaldini's time, among the Strozzi MSS.

Image of page 368 page: 368
more about SONNET (TO BERNARDO DA BOLOGNA). He answers Bernardo, commending Pinella, and saying that the Love he can offer her is already shared by many noble Ladies.
XVIII

TO BERNARDO DA BOLOGNA

Sonnet

Guido answers, commending Pinella, and saying that the Love

he can offer her is already shared by many noble Ladies.
  • The fountain-head that is so bright to see
  • Gains as it runs in virtue and in sheen,
  • Friend Bernard; and for her who spoke with thee,
  • Even such the flow of her young life has been:
  • So that when Love discourses secretly
  • Of things the fairest he has ever seen,
  • He says there is no fairer thing than she,
  • A lowly maid as lovely as a queen.
  • And for that I am troubled, thinking of
  • 10 That sigh wherein I burn upon the waves
  • Which drift her heart,—poor barque, so ill bested!—
  • Unto Pinella a great river of love
  • I send, that's full of sirens, and whose slaves
  • Are beautiful and richly habited.
more about SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). He reproves Guido for his Arrogance in Love.
DINO COMPAGNI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Sonnet

He reproves Guido for his Arrogance in Love
  • No man may mount upon a golden stair,
  • Guido my master, to Love's palace-sill:
  • No key of gold will fit the lock that's there,
  • Nor heart there enter without pure goodwill.
  • Not if he miss one courteous duty, dare
  • A lover hope he should his love fulfil;
  • But to his lady must make meek repair,
  • Reaping with husbandry her favours still.
  • And thou but know'st of Love (I think) his name:
  • 10 Youth holds thy reason in extremities:
  • Only on thine own face thou turn'st thine eyes;
  • Fairer than Absalom's account'st the same;
  • And think'st, as rosy moths are drawn by flame,
  • To draw the women from their balconies.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 368):

* It is curious to find these poets perpetually rating one another for the want of con-

stancy in love. Guido is rebuked, as above, by Dino Compagni; Cino da Pistoia by

Dante (p. 353); and Dante by Guido (p. 370), who formerly, as we have seen (p. 363), had

confided to him his doubts of Lapo Gianni.

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Sig. 24
more about SONNET (TO GUIDO ORLANDI). In Praise of Guido Orlandi's Lady.
XIX

TO GUIDO ORLANDI

Sonnet

In praise of Guido Orlandi's Lady
  • A lady in whom love is manifest—
  • That love which perfect honour doth adorn—
  • Hath ta'en the living heart out of thy breast,
  • Which in her keeping to new life is born:
  • For there by such sweet power it is possest
  • As even is felt of Indian unicorn: *
  • And all its virtue now, with fierce unrest,
  • Unto thy soul makes difficult return.
  • For this thy lady is virtue's minister
  • 10 In suchwise that no fault there is to show,
  • Save that God made her mortal on this ground.
  • And even herein His wisdom shall be found:
  • For only thus our intellect could know
  • That heavenly beauty which resembles her.
Transcribed Footnote (page 369):

* In old representations, the unicorn is often seen with his head in a virgin's lap.

more about SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). He answers the foregoing Sonnet (by Cavalcanti 'To Guido Orlandi. In praise of Guido Orlandi's Lady'), declaring himself his Lady's Champion.
GUIDO ORLANDI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Sonnet

He answers the foregoing Sonnet, declaring himself his Lady's

Champion
  • To sound of trumpet rather than of horn,
  • I in Love's name would hold a battle-play
  • Of gentlemen in arms on Easter Day;
  • And, sailing without oar or wind, be borne
  • Unto my joyful beauty; all that morn
  • To ride round her, in her cause seeking fray
  • Of arms with all but thee, friend, who dost say
  • The truth of her, and whom all truths adorn.
  • And still I pray Our Lady's grace above,
  • 10 Most reverently, that she whom my thoughts bear
  • In sweet remembrance own her Lord supreme.
  • Holding her honour dear, as doth behove,—
  • In God who therewithal sustaineth her
  • Let her abide, and not depart from Him.
Image of page 370 page: 370
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He rebukes Dante for his way of Life, after the Death of Beatrice.
XX

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He rebukes Dante for his way of Life, after the Death of

Beatrice.*
  • I come to thee by daytime constantly,
  • But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find:
  • Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind,
  • And for thy many virtues gone from thee.
  • It was thy wont to shun much company,
  • Unto all sorry concourse ill inclin'd:
  • And still thy speech of me, heartfelt and kind,
  • Had made me treasure up thy poetry.
  • But now I dare not, for thine abject life,
  • 10 Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes;
  • Nor come I in such sort that thou mayst know.
  • Ah! prythee read this sonnet many times:
  • So shall that evil one who bred this strife
  • Be thrust from thy dishonoured soul and go.
more about BALLATA. Concerning a Shepherd-maid.
XXI

Ballata

Concerning a Shepherd-maid
  • Within a copse I met a shepherd-maid,
  • More fair, I said, than any star to see.
  • She came with waving tresses pale and bright,
  • With rosy cheer, and loving eyes of flame,
  • Guiding the lambs beneath her wand aright.
  • Her naked feet still had the dews on them,
  • As, singing like a lover, so she came;
  • Joyful, and fashioned for all ecstasy.
  • I greeted her at once, and question made
  • 10 What escort had she through the woods in spring.
  • But with soft accents she replied and said
  • That she was all alone there, wandering;
  • Moreover: “Do you know, when the birds sing,
  • My heart's desire is for a mate,” said she.
  • While she was telling me this wish of hers,
  • The birds were all in song throughout the wood.
  • “Even now then,” said my thought, “the time recurs,
  • With mine own longing to assuage her mood.”
  • And so, in her sweet favour's name, I sued
  • 20 That she would kiss there and embrace with me.
Transcribed Footnote (page 370):

* This interesting sonnet must refer to the same period of Dante's life regarding which

he has made Beatrice address him in words of noble reproach when he meets her in Eden

( Purg. C.xxx.)

Image of page 371 page: 371
  • She took my hand to her with amorous will,
  • And answered that she gave me all her heart,
  • And drew me where the leaf is fresh and still,
  • Where spring the wood-flowers in the shade apart.
  • And on that day, by Joy's enchanted art,
  • There Love in very presence seemed to be.*
more about SONNET. Of an ill-favoured Lady.
XXII

Sonnet

Of an ill-favoured Lady
  • Just look, Manetto, at that wry-mouthed minx;
  • Merely take notice what a wretch it is;
  • How well contrived in her deformities,
  • How beastly favoured when she scowls and blinks.
  • Why, with a hood on (if one only thinks)
  • Or muffle of prim veils and scapularies,—
  • And set together, on a day like this,
  • Some pretty lady with the odious sphinx;—
  • Why, then thy sins could hardly have such weight,
  • 10 Nor thou be so subdued from Love's attack,
  • Nor so possessed in Melancholy's sway,
  • But that perforce thy peril must be great
  • Of laughing till the very heart-strings crack:
  • Either thou'dst die, or thou must run away.
more about SONNET (TO POPE BONIFACE VIII). After the Pope's Interdict, when the great Houses were leaving Florence.
XXIII

TO POPE BONIFACE VIII

Sonnet

After the Pope's Interdict, when the great Houses were

leaving Florence
  • Nero, thus much for tidings in thine ear.
  • They of the Buondelmonti quake with dread,
  • Nor by all Florence may be comforted,
  • Noting in thee the lion's ravenous cheer;
  • Who more than any dragon giv'st them fear,
  • In ancient evil stubbornly array'd;
  • Neither by bridge nor bulwark to be stay'd,
  • But only by King Pharaoh's sepulchre.
  • O in what monstrous sin dost thou engage,—
  • 10 All these which are of loftiest blood to drive
  • Away, that none dare pause but all take wing!
  • Yet sooth it is, thou might'st redeem the pledge
  • Even yet, and save thy naked soul alive,
  • Wert thou but patient in the bargaining.
Transcribed Footnote (page 371):

* The glossary to Barberino, already mentioned, refers to the existence, among the

Strozzi MSS., of a poem by Lapo di Farinata degli Uberti, written in answer to the above

ballata of Cavalcanti. As this respondent was no other than Guido's brother-in-law,

one feels curious to know what he said to the peccadilloes of his sister's husband. But

I fear the poem cannot yet have been published, as I have sought for it in vain at all my

printed sources of information.

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more about BALLATA. In exile at Sarzana.
XXIV

Ballata

In Exile at Sarzana
  • Because I think not ever to return,
  • Ballad, to Tuscany,—
  • Go therefore thou for me
  • Straight to my lady's face,
  • Who, of her noble grace,
  • Shall show thee courtesy.
  • Thou seekest her in charge of many sighs,
  • Full of much grief and of exceeding fear.
  • But have good heed thou come not to the eyes
  • 10 Of such as are sworn foes to gentle cheer:
  • For, certes, if this thing should chance,—from her
  • Thou then couldst only look
  • For scorn, and such rebuke
  • As needs must bring me pain;—
  • Yea, after death again
  • Tears and fresh agony.
  • Surely thou knowest, Ballad, how that Death
  • Assails me, till my life is almost sped:
  • Thou knowest how my heart still travaileth
  • 20 Through the sore pangs which in my soul are bred:—
  • My body being now so nearly dead,
  • It cannot suffer more.
  • Then, going, I implore
  • That this my soul thou take
  • (Nay, do so for my sake,)
  • When my heart sets it free.
  • Ah! Ballad, unto thy dear offices
  • I do commend my soul, thus trembling;
  • That thou mayst lead it, for pure piteousness,
  • 30 Even to that lady's presence whom I sing.
  • Ah! Ballad, say thou to her, sorrowing,
  • Whereso thou meet her then:—
  • “This thy poor handmaiden
  • Is come, nor will be gone,
  • Being parted now from one
  • Who served Love painfully.”
  • Thou also, thou bewildered voice and weak,
  • That goest forth in tears from my grieved heart,
  • Shalt, with my soul and with this ballad, speak
  • 40 Of my dead mind, when thou dost hence depart,
  • Unto that lady (piteous as thou art!)
  • Who is so calm and bright,
  • It shall be deep delight
  • To feel her presence there.
  • And thou, Soul, worship her
  • Still in her purity.
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more about CANZONE. A Song of Fortune.
XXV

Canzone*

A Song of Fortune
Transcribed Footnote (page 373):

* This and the three following Canzoni are only to be found in the later collections of

Guido Cavalcanti's poems. I have included them on account of their interest, if really

his, and especially for the beauty of the last among them; but must confess to some

doubts of their authenticity.

  • Lo! I am she who makes the wheel to turn;
  • Lo! I am she who gives and takes away;
  • Blamed idly, day by day,
  • In all mine acts by you, ye humankind:
  • For whoso smites his visage and doth mourn,
  • What time he renders back my gifts to me,
  • Learns then that I decree
  • No state which mine own arrows may not find.
  • Who clomb must fall:—this bear ye well in mind,
  • 10 Nor say, because he fell, I did him wrong.
  • Yet mine is a vain song:
  • For truly ye may find out wisdom when
  • King Arthur's resting-place is found of men.
  • Ye make great marvel and astonishment
  • What time ye see the sluggard lifted up
  • And the just man to drop,
  • And ye complain on God and on my sway.
  • O humankind, ye sin in your complaint:
  • For He, that Lord who made the world to live,
  • 20 Lets me not take or give
  • By mine own act, but as He wills I may.
  • Yet is the mind of man so castaway,
  • That it discerns not the supreme behest.
  • Alas! ye wretchedest,
  • And chide ye at God also? Shall not He
  • Judge between good and evil righteously?
  • Ah! had ye knowledge how God evermore,
  • With agonies of soul and grievous heats,
  • As on an anvil beats
  • 30 On them that in this earth hold high estate,—
  • Ye would choose little rather than much store,
  • And solitude than spacious palaces;
  • Such is the sore disease
  • Of anguish that on all their days doth wait.
  • Behold if they be not unfortunate,
  • When oft the father dares not trust the son!
  • O wealth, with thee is won
  • A worm to gnaw for ever on his soul
  • Whose abject life is laid in thy control!
  • 40 If also ye take note what piteous death
  • They ofttimes make, whose hoards were manifold,
  • Who cities had and gold
  • And multitudes of men beneath their hand;
  • Then he among you that most angereth
  • Shall bless me, saying, “Lo! I worship thee
  • That I was not as he
  • Whose death is thus accurst throughout the land.”
  • But now your living souls are held in band
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  • Of avarice, shutting you from the true light
  • 50 Which shows how sad and slight
  • Are this world's treasured riches and array
  • That still change hands a hundred times a-day.
  • For me,—could envy enter in my sphere,
  • Which of all human taint is clean and quit,—
  • I well might harbour it
  • When I behold the peasant at his toil.
  • Guiding his team, untroubled, free from fear,
  • He leaves his perfect furrow as he goes,
  • And gives his field repose
  • 60 From thorns and tares and weeds that vex the soil:
  • Thereto he labours, and without turmoil
  • Entrusts his work to God, content if so
  • Such guerdon from it grow
  • That in that year his family shall live:
  • Nor care nor thought to other things will give.
  • But now ye may no more have speech of me,
  • For this mine office craves continual use:
  • Ye therefore deeply muse
  • Upon those things which ye have heard the while:
  • 70 Yea, and even yet remember heedfully
  • How this my wheel a motion hath so fleet,
  • That in an eyelid's beat
  • Him whom it raised it maketh low and vile.
  • None was, nor is, nor shall be of such guile,
  • Who could, or can, or shall, I say, at length
  • Prevail against my strength.
  • But still those men that are my questioners
  • In bitter torment own their hearts perverse.
  • Song, that wast made to carry high intent
  • 80 Dissembled in the garb of humbleness,—
  • With fair and open face
  • To Master Thomas let thy course be bent.
  • Say that a great thing scarcely may be pent
  • In little room: yet always pray that he
  • Commend us, thee and me,
  • To them that are more apt in lofty speech:
  • For truly one must learn ere he can teach.
more about CANZONE. A Song against Poverty.
XXVI

Canzone

A Song against Poverty
  • O poverty, by thee the soul is wrapp'd
  • With hate, with envy, dolefulness, and doubt.
  • Even so be thou cast out,
  • And even so he that speaks thee otherwise.
  • I name thee now, because my mood is apt
  • To curse thee, bride of every lost estate,
  • Through whom are desolate
  • On earth all honourable things and wise.
  • Within thy power each blest condition dies:
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  • 10 By thee, men's minds with sore mistrust are made
  • Fantastic and afraid:—
  • Thou, hated worse than Death, by just accord,
  • And with the loathing of all hearts abhorr'd.
  • Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than Death,
  • For he at length is longed for in the breast.
  • But not with thee, wild beast,
  • Was ever aught found beautiful or good.
  • For life is all that man can lose by death,
  • Not fame and the fair summits of applause;
  • 20 His glory shall not pause,
  • But live in men's perpetual gratitude.
  • While he who on thy naked sill has stood,
  • Though of great heart and worthy everso,
  • He shall be counted low.
  • Then let the man thou troublest never hope
  • To spread his wings in any lofty scope.
  • Hereby my mind is laden with a fear,
  • And I will take some thought to shelter me.
  • For this I plainly see:—
  • 30 Through thee, to fraud the honest man is led;
  • To tyranny the just lord turneth here,
  • And the magnanimous soul to avarice.
  • Of every bitter vice
  • Thou, to my thinking, art the fount and head;
  • From thee no light in any wise is shed,
  • Who bringest to the paths of dusky hell.
  • I therefore see full well,
  • That death, the dungeon, sickness, and old age,
  • Weighed against thee, are blessèd heritage.
  • 40 And what though many a goodly hypocrite,
  • Lifting to thee his veritable prayer,
  • Call God to witness there
  • How this thy burden moved not Him to wrath.
  • Why, who may call (of them that muse aright)
  • Him poor, who of the whole can say, 'Tis Mine?
  • Methinks I well divine
  • That want, to such, should seem an easy path.
  • God, who made all things, all things had and hath;
  • Nor any tongue may say that He was poor,
  • 50 What while He did endure
  • For man's best succour among men to dwell:
  • Since to have all, with Him, was possible.
  • Song, thou shalt wend upon thy journey now:
  • And, if thou meet with folk who rail at thee,
  • Saying that poverty
  • Is not even sharper than thy words allow,—
  • Unto such brawlers briefly answer thou,
  • To tell them they are hypocrites; and then
  • Say mildly, once again,
  • 60 That I, who am nearly in a beggar's case,
  • Might not presume to sing my proper praise.
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more about CANZONE. He laments the Presumption and Incontinence of his Youth.
XXVII

Canzone

He laments the Presumption and Incontinence of his Youth
  • The devastating flame of that fierce plague,
  • The foe of virtue, fed with others' peace
  • More than itself foresees,
  • Being still shut in to gnaw its own desire;
  • Its strength not weakened, nor its hues more vague,
  • For all the benison that virtue sheds,
  • But which for ever spreads
  • To be a living curse that shall not tire:
  • Or yet again, that other idle fire
  • 10 Which flickers with all change as winds may please:
  • One whichsoe'er of these
  • At length has hidden the true path from me
  • Which twice man may not see,
  • And quenched the intelligence of joy, till now
  • All solace but abides in perfect woe.
  • Alas! the more my painful spirit grieves,
  • The more confused with miserable strife
  • Is that delicious life
  • Which sighing it recalls perpetually:
  • 20 But its worst anguish, whence it still receives
  • More pain than death, is sent, to yield the sting
  • Of perfect suffering,
  • By him who is my lord and governs me;
  • Who holds all gracious truth in fealty,
  • Being nursed in those four sisters' fond caress
  • Through whom comes happiness.
  • He now has left me; and I draw my breath
  • Wound in the arms of Death,
  • Desirous of her: she is cried upon
  • 30 In all the prayers my heart puts up alone.
  • How fierce aforetime and how absolute
  • That wheel of flame which turned within my head,
  • May never quite be said,
  • Because there are not words to speak the whole.
  • It slew my hope whereof I lack the fruit,
  • And stung the blood within my living flesh,
  • To be an intricate mesh
  • Of pain beyond endurance or control;
  • Withdrawing me from God, who gave my soul
  • 40 To know the sign where honour has its seat
  • From honour's counterfeit.
  • So in its longing my heart finds not hope,
  • Nor knows what door to ope;
  • Since, parting me from God, this foe took thought
  • To shut those paths wherein He may be sought.
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  • My second enemy, thrice armed in guile,
  • As wise and cunning to mine overthrow
  • As her smooth face doth show,
  • With yet more shameless strength holds mastery.
  • 50 My spirit, naked of its light and vile,
  • Is lit by her with her own deadly gleam,
  • Which makes all anguish seem
  • As nothing to her scourges that I see.
  • O thou the body of grace, abide with me
  • As thou wast once in the once joyful time;
  • And though thou hate my crime,
  • Fill not my life with torture to the end;
  • But in thy mercy, bend
  • My steps, and for thine honour, back again;
  • 60 Till, finding joy through thee, I bless my pain.
  • Since that first frantic devil without faith
  • Fell, in thy name, upon the stairs that mount
  • Unto the limpid fount
  • Of thine intelligence,—withhold not now
  • Thy grace, nor spare my second foe from death.
  • For lo! on this my soul has set her trust;
  • And failing this, thou must
  • Prove false to truth and honour, seest thou!
  • Then, saving light and throne of strength, allow
  • 70 My prayer, and vanquish both my foes at last;
  • That so I be not cast
  • Into that woe wherein I fear to end.
  • Yet if it is ordain'd
  • That I must die ere this be perfected,—
  • Ah! yield me comfort after I am dead.
  • Ye unadornèd words obscure of sense,
  • With weeping and with sighing go from me,
  • And bear mine agony
  • (Not to be told by words, being too intense,)
  • 80 To His intelligence
  • Who moved by virtue shall fulfil my breath
  • In human life or compensating death.
more about CANZONE. A Dispute with Death.
XXVIII

Canzone

A Dispute with Death
  • “O sluggish, hard, ingrate, what doest thou?
  • Poor sinner, folded round with heavy sin,
  • Whose life to find out joy alone is bent.
  • I call thee, and thou fall'st to deafness now;
  • And, deeming that my path whereby to win
  • Thy seat is lost, there sitt'st thee down content,
  • And hold'st me to thy will subservient.
  • But I into thy heart have crept disguised:
  • Among thy senses and thy sins I went,
  • 10 By roads thou didst not guess, unrecognised.
  • Tears will not now suffice to bid me go,
  • Nor countenance abased, nor words of woe.”
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  • Now, when I heard the sudden dreadful voice
  • Wake thus within to cruel utterance,
  • Whereby the very heart of hearts did fail,
  • My spirit might not any more rejoice,
  • But fell from its courageous pride at once,
  • And turned to fly, where flight may not avail.
  • Then slowly 'gan some strength to re-inhale
  • 20 The trembling life which heard that whisper speak,
  • And had conceived the sense with sore travail;
  • Till in the mouth it murmured, very weak,
  • Saying: “Youth, wealth, and beauty, these have I:
  • O Death! remit thy claim,—I would not die.”
  • Small sign of pity in that aspect dwells
  • Which then had scattered all my life abroad
  • Till there was comfort with no single sense:
  • And yet almost in piteous syllables,
  • When I had ceased to speak, this answer flow'd:
  • 30 “Behold what path is spread before thee hence;
  • Thy life has all but a day's permanence.
  • And is it for the sake of youth there seems
  • In loss of human years such sore offence?
  • Nay, look unto the end of youthful dreams.
  • What present glory does thy hope possess,
  • That shall not yield ashes and bitterness?”
  • But, when I looked on Death made visible,
  • From my heart's sojourn brought before mine eyes,
  • And holding in her hand my grievous sin,
  • 40 I seemed to see my countenance, that fell,
  • Shake like a shadow: my heart uttered cries,
  • And my soul wept the curse that lay therein.
  • Then Death: “Thus much thine urgent prayer shall win:—
  • I grant thee the brief interval of youth
  • At natural pity's strong soliciting.”
  • And I (because I knew that moment's ruth
  • But left my life to groan for a frail space)
  • Fell in the dust upon my weeping face.
  • So, when she saw me thus abashed and dumb,
  • 50 In loftier words she weighed her argument,
  • That new and strange it was to hear her speak;
  • Saying: “The path thy fears withhold thee from
  • Is thy best path. To folly be not shent,
  • Nor shrink from me because thy flesh is weak,
  • Thou seest how man is sore confused, and eke
  • How ruinous Chance makes havoc of his life,
  • And grief is in the joys that he doth seek;
  • Nor ever pauses the perpetual strife
  • 'Twixt fear and rage; until beneath the sun
  • 60 His perfect anguish be fulfilled and done.”
  • “O Death! thou art so dark and difficult,
  • That never human creature might attain
  • By his own will to pierce thy secret sense;
  • Because, foreshadowing thy dread result,
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    Note: On page 379, line 9 (line 73): it is unclear whether the punctuation mark immediately following the word “last” is a comma or a period.
  • He may not put his trust in heart or brain,
  • Nor power avails him, nor intelligence.
  • Behold how cruelly thou takest hence
  • These forms so beautiful and dignified,
  • And chain'st them in thy shadow chill and dense,
  • 70 And forcest them in narrow graves to hide;
  • With pitiless hate subduing still to thee
  • The strength of man and woman's delicacy.”
  • “Not for thy fear the less I come at last,
  • For this thy tremor, for thy painful sweat.
  • Take therefore thought to leave (for lo! I call)
  • Kinsfolk and comrades, all thou didst hold fast,—
  • Thy father and thy mother,—to forget
  • All these thy brethren, sisters, children, all.
  • Cast sight and hearing from thee; let hope fall;
  • 80 Leave every sense and thy whole intellect,
  • These things wherein thy life made festival:
  • For I have wrought thee to such strange effect
  • That thou hast no more power to dwell with these
  • As living man. Let pass thy soul in peace.”
  • Yea, Lord. O thou, the Builder of the spheres,
  • Who, making me, didst shape me, of thy grace,
  • In thine own image and high counterpart;
  • Do thou subdue my spirit, long perverse,
  • To weep within thy will a certain space,
  • 90 Ere yet thy thunder come to rive my heart.
  • Set in my hand some sign of what thou art,
  • Lord God, and suffer me to seek out Christ,—
  • Weeping, to seek Him in thy ways apart;
  • Until my sorrow have at length suffic'd
  • In some accepted instant to atone
  • For sins of thought, for stubborn evil done.
  • Dishevelled and in tears, go, song of mine,
  • To break the hardness of the heart of man:
  • Say how his life began
  • 100 From dust, and in that dust doth sink supine:
  • Yet, say, the unerring spirit of grief shall guide
  • His soul, being purified,
  • To seek its Maker at the heavenly shrine.
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CINO DA PISTOIA
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He interprets Dante's Dream related in the first Sonnet of the Vita Nuova.
I

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He interprets Dante's Dream, related in the first Sonnet of

the Vita Nuova*
  • Each lover's longing leads him naturally
  • Unto his lady's heart his heart to show;
  • And this it is that Love would have thee know
  • By the strange vision which he sent to thee.
  • With thy heart therefore, flaming outwardly,
  • In humble guise he fed thy lady so,
  • Who long had lain in slumber, from all woe
  • Folded within a mantle silently.
  • Also, in coming, Love might not repress
  • 10 His joy, to yield thee thy desire achieved,
  • Whence heart should unto heart true service bring.
  • But understanding the great love-sickness
  • Which in thy lady's bosom was conceived,
  • He pitied her, and wept in vanishing.
Transcribed Footnote (page 380):

* See ante, page 312.

more about CANZONE (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). On the Death of Beatrice Portinari.
II

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Canzone

On the Death of Beatrice Portinari
  • Albeit my prayers have not so long delay'd,
  • But craved for thee, ere this, that Pity and Love
  • Which only bring our heavy life some rest;
  • Yet is not now the time so much o'erstay'd
  • But that these words of mine which tow'rds thee move
  • Must find thee still with spirit dispossess'd,
  • And say to thee: “In Heaven she now is bless'd,
  • Even as the blessèd name men called her by;”
  • While thou dost ever cry,
  • 10 “Alas! the blessing of mine eyes is flown!”
  • Behold, these words set down
  • Are needed still, for still thou sorrowest.
  • Then hearken; I would yield advisedly
  • Some comfort: Stay these sighs; give ear to me.
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  • We know for certain that in this blind world
  • Each man's subsistence is of grief and pain,
  • Still trailed by fortune through all bitterness.
  • Blessèd the soul which, when its flesh is furl'd
  • Within a shroud, rejoicing doth attain
  • 20 To Heaven itself, made free of earthly stress.
  • Then wherefore sighs thy heart in abjectness,
  • Which for her triumph should exult aloud?
  • For He the Lord our God
  • Hath called her, hearkening what her Angel said,
  • To have Heaven perfected.
  • Each saint for a new thing beholds her face,
  • And she the face of our Redemption sees,
  • Conversing with immortal substances.
  • Why now do pangs of torment clutch thy heart
  • 30 Which with thy love should make thee overjoy'd,
  • As him whose intellect hath passed the skies?
  • Behold, the spirits of thy life depart
  • Daily to Heaven with her, they so are buoy'd
  • With their desire, and Love so bids them rise.
  • O God! and thou, a man whom God made wise,
  • To nurse a charge of care, and love the same!
  • I bid thee in His Name
  • From sin of sighing grief to hold thy breath,
  • Nor let thy heart to death,
  • 40 Nor harbour death's resemblance in thine eyes.
  • God hath her with Himself eternally,
  • Yet she inhabits every hour with thee.
  • Be comforted, Love cries, be comforted!
  • Devotion pleads, Peace, for the love of God!
  • O yield thyself to prayers so full of grace;
  • And make thee naked now of this dull weed
  • Which 'neath thy foot were better to be trod;
  • For man through grief despairs and ends his days.
  • How ever shouldst thou see the lovely face
  • 50 If any desperate death should once be thine?
  • From justice so condign
  • Withdraw thyself even now; that in the end
  • Thy heart may not offend
  • Against thy soul, which in the holy place,
  • In Heaven, still hopes to see her and to be
  • Within her arms. Let this hope comfort thee.
  • Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells
  • Thy lovely lady who is in Heaven crown'd,
  • Who is herself thy hope in Heaven, the while
  • 60 To make thy memory hallowed she avails;
  • Being a soul within the deep Heaven bound,
  • A face on thy heart painted, to beguile
  • Thy heart of grief which else should turn it vile.
  • Even as she seemed a wonder here below,
  • On high she seemeth so,—
  • Yea, better known, is there more wondrous yet.
  • And even as she was met
  • First by the angels with sweet song and smile,
  • Thy spirit bears her back upon the wing,
  • 70 Which often in those ways is journeying.
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  • Of thee she entertains the blessèd throngs,
  • And says to them: “While yet my body thrave
  • On earth, I gat much honour which he gave,
  • Commending me in his commended songs.”
  • Also she asks alway of God our Lord
  • To give thee peace according to His word.
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He conceives of some Compensation in Death.
III

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He conceives of some Compensation in Death *
  • Dante, whenever this thing happeneth,—
  • That Love's desire is quite bereft of Hope,
  • (Seeking in vain at ladies' eyes some scope
  • Of joy, through what the heart for ever saith,)—
  • I ask thee, can amends be made by Death?
  • Is such sad pass the last extremity?—
  • Or may the Soul that never feared to die
  • Then in another body draw new breath?
  • Lo! thus it is through her who governs all
  • 10 Below,—that I, who entered at her door,
  • Now at her dreadful window must fare forth.
  • Yea, and I think through her it doth befall
  • That even ere yet the road is travelled o'er
  • My bones are weary and life is nothing worth.
Transcribed Footnote (page 382):

* Among Dante's Epistles there is a Latin letter to Cino, whch I should judge was

written in reply to this Sonnet.

more about MADRIGAL. To his Lady Selvaggia Vergiolesi; likening his Love to a search for Gold.
IV

Madrigal

To his Lady Selvaggia Vergiolesi; likening his Love to a

Search for Gold
  • I am all bent to glean the golden ore
  • Little by little from the river-bed;
  • Hoping the day to see
  • When Crœsus shall be conquered in my store.
  • Therefore, still sifting where the sands are spread,
  • I labour patiently:
  • Till, thus intent on this thing and no more,—
  • If to a vein of silver I were led,
  • It scarce could gladden me.
  • 10 And, seeing that no joy's so warm i' the core
  • As this whereby the heart is comforted
  • And the desire set free,—
  • Therefore thy bitter love is still my scope,
  • Lady, from whom it is my life's sore theme
  • More painfully to sift the grains of hope
  • Than gold out of that stream.
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more about SONNET. To Love, in great Bitterness.
V

Sonnet

To Love, in great Bitterness
  • O love, O thou that, for my fealty,
  • Only in torment dost thy power employ,
  • Give me, for God's sake, something of thy joy,
  • That I may learn what good there is in thee.
  • Yea, for, if thou art glad with grieving me,
  • Surely my very life thou shalt destroy
  • When thou renew'st my pain, because the joy
  • Must then be wept for with the misery.
  • He that had never sense of good, nor sight,
  • 10 Esteems his ill estate but natural,
  • Which so is lightlier borne: his case is mine.
  • But, if thou wouldst uplift me for a sign,
  • Bidding me drain the curse and know it all,
  • I must a little taste its opposite.
more about SONNET. Death is not without but within him.
VI

Sonnet

Death is not without but within him
  • This fairest lady, who, as well I wot,
  • Found entrance by her beauty to my soul,
  • Pierced through mine eyes my heart, which erst was whole,
  • Sorely, yet makes as though she knew it not;
  • Nay turns upon me now, to anger wrought;
  • Dealing me harshness for my pain's best dole,
  • And is so changed by her own wrath's control,
  • That I go thence, in my distracted thought
  • Content to die; and, mourning, cry abroad
  • 10 On Death, as upon one afar from me;
  • But Death makes answer from within my heart.
  • Then, hearing her so hard at hand to be,
  • I do commend my spirit unto God;
  • Saying to her too, “Ease and peace thou art.”
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more about SONNET. A Trance of Love.
VII

Sonnet

A Trance of Love
  • Vanquished and weary was my soul in me,
  • And my heart gasped after its much lament,
  • When sleep at length the painful languor sent.
  • And, as I slept (and wept incessantly),—
  • Through the keen fixedness of memory
  • Which I had cherished ere my tears were spent,
  • I passed to a new trance of wonderment;
  • Wherein a visible spirit I could see,
  • Which caught me up, and bore me to a place
  • 10 Where my most gentle lady was alone;
  • And still before us a fire seemed to move,
  • Out of the which methought there came a moan
  • Uttering, “Grace, a little season, grace!
  • I am of one that hath the wings of Love.”
more about SONNET. Of the Grave of Selvaggia, on the Monte della Sambuca.
VIII

Sonnet

Of the Grave of Selvaggia, on the Monte della Sambuca
  • I was upon the high and blessed mound,
  • And kissed, long worshipping, the stones and grass,
  • There on the hard stones prostrate, where, alas!
  • That pure one laid her forehead in the ground.
  • Then were the springs of gladness sealed and bound,
  • The day that unto Death's most bitter pass
  • My sick heart's lady turned her feet, who was
  • Already in her gracious life renown'd.
  • So in that place I spake to Love, and cried:
  • 10 “O sweet my god, I am one whom Death may claim
  • Hence to be his; for lo! my heart lies here.”
  • Anon, because my Master lent no ear,
  • Departing, still I called Selvaggia's name.
  • So with my moan I left the mountain-side.
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Sig. 25
more about CANZONE. His Lament for Selvaggia.
IX

Canzone

His Lament for Selvaggia
  • Ay me, alas! the beautiful bright hair
  • That shed reflected gold
  • O'er the green growths on either side the way:
  • Ay me! the lovely look, open and fair,
  • Which my heart's core doth hold
  • With all else of that best-remembered day;
  • Ay me! the face made gay
  • With joy that Love confers;
  • Ay me! that smile of hers
  • 10 Where whiteness as of snow was visible
  • Among the roses at all seasons red!
  • Ay me! and was this well,
  • O Death, to let me live when she is dead?
  • Ay me! the calm, erect, dignified walk;
  • Ay me! the sweet salute,—
  • The thoughtful mind,—the wit discreetly worn;
  • Ay me! the clearness of her noble talk,
  • Which made the good take root
  • In me, and for the evil woke my scorn;
  • 20 Ay me! the longing born
  • Of so much loveliness,—
  • The hope, whose eager stress
  • Made other hopes fall back to let it pass,
  • Even till my load of love grew light thereby!
  • These thou hast broken, as glass,
  • O Death, who makest me, alive, to die!
  • Ay me! Lady, the lady of all worth;—
  • Saint, for whose single shrine
  • All other shrines I left, even as Love will'd;—
  • 30 Ay me! what precious stone in the whole earth,
  • For that pure fame of thine
  • Worthy the marble statue's base to yield?
  • Ay me! fair vase fulfill'd
  • With more than this world's good,—
  • By cruel chance and rude
  • Cast out upon the steep path of the mountains
  • Where Death has shut thee in between hard stones!
  • Ay me! two languid fountains
  • Of weeping are these eyes, which joy disowns.
  • 40 Ay me! sharp Death! till what I ask is done
  • And my whole life is ended utterly,—
  • Answer—must I weep on
  • Even thus, and never cease to moan Ay me?
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more about SONNET (TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI). He owes nothing to Guido as a Poet.
X

TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI

Sonnet

He owes nothing to Guido as a Poet
  • What rhymes are thine which I have ta'en from thee,
  • Thou Guido, that thou ever say'st I thieve?*
  • 'Tis true, fine fancies gladly I receive,
  • But when was aught found beautiful in thee?
  • Nay, I have searched my pages diligently,
  • And tell the truth, and lie not, by your leave.
  • From whose rich store my web of songs I weave
  • Love knoweth well, well knowing them and me.
  • No artist I,—all men may gather it;
  • 10 Nor do I work in ignorance of pride,
  • (Though the world reach alone the coarser sense;)
  • But am a certain man of humble wit
  • Who journeys with his sorrow at his side,
  • For a heart's sake, alas! that is gone hence.
more about SONNET. He impugns the verdicts of Dante's Commedia.
XI

Sonnet

He impugns the verdicts of Dante's Commedia
  • This book of Dante's, very sooth to say,
  • Is just a poet's lovely heresy,
  • Which by a lure as sweet as sweet can be
  • Draws other men's concerns beneath its sway;
  • While, among stars' and comets' dazzling play,
  • It beats the right down, lets the wrong go free,
  • Shows some abased, and others in great glee,
  • Much as with lovers is Love's ancient way.
  • Therefore his vain decrees, wherein he lied,
  • 10 Fixing folks' nearness to the Fiend their foe,
  • Must be like empty nutshells flung aside.
  • Yet through the rash false witness set to grow,
  • French and Italian vengeance on such pride
  • May fall, like Antony's on Cicero.
Transcribed Footnote (page 386):

* I have not examined Cino's poetry with special reference to this accusation; but

there is a Canzone of his in which he speaks of having conceived an affection for another

lady from her resemblance to Selvaggia. Perhaps Guido considered this as a sort of

plagiarism de facto on his own change of love through Mandetta's likeness to Giovanna.

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more about SONNET. He condemns Dante for not naming, in the Commedia, his friend Onesto di Boncima, and his Lady Selvaggia.
XII

Sonnet

He condemns Dante for not naming, in the Commedia, his friend

Onesto di Boncima, and his Lady Selvaggia
  • Among the faults we in that book descry
  • Which has crowned Dante lord of rhyme and thought,
  • Are two so grave that some attaint is brought
  • Unto the greatness of his soul thereby.
  • One is, that holding with Sordello high
  • Discourse, and with the rest who sang and taught,
  • He of Onesto di Boncima* nought
  • Has said, who was to Arnauld Daniel† nigh.
  • The other is, that when he says he came
  • 10 To see, at summit of the sacred stair,
  • His Beatrice among the heavenly signs,—
  • He, looking in the bosom of Abraham,
  • Saw not that highest of all women there
  • Who joined Mount Sion to the Apennines.‡
Transcribed Footnote (page 387):

* Between this poet and Cino various friendly sonnets were interchanged, which may

be found in the Italian collections. There is also one sonnet by Onesto to Cino, with

his answer, both of which are far from being affectionate or respectful. They are very

obscure, however, and not specially interesting.

Transcribed Footnote (page 387):

† The Provençal poet, mentioned in C. xxvi of the Purgatory.

Transcribed Footnote (page 387):

‡ That is, sanctified the Apennines by her burial on the Monte della Sambuca.

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DANTE DA MAIANO
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He interpets Dante Alighieri's Dream, related in the first Sonnet of the Vita Nuova.
I

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He interprets Dante Alighieri's Dream, related in the first Sonnet

of the Vita Nuova *
  • Of that wherein thou art a questioner
  • Considering, I make answer briefly thus,
  • Good friend, in wit but little prosperous:
  • And from my words the truth thou shalt infer,—
  • So hearken to thy dream's interpreter.
  • If, sound of frame, thou soundly canst discuss
  • In reason,—then, to expel this overplus
  • Of vapours which hath made thy speech to err,
  • See that thou lave and purge thy stomach soon.
  • 10 But if thou art afflicted with disease,
  • Know that I count it mere delirium.
  • Thus of my thought I write thee back the sum:
  • Nor my conclusions can be changed from these
  • Till to the leach thy water I have shown.
more about SONNET. He craves interpreting of a Dream of his.
II

Sonnet

He craves interpreting of a Dream of his
  • Thou that art wise, let wisdom minister
  • Unto my dream, that it be understood.
  • To wit: A lady, of her body fair,
  • And whom my heart approves in womanhood,
  • Bestowed on me a wreath of flowers, fair-hued
  • And green in leaf, with gentle loving air;
  • After the which, meseemed I was stark nude
  • Save for a smock of hers that I did wear.
  • Whereat, good friend, my courage gat such growth
  • 10 That to mine arms I took her tenderly:
  • With no rebuke the beauty laughed unloth,
  • And as she laughed I kissed continually.
  • I say no more, for that I pledged mine oath,
  • And that my mother, who is dead, was by.
Transcribed Footnote (page 388):

* See ante, page 312.

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more about SONNET (TO DANTE DA MAIANO). He interprets the Dream related in the foregoing Sonnet by Dante da Maiano, 'SONNET. He craves interpreting of a Dream of his').
GUIDO ORLANDI TO DANTE DA MAIANO

Sonnet

He interprets the Dream* related in the foregoing Sonnet
  • On the last words of what you write to me
  • I give you my opinion at the first,
  • To see the dead must prove corruption nursed
  • Within you, by your heart's own vanity.
  • The soul should bend the flesh to its decree:
  • Then rule it, friend, as fish by line amerced.
  • As to the smock, your lady's gift, the worst
  • Of words were not too bad for speech so free.
  • It is a thing unseemly to declare
  • 10 The love of gracious dame or damozel,
  • And therewith for excuse to say, I dream'd.
  • Tell us no more of this, but think who seem'd
  • To call you: mother came to whip you well.
  • Love close, and of Love's joy you'll have your share.
more about SONNET. To his Lady Nina, of Sicily.
III

Sonnet

To his Lady Nina, of Sicily
  • So greatly thy great pleasaunce pleasured me,
  • Gentle my lady, from the first of all,
  • That counting every other blessing small
  • I gave myself up wholly to know thee:
  • And since I was made thine, thy courtesy
  • And worth, more than of earth, celestial,
  • I learned, and from its freedom did enthrall
  • My heart, the servant of thy grace to be.
  • Wherefore I pray thee, joyful countenance,
  • 10 Humbly, that it incense or irk thee not,
  • If I, being thine, do wait upon thy glance.
  • More to solicit, I am all afraid:
  • Yet, lady, twofold is the gift, we wot,
  • Given to the needy unsolicited.
Transcribed Footnote (page 389):

* There exist no fewer than six answers by different poets, interpreting Dante da

Maiano's dream. I have chosen Guido Orlandi's, much the most matter-of-fact of the

six, because it is diverting to find the writer again in his antagonistic mood. Among

the five remaining answers, in all of which the vision is treated as a very mysterious

matter, one is attributed to Dante Alighieri, but seems so doubtful that I have not trans-

lated it. Indeed, it would do the greater Dante, if he really wrote it, little credit as a

lucid interpreter of dreams; though it might have some interest, as giving him (when

compared with the sonnet at page 388) a decided advantage over his lesser namesake in

point of courtesy.

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more about SONNET. He thanks his Lady for the Joy he has had from her.
IV

Sonnet

He thanks his Lady for the Joy he has had from her
  • Wonderful countenance and royal neck,
  • I have not found your beauty's parallel!
  • Nor at her birth might any yet prevail
  • The likeness of these features to partake.
  • Wisdom is theirs, and mildness: for whose sake
  • All grace seems stol'n, such perfect grace to swell;
  • Fashioned of God beyond delight to dwell
  • Exalted. And herein my pride I take
  • Who of this garden have possession,
  • 10 So that all worth subsists for my behoof
  • And bears itself according to my will.
  • Lady, in thee such pleasaunce hath its fill
  • That whoso is content to rest thereon
  • Knows not of grief, and holds all pain aloof.
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CECCO ANGIOLIERI, DA SIENA
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). On the last Sonnet of the Vita Nuova.
I

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

On the last Sonnet of the Vita Nuova*
  • Dante Alighieri, Cecco, your good friend
  • And servant, gives you greeting as his lord,
  • And prays you for the sake of Love's accord,
  • (Love being the Master before whom you bend,)
  • That you will pardon him if he offend,
  • Even as your gentle heart can well afford.
  • All that he wants to say is just one word
  • Which partly chides your sonnet at the end.
  • For where the measure changes, first you say
  • 10 You do not understand the gentle speech
  • A spirit made touching your Beatrice:
  • And next you tell your ladies how, straightway,
  • You understand it. Wherefore (look you) each
  • Of these your words the other's sense denies.
more about SONNET. He will not be too deeply in love.
II

Sonnet

He will not be too deeply in Love
  • I am enamoured, and yet not so much
  • But that I'd do without it easily;
  • And my own mind thinks all the more of me
  • That Love has not quite penned me in his hutch.
  • Enough if for his sake I dance and touch
  • The lute, and serve his servants cheerfully:
  • An overdose is worse than none would be:
  • Love is no lord of mine, I'm proud to vouch.
  • So let no woman who is born conceive
  • 10 That I'll be her liege slave, as I see some,
  • Be she as fair and dainty as she will.
  • Too much of love makes idiots, I believe:
  • I like not any fashion that turns glum
  • The heart, and makes the visage sick and ill.
Transcribed Footnote (page 391):

* See ante, page 346.

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Note: The period at the end of p. 392, line 14 of “Of Becchina, the Shoemaker's Daughter” is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about SONNET. Of Love in Men and Devils.
III

Sonnet

Of Love in Men and Devils
  • The man who feels not, more or less, somewhat
  • Of love in all the years his life goes round
  • Should be denied a grave in holy ground
  • Except with usurers who will bate no groat:
  • Nor he himself should count himself a jot
  • Less wretched than the meanest beggar found.
  • Also the man who in Love's robe is gown'd
  • May say that Fortune smiles upon his lot.
  • Seeing how love has such nobility
  • 10 That if it entered in the lord of Hell
  • 'Twould rule him more than his fire's ancient sting;
  • He should be glorified to eternity,
  • And all his life be always glad and well
  • As is a wanton woman in the spring.
more about SONNET. Of Love, in honour of his Mistress Becchina.
IV

Sonnet

Of Love, in honour of his mistress Becchina
  • Whatever good is naturally done
  • Is born of Love as fruit is born of flower:
  • By Love all good is brought to its full power:
  • Yea, Love does more than this; for he finds none
  • So coarse but from his touch some grace is won,
  • And the poor wretch is altered in an hour.
  • So let it be decreed that Death devour
  • The beast who says that Love's a thing to shun.
  • A man's just worth the good that he can hold,
  • 10 And where no love is found, no good is there;
  • On that there's nothing that I would not stake.
  • So now, my Sonnet, go as you are told
  • To lovers and their sweethearts everywhere,
  • And say I made you for Becchina's sake.
more about SONNET. Of Becchina the Shoemaker's daughter.
V

Sonnet

Of Becchina, the Shoemaker's Daughter
  • Why, if Becchina's heart were diamond,
  • And all the other parts of her were steel,
  • As cold to love as snows when they congeal
  • In lands to which the sun may not get round;
  • And if her father were a giant crown'd
  • And not a donkey born to stitching shoes,
  • Or I were but an ass myself;—to use
  • Such harshness, scarce could to her praise redound.
  • Yet if she'd only for a minute hear,
  • 10 And I could speak if only pretty well,
  • I'd let her know that I'm her happiness;
  • That I'm her life should also be made clear,
  • With other things that I've no need to tell;
  • And then I feel quite sure she'd answer Yes.
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more about SONNET. To Messer Angliolieri, his Father.
VI

Sonnet

To Messer Angiolieri, his Father
  • If I'd a sack of florins, and all new,
  • (Packed tight together, freshly coined and fine,)
  • And Arcidosso and Montegiovi mine,*
  • And quite a glut of eagle-pieces too,—
  • It were but as three farthings to my view
  • Without Becchina. Why then all these plots
  • To whip me, daddy? Nay, but tell me—what's
  • My sin, or all the sins of Turks, to you?
  • For I protest (or may I be struck dead!)
  • 10 My love's so firmly planted in its place,
  • Whipping nor hanging now could change the grain.
  • And if you want my reason on this head,
  • It is that whoso looks her in the face,
  • Though he were old, gets back his youth again.
more about SONNET. Of the 20th June, 1291.
VII

Sonnet

Of the 20 th June 1291
  • I'm full of everything I do not want,
  • And have not that wherein I should find ease;
  • For alway till Becchina brings me peace
  • The heavy heart I bear must toil and pant;
  • That so all written paper would prove scant
  • (Though in its space the Bible you might squeeze,)
  • To say how like the flames of furnaces
  • I burn, remembering what she used to grant.
  • Because the stars are fewer in heaven's span
  • 10 Than all those kisses wherewith I kept tune
  • All in an instant (I who now have none!)
  • Upon her mouth (I and no other man!)
  • So sweetly on the twentieth day of June
  • In the new year† twelve hundred ninety-one.
Transcribed Footnote (page 393):

* Perhaps the names of his father's estates.

Transcribed Footnote (page 393):

† The year, according to the calendar of those days, began on the 25th March. The

alteration to 1st January was made in 1582 by the Pope, and immediately adopted by

all Catholic countries, but by England not till 1752. There is some added vividness in

remembering that Cecco's unplatonic love-encounter dates eleven days after the first

death-anniversary of Beatrice (9th of June 1291), when Dante tells us that he “drew

the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets.” (See ante, p. 340.)

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more about SONNET. In absence from Becchina.
VIII

Sonnet

In absence from Becchina
  • My heart's so heavy with a hundred things
  • That I feel dead a hundred times a-day;
  • Yet death would be the least of sufferings,
  • For life's all suffering save what's slept away;
  • Though even in sleep there is no dream but brings
  • From dream-land such dull torture as it may.
  • And yet one moment would pluck out these stings,
  • If for one moment she were mine to-day
  • Who gives my heart the anguish that it has.
  • 10 Each thought that seeks my heart for its abode
  • Becomes a wan and sorrow-stricken guest:
  • Sorrow has brought me to so sad a pass
  • That men look sad to meet me on the road;
  • Nor any road is mine that leads to rest.
more about SONNET. Of Becchina in a Rage.
IX

Sonnet

Of Becchina in a rage
  • When I behold Becchina in a rage,
  • Just like a little lad I trembling stand
  • Whose master tells him to hold out his hand;
  • Had I a lion's heart, the sight would wage
  • Such war against it, that in that sad stage
  • I'd wish my birth might never have been plann'd,
  • And curse the day and hour that I was bann'd
  • With such a plague for my life's heritage.
  • Yet even if I should sell me to the Fiend,
  • 10 I must so manage matters in some way
  • That for her rage I may not care a fig;
  • Or else from death I cannot long be screen'd.
  • So I'll not blink the fact, but plainly say
  • It's time I got my valour to grow big.
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more about SONNET. He rails against Dante, who had censured his homage to Becchina.
X

Sonnet

He rails against Dante, who had censured his homage to

Becchina
  • Dante Alighieri in Becchina's praise
  • Won't have me sing, and bears him like my lord.
  • He's but a pinchbeck florin, on my word;
  • Sugar he seems, but salt's in all his ways;
  • He looks like wheaten bread, who's bread of maize;
  • He's but a sty, though like a tower in height;
  • A falcon, till you find that he's a kite;
  • Call him a cock!—a hen's more like his case.
  • Go now to Florence, Sonnet of my own,
  • 10 And there with dames and maids hold pretty parles,
  • And say that all he is doth only seem.
  • And I meanwhile will make him better known
  • Unto the Count of Provence, good King Charles; *
  • And in this way we'll singe his skin for him.
more about SONNET. Of his Four Tormentors.
XI

Sonnet

Of his four Tormentors
  • I'm caught, like any thrush the nets surprise,
  • By Daddy and Becchina, Mammy and Love.
  • As to the first-named, let thus much suffice,—
  • Each day he damns me, and each hour thereof;
  • Becchina wants so much of all that's nice,
  • Not Mahomet himself could yield enough;
  • And Love still sets me doting in a trice
  • On trulls who'd seem the Ghetto's proper stuff.
  • My mother don't do much because she can't,
  • 10 But I may count it just as good as done,
  • Knowing the way and not the will's her want.
  • To-day I tried a kiss with her—just one—
  • To see if I could make her sulks avaunt:
  • She said, “The devil rip you up, my son!”
Transcribed Footnote (page 395):

* This may be either Charles II., King of Naples and Count of Provence, or more

probably his son Charles Martel, King of Hungary. We know from Dante that a friend-

ship subsisted between himself and the latter prince, who visited Florence in 1295, and

died in the same year, in his father's lifetime ( Paradise, C. viii.)

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Note: The period at the end of p. 396, line 11 of “Of all he would do” is surrounded by a square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
Note: The period at the end of p. 396, line 8 of “He is past all help” is surrounded by a square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about SONNET. Concerning his Father.
XII

Sonnet

Concerning his Father
  • The dreadful and the desperate hate I bear
  • My father (to my praise, not to my shame,)
  • Will make him live more than Methusalem;
  • Of this I've long ago been made aware.
  • Now tell me, Nature, if my hate's not fair.
  • A glass of some thin wine not worth a name
  • One day I begged (he has whole butts o' the same,)
  • And he had almost killed me, I declare.
  • “Good Lord, if I had asked for vernage-wine!”
  • 10 Said I; for if he'd spit into my face
  • I wished to see for reasons of my own.
  • Now say that I mayn't hate this plague of mine!
  • Why, if you knew what I know of his ways,
  • You'd tell me that I ought to knock him down.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 396):

* I have thought it necessary to soften one or two expressions in this sonnet.

more about SONNET. Of all he would do.
XIII

Sonnet

Of all he would do
  • If I were fire, I'd burn the world away;
  • If I were wind, I'd turn my storms thereon;
  • If I were water, I'd soon let it drown;
  • If I were God, I'd sink it from the day;
  • If I were Pope, I'd never feel quite gay
  • Until there was no peace beneath the sun;
  • If I were Emperor, what would I have done?—
  • I'd lop men's heads all round in my own way.
  • If I were Death, I'd look my father up;
  • 10 If I were Life, I'd run away from him;
  • And treat my mother to like calls and runs.
  • If I were Cecco (and that's all my hope),
  • I'd pick the nicest girls to suit my whim,
  • And other folk should get the ugly ones.
more about SONNET. He is past all help.
XIV

Sonnet

He is past all Help
  • For a thing done, repentance is no good,
  • Nor to say after, Thus would I have done:
  • In life, what's left behind is vainly rued;
  • So let a man get used his hurt to shun;
  • For on his legs he hardly may be stood
  • Again, if once his fall be well begun.
  • But to show wisdom's what I never could;
  • So where I itch I scratch now, and all's one.
  • I'm down, and cannot rise in any way;
  • 10 For not a creature of my nearest kin
  • Would hold me out a hand that I could reach.
  • I pray you do not mock at what I say;
  • For so my love's good grace may I not win
  • If ever sonnet held so true a speech!
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more about SONNET. Of why he is unhanged.
XV

Sonnet

Of why he is unhanged
  • Whoever without money is in love
  • Had better build a gallows and go hang;
  • He dies not once, but oftener feels the pang
  • Than he who was cast down from Heaven above.
  • And certes, for my sins, it's plain enough,
  • If Love's alive on earth, that he's myself,
  • Who would not be so cursed with want of pelf
  • If others paid my proper dues thereof.
  • Then why am I not hanged by my own hands?
  • 10 I answer: for this empty narrow chink
  • Of hope;—that I've a father old and rich,
  • And that if once he dies I'll get his lands;
  • And die he must, when the sea's dry, I think.
  • Meanwhile God keeps him whole and me i' the ditch.
more about SONNET. Of why he would be a Scullion.
XVI

Sonnet

Of why he would be a Scullion
  • I am so out of love through poverty
  • That if I see my mistress in the street
  • I hardly can be certain whom I meet,
  • And of her name do scarce remember me.
  • Also my courage it has made to be
  • So cold, that if I suffered some foul cheat,
  • Even from the meanest wretch that one could beat,
  • Save for the sin I think he should go free.
  • Ay, and it plays me a still nastier trick;
  • 10 For, meeting some who erewhile with me took
  • Delight, I seem to them a roaring fire.
  • So here's a truth whereat I need not stick;—
  • That if one could turn scullion to a cook,
  • It were a thing to which one might aspire.
more about PROLONGED SONNET. When his Clothes were gone.
XVII

Prolonged Sonnet

When his Clothes were gone
Note: The following poem is not, in the strict sense, a “sonnet,” and is designated by Rossetti a “prolonged sonnet,” consisting as it does of a seventeen-line stanza.
  • Never so bare and naked was church-stone
  • As is my clean-stripped doublet in my grasp;
  • Also I wear a shirt without a clasp,
  • Which is a dismal thing to look upon.
  • Ah! had I still but the sweet coins I won
  • That time I sold my nag and staked the pay,
  • I'd not lie hid beneath the roof to-day
  • And eke out sonnets with this moping moan.
  • Daily a thousand times stark mad am I
  • 10 At my dad's meanness who won't clothe me now,
  • For “How about the horse?” is still his cry.
  • Till one thing strikes me as clear anyhow,—
  • No rag I'll get. The wretch has sworn, I see,
  • Not to invest another doit in me.
  • And all because of the fine doublet's price
  • He gave me, when I vowed to throw no dice,
  • And for his damned nag's sake! Well, this is nice!
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more about SONNET. He argues his case with Death.
XVIII

Sonnet

He argues his case with Death
  • Gramercy, Death, as you've my love to win,
  • Just be impartial in your next assault;
  • And that you may not find yourself in fault,
  • Whate'er you do, be quick now and begin.
  • As oft may I be pounded flat and thin
  • As in Grosseto there are grains of salt,
  • If now to kill us both you be not call'd,—
  • Both me and him who sticks so in his skin.
  • Or better still, look here; for if I'm slain
  • 10 Alone,—his wealth, it's true, I'll never have,
  • Yet death is life to one who lives in pain;
  • But if you only kill Saldagno's knave,
  • I'm left in Siena (don't you see your gain?)
  • Like a rich man who's made a galley-slave.*
more about SONNET. Of Becchina, and of her Husband.
XIX

Sonnet

Of Becchina, and of her Husband
  • I would like better in the grace to be
  • Of the dear mistress whom I bear in mind
  • (As once I was) than I should like to find
  • A stream that washed up gold continually:
  • Because no language could report of me
  • The joys that round my heart would then be twin'd,
  • Who now, without her love, do seem resign'd
  • To death that bends my life to its decree.
  • And one thing makes the matter still more sad:
  • 10 For all the while I know the fault's my own,
  • That on her husband I take no revenge,
  • Who's worse to her than is to me my dad.
  • God send grief has not pulled my courage down,
  • That hearing this I laugh; for it seems strange.
Transcribed Footnote (page 398):

* He means, possibly, that he should be more than ever tormented by his creditors

on account of their knowing his ability to pay them; but the meaning seems very un-

certain.

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more about SONNET. To Becchina's rich Husband.
XX

Sonnet

To Becchina's rich Husband*
  • As thou wert loth to see, before thy feet,
  • The dear broad coin roll all the hill-slope down,
  • Till, gathering it from rifted clods, some clown
  • Should rub it oft and scarcely render it;—
  • Tell me, I charge thee, if by generous heat
  • Or clutching frost the fruits of earth be grown,
  • And by what wind the blight is o'er them strown,
  • And with what gloom the tempest is replete.
  • Yet daily, in good sooth, as morn by morn
  • 10 Thou hear'st the voice of thy poor husbandman
  • And those loud herds, his other family,—
  • I know, as surely as Becchina's born
  • With a kind heart, she does the best she can
  • To filch at least one new-bought prize from thee.
Transcribed Footnote (page 399):

* This puzzling sonnet is printed in Italian collections with the name of Guido Caval-

canti. It must evidently belong to Angiolieri, and it has certain fine points which make

me unwilling to omit it; though partly as to rendering, and wholly as to application,

I have been driven on conjecture.

more about SONNET. On the Death of his Father.
XXI

Sonnet

On the Death of his Father
  • Let not the inhabitants of Hell despair,
  • For one's got out who seemed to be locked in;
  • And Cecco's the poor devil that I mean,
  • Who thought for ever and ever to be there.
  • But the leaf's turned at last, and I declare
  • That now my state of glory doth begin:
  • For Messer Angiolieri's slipped his skin,
  • Who plagued me, summer and winter, many a year.
  • Make haste to Cecco, Sonnet, with a will,
  • 10 To him who no more at the Abbey dwells;
  • Tell him that Brother Henry's half dried up.†
  • He'll never more be down-at-mouth, but fill
  • His beak at his own beck,‡ till his life swells
  • To more than Enoch's or Elijah's scope.
Transcribed Footnote (page 399):

† It would almost seem as if Cecco, in his poverty, had at last taken refuge in a religious

house under the name of Brother Henry ( Frate Arrigo), and as if he here meant that

Brother Henry was now decayed, so to speak, through the resuscitation of Cecco. (See

Introduction to Part I., p. 307.)

Transcribed Footnote (page 399):

‡ In the original words, “Ma di tal cibo imbecchi lo suo becco,” a play upon the name

of Becchina seems intended, which I have conveyed as well as I could.

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Note: The period at the end of p. 400, line 14 of “He would slay all who hate their Fathers” is surrounded by a square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about SONNET. He would slay all who hate their Fathers.
XXII

Sonnet

He would slay all who hate their Fathers
  • Who utters of his father aught but praise,
  • 'Twere well to cut his tongue out of his mouth;
  • Because the Deadly Sins are seven, yet doth
  • No one provoke such ire as this must raise.
  • Were I a priest, or monk in anyways,
  • Unto the Pope my first respects were paid,
  • Saying, “Holy Father, let a just crusade
  • Scourge each man who his sire's good name gainsays.”
  • And if by chance a handful of such rogues
  • 10 At any time should come into our clutch,
  • I'd have them cooked and eaten then and there,
  • If not by men, at least by wolves and dogs.
  • The Lord forgive me! for I fear me much
  • Some words of mine were rather foul than fair.
more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He writes Dante, then in exile at Verona, defying him as no better than himself.
XXIII

TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He writes to Dante, then in exile at Verona, defying him as

no better than himself
  • Dante Alighieri, if I jest and lie,
  • You in such lists might run a tilt with me:
  • I get my dinner, you your supper, free;
  • And if I bite the fat, you suck the fry;
  • I shear the cloth and you the teazle ply;
  • If I've a strut, who's prouder than you are?
  • If I'm foul-mouthed, you're not particular;
  • And you're turned Lombard, even if Roman I.
  • So that, 'fore Heaven! if either of us flings
  • 10 Much dirt at the other, he must be a fool:
  • For lack of luck and wit we do these things.
  • Yet if you want more lessons at my school,
  • Just say so, and you'll find the next touch stings—
  • For, Dante, I'm the goad and you're the bull.
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Sig. 26
GUIDO ORLANDI*
more about SONNET. Against the 'White' Ghibellines.
Sonnet

Against the “White” Ghibellines
  • Now of the hue of ashes are the Whites;
  • And they go following now after the kind
  • Of creatures we call crabs, which, as some find,
  • Will only seek their natural food o' nights.
  • All day they hide; their flesh has such sore frights
  • Lest Death be come for them on every wind,
  • Lest now the Lion's† wrath be so inclined
  • That they may never set their sin to rights.
  • Guelf were they once, and now are Ghibelline:
  • 10 Nothing but rebels henceforth be they named,—
  • State-foes, as are the Uberti, every one.
  • Behold, against the Whites all men must sign
  • Some judgment whence no pardon can be claim'd
  • Excepting they were offered to Saint John.‡
Transcribed Footnote (page 401):

* Several other pieces by this author, addressed to Guido Cavalcanti and Dante da

Maiano, will be found among their poems.

Transcribed Footnote (page 401):

† I.e. Florence.

Transcribed Footnote (page 401):

‡ That is, presented at the high altar on the feast-day of St. John the Baptist; a

ceremony attending the release of criminals, a certain number of whom were annually

pardoned on that day in Florence. This was the disgraceful condition annexed to that

recall to Florence which Dante received when in exile at the court of Verona; which

others accepted, but which was refused by him in a memorable epistle still preserved.

LAPO GIANNI
more about MADRIGAL. What Love shall provide for him.
I

Madrigal

What Love shall provide for him
  • Love, I demand to have my lady in fee.
  • Fine balm let Arno be;
  • The walls of Florence all of silver rear'd,
  • And crystal pavements in the public way.
  • With castles make me fear'd,
  • Till every Latin soul have owned my sway.
  • Be the world peaceful; safe throughout each path;
  • No neighbour to breed wrath;
  • The air, summer and winter, temperate.
  • 10 A thousand dames and damsels richly clad
  • Upon my choice to wait,
  • Singing by day and night to make me glad.
  • Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth,
  • Filled with the strife of birds,
  • With water-springs, and beasts that house i' the earth.
  • Let me seem Solomon for lore of words,
  • Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom.
  • Knights as my serfs be given;
  • And as I will, let music go and come;
  • 20 Till at the last thou bring me into Heaven.
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more about BALLATA. A Message in charge for his Lady Lagia.
II

Ballata

A Message in charge for his Lady Lagia
  • Ballad, since Love himself hath fashioned thee
  • Within my mind where he doth make abode,
  • Hie thee to her who through mine eyes bestow'd
  • Her blessing on my heart, which stays with me.
  • Since thou wast born a handmaiden of Love,
  • With every grace thou should'st be perfected,
  • And everywhere seem gentle, wise, and sweet.
  • And for that thine aspect gives sign thereof,
  • I do not tell thee, “Thus much must be said”:—
  • 10 Hoping, if thou inheritest my wit,
  • And com'st on her when speech may ill befit,
  • That thou wilt say no words of any kind:
  • But when her ear is graciously inclin'd,
  • Address her without dread submissively.
  • Afterward, when thy courteous speech is done,
  • (Ended with fair obeisance and salute
  • To that chief forehead of serenest good,)
  • Wait thou the answer which, in heavenly tone,
  • Shall haply stir between her lips, nigh mute
  • 20 For gentleness and virtuous womanhood.
  • And mark that, if my homage please her mood,
  • No rose shall be incarnate in her cheek,
  • But her soft eyes shall seem subdued and meek,
  • And almost pale her face for delicacy.
  • For, when at last thine amorous discourse
  • Shall have possessed her spirit with that fear
  • Of thoughtful recollection which in love
  • Comes first,—then say thou that my heart implores
  • Only without an end to honour her,
  • 30 Till by God's will my living soul remove:
  • That I take counsel oftentimes with Love;
  • For he first made my hope thus strong and rife,
  • Through whom my heart, my mind, and all my life,
  • Are given in bondage to her seigniory.
  • Then shalt thou find the blessed refuge girt
  • I' the circle of her arms, where pity and grace
  • Have sojourn, with all human excellence:
  • Then shalt thou feel her gentleness exert
  • Its rule (unless, alack! she deem thee base):
  • 40 Then shalt thou know her sweet intelligence:
  • Then shalt thou see—O marvel most intense!—
  • What thing the beauty of the angels is,
  • And what are the miraculous harmonies
  • Whereon Love rears the heights of sovereignty.
  • Move, Ballad, so that none take note of thee,
  • Until thou set thy footsteps in Love's road.
  • Having arrived, speak with thy visage bow'd,
  • And bring no false doubt back, or jealousy.
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DINO FRESCOBALDI
more about SONNET. Of what his Lady is.
I

Sonnet

Of what his Lady is
  • This is the damsel by whom love is brought
  • To enter at his eyes that looks on her;
  • This is the righteous maid, the comforter,
  • Whom every virtue honours unbesought.
  • Love, journeying with her, unto smiles is wrought,
  • Showing the glory which surrounds her there;
  • Who, when a lowly heart prefers its prayer,
  • Can make that its transgression come to nought.
  • And, when she giveth greeting, by Love's rule,
  • 10 With sweet reserve she somewhat lifts her eyes
  • Bestowing that desire which speaks to us.
  • Alone on what is noble looks she thus,
  • Its opposite rejecting in like wise,
  • This pitiful young maiden beautiful.
more about SONNET. Of the Star of his Love.
II

Sonnet

Of the Star of his Love
  • That star the highest seen in heaven's expanse
  • Not yet forsakes me with its lovely light:
  • It gave me her who from her heaven's pure height
  • Gives all the grace mine intellect demands.
  • Thence a new arrow of strength is in my hands
  • Which bears good will whereso it may alight;
  • So barbed, that no man's body or soul its flight
  • Has wounded yet, nor shall wound any man's.
  • Glad am I therefore that her grace should fall
  • 10 Not otherwise than thus; whose rich increase
  • Is such a power as evil cannot dim.
  • My sins within an instant perished all
  • When I inhaled the light of so much peace.
  • And this Love knows; for I have told it him.
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GIOTTO DI BONDONE
more about CANZONE. Of the Doctrine of Voluntary Poverty.
Canzone

Of the Doctrine of Voluntary Poverty
  • Many there are, praisers of Poverty;
  • The which as man's best state is register'd
  • When by free choice preferred,
  • With strict observance having nothing here.
  • For this they find certain authority
  • Wrought of an over-nice interpreting.
  • Now as concerns such thing,
  • A hard extreme it doth to me appear,
  • Which to commend I fear,
  • 10 For seldom are extremes without some vice.
  • Let every edifice,
  • Of work or word, secure foundation find;
  • Against the potent wind,
  • And all things perilous, so well prepar'd
  • That it need no correction afterward.
  • Of poverty which is against the will,
  • It never can be doubted that therein
  • Lies broad the way to sin.
  • For oftentimes it makes the judge unjust;
  • 20 In dames and damsels doth their honour kill;
  • And begets violence and villanies,
  • And theft and wicked lies,
  • And casts a good man from his fellows' trust.
  • And for a little dust
  • Of gold that lacks, wit seems a lacking too.
  • If once the coat give view
  • Of the real back, farewell all dignity.
  • Each therefore strives that he
  • Should by no means admit her to his sight,
  • 30 Who, only thought on, makes his face turn white.
  • Of poverty which seems by choice elect,
  • I may pronounce from plain experience,—
  • Not of mine own pretence,—
  • That 'tis observed or unobserved at will.
  • Nor its observance asks our full respect:
  • For no discernment, nor integrity,
  • Nor lore of life, nor plea
  • Of virtue, can her cold regard instil.
  • I call it shame and ill
  • 40 To name as virtue that which stifles good.
  • I call it grossly rude,
  • On a thing bestial to make consequent
  • Virtue's inspired advènt
  • To understanding hearts acceptable:
  • For the most wise most love with her to dwell.
  • Here mayst thou find some issue of demur:
  • For lo! our Lord commendeth poverty.
  • Nay, what His meaning be
  • Search well: His words are wonderfully deep,
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  • 50 Oft doubly sensed, asking interpreter.
  • The state for each most saving, is His will
  • For each. Thine eyes unseal,
  • And look within, the inmost truth to reap.
  • Behold what concord keep
  • His holy words with His most holy life.
  • In Him the power was rife
  • Which to all things apportions time and place.
  • On earth He chose such case;
  • And why? 'Twas His to point a higher life.
  • 60 But here, on earth, our senses show us still
  • How they who preach this thing are least at peace,
  • And evermore increase
  • Much thought how from this thing they should escape.
  • For if one such a lofty station fill,
  • He shall assert his strength like a wild wolf,
  • Or daily mask himself
  • Afresh, until his will be brought to shape;
  • Ay, and so wear the cape
  • That direst wolf shall seem like sweetest lamb
  • 70 Beneath the constant sham.
  • Hence, by their art, this doctrine plagues the world:
  • And hence, till they be hurl'd
  • From where they sit in high hypocrisy,
  • No corner of the world seems safe to me.
  • Go, Song, to some sworn owls that we have known
  • And on their folly bring them to reflect:
  • But if they be stiff-neck'd,
  • Belabour them until their heads are down.
SIMONE DALL' ANTELLA
more about PROLONGED SONNET. In the last Days of the Emperor Henry VII.
Prolonged Sonnet

In the last Days of the Emperor Henry VII
Note: The following poem is not, in the strict sense, a “sonnet,” and is designated by Rossetti a “prolonged sonnet,” consisting as it does of a sixteen-line stanza.
  • Along the road all shapes must travel by,
  • How swiftly, to my thinking, now doth fare
  • The wanderer who built his watchtower there
  • Where wind is torn with wind continually!
  • Lo! from the world and its dull pain to fly,
  • Unto such pinnacle did he repair,
  • And of her presence was not made aware,
  • Whose face, that looks like Peace, is Death's own lie.
  • Alas, Ambition, thou his enemy,
  • 10 Who lurest the poor wanderer on his way,
  • But never bring'st him where his rest may be,—
  • O leave him now, for he is gone astray
  • Himself out of his very self through thee,
  • Till now the broken stems his feet betray,
  • And, caught with boughs before and boughs behind,
  • Deep in thy tangled wood he sinks entwin'd.
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more about SONNET (TO DANTE ALIGHIERI). He commends the work of Dante's Life, then drawing to its close; and deplores his own deficiencies.
GIOVANNI QUIRINO TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sonnet

He commends the work of Dante's life, then drawing

to its close; and deplores his own deficiencies
  • Glory to God and to God's Mother chaste,
  • Dear friend, is all the labour of thy days:
  • Thou art as he who evermore uplays
  • That heavenly wealth which the worm cannot waste:
  • So shalt thou render back with interest
  • The precious talent given thee by God's grace:
  • While I, for my part, follow in their ways
  • Who by the cares of this world are possess'd.
  • For, as the shadow of the earth doth make
  • 10 The moon's globe dark, when so she is debarr'd
  • From the bright rays which lit her in the sky,—
  • So now, since thou my sun didst me forsake,
  • (Being distant from me), I grow dull and hard,
  • Even as a beast of Epicurus' sty.
more about SONNET (TO GIOVANNI QUIRINO). He answers the foregoing Sonnet (by Quirino); saying what he feels at the approach of Death.
DANTE ALIGHIERI TO GIOVANNI QUIRINO

Sonnet

He answers the foregoing Sonnet; saying what he feels at

the approach of Death
  • The King by whose rich grace His servants be
  • With plenty beyond measure set to dwell
  • Ordains that I my bitter wrath dispel
  • And lift mine eyes to the great consistory;
  • Till, noting how in glorious quires agree
  • The citizens of that fair citadel,
  • To the Creator I His creature swell
  • Their song, and all their love possesses me.
  • So, when I contemplate the great reward
  • 10 To which our God has called the Christian seed,
  • I long for nothing else but only this.
  • And then my soul is grieved in thy regard,
  • Dear friend, who reck'st not of thy nearest need,
  • Renouncing for slight joys the perfect bliss.
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APPENDIX TO PART I
more about I. Forese Donati.
I

Forese Donati
What follows relates to the very filmiest of all the will-o'-the-wisps

which have beset me in making this book. I should be glad to let it

lose itself in its own quagmire, but am perhaps bound to follow it as

far as may be.
Ubaldini, in his Glossary to Barberino, (published in 1640, and

already several times referred to here,) has a rather startling entry

under the word Vendetta.
After describing this “custom of the country,” he says:—
“To leave a vengeance unaccomplished was considered very shame-

ful; and on this account Forese de' Donati sneers at Dante, who did

not avenge his father Alighieri; saying to him ironically,—
  • ‘Ben sò che fosti figliuol d' Alighieri;
  • Ed accorgomen pure alla vendetta
  • Che facesti di lui sì bella e netta;’


and hence perhaps Dante is menaced in Hell by the Spirit of one of

his race.”
Now there is no hint to be found anywhere that Dante's father, who

died about 1270, in the poet's childhood, came by his death in any

violent way. The spirit met in Hell (C. xxix.) is Geri son of Bello

Alighieri, and Dante's great-uncle; and he is there represented as

passing his kinsman in contemptuous silence on account of his own

death by the hand of one of the Sacchetti, which remained till then

unavenged, and so continued till after Dante's death, when Cione

Alighieri fulfilled the vendetta by slaying a Sacchetti at the door of his

house. If Dante is really the person addressed in the sonnet quoted by

Ubaldini, I think it probable (as I shall show presently when I give

the whole sonnet) that the ironical allusion is to the death of Geri

Alighieri. But indeed the real writer, the real subject, and the real

object of this clumsy piece of satire, seem about equally puzzling.
Forese Donati, to whom this Sonnet and another I shall quote are

attributed, was the brother of Gemma Donati, Dante's wife, and of

Corso and Piccarda Donati. Dante introduces him in the Purgatory

(C. xxiii.) as expiating the sin of gluttony. From what is there said,

he seems to have been well known in youth to Dante, who speaks also

of having wept his death; but at the same time he hints that the life

they led together was disorderly and a subject for regret. This can

hardly account for such violence as is shown in these sonnets, said to

have been written from one to the other; but it is not impossible, of

course, that a rancour, perhaps temporary, may have existed at some

time between them, especially as Forese probably adhered with the
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rest of his family to the party hostile to Dante. At any rate, Ubaldini,

Crescimbeni, Quadrio, and other writers on Italian Poetry, seem to

have derived this impression from the poems which they had seen in

MS. attributed to Forese. They all combine in stigmatizing Forese's

supposed productions as very bad poetry, and in fact this seems the

only point concerning them which is beyond a doubt. The four sonnets

of which I now proceed to give such translations as I have found

possible were first published together in 1812 by Fiacchi, who states

that he had seen two separate ancient MSS. in both of which they were

attributed to Dante and Forese. In rendering them, I have no choice

but to adopt in a positive form my conjectures as to their meaning;

but that I view these only as conjectures will appear afterwards.
more about SONNET (DANTE TO FORESE). He taunts Forese by the nickname of Bicci.
I

Dante Alighieri to Forese Donati

He taunts Forese, by the nickname of Bicci
  • O Bicci, pretty son of who knows whom
  • Unless thy mother Lady Tessa tell,—
  • Thy gullet is already crammed too well,
  • Yet others' food thou needs must now consume.
  • Lo! he that wears a purse makes ample room
  • When thou goest by in any public place,
  • Saying, “This fellow with the branded face
  • Is thief apparent from his mother's womb.”
  • And I know one who's fain to keep his bed
  • 10 Lest thou shouldst filch it, at whose birth he stood
  • Like Joseph when the world its Christmas saw.
  • Of Bicci and his brothers it is said
  • That with the heat of misbegotten blood
  • Among their wives they are nice brothers-in-law.
more about SONNET (FORESE TO DANTE). He taunts Dante ironically for not avenging Geri Alighieri.
II

Forese Donati to Dante Alighieri

He taunts Dante ironically for not avenging Geri Alighieri
  • Right well I know thou'rt Alighieri's son;
  • Nay, that revenge alone might warrant it,
  • Which thou didst take, so clever and complete,
  • For thy great-uncle who awhile agone
  • Paid scores in full. Why, if thou hadst hewn one
  • In bits for it, 'twere early still for peace!
  • But then thy head's so heaped with things like these
  • That they would weigh two sumpter-horses down.
  • Thou hast taught us a fair fashion, sooth to say,—
  • 10 That whoso lays a stick well to thy back,
  • Thy comrade and thy brother he shall be.
  • As for their names who've shown thee this good play,
  • I'll tell thee, so thou'lt tell me all the lack
  • Thou hast of help, that I may stand by thee.
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more about SONNET (DANTE TO FORESE). He taunts him concerning his Wife.
III

Dante Alighieri to Forese Donati

He taunts him concerning his Wife
  • To hear the unlucky wife of Bicci cough,
  • (Bicci,—Forese as he's called, you know,—)
  • You'd fancy she had wintered, sure enough,
  • Where icebergs rear themselves in constant snow:
  • And Lord! if in mid-August it is so,
  • How in the frozen months must she come off?
  • To wear her socks abed avails not,—no,
  • Nor quilting from Cortona, warm and tough.
  • Her cough, her cold, and all her other ills,
  • 10 Do not afflict her through the rheum of age,
  • But through some want within her nest, poor spouse!
  • This grief, with other griefs, her mother feels,
  • Who says, “Without much trouble, I'll engage,
  • She might have married in Count Guido's house!”
more about SONNET (FORESE TO DANTE). He taunts him concerning the unavenged Spirit of Geri Alighieri.
IV

Forese Donati to Dante Alighieri

He taunts him concerning the unavenged Spirit of Geri Alighieri
  • The other night I had a dreadful cough
  • Because I'd got no bed-clothes over me;
  • And so, when the day broke, I hurried off
  • To seek some gain whatever it might be.
  • And such luck as I had I tell you of.
  • For lo! no jewels hidden in a tree
  • I find, nor buried gold, nor suchlike stuff,
  • But Alighieri among the graves I see,
  • Bound by some spell, I know not at whose 'hest,—
  • 10 At Solomon's, or what sage's who shall say?
  • Therefore I crossed myself towards the east;
  • And he cried out: “For Dante's love I pray
  • Thou loose me!” But I knew not in the least
  • How this were done, so turned and went my way.
Now all this may be pronounced little better than scurrilous doggerel,

and I would not have introduced any of it, had I not wished to include

everything which could possibly belong to my subject.
Even supposing that the authorship is correctly attributed in each

case, the insults heaped on Dante have of course no weight,

as coming from one who shows every sign of being both foul-

mouthed and a fool. That then even the observance of the vendetta

had its opponents among the laity, is evident from a passage in

Barberino's Documenti d' Amore. The two sonnets bearing Dante's

name, if not less offensive than the others, are rather more pointed;

but seem still very unworthy even of his least exalted mood.
Accordingly Fraticelli (in his Minor Works of Dante) settles to his

own satisfaction that these four sonnets are not by Dante and Forese;

but I do not think his arguments conclusive enough to set the matter
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quite at rest. He first states positively that Sonnet I. (as above)

is by Burchiello, the Florentine barber-poet of the fifteenth century.

However, it is only to be found in one edition of Burchiello, and that

a late one, of 1757, where it is placed among the pieces which are very

doubtfully his. It becomes all the more doubtful when we find it

there followed by Sonnet II. (as above), which would seem by all

evidence to be at any rate written by a different person from the first,

whoever the writers of both may be. Of this sonnet Fraticelli seems

to state that he has seen it attributed in one MS. to a certain Bicci

Novello; and adds (but without giving any authority) that it was

addressed to some descendant of the great poet, also bearing the

name of Dante. Sonnet III. is pronounced by Fraticelli to be of

uncertain authorship, though if the first is by Burchiello, so must

this be. He also decides that the designation, “Bicci, vocato Forese,”

shows that Forese was the nickname and Bicci the real name; but

this is surely quite futile, as the way in which the name is put is to

the full as likely to be meant in ridicule as in earnest. Lastly, of

Sonnet IV. Fraticelli says nothing.
It is now necessary to explain that Sonnet II., as I translate it, is

made up from two versions, the one printed by Fiacchi and the one

given among Burchiello's poems; while in one respect I have adopted

a reading of my own. I would make the first four lines say—
  • Ben sò che fosti figliuol d'Alighieri:
  • Ed accorgomen pure alla vendetta
  • Che facesti di lui, sì bella e netta,
  • Dell' avolin che diè cambio l'altrieri.”
Of the two printed texts one says, in the fourth line—
  • Dell' aguglin ched ei cambiò l'altrieri;


and the other,
  • Degli auguglin che diè cambio l'altrieri.
“Aguglino” would be “eaglet,” and with this, the whole sense

of the line seems quite unfathomable: whereas at the same time

“aguglino” would not be an unlikely corrupt transcription, or even

corrupt version, of “avolino,” which again (according to the often

confused distinctions of Italian relationships,) might well be a modi-

fication of “avolo” (grandfather), meaning great-uncle. The reading

would thus be, “La vendetta che facesti di lui (i.e.) dell' avolino che

diè cambio l'altrieri;” translated literally, “The vengeance which

you took for him,—for your great-uncle who gave change the other

day.” Geri Alighieri might indeed have been said to “give change”

or “pay scores in full” by his death, as he himself had been the

aggressor in the first instance, having slain one of the Sacchetti, and

been afterwards slain himself by another.
I should add that I do not think the possibility, however question-

able, of these sonnets being authentically by Dante and Forese, depends

solely on the admission of this word “avolino.”
The rapacity attributed to the “Bicci” of Sonnet I. seems a

tendency somewhat akin to the insatiable gluttony which Forese is

represented as expiating in Dante's Purgatory. Mention is also there

made of Forese's wife, though certainly in a very different strain

from that of Sonnet III.; but it is not impossible that the poet might

have intended to make amends to her as well as in some degree to

her husband's memory. I am really more than half ashamed of so

many “possibles” and “not impossibles”; but perhaps, having

been led into the subject, am a little inclined that the reader should

be worried with it like myself.
At any rate, considering that these Sonnets are attributed by
Image of page 411 page: 411
various old manuscripts to Dante and Forese Donati;—that various

writers (beginning with Ubaldini, who seems to have ransacked

libraries more than almost any one) have spoken of these and other

sonnets by Forese against Dante,—that the feud between the Alighieri

and Sacchetti, and the death of Geri, were certainly matters of unabated

bitterness in Dante's lifetime, as we find the vendetta accomplished

even after his death,—and lastly, that the sonnets attributed to Forese

seem to be plausibly referable to this subject,—I have thought it

pardonable towards myself and my readers to devote to these ill-

natured and not very refined productions this very long and tiresome

note.
Crescimbeni ( Storia della Volgar Poesia) gives another sonnet

against Dante as being written by Forese Donati, and it certainly

resembles these in style. I should add that their obscurity of mere

language is excessive, and that my translations therefore are neces-

sarily guesswork here and there; though as to this I may spare

particulars except in what affects the question at issue. In con-

clusion, I hope I need hardly protest against the inference that my

translations and statements might be shown to abound in dubious

makeshifts and whimsical conjectures; though it would be admitted,

on going over the ground I have traversed, that it presents a difficulty

of some kind at almost every step.
more about II. Cecco D'Ascoli.
II

Cecco D'Ascoli
There is one more versifier, contemporary with Dante, to whom I

might be expected to refer. This is the ill-fated Francesco Stabili,

better known as Cecco d'Ascoli, who was burnt by the Inquisition

at Florence in 1327, as a heretic, though the exact nature of his offence

is involved in some mystery. He was a narrow, discontented, and

self-sufficient writer; and his incongruous poem in sesta rima, called

L'Acerba, contains various references to the poetry of Dante (whom

he knew personally) as well as to that of Guido Cavalcanti, made

chiefly in a supercilious spirit. These allusions have no poetical or

biographical value whatever, so I need say no more of them or their

author. And indeed perhaps the “Bicci” sonnets are quite enough

of themselves in the way of absolute trash.
more about II. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
III

Giovanni Boccaccio
Several of the little-known sonnets of Boccaccio have reference to

Dante, but, being written in the generation which followed his, do not

belong to the body of my first division. I therefore place three of them

here, together with a few more specimens from the same poet.
There is nothing which gives Boccaccio a greater claim to our regard

than the enthusiastic reverence with which he loved to dwell on the

Commedia and on the memory of Dante, who died when he was seven

years old. This is amply proved by his Life of the Poet and Commen-

tary on the Poem, as well as by other passages in his writings both in

prose and poetry. The first of the three following sonnets relates to

his public reading and elucidation of Dante, which took place at

Florence, by a decree of the State, in 1373. The second sonnet shows
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how the greatest minds of the generation which immediately succeeded

Dante already paid unhesitating tribute to his political as well as

poetical greatness. In the third sonnet, it is interesting to note the

personal love and confidence with which Boccaccio could address the

spirit of his mighty master, unknown to him in the flesh.
more about SONNET. To one who had censured his public Exposition of Dante.
I

To one who had censured his public Exposition of Dante
  • If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be,
  • That such high fancies of a soul so proud
  • Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd,
  • (As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by thee,)
  • This were my grievous pain; and certainly
  • My proper blame should not be disavow'd;
  • Though thereof somewhat, I declare aloud
  • Were due to others, not alone to me.
  • False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal
  • 10 The blinded judgment of a host of friends,
  • And their entreaties, made that I did thus.
  • But of all this there is no gain at all
  • Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends
  • Nothing agrees that's great or generous.
more about SONNET. Inscription for a Portrait of Dante.
II

Inscription for a portrait of Dante
  • Dante Alighieri, a dark oracle
  • Of wisdom and of art, I am; whose mind
  • Has to my country such great gifts assign'd
  • That men account my powers a miracle.
  • My lofty fancy passed as low as Hell,
  • As high as Heaven, secure and unconfin'd;
  • And in my noble book doth every kind
  • Of earthly lore and heavenly doctrine dwell.
  • Renownèd Florence was my mother,—nay,
  • 10 Stepmother unto me her piteous son,
  • Through sin of cursed slander's tongue and tooth.
  • Ravenna sheltered me so cast away;
  • My body is with her,—my soul with One
  • For whom no envy can make dim the truth.
more about SONNET. To Dante in Paradise, after Fiammetta's death.
III

To Dante in Paradise, after Fiammetta's death
  • Dante, if thou within the sphere of Love,
  • As I believe, remain'st contemplating
  • Beautiful Beatrice, whom thou didst sing
  • Erewhile, and so wast drawn to her above;—
  • Unless from false life true life thee remove
  • So far that Love's forgotten, let me bring
  • One prayer before thee: for an easy thing
  • This were, to thee whom I do ask it of.
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  • I know that where all joy doth most abound
  • 10 In the Third Heaven, my own Fiammetta sees
  • The grief which I have borne since she is dead.
  • O pray her (if mine image be not drown'd
  • In Lethe) that her prayers may never cease
  • Until I reach her and am comforted.
I add three further examples of Boccaccio's poetry, chosen for their

beauty alone. Two of these relate to Maria d'Aquino, if she indeed

be the lady whom, in his writings, he calls Fiammetta. The third has

a playful charm very characteristic of the author of the Decameron;

while its beauty of colour (to our modern minds, privileged to review

the whole pageant of Italian Art,) might recall the painted pastorals of

Giorgione.
more about SONNET. Of Fiammetta singing.
IV

Of Fiammetta singing
  • Love steered my course, while yet the sun rode high,
  • On Scylla's waters to a myrtle-grove:
  • The heaven was still and the sea did not move;
  • Yet now and then a little breeze went by
  • Stirring the tops of trees against the sky:
  • And then I heard a song as glad as love,
  • So sweet that never yet the like thereof
  • Was heard in any mortal company.
  • “A nymph, a goddess, or an angel sings
  • 10 Unto herself, within this chosen place,
  • Of ancient loves;” so said I at that sound.
  • And there my lady, 'mid the shadowings
  • Of myrtle-trees, 'mid flowers and grassy space,
  • Singing I saw, with others who sat round.
more about SONNET. Of his last sight of Fiammetta.
V

Of his last sight of Fiammetta
  • Round her red garland and her golden hair
  • I saw a fire about Fiammetta's head;
  • Thence to a little cloud I watched it fade,
  • Than silver or than gold more brightly fair;
  • And like a pearl that a gold ring doth bear,
  • Even so an angel sat therein, who sped
  • Alone and glorious throughout heaven, array'd
  • In sapphires and in gold that lit the air.
  • Then I rejoiced as hoping happy things,
  • 10 Who rather should have then discerned how God
  • Had haste to make my lady all His own,
  • Even as it came to pass. And with these stings
  • Of sorrow, and with life's most weary load
  • I dwell, who fain would be where she is gone.
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more about SONNET. Of three Girls and their Talk.
VI

Of three Girls and of their Talk
  • By a clear well, within a little field
  • Full of green grass and flowers of every hue,
  • Sat three young girls, relating (as I knew)
  • Their loves. And each had twined a bough to shield
  • Her lovely face; and the green leaves did yield
  • The golden hair their shadow; while the two
  • Sweet colours mingled, both blown lightly through
  • With a soft wind for ever stirred and still'd.
  • After a little while one of them said,
  • 10 (I heard her,) “Think! If, ere the next hour struck,
  • Each of our lovers should come here to-day,
  • Think you that we should fly or feel afraid?”
  • To whom the others answered, “From such luck
  • A girl would be a fool to run away.”
End of Part I
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more about Poets Chiefly Before Dante.
PART II

POETS CHIEFLY BEFORE DANTE
more about Table of Poets in Part I.
TABLE OF POETS IN PART II
    I. Ciullo d'Alcamo, 1172—78.

  • Ciullo is a popular form of the name Vincenzo, and Alcamo an Arab

    fortress some miles from Palermo. The Dialogue, which is the only

    known production of this poet, holds here the place generally accorded

    to it as the earliest Italian poem (exclusive of one or two dubious

    inscriptions) which has been preserved to our day. Arguments have

    sometimes been brought to prove that it must be assigned to a later

    date than the poem by Folcachiero, which follows it in this volume;

    thus ascribing the first honours of Italian poetry to Tuscany, and not

    to Sicily, as is commonly supposed. Trucchi, however, (in the preface

    to his valuable collection,) states his belief that the two poems are

    about contemporaneous, fixing the date of that by Ciullo between 1172

    and 1178,—chiefly from the fact that the fame of Saladin, to whom

    this poet alludes, was most in men's mouths during that interval.

    At first sight, any casual reader of the original would suppose that this

    poem must be unquestionably the earliest of all, as its language is far

    the most unformed and difficult; but much of this might, of course,

    be dependent on the inferior dialect of Sicily, mixed however in this

    instance (as far as I can judge) with mere nondescript patois.

    • II. Folcachiero de' Folcachieri, Knight of Siena, 1177.

  • The above date has been assigned with probability to Folcachiero's

    Canzone, on account of its first line, where the whole world is said to

    be “living without war”; an assertion which seems to refer its pro-

    duction to the period of the celebrated peace concluded at Venice

    between Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III.

    • III. Lodovico della Vernaccia, 1200.IV. Saint Francis of Assisi; born, 1182; died, 1226.

  • His baptismal name was Giovanni, and his father was Bernardone

    Moriconi, whose mercantile pursuits he shared till the age of twenty-

    five; after which his life underwent the extraordinary change which

    resulted in his canonization, by Gregory IX., three years after his

    death, and in the formation of the Religious Order called Franciscans.

    • V. Frederick II., Emperor; born, 1194; died, 1250.

  • The life of Frederick II., and his excommunication and deposition

    from the Empire by Innocent IV., to whom, however, he did not

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    succumb, are matters of history which need no repetition. Intellec-

    tually, he was in all ways a highly-gifted and accomplished prince;

    and lovingly cultivated the Italian language, in preference to the many

    others with which he was familiar. The poem of his which I give has

    great passionate beauty; yet I believe that an allegorical interpreta-

    tion may here probably be admissible; and that the lady of the poem

    may be the Empire, or perhaps the Church herself, held in bondage by

    the Pope.

    • VI. Enzo, King of Sardinia; born, 1225; died, 1272.

  • The unfortunate Enzo was a natural son of Frederick II., and was

    born at Palermo. By his own warlike enterprise, at an early age (it

    is said at fifteen!) he subjugated the Island of Sardinia, and was made

    King of it by his father. Afterwards he joined Frederick in his war

    against the Church, and displayed the highest promise as a leader;

    but at the age of twenty-five was taken prisoner by the Bolognese,

    whom no threats or promises from the Emperor could induce to set him

    at liberty. He died in prison at Bologna, after a confinement of nearly

    twenty-three years. A hard fate indeed for one who, while moving

    among men, excited their hopes and homage, still on record, by his

    great military genius and brilliant gifts of mind and person.

    • VII. Guido Guinicelli, 1220.

  • This poet, certainly the greatest of his time, belonged to a noble and

    even princely Bolognese family. Nothing seems known of his life,

    except that he was married to a lady named Beatrice, and that in 1274,

    having adhered to the Imperial cause, he was sent into exile, but

    whither cannot be learned. He died two years afterwards. The

    highest praise has been bestowed by Dante on Guinicelli, in the Com-

    media     (Purg. C. xxvi.), in the Convito, and in the De Vulgari Eloquio;

    and many instances might be cited in which the works of the great

    Florentine contain reminiscences of his Bolognese predecessor; es-

    pecially the third canzone of Dante's Convito may be compared with

    Guido's most famous one “On the Gentle Heart.”

    • VIII. Guerzo di Montecanti, 1220.IX. Inghilfredi, Siciliano, 1220.X. Rinaldo d'Aquino, 1250.

  • I have placed this poet, belonging to a Neapolitan family, under the

    date usually assigned to him; but Trucchi states his belief that he

    flourished much earlier, and was a contemporary of Folcachiero;

    partly on account of two lines in one of his poems which say,—

    • “Lo Imperadore con pace
    • Tutto il mondo mantene.”


    If so, the mistake would be easily accounted for, as there seem to have

    been various members of the family named Rinaldo, at different dates.

    • XI. Jacopo da Lentino, 1250.

  • This Sicilian poet is generally called “the Notary of Lentino.”

    The low estimate expressed of him, as well as of Bonaggiunta and

    Guittone, by Dante (Purg. C. xxiv.), must be understood as referring

    in great measure to their want of grammatical purity and nobility of

    style, as we may judge when the passage is taken in conjunction with

    the principles of the De Vulgari Eloquio. However, Dante also attri-

    Image of page 417 page: 417
    Sig. 27
    butes his own superiority to the fact of his writing only when love

    (or natural impulse) really prompted him,—the highest certainly of all

    laws relating to art:—
    • “Io mi son un che quando
    • Amor mi spira, noto, ed in quel modo
    • Ch' ei detta dentro, vo significando.”


    A translation does not suffer from such offences of dialect as may exist

    in its original; and I think my readers will agree that, chargeable as

    he is with some conventionality of sentiment, the Notary of Lentino

    is often not without his claims to beauty and feeling. There is a

    peculiar charm in the sonnet which stands first among my specimens.

    • XII. Mazzeo di Ricci, da Messina, 1250.XIII. Pannuccio dal Bagno, Pisano, 1250.XIV. Giacomino Pugliesi, Knight of Prato, 1250.

  • Of this poet there seems nothing to be learnt; but he deserves special

    notice as possessing rather more poetic individuality than usual, and

    also as furnishing the only instance, among Dante's predecessors, of

    a poem (and a very beautiful one) written on a lady's death.

    • XV. Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, 1250.

  • Guittone was not a monk, but derived the prefix to his name from

    the fact of his belonging to the religious and military order of Cavalieri

    di Santa Maria. He seems to have enjoyed a greater literary reputa-

    tion than almost any writer of his day; but certainly his poems, of

    which many have been preserved, cannot be said to possess merit of

    a prominent kind; and Dante shows by various allusions that he con-

    sidered them much over-rated. The sonnet I have given is somewhat

    remarkable, from Petrarch's having transplanted its last line into his

    Trionfi d'Amore (cap. III.). Guittone is the author of a series of Italian

    letters to various eminent persons, which are the earliest known episto-

    lary writings in the language.

    • XVI. Bartolomeo di Sant' Angelo, 1250.XVII. Saladino da Pavia, 1250.XVIII. Bonaggiunta Urbiciani, da Lucca, 1250.XIX. Meo Abbracciavacca, da Pistoia, 1250.XX. Ubaldo di Marco, 1250.XXI. SImbuono Giudice, 1250.XXII. Masolino da Todi, 1250.XXIII. Onesto di Boncima, Bolognese, 1250.

  • Onesto was a doctor of laws, and an early friend of Cino da Pistoia.

    He was living as late as 1301, though his career as a poet may be fixed

    somewhat further back.

    • XXIV. Terino da Castel Fiorentino, 1250.XXV. Maestro Migliore, da Fiorenza, 1250.XXVI. Dello da Signa, 1250.XXVII. Folgore da San Geminiano, 1250.
    Image of page 418 page: 418
    XXVIII. Guido delle Colonne, 1250.

  • This Sicilian poet has few equals among his contemporaries, and is

    ranked high by Dante in his treatise De Vulgari Eloquio. He visited

    England, and wrote in Latin a Historia de regibus et rebus Angliæ , as

    well as a Historia destructionis Trojæ .

    • XXIX. Pier Moronelli, di Fiorenza, 1250.XXX. Ciuncio Fiorentino, 1250.XXXI. Ruggieri di Amici, Siciliano, 1250.XXXII. Carnino Ghiberti, da Fiorenza, 1250.XXXIII. Prinzivalle Doria, 1250.

  • Prinzivalle commenced by writing Italian poetry, but afterwards

    composed verses entirely in Provençal, for the love of Beatrice, Countess

    of Provence. He wrote also, in Provençal prose, a treatise “On the

    dainty Madness of Love,” and another “On the War of Charles, King

    of Naples, against the tyrant Manfredi.” He held various high offices,

    and died at Naples in 1276.

    • XXXIV. Rustico di Filippo; born about 1200; died, 1270.

  • The writings of this Tuscan poet (called also Rustico Barbuto)

    show signs of more vigour and versatility than was common in his day,

    and he probably began writing in Italian verse even before many of those

    already mentioned. In his old age, he, though a Ghibelline, received

    the dedication of the Tesoretto from the Guelf Brunetto Latini, who

    there pays him unqualified homage for surpassing worth in peace and

    war. It is strange that more should not be known regarding this

    doubtless remarkable man. His compositions have sometimes much

    humour, and on the whole convey the impression of an active and

    energetic nature. Moreover, Trucchi pronounces some of them to be

    as pure in language as the poems of Dante or Guido Cavalcanti, though

    written thirty or forty years earlier.

    • XXXV. Pucciarello di Fiorenza, 1260.XXXVI. Albertuccio della Viola, 1260.XXXVII. Tommaso Buzzuola, da Faenza, 1280.XXXVIII. Noffo Bonaguida, 1280.XXXIX. Lippo Paschi de'Bardi, 1280.XL. Ser Pace, Notaio da Fiorenza, 1280.XLI. NIccolò degli Albizzi, 1300.

  • The noble Florentine family of Albizzi produced writers of poetry

    in more than one generation. The vivid and admirable sonnet which

    I have translated is the only one I have met with by Niccolò. I must

    confess my inability to trace the circumstances which gave rise to it.

    • XLII. Francesco da Barberino; born, 1264; died, 1348.

  • With the exception of Brunetto Latini, (whose poems are neither

    very poetical nor well adapted for extract,) Francesco da Barberino

    shows by far the most sustained productiveness among the poets who

    preceded Dante, or were contemporaries of his youth. Though born

    only one year in advance of Dante, Barberino seems to have under-

    taken, if not completed, his two long poetic treatises, some years before

    the commencement of the Commedia.

    Image of page 419 page: 419

    This poet was born at Barberino di Valdelsa, of a noble family,

    his father being Neri di Rinuccio da Barberino. Up to the year of

    his father's death, 1296, he pursued the study of law chiefly in

    Bologna and Padua; but afterwards removed to Florence for the

    same purpose, and seems to have been there, even earlier, one of the

    many distinguished disciples of Brunetto Latini, who probably had

    more influence than any other one man in forming the youth of his

    time to the great things they accomplished. After this he travelled

    in France and elsewhere; and on his return to Italy in 1313, was

    the first who, by special favour of Pope Clement V., received the

    grade of Doctor of Laws in Florence. Both as lawyer and as citizen,

    he held great trusts and discharged them honourably. He was twice

    married, the name of his second wife being Barna di Tano, and had

    several children. At the age of eighty-four he died in the great Plague

    of Florence. Of the two works which Barberino has left, one bears

    the title of Documenti d'Amore, literally “Documents of Love,” but

    perhaps more properly rendered as “Laws of Courtesy”; while the

    other is called Del Reggimento e dei Costumi delle Donne ,—“Of the

    Government and Conduct of Women.” They may be described, in

    the main, as manuals of good breeding, or social chivalry, the one for

    men and the other for women. Mixed with vagueness, tediousness,

    and not seldom with artless absurdity, they contain much simple

    wisdom, much curious record of manners, and (as my specimens show)

    occasional poetic sweetness or power, though these last are far from

    being their most prominent merits. The first-named treatise, however,

    has much more of such qualities than the second; and contains,

    moreover, passages of homely humour which startle by their truth

    as if written yesterday. At the same time, the second book is quite

    as well worth reading, for the sake of its authoritative minuteness

    in matters which ladies, nowadays, would probably consider their

    own undisputed region; and also for the quaint gravity of certain

    surprising prose anecdotes of real life, with which it is interspersed.

    Both these works remained long unprinted, the first edition of the

    Documenti d'Amore being that edited by Ubaldini in 1640, at which

    time he reports the Reggimento, etc., to be only possessed by his age

    “in name and in desire.” This treatise was afterwards brought to

    light, but never printed till 1815. I should not forget to state that

    Barberino attained some knowledge of drawing, and that Ubaldini

    had seen his original MS. of the Documenti, containing, as he says,

    skilful miniatures by the author.

    Barberino never appears to have taken a very active part in politics,

    but he inclined to the Imperial and Ghibelline party. This contributes

    with other things to render it rather singular that we find no poetic

    correspondence or apparent communication of any kind between

    him and his many great countrymen, contemporaries of his long life,

    and with whom he had more than one bond of sympathy. His career

    stretched from Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, and Cino da Pistoia, to

    Petrarca and Boccaccio; yet only in one respectful but not enthu-

    siastic notice of him by the last-named writer ( Genealogia degli Dei),

    do we ever meet with an allusion to him by any of the greatest men

    of his time. Nor in his own writings, as far as I remember, are they

    ever referred to. His epitaph is said to have been written by Boccaccio,

    but this is doubtful.

    For some interesting notices of, and translations from, Barberino,

    I may refer the reader to the tract on “Italian Courtesy Books,” by

    my brother W. M. Rossetti, issued by the Early English Text Society.

    • XLIII. Fazio degli Uberti, 1326—60.

  • The dates of this poet's birth and death are not ascertainable, but

    I have set against his name two dates which result from his writings

    as belonging to his lifetime. He was a member of that great house

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    of the Uberti which was driven from Florence on the expulsion of

    the Ghibellines in 1267, and which was ever afterwards specially

    excluded by name from the various amnesties offered from time to

    time to the exiled Florentines. His grandfather was Farinata degli

    Uberti, whose stern nature, unyielding even amid penal fires, has

    been recorded by Dante in the tenth canto of the Inferno. Farinata's

    son Lapo, himself a poet, was the father of Fazio ( i.e. Bonifazio), who

    was no doubt born in the lifetime of Dante, and in some place of exile,

    but where is not known. In his youth he was enamoured of a certain

    Veronese lady named Angiola, and was afterwards married, but whether

    to her or not is again among the uncertainties. Certain it is that he

    had a son named Leopardo, who, after his father's death at Verona,

    settled in Venice, where his descendants maintained an honourable

    rank for the space of two succeeding centuries. Though Fazio appears

    to have suffered sometimes from poverty, he enjoyed high reputation

    as a poet, and is even said, on the authority of various early writers,

    to have publicly received the laurel crown; but in what city of Italy

    this took place we do not learn.

    There is much beauty in several of Fazio's lyrical poems, of which,

    however, no great number have been preserved. The finest of all

    is the Canzone which I have translated; whose excellence is such as

    to have procured it the high honour of being attributed to Dante,

    so that it is to be found in most editions of the Canzoniere; and as

    far as poetic beauty is concerned, it must be allowed to hold even there

    an eminent place. Its style, however, (as Monti was the first to point

    out in our own day, though Ubaldini, in his Glossary to Barberino,

    had already quoted it as the work of Fazio,) is more particularizing

    than accords with the practice of Dante; while, though certainly

    more perfect than any other poem by Fazio, its manner is quite his;

    bearing especially a strong resemblance throughout in structure to

    one canzone, where he speaks of his love with minute reference to

    the seasons of the year. Moreover, Fraticelli tells us that it is not

    attributed to Dante in any one of the many ancient MSS. he had

    seen, but has been fathered on him solely on the authority of a printed

    collection of 1518. This contested Canzone is well worth fighting

    for; and the victor would deserve to receive his prize at the hands

    of a peerless Queen of Beauty, for never was beauty better described.

    I believe we may decide that the triumph belongs by right to Fazio.

    An exile by inheritance, Fazio seems to have acquired restless

    tastes; and in the latter years of his life (which was prolonged to old

    age), he travelled over a great part of Europe, and composed his

    long poem entitled Il Dittamondo,—“The Song of the World.” This

    work, though by no means contemptible in point of execution, certainly

    falls far short of its conception, which is a grand one; the topics of

    which it treats in great measure,—geography and natural history,—

    rendering it in those days the native home of all credulities and mon-

    strosities. In scheme it was intended as an earthly parallel to Dante's

    Sacred Poem, doing for this world what he did for the other. At

    Fazio's death it remained unfinished, but I should think by very

    little; the plan of the work seeming in the main accomplished. The

    whole earth (or rather all that was then known of it) is traversed,—

    its surface and its history,—ending with the Holy Land, and thus

    bringing Man's world as near as may be to God's; that is, to the

    point at which Dante's office begins. No conception could well be

    nobler, or worthier even now of being dealt with by a great master.

    To the work of such a man, Fazio's work might afford such first

    materials as have usually been furnished beforehand to the greatest

    poets by some unconscious steward.

    • XLIV. Franco Sacchetti; born, 1335; died shortly after 1400.

  • This excellent writer is the only member of my gathering who was

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    born after the death of Dante, which event (in 1321) preceded Franco's

    birth by some fourteen years. I have introduced a few specimens

    of his poetry, partly because their attraction was irresistible, but also

    because he is the earliest Italian poet with whom playfulness is the

    chief characteristic; for even with Boccaccio, in his poetry, this is

    hardly the case, and we can but ill accept as playfulness the cynical

    humour of Cecco Angiolieri: perhaps Rustico di Filippo alone might

    put in claims to priority in this respect. However, Franco Sacchetti

    wrote poems also on political subjects; and had he belonged more

    strictly to the period of which I treat, there is no one who would

    better have deserved abundant selection. Besides his poetry, he is

    the author of a well-known series of three hundred stories; and

    Trucchi gives a list of prose works by him which are still in MS.,

    and whose subjects are genealogical, historical, natural-historical,

    and even theological. He was a prolific writer, and one who well

    merits complete and careful publication. The pieces which I have

    translated, like many others of his, are written for music.

    Franco Sacchetti was a Florentine noble by birth, and was the

    son of Benci di Uguccione Sacchetti. Between this family and the

    Alighieri there had been a vendetta of long standing (spoken of here

    in the Appendix to Part I.), but which was probably set at rest before

    Franco's time, by the deaths of at least one Alighieri and two Sacchetti.

    After some years passed in study, Franco devoted himself to commerce,

    like many nobles of the republic, and for that purpose spent some

    time in Sclavonia, whose uncongenial influences he has recorded in

    an amusing poem. As his literary fame increased, he was called

    to many important offices; was one of the Priori in 1383, and for

    some time was deputed to the government of Faenza, in the absence

    of its lord, Astorre Manfredi. He was three times married; to Felice

    degli Strozzi, to Ghita Gherardini, and to Nannina di Santi Bruni.

    • XLV. Anonymous Poems.
CIULLO D'ALCAMO
more about DIALOGUE. Lover and Lady.
Dialogue

Lover and Lady
  • He
  • Thou sweetly-smelling fresh red rose
  • That near thy summer art,
  • Of whom each damsel and each dame
  • Would fain be counterpart;
  • Oh! from this fire to draw me forth
  • Be it in thy good heart:
  • For night or day there is no rest with me,
  • Thinking of none, my lady, but of thee.
  • She
  • If thou hast set thy thoughts on me,
  • 10 Thou hast done a foolish thing.
  • Yea, all the pine-wood of this world
  • Together might'st thou bring,
  • And make thee ships, and plough the sea
  • Therewith for corn-sowing,
  • Ere any way to win me could be found:
  • For I am going to shear my locks all round.
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  • He
  • Lady, before thou shear thy locks
  • I hope I may be dead:
  • For I should lose such joy thereby
  • 20 And gain such grief instead.
  • Merely to pass and look at thee,
  • Rose of the garden-bed,
  • Has comforted me much, once and again.
  • Oh! if thou wouldst but love, what were it then!
  • She
  • Nay, though my heart were prone to love,
  • I would not grant it leave.
  • Hark! should my father or his kin
  • But find thee here this eve,
  • Thy loving body and lost breath
  • 30 Our moat may well receive.
  • Whatever path to come here thou dost know,
  • By the same path I counsel thee to go.
  • He
  • And if thy kinsfolk find me here,
  • Shall I be drowned then? Marry,
  • I'll set, for price against my head,
  • Two thousand agostari.
  • I think thy father would not do't
  • For all his lands in Bari.
  • Long life to the Emperor! Be God's the praise!
  • 40 Thou hear'st, my beauty, what thy servant says.
  • She
  • And am I then to have no peace
  • Morning or evening?
  • I have strong coffers of my own
  • And much good gold therein;
  • So that if thou couldst offer me
  • The wealth of Saladin,
  • And add to that the Soldan's money-hoard,
  • Thy suit would not be anything toward.
  • He
  • I have known many women, love,
  • 50 Whose thoughts were high and proud,
  • And yet have been made gentle by
  • Man's speech not over-loud.
  • If we but press ye long enough,
  • At length ye will be bow'd;
  • For still a woman's weaker than a man.
  • When the end comes, recall how this began.
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  • She
  • God grant that I may die before
  • Any such end do come,—
  • Before the sight of a chaste maid
  • 60 Seem to me troublesome!
  • I marked thee here all yestereve
  • Lurking about my home,
  • And now I say, Leave climbing, lest thou fall,
  • For these thy words delight me not at all.
  • He
  • How many are the cunning chains
  • Thou hast wound round my heart!
  • Only to think upon thy voice
  • Sometimes I groan apart.
  • For I did never love a maid
  • 70 Of this world, as thou art,
  • So much as I love thee, thou crimson rose.
  • Thou wilt be mine at last: this my soul knows.
  • She
  • If I could think it would be so,
  • Small pride it were of mine
  • That all my beauty should be meant
  • But to make thee to shine.
  • Sooner than stoop to that, I'd shear
  • These golden tresses fine,
  • And make one of some holy sisterhood;
  • 80 Escaping so thy love, which is not good.
  • He
  • If thou unto the cloister fly,
  • Thou cruel lady and cold,
  • Unto the cloister I will come
  • And by the cloister hold;
  • For such a conquest liketh me
  • Much better than much gold;
  • At matins and at vespers, I shall be
  • Still where thou art. Have I not conquered thee?
  • She
  • Out and alack! wherefore am I
  • 90 Tormented in suchwise?
  • Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour,
  • In whom my best hope lies,
  • O give me strength that I may hush
  • This vain man's blasphemies!
  • Let him seek through the earth; 'tis long and broad;
  • He will find fairer damsels, O my God!
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  • He
  • I have sought through Calabria,
  • Lombardy, and Tuscany,
  • Rome, Pisa, Lucca, Genoa,
  • 100 All between sea and sea:
  • Yea, even to Babylon I went
  • And distant Barbary:
  • But not a woman found I anywhere
  • Equal to thee, who art indeed most fair.
  • She
  • If thou have all this love for me,
  • Thou canst no better do
  • Than ask me of my father dear
  • And my dear mother too:
  • They willing, to the abbey-church
  • 110 We will together go,
  • And, before Advent, thou and I will wed;
  • After the which, I'll do as thou hast said.
  • He
  • These thy conditions, lady mine,
  • Are altogether nought:
  • Despite of them, I'll make a net
  • Wherein thou shalt be caught.
  • What, wilt thou put on wings to fly?
  • Nay, but of wax they're wrought,—
  • They'll let thee fall to earth, not rise with thee:
  • 120 So, if thou canst, then keep thyself from me.
  • She
  • Think not to fright me with thy nets
  • And suchlike childish gear;
  • I am safe pent within the walls
  • Of this strong castle here;
  • A boy before he is a man
  • Could give me as much fear.
  • If suddenly thou get not hence again,
  • It is my prayer thou mayst be found and slain.
  • He
  • Wouldst thou in very truth that I
  • 130 Were slain, and for thy sake?
  • Then let them hew me to such mince
  • As a man's limbs may make!
  • But meanwhile I shall not stir hence
  • Till of that fruit I take
  • Which thou hast in thy garden, ripe enough:
  • All day and night I thirst to think thereof.
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  • She
  • None have partaken of that fruit,
  • Not Counts nor Cavaliers:
  • Though many have reached up for it,
  • 140 Barons and great Seigneurs,
  • They all went hence in wrath because
  • They could not make it theirs.
  • Then how canst thou think to succeed alone
  • Who hast not a thousand ounces of thine own?
  • He
  • How many nosegays I have sent
  • Unto thy house, sweet soul!
  • At least till I am put to proof,
  • This scorn of thine control.
  • For if the wind, so fair for thee,
  • 150 Turn ever and wax foul,
  • Be sure that thou shalt say when all is done,
  • “Now is my heart heavy for him that's gone.”
  • She
  • If by my grief thou couldst be grieved,
  • God send me a grief soon!
  • I tell thee that though all my friends
  • Prayed me as for a boon,
  • Saying, “Even for the love of us,
  • Love thou this worthless loon,”
  • Thou shouldst not have the thing that thou dost hope.
  • 160 No, verily; nor for the realm o' the Pope.
  • He
  • Now could I wish that I in truth
  • Were dead here in thy house:
  • My soul would get its vengeance then;
  • Once known, the thing would rouse
  • A rabble, and they'd point and say,—
  • “Lo! she that breaks her vows,
  • And, in her dainty chamber, stabs!” Love, see:
  • One strikes just thus: it is soon done, pardie!
  • She
  • If now thou do not hasten hence,
  • 170 (My curse companioning),
  • That my stout friends will find thee here
  • Is a most certain thing:
  • After the which, my gallant sir,
  • Thy points of reasoning
  • May chance, I think, to stand thee in small stead,
  • Thou hast no friend, sweet friend, to bring thee aid.
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  • He
  • Thou sayest truly, saying that
  • I have not any friend:
  • A landless stranger, lady mine,
  • 180 None but his sword defend.
  • One year ago, my love began,
  • And now, is this the end?
  • Oh! the rich dress thou worest on that day
  • Since when thou art walking at my side alway!
  • She
  • So 'twas my dress enamoured thee!
  • What marvel? I did wear
  • A cloth of samite silver-flowered,
  • And gems within my hair.
  • But one more word; if on Christ's Book
  • 190 To wed me thou didst swear,
  • There's nothing now could win me to be thine:
  • I had rather make my bed in the sea-brine.
  • He
  • And if thou make thy bed therein,
  • Most courteous lady and bland,
  • I'll follow all among the waves,
  • Paddling with foot and hand;
  • Then, when the sea hath done with thee,
  • I'll seek thee on the sand.
  • For I will not be conquered in this strife:
  • 200 I'll wait, but win; or losing, lose my life.
  • She
  • For Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
  • Three times I cross myself.
  • Thou art no godless heretic,
  • Nor Jew, whose God's his pelf:
  • Even as I know it then, meseems,
  • Thou needs must know thyself
  • That woman, when the breath in her doth cease,
  • Loseth all savour and all loveliness.
  • He
  • Woe's me! Perforce it must be said
  • 210 No craft could then avail:
  • So that if thou be thus resolved,
  • I know my suit must fail.
  • Then have some pity, of thy grace!
  • Thou mayst, love, very well;
  • For though thou love not me, my love is such
  • That 'tis enough for both—yea overmuch.
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  • She
  • Is it even so? Learn then that I
  • Do love thee from my heart.
  • To-morrow, early in the day,
  • 220 Come here, but now depart.
  • By thine obedience in this thing
  • I shall know what thou art,
  • And if thy love be real or nothing worth;
  • Do but go now, and I am thine henceforth.
  • He
  • Nay, for such promise, my own life,
  • I will not stir a foot.
  • I've said, if thou wouldst tear away
  • My love even from its root,
  • I have a dagger at my side
  • 230 Which thou mayst take to do't:
  • But as for going hence, it will not be.
  • O hate me not! my heart is burning me.
  • She
  • Think'st thou I know not that thy heart
  • Is hot and burns to death?
  • Of all that thou or I can say,
  • But one word succoureth.
  • Till thou upon the Holy Book
  • Give me thy bounden faith,
  • God is my witness that I will not yield:
  • 240 For with thy sword 'twere better to be kill'd.
  • He
  • Then on Christ's Book, borne with me still
  • To read from and to pray,
  • (I took it, fairest, in a church,
  • The priest being gone away,)
  • I swear that my whole self shall be
  • Thine always from this day.
  • And now at once give joy for all my grief,
  • Lest my soul fly, that's thinner than a leaf.
  • She
  • Now that this oath is sworn, sweet lord,
  • 250 There is no need to speak
    Transcription Gap: one character (type damage)
  • My heart, that was so strong before,
  • Now feels itself grow weak.
  • If any of my words were harsh,
  • Thy pardon: I am meek
  • Now, and will give thee entrance presently.
  • It is best so, sith so it was to be.
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FOLCACHIERO DE' FOLCACHIERI, KNIGHT OF SIENA
more about CANZONE. He speaks of his Condition through Love.
Canzone

He speaks of his condition through Love
  • All the whole world is living without war,
  • And yet I cannot find out any peace.
  • O God! that this should be!
  • O God! what does the earth sustain me for?
  • My life seems made for other lives' ill-ease:
  • All men look strange to me;
  • Nor are the wood-flowers now
  • As once, when up above
  • The happy birds in love
  • 10 Made such sweet verses, going from bough to bough.
  • And if I come where other gentlemen
  • Bear arms, or say of love some joyful thing—
  • Then is my grief most sore,
  • And all my soul turns round upon me then:
  • Folk also gaze upon me, whispering,
  • Because I am not what I was before.
  • I know not what I am.
  • I know how wearisome
  • My life is now become,
  • 20 And that the days I pass seem all the same.
  • I think that I shall die; yea, death begins;
  • Though 'tis no set-down sickness that I have,
  • Nor are my pains set down.
  • But to wear raiment seems a burden since
  • This came, nor ever any food I crave;
  • Not any cure is known
  • To me, nor unto whom
  • I might commend my case:
  • This evil therefore stays
  • 30 Still where it is, and hope can find no room.
  • I know that it must certainly be Love:
  • No other Lord, being thus set over me,
  • Had judged me to this curse;
  • With such high hand he rules, sitting above,
  • That of myself he takes two parts in fee,
  • Only the third being hers.
  • Yet if through service I
  • Be justified with God,
  • He shall remove this load,
  • 40 Because my heart with inmost love doth sigh.
  • Gentle my lady, after I am gone,
  • There will not come another, it may be,
  • To show thee love like mine:
  • For nothing can I do, neither have done,
  • Except what proves that I belong to thee
  • And am a thing of thine.
  • Be it not said that I
  • Despaired and perished, then;
  • But pour thy grace, like rain,
  • 50 On him who is burned up, yea, visibly.
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LODOVICO DELLA VERNACCIA
more about SONNET. He exorts the State to vigilance.
Sonnet

He exhorts the State to vigilance
  • Think a brief while on the most marvellous arts
  • Of our high-purposed labour, citizens;
  • And having thought, draw clear conclusion thence;
  • And say, do not ours seem but childish parts?
  • Also on these intestine sores and smarts
  • Ponder advisedly; and the deep sense
  • Thereof shall bow your heads in penitence,
  • And like a thorn shall grow into your hearts.
  • If, of our foreign foes, some prince or lord
  • 10 Is now, perchance, some whit less troublesome,
  • Shall the sword therefore drop into the sheath?
  • Nay, grasp it as the friend that warranteth:
  • For unto this vile rout, our foes at home,
  • Nothing is high or awful save the sword.
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
more about CANTICA. Our Lord Christ: of order.
Cantica

Our Lord Christ: of Order*
  • Set Love in order, thou that lovest Me.
  • Never was virtue out of order found;
  • And though I fill thy heart desirously,
  • By thine own virtue I must keep My ground:
  • When to My love thou dost bring charity,
  • Even she must come with order girt and gown'd.
  • Look how the trees are bound
  • To order, bearing fruit;
  • And by one thing compute,
  • 10 In all things earthly, order's grace or gain.
  • All earthly things I had the making of
  • Were numbered and were measured then by Me;
  • And each was ordered to its end by Love,
  • Each kept, through order, clean for ministry.
  • Charity most of all, when known enough,
  • Is of her very nature orderly,
  • Lo, now! what heat in thee,
  • Soul, can have bred this rout?
  • Thou putt'st all order out.
  • 20 Even this love's heat must be its curb and rein.
Transcribed Footnote (page 429):

* This speech occurs in a long poem on Divine Love, half ecstatic, half scholastic,

and hardly appreciable now. The passage stands well by itself, and is the only one

spoken by our Lord.

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FREDERICK II. EMPEROR
more about CANZONE. Of his Lady in bondage.
Canzone

Of his Lady in bondage
  • For grief I am about to sing,
  • Even as another would for joy;
  • Mine eyes which the hot tears destroy
  • Are scarce enough for sorrowing:
  • To speak of such a grievous thing
  • Also my tongue I must employ,
  • Saying: Woe's me, who am full of woes!
  • Not while I live shall my sighs cease
  • For her in whom my heart found peace:
  • 10 I am become like unto those
  • That cannot sleep for weariness,
  • Now I have lost my crimson rose.
  • And yet I will not call her lost;
  • She is not gone out of the earth;
  • She is but girded with a girth
  • Of hate, that clips her in like frost.
  • Thus says she every hour almost:—
  • “When I was born, 'twas an ill birth!
  • O that I never had been born,
  • 20 If I am still to fall asleep
  • Weeping, and when I wake to weep;
  • If he whom I most loathe and scorn
  • Is still to have me his, and keep
  • Smiling about me night and morn!
  • “O that I never had been born
  • A woman! a poor, helpless fool,
  • Who can but stoop beneath the rule
  • Of him she needs must loathe and scorn!
  • If ever I feel less forlorn,
  • 30 I stand all day in fear and dule,
  • Lest he discern it, and with rough
  • Speech mock at me, or with his smile
  • So hard you scarce could call it guile:
  • No man is there to say, ‘Enough.’
  • O, but if God waits a long while,
  • Death cannot always stand aloof!
  • “Thou, God the Lord, dost know all this:
  • Give me a little comfort then,
  • Him who is worst among bad men
  • 40 Smite thou for me. Those limbs of his
  • Once hidden where the sharp worm is,
  • Perhaps I might see hope again.
  • Yet for a certain period
  • Would I seem like as one that saith
  • Strange things for grief, and murmureth
  • With smitten palms and hair abroad:
  • Still whispering under my held breath,
  • ‘Shall I not praise Thy name, O God?’
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  • “Thou, God the Lord, dost know all this:
  • 50 It is a very weary thing
  • Thus to be always trembling:
  • And till the breath of his life cease,
  • The hate in him will but increase,
  • And with his hate my suffering.
  • Each morn I hear his voice bid them
  • That watch me, to be faithful spies
  • Lest I go forth and see the skies;
  • Each night, to each, he saith the same:—
  • And in my soul and in mine eyes
  • 60 There is a burning heat like flame.”
  • Thus grieves she now: but she shall wear
  • This love of mine, whereof I spoke,
  • About her body for a cloak,
  • And for a garland in her hair,
  • Even yet: because I mean to prove,
  • Not to speak only, this my love.
ENZO, KING OF SARDINIA
more about SONNET. Of the Fitness of Seasons.
Sonnet

On the Fitness of Seasons
  • There is a time to mount; to humble thee
  • A time; a time to talk, and hold thy peace;
  • A time to labour, and a time to cease;
  • A time to take thy measures patiently;
  • A time to watch what Time's next step may be;
  • A time to make light count of menaces,
  • And to think over them a time there is;
  • There is a time when to seem not to see.
  • Wherefore I hold him well-advised and sage
  • 10 Who evermore keeps prudence facing him,
  • And lets his life slide with occasion;
  • And so comports himself, through youth to age,
  • That never any man at any time
  • Can say, Not thus, but thus thou shouldst have done.
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GUIDO GUINICELLI
more about SONNET. Concerning Lucy.
I

Sonnet

Concerning Lucy
  • When Lucy draws her mantle round her face,
  • So sweeter than all else she is to see,
  • That hence unto the hills there lives not he
  • Whose whole soul would not love her for her grace.
  • Then seems she like a daughter of some race
  • That holds high rule in France or Germany:
  • And a snake's head stricken off suddenly
  • Throbs never as then throbs my heart to embrace
  • Her body in these arms, even were she loth;—
  • 10 To kiss her lips, to kiss her cheeks, to kiss
  • The lids of her two eyes which are two flames.
  • Yet what my heart so longs for, my heart blames:
  • For surely sorrow might be bred from this
  • Where some man's patient love abides its growth.
more about CANZONE. Of the gentle Heart.
II

Canzone

Of the Gentle Heart
  • Within the gentle heart Love shelters him
  • As birds within the green shade of the grove.
  • Before the gentle heart, in nature's scheme,
  • Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.
  • For with the sun, at once,
  • So sprang the light immediately; nor was
  • Its birth before the sun's.
  • And Love hath his effect in gentleness
  • Of very self; even as
  • 10 Within the middle fire the heat's excess.
  • The fire of Love comes to the gentle heart
  • Like as its virtue to a precious stone;
  • To which no star its influence can impart
  • Till it is made a pure thing by the sun:
  • For when the sun hath smit
  • From out its essence that which there was vile,
  • The star endoweth it.
  • And so the heart created by God's breath
  • Pure, true, and clean from guile,
  • 20 A woman, like a star, enamoureth.
  • In gentle heart Love for like reason is
  • For which the lamp's high flame is fanned and bow'd:
  • Clear, piercing bright, it shines for its own bliss;
  • Nor would it burn there else, it is so proud.
  • For evil natures meet
  • With Love as it were water met with fire,
  • As cold abhorring heat.
  • Through gentle heart Love doth a track divine,—
  • Like knowing like; the same
  • 30 As diamond runs through iron in the mine.
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Sig. 28
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  • The sun strikes full upon the mud all day:
  • It remains vile, nor the sun's worth is less.
  • “By race I am gentle,” the proud man doth say:
  • He is the mud, the sun is gentleness.
  • Let no man predicate
  • That aught the name of gentleness should have,
  • Even in a King's estate,
  • Except the heart there be a gentle man's.
  • The star-beam lights the wave,—
  • 40 Heaven holds the star and the star's radiance.
  • God, in the understanding of high Heaven,
  • Burns more than in our sight the living sun:
  • There to behold His face unveiled is given;
  • And Heaven, whose will is homage paid to One
  • Fulfils the things which live
  • In God, from the beginning excellent.
  • So should my lady give
  • That truth which in her eyes is glorified,
  • On which her heart is bent,
  • 50 To me whose service waiteth at her side.
  • My lady, God shall ask, “What daredst thou?”
  • (When my soul stands with all her acts review'd;)
  • “Thou passedst Heaven, into My sight, as now,
  • To make Me of vain love similitude.
  • To Me doth praise belong,
  • And to the Queen of all the realm of grace
  • Who slayeth fraud and wrong.”
  • Then may I plead: “As though from Thee he came,
  • Love wore an angel's face:
  • 60 Lord, if I loved her, count it not my shame.”
more about SONNET. He will praise his lady.
III

Sonnet

He will praise his Lady
  • Yea, let me praise my lady whom I love:
  • Likening her unto the lily and rose:
  • Brighter than morning star her visage glows;
  • She is beneath even as her Saint above;
  • She is as the air in summer which God wove
  • Of purple and of vermilion glorious;
  • As gold and jewels richer than man knows.
  • Love's self, being love for her, must holier prove.
  • Ever as she walks she hath a sober grace,
  • 10 Making bold men abashed and good men glad;
  • If she delight thee not, thy heart must err.
  • No man dare look on her, his thoughts being base:
  • Nay, let me say even more than I have said;—
  • No man could think base thoughts who looked on her.
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more about CANZONE. He perceives his rashness in Love, but has no choice.
IV

Canzone

He perceives his Rashness in Love, but has no choice
  • I hold him, verily, of mean emprise,
  • Whose rashness tempts a strength too great to bear;
  • As I have done, alas! who turned mine eyes
  • Upon those perilous eyes of the most fair.
  • Unto her eyes I bow'd;
  • No need her other beauties in that hour
  • Should aid them, cold and proud:
  • As when the vassals of a mighty lord,
  • What time he needs his power,
  • 10 Are all girt round him to make strong his sword.
  • With such exceeding force the stroke was dealt
  • That by mine eyes its path might not be stay'd;
  • But deep into the heart it pierced, which felt
  • The pang of the sharp wound, and waxed afraid;
  • Then rested in strange wise,
  • As when some creature utterly outworn
  • Sinks into bed and lies.
  • And she the while doth in no manner care,
  • But goes her way in scorn,
  • 20 Beholding herself alway proud and fair.
  • And she may be as proud as she shall please,
  • For she is still the fairest woman found:
  • A sun she seems among the rest; and these
  • Have all their beauties in her splendour drown'd.
  • In her is every grace,—
  • Simplicity of wisdom, noble speech,
  • Accomplished loveliness;
  • All earthly beauty is her diadem,
  • This truth my song would teach,—
  • 30 My lady is of ladies chosen gem.
  • Love to my lady's service yieldeth me,—
  • Will I, or will I not, the thing is so,—
  • Nor other reason can I say or see,
  • Except that where it lists the wind doth blow.
  • He rules and gives no sign;
  • Nor once from her did show of love upbuoy
  • This passion which is mine.
  • It is because her virtue's strength and stir
  • So fill her full of joy
  • 40 That I am glad to die for love of her.
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more about SONNET. Of Moderation and Tolerance.
V

Sonnet

Of Moderation and Tolerance
  • He that has grown to wisdom hurries not,
  • But thinks and weighs what Reason bids him do;
  • And after thinking he retains his thought
  • Until as he conceived the fact ensue.
  • Let no man to o'erweening pride be wrought,
  • But count his state as Fortune's gift and due.
  • He is a fool who deems that none has sought
  • The truth, save he alone, or knows it true.
  • Many strange birds are on the air abroad,
  • 10 Nor all are of one flight or of one force,
  • But each after his kind dissimilar:
  • To each was portioned of the breath of God,
  • Who gave them divers instincts from one source.
  • Then judge not thou thy fellows what they are.
more about SONNET. Of Human Presumption.
VI

Sonnet

Of Human Presumption
  • Among my thoughts I count it wonderful,
  • How foolishness in man should be so rife
  • That masterly he takes the world to wife
  • As though no end were set unto his rule:
  • In labour alway that his ease be full,
  • As though there never were another life;
  • Till Death throws all his order into strife,
  • And round his head his purposes doth pull.
  • And evermore one sees the other die,
  • 10 And sees how all conditions turn to change,
  • Yet in no wise may the blind wretch be heal'd.
  • I therefore say, that sin can even estrange
  • Man's very sight, and his heart satisfy
  • To live as lives a sheep upon the field.
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GUERZO DI MONTECANTI
more about SONNET. He is out of heart with his time.
Sonnet

He is out of heart with his Time
  • If any man would know the very cause
  • Which makes me to forget my speech in rhyme,
  • All the sweet songs I sang in other time,—
  • I'll tell it in a sonnet's simple clause.
  • I hourly have beheld how good withdraws
  • To nothing, and how evil mounts the while:
  • Until my heart is gnawed as with a file,
  • Nor aught of this world's worth is what it was.
  • At last there is no other remedy
  • 10 But to behold the universal end;
  • And so upon this hope my thoughts are urged:
  • To whom, since truth is sunk and dead at sea,
  • There has no other part or prayer remain'd,
  • Except of seeing the world's self submerged.
INGHILFREDI, SICILIANO
more about CANZONE. He rebukes the Evil of that Time.
Canzone

He rebukes the Evil of that Time
  • Hard is it for a man to please all men:
  • I therefore speak in doubt,
  • And as one may that looketh to be chid.
  • But who can hold his peace in these days?—when
  • Guilt cunningly slips out,
  • And Innocence atones for what he did;
  • When worth is crushed, even if it be not hid;
  • When on crushed worth, guile sets his foot to rise;
  • And when the things wise men have counted wise
  • 10 Make fools to smile and stare and lift the lid.
  • Let none who have not wisdom govern you:
  • For he that was a fool
  • At first shall scarce grow wise under the sun.
  • And as it is, my whole heart bleeds anew
  • To think how hard a school
  • Young hope grows old at, as these seasons run.
  • Behold, sirs, we have reached this thing for one:—
  • The lord before his servant bends the knee,
  • And service puts on lordship suddenly.
  • 20 Ye speak o' the end? Ye have not yet begun.
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  • I would not have ye without counsel ta'en
  • Follow my words; nor meant,
  • If one should talk and act not, to praise him
  • But who, being much opposed, speaks not again,
  • Confesseth himself shent
  • And put to silence,—by some loud-mouthed mime,
  • Perchance, for whom I speak not in this rhyme.
  • Strive what ye can; and if ye cannot all,
  • Yet should not your hearts fall:
  • 30 The fruit commends the flower in God's good time.
  • (For without fruit, the flower delights not God):
  • Wherefore let him whom Hope
  • Puts off, remember time is not gone by.
  • Let him say calmly: “Thus far on this road
  • A foolish trust buoyed up
  • My soul, and made it like the summer fly
  • Burned in the flame it seeks: even so was I:
  • But now I'll aid myself: for still this trust,
  • I find, falleth to dust:
  • 40 The fish gapes for the bait-hook, and doth die.”
  • And yet myself, who bid ye do this thing,—
  • Am I not also spurn'd
  • By the proud feet of Hope continually;
  • Till that which gave me such good comforting
  • Is altogether turn'd
  • Unto a fire whose heat consumeth me?
  • I am so girt with grief that my thoughts be
  • Tired of themselves, and from my soul I loathe
  • Silence and converse both;
  • 50 And my own face is what I hate to see.
  • Because no act is meet now nor unmeet.
  • He that does evil, men applaud his name,
  • And the well-doer must put up with shame:
  • Yea, and the worst man sits in the best seat.
RINALDO D'AQUINO
more about CANZONE. He is resolved to be joyful in Love.
I

Canzone

He is resolved to be joyful in Love
  • A thing is in my mind,—
  • To have my joy again,
  • Which I had almost put away from me.
  • It were in foolish kind
  • For ever to refrain
  • From song, and renounce gladness utterly.
  • Seeing that I am given into the rule
  • Of Love, whom only pleasure makes alive,
  • Whom pleasure nourishes and brings to growth:
  • 10 The wherefore sullen sloth
  • Will he not suffer in those serving him;
  • But pleasant they must seem,
  • That good folk love them and their service thrive;
  • Nor even their pain must make them sorrowful.
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  • So bear he him that thence
  • The praise of men be gain'd,—
  • He that would put his hope in noble Love;
  • For by great excellence
  • Alone can be attain'd
  • 20 That amorous joy which wisdom may approve.
  • The way of Love is this, righteous and just;
  • Then whoso would be held of good account,
  • To seek the way of Love must him befit,—
  • Pleasure, to wit.
  • Through pleasure, man attains his worthiness:
  • For he must please
  • All men, so bearing him that Love may mount
  • In their esteem; Love's self being in his trust.
  • Trustful in servitude
  • 30 I have been and will be,
  • And loyal unto Love my whole life through.
  • A hundred-fold of good
  • Hath he not guerdoned me
  • For what I have endured of grief and woe?
  • Since he hath given me unto one of whom
  • Thus much he said,—thou mightest seek for aye
  • Another of such worth so beauteous.
  • Joy therefore may keep house
  • In this my heart, that it hath loved so well.
  • 40 Meseems I scarce could dwell
  • Ever in weary life or in dismay
  • If to true service still my heart gave room.
  • Serving at her pleasaùnce
  • Whose service pleasureth,
  • I am enriched with all the wealth of Love.
  • Song hath no utterance
  • For my life's joyful breath
  • Since in this lady's grace my homage throve.
  • Yea, for I think it would be difficult
  • 50 One should conceive my former abject case:—
  • Therefore have knowledge of me from this rhyme.
  • My penance-time
  • Is all accomplished now, and all forgot,
  • So that no jot
  • Do I remember of mine evil days.
  • It is my lady's will that I exult.
  • Exulting let me take
  • My joyful comfort, then,
  • Seeing myself in so much blessedness.
  • 60 Mine ease even as mine ache
  • Accepting, let me gain
  • No pride towards Love; but with all humbleness,
  • Even still, my pleasurable service pay.
  • For a good servant ne'er was left to pine:
  • Great shall his guerdon be who greatly bears.
  • But, because he that fears
  • To speak too much, by his own silence shent,
  • Hath sometimes made lament,—
  • I am thus boastful, lady; being thine
  • 70 For homage and obedience night and day.
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more about CANZONE. A Lady, in Spring, repents of her Coldness.
II

Canzone

A Lady, in Spring, repents of her Coldness
  • Now, when it flowereth,
  • And when the banks and fields
  • Are greener every day,
  • And sweet is each bird's breath,
  • In the tree where he builds
  • Singing after his way,—
  • Spring comes to us with hasty step and brief,
  • Everywhere in leaf,
  • And everywhere makes people laugh and play.
  • 10 Love is brought unto me
  • In the scent of the flower
  • And in the bird's blithe noise.
  • When day begins to be,
  • I hear in every bower
  • New verses finding voice:
  • From every branch around me and above,
  • A minstrels' court of love,
  • The birds contend in song about love's joys.
  • What time I hear the lark
  • 20 And nightingale keep Spring,
  • My heart will pant and yearn
  • For love. (Ye all may mark
  • The unkindly comforting
  • Of fire that will not burn.)
  • And, being in the shadow of the fresh wood,
  • How excellently good
  • A thing love is, I cannot choose but learn.
  • Let me ask grace; for I,
  • Being loved, loved not again.
  • 30 Now springtime makes me love,
  • And bids me satisfy
  • The lover whose fierce pain
  • I thought too lightly of:
  • For that the pain is fierce I do feel now.
  • And yet this pride is slow
  • To free my heart, which pity would fain move.
  • Wherefore I pray thee, Love,
  • That thy breath turn me o'er,
  • Even as the wind a leaf;
  • 40 And I will set thee above
  • This heart of mine, that's sore
  • Perplexed, to be its chief.
  • Let also the dear youth, whose passion must
  • Henceforward have good trust,
  • Be happy without words; for words bring grief.
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JACOPO DA LENTINO
more about SONNET. Of his Lady in Heaven.
I

Sonnet

Of his Lady in Heaven
  • I have it in my heart to serve God so
  • That into Paradise I shall repair,—
  • The holy place through the which everywhere
  • I have heard say that joy and solace flow.
  • Without my lady I were loth to go,—
  • She who has the bright face and the bright hair;
  • Because if she were absent, I being there,
  • My pleasure would be less than nought, I know.
  • Look you, I say not this to such intent
  • 10 As that I there would deal in any sin:
  • I only would behold her gracious mien,
  • And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face,
  • That so it should be my complete content
  • To see my lady joyful in her place.
more about CANZONETTA. Of his Lady, and of her Portrait.
II

Canzonetta

Of his Lady, and of her Portrait
  • Marvellously elate,
  • Love makes my spirit warm
  • With noble sympathies:
  • As one whose mind is set
  • Upon some glorious form,
  • To paint it as it is;—
  • I verily who bear
  • Thy face at heart, most fair,
  • Am like to him in this.
  • 10 Not outwardly declared,
  • Within me dwells enclosed
  • Thine image as thou art.
  • Ah! strangely hath it fared!
  • I know not if thou know'st
  • The love within my heart.
  • Exceedingly afraid,
  • My hope I have not said,
  • But gazed on thee apart.
  • Because desire was strong,
  • 20 I made a portraiture
  • In thine own likeness, love:
  • When absence has grown long,
  • I gaze, till I am sure
  • That I behold thee move;
  • As one who purposeth
  • To save himself by faith,
  • Yet sees not, nor can prove.
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  • Then comes the burning pain:
  • As with the man that hath
  • 30 A fire within his breast,—
  • When most he struggles, then
  • Most boils the flame in wrath,
  • And will not let him rest,
  • So still I burned and shook,
  • To pass, and not to look
  • In thy face, loveliest.
  • For where thou art I pass,
  • And do not lift mine eyes,
  • Lady, to look on thee:
  • 40 But, as I go, alas!
  • With bitterness of sighs
  • I mourn exceedingly.
  • Alas! the constant woe!
  • Myself I do not know
    Transcription Gap: one character (type damage)
  • So sore it troubles me.
  • And I have sung thy praise,
  • Lady, and many times
  • Have told thy beauties o'er.
  • Hast heard in anyways,
  • 50 Perchance, that these my rhymes
  • Are song-craft and no more?
  • Nay, rather deem, when thou
  • Shalt see me pass and bow,
  • These words I sicken for.
  • Delicate song of mine,
  • Go sing thou a new strain:
  • Seek, with the first sunshine,
  • Our lady, mine and thine,—
  • The rose of Love's domain
    Transcription Gap: one character (overinked type)
  • 60 Than red gold comelier.
  • “Lady, in Love's name hark
  • To Jacopo the clerk,
  • Born in Lentino here.”
more about SONNET. No Jewel is worth his Lady.
III

Sonnet

No Jewel is worth his Lady
  • Sapphire, nor diamond, nor emerald,
  • Nor other precious stones past reckoning,
  • Topaz, nor pearl, nor ruby like a king,
  • Nor that most virtuous jewel, jasper call'd,
  • Nor amethyst, nor onyx, nor basalt,
  • Each counted for a very marvellous thing,
  • Is half so excellently gladdening
  • As is my lady's head uncoronall'd.
  • All beauty by her beauty is made dim;
  • 10 Like to the stars she is for loftiness;
  • And with her voice she taketh away grief.
  • She is fairer than a bud, or than a leaf.
  • Christ have her well in keeping, of His grace,
  • And make her holy and beloved, like Him!
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more about CANZONETTA. He will neither boast nor lament to his Lady.
IV

Canzonetta

He will neither boast nor lament to his Lady
  • Love will not have me cry
  • For grace, as others do;
  • Nor as they vaunt, that I
  • Should vaunt my love to you.
  • For service, such as all
  • Can pay, is counted small;
  • Nor is it much to praise
  • The thing which all must know;—
  • Such pittance to bestow
  • 10 On you my love gainsays.
  • Love lets me not turn shape
  • As chance or use may strike;
  • As one may see an ape
  • Counterfeit all alike.
  • Then, lady, unto you
  • Be it not mine to sue
  • For grace or pitying.
  • Many the lovers be
  • That of such suit are free,—
  • 20 It is a common thing.
  • A gem, the more 'tis rare,
  • The more its cost will mount:
  • And, be it not so fair,
  • It is of more account.
  • So, coming from the East,
  • The sapphire is increased
  • In worth, though scarce so bright;
  • I therefore seek thy face
  • Not to solicit grace,
  • 30 Being cheapened and made slight.
  • So is the colosmine
  • Now cheapened, which in fame
  • Was once so brave and fine,
  • But now is a mean gem.
  • So be such prayers for grace
  • Not heard in any place;
  • Would they indeed hold fast
  • Their worth, be they not said,
  • Nor by true lovers made
  • 40 Before nine years be past.
  • Lady, sans sigh or groan,
  • My longing thou canst see;
  • Much better am I known
  • Than to myself, to thee
    Transcription Gap: one character (ink smear)
  • And is there nothing else
  • That in my heart avails
  • For love but groan and sigh?
  • And wilt thou have it thus,
  • This love betwixen us?—
  • 50 Much rather let me die.
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more about CANZONETTA. Of his Lady, and of his making her Likeness.
V

Canzonetta

Of his Lady, and of his making her Likeness
  • My Lady mine,* I send
  • These sighs in joy to thee;
  • Though, loving till the end,
  • There were no hope for me
  • That I should speak my love;
  • And I have loved indeed,
  • Though, having fearful heed,
  • It was not spoken of.
  • Thou art so high and great
  • 10 That whom I love I fear;
  • Which thing to circumstate
  • I have no messenger:
  • Wherefore to Love I pray,
  • On whom each lover cries,
  • That these my tears and sighs
  • Find unto thee a way.
  • Well have I wished, when I
  • At heart with sighs have ach'd,
  • That there were in each sigh
  • 20 Spirit and intellect,
  • The which, where thou dost sit,
  • Should kneel and sue for aid,
  • Since I am thus afraid
  • And have no strength for it.
  • Thou, lady, killest me,
  • Yet keepest me in pain,
  • For thou must surely see
  • How, fearing, I am fain.
  • Ah! why not send me still
  • 30 Some solace, small and slight,
  • So that I should not quite
  • Despair of thy good will?
  • Thy grace, all else above,
  • Even now while I implore,
  • Enamoureth my love
  • To love thee still the more.
  • Yet scarce should I know well—
  • A greater love to gain,
  • Even if a greater pain,
  • 40 Lady, were possible.
  • Joy did that day relax
  • My grief's continual stress,
  • When I essayed in wax
  • Thy beauty's life-likeness.
  • Ah! much more beautiful
  • Than golden-haired Yseult,—
  • Who mak'st all men exult,
  • Who bring'st all women dule.
Transcribed Footnote (page 443):

* Madonna mia.

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  • And certes without blame
  • 50 Thy love might fall to me,
  • Though it should chance my name
  • Were never heard of thee.
  • Yea, for thy love, in fine,
  • Lentino gave me birth,
  • Who am not nothing worth
  • If worthy to be thine.
more about SONNET. Of his Lady's Face.
VI

Sonnet

Of his Lady's face
  • Her face has made my life most proud and glad;
  • Her face has made my life quite wearisome;
  • It comforts me when other troubles come,
  • And amid other joys it strikes me sad.
  • Truly I think her face can drive me mad;
  • For now I am too loud, and anon dumb.
  • There is no second face in Christendom
  • Has a like power, nor shall have, nor has had.
  • What man in living face has seen such eyes,
  • 10 Or such a lovely bending of the head,
  • Or mouth that opens to so sweet a smile?
  • In speech, my heart before her faints and dies,
  • And into Heaven seems to be spirited;
  • So that I count me blest a certain while.
more about CANZONE. At the end of his Hope.
VII

Canzone

At the end of his Hope
  • Remembering this—how Love
  • Mocks me, and bids me hoard
  • Mine ill reward that keeps me nigh to death,—
  • How it doth still behove
  • I suffer the keen sword,
  • Whence undeplor'd I may not draw my breath;
  • In memory of this thing
  • Sighing and sorrowing,
  • I am languid at the heart
  • 10 For her to whom I bow,
  • Craving her pity now,
  • And who still turns apart.
  • I am dying, and through her—
  • This flower, from paradise
  • Sent in some wise, that I might have no rest.
  • Truly she did not err
  • To come before his eyes
  • Who fails and dies, by her sweet smile possess'd;
  • For, through her countenance
  • 20 (Fair brows and lofty glance!)
  • I live in constant dule.
  • Of lovers' hearts the chief
  • For sorrow and much grief,
  • My heart is sorrowful.
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  • For Love has made me weep
  • With sighs that do him wrong,
  • Since, when most strong my joy, he gave this woe.
  • I am broken, as a ship
  • Perishing of the song,
  • 30 Sweet, sweet and long, the songs the sirens know.
  • The mariner forgets,
  • Voyaging in those straits,
  • And dies assuredly.
  • Yea, from her pride perverse,
  • Who hath my heart as hers,
  • Even such my death must be.
  • I deemed her not so fell
  • And hard but she would greet,
  • From her high seat, at length, the love I bring;
  • 40 For I have loved her well;—
  • Nor that her face so sweet
  • In so much heat would keep me languishing;
  • Seeing that she I serve
  • All honour doth deserve
  • For worth unparallel'd.
  • Yet what availeth moan
  • But for more grief alone?
  • O God! that it avail'd!
  • Thou, my new song, shalt pray
  • 50 To her, who for no end
  • Each day doth tend her virtues that they grow,—
  • Since she to love saith nay;—
  • (More charms she had attain'd
  • Than sea hath sand, and wisdom even so);—
  • Pray thou to her that she
  • For my love pity me,
  • Since with my love I burn,—
  • That of the fruit of love,
  • While help may come thereof,
  • 60 She give to me in turn.
MAZZEO DI RICCO, DA MESSINA
more about CANZONE. He solicits his Lady's Pity.
I

Canzone

He solicits his Lady's Pity
  • The lofty worth and lovely excellence,
  • Dear lady, that thou hast,
  • Hold me consuming in the fire of love:
  • That I am much afeared and wildered thence,
  • As who, being meanly plac'd,
  • Would win unto some height he dreameth of.
  • Yet, if it be decreed,
  • After the multiplying of vain thought,
  • By Fortune's favour he at last is brought
  • 10 To his far hope, the mighty bliss indeed.
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  • Thus, in considering thy loveliness,
  • Love maketh me afear'd,—
  • So high art thou, joyful, and full of good;—
  • And all the more, thy scorn being never less.
  • Yet is this comfort heard,—
  • That underneath the water fire doth brood,
  • Which thing would seem unfit
  • By law of nature. So may thy scorn prove
  • Changed at the last, through pity into love,
  • 20 If favourable Fortune should permit.
  • Lady, though I do love past utterance,
  • Let it not seem amiss,
  • Neither rebuke thou the enamoured eyes.
  • Look thou thyself on thine own countenance,
  • From that charm unto this,
  • All thy perfections of sufficiencies.
  • So shalt thou rest assured
  • That thine exceeding beauty lures me on
  • Perforce, as by the passive magnet-stone
  • 30 The needle, of its nature's self, is lured.
  • Certes, it was of Love's dispiteousness
  • That I must set my life
  • On thee, proud lady, who accept'st it not.
  • And how should I attain unto thy grace,
  • That falter, thus at strife
  • To speak to thee the thing which is my thought?
  • Thou, lovely as thou art,
  • I pray for God, when thou dost pass me by,
  • Look upon me: so shalt thou certify,
  • 40 By my cheek's ailing, that which ails my heart.
  • So thoroughly my love doth tend toward
  • Thy love its lofty scope,
  • That I may never think to ease my pain;
  • Because the ice, when it is frozen hard,
  • May have no further hope
  • That it should ever become snow again.
  • But, since Love bids me bend
  • Unto thy seigniory,
  • Have pity thou on me,
  • 50 That so upon thyself all grace descend.
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more about CANZONE. After six years' service he renounces his Lady.
II

Canzone

After Six Years' service he renounces his Lady
  • I laboured these six years
  • For thee, thou bitter sweet;
  • Yea, more than it is meet
  • That speech should now rehearse
  • Or song should rhyme to thee;
  • But love gains never aught
  • From thee, by depth or length;
  • Unto thine eyes such strength
  • And calmness thou hast taught,
  • 10 That I say wearily:—
  • “The child is most like me,
  • Who thinks in the clear stream
  • To catch the round flat moon
  • And draw it all a-dripping unto him,—
  • Who fancies he can take into his hand
  • The flame o' the lamp, but soon
  • Screams and is nigh to swoon
  • At the sharp heat his flesh may not withstand.”
  • Though it be late to learn
  • 20 How sore I was possest,
  • Yet do I count me blest,
  • Because I still can spurn
  • This thrall which is so mean.
  • For when a man, once sick,
  • Has got his health anew,
  • The fever which boiled through
  • His veins, and made him weak,
  • Is as it had not been.
  • For all that I had seen,
  • 30 Thy spirit, like thy face,
  • More excellently shone
  • Than precious crystals in an untrod place.
  • Go to: thy worth is but as glass, the cheat,
  • Which, to gaze thereupon,
  • Seems crystal, even as one,
  • But only is a cunning counterfeit.
  • Foiled hope has made me mad,
  • As one who, playing high,
  • Thought to grow rich thereby,
  • 40 And loses what he had.
  • Yet I can now perceive
  • How true the saying is
  • That says: “If one turn back
  • Out of an evil track
  • Through loss which has been his,
  • He gains, and need not grieve.”
  • To me now, by your leave,
  • It chances as to him
  • Who of his purse is free
  • 50 To one whose memory for such debts is dim.
  • Long time he speaks no word thereof, being loth:
  • But having asked, when he
  • Is answered slightingly,
  • Then shall he lose his patience and be wroth.
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Note: The period at the end of p. 448, line 1 up from the bottom is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about SONNET. Of Self-seeing.
III

Sonnet

Of Self-seeing
  • If any his own foolishness might see
  • As he can see his fellow's foolishness,
  • His evil speakings could not but prove less,
  • For his own fault would vex him inwardly.
  • But, by old custom, each man deems that he
  • Has to himself all this world's worthiness;
  • And thou, perchance, in blind contentedness,
  • Scorn'st him, yet know'st not what I think of thee.
  • Wherefore I wish it were so ordered
  • 10 That each of us might know the good that's his,
  • And also the ill,—his honour and his shame.
  • For oft a man has on his proper head
  • Such weight of sins, that, did he know but this,
  • He could not for his life give others blame.
PANNUCCIO DAL BAGNO, PISANO
more about CANZONE. Of his Change through Love.
Canzone

Of his Change through Love
  • My lady, thy delightful high command,
  • Thy wisdom's great intent,
  • The worth which ever rules thee in thy sway,
  • (Whose righteousness of strength hath ta'en in hand
  • Such full accomplishment
  • As height makes worthy of more height alway,)
  • Have granted to thy servant some poor due
  • Of thy perfection; who
  • From them has gained a proper will so fix'd,
  • 10 With other thought unmix'd,
  • That nothing save thy service now impels
  • His life, and his heart longs for nothing else.
  • Beneath thy pleasure, lady mine, I am:
  • The circuit of my will,
  • The force of all my life, to serve thee so:
  • Never but only this I think or name,
  • Nor ever can I fill
  • My heart with other joy that man may know.
  • And hence a sovereign blessedness I draw,
  • 20 Who soon most clearly saw
  • That not alone my perfect pleasure is
  • In this my life-service:
  • But Love has made my soul with thine to touch
  • Till my heart feels unworthy of so much.
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Sig. 29
  • For all that I could strive, it were not worth
  • That I should be uplift
  • Into thy love, as certainly I know:
  • Since one to thy deserving should stretch forth
  • His love for a free gift,
  • 30 And be full fain to serve and sit below.
  • And forasmuch as this is verity,
  • It came to pass with thee
  • That seeing how my love was not loud-tongued
  • Yet for thy service long'd—
  • As only thy pure wisdom brought to pass,—
  • Thou knew'st my heart for only what it was.
  • Also because thou thus at once didst learn
  • This heart of mine and thine,
  • With all its love for thee, which was and is;
  • 40 Thy lofty sense that could so well discern
  • Wrought even in me some sign
  • Of thee, and of itself some emphasis,
  • Which evermore might hold my purpose fast.
  • For lo! thy law is pass'd
  • That this my love should manifestly be
  • To serve and honour thee:
  • And so I do: and my delight is full,
  • Accepted for the servant of thy rule.
  • Without almost, I am all rapturous,
  • 50 Since thus my will was set
  • To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence:
  • Nor ever seems it anything could rouse
  • A pain or a regret,
  • But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense;
  • Considering that from thee all virtues spread
  • As from a fountain-head,—
  • That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail
  • And honour without fail;
  • With whom each sovereign good dwells separate,
  • 60 Fulfilling the perfection of thy state.
  • Lady, since I conceived
  • Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart,
  • My life has been apart
  • In shining brightness and the place of truth;
  • Which till that time, good sooth,
  • Groped among shadows in a darken'd place
  • Where many hours and days
  • It hardly ever had remembered good.
  • But now my servitude
  • 70 Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest.
  • A man from a wild beast
  • Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived.
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GIACOMINO PUGLIESI, KNIGHT OF PRATO
more about CANZONETTA. Of his Lady in Absence.
I

Canzonetta

Of his Lady in Absence
  • The sweetly-favoured face
  • She has, and her good cheer,
  • Have filled me full of grace
  • When I have walked with her.
  • They did upon that day:
  • And everything that pass'd
  • Comes back from first to last
  • Now that I am away.
  • There went from her meek mouth
  • 10 A poor low sigh which made
  • My heart sink down for drouth.
  • She stooped, and sobbed, and said,
  • “Sir, I entreat of you
  • Make little tarrying:
  • It is not a good thing
  • To leave one's love and go.”
  • But when I turned about
  • Saying, “God keep you well!”
  • As she look'd up, I thought
  • 20 Her lips that were quite pale
  • Strove much to speak, but she
  • Had not half strength enough:
  • My own dear graceful love
  • Would not let go of me.
  • I am not so far, sweet maid,
  • That now the old love's unfelt:
  • I believe Tristram had
  • No such love for Yseult:
  • And when I see your eyes
  • 30 And feel your breath again,
  • I shall forget this pain
  • And my whole heart will rise.
more about CANZONETTA. To his Lady, in Spring.
II

Canzonetta

To his Lady, in Spring
  • To see the green returning
  • To stream-side, garden, and meadow,—
  • To hear the birds give warning,
  • (The laughter of sun and shadow
  • Awaking them full of revel,)
  • It puts me in strength to carol
  • A music measured and level,
  • This grief in joy to apparel;
  • For the deaths of lovers are evil.
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  • 10 Love is a foolish riot,
  • And to be loved is a burden;
  • Who loves and is loved in quiet
  • Has all the world for his guerdon.
  • Ladies on him take pity
  • Who for their sake hath trouble:
  • Yet, if any heart be a city
  • From love embarrèd double,
  • Thereof is a joyful ditty.
  • That heart shall be always joyful;—
  • 20 But I in the heart, my lady,
  • Have jealous doubts unlawful,
  • And stubborn pride stands ready.
  • Yet love is not with a measure,
  • But still is willing to suffer
  • Service at his good pleasure:
  • The whole Love hath to offer
  • Tends to his perfect treasure.
  • Thine be this prelude-music
  • That was of thy commanding;
  • 30 Thy gaze was not delusive,—
  • Of my heart thou hadst understanding.
  • Lady, by thine attemp'rance
  • Thou heldst my life from pining:
  • This tress thou gav'st, in semblance
  • Like gold of the third refining,
  • Which I do keep for remembrance.
more about CANZONE. Of his dead Lady.
III

Canzone

Of his dead Lady
  • Death, why hast thou made life so hard to bear,
  • Taking my lady hence? Hast thou no whit
  • Of shame? The youngest flower and the most fair
  • Thou hast plucked away, and the world wanteth it.
  • O leaden Death, hast thou no pitying?
  • Our warm love's very spring
  • Thou stopp'st, and endest what was holy and meet;
  • And of my gladdening
  • Mak'st a most woful thing,
  • 10 And in my heart dost bid the bird not sing
  • That sang so sweet.
  • Once the great joy and solace that I had
  • Was more than is with other gentlemen:—
  • Now is my love gone hence, who made me glad.
  • With her that hope I lived in she hath ta'en
  • And left me nothing but these sighs and tears,—
  • Nothing of the old years
  • That come not back again,
  • Wherein I was so happy, being hers.
  • 20 Now to mine eyes her face no more appears,
  • Nor doth her voice make music in mine ears,
  • As it did then.
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  • O God, why hast thou made my grief so deep?
  • Why set me in the dark to grope and pine?
  • Why parted me from her companionship,
  • And crushed the hope which was a gift of thine?
  • To think, dear, that I never any more
  • Can see thee as before!
  • Who is it shuts thee in?
  • 30 Who hides that smile for which my heart is sore,
  • And drowns those words that I am longing for,
  • Lady of mine?
  • Where is my lady, and the lovely face
  • She had, and the sweet motion when she walk'd?—
  • Her chaste, mild favour—her so delicate grace—
  • Her eyes, her mouth, and the dear way she talk'd?—
  • Her courteous bending—her most noble air—
  • The soft fall of her hair? . . . .
  • My lady—she who to my soul so rare
  • 40 A gladness brought!
  • Now I do never see her anywhere,
  • And may not, looking in her eyes, gain there
  • The blessing which I sought.
  • So if I had the realm of Hungary,
  • With Greece, and all the Almayn even to France,
  • Or Saint Sophia's treasure-hoard, you see
  • All could not give me back her countenance.
  • For since the day when my dear lady died
  • From us, (with God being born and glorified,)
  • 50 No more pleasaunce
  • Her image bringeth, seated at my side,
  • But only tears. Ay me! the strength and pride
  • Which it brought once.
  • Had I my will, beloved, I would say
  • To God, unto whose bidding all things bow,
  • That we were still together night and day:
  • Yet be it done as His behests allow.
  • I do remember that while she remain'd
  • With me, she often called me her sweet friend;
  • 60 But does not now,
  • Because God drew her towards Him, in the end.
  • Lady, that peace which none but He can send
  • Be thine. Even so.
FRA GUITTONE D'AREZZO
more about SONNET. To the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Sonnet

To the Blessed Virgin Mary
  • Lady of Heaven, the mother glorified
  • Of glory, which is Jesus,—He whose death
  • Us from the gates of Hell delivereth
  • And our first parents' error sets aside:—
  • Behold this earthly Love, how his darts glide—
  • How sharpened—to what fate—throughout this earth!
  • Pitiful Mother, partner of our birth,
  • Win these from following where his flight doth guide.
    • Image of page 453 page: 453
  • And O, inspire in me that holy love
  • 10 Which leads the soul back to its origin,
  • Till of all other love the link do fail.
  • This water only can this fire reprove,—
  • Only such cure suffice for suchlike sin;
  • As nail from out a plank is struck by nail.
BARTOLOMEO DI SANT' ANGELO
more about SONNET. He jests concerning his Poverty.
Sonnet

He jests concerning his Poverty
  • I am so passing rich in poverty
  • That I could furnish forth Paris and Rome,
  • Pisa and Padua and Byzantium,
  • Venice and Lucca, Florence and Forlì;
  • For I possess in actual specie,
  • Of nihil and of nothing a great sum;
  • And unto this my hoard whole shiploads come,
  • What between nought and zero, annually.
  • In gold and precious jewels I have got
  • 10 A hundred ciphers' worth, all roundly writ;
  • And therewithal am free to feast my friend.
  • Because I need not be afraid to spend,
  • Nor doubt the safety of my wealth a whit:—
  • No thief will ever steal thereof, God wot.
SALADINO DA PAVIA
more about DIALOGUE. Lover and Lady.
Dialogue

Lover and Lady
  • She
  • Fair sir, this love of ours,
  • In joy begun so well,
  • I see at length to fail upon thy part:
  • Wherefore my heart sinks very heavily.
  • Fair sir, this love of ours
  • Began with amorous longing, well I ween:
  • Yea, of one mind, yea, of one heart and will
  • This love of ours hath been.
  • Now these are sad and still;
  • 10 For on thy part at length it fails, I see.
  • And now thou art gone from me,
  • Quite lost to me thou art;
  • Wherefore my heart in this pain languisheth,
  • Which sinks it unto death thus heavily.
  • He
  • Lady, for will of mine
  • Our love had never changed in anywise,
  • Had not the choice been thine
  • With so much scorn my homage to despise.
  • I swore not to yield sign
  • 20 Of holding 'gainst all hope my heart-service.
  • Nay, let thus much suffice:—
  • From thee whom I have serv'd,
  • All undeserved contempt is my reward,—
  • Rich prize prepar'd to guerdon fealty!
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  • She
  • Fair sir, it oft is found
  • That ladies who would try their lovers so,
  • Have for a season frown'd,
  • Not from their heart but in mere outward show.
  • Then chide not on such ground,
  • 30 Since ladies oft have tried their lovers so.
  • Alas, but I will go,
  • If now it be thy will.
  • Yet turn thee still, alas! for I do fear
  • Thou lov'st elsewhere, and therefore fly'st from me.
  • He
  • Lady, there needs no doubt
  • Of my good faith, nor any nice suspense
  • Lest love be elsewhere sought.
  • For thine did yield me no such recompense,—
  • Rest thou assured in thought,—
  • 40 That now, within my life's circumference,
  • I should not quite dispense
  • My heart from woman's laws,
  • Which for no cause give pain and sore annoy,
  • And for one joy a world of misery.
BONAGGIUNTA URBICIANI, DA LUCCA
more about CANZONE. Of the true End of Love; with a Prayer to his Lady.
I

Canzone

Of the true End of Love; with a Prayer to his Lady
  • Never was joy or good that did not soothe
  • And beget glorying,
  • Neither a glorying without perfect love.
  • Wherefore, if one would compass of a truth
  • The flight of his soul's wing,
  • To bear a loving heart must him behove.
  • Since from the flower man still expects the fruit,
  • And, out of love, that he desireth;
  • Seeing that by good faith
  • 10 Alone hath love its comfort and its joy;
  • For, suffering falsehood, love were at the root
  • Dead of all worth, which living must aspire;
  • Nor could it breed desire
  • If its reward were less than its annoy.
  • Even such the joy, the triumph, and pleasaunce,
  • Whose issue honour is,
  • And grace, and the most delicate teaching sent
  • To amorous knowledge, its inheritance;
  • Because Love's properties
  • 20 Alter not by a true accomplishment;
  • But it were scarcely well if one should gain
  • Without much pain so great a blessedness;
  • He errs, when all things bless,
  • Whose heart had else been humbled to implore.
  • He gets not joy who gives no joy again;
  • Nor can win love whose love hath little scope;
  • Nor fully can know hope
  • Who leaves not of the thing most languished for.
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  • Wherefore his choice must err immeasurably
  • 30 Who seeks the image when
  • He might behold the thing substantial.
  • I at the noon have seen dark night to be,
  • Against earth's natural plan,
  • And what was good to worst abasement fall.
  • Then be thus much sufficient, lady mine;
  • If of thy mildness pity may be born,
  • Count thou my grief outworn,
  • And turn into sweet joy this bitter ill;
  • Lest I might change, if left too long to pine:
  • 40 As one who, journeying, in mid path should stay,
  • And not pursue his way,
  • But should go back against his proper will.
  • Natheless I hope, yea trust, to make an end
  • Of the beginning made,
  • Even by this sign—that yet I triumph not.
  • And if in truth, against my will constrain'd,
  • To turn my steps essay'd,
  • No courage have I, neither strength, God wot.
  • Such is Love's rule, who thus subdueth me
  • 50 By thy sweet face, lovely and delicate;
  • Through which I live elate,
  • But in such longing that I die for love.
  • Ah! and these words as nothing seem to be:
  • For love to such a constant fear has chid
  • My heart that I keep hid
  • Much more than I have dared to tell thee of.
more about How he dreams of his Lady.
II

Canzonetta

How he dreams of his Lady
  • Lady, my wedded thought,
  • When to thy shape 'tis wrought,
  • Can think of nothing else
  • But only of thy grace,
  • And of those gentle ways
  • Wherein thy life excels.
  • For ever, sweet one, dwells
  • Thine image on my sight,
  • (Even as it were the gem
  • 10 Whose name is as thy name) *
  • And fills the sense with light.
  • Continual ponderings
  • That brood upon these things
  • Yield constant agony:
  • Yea, the same thoughts have crept
  • About me as I slept.
  • My spirit looks at me,
  • And asks, “Is sleep for thee?
  • Nay, mourner, do not sleep,
  • 20 But fix thine eyes, for lo!
  • Love's fulness thou shalt know
  • By steadfast gaze and deep.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 455):

* The lady was probably called Diamante, Margherita, or some similar name. (Note

to Flor. Ed. 1816).

Image of page 456 page: 456
  • Then, burning, I awake,
  • Sore tempted to partake
  • Of dreams that seek thy sight:
  • Until, being greatly stirr'd,
  • I turn to where I heard
  • That whisper in the night;
  • And there a breath of light
  • 30 Shines like a silver star.
  • The same is mine own soul,
  • Which lures me to the goal
  • Of dreams that gaze afar.
  • But now my sleep is lost;
  • And through this uttermost
  • Sharp longing for thine eyes
  • At length it may be said
  • That I indeed am mad
  • With love's extremities.
  • 40 Yet when in such sweet wise
  • Thou passest and dost smile,
  • My heart so fondly burns,
  • That unto sweetness turns
  • Its bitter pang the while.
  • Even so Love rends apart
  • My spirit and my heart,
  • Lady, in loving thee;
  • Till when I see thee now,
  • Life beats within my brow
  • 50 And would be gone from me.
  • So hear I ceaselessly,
  • Love's whisper well fulfill'd—
  • Even I am he, even so,
  • Whose flame thy heart doth know:
  • And while I strive I yield.
more about SONNET. Of Wisdom and Foresight.
III

Sonnet

Of Wisdom and Foresight
  • Such wisdom as a little child displays
  • Were not amiss in certain lords of fame:
  • For where he fell, thenceforth he shuns the place,
  • And having suffered blows, he feareth them.
  • Who knows not this may forfeit all he sways
  • At length, and find his friends go as they came.
  • O therefore on the past time turn thy face,
  • And, if thy will do err, forget the same.
  • Because repentance brings not back the past:
  • 10 Better thy will should bend than thy life break:
  • Who owns not this, by him shall it appear.
  • And, because even from fools the wise may make
  • Wisdom, the first should count himself the last,
  • Since a dog scourged can bid the lion fear.
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more about SONNET. Of Continence in Speech.
IV

Sonnet

Of Continence in Speech
  • Whoso abandons peace for war-seeking,
  • 'Tis of all reason he should bear the smart.
  • Whoso hath evil speech, his medicine
  • Is silence, lest it seem a hateful art.
  • To vex the wasps' nest is not a wise thing;
  • Yet who rebukes his neighbour in good part,
  • A hundred years shall show his right therein.
  • Too prone to fear, one wrongs another's heart.
  • If ye but knew what may be known to me,
  • 10 Ye would fall sorry sick, nor be thus bold
  • To cry among your fellows your ill thought.
  • Wherefore I would that every one of ye
  • Who thinketh ill, his ill thought should withhold:
  • If that ye would not hear it, speak it not.
MEO ABBRACCIAVACCA, DA PISTOIA
more about CANZONE. He will be silent and watchful in his Love.
I

Canzone

He will be silent and watchful in his Love
  • Your joyful understanding, lady mine,
  • Those honours of fair life
  • Which all in you agree to pleasantness,
  • Long since to service did my heart assign;
  • That never it has strife,
  • Nor once remembers other means of grace;
  • But this desire alone gives light to it.
  • Behold, my pleasure, by your favour, drew
  • Me, lady, unto you,
  • 10 All beauty's and all joy's reflection here:
  • From whom good women also have thought fit
  • To take their life's example every day;
  • Whom also to obey
  • My wish and will have wrought, with love and fear.
  • With love and fear to yield obedience, I
  • Might never half deserve:
  • Yet you must know, merely to look on me,
  • How my heart holds its love and lives thereby;
  • Though, well intent to serve,
  • 20 It can accept Love's arrow silently.
  • 'Twere late to wait, ere I would render plain
  • My heart, (thus much I tell you, as I should,)
  • Which, to be understood,
  • Craves therefore the fine quickness of your glance.
  • So shall you know my love of such high strain
  • As never yet was shown by its own will;
  • Whose proffer is so still,
  • That love in heart hates love in countenance.
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  • In countenance oft the heart is evident
  • 30 Full clad in mirth's attire,
  • Wherein at times it overweens to waste:
  • Which yet of selfish joy or foul intent
  • Doth hide the deep desire,
  • And is, of heavy surety, double-faced;
  • Upon things double therefore look ye twice.
  • O ye that love! not what is fair alone
  • Desire to make your own,
  • But a wise woman, fair in purity;
  • Nor think that any, without sacrifice
  • 40 Of his own nature, suffers service still;
  • But out of high free-will;
  • In honour propped, though bowed in dignity.
  • In dignity as best I may, must I
  • The guerdon very grand,
  • The whole of it, secured in purpose, sing?
  • Lady, whom all my heart doth magnify,
  • You took me in your hand,
  • Ah! not ungraced with other guerdoning:
  • For you of your sweet reason gave me rest
  • 50 From yearning, from desire, from potent pain;
  • Till, now, if Death should gain
  • Me to his kingdom, it would pleasure me,
  • Having obeyed the whole of your behest.
  • Since you have drawn, and I am yours by lot,
  • I pray you doubt me not
  • Lest my faith swerve, for this could never be.
  • Could never be; because the natural heart
  • Will absolutely build
  • Her dwelling-place within the gates of truth;
  • 60 And, if it be no grief to bear her part,
  • Why, then by change were fill'd
  • The measure of her shame beyond all truth.
  • And therefore no delay shall once disturb
  • My bounden service, nor bring grief to it;
  • Nor unto you deceit.
  • True virtue her provision first affords,
  • Ere she yield grace, lest afterward some curb
  • Or check should come, and evil enter in:
  • For alway shame and sin
  • 70 Stand covered, ready, full of faithful words.
more about BALLATA. His Life is by Contraries.
II

Ballata

His Life is by Contraries
  • By the long sojourning
  • That I have made with grief,
  • I am quite changed, you see;—
  • If I weep, 'tis for glee;
  • I smile at a sad thing;
  • Despair is my relief.
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  • Good hap makes me afraid;
  • Ruin seems rest and shade;
  • In May the year is old;
  • 10 With friends I am ill at ease;
  • Among foes I find peace;
  • At noonday I feel cold.
  • The thing that strengthens others, frightens me.
  • If I am grieved, I sing;
  • I chafe at comforting;
  • Ill fortune makes me smile exultingly.
  • And yet, though all my days are thus,—despite
  • A shaken mind, and eyes
  • Which see by contraries,—
  • 20 I know that without wings is an ill flight.
UBALDO DI MARCO
more about SONNET. Of a Lady's Love for him.
Sonnet

Of a Lady's Love for him
  • My body resting in a haunt of mine,
  • I ranged among alternate memories;
  • What while an unseen noble lady's eyes
  • Were fixed upon me, yet she gave no sign;
  • To stay and go she sweetly did incline,
  • Always afraid lest there were any spies;
  • Then reached to me,—and smelt it in sweet wise,
  • And reached to me—some sprig of bloom or bine.
  • Conscious of perfume, on my side I leant,
  • 10 And rose upon my feet, and gazed around
  • To see the plant whose flower could so beguile.
  • Finding it not, I sought it by the scent;
  • And by the scent, in truth, the plant I found,
  • And rested in its shadow a great while.
SIMBUONO GIUDICE
more about CANZONE. He finds that Love has beguiled him, but will trust in his Lady.
Canzone

He finds that Love has beguiled him, but will trust in his Lady
  • Often the day had a most joyful morn
  • That bringeth grief at last
  • Unto the human heart which deemed all well:
  • Of a sweet seed the fruit was often born
  • That hath a bitter taste:
  • Of mine own knowledge, oft it thus befell.
  • I say it for myself, who, foolishly
  • Expectant of all joy,
  • Triumphing undertook
  • 10 To love a lady proud and beautiful,
  • For one poor glance vouchsafed in mirth to me:
  • Wherefrom sprang all annoy:
  • For, since the day Love shook
  • My heart, she ever hath been cold and cruel.
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  • Well thought I to possess my joy complete
  • When that sweet look of hers
  • I felt upon me, amorous and kind:
  • Now is my hope even underneath my feet.
  • And still the arrow stirs
  • 20 Within my heart—(oh hurt no skill can bind!)—
  • Which through mine eyes found entrance cunningly!
  • In manner as through glass
  • Light pierces from the sun,
  • And breaks it not, but wins its way beyond,—
  • As into an unaltered mirror, free
  • And still, some shape may pass.
  • Yet has my heart begun
  • To break, methinks, for I on death grow fond.
  • But, even though death were longed for, the sharp wound
  • 30 I have might yet be heal'd,
  • And I not altogether sink to death.
  • In mine own foolishness the curse I found,
  • Who foolish faith did yield
  • Unto mine eyes, in hope that sickeneth.
  • Yet might love still exult and not be sad—
  • (For some such utterance
  • Is at my secret heart)—
  • If from herself the cure it could obtain,—
  • Who hath indeed the power Achilles had,
  • 40 To wit, that of his lance
  • The wound could by no art
  • Be closed till it were touched therewith again.
  • So must I needs appeal for pity now
  • From her on her own fault,
  • And in my prayer put meek humility:
  • For certes her much worth will not allow
  • That anything be call'd
  • Treacherousness in such an one as she,
  • In whom is judgment and true excellence.
  • 50 Wherefore I cry for grace;
  • Not doubting that all good,
  • Joy, wisdom, pity, must from her be shed;
  • For scarcely should it deal in death's offence,
  • The so-belovèd face
  • So watched for; rather should
  • All death and ill be thereby subjected.
  • And since, in hope of mercy, I have bent
  • Unto her ordinance
  • Humbly my heart, my body, and my life,
  • 60 Giving her perfect power acknowledgment,—
  • I think some kinder glance
  • She'll deign, and, in mere pity, pause from strife.
  • She surely shall enact the good lord's part:
  • When one whom force compels
  • Doth yield, he is pacified,
  • Forgiving him therein where he did err.
  • Ah! well I know she hath the noble heart
  • Which in the lion quells
  • Obduracy of pride;
  • 70 Whose nobleness is for a crown on her.
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MASOLINO DA TODI
more about SONNET. Of Work and Wealth.
Sonnet

Of Work and Wealth
  • A man should hold in very dear esteem
  • The first possession that his labours gain'd;
  • For, though great riches be at length attain'd,
  • From that first mite they were increased to him.
  • Who followeth after his own wilful whim
  • Shall see himself outwitted in the end;
  • Wherefore I still would have him apprehend
  • His fall, who toils not being once supreme.
  • Thou seldom shalt find folly, of the worst,
  • 10 Holding companionship with poverty,
  • Because it is distracted of much care.
  • Howbeit, if one that hath been poor at first
  • Is brought at last to wealth and dignity,
  • Still the worst folly thou shalt find it there.
ONESTO DI BONCIMA, BOLOGNESE
more about SONNET. Of the Last Judgment.
I

Sonnet

Of the Last Judgment
  • Upon that cruel season when our Lord
  • Shall come to judge the world eternally;
  • When to no man shall anything afford
  • Peace in the heart, how pure soe'er it be;
  • When heaven shall break asunder at His word,
  • With a great trembling of the earth and sea;
  • When even the just shall fear the dreadful sword,—
  • The wicked crying, “Where shall I cover me?”—
  • When no one angel in His presence stands
  • 10 That shall not be affrighted of that wrath,
  • Except the Virgin Lady, she our guide;—
  • How shall I then escape, whom sin commands?
  • Out and alas on me! There is no path,
  • If in her prayers I be not justified.
more about SONNET. He wishes that he could meet his Lady alone.
II

Sonnet

He wishes that he could meet his Lady alone
  • Whether all grace have failed I scarce may scan,
  • Be it of mere mischance, or art's ill sway,
  • That this-wise, Monday, Tuesday, every day,
  • Afflicts me, through her means, with bale and ban.
  • Now are my days but as a painful span;
  • Nor once “Take heed of dying” did she say.
  • I thank thee for my life thus cast away,
  • Thou who hast wearied out a living man.
  • Yet, oh! my Lord, if I were blest no more
  • 10 Than thus much,—clothed with thy humility,
  • To find her for a single hour alone,—
  • Such perfectness of joy would triumph o'er
  • This grief wherein I waste, that I should be
  • As a new image of Love to look upon.
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TERINO DA CASTEL FIORENTINO
more about SONNET. To Onesto di Boncima, in answer to the foregoing.
Sonnet

To Onesto di Boncima, in Answer to the foregoing
  • If, as thou say'st, thy love tormenteth thee,
  • That thou thereby wast in the fear of death,
  • Messer Onesto, couldst thou bear to be
  • Far from Love's self, and breathing other breath?
  • Nay, thou wouldst pass beyond the greater sea
  • (I do not speak of the Alps, an easy path),
  • For thy life's gladdening; if so to see
  • That light which for my life no comfort hath,
  • But rather makes my grief the bitterer:
  • 10 For I have neither ford nor bridge—no course
  • To reach my lady, or send word to her.
  • And there is not a greater pain, I think,
  • Than to see waters at the limpid source,
  • And to be much athirst, and not to drink.
MAESTRO MIGLIORE, DA FIORENZA
more about SONNET. He declares all Love to be Grief.
Sonnet

He declares all Love to be Grief
  • Love taking leave, my heart then leaveth me,
  • And is enamour'd even while it would shun;
  • For I have looked so long upon the sun
  • That the sun's glory is now in all I see.
  • To its first will unwilling may not be
  • This heart (though by its will its death be won),
  • Having remembrance of the joy forerun:
  • Yea, all life else seems dying constantly.
  • Ay and alas! in love is no relief,
  • 10 For any man who loveth in full heart,
  • That is not rather grief than gratefulness.
  • Whoso desires it, the beginning is grief;
  • Also the end is grief, most grievous smart;
  • And grief is in the middle, and is call'd grace.
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DELLO DA SIGNA
more about BALLATA. His Creed of Ideal Love.
Ballata

His Creed of Ideal Love
  • Prohibiting all hope
  • Of the fulfilment of the joy of love,
  • My lady chose me for her lover still.
  • So am I lifted up
  • To trust her heart which piteous pulses move,
  • Her face which is her joy made visible.
  • Nor have I any fear
  • Lest love and service should be met with scorn,
  • Nor doubt that thus I shall rejoice the more.
  • 10 For ruth is born of prayer;
  • Also, of ruth delicious love is born;
  • And service wrought makes glad the servitor.
  • Behold, I, serving more than others, love
  • One lovely more than all:
  • And, singing and exulting, look for joy
  • There where my homage is for ever paid.
  • And, for I know she does not disapprove
  • If on her grace I call,
  • My soul's good trust I will not yet destroy,
  • 20 Though Love's fulfilment stand prohibited.
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMINIANO
more about SONNET. To the Guelf Faction.
I

Sonnet

To the Guelf Faction
  • Because ye made your backs your shields, it came
  • To pass, ye Guelfs, that these your enemies
  • From hares grew lions: and because your eyes
  • Turned homeward, and your spurs e'en did the same,
  • Full many an one who still might win the game
  • In fevered tracts of exile pines and dies.
  • Ye blew your bubbles as the falcon flies,
  • And the wind broke them up and scattered them.
  • This counsel, therefore. Shape your high resolves
  • 10 In good King Robert's humour,* and afresh
  • Accept your shames, forgive, and go your way.
  • And so her peace is made with Pisa! Yea,
  • What cares she for the miserable flesh
  • That in the wilderness has fed the wolves?
Transcribed Footnote (page 463):

* See what is said in allusion to his government of Florence by Dante ( Parad. C. viii.)

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more about SONNET. To the Same.
II

Sonnet

To the Same
  • Were ye but constant, Guelfs, in war or peace,
  • As in divisions ye are constant still!
  • There is no wisdom in your stubborn will,
  • Wherein all good things wane, all harms increase.
  • But each upon his fellow looks, and sees
  • And looks again, and likes his favour ill;
  • And traitors rule ye; and on his own sill
  • Each stirs the fire of household enmities.
  • What, Guelfs! and is Monte Catini* quite
  • 10 Forgot,—where still the mothers and sad wives
  • Keep widowhood, and curse the Ghibellins?
  • O fathers, brothers, yea, all dearest kins!
  • Those men of ye that cherish kindred lives
  • Even once again must set their teeth and fight.
more about SONNET. Of Virtue.
III

Sonnet

Of Virtue
  • The flower of Virtue is the heart's content;
  • And fame is Virtue's fruit that she doth bear;
  • And Virtue's vase is fair without and fair
  • Within; and Virtue's mirror brooks no taint;
  • And Virtue by her names is sage and saint;
  • And Virtue hath a steadfast front and clear;
  • And Love is Virtue's constant minister;
  • And Virtue's gift of gifts is pure descent.
  • And Virtue dwells with knowledge, and therein
  • 10 Her cherished home of rest is real love;
  • And Virtue's strength is in a suffering will;
  • And Virtue's work is life exempt from sin,
  • With arms that aid; and in the sum hereof,
  • All Virtue is to render good for ill.
Transcribed Footnote (page 464):

* The battle of Monte Catini was fought and won by the Ghibelline leader, Uguccione

della Faggiola, against the Florentines, August 29, 1315. This would seem to date

Folgore's career further on than the period usually assigned to him (about 1260), and the

question arises whether the above sonnet be really his.

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Sig. 30
more about Twelve Sonnets. Of the Months.
OF THE MONTHS

Twelve Sonnets

Addressed to a Fellowship of Sienese Nobles *
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. DEDICATION.
DEDICATION
  • Unto the blithe and lordly Fellowship,
  • (I know not where, but wheresoe'er, I know,
  • Lordly and blithe,) be greeting; and thereto,
  • Dogs, hawks, and a full purse wherein to dip;
  • Quails struck i' the flight; nags mettled to the whip;
  • Hart-hounds, hare-hounds, and blood-hounds even so;
  • And o'er that realm, a crown for Niccolò,
  • Whose praise in Siena springs from lip to lip.
  • Tingoccio, Atuin di Togno, and Ancaiàn,
  • 10 Bartolo and Mugaro and Faënot,
  • Who well might pass for children of King Ban,
  • Courteous and valiant more than Lancelot,—
  • To each, God speed! how worthy every man
  • To hold high tournament in Camelot.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. JANUARY.
JANUARY
  • For January I give you vests of skins,
  • And mighty fires in hall, and torches lit;
  • Chambers and happy beds with all things fit;
  • Smooth silken sheets, rough furry counterpanes;
  • And sweetmeats baked; and one that deftly spins
  • Warm arras; and Douay cloth, and store of it;
  • And on this merry manner still to twit
  • The wind, when most his mastery the wind wins.
  • Or issuing forth at seasons in the day,
  • 10 Ye'll fling soft handfuls of the fair white snow
  • Among the damsels standing round, in play:
  • And when you all are tired and all aglow,
  • Indoors again the court shall hold its sway,
  • And the free Fellowship continue so.
Transcribed Footnote (page 465):

* This fellowship or club ( Brigata), so highly approved and encouraged by our Folgore,

is the same to which, and to some of its members by name, scornful allusion is made

by Dante ( Inferno, C. xxix. l. 130), where he speaks of the hare-brained character of the

Sienese. Mr. Cayley, in his valuable notes on Dante, says of it: “A dozen extravagant

youths of Siena had put together by equal contributions 216,000 florins to spend in pleasur-

ing; they were reduced in about a twelvemonth to the extremes of poverty. It was

their practice to give mutual entertainments twice a-month; at each of which, three

tables having been sumptuously covered, they would feast at one, wash their hands

on another, and throw the last out of window.”

There exists a second curious series of sonnets for the months, addressed also to this club,

by Cene della Chitarra d'Arezzo. Here, however, all sorts of disasters and discomforts,

in the same pursuits of which Folgore treats, are imagined for the prodigals; each sonnet,

too, being composed with the same terminations in its rhymes as the corresponding one

among his. They would seem to have been written after the ruin of the club, as a satirical

prophecy of the year to succeed the golden one. But this second series, though sometimes

laughable, not having the poetical merit of the first, I have not included it.

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Note: The period at the end of p. 466, line 1 up from the bottom is surrounded by an square of ink, caused by overinking the piece of type during the printing process.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. FEBRUARY.
FEBRUARY
  • In February I give you gallant sport
  • Of harts and hinds and great wild boars; and all
  • Your company good foresters and tall,
  • With buskins strong, with jerkins close and short;
  • And in your leashes, hounds of brave report;
  • And from your purses, plenteous money-fall,
  • In very spleen of misers' starveling gall,
  • Who at your generous customs snarl and snort.
  • At dusk wend homeward, ye and all your folk,
  • 10 All laden from the wilds, to your carouse,
  • With merriment and songs accompanied:
  • And so draw wine and let the kitchen smoke;
  • And so be till the first watch glorious;
  • Then sound sleep to you till the day be wide.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. MARCH.
MARCH
  • In March I give you plenteous fisheries
  • Of lamprey and of salmon, eel and trout,
  • Dental and dolphin, sturgeon, all the rout
  • Of fish in all the streams that fill the seas.
  • With fishermen and fishing-boats at ease,
  • Sail-barques and arrow-barques, and galleons stout,
  • To bear you, while the season lasts, far out,
  • And back, through spring, to any port you please.
  • But with fair mansions see that it be fill'd,
  • 10 With everything exactly to your mind,
  • And every sort of comfortable folk.
  • No convent suffer there, nor priestly guild:
  • Leave the mad monks to preach after their kind
  • Their scanty truth, their lies beyond a joke.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. APRIL.
APRIL
  • I give you meadow-lands in April, fair
  • With over-growth of beautiful green grass;
  • There among fountains the glad hours shall pass,
  • And pleasant ladies bring you solace there.
  • With steeds of Spain and ambling palfreys rare;
  • Provençal songs and dances that surpass;
  • And quaint French mummings; and through hollow brass
  • A sound of German music on the air.
  • And gardens ye shall have, that every one
  • 10 May lie at ease about the fragrant place;
  • And each with fitting reverence shall bow down
  • Unto that youth to whom I gave a crown
  • Of precious jewels like to those that grace
  • The Babylonian Kaiser, Prester John.
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more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. MAY.
MAY
  • I give you horses for your games in May,
  • And all of them well trained unto the course,—
  • Each docile, swift, erect, a goodly horse;
  • With armour on their chests, and bells at play
  • Between their brows, and pennons fair and gay;
  • Fine nets, and housings meet for warriors,
  • Emblazoned with the shields ye claim for yours;
  • Gules, argent, or, all dizzy at noonday.
  • And spears shall split, and fruit go flying up
  • 10 In merry counterchange for wreaths that drop
  • From balconies and casements far above;
  • And tender damsels with young men and youths
  • Shall kiss together on the cheeks and mouths;
  • And every day be glad with joyful love.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. JUNE.
JUNE
  • In June I give you a close-wooded fell,
  • With crowns of thicket coiled about its head,
  • With thirty villas twelve times turreted,
  • All girdling round a little citadel;
  • And in the midst a springhead and fair well
  • With thousand conduits branched and shining speed,
  • Wounding the garden and the tender mead,
  • Yet to the freshened grass acceptable.
  • And lemons, citrons, dates, and oranges,
  • 10 And all the fruits whose savour is most rare,
  • Shall shine within the shadow of your trees;
  • And every one shall be a lover there;
  • Until your life, so filled with courtesies,
  • Throughout the world be counted debonair.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. JULY.
JULY
  • For July, in Siena, by the willow-tree,
  • I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine
  • In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
  • And morn and eve to eat in company
  • Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
  • Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet,
  • Boiled capons, sovereign kids: and let their treat
  • Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree.
  • Let time slip by, till by-and-by, all day;
  • 10 And never swelter through the heat at all,
  • But move at ease at home, sound, cool, and gay;
  • And wear sweet-coloured robes that lightly fall;
  • And keep your tables set in fresh array,
  • Not coaxing spleen to be your seneschal.
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more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. AUGUST.
AUGUST
  • For August, be your dwelling thirty towers
  • Within an Alpine valley mountainous,
  • Where never the sea-wind may vex your house,
  • But clear life separate, like a star, be yours.
  • There horses shall wait saddled at all hours,
  • That ye may mount at morning or at eve:
  • On each hand either ridge ye shall perceive,
  • A mile apart, which soon a good beast scours.
  • So alway, drawing homewards, ye shall tread
  • 10 Your valley parted by a rivulet
  • Which day and night shall flow sedate and smooth.
  • There all through noon ye may possess the shade,
  • And there your open purses shall entreat
  • The best of Tuscan cheer to feed your youth.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. SEPTEMBER.
SEPTEMBER
  • And in September, O what keen delight!
  • Falcons and astors, merlins, sparrowhawks;
  • Decoy-birds that shall lure your game in flocks;
  • And hounds with bells: and gauntlets stout and tight;
  • Wide pouches; crossbows shooting out of sight;
  • Arblasts and javelins; balls and ball-cases;
  • All birds the best to fly at; moulting these,
  • Those reared by hand; with finches mean and slight;
  • And for their chase, all birds the best to fly;
  • 10 And each to each of you be lavish still
  • In gifts; and robbery find no gainsaying;
  • And if you meet with travellers going by,
  • Their purses from your purse's flow shall fill;
  • And avarice be the only outcast thing.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. OCTOBER.
OCTOBER
  • Next, for October, to some sheltered coign
  • Flouting the winds, I'll hope to find you slunk;
  • Though in bird-shooting (lest all sport be sunk),
  • Your foot still press the turf, the horse your groin.
  • At night with sweethearts in the dance you'll join,
  • And drink the blessed must, and get quite drunk.
  • There's no such life for any human trunk;
  • And that's a truth that rings like golden coin!
  • Then, out of bed again when morning's come,
  • 10 Let your hands drench your face refreshingly,
  • And take your physic roast, with flask and knife.
  • Sounder and snugger you shall feel at home
  • Than lake-fish, river-fish, or fish at sea,
  • Inheriting the cream of Christian life.
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more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. NOVEMBER.
NOVEMBER
  • Let baths and wine-butts be November's due,
  • With thirty mule-loads of broad gold-pieces;
  • And canopy with silk the streets that freeze;
  • And keep your drink-horns steadily in view.
  • Let every trader have his gain of you:
  • Clareta shall your lamps and torches send,—
  • Caëta, citron-candies without end;
  • And each shall drink, and help his neighbour to.
  • And let the cold be great, and the fire grand:
  • 10 And still for fowls, and pastries sweetly wrought,
  • For hares and kids, for roast and boiled, be sure
  • You always have your appetites at hand;
  • And then let night howl and heaven fall, so nought
  • Be missed that makes a man's bed-furniture.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. DECEMBER.
DECEMBER
  • Last, for December, houses on the plain,
  • Ground-floors to live in, logs heaped mountain-high,
  • And carpets stretched, and newest games to try,
  • And torches lit, and gifts from man to man:
  • (Your host, a drunkard and a Catalan;)
  • And whole dead pigs, and cunning cooks to ply
  • Each throat with tit-bits that shall satisfy;
  • And wine-butts of Saint Galganus' brave span.
  • And be your coats well-lined and tightly bound,
  • 10 And wrap yourselves in cloaks of strength and weight,
  • With gallant hoods to put your faces through.
  • And make your game of abject vagabond
  • Abandoned miserable reprobate
  • Misers; don't let them have a chance with you.
more about TWELVE SONNETS. Of the Months. CONCLUSION.
CONCLUSION
  • And now take thought, my sonnet, who is he
  • That most is full of every gentleness;
  • And say to him (for thou shalt quickly guess
  • His name) that all his 'hests are law to me.
  • For if I held fair Paris town in fee,
  • And were not called his friend, 'twere surely less.
  • Ah! had he but the emperor's wealth, my place
  • Were fitted in his love more steadily
  • Than is Saint Francis at Assisi. Alway
  • 10 Commend him unto me and his,—not least
  • To Caian, held so dear in the blithe band.
  • “Folgore da San Geminiano” (say,)
  • “Has sent me, charging me to travel fast,
  • Because his heart went with you in your hand.”
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more about Seven Sonnets. Of the Week.
OF THE WEEK

Seven Sonnets
more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. DEDICATION.
DEDICATION
  • There is among my thoughts the joyous plan
  • To fashion a bright-jewelled carcanet,
  • Which I upon such worthy brows would set,
  • To say, it suits them fairly as it can.
  • And now I have newly found a gentleman,
  • Of courtesies and birth commensurate,
  • Who better would become the imperial state
  • Than fits the gem within the signet's span.
  • Carlo di Messer Guerra Cavicciuoli,*
  • 10 Of him I speak,—brave, wise, of just award
  • And generous service, let who list command:
  • And lithelier limbed than ounce or lëopard.
  • He holds not money-bags, as children, holy;
  • For Lombard Esté hath no freer hand.
more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. MONDAY.
MONDAY

The Day of Songs and Love
  • Now with the moon the day-star Lucifer
  • Departs, and night is gone at last, and day
  • Brings, making all men's spirits strong and gay,
  • A gentle wind to gladden the new air.
  • Lo! this is Monday, the week's harbinger;
  • Let music breathe her softest matin-lay,
  • And let the loving damsels sing to-day,
  • And the sun wound with heat at noontide here.
  • And thou, young lord, arise and do not sleep,
  • 10 For now the amorous day inviteth thee
  • The harvest of thy lady's youth to reap.
  • Let coursers round the door, and palfreys, be,
  • With squires and pages clad delightfully;
  • And Love's commandments have thou heed to keep.
more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. TUESDAY.
TUESDAY

The Day of Battles
  • To a new world on Tuesday shifts my song,
  • Where beat of drum is heard, and trumpet-blast;
  • Where footmen armed and horsemen armed go past,
  • And bells say ding to bells that answer dong;
  • Where he the first and after him the throng,
  • Armed all of them with coats and hoods of steel,
  • Shall see their foes and make their foes to feel,
  • And so in wrack and rout drive them along.
  • Then hither, thither, dragging on the field
  • 10 His master, empty-seated goes the horse,
  • 'Mid entrails strown abroad of soldiers kill'd;
  • Till blow to camp those trumpeters of yours
  • Who noise awhile your triumph and are still'd,
  • And to your tents you come back conquerors.
Transcribed Footnote (page 470):

* That is, according to early Tuscan nomenclature, Carlo, the son of Messer Guerra

Cavicciuoli.

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more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. WEDNESDAY.
WEDNESDAY

The Day of Feasts
  • And every Wednesday, as the swift days move,
  • Pheasant and peacock-shooting out of doors
  • You'll have, and multitude of hares to course,
  • And after you come home, good cheer enough;
  • And sweetest ladies at the board above,
  • Children of kings and counts and senators;
  • And comely-favoured youthful bachelors
  • To serve them, bearing garlands, for true love.
  • And still let cups of gold and silver ware,
  • 10 Runlets of vernage-wine and wine of Greece,
  • Comfits and cakes be found at bidding there;
  • And let your gifts of birds and game increase:
  • And let all those who in your banquet share
  • Sit with bright faces perfectly at ease.
more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. THURSDAY.
THURSDAY

The Day of Jousts and Tournaments
  • For Thursday be the tournament prepar'd,
  • And gentlemen in lordly jousts compete:
  • First man with man, together let them meet,—
  • By fifties and by hundreds afterward.
  • Let arms with housings each be fitly pair'd,
  • And fitly hold your battle to its heat
  • From the third hour to vespers, after meat;
  • Till the best-winded be at last declared.
  • Then back unto your beauties, as ye came:
  • 10 Where upon sovereign beds, with wise control
  • Of leaches, shall your hurts be swathed in bands.
  • The ladies shall assist with their own hands,
  • And each be so well paid in seeing them
  • That on the morrow he be sound and whole.
more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. FRIDAY.
FRIDAY

The Day of Hunting
  • Let Friday be your highest hunting-tide,—
  • No hound nor brach nor mastiff absent thence,—
  • Through a low wood, by many miles of dens,
  • All covert, where the cunning beasts abide:
  • Which now driven forth, at first you scatter wide,—
  • Then close on them, and rip out blood and breath:
  • Till all your huntsmen's horns wind at the death,
  • And you count up how many beasts have died.
  • Then, men and dogs together brought, you'll say:
  • 10 Go fairly greet from us this friend and that,
  • Bid each make haste to blithest wassailings.
  • Might not one vow that the whole pack had wings?
  • What! hither, Beauty, Dian, Dragon, what!
  • I think we held a royal hunt to-day.
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more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. SATURDAY.
SATURDAY

The Day of Hawking
  • I've jolliest merriment for Saturday:—
  • The very choicest of all hawks to fly
  • That crane or heron could be stricken by,
  • As up and down you course the steep highway.
  • So shall the wild geese, in your deadly play,
  • Lose at each stroke a wing, a tail, a thigh;
  • And man with man and horse with horse shall vie,
  • Till you all shout for glory and holiday.
  • Then, going home, you'll closely charge the cook:
  • 10 “All this is for to-morrow's roast and stew.
  • Skin, lop, and truss: hang pots on every hook.
  • And we must have fine wine and white bread too,
  • Because this time we mean to feast: so look
  • We do not think your kitchens lost on you.”
more about SEVEN SONNETS. Of the Week. SUNDAY.
SUNDAY

The Day of Balls and Deeds of Arms in Florence
  • And on the morrow, at first peep o' the day
  • Which follows, and which men as Sunday spell,—
  • Whom most him liketh, dame or damozel,
  • Your chief shall choose out of the sweet array.
  • So in the palace painted and made gay
  • Shall he converse with her whom he loves best;
  • And what he wishes, his desire express'd
  • Shall bring to presence there, without gainsay.
  • And youths shall dance, and men do feats of arms,
  • 10 And Florence be sought out on every side
  • From orchards and from vineyards and from farms:
  • That they who fill her streets from far and wide
  • In your fine temper may discern such charms
  • As shall from day to day be magnified.
GUIDO DELLE COLONNE
more about CANZONE. To Love and to his Lady.
Canzone

To Love and to his Lady
  • O Love, who all this while hast urged me on,
  • Shaking the reins, with never any rest,—
  • Slacken for pity somewhat of thy haste;
  • I am oppress'd with languor and foredone,—
  • Having outrun the power of sufferance,—
  • Having much more endured than who, through faith
  • That his heart holds, makes no account of death.
  • Love is assuredly a fair mischance,
  • And well may it be called a happy ill:
  • 10 Yet thou, my lady, on this constant sting,
  • So sharp a thing, have thou some pity still,—
  • Howbeit a sweet thing too, unless it kill.
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  • O comely-favoured, whose soft eyes prevail,
  • More fair than is another on this ground,—
  • Lift now my mournful heart out of its stound,
  • Which thus is bound for thee in great travail:
  • For a high gale a little rain may end.
  • Also, my lady, be not angered thou
  • That Love should thee enforce, to whom all bow.
  • 20 There is but little shame to apprehend
  • If to a higher strength the conquest be;
  • And all the more to Love who conquers all.
  • Why then appal my heart with doubts of thee?
  • Courage and patience triumph certainly.
  • I do not say that with such loveliness
  • Such pride may not beseem; it suits thee well;
  • For in a lovely lady pride may dwell,
  • Lest homage fail and high esteem grow less:
  • Yet pride's excess is not a thing to praise.
  • 30 Therefore, my lady, let thy harshness gain
  • Some touch of pity which may still restrain
  • Thy hand, ere Death cut short these hours and days.
  • The sun is very high and full of light,
  • And the more bright the higher he doth ride:
  • So let thy pride, my lady, and thy height,
  • Stand me in stead and turn to my delight.
  • Still inmostly I love thee, labouring still
  • That others may not know my secret smart.
  • Oh! what a pain it is for the grieved heart
  • 40 To hold apart and not to show its ill!
  • Yet by no will the face can hide the soul;
  • And ever with the eyes the heart has need
  • To be in all things willingly agreed.
  • It were a mighty strength that should control
  • The heart's fierce beat, and never speak a word:
  • It were a mighty strength, I say again,
  • To hide such pain, and to be sovran lord
  • Of any heart that had such love to hoard.
  • For Love can make the wisest turn astray;
  • 50 Love, at its most, of measure still has least;
  • He is the maddest man who loves the best;
  • It is Love's jest, to make men's hearts alway
  • So hot that they by coldness cannot cool.
  • The eyes unto the heart bear messages
  • Of the beginnings of all pain and ease:
  • And thou, my lady, in thy hand dost rule
  • Mine eyes and heart which thou hast made thine own.
  • Love rocks my life with tempests on the deep,
  • Even as a ship round which the winds are blown:
  • 60 Thou art my pennon that will not go down.
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PIER MORONELLI, DI FIORENZA
more about CANZONETTA. A bitter Song to his Lady.
Canzonetta

A bitter Song to his Lady
  • O lady amorous,
  • Merciless lady,
  • Full blithely play'd ye
  • These your beguilings.
  • So with an urchin
  • A man makes merry,—
  • In mirth grows clamorous,
  • Laughs and rejoices,—
  • But when his choice is
  • 10 To fall aweary,
  • Cheats him with silence.
  • This is Love's portion:—
  • In much wayfaring
  • With many burdens
  • He loads his servants,
  • But at the sharing,
  • The underservice
  • And overservice
  • Are alike barren.
  • 20 As my disaster
  • Your jest I cherish,
  • And well may perish.
  • Even so a falcon
  • Is sometimes taken
  • And scantly cautell'd;
  • Till when his master
  • At length to loose him,
  • To train and use him,
  • Is after all gone,—
  • 30 The creature's throttled
  • And will not waken.
  • Wherefore, my lady,
  • If you will own me,
  • O look upon me!
  • If I'm not thought on,
  • At least perceive me!
  • O do not leave me
  • So much forgotten!
  • If, lady, truly
  • 40 You wish my profit,
  • What follows of it
  • Though still you say so?—
  • For all your well-wishes
  • I still am waiting.
  • I grow unruly,
  • And deem at last I'm
  • Only your pastime.
    • Image of page 475 page: 475
  • A child will play so,
  • Who greatly relishes
  • 50 Sporting and petting
  • With a little wild bird:
  • Unaware he kills it,—
  • Then turns it, feels it,
  • Calls it with a mild word,
  • Is angry after,—
  • Then again in laughter
  • Loud is the child heard.
  • O my delightful
  • My own my lady,
  • 60 Upon the Mayday
  • Which brought me to you
  • Was all my haste then
  • But a fool's venture?
  • To have my sight full
  • Of you propitious
  • Truly my wish was,
  • And to pursue you
  • And let love chasten
  • My heart to the centre.
  • 70 But warming, lady,
  • May end in burning.
  • Of all this yearning
  • What comes, I beg you?
  • In all your glances
  • What is't a man sees?—
  • Fever and ague.
CIUNCIO FIORENTINO
more about CANZONE. Of his Love; with the Figures of a Stag, of Water, and of an Eagle.
Canzone

Of his Love; with the Figures of a Stag, of Water, and

of an Eagle
  • Lady, with all the pains that I can take,
  • I'll sing my love renewed, if I may, well,
  • And only in your praise.
  • The stag in his old age seeks out a snake
  • And eats it, and then drinks, (I have heard tell,)
  • Fearing the hidden ways
  • Of the snake's poison, and renews his youth.
  • Even such a draught, in truth,
  • Was your sweet welcome, which cast out of me,
  • 10 With whole cure instantly,
  • Whatever pain I felt, for my own good,
  • When first we met that I might be renew'd.
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  • A thing that has its proper essence changed
  • By virtue of some powerful influence,
  • As water has by fire,
  • Returns to be itself, no more estranged,
  • So soon as that has ceased which gave offence:
  • Yea, now will more aspire
  • Than ever, as the thing it first was made.
  • 20 Thine advent long delay'd
  • Even thus had almost worn me out of love,
  • Biding so far above:
  • But now that thou hast brought love back for me,
  • It mounts too much,—O lady, up to thee.
  • I have heard tell, and can esteem it true,
  • How that an eagle looking on the sun,
  • Rejoicing for his part
  • And bringing oft his young to look there too,—
  • If one gaze longer than another one,
  • 30 On him will set his heart.
  • So I am made aware that Love doth lead
  • All lovers, by their need,
  • To gaze upon the brightness of their loves;
  • And whosoever moves
  • His eyes the least from gazing upon her,
  • The same shall be Love's inward minister.
RUGGIERI DI AMICI, SICILIANO
more about CANZONETTA. For a Renewal of Favours.
Canzonetta

For a Renewal of Favours
  • I play this sweet prelude
  • For the best heart, and queen
  • Of gentle womanhood,
  • From here unto Messene;
  • Of flowers the fairest one;
  • The star that's next the sun;
  • The brightest star of all.
  • What time I look at her,
  • My thoughts do crowd and stir
  • 10 And are made musical.
  • Sweetest my lady, then
  • Wilt thou not just permit,
  • As once I spoke, again
  • That I should speak of it?
  • My heart is burning me
  • Within, though outwardly
  • I seem so brave and gay.
  • Ah! dost thou not sometimes
  • Remember the sweet rhymes
  • 20 Our lips made on that day?—
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  • When I her heart did move
  • By kisses and by vows,
  • Whom I then called my love,
  • Fair-haired, with silver brows:
  • She sang there as we sat;
  • Nor then withheld she aught
  • Which it were right to give;
  • But said, “Indeed I will
  • Be thine through good and ill
  • 30 As long as I may live.”
  • And while I live, dear love,
  • In gladness and in need
  • Myself I will approve
  • To be thine own indeed.
  • If any man dare blame
  • Our loves,—bring him to shame,
  • O God! and of this year
  • Let him not see the May.
  • Is't not a vile thing, say,
  • 40 To freeze at Midsummer?
CARNINO GHIBERTI, DA FIORENZA
more about CANZONE. Being absent from his Lady, he fears Death.
Canzone

Being absent from his Lady, he fears Death
  • I am afar, but near thee is my heart;
  • Only soliciting
  • That this long absence seem not ill to thee:
  • For, if thou knew'st what pain and evil smart
  • The lack of thy sweet countenance can bring,
  • Thou wouldst remember me compassionately.
  • Even as my case, the stag's is wont to be,
  • Which, thinking to escape
  • His death, escaping whence the pack gives cry,
  • 10 Is wounded and doth die.
  • So, in my spirit imagining thy shape,
  • I would fly Death, and Death o'ermasters me.
  • I am o'erpower'd of Death when, telling o'er
  • Thy beauties in my thought,
  • I seem to have that which I have not: then
  • I am as he who in each meteor,
  • Dazzled and wildered, sees the thing he sought.
  • In suchwise Love deals with me among men:—
  • Thee whom I have not, yet who dost sustain
  • 20 My life, he bringeth in his arms to me
  • Full oft,—yet I approach not unto thee.
  • Ah! if we be not joined i' the very flesh,
  • It cannot last but I indeed shall die
  • By burden of this love that weigheth so.
  • As an o'erladen bough, while yet 'tis fresh,
  • Breaks, and itself and fruit are lost thereby—
  • So shall I, love, be lost, alas for woe!
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  • And, if this slay indeed that thus doth rive
  • My heart, how then shall I be comforted?
  • 30 Thou, as a lioness
  • Her cub, in sore distress
  • Might'st toil to bring me out of death alive:
  • But couldst thou raise me up, if I were dead?
  • Oh! but an' if thou wouldst, I were more glad
  • Of death than life,—thus kept
  • From thee and the true life thy face can bring.
  • So in nowise could death be harsh or bad;
  • But it should seem to me that I had slept
  • And was awakened with thy summoning.
  • 40 Yet, sith the hope thereof is a vain thing,
  • I, in fast fealty,
  • Can like the Assassin* be,
  • Who, to be subject to his lord in all,
  • Goes and accepts his death and has no heed:
  • Even as he doth so could I do indeed.
  • Nevertheless, this one memorial—
  • The last—I send thee, for Love orders it.
  • He, this last once, wills that thus much be writ
  • In prayer that it may fall 'twixt thee and me
  • 50 After the manner of
  • Two birds that feast their love
  • Even unto anguish, till, if neither quit
  • The other, one must perish utterly.
PRINZIVALLE DORIA
more about CANZONE. Of his Love, with the Figure of a sudden storm.
Canzone

Of his Love, with the Figure of a sudden Storm
  • Even as the day when it is yet at dawning
  • Seems mild and kind, being fair to look upon,
  • While the birds carol underneath their awning
  • Of leaves, as if they never would have done;
  • Which on a sudden changes, just at noon,
  • And the broad light is broken into rain
  • That stops and comes again;
  • Even as the traveller, who had held his way
  • Hopeful and glad because of the bright weather,
  • 10 Forgetteth then his gladness altogether;
  • Even so am I, through Love, alas the day!
  • It plainly is through Love that I am so.
  • At first, he let me still grow happier
  • Each day, and made her kindness seem to grow;
  • But now he has quite changed her heart in her.
  • And I, whose hopes throbbed and were all astir
  • For times when I should call her mine aloud,
  • And in her pride be proud
  • Who is more fair than gems are, ye may say,
  • 20 Having that fairness which holds hearts in rule;—
  • I have learnt now to count him but a fool
  • Who before evening says, A goodly day.
Transcribed Footnote (page 478):

* Alluding to the Syrian tribe of Assassins, whose chief was the Old Man of the

Mountain.

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  • It had been better not to have begun,
  • Since, having known my error, 'tis too late.
  • This thing from which I suffer, thou hast done,
  • Lady: canst thou restore me my first state?
  • The wound thou gavest canst thou medicate?
  • Not thou, forsooth: thou hast not any art
  • To keep death from my heart.
  • 30 O lady! where is now my life's full meed
  • Of peace,—mine once, and which thou took'st away?
  • Surely it cannot now be far from day:
  • Night is already very long indeed.
  • The sea is much more beautiful at rest
  • Than when the storm is trampling over it.
  • Wherefore, to see the smile which has so bless'd
  • This heart of mine, deem'st thou these eyes unfit?
  • There is no maid so lovely, it is writ,
  • That by such stern unwomanly regard
  • 40 Her face may not be marr'd.
  • I therefore pray of thee, my own soul's wife,
  • That thou remember me who am forgot.
  • How shall I stand without thee? Art thou not
  • The pillar of the building of my life?
RUSTICO DI FILIPPO
more about SONNET. On the Making of Master Messerin.
I

Sonnet

Of the making of Master Messerin
  • When God had finished Master Messerin,
  • He really thought it something to have done:
  • Bird, man, and beast had got a chance in one,
  • And each felt flattered, it was hoped, therein.
  • For he is like a goose i' the windpipe thin,
  • And like a cameleopard high i' the loins;
  • To which, for manhood, you'll be told, he joins
  • Some kinds of flesh-hues and a callow chin.
  • As to his singing, he affects the crow;
  • 10 As to his learning, beasts in general;
  • And sets all square by dressing like a man.
  • God made him, having nothing else to do;
  • And proved there is not anything at all
  • He cannot make, if that's a thing He can.
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more about SONNET. Of the Safety of Messer Fazio.
II

Sonnet

Of the Safety of Messer Fazio*
  • Master Bertuccio, you are called to account
  • That you guard Fazio's life from poison ill:
  • And every man in Florence tells me still
  • He has no horse that he can safely mount.
  • A mighty war-horse worth a thousand pound
  • Stands in Cremona stabled at his will;
  • Which for his honoured person should fulfil
  • Its use. Nay, sir, I pray you be not found
  • So poor a steward. For all fame of yours
  • 10 Is cared for best, believe me, when I say:—
  • Our Florence gives Bertuccio charge of one
  • Who rides her own proud spirit like a horse;
  • Whom Cocciolo himself must needs obey;
  • And whom she loves best, being her strongest son.
more about SONNET. Of Messer Ugolino.
III

Sonnet

Of Messer Ugolino†
  • If any one had anything to say
  • To the Lord Ugolino, because he's
  • Not staunch, and never minds his promises,
  • 'Twere hardly courteous, for it is his way.
  • Courteous it were to say such sayings nay:
  • As thus: He's true, sir, only takes his ease
  • And don't care merely if it plague or please,
  • And has good thoughts, no doubt, if they would stay.
  • Now I know he's so loyal every whit
  • 10 And altogether worth such a good word
  • As worst would best and best would worst befit.
  • He'd love his party with a dear accord
  • If only he could once quite care for it,
  • But can't run post for any Law or Lord.
Transcribed Footnote (page 480):

* I have not been able to trace the Fazio to whom this sonnet refers.

Transcribed Footnote (page 480):

† The character here drawn certainly suggests Count Ugolino de' Gherardeschi, though

it would seem that Rustico died nearly twenty years before the tragedy of the Tower of

Famine.

Image of page 481 page: 481
Sig. 31
PUCCIARELLO DI FIORENZA
more about SONNET. Of Expediency.
Sonnet

Of Expediency
  • Pass and let pass,—this counsel I would give,—
  • And wrap thy cloak what way the wind may blow;
  • Who cannot raise himself were wise to know
  • How best, by dint of stooping, he may thrive.
  • Take for ensample this: when the winds drive
  • Against it, how the sapling tree bends low,
  • And, once being prone, abideth even so
  • Till the hard harsh wind cease to rend and rive.
  • Wherefore, when thou behold'st thyself abased,
  • 10 Be blind, deaf, dumb; yet therewith none the less
  • Note thou in peace what thou shalt hear and see,
  • Till from such state by Fortune thou be raised.
  • Then hack, lop, buffet, thrust, and so redress
  • Thine ill that it may not return on thee.
ALBERTUCCIO DELLA VIOLA
more about CANZONE. Of his Lady Dancing.
Canzone

Of his Lady dancing
  • Among the dancers I beheld her dance,
  • Her who alone is my heart's sustenance.
  • So, as she danced, I took this wound of her;
  • Alas! the flower of flowers, she did not fail.
  • Woe's me! I will be Jew and blasphemer
  • If the good god of Love do not prevail
  • To bring me to thy grace, oh! thou most fair.
  • My lady and my lord! alas for wail!
  • How many days and how much sufferance?
  • 10 Oh! would to God that I had never seen
  • Her face, nor had beheld her dancing so!
  • Then had I missed this wound which is so keen—
  • Yea, mortal—for I think not to win through
  • Unless her love be my sweet medicine;
  • Whereof I am in doubt, alas for woe!
  • Fearing therein but such a little chance.
  • She was apparelled in a Syrian cloth,
  • My lady:—oh! but she did grace the same,
  • Gladdening all folk, that they were nowise loth
  • 20 At sight of her to put their ills from them.
  • But upon me her power hath had such growth
  • That nought of joy thenceforth, but a live flame,
  • Stirs at my heart,—which is her countenance.
  • Sweet-smelling rose, sweet, sweet to smell and see,
  • Great solace had she in her eyes for all;
  • But heavy woe is mine; for upon me
  • Her eyes as they were wont, did never fall.
  • Which thing if it were done advisedly,
  • I would choose death, that could no more appal,
  • 30 Not caring for my life's continuance.
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TOMMASO BUZZUOLA, DA FAENZA
more about SONNET. He is in awe of his Lady.
Sonnet

He is in awe of his Lady
  • Even as the moon amid the stars doth shed
  • Her lovelier splendour of exceeding light,—
  • Even so my lady seems the queen and head
  • Among all other ladies in my sight.
  • Her human visage, like an angel's made,
  • Is glorious even to beauty's perfect height;
  • And with her simple bearing soft and staid
  • All secret modesties of soul unite.
  • I therefore feel a dread in loving her;
  • 10 Because of thinking on her excellence,
  • The wisdom and the beauty which she has.
  • I pray her for the sake of God,—whereas
  • I am her servant, yet in sore suspense
  • Have held my peace,—to have me in her care.
NOFFO BONAGUIDA
more about SONNET. He is enjoined to pure Love.
Sonnet

He is enjoined to pure Love
  • A spirit of Love, with Love's intelligence,
  • Maketh his sojourn alway in my breast,
  • Maintaining me in perfect joy and rest;
  • Nor could I live an hour, were he gone thence:
  • Through whom my love hath such full permanence
  • That thereby other loves seem dispossess'd.
  • I have no pain, nor am with sighs oppress'd,
  • So calm is the benignant influence.
  • Because this spirit of Love, who speaks to me
  • 10 Of my dear lady's tenderness and worth,
  • Says: “More than thus to love her seek thou not,
  • Even as she loves thee in her wedded thought;
  • But honour her in thy heart delicately:
  • For this is the most blessed joy on earth.”
LIPPO PASCHI DE' BARDI
more about SONNET. He solicits a Lady's Favours.
Sonnet

He solicits a Lady's Favours
  • Wert thou as prone to yield unto my prayer
  • The thing, sweet virgin, which I ask of thee,
  • As to repeat, with all humility,
  • “Pray you go hence, and of your speech forbear;”—
  • Then unto joy might I my heart prepare,
  • Having my fellows in subserviency;
  • But, for that thou contemn'st and mockest me,
  • Whether of life or death I take no care.
  • Because my heart may not assuage its drouth
  • 10 Nor ever may again rejoice at all
  • Till the sweet face bend to be felt of man,—
  • Till tenderly the beautiful soft mouth
  • I kiss by thy good leave; thenceforth to call
  • Blessing and triumph Love's extremest ban.
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SER PACE, NOTAIO DA FIORENZA
more about SONNET. A Return to Love.
Sonnet

A Return to Love
  • A fresh content of fresh enamouring
  • Yields me afresh, at length, the sense of song,
  • Who had well-nigh forgotten Love so long:
  • But now my homage he will have me bring.
  • So that my life is now a joyful thing,
  • Having new-found desire, elate and strong,
  • In her to whom all grace and worth belong,
  • On whom I now attend for ministering.
  • The countenance remembering, with the limbs,
  • 10 She was all imaged on my heart at once
  • Suddenly by a single look at her:
  • Whom when I now behold, a heat there seems
  • Within, as of a subtle fire that runs
  • Unto my heart, and remains burning there.
NICCOLÒ DEGLI ALBIZZI
more about PROLONGED SONNET. When the Troops were returning from Milan.
Prolonged Sonnet

When the Troops were returning from Milan
Note: The following poem is not, in the strict sense, a “sonnet,” and is designated by Rossetti a “prolonged sonnet,” consisting as it does of a sixteen-line stanza.
  • If you could see, fair brother, how dead beat
  • The fellows look who come through Rome to-day,—
  • Black yellow smoke-dried visages,—you'd say
  • They thought their haste at going all too fleet.
  • Their empty victual-waggons up the street
  • Over the bridge dreadfully sound and sway;
  • Their eyes, as hanged men's, turning the wrong way;
  • And nothing on their backs, or heads, or feet.
  • One sees the ribs and all the skeletons
  • 10 Of their gaunt horses; and a sorry sight
  • Are the torn saddles, crammed with straw and stones.
  • They are ashamed, and march throughout the night;
  • Stumbling, for hunger, on their marrowbones;
  • Like barrels rolling, jolting, in this plight.
  • Their arms all gone, not even their swords are saved;
  • And each as silent as a man being shaved.
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FRANCESCO DA BARBERINO
more about BLANK VERSE. A Virgin declares her Beauties.
I

Blank Verse*

A Virgin declares her Beauties
  • Do not conceive that I shall here recount
  • All my own beauty: yet I promise you
  • That you, by what I tell, shall understand
  • All that befits and that is well to know.
  • My bosom, which is very softly made,
  • Of a white even colour without stain,
  • Bears two fair apples, fragrant, sweetly-savoured,
  • Gathered together from the Tree of Life
  • The which is in the midst of Paradise.
  • 10 And these no person ever yet has touched;
  • For out of nurse's and of mother's hands
  • I was, when God in secret gave them me.
  • These ere I yield I must know well to whom;
  • And for that I would not be robbed of them,
  • I speak not all the virtue that they have;
  • Yet thus far speaking:—blessed were the man
  • Who once should touch them, were it but a little;—
  • See them I say not, for that might not be.
  • My girdle, clipping pleasure round about,
  • 20 Over my clear dress even unto my knees
  • Hangs down with sweet precision tenderly;
  • And under it Virginity abides.
  • Faithful and simple and of plain belief
  • She is, with her fair garland bright like gold;
  • And very fearful if she overhears
  • Speech of herself; the wherefore ye perceive
  • That I speak soft lest she be made ashamed.
  • Lo! this is she who hath for company
  • The Son of God and Mother of the Son;
  • 30 Lo! this is she who sits with many in heaven;
  • Lo! this is she with whom are few on earth.
more about SENTENZE. Of Sloth against Sin.
II

Sentenze†

Of Sloth against Sin
  • There is a vice which oft
  • I've heard men praise; and divers forms it has;
  • And it is this. Whereas
  • Some, by their wisdom, lordship, or repute,
  • When tumults are afoot,
  • Might stifle them, or at the least allay,—
  • These certain ones will say,
  • “The wise man bids thee fly the noise of men.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 484):

* Extracted from his long treatise, in unrhymed verse and in prose, “Of the Govern-

ment and Conduct of Women”; ( Del Reggimento e dei Costumi delle Donne ).

Transcribed Footnote (page 484):

† This and the three following pieces are extracted from his “Documents of Love”

( Documenti d' Amore).

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  • One says, “Wouldst thou maintain
  • 10 Worship,—avoid where thou mayst not avail;
  • And do not breed worse ail
  • By adding one more voice to strife begun.”
  • Another, with this one,
  • Avers, “I could but bear a small expense,
  • Or yield a slight defence.”
  • A third says this, “I could but offer words.”
  • Or one, whose tongue records
  • Unwillingly his own base heart, will say,
  • “I'll not be led astray
  • 20 To bear a hand in others' life or death.”
  • They have it in their teeth!
  • For unto this each man is pledged and bound;
  • And this thing shall be found
  • Entered against him at the Judgment Day.
more about SENTENZE. Of Sins in Speech.
III

Sentenze

Of Sins in Speech
  • Now these four things, if thou
  • Consider, are so bad that none are worse.
  • First,—among counsellors
  • To thrust thyself, when not called absolutely.
  • And in the other three
  • Many offend by their own evil wit.
  • When men in council sit,
  • One talks because he loves not to be still;
  • And one to have his will;
  • 10 And one for nothing else but only show.
  • These rules were well to know,
  • First for the first, for the others afterward.
  • Where many are repair'd
  • And met together, never go with them
  • Unless thou'rt called by name.
  • This for the first: now for the other three.
  • What truly thou dost see
  • Turn in thy mind, and faithfully report;
  • And in the plainest sort
  • 20 Thy wisdom may, proffer thy counselling.
  • There is another thing
  • Belongs hereto, the which is on this wise.
  • If one should ask advice
  • Of thine for his own need whate'er it be,—
  • This is my word to thee:—
  • Deny it if it be not clearly of use:
  • Or turn to some excuse
  • That may avail, and thou shalt have done well.
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more about SENTENZE. Of Importunities and Troublesome Persons.
IV

Sentenze

Of Importunities and Troublesome Persons
  • There is a vice prevails
  • Concerning which I'll set you on your guard;
  • And other four, which hard
  • It were (as may be thought) that I should blame.
  • Some think that still of them—
  • Whate'er is said—some ill speech lies beneath;
  • And this to them is death:
  • Whereby we plainly may perceive their sins.
  • And now let others wince.
  • 10 One sort there is, who, thinking that they please,
  • (Because no wit's in these,)
  • Where'er you go, will stick to you all day,
  • And answer, (when you say,
  • “Don't let me tire you out!”) “Oh never mind—
  • Say nothing of the kind,—
  • It's quite a pleasure to be where you are!”
  • A second,—when, as far
  • As he could follow you, the whole day long
  • He's sung you his dull song,
  • 20 And you for courtesy have borne with it,—
  • Will think you've had a treat.
  • A third will take his special snug delight,—
  • Some day you've come in sight
  • Of some great thought and got it well in view,—
  • Just then to drop on you.
  • A fourth, for any insult you've received
  • Will say he is so grieved,
  • And daily bring the subject up again.
  • So now I would be fain
  • 30 To show you your best course at all such times;
  • And counsel you in rhymes
  • That you yourself offend not in likewise.
  • In these four cases lies
  • This help:—to think upon your own affair,
  • Just showing here and there
  • By just a word that you are listening;
  • And still to the last thing
  • That's said to you attend in your reply,
  • And let the rest go by,—
  • 40 It's quite a chance if he remembers them.
  • Yet do not, all the same,
  • Deny your ear to any speech of weight.
  • But if importunate
  • The speaker is, and will not be denied,
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  • Just turn the speech aside
  • When you can find some plausible pretence;
  • For if you have the sense,
  • By a quick question or a sudden doubt
  • You may so put him out
  • 50 That he shall not remember where he was,
  • And by such means you'll pass
  • Upon your way and be well rid of him.
  • And now it may beseem
  • I give you the advice I promised you.
  • Before you have to do
  • With men whom you must meet continually,
  • Take notice what they be;
  • And so you shall find readily enough
  • If you can win their love,
  • 60 And give yourself for answer Yes or No.
  • And finding Yes, do so
  • That still the love between you may increase.
  • Yet if they be of these
  • Whom sometimes it is hard to understand,
  • Let some slight cause be plann'd,
  • And seem to go,—so you shall learn their will:
  • And if but one sit still
  • As 'twere in thought,—then go, unless he call.
  • Lastly, if insult gall
  • 70 Your friend, this is the course that you should take.
  • At first 'tis well you make
  • As much lament thereof as you think fit,—
  • Then speak no more of it,
  • Unless himself should bring it up again;
  • And then no more refrain
  • From full discourse, but say his grief is yours.
more about SENTENZE. Of Caution.
V

Sentenze

Of Caution
  • Say, wouldst thou guard thy son,
  • That sorrow he may shun?
  • Begin at the beginning
  • And let him keep from sinning.
  • Wouldst guard thy house? One door
  • Make to it, and no more.
  • Wouldst guard thine orchard-wall?
  • Be free of fruit to all.
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FAZIO DEGLI UBERTI
more about CANZONE. His Portrait of his Lady, Angiola of Verona.
I

Canzone

His Portrait of his Lady, Angiola of Verona
  • I look at the crisp golden-threaded hair
  • Whereof, to thrall my heart, Love twists a net:
  • Using at times a string of pearls for bait,
  • And sometimes with a single rose therein.
  • I look into her eyes which unaware
  • Through mine own eyes to my heart penetrate;
  • Their splendour, that is excellently great,
  • To the sun's radiance seeming near akin,
  • Yet from herself a sweeter light to win.
  • 10 So that I, gazing on that lovely one,
  • Discourse in this wise with my secret thought:—
  • “Woe's me! why am I not,
  • Even as my wish, alone with her alone,—
  • That hair of hers, so heavily uplaid,
  • To shed down braid by braid,
  • And make myself two mirrors of her eyes
  • Within whose light all other glory dies?”
  • I look at the amorous beautiful mouth,
  • The spacious forehead which her locks enclose,
  • 20 The small white teeth, the straight and shapely nose,
  • And the clear brows of a sweet pencilling.
  • And then the thought within me gains full growth,
  • Saying, “Be careful that thy glance now goes
  • Between her lips, red as an open rose,
  • Quite full of every dear and precious thing;
  • And listen to her gracious answering,
  • Born of the gentle mind that in her dwells,
  • Which from all things can glean the nobler half.
  • Look thou when she doth laugh
  • 30 How much her laugh is sweeter than aught else.”
  • Thus evermore my spirit makes avow
  • Touching her mouth; till now
  • I would give anything that I possess,
  • Only to hear her mouth say frankly, “Yes.”
  • I look at her white easy neck, so well
  • From shoulders and from bosom lifted out;
  • And at her round cleft chin, which beyond doubt
  • No fancy in the world could have design'd.
  • And then, with longing grown more voluble,
  • 40 “Were it not pleasant now,” pursues my thought,
  • “To have that neck within thy two arms caught
  • And kiss it till the mark were left behind?”
  • Then, urgently: “The eyelids of thy mind
  • Open thou: if such loveliness be given
  • To sight here,—what of that which she doth hide?
  • Only the wondrous ride
  • Of sun and planets through the visible heaven
  • Tells us that there beyond is Paradise.
  • Thus, if thou fix thine eyes,
  • 50 Of a truth certainly thou must infer
  • That every earthly joy abides in her.”
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  • I look at the large arms, so lithe and round,—
  • At the hands, which are white and rosy too,—
  • At the long fingers, clasped and woven through,
  • Bright with the ring which one of them doth wear.
  • Then my thought whispers: “Were thy body wound
  • Within those arms, as loving women's do,
  • In all thy veins were born a life made new
  • Which thou couldst find no language to declare.
  • 60 Behold if any picture can compare
  • With her just limbs, each fit in shape and size,
  • Or match her angel's colour like a pearl.
  • She is a gentle girl
  • To see; yet when it needs, her scorn can rise,
  • Meek, bashful, and in all things temperate,
  • Her virtue holds its state;
  • In whose least act there is that gift express'd
  • Which of all reverence makes her worthiest.”
  • Soft as a peacock steps she, or as a stork
  • 70 Straight on herself, taller and statelier:
  • 'Tis a good sight how every limb doth stir
  • For ever in a womanly sweet way.
  • “Open thy soul to see God's perfect work,”
  • (My thought begins afresh), “and look at her
  • When with some lady-friend exceeding fair
  • She bends and mingles arms and locks in play.
  • Even as all lesser lights vanish away,
  • When the sun moves, before his dazzling face,
  • So is this lady brighter than all these.
  • 80 How should she fail to please,—
  • Love's self being no more than her loveliness?
  • In all her ways some beauty springs to view;
  • All that she loves to do
  • Tends alway to her honour's single scope;
  • And only from good deeds she draws her hope.”
  • Song, thou canst surely say, without pretence,
  • That since the first fair woman ever made,
  • Not one can have display'd
  • More power upon all hearts than this one doth;
  • 90 Because in her are both
  • Loveliness and the soul's true excellence:—
  • And yet (woe's me!) is pity absent thence?
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more about EXTRACT FROM THE 'DITTAMONDO.' Of England, and of its Marvels.
II

Extract from the “Dittamondo”*

(Lib. iv. Cap. 23)

Of England, and of its Marvels
  • Now to Great Britain we must make our way,
  • Unto which kingdom Brutus gave its name
  • What time he won it from the giants' rule.
  • 'Tis thought at first its name was Albion,
  • And Anglia, from a damsel, afterwards.
  • The island is so great and rich and fair,
  • It conquers others that in Europe be,
  • Even as the sun surpasses other stars.
  • Many and great sheep-pastures bountifully
  • 10 Nature has set there, and herein more bless'd,
  • That they can hold themselves secure from wolves.
  • Jet also doth the hollow land enrich,
  • (Whose properties my guide Solinus here
  • Told me, and how its colour comes to it;)
  • And pearls are found in great abundance too.
  • The people are as white and comely-faced
  • As they of Ethiop land are black and foul.
  • Many hot springs and limpid fountain-heads
  • We found about this land, and spacious plains,
  • 20 And divers beasts that dwell within thick woods.
  • Plentiful orchards too and fertile fields
  • It has, and castle-forts, and cities fair
  • With palaces and girth of lofty walls.
  • And proud wide rivers without any fords
  • We saw, and flesh, and fish, and crops enough.
  • Justice is strong throughout those provinces.
  • Now this I saw not; but so strange a thing
  • It was to hear, and by all men confirm'd,
  • That it is fit to note it as I heard;—
  • 30 To wit, there is a certain islet here
  • Among the rest, where folk are born with tails,
  • Short, as are found in stags and such-like beasts.†
  • For this I vouch,—that when a child is freed
  • From swaddling bands, the mother without stay
  • Passes elsewhere, and 'scapes the care of it.
Transcribed Footnote (page 490):

* I am quite sorry (after the foregoing love-song, the original of which is not perhaps

surpassed by any poem of its class in existence) to endanger the English reader's respect

for Fazio by these extracts from the Dittamondo, or “Song of the World”, in which he

will find his own country endowed with some astounding properties. However, there are

a few fine characteristic sentences, and the rest is no more absurd than other travellers'

tales of that day; while the table of our Norman line of kings is not without some historical

interest. It must be remembered that the love-song was the work of Fazio's youth,

and the Dittamondo that of his old age, when we may suppose his powers to have been

no longer at their best. Besides what I have given relating to Great Britain, there is

a table of the Saxon dynasty, and some surprising facts about Scotland and Ireland;

as well as a curious passage written in French, and purporting to be an account, given by

a royal courier, of Edward the Third's invasion of France. I felt half disposed to include

these, but was afraid of overloading with such matter a selection made chiefly for the

sake of poetic beauty. I should mention that the Dittamondo, like Dante's great poem,

is written in terza rima; but as perfect literality was of primary importance in the above

extracts, I have departed for once from my rule of fidelity to the original metre.

Transcribed Footnote (page 490):

† Mediæval Britons would seem really to have been credited with this slight peculiarity.

At the siege of Damietta, Cœur-de-Lion's bastard brother is said to have pointed out

the prudence of deferring the assault, and to have received for rejoinder from the French

crusaders, “See now these faint-hearted English with the tails!” To which the English-

man replied, “You will need stout hearts to keep near our tails when the assault is

made.”

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  • I put no faith herein; but it is said
  • Among them, how such marvellous trees are there
  • That they grow birds, and this is their sole fruit.*
  • Forty times eighty is the circuit ta'en,
  • 40 With ten times fifteen, if I do not err,
  • By our miles reckoning its circumference.
  • Here every metal may be dug; and here
  • I found the people to be given to God,
  • Steadfast, and strong, and restive to constraint.
  • Nor is this strange, when one considereth;
  • For courage, beauty, and large-heartedness,
  • Were there, as it is said, in ancient days.
  • North Wales, and Orkney, and the banks of Thames,
  • Strangoure and Listenois and Northumberland,
  • 50 I chose with my companion to behold.†
  • We went to London, and I saw the Tower
  • Where Guenevere her honour did defend,
  • With the Thames river which runs close to it.
  • I saw the castle which by force was ta'en
  • With the three shields by gallant Lancelot,
  • The second year that he did deeds of arms.
  • I beheld Camelot despoiled and waste;
  • And was where one and the other had her birth,
  • The maids of Corbonek and Astolat.
  • 60 Also I saw the castle where Geraint
  • Lay with his Enid; likewise Merlin's stone,
  • Which for another's love I joyed to see.
  • I found the tract where is the pine-tree well,
  • And where of old the knight of the black shield
  • With weeping and with laughter kept the pass,
  • What time the pitiless and bitter dwarf
  • Before Sir Gawaine's eyes discourteously
  • With many heavy stripes led him away.
  • I saw the valley which Sir Tristram won
  • 70 When having slain the giant hand to hand
  • He set the stranger knights from prison free.
  • And last I viewed the field, at Salisbury,
  • Of that great martyrdom which left the world
  • Empty of honour, valour, and delight.
  • So, compassing that Island round and round,
  • I saw and hearkened many things and more
  • Which might be fair to tell but which I hide.
Transcribed Footnote (page 491):

* This is the Barnacle-tree, often described in old books of travels and natural history,

and which Sir Thomas Browne classes gravely among his “Vulgar Errors.”

Transcribed Footnote (page 491):

† What follows relates to the Romances of the Round Table. The only allusion here

which I cannot trace to the Mort d'Arthur is one where “Rech” and “Nida” are spoken

of: it seems however that, by a perversion hardly too corrupt for Fazio, these might be

the Geraint and Enid whose story occurs in the Mabinogion, and has been used by Tenny-

son in his Idylls of the King. Why Fazio should have “joyed to see” Merlin's stone “for

another's love” seems inscrutable; unless indeed the words “ per amor altrui ” are a

mere idiom, and Merlin himself is meant; and even then Merlin, in his compulsory niche

under the stone, may hardly have been grateful for such friendly interest.

I should not omit, in this second edition, to acknowledge several obligations, as regards

the above extract from the Dittamondo, to the unknown author of an acute and kindly

article in the Spectator for January 18th, 1862.

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more about EXTRACT FROM THE 'DITTAMONDO'. Of the Dukes of Normandy, and thence of the Kings of England, from William the First to Edward the Third.
III

Extract from the “Dittamondo”

(Lib. iv. Cap. 25)

Of the Dukes of Normandy, and thence of the Kings of England, from

William the First to Edward the Third
  • Thou well hast heard that Rollo had two sons,
  • One William Longsword, and the other Richard,
  • Whom thou now know'st to the marrow, as I do.*
  • Daring and watchful, as a leopard is,
  • Was William, fair in body and in face,
  • Ready at all times, never slow to act.
  • He fought great battles, but at last was slain
  • By the earl of Flanders; so that in his place
  • Richard his son was o'er the people set.
  • 10 And next in order, lit with blessed flame
  • Of the Holy Spirit, his son followed him,
  • Who justly lived 'twixt more and less midway,—
  • His father's likeness, as in shape in name.
  • So unto him succeeded as his heir
  • Robert the Frank, high-counselled and august:
  • And thereon following, I proceed to tell
  • How William, who was Robert's son, did make
  • The realm of England his co-heritage.
  • The same was brave and courteous certainly,
  • 20 Generous and gracious, humble before God,
  • Master in war and versed in counsel too.
  • He with great following came from Normandy
  • And fought with Harold, and so left him slain,
  • And took the realm, and held it at his will.
  • Thus did this kingdom change its signiory;
  • And know that all the kings it since has had
  • Only from this man take their origin.
  • Therefore, that thou mayst quite forget its past,
  • I say this happened when, since our Lord's Love,
  • 30 Some thousand years and sixty were gone by.
  • While the fourth Henry ruled as emperor,
  • This king of England fought in many wars,
  • And waxed through all in honour and account.
  • And William Rufus next succeeded him;
  • Tall, strong, and comely-limbed, but therewith proud
  • And grasping, and a killer of his kind.
  • In body he was like his father much,
  • But was in nature more his contrary
  • Than fire and water when they come together;
  • 40 Yet so far good that he won fame in arms,
  • And by himself risked many an enterprise,
  • All which he brought with honour to an end.
  • Also if he were bad, he gat great ill;
  • For, chasing once the deer within a wood,
  • And having wandered from his company,
  • Him by mischance a servant of his own
  • Hit with an arrow, that he fell and died.
    Transcribed Footnote (page 492):

    * The speaker here is the poet's guide Solinus (an historical and geographical writer

    of the third century,) who bears the same relation to him which Virgil bears to Dante

    in the Commedia.

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  • And after him Henry the First was king,
  • His brother, but therewith the father's like,
  • 50 Being well with God and just in peace and war.
  • Next Stephen, on his death, the kingdom seized,
  • But with sore strife; of whom thus much be said,
  • That he was frank and good is told of him.
  • And after him another Henry reigned,
  • Who, when the war in France was waged and done
  • Passed beyond seas with the first Frederick.
  • Then Richard came, who, after heavy toil
  • At sea, was captive made in Germany,
  • Leaving the Sepulchre to join his host.
  • 60 Who being dead, full heavy was the wrath
  • Of John his brother; and so well he took
  • Revenge, that still a moan is made of it.
  • This John in kingly largesse and in war
  • Delighted, when the kingdom fell to him;
  • Hunting and riding ever in hot haste.
  • Handsome in body and most poor in heart,
  • Henry his son and heir succeeded him,
  • Of whom to speak I count it wretchedness.
  • Yet there's some good to say of him, I grant;
  • 70 Because of him was the good Edward born,
  • Whose valour still is famous in the world.
  • The same was he who, being without dread
  • Of the Old Man's Assassins, captured them,
  • And who repaid the jester if he lied.*
  • The same was he who over seas wrought scathe
  • So many times to Malekdar, and bent
  • Unto the Christian rule whole provinces.
  • He was a giant of his body, and great
  • And proud to view, and of such strength of soul
  • 80 As never saddens with adversity.
  • His reign was long; and when his death befell,
  • The second Edward mounted to the throne,
  • Who was of one kind with his grandfather.
  • I say from what report still says of him,
  • That he was evil, of base intellect,
  • And would not be advised by any man.
  • Conceive, good heart! that how to thatch a roof
  • With straw,—conceive!—he held himself expert,
  • And therein constantly would take delight!
  • 90 By fraud he seized the Earl of Lancaster,
  • And what he did with him I say not here,
  • But that he left him neither town nor tower.
  • And thiswise, step by step, thou mayst perceive
  • That I to the third Edward have advanced,
  • Who now lives strong and full of enterprise,
  • And who already has grown manifest
  • For the best Christian known of in the world.
  • Thus I have told, as thou wouldst have me tell,
  • The race of William even unto the end.
Transcribed Footnote (page 493):

* This may either refer to some special incident or merely mean generally that he

would not suffer lying even in a jester.

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FRANCO SACCHETTI
more about BALLATA. His Talk with certain Peasant Girls.
I

Ballata

His Talk with certain Peasant-girls
  • “Ye graceful peasant-girls and mountain-maids,
  • Whence come ye homeward through these evening shades?”
  • “We come from where the forest skirts the hill;
  • A very little cottage is our home,
  • Where with our father and our mother still
  • We live, and love our life, nor wish to roam.
  • Back every evening from the field we come
  • And bring with us our sheep from pasturing there.”
  • “Where, tell me, is the hamlet of your birth,
  • 10 Whose fruitage is the sweetest by so much?
  • Ye seem to me as creatures worship-worth,
  • The shining of your countenance is such.
  • No gold about your clothes, coarse to the touch,
  • Nor silver; yet with such an angel's air!
  • “I think your beauties might make great complaint
  • Of being thus shown over mount and dell;
  • Because no city is so excellent
  • But that your stay therein were honourable.
  • In very truth, now, does it like ye well
  • 20 To live so poorly on the hill-side here?”
  • “Better it liketh one of us, pardie,
  • Behind her flock to seek the pasture-stance,
  • Far better than it liketh one of ye
  • To ride unto your curtained rooms and dance.
  • We seek no riches neither golden chance
  • Save wealth of flowers to weave into our hair.”
  • Ballad, if I were now as once I was,
  • I'd make myself a shepherd on some hill,
  • And, without telling any one, would pass
  • 30 Where these girls went, and follow at their will;
  • And “Mary” and “Martin” we would murmur still,
  • And I would be for ever where they were.
more about CATCH. On a Fine Day.
II

Catch

On a Fine Day
  • “Be stirring, girls! we ought to have a run:
  • Look, did you ever see so fine a day?
  • Fling spindles right away,
  • And rocks and reels and wools:
  • Now don't be fools,—
  • To-day your spinning's done.
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  • Up with you, up with you!” So, one by one
  • They caught hands, catch who can,
  • Then singing, singing, to the river they ran,
  • 10 They ran, they ran
  • To the river, the river;
  • And the merry-go-round
  • Carries them at a bound
  • To the mill o'er the river.
  • “Miller, miller, miller,
  • Weigh me this lady
  • And this other. Now, steady!”
  • “You weigh a hundred, you,
  • And this one weighs two.”
  • 20 “Why, dear, you do get stout!”
  • “You think so, dear, no doubt:
  • Are you in a decline?”
  • “Keep your temper, and I'll keep mine.
  • Come, girls,” (“O thank you, miller!”)
  • “We'll go home when you will.”
  • So, as we crossed the hill,
  • A clown came in great grief
  • Crying, “Stop thief! stop thief!
  • O what a wretch I am!”
  • 30 “Well, fellow, here's a clatter!
  • Well, what's the matter?”
  • “O Lord, O Lord, the wolf has got my lamb!”
  • Now at that word of woe,
  • The beauties came and clung about me so
  • That if wolf had but shown himself, maybe
  • I too had caught a lamb that fled to me.
more about CATCH. On a Wet Day.
III

Catch

On a Wet Day
  • As I walked thinking through a little grove,
  • Some girls that gathered flowers came passing me,
  • Saying, “Look here! look there!” delightedly.
  • “O here it is!” “What's that?” “A lily, love.”
  • “And there are violets!”
  • “Further for roses! Oh the lovely pets—
  • The darling beauties! Oh the nasty thorn!
  • Look here, my hand's all torn!”
  • “What's that that jumps?” “Oh don't! it's a grasshopper!”
  • 10 “Come run, come run,
  • Here's bluebells!” “Oh what fun!”
  • “Not that way! Stop her!”
  • “Yes, this way!” “Pluck them, then!”
  • “Oh, I've found mushrooms! Oh look here!” “Oh, I'm
  • Quite sure that further on we'll get wild thyme.”
  • “Oh we shall stay too long, it's going to rain!
  • There's lightning, oh there's thunder!”
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  • “Oh shan't we hear the vesper-bell, I wonder?”
  • “Why, it's not nones, you silly little thing;
  • 20 And don't you hear the nightingales that sing
  • Fly away O die away?”
  • “O I hear something! Hush!”
  • “Why, where? what is it then?” “Ah! in that bush!”
  • So every girl here knocks it, shakes and shocks it,
  • Till with the stir they make
  • Out skurries a great snake.
  • “O Lord! O me! Alack! Ah me! alack!”
  • They scream, and then all run and scream again,
  • And then in heavy drops down comes the rain.
  • 30 Each running at the other in a fright,
  • Each trying to get before the other, and crying,
  • And flying, stumbling, tumbling, wrong or right;
  • One sets her knee
  • There where her foot should be;
  • One has her hands and dress
  • All smothered up with mud in a fine mess;
  • And one gets trampled on by two or three.
  • What's gathered is let fall
  • About the wood and not picked up at all.
  • 40 The wreaths of flowers are scattered on the ground;
  • And still as screaming hustling without rest
  • They run this way and that and round and round,
  • She thinks herself in luck who runs the best.
  • I stood quite still to have a perfect view,
  • And never noticed till I got wet through.
ANONYMOUS POEMS
more about SONNET. A Lady laments for her lost Lover, by similitude of a Falcon.
I

Sonnet

A Lady laments for her lost Lover, by similitude of a

Falcon
  • Alas for me, who loved a falcon well!
  • So well I loved him, I was nearly dead:
  • Ever at my low call he bent his head,
  • And ate of mine, not much, but all that fell.
  • Now he has fled, how high I cannot tell,
  • Much higher now than ever he has fled,
  • And is in a fair garden housed and fed;
  • Another lady, alas! shall love him well.
  • O my own falcon whom I taught and rear'd!
  • 10 Sweet bells of shining gold I gave to thee
  • That in the chase thou shouldst not be afeard.
  • Now thou hast risen like the risen sea,
  • Broken thy jesses loose, and disappear'd,
  • As soon as thou wast skilled in falconry.
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Sig. 32
more about BALLATA. One speaks of the Beginning of his Love.
II

Ballata

One speaks of the Beginning of his Love
  • This fairest one of all the stars, whose flame,
  • For ever lit, my inner spirit fills,
  • Came to me first one day between the hills.
  • I wondered very much; but God the Lord
  • Said, “From Our Virtue, lo! this light is pour'd.”
  • So in a dream it seemed that I was led
  • By a great Master to a garden spread
  • With lilies underfoot and overhead.
more about BALLATA. One speaks of his false Lady.
III

Ballata

One speaks of his False Lady
  • When the last greyness dwells throughout the air,
  • And the first star appears,
  • Appeared to me a lady very fair.
  • I seemed to know her well by her sweet air;
  • And, gazing, I was hers.
  • To honour her, I followed her: and then. . . .
  • Ah! what thou givest, God give thee again,
  • Whenever thou remain'st as I remain.
more about BALLATA. One speaks of his feigned and real Love.
IV

Ballata

One speaks of his Feigned and Real Love
  • For no love borne by me,
  • Neither because I care
  • To find that thou art fair,—
  • To give another pain I gaze on thee.
  • And now, lest such as thought that thou couldst move
  • My heart, should read this verse,
  • I will say here, another has my love.
  • An angel of the spheres
  • She seems, and I am hers;
  • 10 Who has more gentleness
  • And owns a fairer face
  • Than any woman else,—at least, to me.
  • Sweeter than any, more in all at ease,
  • Lighter and lovelier.
  • Not to disparage thee; for whoso sees
  • May like thee more than her.
  • This vest will one prefer,
  • And one another vest.
  • To me she seems the best,
  • 20 And I am hers, and let what will be, be.
  • For no love borne by me,
  • Neither because I care
  • To find that thou art fair,—
  • To give another pain, I gaze on thee.
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more about BALLATA. Of True and False Singing.
V

Ballata

Of True and False Singing
  • A little wild bird sometimes at my ear
  • Sings his own little verses very clear:
  • Others sing louder that I do not hear.
  • For singing loudly is not singing well;
  • But ever by the song that's soft and low
  • The master-singer's voice is plain to tell.
  • Few have it and yet all are masters now,
  • And each of them can trill out what he calls
  • His ballads, canzonets, and madrigals.
  • 10 The world with masters is so covered o'er,
  • There is no room for pupils any more.
END OF DANTE AND HIS CIRCLE
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TRANSLATIONS

from the

GERMAN, ITALIAN, FRENCH, AND

GREEK
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Note: blank page
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more about Lenore. by G. A. Burger
LENORE
By G. A. Bürger
Transcribed Note (page 501):

I have retained the German version of the heroine's name; thinking it more suited to

the metre than the lengthy English word “Leonora”—and by far less unpleasing to the ear

than the stunted and ugly abbreviation, “Leonor.”

G. C. R.

  • Up rose Lenore as the red morn wore,
  • From weary visions starting;
  • “Art faithless, William, or, William, art dead?
  • 'Tis long since thy departing.”
  • For he, with Frederick's men of might,
  • In fair Prague waged the uncertain fight;
  • Nor once had he writ in the hurry of war,
  • And sad was the true heart that sickened afar.
  • The Empress and the King,
  • 10 With ceaseless quarrel tired,
  • At length relaxed the stubborn hate
  • Which rivalry inspired:
  • And the martial throng, with laugh and song,
  • Spoke of their homes as they rode along,
  • And clank, clank, clank! came every rank,
  • With the trumpet-sound that rose and sank.
  • And here and there and everywhere,
  • Along the swarming ways,
  • Went old man and boy, with the music of joy,
  • 20 On the gallant bands to gaze;
  • And the young child shouted to spy the vaward,
  • And trembling and blushing the bride pressed forward:
  • But ah! for the sweet lips of Lenore
  • The kiss and the greeting are vanished and o'er.
  • From man to man all wildly she ran
  • With a swift and searching eye;
  • But she felt alone in the mighty mass,
  • As it crushed and crowded by:
  • On hurried the troop,—a gladsome group,—
  • 30 And proudly the tall plumes wave and droop:
  • She tore her hair and she turned her round,
  • And madly she dashed her against the ground.
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  • Her mother clasped her tenderly
  • With soothing words and mild:
  • “My child, may God look down on thee,—
  • God comfort thee, my child.”
  • “Oh! mother, mother! gone is gone!
  • I reck no more how the world runs on:
  • What pity to me does God impart?
  • 40 Woe, woe, woe! for my heavy heart!”
  • “Help, Heaven, help and favour her!
  • Child, utter an Ave Marie!
  • Wise and great are the doings of God;
  • He loves and pities thee.”
  • “Out, mother, out, on the empty lie!
  • Doth he heed my despair,—doth he list to my cry?
  • What boots it now to hope or to pray?
  • The night is come,—there is no more day.”
  • “Help, Heaven, help! who knows the Father
  • 50 Knows surely that he loves his child:
  • The bread and the wine from the hand divine
  • Shall make thy tempered grief less wild.”
  • “Oh! mother, dear mother! the wine and the bread
  • Will not soften the anguish that bows down my head;
  • For bread and for wine it will yet be as late
  • That his cold corpse creeps from the grim grave's gate.”
  • “What if the traitor's false faith failed,
  • By sweet temptation tried,—
  • What if in distant Hungary
  • 60 He clasp another bride?—
  • Despise the fickle fool, my girl,
  • Who hath ta'en the pebble and spurned the pearl:
  • While soul and body shall hold together
  • In his perjured heart shall be stormy weather.”
  • “Oh! mother, mother! gone is gone,
  • And lost will still be lost!
  • Death, death is the goal of my weary soul,
  • Crushed and broken and crost.
  • Spark of my life! down, down to the tomb:
  • 70 Die away in the night, die away in the gloom!
  • What pity to me does God impart?
  • Woe, woe, woe! for my heavy heart!”
  • “Help, Heaven, help, and heed her not,
  • For her sorrows are strong within;
  • She knows not the words that her tongue repeats,—
  • Oh! count them not for sin!
  • Cease, cease, my child, thy wretchedness,
  • And think on the promised happiness;
  • So shall thy mind's calm ecstasy
  • 80 Be a hope and a home and a bridegroom to thee.”
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  • “My mother, what is happiness?
  • My mother, what is Hell?
  • With William is my happiness,—
  • Without him is my Hell!
  • Spark of my life! down, down to the tomb:
  • Die away in the night, die away in the gloom!
  • Earth and Heaven, and Heaven and earth,
  • Reft of William are nothing worth.”
  • Thus grief racked and tore the breast of Lenore,
  • 90 And was busy at her brain;
  • Thus rose her cry to the Power on high,
  • To question and arraign:
  • Wringing her hands and beating her breast,—
  • Tossing and rocking without any rest;—
  • Till from her light veil the moon shone through,
  • And the stars leapt out on the darkling blue.
  • But hark to the clatter and the pat pat patter
  • Of a horse's heavy hoof!
  • How the steel clanks and rings as the rider springs!
  • 100 How the echo shouts aloof!
  • While slightly and lightly the gentle bell
  • Tingles and jingles softly and well;
  • And low and clear through the door plank thin
  • Comes the voice without to the ear within:
  • “Holla! holla! unlock the gate;
  • Art waking, my bride, or sleeping?
  • Is thy heart still free and still faithful to me?
  • Art laughing, my bride, or weeping?”
  • “Oh! wearily, William, I've waited for you,—
  • 110 Woefully watching the long day through,—
  • With a great sorrow sorrowing
  • For the cruelty of your tarrying.”
  • “Till the dead midnight we saddled not,—
  • I have journeyed far and fast—
  • And hither I come to carry thee back
  • Ere the darkness shall be past.”
  • “Ah! rest thee within till the night's more calm;
  • Smooth shall thy couch be, and soft, and warm:
  • Hark to the winds, how they whistle and rush
  • 120 Through the twisted twine of the hawthorn-bush.”
  • “Through the hawthorn-bush let whistle and rush,—
  • Let whistle, child, let whistle!
  • Mark the flash fierce and high of my steed's bright eye,
  • And his proud crest's eager bristle.
  • Up, up and away! I must not stay:
  • Mount swiftly behind me! up, up and away!
  • An hundred miles must be ridden and sped
  • Ere we may lie down in the bridal-bed.”
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  • “What! ride an hundred miles to-night,
  • 130 By thy mad fancies driven!
  • Dost hear the bell with its sullen swell,
  • As it rumbles out eleven?”
  • “Look forth! look forth! the moon shines bright:
  • We and the dead gallop fast through the night.
  • 'Tis for a wager I bear thee away
  • To the nuptial couch ere break of day.”
  • “Ah! where is the chamber, William dear,
  • And William, where is the bed?”
  • “Far, far from here: still, narrow, and cool;
  • 140 Plank and bottom and lid.”
  • “Hast room for me?”—“For me and thee;
  • Up, up to the saddle right speedily!
  • The wedding-guests are gathered and met,
  • And the door of the chamber is open set.”
  • She busked her well, and into the selle
  • She sprang with nimble haste,—
  • And gently smiling, with a sweet beguiling,
  • Her white hands clasped his waist:—
  • And hurry, hurry! ring, ring, ring!
  • 150 To and fro they sway and swing;
  • Snorting and snuffing they skim the ground,
  • And the sparks spurt up, and the stones run round.
  • Here to the right and there to the left
  • Flew fields of corn and clover,
  • And the bridges flashed by to the dazzled eye,
  • As rattling they thundered over.
  • “What ails my love? the moon shines bright:
  • Bravely the dead men ride through the night.
  • Is my love afraid of the quiet dead?”
  • 160 “Ah! no;—let them sleep in their dusty bed!”
  • On the breeze cool and soft what tune floats aloft,
  • While the crows wheel overhead?—
  • Ding dong! ding dong! 'tis the sound, 'tis the song,—
  • “Room, room for the passing dead!”
  • Slowly the funeral-train drew near,
  • Bearing the coffin, bearing the bier;
  • And the chime of their chaunt was hissing and harsh,
  • Like the note of the bull-frog within the marsh.
  • “You bury your corpse at the dark midnight,
  • 170 With hymns and bells and wailing;—
  • But I bring home my youthful wife
  • To a bride-feast's rich regaling.
  • Come, chorister, come with thy choral throng,
  • And solemnly sing me a marriage-song;
  • Come, friar, come,—let the blessing be spoken,
  • That the bride and the bridegroom's sweet rest be unbroken.”
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  • Died the dirge and vanished the bier:—
  • Obedient to his call,
  • Hard hard behind, with a rush like the wind,
  • 180 Came the long steps' pattering fall:
  • And ever further! ring, ring, ring!
  • To and fro they sway and swing;
  • Snorting and snuffing they skim the ground,
  • And the sparks spurt up, and the stones run round.
  • How flew to the right, how flew to the left,
  • Trees, mountains in the race!
  • How to the left, and the right and the left,
  • Flew town and market-place!
  • “What ails my love? the moon shines bright:
  • 190 Bravely the dead men ride through the night.
  • Is my love afraid of the quiet dead?”
  • “Ah! let them alone in their dusty bed!”
  • See, see, see! by the gallows-tree,
  • As they dance on the wheel's broad hoop,
  • Up and down, in the gleam of the moon
  • Half lost, an airy group:—
  • “Ho! ho! mad mob, come hither amain,
  • And join in the wake of my rushing train;—
  • Come, dance me a dance, ye dancers thin,
  • 200 Ere the planks of the marriage-bed close us in.”
  • And hush, hush, hush! the dreamy rout
  • Came close with a ghastly bustle,
  • Like the whirlwind in the hazel-bush,
  • When it makes the dry leaves rustle:
  • And faster, faster! ring, ring, ring!
  • To and fro they sway and swing;
  • Snorting and snuffing they skim the ground,
  • And the sparks spurt up, and the stones run round.
  • How flew the moon high overhead,
  • 210 In the wild race madly driven!
  • In and out, how the stars danced about,
  • And reeled o'er the flashing heaven!
  • “What ails my love? the moon shines bright:
  • Bravely the dead men ride through the night.
  • Is my love afraid of the quiet dead?”
  • “Alas! let them sleep in their dusty bed.”
  • “Horse, horse! meseems 'tis the cock's shrill note,
  • And the sand is well nigh spent;
  • Horse, horse, away! 'tis the break of day,—
  • 220 'Tis the morning air's sweet scent.
  • Finished, finished is our ride:
  • Room, room for the bridegroom and the bride!
  • At last, at last, we have reached the spot,
  • For the speed of the dead man has slackened not!”
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  • And swiftly up to an iron gate
  • With reins relaxed they went;
  • At the rider's touch the bolts flew back,
  • And the bars were broken and bent;
  • The doors were burst with a deafening knell,
  • 230 And over the white graves they dashed pell-mell:
  • The tombs around looked grassy and grim,
  • As they glimmered and glanced in the moonlight dim.
  • But see! but see! in an eyelid's beat,
  • Towhoo! a ghastly wonder!
  • The horseman's jerkin, piece by piece,
  • Dropped off like brittle tinder!
  • Fleshless and hairless, a naked skull,
  • The sight of his weird head was horrible;
  • The lifelike mask was there no more,
  • 240 And a scythe and a sandglass the skeleton bore.
  • Loud snorted the horse as he plunged and reared,
  • And the sparks were scattered round:—
  • What man shall say if he vanished away,
  • Or sank in the gaping ground?
  • Groans from the earth and shrieks in the air!
  • Howling and wailing everywhere!
  • Half dead, half living, the soul of Lenore
  • Fought as it never had fought before.
  • The churchyard troop,—a ghostly group,—
  • 250 Close round the dying girl;
  • Out and in they hurry and spin
  • Through the dance's weary whirl:
  • “Patience, patience, when the heart is breaking;
  • With thy God there is no question-making:
  • Of thy body thou art quit and free:
  • Heaven keep thy soul eternally!”
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Note: There is a typo on page 507, line 9: the word "hear" is printed instead of "heart."
more about Henry the Leper. A Swabian Miracle-Rhyme. by Hartmann Von Aue (A.D. 1100-1200)
HENRY THE LEPER

A SWABIAN MIRACLE-RHYME
BY HARTMANN VON AUË (A. D. 1100—1200)
  • Hartmann von Auë, the fame went,
  • Was a good knight, and well
    Transcription Gap: one character (ink smudge)
    acquent
  • With books in every character.
  • Having sought this many a year,
  • He found at length a record fit,
  • As far as he apprehendeth it,
  • To smoothe the rugged paths uneven,
  • To glorify God which is in Heaven,
  • And gain kind thoughts from each true hear
  • 10 For himself as also for his art.
  • Unto your ears this song sings he,
  • And begs, an you hear it patiently,
  • That his reward be held in store;
  • And that whoso, when his days are o'er,
  • Shall read and understand this book,
  • For the writer unto God may look,
  • Praying that God may be his goal
  • And the place of rest to his poor soul.
  • That man his proper shrift shall win
  • 20 Who prayeth for his brother's sin.
PART I
  • Once on a time, rhymeth the rhyme,
  • In Swabia-land once on a time,
  • There was a nobleman sojourning,
  • Unto whose nobleness everything
  • Of virtue and high-hearted excellence
  • Worthy his line and his large pretence
  • With plentiful measure was meted out:
  • The land rejoiced in him round about.
  • He was like a prince in his governing—
  • 10 In his wealth he was like a king;
  • But most of all by the fame far-flown
  • Of his great knightliness was he known,
  • North and south, upon land and sea.
  • By his name he was Henry of the Lea.
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  • All things whereby the truth grew dim
  • Were held as hateful foes with him:
  • By solemn oath was he bounden fast
  • To shun them while his life should last.
  • In honour all his days went by:
  • 20 Therefore his soul might look up high
  • To honourable authority.
  • A paragon of all graciousness,
  • A blossoming branch of youthfulness,
  • A looking-glass to the world around,
  • A stainless and priceless diamond,
  • Of gallant 'haviour a beautiful wreath,
  • A home when the tyrant menaceth,
  • A buckler to the breast of his friend,
  • And courteous without measure or end;
  • 30 Whose deeds of arms 'twere long to tell;
  • Of precious wisdom a limpid well,
  • A singer of ladies every one,
  • And very lordly to look upon
  • In feature and bearing and countenance:—
  • Say, failed he in anything, perchance,
  • The summit of all glory to gain
  • And the lasting honour of all men?
  • Alack! the soul that was up so high
  • Dropped down into pitiful misery;
  • 40 The lofty courage was stricken low,
  • The steady triumph stumbled in woe,
  • And the world-joy was hidden in the dust,
  • Even as all such shall be and must.
  • He whose life in the senses centreth
  • Is already in the shadow of death.
  • The joys, called great, of this under-state
  • Burn up the bosom early and late;
  • And their shining is altogether vain,
  • For it bringeth anguish and trouble and pain.
  • 50 The torch that flames for men to see
  • And wasteth to ashes inwardly
  • Is verily but an imaging
  • Of man's own life, the piteous thing.
  • The whole is brittleness and mishap:
  • We sit and dally in Fortune's lap
  • Till tears break in our smiles betwixt,
  • And the shallow honey-draught be mix'd
  • With sorrow's wormwood fathom-deep.
  • Oh! rest not therefore, man, nor sleep:—
  • 60 In the blossoming of thy flower-crown
  • A sword is raised to smite thee down.
  • Even with Earl Henry it was thus:
  • Though gladsome and very glorious
  • Was the manner of his life, yet God
  • Upon his spirit's fulness trod.
  • The curse that fell was heavy and deep—
  • A thunderbolt in the hour of sleep.
  • His body, whose beauty was so much,
  • Was turned unto loathing and reproach,—
  • 70 Full of foul sores, increasing fast,
  • Which grew into leprosy at last.
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  • Ages ago the Lord even so
  • Ordained that Job should be brought low,
  • To prove him if in such distress
  • He would hold fast his righteousness.
  • The great rich Earl, who otherwhile
  • Met but man's praise and woman's smile,
  • Was now no less than out-thrust quite.
  • The day of the world hath a dark night.
  • 80 What time Lord Henry wholly knew
  • The stound that he was come into,
  • And saw folk shun him as he went,
  • And his pains food for merriment,
  • Then did he, as often it is done
  • By those whom sorrow falleth on—
  • He wrapped not round him as a robe
  • The patience that was found in Job.
  • For holy Job meet semblance took,
  • And bowed him under God's rebuke,
  • 90 Which had given to him the world's reverse,
  • And the shame, and the anguish, and the curse,
  • Only to snatch away his soul
  • From emptiness and earth's control:
  • Therefore his soul had triumphing
  • Inmostly at the troublous thing.
  • In such wise Henry bore him not;
  • Its duteousness his heart forgot;
  • His pride waxed hard and kept its place,
  • But the glory departed from his face,
  • 100 And that which was his strength grew weak.
  • The hand that smote him on the cheek
  • Was all too heavy. It was night
  • Now, and his sun withdrew its light.
  • To the pride of his uplifted thought
  • Much woe the weary knowledge brought
  • That the pleasant way his feet did wend
  • Was all passed o'er and had an end.
  • The day wherein his years had begun
  • Went in his mouth with a malison.
  • 110 As the ill grew stronger and more strong,
  • There was but hope bore him along:
  • Even yet to hope he was full fain
  • That gold might help him back again
  • Thither whence God had cast him out.
  • Ah! weak to strive and little stout
  • 'Gainst Heaven the strength that he possess'd.
  • North and south, and east and west,
  • Far and wide from every side,
  • Mediciners well proved and tried
  • 120 Came to him at the voice of his woe;
  • But, mused and pondered they everso,
  • They could but say, for all their care,
  • That he must be content to bear
  • The burthen of the anger of God:
  • For him there was none other road.
  • Already was his heart nigh down,
  • When yet to him one chance was shown;
  • For in Salerno dwelt, folk said,
  • A leach who still might lend him aid,
  • 130 Albeit unto his body's cure
  • All such had been as nought before.
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  • Up rose fresh-hearted the sick man,
  • And sought the great physician,
  • And told him all, and prayed him hard,
  • With the proffer of a rich reward,
  • To take away his grief's foul cause.
  • Then said the leach without a pause,
  • “There is one means might healing yield,
  • Yet will you ever be unheal'd.”
  • 140 And Henry said, “Say on; define
  • Your thoughts; your words are as thick wine.
  • Some means may bring recovery?—
  • I will recover! Verily,
  • Unto your will my will shall bend,
  • So this mine anguish pass and end.”
  • Then said the leach, “Give ear to me:
  • Thus stands it with your misery.
  • Albeit there be a means of health,
  • From no man shall you win such wealth;
  • 150 Many have it, yet none will give;
  • You shall lack it all the days you shall live;—
  • Strength gets it not; valour gains it not;
  • Nor with gold nor with silver is it bought.
  • Then, since God heedeth not your plaint,
  • Accept God's will and be content.”
  • “Woe's me!” did Henry's speech begin;
  • “Your pastime do you take herein,
  • To snatch the last hope from my sight?
  • Riches are mine, and mine is might,—
  • 160 Why cast away such golden chance
  • As waiteth on my deliverance?
  • You shall grow rich in succouring me:
  • Tell me the means, what they may be.”
  • Quoth the leach, “Then know them, what they are;
  • Yet still all hope must stand afar.
  • Truly if the cure for your care
  • Might be gotten anyway anywhere,
  • Did it hide in the furthest parts of earth,
  • This-wise I had not sent you forth.
  • 170 But all my knowledge hath none avail;
  • There is but one thing would not fail:—
  • An innocent virgin for to find,
  • Chaste, and modest, and pure in mind,
  • Who, to save you from death, might choose
  • Her own young body's life to lose:
  • The heart's blood of the excellent maid—
  • That and nought else can be your aid.
  • But there is none will be won thereby
  • For the love of another's life to die.”
  • 180 'Twas then poor Henry knew indeed
  • That from his ill he might not be freed,
  • Sith that no woman he might win
  • Of her own will to act herein.
  • Thus gat he but an ill return
  • For the journey he made unto Salerne,
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  • And the hope he had upon that day
  • Was snatched from him and rent away.
  • Homeward he hied him back: full fain
  • With limbs in the dust he would have lain.
  • 190 Of his substance—lands and riches both—
  • He rid himself; even as one doth
  • Who the breath of the last life of his hope
  • Once and for ever hath rendered up.
  • To his friends he gave, and to the poor;
  • Unto God praying evermore
  • The spirit that was in him to save,
  • And make his bed soft in the grave.
  • What still remained, aside he set
  • For Holy Church's benefit.
  • 200 Of all that heretofore was his
  • Nought held he for himself, I wis,
  • Save one small house, with byre and field:
  • There from the world he lived conceal'd,—
  • There lived he and awaited Death,
  • Who, being awaited, lingereth.
  • Pity and ruth his troubles found
  • Alway through all the country round.
  • Who heard him named, had sorrow deep,
  • And for his piteous sake would weep.
PART II
  • The little farm, with herd and field,
  • Now, as it had been erst, was till'd
  • By a poor man of simple make
  • Whose heart right seldom had the ache.
  • A happy soul, and well content
  • With every chance that fortune sent,
  • Being equal in fortune's pitch
  • Even unto him that is rich,—
  • For that his master's kindly will
  • 10 Set limit to his labour still,
  • And without cumbrance and in peace
  • He lived upon the field's increase.
  • With him poor Henry, trouble-press'd,
  • Dwelt, and to dwell with him was rest.
  • In grateful wise, neglecting nought,
  • Still was the peasant's service wrought:
  • Cheerily, both in heart and look,
  • The trouble and the toil he took,
  • Which, new as each day dawned anew,
  • 20 For Henry he must bear and do.
  • With favour which to blessings ran,
  • God looked upon the worthy man:
  • He gave him strength to aid his life,
  • A sturdy heart, an honest wife,
  • And children such as bring to be
  • That a man's breast is brimmed with glee.
  • Among them was a little maid,
  • Red-cheeked, in yellow locks arrayed,
  • Whose tenth year was just passing her;
  • 30 With eyes most innocently clear,
  • Sweet smiles that soothe, sweet tones that lull;
  • Of gracious semblance wonderful.
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  • For her sick lord the dear good child
  • Was full of tender thoughts and mild.
  • Rarely from sitting at his feet
  • She rose; because his speech was sweet,
  • To serve him she was proud and glad.
  • Great fear her little playmates had
  • At the sight of the loathly wight;
  • 40 But she, as often as she might,
  • Went to him and with him would stay;
  • And her heart unto him alway
  • Clave as a child's heart cleaves: his pain
  • And grief that ever must remain,
  • With childish grace she soothed the while,
  • And sat her at his feet with a smile.
  • And Henry loved the little one
  • Who had such thought his woes upon,
  • And he would buy her baubles bright
  • 50 Such as to children give delight:
  • Nought else to peace his heart could lift
  • Like her innocent gladness at the gift.
  • A riband sometimes, broad and fair,
  • To twine with the tresses of her hair,
  • Or a looking-glass, or a little ring,
  • Or a girdle-clasp;—at anything
  • She was so thankful, was so pleased,
  • That in some sort his pain was eased,
  • And he would even say jestingly,
  • 60 His own good little wife was she.
  • Seldom she left him long alone,
  • Winning him from his inward moan
  • With love and childish trustfulness;
  • Her joyous seeming ne'er grew less;
  • She was a balm unto his breast,—
  • Unto his eyes she was shade and rest.
  • Already were three years outwrung,
  • And still his torment o'er him hung,
  • And still in death ceased not his life.
  • 70 It chanced the peasant and his wife,
  • And his two little daughters, sate
  • Together when the day was late,
  • Their talk was all upon their lord,
  • And how the help they could afford
  • Was joy to them, and of the woe
  • They suffered for his sake,—yet how
  • His death, they feared, might bring them worse.
  • They thought that in the universe
  • No lord could be so good as he,
  • 80 And if but once they lived to see
  • Another inherit of their friend,
  • That all their welfare needs must end.
  • Then to his lord the peasant spake.
  • “Question, dear master, I would make,
  • So you permit me, of the cause
  • Wherefore thus long you have made pause
  • From seeking help from such as win
  • Worship by lore of medicine,
  • And famous are both near and far.
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    Sig. 33
  • 90 One such might yet break down the bar
  • That shuts you from your health's estate.
  • Wherefore, dear master, should you wait?”
  • Then sighs from the soul of the sick man
  • Pressed outward, and his tears began;
  • They were so sore, that when he spake
  • It seemed as though his heart would break.
  • “From God this woful curse,” he said,
  • “Wofully have I merited,
  • Whose mind but to world-vanity
  • 100 Looked, and but thought how best to be
  • Wondrous in the thinking of men:
  • Worship I laboured to attain
  • By wealth, which God in His great views
  • Had given me for another use.
  • God's self I had well-nigh forgot,
  • The moulder of my human lot,
  • Whose gifts, ill ta'en, though well bestow'd,
  • Hindered me from the heaven-road;
  • Till I at length, lost here as there,
  • 110 Am chosen unto shame and despair,
  • His wrath's insufferable weight
  • Made me to know Him—but too late.
  • From bad to worse, from worse to worst,
  • At length I am cast forth and curs'd:
  • The whole world from my side doth flee;
  • The wretchedest insulteth me;
  • Looking on me, each ruffian
  • Accounts himself the better man,
  • And turns his visage from the sight,
  • 120 As though I brought him bane and blight.
  • Therefore may God reward thee, thou
  • Who dost bear with me even now,
  • Not scorning him whose sore distress
  • No more may guerdon faithfulness.
  • And yet, however kind and true
  • The deeds thy goodness bids thee do,—
  • Still, spite of all, it must at heart
  • Rejoice thee when my breath shall part.
  • How am I outcast and forlorn!—
  • 130 That I, who as thy lord was born,
  • Must now beseech thee of thy grace
  • To suffer me in mine evil case.
  • With a great blessing verily
  • Thou shalt be blest of God through me,
  • Because to me, whom God thus tries,
  • Pity thou grantest, Christian-wise.
  • The thing thou askest thou shalt know:—
  • All the physicians long ago
  • Who might bring help in any kind
  • 140 I sought;—but, woe is me! to find
  • That all the help in all the earth
  • Avails not and is nothing worth.
  • One means there is indeed, and yet
  • That means nor gold nor prayers may get:—
  • A leach who is full of lore hath said
  • How it needeth that a virtuous maid
  • For my sake with her life should part,
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  • And feel the steel cut to her heart:
  • Only in the blood of such an one
  • 150 My curse may cease beneath the sun.
  • But such an one what hope can show,
  • Who her own life would thus forego
  • To save my life? Then let despair
  • Bow down within my soul to bear
  • The wrath God's justice doth up-pile.
  • When will death come? Woe, woe the while!”
  • Of these, poor Henry's words, each word
  • The little maiden likewise heard
  • Who at his feet would always sit;
  • 160 And forgot it not, but remember'd it.
  • In the hid shrine, her heart's recess,
  • She held his words in silentness.
  • As the mind of an angel was her mind,
  • Grave and holy and Christ-inclin'd.
  • When in their chamber, day being past,
  • Her parents, after toil, slept fast,—
  • Then always with the self-same stir
  • The sighs of her grief troubled her.
  • At the foot of her parents' bed
  • 170 Lying, so many tears she shed
  • (Bitter and many) as to make
  • That they woke up and kept awake.
  • Her secret grieving once perceived,
  • They made much marvel why she grieved,
  • And questioned her of the evil chance
  • To which she gave sorrowful utterance
  • In her sobbings and in her under-cries:
  • But nothing answered she anywise,
  • Until her father bade her tell
  • 180 Openly and truly and well
  • Why night by night within her bed
  • So many bitter tears she shed.
  • “Alack!” quoth she, “what should it be
  • But our kind master's misery—
  • With thoughts how soon we now must miss
  • Both him and all our happiness?
  • Our solace shall be ours no more:
  • There is no lord alive, be sure,
  • Who, like unto him and of his worth,
  • 190 Shall bless our days with peace thenceforth.”
  • They answering said: “Right words and rare
  • Thou speak'st; but it booteth not an hair
  • That we should make outcry and lament:
  • Brood thou no longer thereanent.
  • Unto us it is pain, as unto thee,
  • Perchance even more; yet what can we
  • That may avail for succouring?
  • Truly the Lord hath done this thing.”
  • Thus silenced they her speaking; but
  • 200 Her soul's complaint they silenced not.
  • Grief lay with her from hour to hour
  • Through the long night; nor dawn had power
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  • To rid her of it; all beside
  • That near and about her might betide
  • Seemed nought. And when sleep covered men,
  • Again and again, and yet again,
  • Wakeful and faithful, she would crouch
  • Wearily on her little couch,
  • Tossing in trouble without sign:
  • 210 And from her eyes the scalding brine
  • Flowed through sick grief that wept apart;
  • As steadfastly within her heart
  • She pondered on her heart's sore ache
  • And on those words Earl Henry spake.
  • Long with herself communing so,
  • Her tears were softened in their flow;
  • Because at length her will was fix'd
  • To stand his fate and him betwixt.
  • Where now should such a child be sought,
  • 220 Thinking even as this one thought,
  • Who, rather than her lord should die,
  • Chose her own death and held thereby?
  • But once her purpose settled fast,
  • All woe went forth from her and pass'd;
  • Her heart sat lightly in her breast,
  • And one thing only gave unrest.
  • Her lord's own hand, she feared, might stay
  • Her footsteps from the terrible way,—
  • She feared her parents strength might lack,
  • 230 And, through much loving, hold her back.
  • By reason of such fears, she fell
  • Into new grief unspeakable,
  • And that night, as the past nights, wept,
  • Waking her father where he slept.
  • “Thou foolish child,” thus did he say,
  • “Why wilt thou weep thine eyes away
  • For what no help thou hast can mend?
  • Is not this moan thou mak'st to end?
  • We would sleep; let us sleep in peace.”
  • 240 Thus chidingly he bade her cease,
  • Because his thought conceived in nought
  • The thing she had laid up in her thought.
  • Answered him the excellent maid:
  • “Truly my own dear lord hath said
  • That by one means he may be heal'd.
  • So ye but your consenting yield,
  • It is my blood that he shall have.
  • I, being virgin-pure, to save
  • His days, do choose the edge o' the knife,
  • 250 And my death rather than my life.”
  • The young girl's parents lay and heard,
  • And had sore grief of her spoken word;
  • And thus her father said: “How now?
  • What silly wish, child, wishest thou?
  • Thou durst not do it in very truth.
  • What knows a child of these things, forsooth?
  • Ugly Death thou hast never seen:
  • Were he once to near thee, I ween—
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  • Didst thou view the pit of the sepulchre—
  • 260 Thy face would change and thy flesh fear,
  • And thy soul within thee would shake,
  • And thy weak hands would toil to break
  • The grasp of the monster foul and grim,
  • Drawing thee from thyself to him.
  • Leave thy words and thy weeping too;
  • What cannot be done, seek not to do.”
  • “Nay, father mine,” replied the child,
  • “Though my words may be counted wild,
  • Well I know that the body's death
  • 270 Is a torture and tortureth.
  • Yet truly this is truth no less:
  • He who is plagued with sharp distress,
  • Who hates his life, having but woe,—
  • To him the end cometh, even so,
  • When for all the curses that he hath pass'd,
  • He 'scapes not the curse of death at last.
  • What booteth it him a long-drawn life
  • To have traversed in trouble and in strife,
  • If nothing after all he can win,
  • 280 Except, being old, to enter in
  • At the self-same door which years ago
  • He might more firmly have passed through?
  • But scantly may the soul see good,—
  • So rough is world-driving and so rude;
  • And, good once ended, hope once lorn,
  • Best it were I had not been born.
  • Therefore my lips give praise to God,
  • Who this great blessing hath bestow'd
  • On me,—by loss of body and limb
  • 290 To have the life that lives with Him.
  • 'Twere ill done, did ye make me loth
  • From what unto me and unto both
  • Bringeth joy and prosperity,
  • Gaining the crown of Christ for me;
  • And you, from every troublous thing
  • That threateneth you, delivering.
  • The generous master ye shall keep
  • Who leaves you undisturbed to reap
  • The fruits our little field doth grow,
  • 300 Earn'd, father, in the sweat of thy brow.
  • With you, while he liveth, it shall stay;
  • He is good; he will not drive you away.
  • But if we now should let him die,
  • Our ruining hasteneth thereby:
  • The thought whereof doth make me give
  • My own young life that he may live.
  • To such a choice, which profits all,
  • Meseems your chiding should be small.”
  • Then the mother broke forth at last,
  • 310 Finding her daughter's purpose fast.
  • “Think, my own child,—daughter mine, think
  • Of the bitter cup that I had to drink,
  • Of the pain that I suffered once for thee;
  • And, thinking, turn thyself unto me.
  • Is this the guerdon thou dost give
  • Even to the womb that bade thee live?
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  • Her in pain must I lose again
  • Whom I bore and brought forth in pain?
  • Wouldst leave thy parents for thy lord?
  • 320 This were hatred of God and of His word.
  • Clean from thy mind is the word gone
  • Which God pronounced? Ponder thereon:
  • ‘Listen,’ it is written, ‘to their command,
  • That thy days may be long in the land.’
  • Lo! how corrupt must be thine heart!—
  • It hath striven the will of God to thwart.
  • And sayest thou, if thou losest thus
  • Thy life, good hap shall come to us?
  • Oh no! in us thou wilt give birth
  • 330 To weariness and to scorn of earth.
  • In the whole world thou art alone
  • That which our joy is set upon.
  • Yes, little daughter, always dear,
  • 'Tis thou shouldst make our gladness here;
  • Thou shouldst be a lamp to our life,
  • Our aim in the troublesome hard strife,
  • And a staff our falling steps to save:
  • In place whereof, thine own black grave
  • With thine own hand thou digg'st, and sad
  • 340 Grow the hope and the comfort that we had,
  • And I must weep at thy tomb all day
  • Till in plague and torment I pass away.
  • Yet oh! whate'er our ills may be,
  • So much and more shall God do to thee.”
  • Then the pious maid answered and said:—
  • “O mother, that in my soul art laid,
  • How should I not at all times here
  • See the path of my duty clear,
  • When at all times my thankful mind
  • 350 Meeteth thy love, tender and kind,
  • That kindly and tenderly ministers?
  • Of a verity I am young in years;
  • Yet this I know: what is mine, to wit,
  • Is mine but since thou gavest it.
  • And if the people grant me praise,
  • And look with favour in my face,
  • Yet my heart's tale is continual—
  • That only thee must I thank for all
  • Which it pleaseth them to perceive in me;
  • 360 And that ne'er a thing should be brought to be
  • By myself on myself, save such
  • As thou wouldst permit without reproach.
  • Mother, it was thou that didst give
  • These limbs and the life wherewith I live,—
  • And is it thou wouldst grudge my soul
  • Its white robe and its aureole?
  • The knowledge of evil in my breast
  • Hath not yet been, nor sin's unrest;
  • Therefore, the road being overtrod,
  • 370 I know I shall have portion with God.
  • Say not that this is foolishness;
  • No hand but God's hand is in this:
  • Him must thou thank, Whose grace doth cleanse
  • My heart from earth's desire, till hence
  • It longs with a mighty will to go
  • Ere sin be known that's yet to know.
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  • Well it needs that the joys of earth
  • (Deemed oftentimes of a priceless worth
  • By man should be counted excellent:
  • 380 How otherwise might he rest content
  • With anything but Christ's perfecting?
  • Oh! to such reeds let me not cling!
  • God knows how vain seem to my sight
  • The bliss of this world and the delight;
  • For the delight turneth amiss,
  • And soul's tribulation hath the bliss.
  • What is their life?—a gasp for breath;
  • And their guerdon?—but the burthen of death.
  • One thing alone is sure:—should peace
  • 390 Come to-day, with to-morrow it shall cease;
  • Till the last evil thing at last
  • Shall find us out, and our days be past.
  • Nor birth nor wealth succoureth then,
  • Nor strength, nor the courage of strong men,
  • Nor honour, nor fealty, nor truth.
  • Out and alack! our life, our youth,
  • Are but dust only and empty smoke;
  • We are laden branches that the winds rock.
  • Woe to the fool who layeth hold
  • 400 On earth's vain shadows manifold!
  • The marsh-fire gleam, as it hath shone,
  • Still shines, luring his footsteps on:
  • But he is dead ere he reach the goal,
  • And with his flesh dieth his soul.
  • Therefore, dear mother, be at rest,
  • And labour not to make manifest
  • That for my sake thou hold'st me here:
  • But let one silence make it clear
  • That my father's will is joined with thine.
  • 410 Alas! though I kept this life of mine
  • 'Tis verily but a little while
  • That ye may smile, or that I may smile.
  • Two years perchance, perchance even three,
  • In happiness I shall keep with ye:
  • Then must our lord be surely dead,
  • And sorrow and sighing find us instead;
  • And your want shall your will withhold
  • From giving me any dowry-gold,
  • And no man will take me for his wife;
  • 420 And my life shall be trouble-rife,
  • And very hateful, and worse than death.
  • Or though this thing that threateneth
  • Were 'scaped, and ere our good lord died
  • Some bridegroom chose me for his bride,—
  • Though then, ye think, all is made smooth,
  • Yet the bad is but made worse, forsooth;
  • For even with love, woes should not cease,
  • And not to love were the end of peace.
  • Thus through ill and grief I struggle still,
  • 430 What to attain? Even grief and ill.
  • In this strait, One would set me free,
  • My soul and my body asking of me,
  • That I may be with Him where He is.
  • Hold me not; I would make myself His.
  • He only is the true Husbandman;
  • The labour ends well which He began;
  • Ever His plough goeth aright;
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  • His barns fill; for His fields there is no blight;
  • In His lands life dies not anywhere;
  • 440 Never a child sorroweth there;
  • There heat is not, neither is cold;
  • There the lapse of years maketh not old;
  • But peace hath its dwelling there for aye,
  • And abideth, and shall not pass away.
  • Thither, yea, thither let me go,
  • And be rid of this shadow-place below,—
  • This place laid waste like a waste plain,
  • Where nothing is but torment and pain,
  • Where a day's blight falleth upon
  • 450 The work of a year, and it is gone;
  • Where ruinous thunder lifts its voice,
  • And where the harvest may not rejoice.
  • You love me? Oh let your love be seen,
  • And labour no more to circumvene
  • My heart's desire for the happy place!
  • To the Lord let me lift my face,—
  • Even unto Jesus Christ my Friend,
  • Whose gracious mercies have no end,
  • In whose name Love is the world's dear Lord,
  • 460 And by whom not the vilest is abhorr'd.
  • Alike with Him is man's estate,—
  • As the rich the poor, the small as the great:
  • Were I a queen, be sure that He
  • With more joy could not welcome me.
  • Yet from your hearts do I turn my heart?
  • Nay, from your love I will not part,
  • But rejoice to be subject unto you.
  • Then count not my thought to be untrue
  • Because I deem, if I do this thing,
  • 470 It is your weal I am furthering.
  • Whoso, men say, another's pelf
  • Heaping, pulls want upon himself,—
  • Whoso his neighbour's fame would crown
  • By bringing ruin upon his own,—
  • His friendship is surely overmuch.
  • But this my purpose is none such:
  • For though ye too shall gain relief,
  • It is myself I would serve in chief.
  • O mother dear, weep not, nor mourn:
  • 480 My duty is this; let it be borne.
  • Take heart,—thou hast other children left;
  • In theirs thy life shall be less bereft;
  • They shall comfort thee for the loss of me:
  • Then my own gain let me bring to be,
  • And my lord's; for to him upon the earth
  • This only can be of any worth.
  • Nor think that thou shalt look on my grave;
  • That pain, at least, thou canst never have;
  • Very far away is the land
  • 490 Where that must be done which I have plann'd.
  • God guerdoneth; in God is my faith;
  • He shall loosen me from the bonds of Death.”
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PART III
  • All trembling had the parents heard
  • Death by their daughter thus preferr'd
  • With a language so very marvellous
  • (Surely no child reasoneth thus),
  • Whose words between her lips made stir,
  • As though the Spirit were poured on her
  • Which giveth knowledge of tongues unknown.
  • So strange was every word and tone,
  • They knew not how they might answer it,
  • 10 Except by striving to submit
  • To Him Who had made the child's heart rife
  • With the love of death and the scorn of life.
  • Therefore they said, silently still,
  • “All-perfect One, it is Thy will.”
  • With fear and doubt's most bitter ban
  • They were a-cold; so the poor man
  • And the poor woman sat alway
  • In their bed, without yea or nay.
  • Ever alack! they had no speech
  • 20 The new dawn of their thought to reach.
  • With a wild sorrow unrepress'd
  • The mother caught the child to her breast;
  • But the father after long interval
  • Said, though his soul smote him withal,
  • “Daughter, if God is in thine heart,
  • Heed not our grieving, but depart.”
  • Then the sweet maid smiled quietly;
  • And soon i' the morning hastened she
  • To the room where the sick man slept.
  • 30 Up to his bed she softly stepp'd,
  • Saying, “Do you sleep, my dear lord?”
  • “No, little wife,” was his first word,
  • “But why art thou so early to-day?”
  • “Grief made that I could not keep away—
  • The great grief that I have for you.”
  • “God be with thee, faithful and true!
  • Often to ease my suffering
  • Thou hast done many a gracious thing.
  • But it lasteth; it shall be always so.”
  • 40 Then said the girl: “On my troth, no!
  • Take courage and comfort; it will turn,
  • The fire that in your flesh doth burn
  • One means, you know, would quench at once.
  • My mind climbs to conclusions.
  • Not a day will I make delay,
  • Now I am 'ware of the one way.
  • Dear lord, I have heard yourself expound
  • How, if only a maiden could be found
  • To lose her life for you willingly,
  • 50 From all your pains you might yet be free.
  • God He knoweth, I will do this:
  • My worth is not as yours, I wis.”
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  • Wondering and sore astonièd,
  • The poor sick man looked at the maid,
  • Whose face smiled down unto his face,
  • While the tears gave each other chase
  • Over his cheeks from his weary eyes,
  • Till he made answer in this wise:—
  • “Trust me, this death is not, my child,
  • 60 So tender a trouble and so mild
  • As thou, in thy reckoning, reckonest.
  • Thou didst keep madness from my breast,
  • And help me when other help was none:
  • I thank thee for all that thou hast done.
  • (May God unto thee be merciful
  • For thy tenderness in the day of dule!)
  • I know thy mind, childlike and chaste,
  • And the innocent spirit that thou hast;
  • But nothing more will I ask of thee
  • 70 Than thou without wrong mayst do for me.
  • Long ago have I given up
  • The strife for deliverance and the hope;
  • So that now in thy faithfulness
  • I pleasure me with a soul at peace,
  • Wishing not thy sweet life withdrawn
  • Sith my own life I have foregone.
  • Too suddenly, little wife, beside,
  • Like a child's, doth thine heart decide
  • On this which hath enter'd into it,—
  • 80 Unsure if thou shalt have benefit.
  • In little space sore were thy case
  • If once with Death thou wert face to face;
  • And heavy and dark would the thing seem
  • Which thou hast desirèd in thy dream.
  • Therefore, good child, go in again:
  • Soon, I know, thou wilt count as vain
  • This thing to which thy mind is wrought,
  • When once thou hast ponder'd in thy thought
  • How hard a thing it is to remove
  • 90 From the world and from the home of one's love.
  • And think too what a grievous smart
  • Hereby must come to thy parents' heart,
  • And how bitter to them would be the stroke.
  • Shall I bring this thing on the honest folk
  • By whose pity my woes have been beguiled?
  • To thy parents' counselling, my child,
  • For evermore look that thou incline:
  • So sorrow of heart shall not be thine.”
  • When thus he had answer'd tenderly,
  • 100 Forth came the parents, who hard by
  • Had hearken'd to the speech that he spake.
  • Albeit his heart was nigh to break
  • With the load under which it bow'd,
  • The father spake these words aloud:
  • “God knows,” said he, “we do willingly,
  • Dear master, aught that may vantage thee
  • Who hast been so good to us and so kind.
  • If God have in very truth design'd
  • That this young child should for thee atone,—
  • 110 Then, being God's will, let it be done.
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  • Yea, through His power she hath been brought
  • To count the years of her youth for nought;
  • And by no childish whim is she led
  • To her grave, as thou hast imaginèd.
  • To-day, alack! is the third day
  • That with prayers we might not put away
  • She hath sorely entreated us that we
  • Would grant her the grace to die for thee.
  • By her words exceeding wonderful,
  • 120 Our sharp resistance hath waxed dull,
  • Till now we may no longer dare
  • To pause from the granting of her prayer.”
  • When the sick man thus found that each
  • Spoke with good faith the selfsame speech,
  • And that in earnest the young maid
  • Proffered her life for his body's aid,—
  • There rose, the little room within,
  • Of sobbing and sorrow a great din,
  • And a strange dispute, that side and this,
  • 130 In manner as there seldom is.
  • The Earl, at length winning unto
  • The means of health, raised much ado,
  • Loudly lamenting that his cure
  • From sickness should be thus made sure.
  • The parents grieved with a bitter woe
  • That their dear child should leave them so,
  • While yet they pray'd of him constantly
  • To grant her prayer that she should die.
  • And she meanwhile whose life-long years
  • 140 It was to cost, shed sorrowful tears
  • For dread lest he whom she would save
  • Should deny to her the boon of the grave.
  • Thus they who, in pure faith's control
  • And in the strength of a godly soul,
  • Vied one with the other, sat there now,
  • Their eyes all wet with the bitter flow,
  • Each urging of what he had to say,
  • None yielding at all, nor giving way.
  • The sick man sat in thought a space,
  • 150 Between his hands bowing his face,
  • While the others, with supplicating tone,
  • Softly besought him one by one.
  • Then his head at last he lifted up,
  • And let his tears fall without stop,
  • And said finally: “So let it be.
  • Shall I, who am one, stand against three?
  • Now know I surely that God's word,
  • Which speaks in silence, ye have heard;
  • And that this thing must be very fit,
  • 160 And even as God hath appointed it.
  • He, seeing my heart, doth read thereon
  • That I yield but to Him alone,—
  • Not to the wish that for my sake
  • Her grave this gracious child should make.”
  • Then the maid sprang to him full fain,
  • As though she had gotten a great gain;
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  • And both his feet clasp'd and would kiss,—
  • Not for sorrow sobbing now, but for bliss:
  • The while her sorrowing parents went
  • 170 Forth from that room to make lament,
  • And weep apart for the heavy load
  • Which yet they knew was the will of God.
  • Then a kirtle was given unto the maid,
  • Broider'd all with the silken braid,
  • Such as never before she had put on;
  • With sables the border was bedone,
  • And with jewels bound about and around:
  • On her so fair they were fairer found
  • Than song of mine can make discourse.
  • 180 And they mounted her on a goodly horse:
  • That horse was to carry her very far,—
  • Even to the place where the dead are.
  • In the taking of these gifts she smil'd.
  • Not any longer a silly child
  • She seemed, but a worshipful damozel,
  • Well begotten and nurtured well.
  • And her face had a quiet earnestness;
  • And while she made ready, none the less
  • Did she comfort the trouble-stricken pair,
  • 190 Who in awestruck wise looked on her there,
  • As a saintly being superior
  • And no daughter unto them any more.
  • Yet when the bitter moment came
  • Wherein their child must depart from them,
  • In sooth it was hard to separate.
  • The mother's grief was heavy and great,
  • Seeing that child lost to her, whom,
  • Years since, she had carried in her womb.
  • And the father was sorely shaken too,
  • 200 Now nought remained but to bid adieu
  • To that young life, full of the spring,
  • Which must wither before the blossoming.
  • What made the twain more strong at length
  • Was the young girl's wonderful strength,
  • Whose calm look and whose gentle word
  • Blunted the sharp point of the sword.
  • With her mouth she was eloquent,
  • As if to her ear an angel bent,
  • Whispering her that she might say
  • 210 The word which wipes all tears away.
  • Thus, with her parents' benison
  • Upon her head, forth is she gone:—
  • She is gone forth like to a bride,
  • Lifted and inwardly glorified;
  • She seemed not as one that journeyeth
  • To the door of the house of death.
  • So they rode without stop or turn
  • By the paths that take unto Salerne.
  • Lo! he is riding to new life
  • 220 Whose countenance is laden and rife
  • With sorrow and care and great dismay.
  • But for her who rides the charnel-way—
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  • Oh! up in her eyes sits the bright look
  • Which tells of a joy without rebuke.
  • With friendly speech, with cheerful jest,
  • She toils to give his sorrow rest,
  • To lighten the heavy time for him,
  • And shorten the road that was long and grim.
  • Thus on their way they still did wend
  • 230 Till they were come to their journey's end.
  • Then prayed she of him that they might reach
  • That day the dwelling of the wise leach
  • Who had shown how his ill might be allay'd.
  • And it was done even as she said.
  • His arm in hers, went the sick man
  • Unto the great physician,
  • And brought again to his mind the thing
  • Whereof they had erst made questioning.
  • “This maid,” he said, “holds purpose now
  • 240 To work my cure, as thy speech did show.”
  • But the leach held silence, as one doth
  • Whose heart to believe is well-nigh loth,
  • Even though his eyes witness a thing.
  • At length he said: “By whose counselling
  • Comes this, my child? Hast thou thought well
  • On that whereof this lord doth tell,
  • Or art thou led perforce thereto?”
  • “Nay,” quoth the maid, “that which I do,
  • I do willingly; none persuadeth me;
  • 250 It is, because I choose it should be.”
  • He took her hand, silently all,
  • And led her through a door in the wall
  • Into another room that was there,
  • Wherein he was quite alone with her.
  • Then thus: “Thou poor ill-guided child,
  • What is it that maketh thee so wild,
  • Thy short life and thy little breath
  • Suddenly to yield up to death?
  • An thou art constrain'd, e'en say 'tis so,
  • 260 And I swear to thee thou art free to go.
  • Remember this—how that thy blood
  • Unto the Earl can bring no good
  • If thou sheddest it with an inward strife.
  • Vain it were to bleed out thy life,
  • If still, when the whole hath come to pass,
  • Thy lord should be even as he was.
  • Bethink thee—and consider thereof—
  • How the pains thou tempt'st are hard and rough.
  • First, with thy limbs naked and bare
  • 270 Before mine eyes thou must appear,—
  • So needs shall thy maiden shame be sore:
  • Yet still must the woe be more and more,
  • What time thou art bound by heel and arm,
  • And with sharp hurt and with grievous harm
  • I cut from out thy breast the part
  • That is most alive—even thine heart.
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  • With thine eyes thou shalt surely see
  • The knife ere it enter into thee,—
  • Thou shalt feel worse than death's worst sting
  • 280 Ere the heart be drawn forth quivering.
  • How deemest thou? Canst thou suffer this?
  • Alack, poor wretch! there is dreadfulness
  • Even in the thought. If only once
  • Thou do blench or shrink when the blood runs—
  • If thou do repent but by an hair,—
  • It is bootless all,—in vain the care,
  • In vain the scathe, in vain the death.
  • Now what is the word thy free choice saith?”
  • She look'd at him as at a friend,
  • 290 And answer'd: “Sir, unto that end—
  • To wit, my choice—I had ponder'd hard
  • Long ere I was borne hitherward.
  • I thank you, sir, that of your heart's ruth
  • You have warn'd me thus; and of a truth,
  • By all the words that you have said
  • I well might feel dispirited,—
  • The more that even yourself, meseems,
  • Are frightened by these idle dreams
  • From the work you should perform for the Earl.
  • 300 Oh! it might hardly grace a girl
  • Such cowardly reasoning to use!
  • Pardon me, sir; I cannot choose
  • But laugh, that you, with your mastership,
  • Should have a courage less firm and deep
  • Than a pitiful maiden without lore
  • Whose life even now ends and is o'er.
  • The part that is yours dare but to do,—
  • As for me, I have trust to undergo.
  • Methinks the dule and the drearihead
  • 310 You tell me of, must be sharp indeed,
  • Sith the mere thought is so troublesome.
  • Believe me, I never should have come,
  • Had I not known of myself alone
  • What the thing was to be undergone,—
  • Were I not sure that, abash'd no whit,
  • This soul of mine could be through with it.
  • Yea, verily, by your sorrowing,
  • My poor heart's courage you can bring
  • Just to such sorrowful circumstance
  • 320 As though I were going to the dance.
  • Worshipful sir, there nothing is
  • That can last alway without cease,—
  • Nought that one day's remitted doom
  • Can save the feeble body from.
  • Thus then, you see, it is cheerfully
  • That I do all this; and that while he
  • My lord, you willing, shall not die,
  • The endless life shall be mine thereby.
  • Resolve you, and so it shall be said
  • 330 That the fame you have is well merited.
  • This brings me joy that I undertake,
  • Even for my dear kind master's sake,
  • And for what we two shall gain also,—
  • I, there above,—and you, here below.
  • Sir, inasmuch as the work is hard,
  • So much the more is our great reward.”
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  • Then the leach said nothing, but was dumb;
  • And, marvelling much, he sought the room
  • Where the sick man sat in expectancy.
  • 340 “New courage may be yours,” quoth he;
  • “For your sake she casts her life behind,
  • Not from empty fantasy of the mind;
  • And the parting of her body and soul
  • Shall cleanse your limbs and make you whole.”
  • But Henry was full of troublous thought;
  • Peradventure he hearken'd not,
  • For he answer'd not that which was sain.
  • So the leach turn'd, and went out again.
  • Again to the maid did he repair,
  • 350 And straightway lock'd the doors with care,
  • That Henry might not see or know
  • What she for his sake must undergo.
  • And the leach said, “Take thy raiment off.”
  • Then was her heart joyous enough,
  • And she obey'd, and in little space
  • Stood up before the old man's face
  • As naked as God had fashion'd her:
  • Only her innocence clothèd her:
  • She fear'd not, and was not asham'd,
  • 360 In the sight of God standing unblamed,
  • To whom her dear life without price
  • She offered up for a sacrifice.
  • When thus she was beheld of the leach,
  • His soul spake with an inward speech,
  • Saying that beauty so excellent
  • Had scarce been known since the world went.
  • And he conceived for the poor thing
  • Such an unspeakable pitying,
  • And such a fear on his purpose lit,
  • 370 That he scarce dared to accomplish it.
  • Slowly he gave her his command
  • To lie down on a table hard at hand,
  • To the which he bound her with strong cords:
  • Then he reach'd his hand forth afterwards,
  • And took a broad long knife, and tried
  • The edge of the same on either side.
  • It was sharp, yet not as it should be
  • (He looked to its sharpness heedfully,—
  • Having sore grief for the piteous scathe,
  • 380 And desiring to shorten her death).
  • Therefore it was he took a stone,
  • And ground the knife finely thereon.
  • Earl Henry heard in bitterest woe
  • The blade, a-whetting, come and go.
  • Forward he sprang; a sudden start
  • Of grief for the maid struck to his heart.
  • He thought what a peerless soul she bore,—
  • And made a great haste unto the door,
  • And would have gone in, but it was shut.
  • 390 Then his eyes burn'd, as he stood without,
  • In scalding tears; transfigurèd
  • He felt himself; and in the stead
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  • Of his feebleness there was mightiness.
  • “Shall she,” he thought, “who my life doth bless,—
  • The gracious, righteous, virtuous maid,—
  • To this end be thrust down to the shade?
  • Wilt thou, thou fool, force the Most High,
  • That thy desire may come thereby?
  • Deem'st thou that any, for good or ill,
  • 400 Can live but a day against His will?
  • And if by His will thou yet shalt live,
  • What more of help can her dying give?
  • Sith all then is as God ordereth,
  • Rest evermore in the hand of faith.
  • As in past time, anger not now
  • The All-powerful; seeing that thou
  • Canst anger Him only. 'Tis the ways
  • Of penitence lead unto grace.”
  • He was determined immediately,
  • 410 And smote on the door powerfully,
  • And cried to the leach, “Open to me!”
  • But the leach answer'd, “It may not be:
  • I have something of weight that I must do.”
  • Then Henry urged back upon him, “No!
  • Come quickly, and open, and give o'er.”
  • Quoth the other, “Say your say through the door.”
  • “Not so, not so; let me enter in:
  • It is my soul's rest I would win.”
  • Then the door drew back, widely and well;
  • 420 And Henry look'd on the damozel,
  • Where she lay bound, body and limb,
  • Waiting Death's stroke, to conquer him.
  • “Hear me,” said he, “worshipful sir;
  • It is horrible thus to look on her:
  • Rather the burthen of God's might
  • I choose to suffer, than this sight.
  • What I have said, that will I give;
  • But let thou the brave maiden live.”
PART IV
  • When the maiden learn'd assuredly
  • That by that death she was not to die,
  • And when she was loosed from the strong bands,
  • A sore moan made she. With her hands
  • She rent her hair; and such were her tears
  • That it seem'd a great wrong had been hers.
  • “Woe worth the weary time!” she cried;
  • “There is no pity on any side.
  • Woe is me! It fades from my view—
  • 10 The recompense I was chosen to,—
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  • The magnificent heaven-crown
  • I hoped with such a hope to put on.
  • Now it is I am truly dead,—
  • Now it is I am truly ruinèd.
  • Oh! shame and sorrowing on me,
  • And shame and sorrowing on thee,
  • Who the guerdon from my spirit hast riven,
  • And by whose hands I am snatch'd from Heaven!
  • Lo! he chooseth his own calamity,
  • 20 That so my crown may be reft from me!”
  • Then with sharp prayer she pray'd them there
  • That still the death might be given her
  • For the which she had journey'd many a mile.
  • But being assured in a brief while
  • That the thing she sought would be denied,
  • She gazed with a piteous mien, and cried,
  • Rebuking her heart-beloved lord—
  • “Is all then lost that my soul implor'd?
  • How faint art thou, how little brave,
  • 30 To load me with this load that I have!
  • How have I been cheated with lies,
  • And cozen'd with fair-seeming falsities!
  • They told me thou wast honest, and good,
  • And valiant, and full of noble blood,—
  • The which, so help me God! was false.
  • Thou art one the world strangely miscalls.
  • Thou art but a weak timorous man,
  • Whose soul, affrighted, fails to scan
  • The strength of a woman's sufferance.
  • 40 Have I injured thee anyway, perchance?
  • Say, how didst thou hear, sitting without?
  • And yet meseems the wall was stout
  • Betwixt us. Nay, but thou must know
  • That it is to be—that it will be so.
  • Take heed—there is no second one
  • Who yet for thy life will lose her own.
  • Oh! turn to me and be pitiful,
  • And grudge not death to my poor soul!”
  • But though her sueing was hard and hot,
  • 50 His firmness never fail'd him a jot;
  • So that at length, against her will,
  • She needs must end her cries and be still,—
  • Yielding her to the loath'd decree
  • That made her life a necessity.
  • Lord Henry to one will was wrought,
  • Fast settled in his steadfast thought:
  • He clothed her again with his own hand,
  • And again set forth to his native land,
  • Having given large reward to the leach.
  • 60 He knew the shame and the evil speech
  • And the insult he must bear,—yet bow'd
  • Meekly thereto; knowing that God
  • Had will'd, in his regard, each thing
  • That wrought for him weal or suffering.
  • Thus by the damsel's help indeed
  • From a foul sickness he was freed,—
  • Not from his body's sore and smart,
  • But from hardness and stubbornness of heart.
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    Sig. 34
  • Then first was all that pride of his
  • 70 Quite overthrown; a better bliss
  • Came to his soul and dwelt with him
  • Than the bliss he had in the first time,—
  • To wit, a blithe heart's priceless gain
  • That looks to God through the tears of pain.
  • But as they rode, the righteous maid
  • Mourn'd and might not be comforted.
  • Her soul was aghast, her heart was waste,
  • Her wits were all confused and displac'd:
  • Herseem'd that the leaning on God's might
  • 80 Was turn'd for her to shame and despite:
  • So her pure heart ceased not to pray
  • That the woe she had might be ta'en away.
  • Thus came the girl and the sick wight
  • To an hostel at the fall of the night.
  • Each in a little chamber alone,
  • They watch'd till many hours were gone.
  • The nobleman gave thanks to God
  • Who had turn'd him from the profitless road,
  • And cleansed him, by care and suffering,
  • 90 From his loftiness and vain-glorying.
  • The damsel went down on her knees
  • And spake to God such words as these,—
  • Why thus He had put aside, and left
  • Out of His grace, her and her gift,—
  • Seeing how she had nothing more
  • To give but her one life bare and poor.
  • She prayed: “Am I not good enough,
  • Thou Holy One, to partake thereof?
  • Then, O my God! cleanse Thou mine heart;
  • 100 Let me not thus cease and depart:
  • Give me a sign, Father of mine,
  • That the absolving grace divine
  • By seeking may at length be found
  • While yet this earth shall hold me round.”
  • And God, who lifts souls from the dust,
  • Nor turns from the spirit that hath trust,
  • The same look'd down with looks unloth
  • On the troublesome sorrow of them both,
  • Both whose hearts and whose life-long days
  • 110 He had won to Him for glory and praise,—
  • Who had passed through the fire and come forth
  • And proved themselves salvation-worth.
  • The Father—He who comforteth
  • His patient children that have faith—
  • At length released these steadfast ones
  • From their manifold tribulations.
  • In wondrous wise the Earl was stripp'd
  • Of all his sickness while he slept;
  • And when, as the sunrise smote his e'en,
  • 120 He found him once more whole and clean,
  • He rose from his couch and sought the maid.
  • On the sight for which she long had pray'd,
  • She gazed and gazed some speechless space
  • And then knelt down with lifted face
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  • And said, “The Lord God hath done this:
  • His was the deed—the praise be His.
  • With solemn thinking let me take
  • The life which He hath given me back.”
PART V
  • The Earl return'd in joyful case
  • Unto his fathers' dwelling-place.
  • Every day brought back to him
  • A part of his joy, which had waxed dim;
  • And he grew now, of face and mien,
  • More comely than ever he had been.
  • And unto all who in former years
  • Had been his friends and his comforters,
  • He told how God's all-mercifulness
  • 10 Had deliver'd him out of his distress.
  • And they rejoiced, giving the praise
  • To God and His unsearchable ways.
  • Then thitherward full many a road
  • Men came, a gladsome multitude;
  • They came in haste, they rode and they ran,
  • To welcome the gallant gentleman;
  • Their own eyes they could scarce believe,
  • Beholding him in health and alive.
  • A strange sight, it may well be said,
  • 20 When one revives that was counted dead.
  • The worthy peasant who so long
  • Had tended him when the curse was strong,
  • In the good time stay'd not away,
  • Nor his wife could be brought to stay.
  • 'Twas then that after long suspense
  • Their labour gat its recompense.
  • They who had hoped no other thing
  • Than the sight of their lord, on entering
  • Saw the sweet damsel by his side,
  • 30 In perfect measure satisfied,
  • Who caught them round with either arm,
  • And clave to them closely and warm.
  • Long time they kissed her, in good sooth—
  • They kissed her on her cheeks and mouth.
  • Within their breasts their hearts were light;
  • And eyes which first laughed and were bright
  • Soon overbrimmed with many tears,
  • The tokens of the joy that was theirs.
  • Then the good honest Swabians
  • 40 Who erst had shared the inheritance
  • Of the sick lord, gave back the land,
  • Unasked, which they had ta'en at his hand.
  • Him did they wholly reinstate
  • In every title and estate
  • That heretofore he had possess'd.
  • But ever he pondered in his breast
  • Upon those wondrous things which once
  • God wrought on his flesh and in his bones.
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  • Nor did he in anywise forget
  • 50 The friendly pair whose help, ere yet
  • His hours of pain were overpast,
  • Had stood him in such stead. The taste
  • Of bitter grief he had brought on them
  • Found such reward as best became—
  • He gave the little farm and the field,
  • With the cattle whereby they were till'd,
  • With servants eke, to the honest twain;
  • So that no fears plagued them again
  • Lest any other lord should come
  • 60 At length and turn them from their home.
  • Also his thankful favour stay'd
  • Evermore with the pious maid:
  • Many a day with her he spent,
  • And gave her many an ornament,
  • Because of what is said in my rhyme
  • And the love he bore her from old time.
  • Thus, it may be, a year went o'er:
  • Then all his kinsfolk urged him sore
  • Some worthy woman for to woo,
  • 70 And bring her as his wife thereto.
  • And he answer'd, “Truly as I live,
  • This is good counsel that ye give.”
  • So he summoned every lord his friend,
  • That to this matter they might bend
  • Such help as honest friends can bring.
  • And they all came at his summoning,
  • Everywhence, both far and near;
  • And eke his whole vassalage was there,—
  • Not a single man but was come:
  • 80 It made, good sooth, a mighty sum.
  • And the earl stepp'd forward in their sight,
  • Saying, “Sirs, my mind is fixed aright
  • To wed even as your wills decide:
  • Take counsel then, and choose me a bride.”
  • So they got together and began;
  • But there was a mind for every man.
  • Both ways they wrangled, aye and no,
  • As counsellors are sure to do.
  • Then again he spake to them and cried:
  • 90 “Dear friends, now let alone the bride,
  • And rede me a thing. All of ye know,
  • Doubtless, that I, a while ago,
  • With a most loathsome ill was cross'd,
  • And appear'd to be altogether lost,
  • So that all people avoided me
  • With cursings and cruel mockery.
  • And yet no man scorneth me now,
  • Nor woman either; seeing how
  • God's mercy hath made me whole again.
  • 100 Then tell me, I pray of ye full fain,
  • What I may do to His honouring
  • Who to mine aid hath done this thing.”
  • And they all answered immediately:
  • “By word and deed it behoveth thee
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  • To offer thyself to the Most High,
  • And work for Him good works thereby,
  • That the life He spared may be made His.”
  • “Then,” quoth the Earl, “hearken me this.
  • The damozel who standeth here,—
  • 110 And whom I embrace, being most dear,—
  • She it is unto whom I owe
  • The grace it hath pleased God to bestow.
  • He saw the simple-spirited
  • Earnestness of the holy maid,
  • And even in guerdon of her truth
  • Gave back to me the joys of my youth,
  • Which seem'd to be lost beyond all doubt.
  • And therefore I have chosen her out
  • To wed with me, knowing her free.
  • 120 I think that God will let this be.
  • But now if I fail, and not obtain,
  • I will never embrace woman again;
  • For all I am, and all I have,
  • Is but a gift, sirs, that she gave.
  • Lo! I enjoin ye, with God's will,
  • That this my longing ye fulfil:
  • I pray ye all, have but one voice,
  • And let your choice go with my choice.”
  • Then the cries ceased, and the counter-cries,
  • 130 And all the battle of advice,
  • And every lord, being content
  • With Henry's choice, granted assent.
  • Then the priests came, to bind as one
  • Two lives in bridal unison.
  • Into his hand they folded hers,
  • Not to be loosed in coming years,
  • And utter'd between man and wife
  • God's blessing on the road of their life.
  • Many a bright and pleasant day
  • 140 The twain pursued their steadfast way,
  • Till, hand in hand, at length they trod
  • Upward to the kingdom of God.
  • Even as it was with them, even thus,
  • And quickly, it must be with us.
  • To such reward as theirs was then,
  • God help us in His Hour. Amen.
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more about Two Songs from Victor Hugo's 'Burgraves'
TWO SONGS FROM VICTOR HUGO'S “BURGRAVES”
more about Two Songs from Victor Hugo's 'Burgraves.' I.
I
  • Through the long winter the rough wind tears;
  • With their white garment the hills look wan.
  • Love on: who cares?
  • Who cares? Love on.
  • My mother is dead; God's patience wears;
  • It seems my chaplain will not have done.
  • Love on: who cares?
  • Who cares? Love on.
  • The Devil, hobbling up the stairs,
  • 10 Comes for me with his ugly throng.
  • Love on: who cares?
  • Who cares? Love on.
more about Two Songs from Victor Hugo's 'Burgraves.' II.
II
  • In the time of the civil broils
  • Our swords are stubborn things.
  • A fig for all the cities!
  • A fig for all the kings!
  • The Burgrave prospereth:
  • Men fear him more and more.
  • Barons, a fig for his Holiness!
  • A fig for the Emperor!
  • Right well we hold our own
  • 10 With the brand and the iron rod.
  • A fig for Satan, Burgraves!
  • Burgraves, a fig for God!
more about Capitolo - A.M. Salvini to Francesco Redi, 16-
CAPITOLO:
A. M. SALVINI TO FRANCESCO REDI, 16—
  • Know then, dear Redi, (sith thy gentle heart
  • Would read my riddle and my mystery,)—
  • That I am thinking from men's thoughts apart;
  • And that I learn deeper theology
  • While my soul travails over Dante's page,
  • Than with long study in the schools might be.
  • Many and many things, holy and sage,
  • To the dim mind his mighty words unveil,
  • Thralling it with a welcome vassalage:
  • 10 Nor doth his glorious lamp flicker or fail
  • By reason of that vapoury shrouding strange,
  • Which in like argument may much prevail.
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  • Through old and trodden paths he scorned to range;
  • He took the leap of Chaos;—high, and low,
  • And to the middle region's state of change.
  • Bright things, and dubious things, and things of woe,
  • Thence to the mind he spake with pictured speech,
  • Making the tongue cry out, “They must be so!”
  • The how and wherefore will be told of each;
  • 20 And that his soul might take its flight and roam,
  • Beatrice gave him wings of boundless reach.
  • O hallowed breast, the Muses' chosen home,
  • Blest be the working of thy steadfast aim,
  • And blest thy fancy through all time to come,
  • Which whispers now, and now with words of flame
  • Like sudden thunder makes the heart to pause;
  • Whence laurel to thy brow and myrtle came.
  • For in love-speaking, so to love's sweet laws
  • Thy verse is subject, that no truer truth
  • 30 From passion's store the stricken spirit draws.
  • But pent in Hell's huge coil, for pity and ruth
  • Thy voice is slow and broken and profound,
  • To the harsh echoes singing sorrowful sooth;
  • And thy steps stumble in the weary bound;—
  • Of that dim maze where nothing is that shines
  • Stalking the desolate circles round and round.
  • Then through the prisoned air which sobs and pines
  • With Purgatorial grief, up dost thou soar
  • To Paradise, on the sun's dazzling lines.
  • 40 There all the wonders thou dost reckon o'er
  • Of that great Joy that never waxeth old,—
  • A mighty hearing seldom heard before.
  • To us by thee pleasures and woes are told,
  • What path to fly from, in whose steps to tread,
  • That from man's mind the veil may be unrolled.
  • But oh! thine angry tones, awful and dread,
  • What time God puts the thunder in thy mouth,
  • Upon His foes the righteous wrath to shed!
  • Then, then thy thoughts are of a mighty growth;—
  • 50 Then does the terror of His holy curse
  • Hurtle from East to West, from North to South;—
  • Then heavy sorrow 'ginn'st thou to rehearse;—
  • Then Priests and Princes tremble and are pale,
  • More than with ague shaken at thy verse.
  • Though in thy praise all human praises fail,
  • Even of the few who love thee and who bless,—
  • The scoffing of the herd shall not prevail.
  • Thy words are weights, under whose mighty stress
  • Tyrants and evil men shall shrink and quail;
  • 60 True seeds of an undying perfectness.
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more about Two Lyrics: from Niccolo Tommaseo
TWO LYRICS
FROM NICCOLÒ TOMMASEO
more about Two Lyrics: from Niccolo Tommaseo. I. The Young Girl
I.— THE YOUNG GIRL
  • Even as a child that weeps,
  • Lulled by the love it keeps,
  • My grief lies back and sleeps.
  • Yes, it is Love bears up
  • My soul on his spread wings,
  • Which the days would else chafe out
  • With their infinite harassings.
  • To quicken it, he brings
  • The inward look and mild
  • 10 That thy face wears, my child.
  • As in a gilded room
  • Shines 'mid the braveries
  • Some wild-flower, by the bloom
  • Of its delicate quietness
  • Recalling the forest-trees
  • In whose shadow it was,
  • And the water and the green grass:—
  • Even so, 'mid the stale loves
  • The city prisoneth,
  • 20 Thou touchest me gratefully,
  • Like Nature's wholesome breath:
  • Thy heart nor hardeneth
  • In pride, nor putteth on
  • Obeisance not its own.
  • Not thine the skill to shut
  • The love up in thine heart,
  • Neither to seem more tender,
  • Less tender than thou art.
  • Thou dost not hold apart
  • 30 In silence when thy joys
  • Most long to find a voice.
  • Let the proud river-course,
  • That shakes its mane and champs,
  • Run between marble shores
  • By the light of many lamps,
  • While all the ooze and the damps
  • Of the city's choked-up ways
  • Make it their draining-place.
  • Rather the little stream
  • 40 For me; which, hardly heard,
  • Unto the flower, its friend,
  • Whispers as with a word.
  • The timid journeying bird
  • Of the pure drink that flows
  • Takes but one drop, and goes.
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more about Two Lyrics: from Niccolo Tommaseo. II. A Farewell.
II.— A FAREWELL
  • I soothed and pitied thee: and for thy lips,—
  • A smile, a word (sure guide
  • To love that's ill to hide!)
  • Was all I had thereof.
  • Even as an orphan boy, whom, sore distress'd,
  • A gentle woman meets beside the road
  • And takes him home with her,—so to thy breast
  • Thou didst take home my image: pure abode!
  • 'Twas but a virgin's dream. This heart bestow'd
  • 10 Respect and piety
  • And friendliness on thee:
  • But it is poor in love.
  • No, I am not for thee. Thou art too new,
  • I am too old, to the old beaten way.
  • The griefs are not the same which grieve us two:
  • Thy thought and mine lie far apart to-day.
  • Less than I wish, more than I hope, alway
  • Are heart and soul in thee.
  • Thou art too much for me,
  • 20 Sister, and not enough.
  • A better and a fresher heart than mine
  • Perchance may meet thee ere thy youth be told;
  • Or, cheated by the longing that is thine,
  • Waiting for life perchance thou shalt wax old.
  • Perchance the time may come when I may hold
  • It had been best for me
  • To have had thy ministry
  • On the steep path and rough.
more about Sonnet. From Cecco Angiolieri. In Absence from Becchina
SONNET

[FR]OM CECCO ANGIOLIERI

In absence from Becchina
Note: Typo: The second line of the title reads “OM CECCO ANGIOLIERI” instead of “FROM CECCO ANGIOLIERI.”
  • I'm better skill'd to frolic on a bed
  • Than any man that goes upon two feet;
  • And so, when I and certain moneys meet,
  • You'll fancy with what joys I shall be fed.
  • Meanwhile (alas!) I can but long instead
  • To be within her arms held close and sweet
  • To whom without reserve and past retreat
  • My soul and body and heart are subjected.
  • For often, when my mind is all distraught
  • 10 With this whereof I make my boast, I pass
  • The day in deaths which never seem enough;
  • And all my blood within is boiling hot,
  • Yet I've less strength than running water has;
  • And this shall last as long as I'm in love.
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more about Lines from the Roman de la Rose
FROM THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE
  • Tender as dew her cheeks' warm life;
  • She was as simple as a wife,
  • She was as white as lilies are.
  • Her face was sweet and smooth and fair:
  • Slender and very straight she was,
  • And on her cheeks no paint might pass.
  • Her fair hair was so long that it
  • Shook, when she walked, about her feet:
  • Eyes, nose, and mouth, were perfect art,
  • 10 Exceeding pain is at my heart
  • When I remember me of her.
more about Poems by Francesco and Gaetano Polidori
POEMS BY FRANCESCO AND GAETANO POLIDORI
Il Losario: Poema Eroico Romanesco, di Ser Frencesco Polidori. Messo in luce, coll

aggiunta di Tre Canti, da Gaetano Polidori, suo nipote. Firenze e Londra.

[ Losario: a Poetic Romance. By Ser Frencesco Polidori. Now first published,

with the addition of Three Cantos, by his nephew, Gaetano Polidori. Florence

and London.]
It is so rarely that the reviewer nowadays has to cope with anything

even remotely resembling an epic, that when such a work does happen

to fall in his way he is apt to consider the perusal of it as an achieve-

ment almost worthy to form the subject of a poem of equal pretensions.

Nor is it in all moods that he would so much as attempt the task; for

indeed we fear it might almost be said of Homer himself that only

when that great man is found nodding could he count safely upon the

“used-up” energies of a modern critic as being in perfectly sympa-

thetic relation with him.
The poem whose title and genealogy head our present article is not,

however, a direct descendant from the great epic stock, but rather

belonging to that illegitimate line which claims Ariosto for its ancestor—

a bastard, for the matter of that, with a dash of the Falconbridge

humour in him, and not at all disposed to yield the hereditary lion's

skin to any that has not strength to keep it. Or perhaps, on some

accounts, the author of Losario would have preferred to trace the

pedigree of his work through Tasso's branch of the heroic family,

which, if more legitimate, has yet always seemed to us to be less akin

to the parent stock in vigour than is the misbegotten fire of Ariosto;

and, indeed, almost liable now and then to that irreverent imputation

of being “got betwixt sleep and wake.” Au reste, we can assure the

reader that, whatever may have been the balance of our author's

predilections, his poem of Losario is a perfect cornucopia of marvellous

adventure; where kings' sons are dethroned and reinstated; where

usurpers, in the hour of triumph, find themselves cloven to the chine;

where the unjustifiable lives of dragons are held on the most perilous

tenure; where the gods themselves are the “medium” of prophecy;

and where the valour of the hero is unsurpassed, except perhaps by

that of his lady—the love here being not only platonic, but generally

having Mars for a Cupid.
Before proceeding to give a translated extract from the poem, we

need merely premise regarding its author, Ser Francesco Polidori (the

Ser being a legal title), that he was born in the year 1720, at Pontedera,
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in Tuscany; that he followed the profession of the law, in which,

however, his natural goodness of heart appears to have interfered with

his success; and that he died in 1773. Losario, which seems to have

been his only considerable work, after remaining in the limbo of manu-

script for about a century, now at length sees the light under the

auspices of a nonagenarian descendant; for such, as may be gathered

from the preface, is now the venerable age of its editor, of whom we

shall have more to say anon.
The following extract is taken from a passage of the poem where

Prince Losario and his friend Antasete are informed by a river-nymph

of the means whereby they may succeed in destroying a dragon which

troubles her dominion:—
more about Losario, by Ser Francesco Polidori. Fragment of a Translation
  • Silent, she lifted softly through the wave
  • All her divine white bosom; seeming there
  • As when Aurora, freed from night's dull cave,
  • Fills full of roses the sweet morning air;
  • Then, with a hand more white than snows which pave
  • The Alps, upon their brows that water clear
  • She shook; and, to the immediate summons sent,
  • The monster's presence stirr'd the element.
  • And the banks shudder'd, and the sky grew dark,
  • 10 As the dark river heaved with that obscene
  • Infamous bulk: the while each knight, to mark
  • His 'vantage, hover'd, stout in heart and mien,
  • Around it. Watchful were their eyes, and stark
  • Losario's onset; and yet weak, I ween,
  • Against the constant spray of fire and smoke,
  • Which from the dragon's lips and nostrils broke.
  • Blinded and baffled by the hideous rain,
  • And stunn'd with gnashing fangs and scourged with claws,
  • Still brave Losario toils, but spends in vain
  • 20 His strength against the dragon without pause;
  • Till at the last, one mighty stroke amain
  • Within the nether rack of those foul jaws
  • He dealt. Then fume and flame together ceased
  • At once; and on the palpitating beast
  • The champion fell with his strong naked hands;
  • And right and left such iron blows struck he
  • On that hard front, that far across the sands
  • The deep woods utter'd echoes heavily;
  • A noise like that when some broad roof withstands
  • 30 The hail-clouds under which the cattle flee.
  • But when at length those open jaws emit
  • A flickering tongue, the prince lays hold on it.
  • Then Antasete, who by the creature's flank
  • Still watch'd, obedient to the nymph, did rouse
  • His strength, and up the rugged loins that stank
  • Clomb on its neck, and bit it in the brows.
  • Straight as his teeth within the forehead sank,
  • Those execrable limbs fell ponderous;
  • And from the wound such spilth of gore was shed,
  • 40 That lips, and chin, and fingers, were all red.
  • (Canto 3, st. 28, et seq.)
There is movement in the above description, and the bloody work

is done with an appropriately savage relish. Nor is this, perhaps, the

best passage which we could have taken from the poem; but its

episodical character recommended it to extract.
Having said thus much of Losario and its author, we shall add, before

we conclude, some little regarding its editor, whose own poetical works

(and he has written much) we have been looking over at the same time

with this his last publication; which, moreover, as its title-page indi-

cates, owes its concluding cantos to his hand.
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We have said above that Mr. Polidori is now in his ninetieth year;

and we find, by the preface to his collected poems, that sixty of these

years have been spent in England. Nor has his sojourn here been

without results: having led apparently to an extensive acquaintance

with our literature, and induced him probably to undertake his excellent

translation of Milton's works, whose value has been acknowledged

both here and in his own country. Among his other labours as a

translator, the version of Lucan's Pharsalia deserves high praise, and

has obtained it in many quarters. To him also the student of Milton

is indebted for the modern republication of that very rare work the

Angeleida of Valvasoni; accompanied by a valuable dissertation re-

garding its claims to have suggested in any degree the structure of the

Paradise Lost. We may add that Mr. Polidori was the father of the

late Dr. Polidori, who wrote the Vampyre, erroneously attributed to

Lord Byron; and that he is the father-in-law of Professor Rossetti,

celebrated among the patriotic poets of his country, and in the selva

oscura of Dantesque criticism.
We gather from the preface to Mr. Polidori's original poems, that

during four years of his youth he was secretary to that Byron of the

classic school, or Racine of romanticism, “rejected by both,”—the

great Alfieri; a strange kind of prodigal-ascetic, suggesting fantastic

combinations; of whom one might say that he seemed bent on carrying

on simultaneously the two phases of Timon's career, and “throwing

in” Shakspeare par étrenne. In this preface are many most curious

anecdotes, exhibiting the stoical pretensions and childish self-will, the

republicanism and brutal arrogance, the euphuistic woman-worship

and private unmanliness (for none of these terms are too harsh), which

were among the contradictions that made up this unchivalrous trouba-

dour. Some of these scraps from the unacted biography of one who

was seldom behind the scenes, we would willingly extract for our

readers; but, indeed, they should rightly be read together. We,

therefore, prefer translating a couple of specimens from the poems in

Mr. Polidori's volume.
The following passage occurs in the second of two poems entitled

“La Fantasia” and “Il Disinganno;” which may be translated

“Fantasy” and “Disenchantment,” or perhaps more properly,

“Illusion” and “Experience.” The joint theme seems to us admirably

chosen, and its execution highly successful.



more about 'Winter' by Gaetano Polidori. A Translation
WINTER
  • In this dead winter season now,
  • Whose rigid sky is like a corpse,
  • Awhile beneath some naked bough
  • Here let me stand, beholding how
  • The frost all earthly life absorbs.
  • Yet fair the sky with clouds o'erspread,
  • As in grey mantle garmented;
  • While hastily or placidly
  • The snow's white flakes descend to clothe
  • 10 The pleasant world and all its growth.
  • And passing fair it is to see
  • How hills and multitudinous woods,
  • And trees alone in solitudes,
  • Accept the white shroud silently;
  • And I have watch'd and deem'd it fair,
  • While myrtle, laurel, juniper,
  • Slowly were hidden; while each spring,
  • Each river, crept, an unknown thing,
  • Beneath its crystal covering.
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  • 20 Then shalt thou see, beside the wan
  • Changed surface of his watery home,
  • Stand lean and cold the famish'd swan,—
  • One foot within his ruffled plumes
  • Upgather'd, while his eyes will roam
  • Around, till from the wintry glooms
  • Beneath the wing they hopelessly
  • Take shelter, that they may not see.
  • And though sad thoughts within her rise
  • At the drear sight, yet it shall soothe
  • 30 Thy soul to look in any guise
  • Upon the teaching face of truth.
  • Or shall no beauty fill the mind,
  • No lesson—when the flocks stand fast,
  • Their backs all set against the blast,
  • Labouring immovable, combined,
  • Till they with their weak feet have burst
  • The frost-bound treasure of the stream,
  • And now at length may quench their thirst?
  • And O! how beautiful doth seem
  • 40 That evening journey when the herd
  • Troop homeward by accustom'd ways,
  • All night in paddock there to graze,
  • And know the joy of rest deferr'd.
  • Or if the crow, the sullen bird,
  • Upon some leafless branch in view,
  • Thrusts forth his neck, and flaps the bleak
  • Dry wind, and grates his ravenous beak,
  • That sight may feed thy musings too.
  • And grand it is, 'mid forest boughs,
  • 50 In darkness, awfully forlorn,
  • At night to hear the wind carouse,
  • Within whose breath the strong trees quake
  • Or stand with naked limbs all torn;
  • While such unwonted clamours wake
  • Around, that over all the plain
  • Fear walks abroad, and tremble then
  • The flocks, the herds, the husbandmen.
  • But most sublime of all, most holy,
  • The unfathomable melancholy
  • 60 When winds are silent in their cells;
  • When underneath the moon's calm light,
  • And in the unalter'd snow which veils
  • All height and depth—to look thereon,
  • It seems throughout the solemn night
  • As if the earth and sky were one.
We doubt not that many of our readers will enjoy with us, in the

above beautiful passage, both the close observation of nature, and the

under-current of suggestive thought. In our second extract, which

closes this notice, it seems to us that the beauty of Mr. Polidori's

images is sufficient to disprove their modest application to his own

poetic powers.
more about 'Sonnet to the Laurel' by Gaetano Polidori. A Translation
SONNET TO THE LAUREL
  • Approaching thee, thou growth of mystic spell,
  • That wast of old a virgin fair and wise,
  • I fix upon thee my devoted eyes
  • And stand a little while immovable.
  • Then if in the low breeze thy branches quail—
  • “What, so afraid?” I say; “not I, poor tree,
  • Apollo; though my heart hath cherish'd thee
  • Because thou crown'st his children's foreheads well.”
  • Then half-incensed, abasing mine own brow—
  • 10 “These leaves,” I muse, “how many crave—with these
  • How few at length the flattering gods endow!
  • I hoped—ah! shall I hope again? Nay, cease.
  • Too much, alas! the world's rude clamours now
  • Bewilder mine accorded cadences.”
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more about A Doctor's Advice
A DOCTOR'S ADVICE

Translated from an inscription in ill-spelt French verse scratched on the pane of a window

at the New Inn, Winchelsea.
  • My doctor's issued his decree
  • That too much wine is killing me,
  • And furthermore his ban he hurls
  • Against my touching naked girls.
  • How then? must I no longer share
  • Good wine or beauties dark and fair?
  • Doctor, goodbye, my sail's unfurl'd,
  • I'm off to try the other world.
more about My Lady
MY LADY
  • My lady, as God made you, may God guard you:
  • My lady, God uphold you, God exalt you;
  • My lady, may God grant you all your wishes.
more about Lilith -- From Goethe
LILITH

FROM GÖTHE
  • Hold thou thy heart against her shining hair,
  • If, by thy fate, she spread it once for thee;
  • For, when she nets a young man in that snare,
  • So twines she him he never may be free.
more about The Ballad of Dead Ladies. FRANCOIS VILLON, 1450
THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES

FRANÇOIS VILLON, 1450
  • Tell me now in what hidden way is
  • Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
  • Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
  • Neither of them the fairer woman?
  • Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
  • Only heard on river and mere,—
  • She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
  • Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
  • 10 For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
  • Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
  • (From Love he won such dule and teen!)
  • And where, I pray you, is the Queen
  • Who willed that Buridan should steer
  • Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . .
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
  • White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
  • With a voice like any mermaiden,—
  • Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
  • 20 And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
  • And that good Joan whom Englishmen
  • At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
  • Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
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  • Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
  • Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
  • Save with thus much for an overword,—
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
more about To Death, Of His Lady. Francois Villon
TO DEATH, OF HIS LADY

FRANÇOIS VILLON
  • Death, of thee do I make my moan,
  • Who hadst my lady away from me,
  • Nor wilt assuage thine enmity
  • Till with her life thou hast mine own:
  • For since that hour my strength has flown.
  • Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,
  • Death?
  • Two we were, and the heart was one;
  • Which now being dead, dead I must be,
  • 10 Or seem alive as lifelessly
  • As in the choir the painted stone,
  • Death!
more about John of Tours (Old French)
JOHN OF TOURS

OLD FRENCH
  • John of Tours is back with peace,
  • But he comes home ill at ease.
  • “Good-morrow, mother.” “Good-morrow, son;
  • Your wife has borne you a little one.”
  • “Go now, mother, go before,
  • Make me a bed upon the floor;
  • “Very low your foot must fall,
  • That my wife hear not at all.”
  • As it neared the midnight toll,
  • 10 John of Tours gave up his soul.
  • “Tell me now, my mother my dear,
  • What's the crying that I hear?”
  • “Daughter, it's the children wake,
  • Crying with their teeth that ache.”
  • “Tell me though, my mother my dear,
  • What's the knocking that I hear?”
  • “Daughter, it's the carpenter
  • Mending planks upon the stair.”
  • “Tell me too, my mother my dear,
  • 20 What's the singing that I hear?”
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  • “Daughter, it's the priests in rows
  • Going round about our house.”
  • “Tell me then, my mother my dear,
  • What's the dress that I should wear?”
  • “Daughter, any reds or blues,
  • But the black is most in use.”
  • “Nay, but say, my mother my dear,
  • Why do you fall weeping here?”
  • “Oh! the truth must be said,—
  • 30 It's that John of Tours is dead.”
  • “Mother, let the sexton know
  • That the grave must be for two;
  • “Aye, and still have room to spare,
  • For you must shut the baby there.”
more about My Father's Close (Old French)
MY FATHER'S CLOSE

OLD FRENCH
  • Inside my father's close,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • Sweet apple-blossom blows
  • So sweet.
  • Three kings' daughters fair,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • They lie below it there
  • So sweet.
  • “Ah!” says the eldest one,
  • 10 (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • “I think the day's begun
  • So sweet.”
  • “Ah!” says the second one,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • “Far off I hear the drum
  • So sweet.”
  • “Ah!” says the youngest one,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • “It's my true love, my own,
  • 20 So sweet.
  • “Oh! if he fight and win,”
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • “I keep my love for him,
  • So sweet:
  • Oh! let him lose or win,
  • He hath it still complete.”
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more about Beauty (A Combination from Sappho)
BEAUTY

A COMBINATION FROM SAPPHO
  • I
  • Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
  • A-top on the top-most twig,—which the pluckers forgot somehow,—
  • Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.
  • II
  • Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found,
  • Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound,
  • Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.
more about The Leaf (Leopardi)
THE LEAF

LEOPARDI
  • “Torn from your parent bough,
  • Poor leaf all withered now,
  • Where go you?” “I cannot tell.
  • Storm-stricken is the oak-tree
  • Where I grew, whence I fell.
  • Changeful continually,
  • The zephyr and hurricane
  • Since that day bid me flee
  • From deepest woods to the lea,
  • 10 From highest hills to the plain.
  • Where the wind carries me
  • I go without fear or grief:
  • I go whither each one goes,—
  • Thither the leaf of the rose
  • And thither the laurel-leaf.”
more about His Mother's Service to Our Lady. FRANCOIS VILLON
HIS MOTHER'S SERVICE TO OUR LADY

FRANÇOIS VILLON
  • Lady of Heaven and Earth, and therewithal
  • Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,—
  • I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call,
  • Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell,
  • Albeit in nought I be commendable.
  • But all mine undeserving may not mar
  • Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are;
  • Without the which (as true words testify)
  • No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far.
  • 10 Even in this faith I choose to live and die.
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Sig. 35
  • Unto thy Son say thou that I am His,
  • And to me graceless make Him gracious.
  • Sad Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss,
  • Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theophilus,
  • Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus
  • Though to the Fiend his bounden service was.
  • Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass
  • (Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!)
  • The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass.
  • 20 Even in this faith I choose to live and die.
  • A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old,
  • I am, and nothing learn'd in letter-lore.
  • Within my parish-cloister I behold
  • A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore,
  • And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore:
  • One bringeth fear, the other joy to me.
  • That joy, great Goddess, make thou mine to be,—
  • Thou of whom all must ask it even as I;
  • And that which faith desires, that let it see.
  • 30 For in this faith I choose to live and die.
  • O excellent Virgin Princess! thou didst bear
  • King Jesus, the most excellent comforter,
  • Who even of this our weakness craved a share,
  • And for our sake stooped to us from on high,
  • Offering to death His young life sweet and fair.
  • Such as He is, Our Lord, I Him declare,
  • And in this faith I choose to live and die.
more about Francesca Da Rimini. Dante
FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

DANTE
  • When I made answer, I began: “Alas!
  • How many sweet thoughts and how much desire
  • Led these two onward to the dolorous pass!”
  • Then turned to them, as who would fain inquire,
  • And said: “Francesca, these thine agonies
  • Wring tears for pity and grief that they inspire:
  • But tell me,—in the season of sweet sighs,
  • When and what way did Love instruct you so
  • That he in your vague longings made you wise?”
  • 10 Then she to me: “There is no greater woe
  • Than the remembrance brings of happy days
  • In misery; and this thy guide doth know.
  • But if the first beginnings to retrace
  • Of our sad love can yield thee solace here,
  • So will I be as one that weeps and says.
  • One day we read, for pastime and sweet cheer,
  • Of Lancelot, how he found Love tyrannous:
  • We were alone and without any fear.
  • Our eyes were drawn together, reading thus,
  • 20 Full oft, and still our cheeks would pale and glow;
  • But one sole point it was that conquered us.
  • For when we read of that great lover, how
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  • He kissed the smile which he had longed to win,—
  • Then he whom nought can sever from me now
  • For ever, kissed my mouth, all quivering.
  • A Galahalt was the book, and he that writ:
  • Upon that day we read no more therein.”
  • At the tale told, while one soul uttered it,
  • The other wept: a pang so pitiable
  • 30 That I was seized, like death, in swooning-fit,
  • And even as a dead body falls, I fell.
more about La Pia. Dante
LA PIA

DANTE
  • “Ah when on earth thy voice again is heard,
  • And thou from the long road hast rested thee,”
  • After the second spirit said the third,
  • “Remember me who am La Pia. Me
  • Siena, me Maremma, made, unmade.
  • He knoweth this thing in his heart—even he
  • With whose fair jewel I was ringed and wed.”
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more about Prose
PROSE
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more about Hand and Soul
HAND AND SOUL
  • Rivolsimi in quel lato
  • Là onde venìa la voce,
  • E parvemi una luce
  • Che lucea quanto stella:
  • La mia mente era quella.
Bonaggiunta Urbiciani (1250).
Before any knowledge of painting was brought to Florence, there

were already painters in Lucca, and Pisa, and Arezzo, who feared God

and loved the art. The workmen from Greece, whose trade it was to

sell their own works in Italy and teach Italians to imitate them, had

already found in rivals of the soil a skill that could forestall their lessons

and cheapen their labours, more years than is supposed before the art

came at all into Florence. The pre-eminence to which Cimabue was

raised at once by his contemporaries, and which he still retains to a

wide extent even in the modern mind, is to be accounted for, partly

by the circumstances under which he arose, and partly by that ex-

traordinary purpose of fortune born with the lives of some few, and

through which it is not a little thing for any who went before, if they

are even remembered as the shadows of the coming of such an one, and

the voices which prepared his way in the wilderness. It is thus, almost

exclusively, that the painters of whom I speak are now known.

They have left little, and but little heed is taken of that which men

hold to have been surpassed; it is gone like time gone,—a track of

dust and dead leaves that merely led to the fountain.
Nevertheless, of very late years and in very rare instances, some

signs of a better understanding have become manifest. A case in

point is that of the triptych and two cruciform pictures at Dresden, by

Chiaro di Messer Bello dell' Erma, to which the eloquent pamphlet

of Dr. Aemmster has at length succeeded in attracting the students.

There is another still more solemn and beautiful work, now proved to

be by the same hand, in the Pitti gallery at Florence. It is the one

to which my narrative will relate.
This Chiaro dell' Erma was a young man of very honourable family in

Arezzo; where, conceiving art almost for himself, and loving it deeply,

he endeavoured from early boyhood towards the imitation of any

objects offered in nature. The extreme longing after a visible embodi-

ment of his thoughts strengthened as his years increased, more even

than his sinews or the blood of his life; until he would feel faint in

sunsets and at the sight of stately persons. When he had lived nine-

teen years, he heard of the famous Giunta Pisano; and, feeling much

of admiration, with perhaps a little of that envy which youth always

feels until it has learned to measure success by time and opportunity,

he determined that he would seek out Giunta, and, if possible, become

his pupil.
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Having arrived in Pisa, he clothed himself in humble apparel, being

unwilling that any other thing than the desire he had for knowledge

should be his plea with the great painter; and then, leaving his baggage

at a house of entertainment, he took his way along the street, asking

whom he met for the lodging of Giunta. It soon chanced that one of

that city, conceiving him to be a stranger and poor, took him into his

house and refreshed him; afterwards directing him on his way.
When he was brought to speech of Giunta, he said merely that he

was a student, and that nothing in the world was so much at his heart

as to become that which he had heard told of him with whom he was

speaking. He was received with courtesy and consideration, and soon

stood among the works of the famous artist. But the forms he saw

there were lifeless and incomplete; and a sudden exultation possessed

him as he said within himself, “I am the master of this man.” The

blood came at first into his face, but the next moment he was quite

pale and fell to trembling. He was able, however, to conceal his

emotion; speaking very little to Giunta, but when he took his leave,

thanking him respectfully.
After this, Chiaro's first resolve was, that he would work out

thoroughly some one of his thoughts, and let the world know him. But

the lesson which he had now learned, of how small a greatness might

win fame, and how little there was to strive against, served to make

him torpid, and rendered his exertions less continual. Also Pisa was

a larger and more luxurious city than Arezzo; and when, in his walks,

he saw the great gardens laid out for pleasure, and the beautiful women

who passed to and fro, and heard the music that was in the groves of

the city at evening, he was taken with wonder that he had never

claimed his share of the inheritance of those years in which his youth

was cast. And women loved Chiaro; for, in despite of the burthen

of study, he was well-favoured and very manly in his walking; and,

seeing his face in front, there was a glory upon it, as upon the face of

one who feels a light round his hair.
So he put thought from him, and partook of his life. But, one night,

being in a certain company of ladies, a gentleman that was there with

him began to speak of the paintings of a youth named Bonaventura,

which he had seen in Lucca; adding that Giunta Pisano might now

look for a rival. When Chiaro heard this, the lamps shook before him

and the music beat in his ears. He rose up, alleging a sudden sickness,

and went out of that house with his teeth set. And, being again within

his room, he wrote up over the door the name of Bonaventura, that it

might stop him when he would go out.
He now took to work diligently, not returning to Arezzo, but re-

maining in Pisa, that no day more might be lost; only living entirely

to himself. Sometimes, after nightfall, he would walk abroad in the

most solitary places he could find; hardly feeling the ground under

him, because of the thoughts of the day which held him in fever.
The lodging Chiaro had chosen was in a house that looked upon

gardens fast by the Church of San Petronio. It was here, and at this

time, that he painted the Dresden pictures; as also, in all likelihood,

the one—inferior in merit, but certainly his—which is now at Munich.

For the most part he was calm and regular in his manner of study;

though often he would remain at work through the whole of a day,

not resting once so long as the light lasted; flushed, and with the hair

from his face. Or, at times, when he could not paint, he would sit for

hours in thought of all the greatness the world had known from of old;

until he was weak with yearning, like one who gazes upon a path of

stars.
He continued in this patient endeavour for about three years, at the

end of which his name was spoken throughout all Tuscany. As his

fame waxed, he began to be employed, besides easel-pictures, upon

wall-paintings; but I believe that no traces remain to us of any of
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these latter. He is said to have painted in the Duomo; and D'Agin-

court mentions having seen some portions of a picture by him which

originally had its place above the high altar in the Church of the

Certosa; but which, at the time he saw it, being very dilapidated, had

been hewn out of the wall, and was preserved in the stores of the

convent. Before the period of Dr. Aemmster's researches, however,

it had been entirely destroyed.
Chiaro was now famous. It was for the race of fame that he had

girded up his loins; and he had not paused until fame was reached;

yet now, in taking breath, he found that the weight was still at his

heart. The years of his labour had fallen from him, and his life was

still in its first painful desire.
With all that Chiaro had done during these three years, and even

before with the studies of his early youth, there had always been a

feeling of worship and service. It was the peace-offering that he made

to God and to his own soul for the eager selfishness of his aim. There

was earth, indeed, upon the hem of his raiment; but this was of the

heaven, heavenly. He had seasons when he could endure to think of

no other feature of his hope than this. Sometimes it had even seemed

to him to behold that day when his mistress—his mystical lady (now

hardly in her ninth year, but whose smile at meeting had already

lighted on his soul,)—even she, his own gracious Italian Art— should

pass, through the sun that never sets, into the shadow of the tree of

life, and be seen of God and found good: and then it had seemed to

him that he, with many who, since his coming, had joined the band of

whom he was one (for, in his dream, the body he had worn on earth had

been dead an hundred years), were permitted to gather round the

blessed maiden, and to worship with her through all ages and ages of

ages, saying, Holy, holy, holy. This thing he had seen with the eyes

of his spirit; and in this thing had trusted, believing that it would

surely come to pass.
But now, (being at length led to inquire closely into himself,) even

as, in the pursuit of fame, the unrest abiding after attainment had

proved to him that he had misinterpreted the craving of his own

spirit—so also, now that he would willingly have fallen back on de-

votion, he became aware that much of that reverence which he had

mistaken for faith had been no more than the worship of beauty.

Therefore, after certain days passed in perplexity, Chiaro said within

himself, “My life and my will are yet before me: I will take another

aim to my life.”
From that moment Chiaro set a watch on his soul, and put his hand

to no other works but only to such as had for their end the presentment

of some moral greatness that should influence the beholder: and to

this end, he multiplied abstractions, and forgot the beauty and passion

of the world. So the people ceased to throng about his pictures as

heretofore; and, when they were carried through town and town to

their destination, they were no longer delayed by the crowds eager to

gaze and admire; and no prayers or offerings were brought to them on

their path, as to his Madonnas, and his Saints, and his Holy Children,

wrought for the sake of the life he saw in the faces that he loved. Only

the critical audience remained to him; and these, in default of more

worthy matter, would have turned their scrutiny on a puppet or a

mantle. Meanwhile, he had no more of fever upon him; but was calm

and pale each day in all that he did and in his goings in and out. The

works he produced at this time have perished—in all likelihood, not

unjustly. It is said (and we may easily believe it), that, though more

laboured than his former pictures, they were cold and unemphatic;

bearing marked out upon them the measure of that boundary to which

they were made to conform.
And the weight was still close at Chiaro's heart: but he held in his

breath, never resting (for he was afraid), and would not know it.
Note: The final punctuation mark in paragraph 15 resembles a comma.
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Now it happened, within these days, that there fell a great feast in

Pisa, for holy matters: and each man left his occupation; and all the

guilds and companies of the city were got together for games and re-

joicings. And there were scarcely any that stayed in the houses,

except ladies who lay or sat along their balconies between open windows

which let the breeze beat through the rooms and over the spread tables

from end to end. And the golden cloths that their arms lay upon

drew all eyes upward to see their beauty; and the day was long; and

every hour of the day was bright with the sun.
So Chiaro's model, when he awoke that morning on the hot pave-

ment of the Piazza Nunziata, and saw the hurry of people that passed

him, got up and went along with them; and Chiaro waited for him

in vain.
For the whole of that morning, the music was in Chiaro's room

from the Church close at hand; and he could hear the sounds that

the crowd made in the streets; hushed only at long intervals while

the processions for the feast-day chanted in going under his windows.

Also, more than once, there was a high clamour from the meeting

of factious persons: for the ladies of both leagues were looking down;

and he who encountered his enemy could not choose but draw upon

him. Chiaro waited a long time idle; and then knew that his model

was gone elsewhere. When at his work, he was blind and deaf to

all else; but he feared sloth: for then his stealthy thoughts would

begin to beat round and round him, seeking a point for attack. He

now rose, therefore, and went to the window. It was within a short

space of noon; and underneath him a throng of people was coming

out through the porch of San Petronio.
The two greatest houses of the feud in Pisa had filled the church

for that mass. The first to leave had been the Gherghiotti; who,

stopping on the threshold, had fallen back in ranks along each side

of the archway: so that now, in passing outward, the Marotoli had

to walk between two files of men whom they hated, and whose fathers

had hated theirs. All the chiefs were there and their whole adherence;

and each knew the name of each. Every man of the Marotoli, as

he came forth and saw his foes, laid back his hood and gazed about

him, to show the badge upon the close cap that held his hair. And

of the Gherghiotti there were some who tightened their girdles; and

some shrilled and threw up their wrists scornfully, as who flies a falcon;

for that was the crest of their house.
On the walls within the entry were a number of tall narrow pictures,

presenting a moral allegory of Peace, which Chiaro had painted that

year for the Church. The Gherghiotti stood with their backs to these

frescoes; and among them Golzo Ninuccio, the youngest noble of

the faction, called by the people Golaghiotta, for his debased life.

This youth had remained for some while talking listlessly to his

fellows, though with his sleepy sunken eyes fixed on them who passed:

but now, seeing that no man jostled another, he drew the long silver

shoe off his foot and struck the dust out of it on the cloak of him who

was going by, asking him how far the tides rose at Viderza. And

he said so because it was three months since, at that place, the

Gherghiotti had beaten the Marotoli to the sands, and held them

there while the sea came in; whereby many had been drowned.

And, when he had spoken, at once the whole archway was dazzling

with the light of confused swords; and they who had left turned

back; and they who were still behind made haste to come forth;

and there was so much blood cast up the walls on a sudden, that it

ran in long streams down Chiaro's paintings.
Chiaro turned himself from the window; for the light felt dry

between his lids, and he could not look. He sat down, and heard the

noise of contention driven out of the church-porch and a great way

through the streets; and soon there was a deep murmur that heaved
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Note: Typo: on page 553, line 8 (paragraph 22), “thes” is printed instead of “these”.
and waxed from the other side of the city, where those of both parties

were gathering to join in the tumult.
Chiaro sat with his face in his open hands. Once again he had

wished to set his foot on a place that looked green and fertile; and

once again it seemed to him that the thin rank mask was about to

spread away, and that this time the chill of the water must leave

leprosy in his flesh. The light still swam in his head, and bewildered

him at first; but when he knew his thoughts, they were thes :—
“Fame failed me: faith failed me: and now this also,—the hope

that I nourished in this my generation of men,—shall pass from me,

and leave my feet and my hands groping. Yet because of this are

my feet become slow and my hands thin. I am as one who, through

the whole night, holding his way diligently, hath smitten the steel

unto the flint, to lead some whom he knew darkling; who hath kept

his eyes always on the sparks that himself made, lest they should

fail; and who, towards dawn, turning to bid them that he had guided

God speed, sees the wet grass untrodden except of his own feet. I

am as the last hour of the day, whose chimes are a perfect number;

whom the next followeth not, nor light ensueth from him; but in

the same darkness is the old order begun afresh. Men say, ‘This

is not God nor man; he is not as we are, neither above us: let him

sit beneath us, for we are many.’ Where I write Peace, in that spot

is the drawing of swords, and there men's footprints are red. When

I would sow, another harvest is ripe. Nay, it is much worse with

me than thus much. Am I not as a cloth drawn before the light,

that the looker may not be blinded? but which sheweth thereby the

grain of its own coarseness, so that the light seems defiled, and men

say, ‘We will not walk by it.’ Wherefore through me they shall

be doubly accursed, seeing that through me they reject the light.

May one be a devil and not know it?”
As Chiaro was in these thoughts, the fever encroached slowly on

his veins, till he could sit no longer and would have risen; but suddenly

he found awe within him, and held his head bowed, without stirring.

The warmth of the air was not shaken; but there seemed a pulse in

the light, and a living freshness, like rain. The silence was a painful

music, that made the blood ache in his temples; and he lifted his

face and his deep eyes.
A woman was present in his room, clad to the hands and feet with

a green and grey raiment, fashioned to that time. It seemed that

the first thoughts he had ever known were given him as at first from

her eyes, and he knew her hair to be the golden veil through which

he beheld his dreams. Though her hands were joined, her face was

not lifted, but set forward; and though the gaze was austere, yet

her mouth was supreme in gentleness. And as he looked, Chiaro's

spirit appeared abashed of its own intimate presence, and his lips

shook with the thrill of tears; it seemed such a bitter while till the

spirit might be indeed alone.
She did not move closer towards him, but he felt her to be as much

with him as his breath. He was like one who, scaling a great steepness,

hears his own voice echoed in some place much higher than he can

see, and the name of which is not known to him. As the woman

stood, her speech was with Chiaro: not, as it were, from her mouth

or in his ears; but distinctly between them.
“I am an image, Chiaro, of thine own soul within thee. See me,

and know me as I am. Thou sayest that fame has failed thee, and

faith failed thee; but because at least thou hast not laid thy life

unto riches, therefore, though thus late, I am suffered to come into

thy knowledge. Fame sufficed not, for that thou didst seek fame:

seek thine own conscience (not thy mind's conscience, but thine

heart's), and all shall approve and suffice. For Fame, in noble soils,

is a fruit of the Spring: but not therefore should it be said: ‘Lo!
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my garden that I planted is barren: the crocus is here, but the lily

is dead in the dry ground, and shall not lift the earth that covers

it: therefore I will fling my garden together, and give it unto the

builders.’ Take heed rather that thou trouble not the wise secret

earth; for in the mould that thou throwest up shall the first tender

growth lie to waste; which else had been made strong in its season.

Yea, and even if the year fall past in all its months, and the soil be

indeed, to thee, peevish and incapable, and though thou indeed gather

all thy harvest, and it suffice for others, and thou remain vexed with

emptiness; and others drink of thy streams, and the drouth rasp

thy throat;—let it be enough that these have found the feast good,

and thanked the giver: remembering that, when the winter is striven

through, there is another year, whose wind is meek, and whose sun

fulfilleth all.”
While he heard, Chiaro went slowly on his knees. It was not to

her that spoke, for the speech seemed within him and his own.

The air brooded in sunshine, and though the turmoil was great outside,

the air within was at peace. But when he looked in her eyes, he

wept. And she came to him, and cast her hair over him, and took

her hands about his forehead, and spoke again:—
“Thou hast said,” she continued, gently, “that faith failed thee.

This cannot be. Either thou hadst it not, or thou hast it. But who

bade thee strike the point betwixt love and faith? Wouldst thou

sift the warm breeze from the sun that quickens it? Who bade thee

turn upon God and say: ‘Behold, my offering is of earth, and not

worthy: Thy fire comes not upon it; therefore, though I slay not

my brother whom Thou acceptest, I will depart before Thou smite

me.’ Why shouldst thou rise up and tell God He is not content?

Had He, of His warrant, certified so to thee? Be not nice to seek

out division; but possess thy love in sufficiency: assuredly this

is faith, for the heart must believe first. What He hath set in thine

heart to do, that do thou; and even though thou do it without thought

of Him, it shall be well done; it is this sacrifice that He asketh of

thee, and His flame is upon it for a sign. Think not of Him; but of

His love and thy love. For God is no morbid exactor: He hath no

hand to bow beneath, nor a foot, that thou shouldst kiss it.”
And Chiaro held silence, and wept into her hair which covered his

face; and the salt tears that he shed ran through her hair upon his

lips; and he tasted the bitterness of shame.
Then the fair woman, that was his soul, spoke again to him, saying:
“And for this thy last purpose, and for those unprofitable truths of

thy teaching,—thine heart hath already put them away, and it needs

not that I lay my bidding upon thee. How is it that thou, a man,

wouldst say coldly to the mind what God hath said to the heart

warmly? Thy will was honest and wholesome; but look well lest

this also be folly,—to say, ‘I, in doing this, do strengthen God among

men.’ When at any time hath He cried unto thee, saying, ‘My son,

lend Me thy shoulder, for I fall’? Deemest thou that the men who

enter God's temple in malice, to the provoking of blood, and neither

for His love nor for His wrath will abate their purpose,—shall after-

wards stand, with thee in the porch midway between Him and them-

selves, to give ear unto thy thin voice, which merely the fall of their

visors can drown, and to see thy hands, stretched feebly, tremble

among their swords? Give thou to God no more than He asketh of

thee; but to man also, that which is man's. In all that thou doest,

work from thine own heart, simply; for his heart is as thine, when

thine is wise and humble; and he shall have understanding of thee.

One drop of rain is as another, and the sun's prism in all: and shalt

thou not be as he, whose lives are the breath of One? Only by making

thyself his equal can he learn to hold communion with thee, and at last

own thee above him. Not till thou lean over the water shalt thou see
Image of page 555 page: 555
thine image therein: stand erect, and it shall slope from thy feet and

be lost. Know that there is but this means whereby thou mayst serve

God with man:—Set thine hand and thy soul to serve man with God.”
And when she that spoke had said these words within Chiaro's spirit,

she left his side quietly, and stood up as he had first seen her: with her

fingers laid together, and her eyes steadfast, and with the breadth of

her long dress covering her feet on the floor. And, speaking again,

she said:—
“Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto thee, and paint

me thus, as I am, to know me: weak, as I am, and in the weeds of this

time; only with eyes which seek out labour, and with a faith, not

learned, yet jealous of prayer. Do this; so shall thy soul stand before

thee always, and perplex thee no more.”
And Chiaro did as she bade him. While he worked, his face grew

solemn with knowledge: and before the shadows had turned, his work

was done. Having finished, he lay back where he sat, and was asleep

immediately: for the growth of that strong sunset was heavy about

him, and he felt weak and haggard; like one just come out of a dusk,

hollow country, bewildered with echoes, where he had lost himself,

and who has not slept for many days and nights. And when she saw

him lie back, the beautiful woman came to him, and sat at his head,

gazing, and quieted his sleep with her voice.
The tumult of the factions had endured all that day through all Pisa,

though Chiaro had not heard it: and the last service of that feast was

a mass sung at midnight from the windows of all the churches for the

many dead who lay about the city, and who had to be buried before

morning, because of the extreme heat.
In the spring of 1847, I was at Florence. Such as were there at the

same time with myself—those, at least, to whom Art is something,—

will certainly recollect how many rooms of the Pitti Gallery were closed

through that season, in order that some of the pictures they contained

might be examined and repaired without the necessity of removal.

The hall, the staircases, and the vast central suite of apartments, were

the only accessible portions; and in these such paintings as they could

admit from the sealed penetralia were profanely huddled together,

without respect of dates, schools, or persons.
I fear that, through this interdict, I may have missed seeing many of

the best pictures. I do not mean only the most talked of: for these,

as they were restored, generally found their way somehow into the open

rooms, owing to the clamours raised by the students; and I remember

how old Ercoli's, the curator's, spectacles used to be mirrored in the

reclaimed surface, as he leaned mysteriously over these works with

some of the visitors, to scrutinize and elucidate.
One picture that I saw that spring, I shall not easily forget. It was

among those, I believe, brought from the other rooms, and had been

hung, obviously out of all chronology, immediately beneath that head

by Raphael so long known as the Berrettino, and now said to be the

portrait of Cecco Ciulli.
The picture I speak of is a small one, and represents merely the

figure of a woman, clad to the hands and feet with a green and grey

raiment, chaste and early in its fashion, but exceedingly simple. She

is standing: her hands are held together lightly, and her eyes set

earnestly open.
The face and hands in this picture, though wrought with great

delicacy, have the appearance of being painted at once, in a single

sitting: the drapery is unfinished. As soon as I saw the figure, it

drew an awe upon me, like water in shadow. I shall not attempt to

describe it more than I have already done; for the most absorbing

wonder of it was its literality. You knew that figure, when painted,
Image of page 556 page: 556


had been seen; yet it was not a thing to be seen of men. This language

will appear ridiculous to such as have never looked on the work; and

it may be even to some among those who have. On examining it

closely, I perceived in one corner of the canvas the words Manus

Animam pinxit, and the date 1239.
I turned to my Catalogue, but that was useless, for the pictures were

all displaced. I then stepped up to the Cavaliere Ercoli, who was in

the room at the moment, and asked him regarding the subject and

authorship of the painting. He treated the matter, I thought, some-

what slightingly, and said that he could show me the reference in the

Catalogue, which he had compiled. This, when found, was not of

much value, as it merely said, “Schizzo d'autore incerto,” adding the

inscription.* I could willingly have prolonged my inquiry, in the hope

that it might somehow lead to some result; but I had disturbed the

curator from certain yards of Guido, and he was not communicative. I

went back, therefore, and stood before the picture till it grew dusk.
The next day I was there again; but this time a circle of students

was round the spot, all copying the Berrettino. I contrived, however,

to find a place whence I could see my picture, and where I seemed to be

in nobody's way. For some minutes I remained undisturbed; and

then I heard, in an English voice: “Might I beg of you, sir, to stand a

little more to this side, as you interrupt my view?”
I felt vexed, for, standing where he asked me, a glare struck on the

picture from the windows, and I could not see it. However, the request

was reasonably made, and from a countryman; so I complied, and

turning away, stood by his easel. I knew it was not worth while; yet

I referred in some way to the work underneath the one he was copying.

He did not laugh, but he smiled as we do in England. “ Very odd, is

it not?” said he.
The other students near us were all continental; and seeing an

Englishman select an Englishman to speak with, conceived, I suppose,

that he could understand no language but his own. They had evi-

dently been noticing the interest which the little picture appeared to

excite in me.
One of them, an Italian, said something to another who stood next

to him. He spoke with a Genoese accent, and I lost the sense in the

villanous dialect. “Che so?” replied the other, lifting his eyebrows

towards the figure; “roba mistica: 'st' Inglesi son matti sul misti-

cismo: somiglia alle nebbie di là. Li fa pensare alla patria,
  • ‘e intenerisce il core
  • Lo di ch' han detto ai dolci amici adio.’”
“La notte, vuoi dire,” said a third.
There was a general laugh. My compatriot was evidently a novice

in the language, and did not take in what was said. I remained silent,

being amused.
“Et toi donc?” said he who had quoted Dante, turning to a student,

whose birthplace was unmistakable, even had he been addressed in

any other language: “que dis-tu de ce genre-là?”
“Moi?” returned the Frenchman, standing back from his easel,

and looking at me and at the figure, quite politely, though with an

evident reservation: “Je dis, mon cher, que c'est une spécialité dont

je me fiche pas mal. Je tiens que quand on ne comprend pas une

chose, c'est qu'elle ne signifie rien.”
My reader thinks possibly that the French student was right.
Transcribed Footnote (page 556):

* I should here say, that in the latest catalogues (owing, as in cases before mentioned,

to the zeal and enthusiasm of Dr. Aemmster), this, and several other pictures, have been

more competently entered. The work in question is now placed in the Sala Sessagona,

a room I did not see—under the number 161. It is described as “Figura mistica di

Chiaro dell' Erma,” and there is a brief notice of the author appended.

Image of page 557 page: 557
more about St. Agnes of Intercession
SAINT AGNES OF INTERCESSION

“In all my life,” said my uncle in his customary voice, made up of goodness and

trusting simplicity, and a spice of piety withal, which, an't pleased your worship, made

it sound the sweeter,—“In all my life,” quoth my uncle Toby, “I have never heard a

stranger story than one which was told me by a sergeant in Maclure's regiment, and

which, with your permission, Doctor, I will relate.”

“No stranger, brother Toby,” said my father testily, “than a certain tale to be found

in Slawkenbergius (being the eighth of his third Decad), and called by him the History

of an Icelandish Nose.”

“Nor than the golden legend of Saint Anschankus of Lithuania,” added Dr. Slop,

“who, being troubled digestively while delivering his discourse ‘de sanctis sanctorum,’

was tempted by the Devil in imagine vasis in contumeliam,—which is to say,—in the form

of a vessel unto dishonour.”

Now Excentrio, as one mocking, sayeth, etc., etc.—Tristram Shandy.

Among my earliest recollections, none is stronger than that of my

father standing before the fire when he came home in the London

winter evenings, and singing to us in his sweet, generous tones: some-

times ancient English ditties,—such songs as one might translate from

the birds, and the brooks might set to music; sometimes those with

which foreign travel had familiarized his youth,—among them the great

tunes which have rung the world's changes since '89. I used to sit on

the hearth-rug, listening to him, and look between his knees into the

fire till it burned my face, while the sights swarming up in it seemed

changed and changed with the music: till the music and the fire and

my heart burned together, and I would take paper and pencil, and try

in some childish way to fix the shapes that rose within me. For my

hope, even then, was to be a painter.
The first book I remember to have read, of my own accord, was

an old-fashioned work on Art, which my mother had,—Hamilton's

“English Conoscente.” It was a kind of continental tour,—sufficiently

Della-Cruscan, from what I can recall of it,—and contained notices

of pictures which the author had seen abroad, with engravings after

some of them. These were in the English fashion of that day, executed

in stipple and printed with red ink; tasteless enough, no doubt, but

I yearned towards them and would toil over them for days. One

especially possessed for me a strong and indefinable charm: it was

a Saint Agnes in glory, by Bucciolo d'Orli Angiolieri. This plate

I could copy from the first with much more success than I could any

of the others; indeed, it was mainly my love of the figure, and a

desire to obtain some knowledge regarding it, which impelled me,

by one magnanimous effort upon the “Conoscente,” to master in a

few days more of the difficult art of reading than my mother's laborious

inculcations had accomplished till then. However, what I managed

to spell and puzzle out related chiefly to the executive qualities of

the picture, which could be little understood by a mere child; of

the artist himself, or the meaning of his work, the author of the book

appeared to know scarcely anything.
As I became older, my boyish impulse towards art grew into a

vital passion; till at last my father took me from school and per-

mitted me my own bent of study. There is no need that I should

dwell much upon the next few years of my life. The beginnings of

Art, entered on at all seriously, present an alternation of extremes:—

on the one hand, the most bewildering phases of mental endeavour,

on the other, a toil rigidly exact and dealing often with trifles. What

was then the precise shape of the cloud within my tabernacle, I could

scarcely say now; or whether through so thick a veil I could be sure

of its presence there at all. And as to which statue at the Museum

I drew most or learned least from,—or which Professor at the Academy

“set” the model in the worst taste,—these are things which no one

need care to know. I may say, briefly, that I was wayward enough
Image of page 558 page: 558
in the pursuit, if not in the purpose; that I cared even too little for

what could be taught me by others; and that my original designs

greatly outnumbered my school-drawings.
In most cases where study (such study, at least, as involves any

practical elements) has benumbed that subtle transition which brings

youth out of boyhood, there comes a point, after some time, when

the mind loses its suppleness and is riveted merely by the continuance

of the mechanical effort. It is then that the constrained senses

gradually assume their utmost tension, and any urgent impression

from without will suffice to scatter the charm. The student looks

up: the film of their own fixedness drops at once from before his eyes,

and for the first time he sees his life in the face.
In my nineteenth year, I might say that, between one path of Art

and another, I worked hard. One afternoon I was returning, after

an unprofitable morning, from a class which I attended. The day

was one of those oppressive lulls in autumn, when application, unless

under sustained excitement, is all but impossible,—when the perceptions

seem curdled and the brain full of sand. On ascending the stairs to

my room, I heard voices there, and when I entered, found my sister

Catharine, with another young lady, busily turning over my sketches

and papers, as if in search of something. Catharine laughed, and

introduced her companion as Miss Mary Arden. There might have

been a little malice in the laugh, for I remembered to have heard

the lady's name before, and to have then made in fun some teasing

inquiries about her, as one will of one's sisters' friends. I bowed for

the introduction, and stood rebuked. She had her back to the window,

and I could not well see her features at the moment; but I made sure

she was very beautiful, from her tranquil body and the way that

she held her hands. Catharine told me they had been looking together

for a book of hers which I had had by me for some time, and which

she had promised to Miss Arden. I joined in the search, the book

was found, and soon after they left my room. I had come in utterly

spiritless; but now I fell to and worked well for several hours. In

the evening, Miss Arden remained with our family circle till rather

late: till she left I did not return to my room, nor, when there, was

my work resumed that night. I had thought her more beautiful

than at first.
After that, every time I saw her, her beauty seemed to grow on

my sight by gazing, as the stars do in water. It was some time before

I ceased to think of her beauty alone; and even then it was still of

her that I thought. For about a year my studies somewhat lost

their hold upon me, and when that year was upon its close, she and

I were promised in marriage.
Miss Arden's station in life, though not lofty, was one of more ease

than my own, but the earnestness of her attachment to me had deterred

her parents from placing any obstacles in the way of our union. All

the more, therefore, did I now long to obtain at once such a position

as should secure me from reproaching myself with any sacrifice made

by her for my sake: and I now set to work with all the energy of

which I was capable, upon a picture of some labour, involving various

aspects of study. The subject was a modern one, and indeed it has

often seemed to me that all work, to be truly worthy, should be wrought

out of the age itself, as well as out of the soul of its producer, which

must needs be a soul of the age. At this picture I laboured constantly

and unweariedly, my days and my nights; and Mary sat to me for

the principal female figure. The exhibition to which I sent it opened

a few weeks before the completion of my twenty-first year.
Naturally enough, I was there on the opening day. My picture,

I knew, had been accepted, but I was ignorant of a matter perhaps

still more important,—its situation on the walls. On that now depended

its success; on its success the fulfilment of my most cherished hopes
Image of page 559 page: 559
might almost be said to depend. That is not the least curious feature

of life as evolved in society—which, where the average strength and

the average mind are equal, as in this world, becomes to each life

another name for destiny,—when a man, having endured labour, gives

its fruits into the hands of other men, that they may do their work

between him and mankind: confiding it to them, unknown, without

seeking knowledge of them; to them, who have probably done in

likewise before him, without appeal to the sympathy of kindred

experience: submitting to them his naked soul, himself, blind and

unseen: and with no thought of retaliation, when, it may be, by their

judgment, more than one year, from his dubious threescore and ten,

drops alongside, unprofitable, leaving its baffled labour for its successors

to recommence. There is perhaps no proof more complete how

sluggish and little arrogant, in aggregate life, is the sense of

individuality.
I dare say something like this may have been passing in my mind

as I entered the lobby of the exhibition, though the principle, with

me as with others, was subservient to its application; my thoughts,

in fact, starting from and tending towards myself and my own picture.

The kind of uncertainty in which I then was is rather a nervous affair;

and when, as I shouldered my way through the press, I heard my

name spoken close behind me, I believe that I could have wished the

speaker further off without being particular as to distance. I could

not well, however, do otherwise than look round, and on doing so,

recognised in him who had addressed me a gentleman to whom I had

been introduced overnight at the house of a friend, and to whose

remarks on the Corn question and the National Debt I had listened

with a wish for deliverance somewhat akin to that which I now felt;

the more so, perhaps, that my distaste was coupled with surprise;

his name having been for some time familiar to me as that of a writer

of poetry.
As soon as we were rid of the crush, we spoke and shook hands;

and I said, to conceal my chagrin, some platitudes as to Poetry being

present to support her sister Art in the hour of trial.
“Oh just so, thank you,” said he; “have you anything here?”
While he spoke, it suddenly struck me that my friend, the night

before, had informed me this gentleman was a critic as well as a poet.

And indeed, for the hippopotamus-fronted man, with his splay limbs

and wading gait, it seemed the more congenial vocation of the two.

In a moment, the instinctive antagonism wedged itself between the

artist and the reviewer, and I avoided his question.
He had taken my arm, and we were now in the gallery together.

My companion's scrutiny was limited almost entirely to the “line,”

but my own glance wandered furtively among the suburbs and out-

skirts of the ceiling, as a misgiving possessed me that I might have

a personal interest in those unenviable “high places” of art. Works,

which at another time would have absorbed my whole attention,

could now obtain from me but a restless and hurried examination:

still I dared not institute an open search for my own, lest thereby I

should reveal to my companion its presence in some dismal condemned

corner which might otherwise escape his notice. Had I procured my

catalogue, I might at least have known in which room to look; but

I had omitted to do so, thinking thereby to know my fate the sooner,

and never anticipating so vexatious an obstacle to my search. Mean-

while I must answer his questions, listen to his criticism, observe

and discuss. After nearly an hour of this work, we were not through

the first room. My thoughts were already bewildered, and my face

burning with excitement.
By the time we reached the second room, the crowd was more dense

than ever, and the heat more and more oppressive. A glance round

the walls could reveal but little of the consecrated “line,” before all
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parts of which the backs were clustered more or less thickly; except,

perhaps, where at intervals hung the work of some venerable member,

whose glory was departed from him. The seats in the middle of the

room were, for the most part, empty as yet: here and there only an

unenthusiastic lady had been left by her party, and sat in stately

unruffled toilet, her eye ranging apathetically over the upper portion

of the walls, where the gilt frames were packed together in desolate

parade. Over these my gaze also passed uneasily, but without en-

countering the object of its solicitude.
In this room my friend the critic came upon a picture, conspicuously

hung, which interested him prodigiously, and on which he seemed

determined to have my opinion. It was one of those tender and tearful

works, those “labours of love,” since familiar to all print-shop flâneurs,

—in which the wax doll is made to occupy a position in Art which it

can never have contemplated in the days of its humble origin. The

silks heaved and swayed in front of this picture the whole day long.
All that we could do was to stand behind, and catch a glimpse of it

now and then, through the whispering bonnets, whose “curtains”

brushed our faces continually. I hardly knew what to say, but my

companion was lavish of his admiration, and began to give symptoms

of the gushing of the poet-soul. It appeared that he had already seen

the picture in the studio, and being but little satisfied with my mono-

syllables, was at great pains to convince me. While he chattered, I

trembled with rage and impatience.
“You must be tired,” said he at last; “so am I; let us rest a

little.” He led the way to a seat. I was his slave, bound hand and

foot: I followed him.
The crisis now proceeded rapidly. When seated, he took from his

pocket some papers, one of which he handed to me. Who does not

know the dainty action of a poet fingering MS.? The knowledge

forms a portion of those wondrous instincts implanted in us for self-

preservation. I was past resistance, however, and took the paper

submissively.
“They are some verses,” he said, “suggested by the picture you

have just seen. I mean to print them in our next number, as being

the only species of criticism adequate to such a work.”
I read the poem twice over, for after the first reading I found I had

not attended to a word of it, and was ashamed to give it him back.

The repetition was not, however, much more successful, as regarded

comprehension,—a fact which I have since believed (having seen it

again) may have been dependent upon other causes besides my dis-

tracted thoughts. The poem, now included among the works of its

author, runs as follows:—
more about O thou who art not as I am
  • O thou who art not as I am,
  • Yet knowest all that I must be,—
  • O thou who livest certainly
  • Full of deep meekness like a lamb
  • Close laid for warmth under its dam,
  • On pastures bare towards the sea:—
  • Look on me, for my soul is bleak,
  • Nor owns its labour in the years,
  • Because of the deep pain of tears:
  • 10 It hath not found and will not seek,
  • Lest that indeed remain to speak
  • Which, passing, it believes it hears.
  • Like ranks in calm unipotence
  • Swayed past, compact and regular,
  • Time's purposes and portents are:
  • Yet the soul sleeps, while in the sense
  • The graven brows of Consequence
  • Lie sunk, as in blind wells the star.
Image of page 561 page: 561
Sig. 36
  • O gaze along the wind-strewn path
  • 20 That curves distinct upon the road
  • To the dim purple-hushed abode.
  • Lo! autumntide and aftermath!
  • Remember that the year has wrath
  • If the ungarnered wheat corrode.
  • It is not that the fears are sore
  • Or that the evil pride repels:
  • But there where the heart's knowledge dwells
  • The heart is gnawed within the core,
  • Nor loves the perfume from that shore
  • 30 Faint with bloom-pulvered asphodels.
Having atoned for non-attention by a second perusal, whose only

result was non-comprehension, I thought I had done my duty towards

this performance, which I accordingly folded up and returned to its

author. He asked, in so many words, my opinion of it.
“I think,” replied I coolly, “that when a poet strikes out for himself

a new path in style, he should first be quite convinced that it possesses

sufficient advantages to counterbalance the contempt which the swarm

of his imitators will bring upon poetry.”
My ambiguity was successful. I could see him take the compliment

to himself, and inhale it like a scent, while a slow broad smile covered his

face. It was much as if, at some meeting, on a speech being made

complimentary to the chairman, one of the waiters should elbow that

personage aside, plant his knuckles on the table, and proceed to return

thanks.
And indeed, I believe my gentleman was about to do so in due form,

but my thoughts, which had been unable to resist some enjoyment of

his conceit, now suddenly reverted to their one dominant theme; and

rising at once, in an indignant spleen at being thus harassed and beset,

I declared that I must leave him, and hurry through the rest of the

gallery by myself, for that I had an impending appointment. He rose

also. As we were shaking hands, a part of the “line” opposite to

where we stood was left bare by a lapse in the crowd. “There seems

to be an odd-looking picture,” said my companion. I looked in the

same direction: the press was closing again; I caught only a glimpse

of the canvas, but that sufficed: it was my own picture, on the line!

For a moment my head swam with me.
He walked towards the place, and I followed him. I did not at first

hear well what he said of the picture; but when I did, I found he was

abusing it. He called it quaint, crude, even grotesque; and certainly

the uncompromising adherence to nature as then present before me,

which I had attempted throughout, gave it, in the exhibition, a more

curious and unique appearance than I could have anticipated. Of

course only a very few minutes elapsed before my companion turned

to the catalogue for the artist's name.
“They thought the thing good,” he drawled as he ran his eye

down the pages, “or it wouldn't be on the line. 605, 606 — or else

the fellow has interest somewhere. 630, what the deuce am I thinking

of? — 613, 613, 613 — Here it is — Why,” he exclaimed, short

of breath with astonishment, “the picture is yours!”
“Well, it seems so,” said I, looking over his shoulder; “I suppose

they're likely to know.”
“And so you wanted to get away before we came to it. And so

the picture is yours!”
“Likely to remain so too,” I replied laughing, “if every one thinks

as well of it as you do.”
“Oh! mind you,” he exclaimed, “you must not be offended: one

always finds fault first: I am sure to congratulate you.”
The surprise he was in made him speak rather loud, so that people

were beginning to nudge each other, and whisper that I was the painter.
Image of page 562 page: 562
I therefore repeated hurriedly that I really must go, or I should miss

my appointment.
“Stay a minute,” ejaculated my friend the critic; “I am trying to

think what the style of your picture is like. It is like the works of a

very early man that I saw in Italy. Angioloni, Angellini, Angiolieri,—

that was the name,—Bucciuolo Angiolieri. He always turned the toes

in. The head of your woman there” (and he pointed to the figure

painted from Mary) “is exactly like a St. Agnes of his at Bologna.”
A flash seemed to strike before my eyes as he spoke. The name

mentioned was a part of my first recollections; and the picture he

spoke of. . . . Yes, indeed, there in the face of my betrothed bride, I

beheld the once familiar features of the St. Agnes, forgotten since

childhood! I gazed fixedly on the work of my own hands; and thought

turned in my brain like a wheel.
When I looked again toward my companion, I could see that he

was wondering at my evident abstraction. I did not explain, but

abruptly bidding him good-bye, hastened out of the exhibition.
As I walked homewards, the cloud was still about me, and the

street seemed to pass me like a shadow. My life had been, as it were,

drawn by, and the child and the man brought together. How had I

not at once recognized, in her I loved, the dream of my childhood?

Yet, doubtless, the sympathy of relation, though unconscious, must

have had its influence. The fact of the likeness was a mere casualty,

however singular; but that which had cast the shadow of a man's love

in the path of the child, and left the seed at his heart to work its growth

blindly in darkness, was surely much more than chance.
Immediately on reaching home, I made inquiries of my mother

concerning my old friend the “English Conoscente”; but learned, to

my disappointment, that she had long since missed the book, and had

never recovered it. I felt vexed in the extreme.
The joy with which the news of my picture was hailed at home may

readily be imagined. There was one, however, to whom it may have

been more welcome even than to my own household: to her, as to

myself, it was hope seen nearer. I could scarcely have assigned a reason

why I refrained from mentioning to her, or to any one, the strange point

of resemblance which I had been led to perceive; but from some un-

accountable reluctance I kept it to myself at the time. The matter

was detailed in the journal of the worthy poet-critic who had made

the discovery; such scraps of research being much too scarce not to

be worked to their utmost; it may be too that my precipitate retreat

had left him in the belief of my being a convicted plagiarist. I do not

think, however, that either Mary's family or my own saw the paper;

and indeed it was much too æsthetic to permit itself many readers.
Meanwhile, my picture was obtaining that amount of notice, favour-

able with unfavourable, which constitutes success, and was not long in

finding a purchaser. My way seemed clearing before me. Still, I

could not prevent my mind from dwelling on the curious incident

connected with the painting, and which, by constant brooding upon it,

had begun to assume, in my idea, almost the character of a mystery.

The coincidence was the more singular that my work, being in subject,

costume, and accessories, English, and of the present period, could

scarcely have been expected to suggest so striking an affinity in style

to the productions of one of the earliest Italian painters.
The gentleman who purchased my picture had commissioned me at

the same time for another. I had always entertained a great wish to

visit Italy, but now a still stronger impulse than before drew me

thither. All substantial record having been lost, I could hardly per-

suade myself that the idol of my childhood, and the worship I had

rendered it, was not all an unreal dream; and every day the longing

possessed me more strongly to look with my own eyes upon the veri-

table St. Agnes. Not holding myself free to marry as yet, I therefore
Image of page 563 page: 563
determined (having it now within my power) that I would seek Italy at

once, and remain there while I painted my next picture. Nor could

even the thought of leaving Mary deter me from this resolution.
On the day I quitted England, Mary's father again placed her hand

in mine, and renewed his promise; but our own hearts were a covenant

between us.
From this point, my narrative will proceed more rapidly to its issue.

Some lives of men are as the sea is, continually vexed and trampled

with winds. Others are, as it were, left on the beach. There the wave

is long in reaching its tide-mark, where it abides but a moment;

afterwards, for the rest of that day, the water is shifted back more or

less slowly; the sand it has filled hardens; and hourly the wind drives

lower till nightfall.
To dwell here on my travels any further than in so much as they

concern the thread of my story, would be superfluous. The first place

where I established myself, on arriving in the Papal States, was Bologna,

since it was there, as I well remembered, that the St. Agnes of Bucciuolo

Angiolieri was said to be. I soon became convinced, however, after

ransacking the galleries and private collections, that I had been mis-

informed. The great Clementine is for the most part a dismal wilder-

ness of Bolognese Art, “where nothing is that hath life,” being rendered

only the more ghastly by the “life-in-death” of Guido and the Caracci;

and the private collectors seem to emulate the Clementine.
From Bologna I removed to Rome, where I stayed only for a month,

and proceeded thence into Tuscany. Here, in the painter's native

province, after all, I thought the picture was most likely to be found;

as is generally the case with artists who have produced comparatively

few works, and whose fame is not of the highest order of all. Having

visited Siena and Arezzo, I took up my abode in Florence. Here,

however, seeing the necessity of getting to work at once, I commenced

my next picture, devoting to it a certain number of hours each day;

the rest of my time being chiefly spent among the galleries, where I

continued my search. The St. Agnes still eluded me; but in the Pitti

and elsewhere, I met with several works of Bucciuolo; in all of which

I thought, in fact, that I could myself recognize, despite the wide

difference both of subject and occasional treatment, a certain mental

approximation, not easily defined, to the style of my own productions.

The peculiarities of feeling and manner which had attracted my boyish

admiration had evidently sunk deep, and maintained, though hitherto

unperceived, their influence over me.
I had been at Florence for about three months, and my picture was

progressing, though slowly enough; moreover, the other idea which

engrossed me was losing its energy, by the recurrence of defeat, so that

I now determined on leaving the thing mainly to chance, and went here

and there, during the hours when I was not at work, seeing what was

to see. One day, however, being in a bookseller's shop, I came upon

some numbers of a new Dictionary of Works of Art, then in course of

publication, where it was stated that a painting of St. Agnes, by

Bucciuolo Angiolieri, was in the possession of the Academy of Perugia.

This then, doubtless, was the work I wished to see; and when in the

Roman States, I must already have passed upon my search through

the town which contained it. In how many books had I rummaged for

the information which chance had at length thrown in my way! I was

almost inclined to be provoked with so inglorious a success. All my

interest in the pursuit, however, revived at once, and I immediately

commenced taking measures for retracing my steps to Perugia. Before

doing so I despatched a long letter to Mary, with whom I kept up a

correspondence, telling her where to direct her next missive, but

without informing her as to the motive of my abrupt removal, although

in my letter I dwelt at some length, among other topics, on those works

of Bucciuolo which I had met with at Florence.
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I arrived at Perugia late in the evening, and to see the gallery before

the next morning was out of the question. I passed a most restless

night. The same one thought had been more or less with me during

the whole of my journey, and would not leave me now until my wish

was satisfied. The next day proved to be one on which the pictures

were not visible; so that on hastening to the Academy in the morning,

I was again disappointed. Upon the second day, had they refused me

admittance, I believe I should have resorted to desperate measures.

The doors however were at last wide open. Having put the swarm of

guides to rout, I set my feet on the threshold; and such is the power of

one absorbing idea, long suffered to dwell on the mind, that as I entered

I felt my heart choke me as if with some vague apprehension.
This portion of my story which the reader has already gone through

is so unromantic and easy of belief, that I fear the startling circum-

stances which remain to be told will jar upon him all the more by

contrast as a clumsy fabrication. My course, however, must be to

speak on, relating to the best of my memory things in which the memory

is not likely to have failed; and reserving at least my own inward

knowledge that all the events of this narrative (however unequal the

measure of credit they may obtain) have been equally, with myself,

matters of personal experience.
The Academy of Perugia is, in its little sphere, one of the high places

of privilege; and the first room, the Council Chamber, full of rickety

arm chairs, is hung with the presentation pictures of the members, a

collection of indigenous grandeurs of the school of David. I purchased

a catalogue of an old woman who was knitting in one corner, and pro-

ceeded to turn the leaves with nervous anxiety. Having found that

the Florentine pictures were in the last room, I commenced hurrying

across the rest of the gallery as fast as the polish of the waxed boards

would permit. There was no visitor besides myself in the rooms,

which were full of Roman, Bolognese, and Perugian handiwork: one or

two students only, who had set up their easels before some master-

piece of the “advanced” style, stared round in wonder at my irreverent

haste. As I walked, I continued my search in the catalogue; so that,

by the time I reached the Florentine room, I had found the number,

and walked, with a beating heart, straight up to the picture.
The picture is about half the size of life: it represents a beautiful

woman, seated, in the costume of the painter's time, richly adorned

with jewels; she holds a palm branch, and a lamb nestles to her feet.

The glory round her head is a device pricked without colour on the gold

background, which is full of the faces of angels. The countenance was

the one known to me, by a feeble reflex, in childhood; it was also the

exact portrait of Mary, feature by feature. I had been absent from

her for more than five months, and it was like seeing her again.
As I looked, my whole life seemed to crowd about me, and to stun

me like a pulse in my head. For some time I stood lost in astonish-

ment, admiration, perplexity, helpless of conjecture, and an almost

painful sense of love.
I had seen that in the catalogue there was some account of the

picture; and now, after a long while, I removed my eyes, dizzy with

gazing and with thought, from the face, and read in Italian as follows:
“No. 212. St. Agnes, with a glory of angels. By Bucciuolo An-

giolieri.
“Bertuccio, Buccio, or Bucciuolo d'Orli Angiolieri, a native of Cignana

in the Florentine territory, was born in 1405 and died in 1460. He was

the friend, and has been described as the pupil, of Benozzo Gozzoli;

which latter statement is not likely to be correct, since their ages were

nearly the same, as are also the dates of their earliest known pictures.
“He is said by some to have been the first to introduce a perfectly

nude figure in a devotional subject (the St. Sebastian now at Florence);

an opinion which Professor Ehrenhaupt has called in question, by
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fixing the date of the five anonymous frescoes in the Church of Sant'

Andrea d'Oltr' arno, which contain several nude figures, at a period

antecedent to that in which he flourished. His works are to be met

with at Florence, at Lucca, and in one or two cities of Germany. The

present picture, though ostensibly representing St. Agnes, is the por-

trait of Blanzifiore dal l'Ambra, a lady to whom the painter was

deeply attached, and who died early. The circumstances connected

by tradition with the painting of this picture are of a peculiarly melan-

choly nature.
“It appears that, in the vicissitudes of faction, the lady's family

were exiled from Florence, and took refuge at Lucca; where some of

them were delivered by treachery to their enemies and put to death.

These accumulated misfortunes (not the least among which was the

separation from her lover, who, on account of his own ties and con-

nections, could not quit Florence), preyed fatally on the mind and

health of Blanzifiore; and before many months had passed, she was

declared to be beyond medicinal aid. No sooner did she learn this,

than her first thought was of the misery which her death would occasion

her lover; and she insisted on his being summoned immediately from

Florence, that they might at least see each other once again upon

earth. When, on his arrival, she witnessed his anguish at thus losing

her for ever, Blanzifiore declared that she would rise at once from her

bed, and that Bucciuolo should paint her portrait before she died; for

so, she said, there should still remain something to him whereby to

have her in memory. In this will she persisted against all remonstrance

occasioned by the fears of her friends; and for two days, though in a

dying state, she sat with wonderful energy to her lover: clad in her

most sumptuous attire, and arrayed with all her jewels: her two

sisters remaining constantly at her side, to sustain her and supply

restoratives. On the third day, while Bucciuolo was still at work, she

died without moving.
“After her death, Bucciuolo finished the portrait, and added to

it the attributes of St. Agnes, in honour of her purity. He kept it

always near him during his lifetime; and, in dying, bequeathed it

to the Church of Santa Agnese dei Lavoranti, where he was buried

at her side. During all the years of his life, after the death of Blan-

zifiore, he remained at Lucca: where some of his works are still to

be found.
“The present picture has been copied many times, but never

competently engraved; and was among those conveyed to Paris

by Bonaparte, in the days of his omnipotence.”
The feeling of wonder which attained bewilderment, as I proceeded

with this notice, was yet less strong than an intense penetrating

sympathy excited in me by the unhappy narrative, which I could not

easily have accounted for, but which so overcame me that, as I finished,

the tears stung my eyes. I remained for some time leaning upon

the bar which separated me from the picture, till at last my mind

settled to more definite thought. But thought here only served to

confound. A woman had then lived four hundred years since, of

whom that picture was the portrait; and my own eyes bore me witness

that it was also the surpassingly perfect resemblance of a woman

now living and breathing,—of my own affianced bride! While I

stood, these things grew and grew upon my mind, till my thoughts

seemed to hustle about me like pent-up air.
The catalogue was still open in my hand; and now, as my eyes

wandered, in aimless distraction, over the page, they were arrested

by these words: “ No. 231. Portrait of Bucciuolo Angiolieri painted

by himself.” At first my bewildered perceptions scarcely attached

a meaning to the words; yet, owing no doubt to the direction of

my thoughts, my eye dwelt upon them, and continued to peruse

them over and over, until at last their purport flashed upon me. At
Image of page 566 page: 566
the same instant that it did so, I turned round and glanced rapidly

over the walls for the number: it was at the other end of the room.

A trembling suspense, with something almost of involuntary awe,

was upon me as I ran towards the spot; the picture was hung low;

I stooped over the rail to look closely at it, and was face to face with

myself! I can recall my feeling at that moment, only as one of the

most lively and exquisite fear.
It was myself, of nearly the same age as mine was then, but perhaps

a little older. The hair and beard were of my colour, trimmed in an

antique fashion; and the dress belonged to the early part of the

fifteenth century. In the background was a portion of the city of

Florence. One of the upper corners contained this inscription:—


ALBERTUS* ORLITIS ANGELERIUS

Ipsum ipse

ÆTAT. SUÆ XXIV.
That it was my portrait,—that the St. Agnes was the portrait of

Mary,—and that both had been painted by myself four hundred years

ago,—this now rose up distinctly before me as the one and only solution

of so startling a mystery, and as being, in fact, that result round

which, or some portion of which, my soul had been blindly hovering,

uncertain of itself. The tremendous experience of that moment,

the like of which has never, perhaps, been known to any other man,

must remain undescribed; since the description, read calmly at

common leisure, could seem but fantastic raving. I was as one who,

coming after a wilderness to some city dead since the first world,

should find among the tombs a human body in his own exact image,

embalmed; having the blackened coin still within its lips, and the

jars still at its side, in honour of gods whose very names are abolished.
After the first incapable pause, during which I stood rooted to the

spot, I could no longer endure to look on the picture, and turning

away, fled back through the rooms and into the street. I reached

it with the sweat springing on my forehead, and my face felt pale

and cold in the sun.
As I hurried homewards, amid all the chaos of my ideas, I had

clearly resolved on one thing,—namely, that I would leave Perugia

that night on my return to England. I had passports which would

carry me as far as the confines of Italy; and when there I counted

on somehow getting them signed at once by the requisite authorities,

so as to pursue my journey without delay.
On entering my room in the hotel where I had put up, I found a

letter from Mary lying on the table. I was too much agitated with

conflicting thoughts to open it at once; and therefore allowed it to

remain till my perturbation should in some measure have subsided.

I drew the blinds before my windows, and covered my face to think;

my forehead was still damp between my hands. At least an hour

must have elapsed in that tumult of the spirit which leaves no im-

pression behind, before I opened the letter.
It was an answer to the one which I had posted before leaving

Florence. After many questions and much news of home, there was

a paragraph which ran thus:—
“The account you give me of the works of Bucciuolo Angiolieri

interested me greatly. I am surprised never to have heard you

mention him before, as he appears to find so much favour with you.

But perhaps he was unknown to you till now. How I wish I could

stand by your side before his pictures, to enjoy them with you and

hear you interpret their beauties! I assure you that what you say

about them is so vivid, and shows so much insight into all the meanings
Transcribed Footnote (page 566):

* Alberto, Albertuccio, Bertuccio, Buccio, Bucciuolo.

Image of page 567 page: 567
of the painter, that, while reading, I could scarcely divest myself of

the impression that you were describing some of your own works.”
As I finished the last sentence, the paper fell from my hands. A

solemn passage of Scripture had been running in my mind; and as

I again lay back and hid my now burning and fevered face, I repeated

it aloud:—“How unsearchable are Thy judgments, and Thy ways

past finding out!”
As I have said, my intention was to set out from Perugia that same

night; but on making inquiry, I found that it would be impossible

to do so before the morning, as there was no conveyance till then.

Post-horses, indeed, I might have had, but of this my resources would

not permit me to think. That was a troubled and gloomy evening

for me. I wrote, as well as my disturbed state would allow me, a

short letter to my mother, and one to Mary, to apprise them of my

return; after which, I went early to bed, and, contrary to my

expectations, was soon asleep.
That night I had a dream, which has remained as clear and whole

in my memory as the events of the day: and so strange were those

events—so apart from the rest of my life till then,—that I could some-

times almost persuade myself that my dream of that night also was

not without a mystic reality.
I dreamt that I was in London, at the exhibition where my picture

had been; but in the place of my picture, which I could not see,

there hung the St. Agnes of Perugia. A crowd was before it; and

I heard several say that it was against the rules to hang that picture,

for that the painter (naming me) was dead. At this, a woman who

was there began to weep: I looked at her and perceived it to be

Mary. She had her arm in that of a man who appeared to wear a

masquerade dress; his back was towards me, and he was busily

writing on some tablets; but on peering over his shoulder, I saw that

his pencil left no mark where it passed, which he did not seem to

perceive, however, going on as before. I spoke to Mary, but she

continued crying and did not look up. I then touched her companion

on the shoulder; but finding that he paid no attention, I shook him

and told him to resign that lady's arm to me, as she was my bride.

He then turned round suddenly, and showed me my own face with

the hair and beard quaintly cut, as in the portrait of Bucciuolo. After

looking mournfully at me, he said, “Not mine, friend, but neither

thine:” and while he spoke, his face fell in like a dead face. Mean-

time, every one seemed pale and uneasy, and they began to whisper

in knots; and all at once I found opposite me the critic I met at the

gallery, who was saying something I could not understand, but so

fast that he panted and kept wiping his forehead. Then my dream

changed. I was going upstairs to my room at home, where I thought

Mary was waiting to sit for her portrait. The staircase was quite

dark; and as I went up, the voices of several persons I knew passed

by me, as if they were descending; and sometimes my own among

them. I had reached the top, and was feeling for the handle of the

door, when it was opened suddenly by an angel; and looking in, I

saw, not Mary, but a woman whose face was hidden with white light,

and who had a lamb beside her that was bleating aloud. She knelt

in the middle of the room, and I heard her say several times: “O

Lord, it is more than he can bear. Spare him, O Lord, for her sake

whom he consecrated to me.” After this, music came out of heaven,

and I thought to have heard speech; but instead, there was silence

that woke me.
This dream must have occurred repeatedly in the course of the

night, for I remember waking up in perfect darkness, overpowered

with fear, and crying out in the words which I had heard spoken

by the woman; and when I woke in the morning, it was from the

same dream, and the same words were on my lips.
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During the two days passed at Perugia, I had not had time to think

of the picture I was engaged upon, which had therefore remained in

its packing-case, as had also the rest of my baggage. I was thus in

readiness to start without further preliminaries. My mind was so

confused and disturbed that I have but a faint recollection of that

morning; to the agitating events of the previous day, my dream had

now added, in spite of myself, a vague foreboding of calamity.
No obstacle occurred throughout the course of my journey, which

was, even at that recent date, a longer one than it is now. The whole

time, with me, was occupied by one haunting and despotic idea: it

accompanied me all day on the road; and if we paused at night it

either held me awake or drove all rest from my sleep. It is owing

to this, I suppose, that the wretched mode of conveyance, the evil

roads, the evil weather, the evil inns, the harassings of petty au-

thorities, and all those annoyances which are set as close as milestones

all over the Continent, remain in my memory only with a general

sense of discomfort. Moreover, on the day when I left Perugia I

had felt the seeds of fever already in my veins; and during the journey

this oppression kept constantly on the increase. I was obliged,

however, carefully to conceal it, since the panic of the cholera was

again in Europe, and any sign of illness would have caused me to be

left at once on the road.
By the night of my arrival in London, I felt that I was truly and

seriously ill; and, indeed during the last part of the journey, physical

suffering had for the first time succeeded in partially distracting my

thought from the thing which possessed it. The first inquiries I made

of my family were regarding Mary. I learned that she at least was

still in good health, and anxiously looking for my arrival; that she

would have been there, indeed, but that I had not been expected till a

day later. This was a weight taken from my heart. After scarcely

more than an hour passed among my family, I repaired to my bed;

both body and mind had at length a perfect craving for rest. My

mother, immediately on my arrival, had noticed my flushed and

haggard appearance; but when questioned by her I attributed this to

the fatigues of travelling.
In spite of my extreme need of sleep, and the wish I felt for it, I

believe that I slept but little that night. I am not certain, however,

for I can only remember that as soon as I lay down my head began to

whirl till I seemed to be lifted out of my bed; but whether this were

in waking or a part of some distempered dream, I cannot determine.

This, however, is the last thing I can recall. The next morning I was

in a raging fever, which lasted for five weeks.
Health and consciousness came back to me by degrees, as light and

air towards the outlet of a long vault. At length, one day, I sat up

in bed for the first time. My head felt light in the pillows; and the

sunshine that warmed the room made my blood creep refreshingly.

My father and mother were both with me.
As sense had deserted my mind, so had it returned, in the form of

one constant thought. But this was now grown peremptory, absolute,

uncompromising, and seemed to cry within me for speech, till silence

became a torment. To-day, therefore, feeling for the first time, since

my gradual recovery, enough of strength for the effort, I resolved that

I would at last tell the whole to my parents. Having first warned

them of the extraordinary nature of the disclosure I was about to make,

I accordingly began. Before I had gone far with my story, however,

my mother fell back in her seat, sobbing violently; then rose, and

running up to me, kissed me many times, still sobbing and calling me

her poor boy. She then left the room. I looked towards my father,

and saw that he had turned away his face. In a few moments he rose

also without looking at me, and went out as my mother had done.
I could not quite account for this, but was so weary of doubt and
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conjecture, that I was content to attribute it to the feelings excited by

my narration and the pity for all those troubles which the events I

spoke of had brought upon me. It may appear strange, but I believe

it to have been the fact, that the startling and portentous reality which

those events had for me, while it left me fully prepared for wonder and

perturbation on the part of my hearers, prevented the idea from even oc-

curring to me that, as far as belief went, there could be more hesitation

in another's than in my own.
It was not long before my father returned. On my questioning him

as to the cause of my mother's excitement, he made no explicit answer,

but begged to hear the remainder of what I had to disclose. I went on,

therefore, and told my tale to the end. When I had finished, my

father again appeared deeply affected; but soon recovering himself,

endeavoured, by reasoning, to persuade me either that the circum-

stances I had described had no foundation save in my own diseased

fancy, or else that at the time of their occurrence incipient illness had

caused me to magnify very ordinary events into marvels and omens.
Finding that I still persisted in my conviction of their actuality, he

then informed me that the matters I had related were already known

to himself and to my mother through the disjointed ravings of my

long delirium, in which I had dwelt on the same theme incessantly;

and that their grief, which I had remarked, was occasioned by hearing

me discourse thus connectedly on the same wild and unreal subject,

after they had hoped me to be on the road to recovery. To convince me

that this could merely be the effect of prolonged illness, he led me to

remark that I had never till then alluded to the topic, either by word

or in any of my letters, although, by my account, the chain of coin-

cidences had already begun before I left England. Lastly, he implored

me most earnestly at once to resist and dispel this fantastic brain sick-

ness, lest the same idea, allowed to retain possession of my mind,

might end,—as he dreaded to think that it indeed might,—by en-

dangering my reason.
My father's last words struck me like a stone in the mouth; there

was no longer any answer that I could make. I was very weak at the

time, and I believe I lay down in my bed and sobbed. I remember it

was on that day that it seemed to me of no use to see Mary again, or,

indeed, to strive again after any aim I had had, and that for the first

time I wished to die; and then it was that there came distinctly, such

as it may never have come to any other man, the unutterable suspicion

of the vanity of death.
From that day until I was able to leave my bed, I never in any way

alluded to the same terrible subject; but I feared my father's eye

as though I had been indeed a madman. It is a wonder that I did not

really lose my senses. I lived in a continual panic lest I should again

speak of that matter unconsciously, and used to repeat inwardly, for

hours together, words enjoining myself to silence. Several friends of

the family, who had made constant inquiries during my illness, now

wished to see me; but this I strictly refused, being in fear that my

incubus might get the better of me, and that I might suddenly implore

them to say if they had any recollection of a former existence. Even

a voice or a whistle from the street would set me wondering whether

that man also had lived before, and if so, why I alone should be cursed

with this awful knowledge. It was useless even to seek relief in books;

for the name of any historical character occurring at once disturbed

my fevered mind with conjectures as to what name its possessor now

bore, who he was, and in what country his lot was cast.
For another week after that day I was confined to my room, and then

at last I might go forth. Latterly, I had scarcely spoken to any one,

but I do not think that either my father or my mother imagined I had

forgotten. It was on a Sunday that I left the house for the first time.

Some person must have been buried at the neighbouring church very
Image of page 570 page: 570
early that morning, for I recollect that the first thing I heard upon

waking was the funeral bell. I had had, during the night, but a rest-

less throbbing kind of sleep; and I suppose it was my excited nerves

which made me wait with a feeling of ominous dread through the long

pauses of the tolling, unbroken as they were by any sound from the

silent Sunday streets, except the twitter of birds about the housetops.

The last knell had long ceased, and I had been lying for some time in

bitter reverie, when the bells began to ring for church. I cannot

express the sudden refreshing joy which filled me at that moment.

I rose from my bed, and kneeling down, prayed while the sound lasted.
On joining my parents at breakfast, I made my mother repeat to me

once more how many times Mary had called during my illness, and all

that she had said and done. They told me that she would probably

be there that morning; but my impatience would not permit me to

wait; I must go and seek her myself at once. Often already, said

my parents, she had wished and begged to see me, but they had feared

for my strength. This was in my thoughts as I left the house; and

when, shutting the door behind me, I stood once again in the living

sunshine, it seemed as if her love burst around me like music.
I set out hastily in the well-known direction of Mary's house. While

I walked through the crowded streets, the sense of reality grew upon

me at every step, and for the first time during some months I felt a

man among men. Any artist or thoughtful man whatsoever, whose

life has passed in a large city, can scarcely fail, in course of time, to

have some association connecting each spot continually passed and

repassed with the labours of his own mind. In the woods and fields

every place has its proper spell and mystery, and needs no consecration

from thought; but wherever in the daily walk through the thronged

and jarring city, the soul has read some knowledge from life, or laboured

towards some birth within its own silence, there abides the glory of

that hour, and the cloud rests there before an unseen tabernacle. And

thus now, with myself, old trains of thought and the conceptions of

former years came back as I passed from one swarming resort to

another, and seemed, by contrast, to wake my spirit from its wild and

fantastic broodings to a consciousness of something like actual exist-

ence; as the mere reflections of objects, sunk in the vague pathless

water, appear almost to strengthen it into substance.
more about Exhibition of Modern British Art at the Old Water- Colour Gallery, 1850
EXHIBITION OF MODERN BRITISH ART AT THE OLD

WATER-COLOUR GALLERY, 1850
The principal claim to support made by the promoters of this new

Winter Exhibition rests on its being entirely free of expense to the

artists exhibiting, even in the event of sale; no charge being made for

space, as at the Portland Gallery, nor any percentage levied on pur-

chases, as at all other exhibitions with the exception of the Royal

Academy. Its principal object appears to be to place before the public

a collection of drawings and sketches (several of them the first studies

for pictures already well known), a class of productions not of very

frequent occurrence in our annual picture shows. Its principal ex-

hibitors are of course the same whose works fill the other galleries, and

among them may be especially noticed a considerable sprinkling of

Associates from the Royal Academy. Of late years, the Associate-

ship has come to present a somewhat anomalous aspect, viewed as a

position in art. Originally instituted as a preliminary step to the

highest honours, it now musters a body of young artists so much

resembling each other in style, in choice of subjects, and even in the
Image of page 571 page: 571
Note: There is a typo on page 571, in line 2 up from the bottom: “severai” is printed rather than the word “several.”
minutiæ of execution, that it is difficult to suppose, at each new ac-

cession to their number, that the young man so elevated is any nearer

than before to the full membership of the Academy; since all can

scarcely be at any time received into the Forty, nor is selection among

them an easy matter. The Associateship has thus grown to be looked

upon almost as a limit of achievement, at least by a certain class of

artists; some of whom would, we suspect, be actually scared, could they

contemplate, when signing their names as aspirants for the minor

grade, that they were ever to be called on to discharge the duties of a

Professorship, for which neither nature nor study has fitted them;

utterly lacking as do certain among them education, in the first place,

and, in the second place, the capacity to educate themselves. Thus

it happens that year after year the corner-places and outposts of the

“line” at the Academy are occupied, in a great measure, by pictures

so closely resembling each other (though from different hands) as

hardly to establish a separate recollection. Meanwhile, year after year,

the works of other young artists continue to be ill placed and com-

paratively unnoticed; one or other of whom, however, in some year

or other, finds himself at last on the line, in a little while to be an

Associate, and in yet a little while an Academician. Then it is that the

question comes to be asked, why he, now suddenly found worthy to

take the head of the board, should so long have sat beneath so many

over whom he is now at once advanced. And the answer, whether

spoken or not, is, that this man was marked by the Academy for an

Academician, and not, as these, for Associates; and that verily they

have their reward.
These preliminary remarks will not be considered out of place when

we see how many of the young men in this Exhibition are evidently

striving to do exactly the same thing which others, also exhibitors

here, have done,—making use of exactly the same means as those

who have gone before them, in hope of the same result and no more.
We have said that the collection consists principally of sketches, and

indeed rests its chief claim on bringing together for the first time any

considerable gathering of such productions. We will not dispute the

plea as a matter of fact, although our memory presents to us certain

feet of wall in Trafalgar Square which have been covered annually for

the most part, from time immemorial, with works little differing from

these sketches except in size. Let us, however, allow that we are here

for the first time presented with sketches by British artists; and still

we must needs confess a degree of obtuseness as to the benefit, and a

certain reluctance of gratitude. It has long been cause of complaint

that our organs of veneration are called upon to be influenced by the

I.O.U.'s and washing-bills of great men. But has it come to this now—

that even mediocrity shall not have its dressing-room? For our part,

we have ventured to suspect that the slightest and most trifling pro-

ductions of some British artists—say Mr. Hollins or Mr. Brooks—

might, for any public demand, as well have been held sacred to that

moderate enthusiasm which may be supposed to have given them

birth. Nay, it has been suggested to us by an unguarded acquaintance

that even Mr. Frith, Mr. Goodall, or Mr. Frank Stone, may be con-

jectured at some time, in moments of unusual languor, to have pro-

duced works (say of the size of three half-crowns) which might almost

be regarded as inconsiderable, and the like of which Heaven permits

the average Briton to execute, so he be only supplied with a given

quantity of hogshair and pigment.
Having said thus much in the way of introduction, called for no

less by the recent establishment than by the character of the Ex-

hibition, we shall proceed in our next to an examination of the severai

performances.
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more about Frank Stone: Sympathy, 1850
FRANK STONE

“Sympathy” (1850)
Whether the sympathy of the gazer with the painter, or of the painter

with his subject, or indeed of the young lady in faded yellow with the

young lady in washed-out red, or vice versâ, be the sympathy here

symbolized, there is no precise clue to determine. But a conjecture

may be hazarded that the distress of the fair ones is occasioned by a

“distress” for rent; since under no other circumstances could we

expect to meet with a blue satin sofa in a place which, from its utter

nakedness, can be intended for no part of a modern dwelling-house

except the passage leading to the street. These premises, however, are

merely, as we have said, conjectural—knocked up at random on the

appearance of the premises represented. All we can know for certain

from the picture is, that on some occasion or other, somewhere, a mild

young lady threw her arms (with as much of abandon as a lay-figure

may permit itself) round another sorrowful but very mild young lady;

that the faces of these young ladies were made of wax, their hair of

Berlin wool, and their hands of scented soap. There is one other piece

of knowledge distinctly communicated, viz., that such pictures as this

will not sustain Mr. Stone's reputation.
more about J. C. Hook
J. C. HOOK

“The Departure of the Chevalier Bayard from Brescia. As he quitted

his chamber to take horse, the two fair damsels met him, each bearing a

little offering which she had worked during his sickness” (1850).
The general arrangement of colour in this picture is very brilliant and

delightful, and its first aspect will be highly satisfactory; as indeed

it could scarcely fail to be when the work of a very accomplished young

artist, as Mr. Hook incontestably is, is surrounded by the incompetence

which predominates among the figure-pieces here. But we question

whether it would not be wise to carry away the first impression of

pleasure, without endangering it by any stricter examination. There

is a flimsy holiday-look about the picture, when considered, at variance

not only with the simplicity of the subject, but also with truth to nature.

One figure, however,—that of the foremost lady—is of exquisite grace

and beauty; the head and bosom perfectly charming. As for the good

Bayard himself, we suspect that, could he have had any preknowledge

of the carpet-knight (with something, too, of the dashing outlaw) Mr.

Hook was to make of him, he would not at that moment have been

altogether sans peur; and that, could he now look at the picture and

speak his mind of it, the artist would not find him to be, in an active

sense, sans reproche. The present work, though not of the same

dimensions, may be considered, in subject, as a companion to one which

Mr. Hook had last year at the Royal Academy.
more about Anthony: The Rival's Wedding, 1850
ANTHONY

“The Rival's Wedding” (1850)
This picture, the only one contributed by Mr. Anthony, needs but a

little more of finish to have secured to it that prominent position on the

walls to which its merits, even as it is, undoubtedly entitled it. The
Image of page 573 page: 573
subject, as indicated in the catalogue, is not, perhaps, very clearly

developed; but such pictures as this are independent of any catalogue.

To some, the first aspect of the work will be more singular than en-

gaging; indeed, it is perhaps necessary that the eye should gaze long

enough to be isolated from all the surrounding canvases, before the

mind can be fully impressed by the secret beauty of this picture.

Every object and every part of the colour contribute to the feeling:

there is something strangely impressive even in the curious dog, who

is looking up at that sad, slow-footed, mysterious couple in the shadow;

there is something mournful, that he has to do with, in the sunlight

upon the grass behind him. After contemplating the picture for some

while, it will gradually produce that indefinable sense of rest and wonder

which, when childhood is once gone, poetry alone can recall. And

assuredly, before he knew that colour was laid on with brushes, or that

oil-painting was done upon canvas, this painter was a poet.
more about Branwhite
BRANWHITE
But perhaps the most admirable work in any class upon these walls

is Mr. Branwhite's “Environs of an Ancient Garden,” grand, and full of

melancholy silence. It calls to mind Hood's Haunted House, and may,

we fancy, have been suggested by that poem; or Mrs. Browning's

readers may think of her wondrous Deserted Garden. But here the

work of desolation has been more complete. Many years must have

passed before it became thus; and since then it has scarcely changed

for many years. All that could quite go is gone; and now, for a long

long while, it shall stand on into the years as it is. The water possesses

the scene within its depths, as calm as a picture; the white statue

almost appears to listen; there is a peacock still about the place, to

stalk and hush out his plumage when the sun lies there at noon; the

pines conceal the rocky mountains till at a great height, and the moun-

tains shut the horizon out. The encroachment of moss and grass and

green mildew is everywhere; the growths of the garden cling together

on all hands.
  • Long years ago it might befall,
  • When all the garden flowers were trim,
  • The grave old gardener prided him
  • On these the most of all;
  • And lady, stately overmuch,
  • Who movèd with a silken noise,
  • Blushed near them, dreaming of the voice
  • That likened her to such.
more about Lucy (1850)
LUCY

(1850)
There can now no longer remain a doubt that Mr. C. Lucy is one of the

elect of art destined to contribute to his epoch. In no painter whose

works we can remember is there to be found more of resolute truth,

while in none is it accompanied by less of the mere parade of truthful-

ness. The increased solidity of thought and manner in Mr. Lucy's

pictures of last year is confirmed in this exhibition; it is evidently a

permanent advance in power. His present subject, “The Parting of

Charles I. from his two youngest Children the day previous to his

Execution,” is one of those hitherto left for second or third rate artists

to work their will upon. Truly none such has here been at work.

The arrangement adopted by Mr. Lucy is simple and suggestive.

Bishop Juxon, holding the young prince's hand, leads him out into the
Image of page 574 page: 574
antechamber where the sentry is posted, and where Vandyck's portrait

of the king has been left hanging; the princess, now on the threshold,

looks back at her father for once more; while the quiet head and pattering

shoes of the little boy, who is evidently trying to walk faster than he

is able, and the delicate manner in which he is being led by the good

bishop, are peculiarly happy in their sympathetic appeal. Charles,

standing, raises one hand to his brow; his face is bewildered with

anguish. He is turning unconsciously against the window, and the

hand which has just held those of his children for the last time, is

quivering helpless to his side. At first, the action of the figure strikes,

however, as incomplete; and indeed, perhaps, something better might

have been done with the limbs; but the feeling in the head and in the

children, assisted by the quietness of the room into which they pass,

is not the less real for being perfectly unobtrusive.
more about F. R. Pickersgill (1850)
F. R. PICKERSGILL

(1850)
Mr. F. R. Pickersgill's Nymphs differ from Mr. Frost's by something

of the same space as might exist between a doll which, having put on

humanity, has grown to the size of a woman, and a high-art wax-work.

The latter are more firm and consistent; the former retain the pulpi-

ness of infancy, and stare with the glass eyes of their primitive status.

We may refer, for confirmation, to Mr. Pickersgill's “Pluto carrying

away Proserpine, opposed by the Nymph Cyane;” observing further

that, whereas Mr. Frost brings his pictures up to the point he is capable

of desiring them to reach, in Mr. Pickersgill, when on his present tack,

there is more of wilful imbecility, clearly conceived, boldly aimed at,

and worked out with an uncompromising contempt for his real self.

Last week we likened this gentleman to an amalgam of the Venetian

colourists, Mr. Etty, and Mr. Frost; in the work now under review

we are struck by the resemblance in Pluto and Cupid to the late Mr.

Howard; while the plagiarism from the artist of the Mr. Skelt dear to

our childish days is too evident in the horses to escape detection. As

regards Mr. Pickersgill's third picture, “A Scene during the Invasion

of Italy by Charles VIII.,” it is painful to be compelled in truth to say

that the artist, who was originally Mr. Hook's model of style, is here

something very like an imitator of that same Mr. Hook. We turn with

a degree of pleasure to Mr. Pickersgill's watercolour “Sketches from

the Story of Imelda.” If these are recent works, the artist is evidently

still capable of his own style, still retains some feeling for purity of form

and sentiment. The story is told in three compartments. The first is

not in any way remarkable; the second, where Imelda sees her lover's

blood trickling through from under the closed door, is vividly imagined;

there is poetry in the last. Imelda is dead in her efforts to suck the

poison from the wounds of her lover, and the two lie together: a thin

leafless tree in the shadow of the wall bends outside into the moonlight

which makes the stone steps deathly cold.
more about C. H. Lear
C. H. LEAR
Mr. C. H. Lear has this year taken the subject of his single small

picture from Keats:—
  • “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  • Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
  • Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
  • Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:”—
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or rather, he, working from his own poetical resources, has found a

sympathetic echo in the words of a brother poet. The heard melody

is indeed sweet, so sweet that the unheard may scarcely exceed it:

but the parallel is unnecessary; they are like voice and instrument.

This picture should hang in the room of a poet: we will dare to say

that Keats himself might have lain dreaming before it, and found it

minister to his inspiration. Here we will not stand to discuss trivial

shortcomings in execution, believing that, when Mr. Lear undertakes—

as we hope he will not long defer doing—a subject combining varied

character, and whose poetry shall be of the real as well as the abstract,

he will see the necessity of not denying to his wonderful sentiment,

which has already more than once accomplished so much by itself, the

toilsome but indispensable adjunct of a rigid completeness.
more about Kennedy
KENNEDY
While we are still within the magic circle of the poetic—the truly

and irresponsibly pleasurable in art—let us turn to Mr. Kennedy's

“L'Allegro.” Mr. Kennedy lounges (no less than Mr. Frost picks his

way) in his own footsteps year after year; and his pictures have

much less to do with nature than with his own nature. Mr. Frost is

self-conscious—timorously so; Mr. Kennedy is less alive to his identity

than to his ideal, but lazy enough in all things. His picture of this

year, like those of former years, does not seem to deal in any way with

critical requirements: it simply affords great delight. The landscapes

we have all known in our dreams; only Mr. Kennedy remembers his,

and can paint them. The figures are of that elect order which Boccaccio

fashioned in his own likeness: they will play out the rest of the sun-

light, no doubt, in that garden: in the evening their wine will be

brought them, and the music will be played less sluggishly in the cool

air, and those white-throated ladies will not be too languid to sing.

Surely they are magic creatures; they shall stay all night there.

Surely it shall be high noon when they wake: there shall be no soil on

their silks and velvets, and their hair shall not need the comb, and the

love-making shall go on again in the shadow that lies again green and

distinct; and all shall be as no doubt it has been in that Florentine

sanctuary (if we could only find the place) any ten days these five-

hundred years. From time to time, however, a poet or a painter has

caught the music, and strayed in through the close stems: the spell

is on his hand and his lips like the sleep of the Lotos-eaters, and his

record shall be vague and fitful; yet will we be in waiting, and open

our eyes and our ears, for the broken song has snatches of an enchanted

harmony, and the glimpses are glimpses of Eden.
more about Cope (1850)
COPE

(1850)
The subject of Mr. Cope's principal picture is from the 4th Act of

King Lear:—
  • “Oh! my dear father! Restoration, hang
  • Thy medicine on my lips: and may this kiss
  • Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
  • Have in thy reverence made!”


Nearly identical, it may be remembered, was the theme of Mr. F. M.

Brown's work of last year, the most remarkable contribution to

the then Free Exhibition; and a comparison of the two renderings may

help us to some conclusions. Firstly, Mr. Cope has assigned a more
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prominent place to the music, and has attempted more of physical

beauty and of differences of age and position in his singers, the chief of

whom, we submit, is man or woman, at option of the spectator. The

other picture had a background of music; but its subject was emphati-

cally the filial love. There lay the potential influence; and to this

the resources appealing to sense were but a ministration. Yet the

subordination of the persons doing did not detract from the full pre-

sentment of the thing done, to which the ostensible action was referred

by the waiting and listening heads of Kent and of the Fool—a character

not introduced by Mr. Cope. The latter, in keeping strictly to the text,

—“In the heaviness of sleep we put fresh garments on him,”—has, we

think, acted well, though the result is necessarily a less obvious and

immediate realization; but, in all that relates to the characters of

Lear and Cordelia, considered as either individual or Shakspearian, Mr.

Brown shows a far higher apprehension; nor must his adherence to

appropriateness (as far as possible) in costume and accessory be over-

looked, as contrasted with the unknown chronology of Mr. Cope. The

colour of both is strong. Mr. Cope's, however, while specially notice-

able for modelling and relief, has a degree of inkiness, as though a tone

of colour naturally hot had been reduced by means of corresponding

violence.
more about Landseer (1850)
LANDSEER

(1850)
Mr. Landseer's chief work of the present year is “A Dialogue at

Waterloo.” This is, in the truest sense of the word, a historical picture;

—not merely an embodiment of conceptions, however acute and

valuable, founded on the records left us from past ages; this, on the

contrary, is itself a record, a part of the time, to remain chronicled;

an emphatic personal testimony. It belongs to a class of art but too

little followed in our day, which leaves its own annals, for the most

part, to the caricaturist and the newspaper draughtsman; a class

which is more “historical” than Mr. Cross's picture, or than Mr.

Lucy's, or than M. Delaroche's, as not being painted from history, but

itself history painted . Let us consider Mr. Landseer's work. It is now

thirty-five years since the day of Waterloo, and Europe is another

Europe since then because of that day: and here, in the picture, we

have that day's Master riding in peace after these many years over the

field whose name is now less the name of a field than of a battle which

he fought. A woman of his house is with him, and to her he is recount-

ing those matters as one who was there and of them. Since then, his

labour has been his country's no less than on that day; but it has been

wrought out in the comparative calm and silence of a peace which, but

for him, she might not have enjoyed; and now, how must his memories

crowd upon him as he recalls those events in which he was not an actor

only, but the mind and master-spirit of action! Nothing about him

but what has felt his influence;—the peasantry, whose native soil has

become famous and prospered because of his deeds; the very soil

itself, which the blood of his battle has fertilized and increased yearly

to a plentiful harvest. All this is here, and much more, both present-

ment and suggestion. On the execution of the picture, its truthfulness

in colour and daylight, we have left ourselves no room to dwell; we

may mention, however, that the action of the Duke is, we believe, one

habitual to him, and here admirably appropriate. Still less can we

devote space to the discussion, in how far a subject of this class is

available to the tendencies of the age. The painter's highest duty is

to record, in a manner sufficiently complete for after-deduction: and

surely here, if anywhere, thus much is accomplished.
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Sig. 37
more about Marochetti (1850)
MAROCHETTI

(1850)
The name of Baron Marochetti, well known, we believe, in Italian art,

is here represented by a small statue of “Sappho,” of exquisite though

peculiar character. The first impression of eccentricity will not be

favourable: but manage to look beyond this, and there is a grace and

charm in the work which will arrest not the eye merely, but the mind.

Sappho sits in abject languor, her feet hanging over the rock, her hands

left in her lap, where her harp has sunk; its strings have made music

assuredly for the last time. The poetry of the figure is like a pang of

life in the stone; the sea is in her ears, and that desolate look in her

eyes is upon the sea; and her countenance has fallen. The style of

the work is of an equally high class with its sentiment—pure and chaste,

yet individualized. This is especially noticeable in the drapery, which

is no unmeaning sheet tossed anyhow for effect, but a real piece of

antique costume, full of beauty and character. We may venture to

suggest, however, that the extreme tension of the skirt across the knees

gives a certain appearance of formality to the lower portion of the

figure.
more about The Modern Pictures of All Countries, at Lichfield House, 1851
THE MODERN PICTURES OF ALL COUNTRIES, AT

LICHFIELD HOUSE, 1851
Perhaps the best service we can render the directors of this Exhibition

is to record, at the outset of our criticisms, their assurance to the

public, that other pictures besides those now on the walls are to reach

them shortly from the Continent. There is hope here at least, albeit

deferred; and, seeing that their collection is a veritable Pandora's

casket, whence every ill quality of art is let forth to the light of day,

it was certainly desirable that Hope should remain at the bottom.
It would not be much to the purpose to inquire which school of

painting shows most creditably here; nor, if a decision were to be

arrived at, need any one set of artists feel much flattered by the pre-

ference. The only school whose merits, such as they are, are adequately

represented in this gathering, is that of Belgium; which, we fear,

would scarcely call for many representatives in a place where nothing

should be exhibited that was not worth exhibiting.
After this opening, it will suggest itself at once that the great mass

of these pictures is such as we shall not attempt to criticize; belonging

as they do to that class where examination and silence are the sum of

criticism.
Let us begin with the French works; among which are some of the

few good things of the collection. If again we decimate these elect,

(supposing such a course to be arithmetically possible), we shall find

that the best work in the place, upon the whole, is Mademoiselle Rosa

Bonheur's “Charcoal-burners in Auvergne crossing a Moor.” We are

rejoiced to be able to lay our homage, at last, at the feet of one lady

who has really done something in some one branch of art which

may be considered quite of the first class. Sky, landscape, and cattle,

are all admirable; and must have been, though the picture is a small

one, the result of no little time and labour. The sentiment, too, is

most charming: you see at once that the lumbering conveyances are

moving
  • “Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.”


The only fault of the picture consists in some slight appearance of that

polished surface which always interferes with the truth of a French
Image of page 578 page: 578
painting where any finish has been aimed at. This, however, detracts

but slightly from the pleasure of the general impression. Mademoiselle

Rosa Bonheur was previously known to us only by a few small litho-

graphs from some of her works: these had always seemed to us to

give proofs of the highest power, and her picture more than fulfils our

expectations.
Other French landscapes of some merit are those of Rousseau, some-

what resembling Linnell; Ziem, bearing a strong likeness to Holland,

though scarcely so good; and Troyon, much akin to the feeling and

execution of Kennedy. These, however, have mostly been hung out

of the reach of anything like scrutiny.
Turning to the French figure subjects, we shall find much that is

excellent in the contributions of Biard, though he has sent no work of

prominent importance. The best is “A Performance of Mesmerism

in a Parisian Drawing-room.” Here the variety of actions and ex-

pressions under the same drowsy influence is very diverting; and

there is even a rude grace in the colour, in spite of its sketchy and

almost “scrubby” character: but perhaps this is only a study for a

larger picture. The same artist's “Henry IV. and Fleurette” has a

good deal of pastoral freshness and beauty; though the landscape

lacks brilliancy and variety of tints, and the monarch is little better

than a ballet-lover. There is great humour in the “Arraying of the

‘Virgins’ for the Fête of Agriculture,” a scene from the last Revolution;

as well as in the “Review of the National Guard.” The pair entitled

“Before the Night” and “After the Night” are, however, very vulgar

and unpleasant, and must be, we should think, early productions.
The humorous sketches of Adolphe Leleux, relating to the Garde

Mobile, have strong character, but are both unfinished and unskilful.
The most remarkable among the productions of Henri Lehmann in

this gallery are his “Hamlet” and “Ophelia,” a pair of small copies

from the larger works, probably made for the purpose of being litho-

graphed. The “Hamlet” especially gives proof of thought and

intention,—the brooding eyes and suspended movement of the hand

suggesting indecision of character. The “Ophelia” is much less good,

and is little more, indeed, than a posture-figure with a sort of re-

miniscence of Rachel: the proportions of the face, too, betray a very

unnatural mannerism. The execution of both figures, though careful,

is not satisfactory, and reminds us in this respect of Mr. Frank Stone;

having the same laborious endeavour at finish, and the same inability,

apparently, to set about it in the right way. “The Virgin at the foot

of the Cross” is an utter mistake, of that kind which makes the heart

sink to look at it.
In the “St. Anne and the Virgin” of Goyet, there is a pretty

arrangement of the background; but the Virgin is mere waxwork,

and St. Anne sits listening like one of the Fates in a tableau vivant.
“The Woman taken in Adultery,” by Signol, is the companion to

the well-known picture in the Luxembourg, and one of the couple which

have been published. We never much admired these works, though

they are not without delicacy and even sentiment of their kind. That

at the Luxembourg is decidedly the better picture; though the action

of the woman in this other, crouching, and raising her arm as if she

feared that the first stone were about indeed to be cast, is certainly the

best thing in either of them. The colour is very dull and flat, and the

hands of the Saviour much too small. The picture by the same artist,

from the “Bride of Lammermoor,” (where Lucy Ashton, stricken with

insanity, is discovered crouching in the recess of the fireplace,) displays

much dramatic power in the principal figure, which is also finely

drawn. The subject, however, is a repulsive one, unredeemed by any

lesson or sympathetic beauty. And there is a stationary look, so to

speak, in the figures, and a general want of characteristic accessory,

together with that peculiar French commonness in the colour and
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handling which is so especially displeasing in this country, where,

whatever qualities in art may be neglected, an attempt is almost always

made to obtain some harmony and transparency of colour. A word

of high praise is due to Mademoiselle Nina Bianchi, for her pastel of

“An Italian Lady”: it is really well drawn, and shows remarkable

vigour. Mademoiselle Bianchi should practise oil-painting, and leave

her present insufficient material.
There are few better things in the gallery than a very small picture

by Gérôme, bearing the singular title of “The humble Troubadour in a

Workshop.” It is poetical in subject and arrangement, and dainty in

execution, though the tone of colour is not pleasing. Something of

the same qualities, but with a want of expression and a servile Dutch

look may be found in the “Interior of an Artist's Studio,” by Alphonse

Roehn. The picture by Beaume of “The Brothers Hubert and John

Van Eyck” is a subject of the same class, but in treatment resembling

rather the works of Robert-Fleury. John Van Eyck is apparently

engaged on his picture of the “Marriage of Cana,” now in the Louvre:

and we would remind M. Beaume that that work is not, as he has

represented it, of the colour of treacle, but rather distinguished by a

certain delicacy and distinctness which might not be without their

lesson to any modern artist who should be sufficiently “poor in heart”

to receive the promised blessing.
Summing up in one sentence of condemnation the platitudes or

pretentious mediocrities of Ziegler, Cibot, Henry Scheffer, and Etex,

and the execrable Astley's-Martyrology of Felix Leullier, we come

lastly to the most important in size and character of all the French

works—the Nicean duplicate of “Cromwell at the Coffin of Charles I.,”

by Delaroche; a picture on whose merits we should dwell at some

length, had it not been already exhibited last year at the Royal Aca-

demy. Admirable it is in every respect, always taken for granted the

artist's view of the subject and personage. We think, however, that

it might prove of some benefit to M. Delaroche, supposing Mr. Carlyle

could be persuaded to go for once to an exhibition, to stand behind that

gentleman, and hear his remarks on the present picture. We fear the

painter would find that this is not exactly the “lion-face and hero-face”

which our great historian has told us is “to him royal enough.”
Proceeding next to the Belgian school, we find another English hero

presumptuously maltreated by a foreigner, in Ernest Slingeneyer's

monstrous “Death of Nelson.” Is it possible that this abortive mam-

moth is to take its place on the walls of Greenwich Hospital, for which

purpose a subscription has actually been set afloat? For our part,

we believe that the old grampuses there have enough fire left in them

to resent such an indignity; in which case, one would gladly let them

have their own way with the daub for an hour or so, if it once got within

their walls. Of greatly superior pretensions is Baron Wappers' picture

of “Boccaccio Reading his Tales to Queen Jeanne of Naples and

Princess Mary.” It is far, however, from being a work of a high

standard, though a good enough painting in all artistic respects. The

face of the Queen, if not very expressive, is beautiful, and the Princess

is a handsome wench; but the conception of Boccaccio is common-

place; neither is there anything in the work that demanded a life-size

treatment. The other two productions of this painter—“Genevieve

of Brabant” and “Louis XVII. when apprenticed to Simon the

Shoemaker”—are mawkish, ill-drawn, and ill-coloured in the highest

degree. The cattle-pieces of Eugene Verboeckhoven, of which there

are two or three here, appear to us extremely overrated. They are

very coarsely painted, very loosely grouped, and supremely unin-

teresting.
The only other Belgian work which has anything to claim attention

in it is “Brigands Gambling for the Booty,” by Henri Leys. There

is some merit here, both of colour and arrangement. We may notice
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the absence of any paintings by Gallait, perhaps the best of the Belgian

artists.
The German schools can scarcely be said to be at all represented

here. Perhaps the most striking picture is that of “Pagan Conjurors

foretelling his Death to Ivan the Terrible,” by Buhr of Dresden.

Indeed, there is probably no picture in the gallery displaying more

couleur locale and characteristic accessory. There is expression, too,

here and there; but in many of the figures this is sadly exaggerated,

and the whole has a somewhat theatrical appearance. The two little

pictures from the life of St. Boniface, by Schraudolf of Munich, are very

excellent, especially the latter. They are the work of an artist who

thoroughly knows his art. In a collection like the present one, such

productions, though the subjects have no dramatic interest, are an

indescribable relief. Still more so are the “Subjects on Porcelain,”

chiefly from the Italian masters, by Pragers of Munich.
The “Young Girl at a Window,” by Herman Schultz of Berlin, has

a very sweet German face, but is flatly painted; the “Nymphs of the

Grotto,” by Steinbruck of Düsseldorf, is pretty and fanciful; the

“Monk demanding Gretchen's Jewels,” from Faust, by Bendixen,

is a well-found subject entirely spoilt; the “Deputation before the

Magistrates,” by Hasenclever of Düsseldorf, has some character, but

no art; the “Recollection of Italy, Procida,” by Rudolf Lehmann of

Hamburg, is a contemptible and vexatious piece of affectation; and

the pair of half-figures entitled “Tasting” and “Smelling,” by

Schlesinger of Vienna, are not such as we should have expected from

the author of various popular prints, which, in spite of their some-

times questionable subjects, give proof of much sense of beauty and

even poetical feeling.
Of the English pictures we shall have but little to say, since nearly

all of them have been exhibited before. The biggest is G. F. Watts's

piece of dirty Titianism, entitled “The Ostracism of Aristides.” It has

something in it, however, which somehow proves what was certainly

the one thing most difficult of proof, considering the general treatment

of the picture,—namely, that the painter is not a fool. The “Lake of

Killarney,” by H. M. Anthony, is a picture with a wonderful sky, and

two highly poetical brackets; but as it has been exhibited before,

our space will not permit us to speak of it at length. The same

may be said of E. M. Ward's dramatic but somewhat coarsely painted

“Fall of Clarendon.”
Redgrave's “Quintin Matsys” assimilates in execution to the Bel-

gian pictures, of which it is in every respect a fitting companion.

“The Tower of Babel,” by Edgar Papworth, is ill placed, but seems

to display no small imaginative power, and is further remarkable as

an evidence of considerable proficiency in painting on the part of one

whose merit as a sculptor is acknowledged. “Preparation,” by

Lance, is a bright but scarcely natural-looking picture, with an absurd

title. “Titania and the Fairies” is an imbecile attempt by the son of

an Academician: it would seem almost incredible that this thing

should have occupied a place on the line two years back at the Royal

Academy, and its author been nearly elected to an Associateship.

“Petrarch's first Interview with Laura,” by H. O'Neil, is very ill

executed, though rather less commonplace in general aspect than

most of the painter's works.
H. Stanley, the author of “Angelico da Fiesole Painting in the

Convent,” is one of the artists lately selected by the Royal Commission

to execute works for the Palace at Westminster. His present picture

is hard in outline and monotonous in colour: Angelico is on his knees,

with his back to the spectator, so that even his full profile is scarcely

seen; and the treatment seems to us altogether somewhat tasteless

and wanting in interest; the best incident, perhaps, being that of a

second monk who is seen playing on the organ in a dark anteroom.
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Another artist commissioned lately by Government is W. Cave Thomas;

whose picture here, “Alfred sharing his Loaf with the Pilgrim,” we

shall not dwell upon, as it has been seen at the Royal Academy. It is

only fair that the same excuse should come to the rescue of the picture

from the life of Beatrice Cenci, by Willes Maddox; on which, both as

regards subject and artistic qualities, we should otherwise have a very

decided opinion to express.
By young and unknown English artists, there seems to be scarcely

anything. Some prettiness and rather nice painting, though without

much expression or sentiment, will be found in “Cinderella,” by W. S.

Burton. There appears to be a feeling for colour in a rather incom-

prehensible performance by W. D. Telfer, entitled “The Baron's

Hand,” which is hung nearly out of sight. We may mention, however,

that our notice was attracted to it by the recollection of a far superior

picture in the same name, which we saw lately, happening to pay a

visit to that now somewhat renovated sarcophagus of art, the Pantheon,

in Oxford Street. The subject of the picture in question is “Ariel on

the Bat's back”; and it possesses undoubted evidence of the qualities

of a colourist, though as yet hardly developed, as well as a kind of fan-

tastic unearthliness in conception. In the catalogue of the present

exhibition occur the titles of two other paintings by the same artist,

but we looked for them in vain on the walls.
We have now concluded what we have to say of this gallery. To

argue, from its contents, anything as regards the relative position of

the different schools, would of course be out of the question, since

among the specimens contributed are scarcely any from artists who

enjoy a decided celebrity in their respective countries. For our part,

we have sufficient reliance on the sound qualities of a few of our own

best painters to entertain some regret that on their part, as well as

that of foreign schools, no attempt has been made in the present in-

stance to enter into anything which deserves to be called a competition.
more about Exhibition of Sketches and Drawings in Pall Mall East, 1851
EXHIBITION OF SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS IN

PALL MALL EAST, 1851
This is the second year of an experiment which promises to prove a

successful one. The sketches exhibited number about an equal pro-

portion of oil and water-colour, and include contributions from members

of all our artistic bodies. Among those from Suffolk Street, however,

we are sorry to miss Mr. Anthony; who, we trust, does not intend to

withdraw his co-operation from this annual gathering.
In productions like sketches, where success in the general result

depends almost entirely on dexterous handling of the material, the

real superiority is, of course, more than ever to be argued chiefly from

the presence of something like intellectual purpose in choice of subject

and arrangement. We shall therefore endeavour, in the first place,

to determine where, in the present collection, this quality is to be found.
This brings us at once to Mr. Cope, Mr. Madox Brown, Mr. Cave

Thomas, Mr. Cross, and Mr. Armitage; in whose contributions may

be summed up the amount of thought or meaning contained in the

gallery. We do not recollect to have seen any work in which all the

essentials of a subject were more nobly discerned and concentrated than

they are in Mr. Cope's “Griselda separated from her Child,” of which

a sketch is exhibited here. Mr. Madox Brown's “Composition illustra-

tive of English Poetry” shows that his large picture of “Chaucer at

the Court of Edward III.,” seen this year at the Royal Academy

Exhibition, was in fact only the central compartment of a very exten-

sive work, embodying, in its side-pieces, personations of our greatest

succeeding poets, and other symbolical adjuncts. As regards pictorial
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effect, it is to be regretted that these were not added to the exhibited

picture, since, in the sketch, their chaste and sober tone completely

does away with that somewhat confused appearance, resulting from a

redundancy of draperies and conflicting colours, which was noticed in

the “Chaucer.” The design is admirable, both in conception and

carrying-out. The symbolical subject by Mr. Cave Thomas, where the

last watchers of the earth are gathered together in a chamber, while

outside the Son of Man is seen, habited as a pilgrim, coming noiselessly

through the moonlight, may without exaggeration be said to rank, as

regards its aim, among the loftiest embodiments which art has yet

attempted from Scripture. The mere selection of the glorious words

of the text (Mark, ch. xiii. v. 34) is in itself a proof of a fine and pene-

trative mind. Mr. Thomas exhibited a drawing for this work last year

at the Royal Academy, and he now gives us a sketch in oils. We

are fully aware of the importance of consideration to an artist who

really has an idea to work upon; but we hope the picture is to come

at some time or other. At present it seems to us that much of

the costume and accessories would be susceptible of improvement;

being too decidedly Teutonic for so abstract a theme. Mr. Thomas

exhibits here also “The Fruit-Bearer” and “Sketch for the Com-

partment of Justice, House of Lords.” The two other artists we have

named above, Mr. Cross and Mr. Armitage, have sent, the former, two

studies for “The Burial of the Princes in the Tower”—of which we prefer

the less finished one, which, though perhaps almost too slight for ex-

hibition, shows the greater share of dramatic faculty; and the latter,

a sketch for “Samson Grinding Corn for the Philistines”—not very

well executed, nor by any means representing the merits of the fine

picture for which it was a preparation.
In the second order of figure-pieces, the best are the contributions

of Messrs. Hook, Egg, and Lewis. Mr. Hook's study for the “Dream

of Venice” is among the most charming things of the kind we know,

and certainly superior in various respects to the picture. The finest

among the drawings sent by Mr. Lewis (the painter of that talisman of

art “The Harem”) is the “Lord Viscount Castlereagh,” represented

in Eastern costume. In Mr. Egg's “Anticipation”—a young lady

glancing over an opera-bill—the features are perhaps slightly out of

drawing, but the colour is most gorgeous; in this respect, indeed, it

exhibits more unmistakeable power than anything here. Mr. Frith,

an artist whose name is generally associated with that of Mr. Egg

(while in fact there are no two painters whose chief characteristics are

much more different), sends a half-length figure of a lady in an opera

box—very loose as to arrangement, wherein the principal value of such

things should consist. He has also here the “Original Sketch for the

Picture of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme”—which is a fair specimen of

his usual style of painting, the picture having been among his happiest

efforts; and the “Squire Relating his Adventures”—which is not a

fair specimen of him, nor would be indeed of most other artists.
Of Mr. E. M. Ward's couple—one, a study for a figure in his last

picture, and the other, a sketch for “La Fleur's Departure from

Montreuil”—the latter is the more interesting. Perhaps nothing can

well be more repulsive than the prurient physiognomy of Mr. O'Neil's

“Novel-Reader”: there is no name on the cover of the book, so that

the fancy is free to choose between “Sofie,” “Justine,” and “Faublas.”

Several studies of flowers here, by the same artist, are so good as to

leave us a hope that he deserves to be ashamed of himself for his

notion of female beauty. Regarding Mr. F. R. Pickersgill's large

sketch for “Rinaldo destroying the Enchanted Forest,” the only point

admitting of argument is as to whether the sketch or the picture be

the more meretricious in style; unless indeed we were disposed to

discuss which of the female figures is the most unlike a woman. Much

better, however, and in their way displaying a high sense of colour,
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are Mr. Pickersgill's slighter sketches, in which the beauties of his

present system of painting are more apparent than in his pictures.

Indeed, the one of the “Contest for the Girdle of Florimel” is exceed-

ingly brilliant and delightful. Mr. Kenny Meadows's drawing entitled

“Which is the taller?” has much grace and spirit; but we had far

rather meet him in the more intellectual class of subjects, where, when

he chooses, no one can show to greater advantage. Mr. Hine's “Fellow

of the Society of Antiquaries” might belong also to the “Odd Fellows”

as regards his appearance, which is very quaint and humoristic. Mr.

Gilbert's “Sancho Panza” is a clever pen-and-ink drawing; but it

has, in common with the artist's other productions here, a disagreeable

air of book-keeping dexterity with the pen. Mr. Webster's con-

tributions are of that utterly uninteresting class which can only be

redeemed by the highest artistic finish. Mr. Cattermole has several

very effective drawings in his well-known and peculiar style. Every-

thing about Mr. Uwins's sketches here is of a very obvious description;

especially the intimation that the picture of “Sir Guyon at the Boure

of Bliss” is “in the artist's own possession;”—we should think so.

The mild-drawn domesticities of Mr. Marshall, the frozen “Frosts”

of Mr. Rolt, and that omnipresent “Gleaner” by the relentless Mr.

Brooks, are only not worse than it was possible for them to be: a

boundary which has almost been triumphantly annihilated by Mr.

Eddis, in the puny and puling production entitled “The Sisters.”

We were amused with Mr. Templeton's “Study of a Head,” the “idea”

of which is pompously said to have been “suggested by a passage in

the life of Galileo”; whereas it is very evident that the only “sug-

gestion” consisted in the good looks of a model well enough known

among artists, and whose portrait has been exhibited scores of times.
Of the landscapes etc. we shall have but little to say; since, not-

withstanding the excellence of many among them, they scarcely

require comment, the styles of their respective authors being so uni-

versally known. Mr. Lucy's “Windermere” calls, however, for par-

ticular mention, as showing how serviceable in landscape-painting is

the severer study of historical art: this sketch is of great excellence in

colour, and replete with poetic beauty. There is a sketch here, un-

provided with any name, by Mr. Turner; and specimens, all very good

and some unusually fine, by Messrs. Roberts, Stanfield, Linnell, Prout,

A. W. Williams, Cooke, Clint, Holland, Linton, Lake Price, Davidson,

Pidgeon, Vacher, and Hardy. The “Sketch, North Wales,” by Mr.

Branwhite—chiefly known hitherto for his frost-scenes—is really

astonishing in depth and gorgeousness of colour; the same qualities

are perhaps rather excessive in his other two contributions. In Mr.

Hunt's “Winter” we cannot but think that the crude and spotty

execution detracts from the reality of aspect; but the same artist's

“Bird's Nest and Primroses” is absolutely enchanting in truth and

freshness.
In the class of animal-painting, we should not omit to notice Mr.

Newton Fielding's “Woodcocks”—very delicately and conscientiously

painted, and reminding us in some degree of Mr. Wolf's inimitable

“Woodcocks taking Shelter” exhibited two years ago at the Royal

Academy.
more about Madox Brown (1851)
MADOX BROWN

(1851)
We come next to a work of very prominent importance by a gentleman

who has hitherto been a stranger to the walls of the Royal Academy,

Mr. F. Madox Brown's large picture “ Geoffrey Chaucer reading the

Legend of Custance to Edward III. and his Court at the Palace of
Image of page 584 page: 584
Sheen, on the Black Prince's forty-fifth birthday.” This work cannot

fail of establishing at once for Mr. Brown a reputation of the first

class; which, indeed, he might have secured before now had he con-

tributed more regularly to our annual exhibitions. And we confess to

some feeling of self-satisfaction in believing that, while we watched with

interest in various exhibitions the sure-footed and unprecipitate career

of this artist, we belonged to a comparatively select band. His works

have, as we have said, been few in number, and of a different class from

those which, to judge from the circle of their admirers, would seem to

possess a talisman somewhat akin to the enigmatic ducdamè of Jaques.

Yet there must doubtless be many who have not forgotten, and will

not easily forget, the solemn beauty of “ The Bedside of Lear.” And

we will even hope that some few have received, like ourselves, a potent

and lasting impression from his cartoon of “ The Dead Harold brought

to William the Conqueror on the Field of Hastings ;” the only real

work we have yet seen in connection with that now dead-ridden subject,

a very knacker of artistic hobby-horses, for here alone was present the

naked devil of Victory as he is, gnashing and awful. We believe that

there is no one individual in our younger generation of art whose

influence has been more felt among his fellow-aspirants, whose hand

has been more in the leavening of the mass, than Mr. Madox Brown's.

Of his present picture our space will not permit a detailed description,

which is fully supplied in the catalogue. The subject is a noble one,

illustrating the first perfect utterance of English poetry. The fountain

whose clear jet rises in the foreground, as well as the sower scattering

seed in the wake of the plough at the furthest distance, have probably

a symbolical allusion. Amongst the happiest embodiments of character

we would particularize the languid and wasted figure of the Black

Prince, propped up in the cushions of his litter; that of his wife, full

of a beauty saddened to tenderness, as she sustains in her lap the arm

that shall no more be heavy upon France; the foreign troubadour

who looks up at Chaucer, his feeling of rivalry absorbed in admiration;

and the capitally conceived jester, lost to the ministry of his mystery,

spell-bound and open-mouthed. For the figure of Chaucer, whose

action, and the appearance of speaking conveyed in his features, are

excellent, Mr. Brown has chosen to adopt a portraiture less familiar

than the one which he followed when he had occasion to introduce

the poet in his picture of “ Wycliffe.” In effect, the work aims at

representing broad sunlight, a task perhaps the most difficult which a

painter can undertake. Mr. Brown has been unusually successful;

and the colour throughout is also brilliant and delicate. It may be

said indeed that, owing to the great variety of hues in the draperies,

the picture has at first sight a rather confusing appearance. This

might perhaps have been lessened by restricting each figure, as far as

possible, to a single prevailing colour, and by a more sparing admission

of ornament and minute detail of costume. Yet this degree of in-

distinctness may be mainly caused by the light in which the picture

is hung, causing a kind of glare over the entire surface, and rendering

it impracticable to obtain anything like a good view of it except by

retreating laterally to as great a distance as possible. These, however,

are but slight or questionable drawbacks. Upon the whole we have

to congratulate Mr. Brown on a striking success—a success not to be

won, as he must know well, without much doubt and vexation, and

many fluctuating phases of study, and whose chief value in his case,

however worthy the immediate result, consists in the attainment of

that clear-sightedness which can still look forward.
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more about Poole (1851)
POOLE

(1851)
Mr. Poole is an artist to whom, in virtue of our sincere conviction

of his genius, we would claim the privilege of venturing a few words

of remonstrance. He has now for several years been in the habit of

exhibiting pictures which have placed his admirers in the painful position

of being unable to uphold them, on grounds of strict art, against those

who are dead to their poetic beauty. Year after year, the idea upon

which he works is sure to be among the finest in modern painting;

and yearly he is content that, in all but colour, the execution should

be left unworthy of the idea. And we would notice particularly that

there is nearly always in his pictures some one personage so unhappily

independent of drawing as to reflect discredit on the whole company in

which he is found, even if no other were at all chargeable on the same

count. Last year, in Mr. Poole's subject from Job, this “bad eminence”

belonged to the boy pouring wine in the centre; this year, in “The

Goths in Italy,” it has been bestowed, as though in reward of unob-

trusive merit, upon the figure of the girl to the left who watches, in

harrowing suspense, the overtures which a brutal Goth is making to

her childish sister. Surely Mr. Poole must know himself that this

figure is too small for the rest, and in every way unsatisfactory: neither

will we believe, though he does his best to convince us, that he really

thinks hair should be painted like that of the man tying his sandal,

or an arm drawn like the right arm of his principal female figure. Not

less unaccountable are the folds of his draperies; being moreover, of

the two, rather more like water than his sea, which is represented in

something of that artless simplicity (whatever may be allowed for

poetic effect) in which it exalts the mind on the transparency-blinds

of cheap coffee-houses. Mr. Poole's personages, too, seem, like the

company of a theatre, to do duty in all parts and on all occasions.

One barbarian we especially noticed, lying on the upper bank, whose

identity and recumbent tastes Mr. Poole has traced, we suppose on the

Pythagorean system, from the surrender of Rome to the surrender of

Calais, thence to the shipwreck of Alonzo King of Naples, and so on to

the plague of London; only that he has chosen to give us the process

of transmigration in an inverse order. Even the atmosphere in his

works, beautiful as it is to the eye, would appear equally suited to all

seasons and countries; each new Poole, like the pool in Mr. Patmore's

poem, seeming eternally to “reflect the scarlet West.” But enough:

we have said our say, and assuredly much more for the artist's sake

than our own; since we can assure Mr. Poole that as long as he paints

pictures whose merit is of the same order and degree as in those which

we have seen—even though they should continue to fall short in the

respects touched upon—we shall take up our station before them

regularly, as heretofore, nor be able to move away until we shall have

followed out all the points of thought and intellectual study brought

in aid of the development of his idea; and we can trust him that these

will be sufficient for prolonged contemplation.
more about Holman Hunt (1851)
HOLMAN HUNT

(1851)
Among the works embodying the principles referred to, that on which

its size and subject confer the greatest importance is Mr. W. H. Hunt's

“Valentine rescuing Sylvia from Proteus.” This picture is certainly

the finest we have seen from its painter; it is as minutely finished as his

“Rienzi,” with more powerful colour; and as scrupulously drawn as
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his “Christian Priests escaping from the Druids,” with a more perfect

proportion of parts. The scene is the Mantuan forest, deep in dead

red leaves, on a sunny day of autumn. Valentine has but just arrived,

and draws Sylvia towards his side, from where she has been struggling

on her knees with Proteus, whose unnerved hand he puts from him

with speech and countenance of sorrowful rebuke. Sylvia nestles to

her strong knight, rescued and secure; while poor Julia leans, sick to

swooning, against a tree, and tries with a trembling hand to draw the

ring from her finger. Both these figures are truly creations, for the

very reason that they are appropriate individualities, and not self-

seeking idealisms. Mr. Hunt's hangers may claim to have prevented

the public from judging of Sylvia much beyond her general tenderness

of sentiment; the exquisite loveliness of the Julia there was no

concealing. The outlaws are approaching from the distance, leading

the captive Duke. The glory of sunlight is conveyed in the picture

with a truth scarcely to be matched; and its colour renders it a most

undesirable neighbour. It might have been well, however, to avoid

adding to the already great diffusion of hues by the richly embroidered

robe of Sylvia. We are tempted to dwell further on the position as-

signed to Mr. Hunt on the walls of the Academy, in connection with the

importunate mediocrity displayed at so many points of the “line”;

but, in speaking of the work, we recall the solemn human soul which

seems to vibrate through it, like a bell in the forest, drawing us, as it

were, within the quiet superiority which the artist must himself feel;

and we would rather aim at following him into that portion of the

subject which is his domain only.
more about Deuced Odd; or The Devil's In It
DEUCED ODD; OR THE DEVIL'S IN IT
I am sorely afraid that the extraordinary narration which I am about

to relate will derive no accession of credit from my stating at the

outset that I am a public actor,—one, in fact, whose very life is passed

in the endeavour to identify himself with fictitious characters and

situations, and whose most consummate triumph would be the bringing

his audience to believe, if only for a single moment, that the events

going forward under their eyes were of spontaneous occurrence.

Indeed, I cannot but look upon this fact of my profession as calcu-

lated to be so seriously detrimental to a belief in circumstances which

I know to have really occurred that I should have considered myself

at liberty to suppress it, had it not been inextricably wound up with

the very warp and woof of my story. It therefore only remains for

me to record on my own behalf that protest which conscious truth

has a right to oppose to all prejudice, based on any grounds what-

soever. At the same time I would remind my reader that the very

improbability of the matters I shall narrate ought by rights to be

counted as a plea in my favour; since, being fully alive to the dis-

advantages under which I labour, I should, if inclined to deceive,

have at least selected a story more adapted for purposes of deception,

and could scarcely be supposed to rush with my eyes open upon the

humiliating result of acting like a fool and being thought to act like

a knave.
I am proud to say that my practice on the stage has been almost

entirely confined to the legitimate drama, in which I have enjoyed

a large share of public favour, and now towards the close of my career,

may even consider myself celebrated. I have no wish to speak

harshly of those who have arisen in the course of my career, and who

have endeavoured to introduce new theories connected with parts

on which I had long before formed and pursued my own opinion,

from which I may add that I have not, at any time in the fluctuations

of public taste, seen occasion to deviate. I fear, indeed, that the
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days when the embodiment of tragedy on the stage was undesecrated

by a study of the petty actualities of common life are passed for

ever. I at least have to the last upheld my principles as an actor,

and can afford to treat certain recent criticisms with silent contempt.

The strange passage in my life which I am about to relate is commonly

connected in my mind with the one occasion on which I was weak

enough to step down from the pinnacles of High Art, and seem to bestow

my sanction on the monstrosities of the modern drama. The mys-

terious and awful circumstance (for I can call it by no other name) to

which I allude might, I think, not unjustly be regarded as a judgment

upon me for this single concession to a perverted taste.
more about Lancelot and Guenevere
LANCELOT AND GUENEVERE
  • 1. How Sir Lancelot was made a knight at the hand of King Arthur,

    and how Queen Guenevere crowned him.
  • 2. How Sir Lancelot, being in quest of the Sancgreal, fell in a deep

    sleep before the shrine, for he might not enter in because of the love

    he bore to Queen Guenevere, King Arthur's wife.
  • 3. How Sir Galahad, with Sir Bors and Sir Percival, they three

    being clean maids, were fed with the Sancgreal, but Sir Percival's

    sister died on the way.
  • 4. How Sir Lancelot was found in Queen Guenevere's chamber,

    and how Sir Agravain and Sir Mordred came with twelve knights to

    slay him.
  • 5. How Sir Lancelot parted from Queen Guenevere at King Arthur's

    tomb, and would have kissed her at parting, but she would not.
more about William Blake
WILLIAM BLAKE

Blake felt his way in drawing, notwithstanding his love of a “bold

determinate outline,” and did not get this at once. Copyists and

plagiarists do that, but not original artists, as it is common to sup-

pose: they find a difficulty in developing the first idea. Blake

drew a rough, dotted line with pencil, then with ink; then colour,

filling in cautiously, carefully. At the same time he attached very

great importance to “first lines,” and was wont to affirm—“First

thoughts are best in art, second thoughts in other matters.”

He held that nature should be learned by heart, and remembered

by the painter, as the poet remembers language. “To learn the

language of art, Copy for ever is my rule,” said he. But he never

painted his pictures from models. “Models are difficult—enslave

one—efface from one's mind a conception or reminiscence which was

better.” This last axiom is open to much more discussion than can

be given it here. From Fuseli, that often reported declaration of

his, “Nature puts me out,” seems but another expression of the same

wilful arrogance and want of delicate shades, whether of character

or style, which we find in that painter's works. Nevertheless a sen-

tence should here be spared to say that England would do well to

preserve some remnant of Fuseli's work before it is irremediably

obliterated. His oil pictures are, for the most part, monstrously

overloaded in bulk as in style, and not less overloaded in mere slimy

pigment. But his sketches in water-wash and pencil or pen-and-ink

should yet be formed, ere too late, into a precious national collection,

including as they do many specimens than which not the greatest

Italian masters could show greater proofs of mastery.

Blake's natural tendencies were, in many respects, far different

from Fuseli's; and it is deeply to be regretted that an antagonism,

which became more and more personal as well as artistic, to the

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petty practice of the art of his day,—joined no doubt to inevitable

sympathy with this very Fuseli, fighting in great measure the same

battle with himself for the high against the low,—should have led

to Blake's adopting and unreservedly following the dogma above

given as regards the living model. Poverty, and consequent difficulty

of models at command, must have had something to do with it too.

The truth on this point is, that no imaginative artist can fully express

his own tone of mind without sometimes in his life working un-

trammelled by present reference to nature; and, indeed, that the

first conception of every serious work must be wrought into something

like complete form, as a preparatory design, without such aid, before

having recourse to it in the carrying-out of the work. But it is

equally or still more imperative that immediate study of nature

should pervade the whole completed work. Tenderness, the constant

unison of wonder and familiarity so mysteriously allied in nature,

the sense of fulness and abundance such as we feel in a field, not

because we pry into it all, but because it is all there: these are the

inestimable prizes to be secured only by such study in the painter's

every picture. And all this Blake, as thoroughly as any painter, was

gifted to have attained, as we may see especially in his works of that

smallest size where memory and genius may really almost stand in

lieu of immediate consultation of nature. But the larger his works

are, the further he departs from this lovely impression of natural

truth; and when we read the above maxim, we know why. How-

ever, the principle was not one about which he had no misgiving,

for very fluctuating if not quite conflicting opinions on this point

might be quoted from his writings.

No special consideration has yet been entered on here of Blake's

claim as a colourist, but it is desirable that this should be done now

in winding up the subject, both because his place in this respect

among painters is very peculiar, and also on account of the many

misleading things he wrote regarding colour, carried away at the

moment, after his fiery fashion, by the predominance he wished to

give to other qualities in some argument in hand. Another reason

why his characteristics in this respect need to be dwelt upon is that

certainly his most original and prismatic system of colour,—in which

tints laid on side by side, each in its utmost force, are made by

masterly treatment to produce a startling and novel effect of truth,—

must be viewed as being, more decidedly than the system of any other

painter, the forerunner of a style of execution now characterizing a

whole new section of the English School, and making itself admitted

as actually involving some positive additions to the resources of the

art. Some of the out-door pictures of this class, studied as they are

with a closeness of imitation perhaps unprecedented, have never-

theless no slight essential affinity to Blake's way of representing

natural scenes, though the smallness of scale in these latter, and the

spiritual quality which always mingles with their truth to nature,

may render the parallel less apparent than it otherwise would be.

In Blake's colouring of landscape, a subtle and exquisite reality forms

quite as strong an element as does ideal grandeur; whether we find

him dealing with the pastoral sweetness of drinking cattle at a stream,

their hides and fleeces all glorified by sunset with magic rainbow

hues; or revealing to us, in a flash of creative genius, some parted

sky and beaten sea full of portentous expectation. One unfailing

sign of his true brotherhood with all the great colourists is the lovingly

wrought and realistic flesh-painting which is constantly to be met

with in the midst of his most extraordinary effects. For pure realism,

too, though secured in a few touches as only greatness can, let us

turn to the dingy London street, all snow-clad and smoke-spotted,

through which the little black Chimney-sweeper wends his way in

the Songs of Experience. Certainly an unaccountable perversity of

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colour may now and then be apparent, as where in the same series

the tiger is painted in fantastic streaks of red, green, blue, and yellow,

while a tree stem at his side tantalizingly supplies the tint which one

might venture to think his due, and is perfect tiger-colour! I am

sure however that such vagaries, curious enough no doubt, are not

common with Blake, as the above is the only striking instance I can

recall in his published work. But, perhaps, a few occasional bewilder-

ments may be allowed to a system of colour which is often suddenly

called upon to help in embodying such conceptions as painter never

before dreamed of: some old skeleton folded together in the dark

bowels of earth or rock, discoloured with metallic stain and vegetable

mould; some symbolic human birth of crowned flowers at dawn,

amid rosy light and the joyful opening of all things. Even a pre-

sentment of the most abstract truths of natural science is not only

attempted by this new painter, but actually effected by legitimate

pictorial ways; and we are somehow shown, in figurative yet not

wholly unreal shapes and hues, the mingling of organic substances,

the gradual development and perpetual transfusion of life.

The reader who wishes to study Blake as a colourist has a means

of doing so, thorough in kind though limited in extent, by going to

the Print Room at the British Museum (which is accessible to any

one who takes the proper course to gain admission), and there exam-

ining certain of Blake's hand-coloured prints, bound in volumes.

All those in the collection are not equally valuable, since the various

copies of Blake's own colouring differ extremely in finish and rich-

ness. The Museum copy of the Songs of Innocence and Experience

is rather a poor one, though it will serve to judge of the book; and

some others of his works are there represented by copies which, I

feel convinced, are not coloured by Blake's hand at all, but got up

more or less in his manner, and brought into the market after his

death. But two volumes here—the Song of Los, and especially the

smaller of the two collections of odd plates from his different works,

which is labelled Designs by W. Blake, and numbered inside the fly-

leaf 5240—afford specimens of his colouring, perhaps equal to any

that could be seen.

The tinting in the Song of Los is not, throughout, of one order of

value; but no finer example of Blake's power in rendering poetic

effects of landscape could be found than that almost miraculous

expression of the glow and freedom of air in closing sunset, in a plate

where a youth and maiden, lightly embraced, are racing along a

saddened low-lit hill, against an open sky of blazing and changing

wonder. But in the volume of collected designs I have specified,

almost every plate (or more properly water-colour drawing, as the

printed groundwork in such specimens is completely overlaid) shows

Blake's colour to advantage, and some in its very fullest force. See,

for instance, in plate 8, the deep, unfathomable, green sea churning

a broken foam as white as milk against that sky which is all blue

and gold and blood-veined heart of fire; while from sea to sky one

locked and motionless face gazes, as it might seem, for ever. Or, in

plate 9, the fair tongues and threads of liquid flame deepening to

the redness of blood, lapping round the flesh-tints of a human figure

which bathes and swims in the furnace. Or plate 12, which, like the

other two, really embodies some of the wild ideas in Urizen, but might

seem to be Aurora guiding the new-born day, as a child, through a

soft-complexioned sky of fleeting rose and tingling grey, such as

only dawn and dreams can show us. Or, for pure delightfulness,

intricate colour, and a kind of Shakespearean sympathy with all

forms of life and growth, as in the Midsummer Night's Dream, let the

gazer, having this precious book once in his hands, linger long over

plates 10, 16, 22, and 23. If they be for him, he will be joyful more

and more the longer he looks, and will gain back in that time some

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things as he first knew them, not encumbered behind the days of

his life; things too delicate for memory or years since forgotten;

the momentary sense of spring in winter-sunshine, the long sunsets

long ago, and falling fires on many distant hills.

The inequality in value, to which I have alluded, between various

copies of the same design as coloured by Blake, may be tested by

comparing the book containing the plates alluded to above, with the

copies of Urizen and the Book of Thel, also in the Print Room, some

of whose contents are the same as in this collected volume. The

immense difference dependent on greater finish in the book I have

described, and indeed sometimes involving the introduction of entirely

new features into the design, will thus be at once apparent. In

these highly-wrought specimens, the colour has a half floating and half

granulated character which is most curious and puzzling, seeming

dependent on the use of some peculiar means, either in vehicle, or

by some kind of pressure or stamping which had the result of blend-

ing the transparent and body tints in a manner not easily described.

The actual printing from the plate bearing the design was as I have

said, and feel convinced, confined to the first impression in mono-

chrome. But this perplexing quality of execution reaches its climax

in some of Blake's “oil-colour printed” and hand-finished designs,

such as several large ones now in the possession of Captain Butts,

the grandson of Blake's friend and patron. One of these, the Newton,

consists in a great part of rock covered with fossil substance or lichen

of some kind, the treatment of which is as endlessly varied and intri-

cate as a photograph from a piece of seaweed would be. It cannot

possibly be all handwork, and yet I can conceive no mechanical pro-

cess, short of photography, which is really capable of explaining it.

It is no less than a complete mystery, well worthy of any amount of

inquiry, if a clue could only be found from which to commence. In

nearly all Blake's works of this solidly painted kind, it is greatly to be

lamented that the harmony of tints is continually impaired by the

blackening of the bad white pigment, and perhaps red lead also,

which has been used,—an injury which must probably go still further

in course of time.

Of the process by which the designs last alluded to were produced,

the following explanation has been furnished by Mr. Tatham. It

is interesting, and I have no doubt correct as regards the ground-

work, but certainly it quite falls short of accounting for the perplexing

intricacy of such portions as the rock-background of the Newton.

“Blake, when he wanted to make his prints in oil” (writes my in-

formant), “took a common thick millboard, and drew, in some strong

ink or colour, his design upon it strong and thick. He then painted

upon that in such oil colours and in such a state of fusion that they

would blur well. He painted roughly and quickly, so that no colour

would have time to dry. He then took a print of that on paper,

and this impression he coloured up in water-colours, repainting his

outline on the millboard when he wanted to take another print.

This plan he had recourse to, because he could vary slightly each

impression; and each having a sort of accidental look, he could

branch out so as to make each one different. The accidental look

they had was very enticing.” Objections might be raised to this

account as to the apparent impracticability of painting in water-

colours over oil; but I do not believe it would be found so, if the oil

colour were merely stamped as described, and left to dry thoroughly

into the paper.

In concluding a biography which has for its subject a life so prone

to new paths as was that of William Blake, it may be well to allude,

however briefly, to those succeeding British artists who have shown

unmistakably something of his influence in their works. Foremost

among these comes a very great though as yet imperfectly acknow-

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ledged name,—that of David Scott of Edinburgh, a man whom Blake

himself would have delighted to honour, and to whose high appre-

ciation of Blake the motto on the title-page of the present book bears

witness. Another proof of this is to be found in a MS. note in a

copy of The Grave which belonged to Scott; which note I shall here

transcribe. I may premise that the apparent preference given to

The Grave over Blake's other works seems to me almost to argue in

the writer an imperfect acquaintance with the Job.

“These, of any series of designs which art has produced” (writes

the Scottish painter), “are the most purely elevated in their relation

and sentiment. It would be long to discriminate the position they

hold in this respect, and at the same time the disregard in which they

may be held by some who judge of them in a material relation,

while the great beauty which they possess will at once be apparent

to others who can appreciate their style in its immaterial connection.

But the sum of the whole in my mind is this: that these designs

reach the intellectual or infinite, in an abstract significance, more

entirely unmixed with inferior elements and local conventions than

any others; that they are the result of high intelligence, of thought,

and of a progress of art through many styles and stages of different

times, produced through a bright generalizing and transcendental

mind.

“The errors or defects of Blake's mere science in form, and his

proneness to overdo some of its best features into weakness, are less

perceptible in these than in others of his works. What was a dis-

appointment to him was a benefit to the work,—that it was etched by

another, who was able to render it in a style thoroughly consistent,

(but which Blake has the originality of having pointed out, in his

series from Young, though he did not properly effect it,) and to pass

over those solecisms which would have interrupted its impression,

in a way that, to the apprehender of these, need scarcely give offence,

and hides them from the discovery of others. They are etched with

most appropriate and consummate ability.”— David Scott, 1844.

In the list of subscribers appended to Blake's Grave, we find the

name of “Mr. Robert Scott, Edinburgh.” This was the engraver,

father of David Scott, to whom, therefore, this book (published in

1808, one year after his birth) must have come as an early association

and influence. That such was the case is often traceable in his works,

varied as they are in their grand range of subject, and even treatment.

And it is singular that the clear perception of Blake's weak side,

evident in the second paragraph of the note, did not save its writer

from falling into defects exactly similar in that peculiar class of his

works in which he most resembles Blake. It must be noticed, however,

that these are chiefly among his earlier productions (such as the

Monograms of Man, the picture of Discord, etc.), or else among the

sketches left imperfect; while the note dates only five years before

his untimely death at the age of forty-two. This is not a place where

any attempt can be made at estimating the true position of David

Scott. Such a task will need, and some day doubtless find, ample

limit and opportunity. It is fortunate that an unusually full and

excellent biographical record of him already exists in the Memoir

from the hand of a brother no less allied to him by mental and artistic

powers than by ties of blood; but what is needed is that his works

should be collected and competently placed before the world. An

opportunity in this direction was afforded by the International Ex-

hibition of 1862; but the two noble works of his which were there

were so unpardonably ill-placed (and that where so much was well

seen which was not worth the seeing) that the chance was completely

missed. David Scott will one day be acknowledged as the painter

most nearly fulfilling the highest requirements for historic art, both

as a thinker and a colourist (in spite of the great claims in many

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respects of Etty and Maclise), who had come among us from the time

of Hogarth to his own. In saying this it is necessary to add distinctly

(for the sake of objectors who have raised, or may raise, their voices),

that it is not only or even chiefly on his intellectual eminence that

the statement is based, but also on the great qualities of colour and

powers of solid execution displayed in his finest works, which are to

be found among those deriving their subjects from history.

Another painter, ranking far below David Scott, but still not to

be forgotten where British poetic art is the theme, was Theodore von

Holst, an Englishman, though of German extraction; in many of

whose most characteristic works the influence of Blake, as well as

of Fuseli, has probably been felt. But Holst was far from possessing

anything like the depth of thought or high aims which distinguished

Blake. At the same time, his native sense of beauty and colour

in the more ideal walks of art was originally beyond that of any

among his contemporaries, except Etty and Scott. He may be best

described, perhaps, to the many who do not know his works, as being,

in some sort, the Edgar Poe of painting; but lacking, probably,

even the continuity of closely studied work in the midst of irregu-

larities which distinguished the weird American poet, and has enabled

him to leave behind some things which cannot be soon forgotten.

Holst, on the contrary, it is to be feared, has hardly transmitted such

complete record of his naturally great gifts as can secure their rescue

from oblivion. It would be very desirable that an account of him

and his works should be written by some one best able to do so among

those still living who must have known him.

It is a tribute due to an artist who, however imperfect his self-expres-

sion during a short and fitful career, forms certainly one of the few

connecting links between the early and sound period of English colour

and method in painting, and that revival of which so many signs

have, in late years, been apparent. At present, much of what he did

is doubtless in danger of being lost altogether. Specimens from his

hand existed in the late Northwick collection, now dispersed; and

some years since I saw a most beautiful work by him—a female head

or half figure—among the pictures at Stafford House. But Holst's

sketches and designs on paper (a legion past numbering) were, for

the most part, more expressive of his full powers than his pictures,

which were too often merely sketches enlarged without reference to

nature. Of these, a very extensive collection was possessed by the

late Serjeant Ralph Thomas. What has become of them? Amongst

Holst's pictures, the best are nearly always those partaking of the

fantastic or supernatural, which, however dubious a ground to take

in art, was the true bent of his genius. A notable instance of his

comparative weakness in subjects of pure dignity may be found in

what has been pronounced his best work, and was probably about

the most “successful” at the time of its production; that is, the

Raising of Jairus's Daughter, which was once in the gallery at the

Pantheon in Oxford Street. Probably the fullest account of Holst

is to be found in the sufficiently brief notice of him which appeared

in the Art Journal (or Art Union, as then called).

Of any affinity in spirit to Blake which might be found existing

in the works of some living artists, it is not necessary to speak here;

yet allusion should be made to one still alive and honoured in other

ways, who early in life produced a series of Biblical designs seldom

equalled for imaginative impression, and perhaps more decidedly

like Blake's works, though quite free from plagiarism, than anything

else that could be cited. I allude to One Hundred Copper-plate En-

gravings from original drawings by Isaac Taylor, junior, calculated

to ornament all quarto and octavo editions of the Bible. London: Allan

Bell & Co., Warwick Square. 1834. Strange as it may appear, I

believe I am right in stating that these were produced in youth by

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Sig. 38
the late venerable author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm, and

many other works. How he came to do them, or why he did no more,

I have no means of recording. They are very small and very un-

attractively engraved, sometimes by the artist and sometimes by

others. In simplicity, dignity, and original thought, probably in

general neglect at the time, and certainly in complete disregard ever

since, they bear a close affinity to the mass of Blake's works, and

may fairly be supposed to have been, in some measure, inspired by

the study of them. The Witch of Endor, The Plague Stayed, The

Death of Samson , and many others are, in spirit, even well worthy of

his hand, and from him, at least, would not have missed the admiration

they deserve.

Having spoken so far of Blake's influence as a painter, I should be

glad if I could point out that the simplicity and purity of his style

as a lyrical poet had also exercised some sway. But, indeed, he is

so far removed from ordinary apprehensions in most of his poems,

or more or less in all, and they have been so little spread abroad,

that it will be impossible to attribute to them any decided place among

the impulses which have directed the extraordinary mass of poetry,

displaying power of one or another kind, which has been brought

before us, from his day to our own. Perhaps some infusion of his

modest and genuine beauties might add a charm even to the most

gifted works of our present rather redundant time. One grand poem

which was, till lately, on the same footing as his own (or even a still

more obscure one) as regards popular recognition, and which shares,

though on a more perfect scale than he ever realized in poetry, the

exalted and primeval, if not the subtly etherealized, qualities of his

poetic art, may be found in Charles Wells's scriptural drama of Joseph

and his Brethren , published in 1824 under the assumed name of

Howard. This work affords, perhaps, the solitary instance, within

our period, of poetry of the very first class falling quite unrecognized

and remaining so for a long space of years. In the first edition of

this Life of Blake it was prophesied that Wells's time would “assuredly

still come.” In 1876 Joseph and his Brethren was republished under

the auspices of Mr. Swinburne, and with an introduction from his

pen. Charles Wells lived to see this new phœnix form of the genius

of his youth, but died in 1878. The work is attainable now, and

need not here be dwelt on at any length. In what may be called the

Anglo-Hebraic order of aphoristic truth, Shakspeare, Blake, and

Wells are nearly akin; nor could any fourth poet be named so abso-

lutely in the same connection, though from the Shakspearean point

of view alone the “marvellous,” nay miraculous, Chatterton must

also be included. It may be noted that Wells's admirable prose Stories

after Nature (1822) have not yet been republished.

A very singular example of the closest and most absolute resem-

blance to Blake's poetry may be met with (if only one could meet with

it) in a phantasmal sort of little book, published, or perhaps not

published but only printed, some years since, and entitled Impro-

visations of the Spirit . It bears no author's name, but was written

by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, the highly-gifted editor of Swedenborg's

writings, and author of a Life of him: to whom we owe a reprint

of the poems in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience . These

improvisations profess to be written under precisely the same kind

of spiritual guidance, amounting to abnegation of personal effort

in the writer, which Blake supposed to have presided over the pro-

duction of his Jerusalem, etc. The little book has passed into the

general (and in all other cases richly-deserved) limbo of the modern

“spiritualist” muse. It is a very thick little book, however unsub-

stantial its origin; and contains, amid much that is disjointed or

hopelessly obscure (but then why be the polisher of poems for which

a ghost, and not even your own ghost, is alone responsible?) many

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passages and indeed whole compositions of a remote and charming

beauty, or sometimes of a grotesque figurative relation to things of

another sphere, which are startlingly akin to Blake's writings,—could

pass, in fact, for no one's but his. Professing as they do the same new

kind of authorship, they might afford plenty of material for com-

parison and bewildered speculation, if such were in any request.

Considering the interval of seventeen years which has now elapsed

since the first publication of this Life , it may be well to refer briefly

to such studies connected with Blake as have since appeared. This

is not the place where any attempt could be made to appraise the

thanks due for such a work as Mr. Swinburne's Critical Essay on

Blake. The task chiefly undertaken in it—that of exploring and

expounding the system of thought and personal mythology which

pervades Blake's Prophetic Books—has been fulfilled, not by piece-

work or analysis, but by creative intuition. The fiat of Form and

Light has gone forth, and as far as such a chaos could respond it has

responded. To the volume itself, and to that only, can any reader

be referred for its store of intellectual wealth and reach of eloquent

dominion. Next among Blake labours of love let me here refer to

Mr. James Smetham's deeply sympathetic and assimilative study

(in the form of a review article on the present Life ) published in the

London Quarterly Review for January 1869. As this article is reprinted

in our present Vol. II., no further tribute to its delicacy and force

needs to be made here: it speaks for itself. But some personal

mention, however slight, should here exist as due to its author, a

painter and designer of our own day who is, in many signal respects,

very closely akin to Blake; more so, probably, than any other living

artist could be said to be. James Smetham's work—generally of

small or moderate size—ranges from Gospel subjects, of the subtlest

imaginative and mental insight, and sometimes of the grandest

colouring, through Old Testament compositions and through poetic

and pastoral themes of every kind, to a special imaginative form of

landscape. In all these he partakes greatly of Blake's immediate

spirit, being also often nearly allied by landscape intensity to Samuel

Palmer,—in youth, the noble disciple of Blake. Mr. Smetham's

works are very numerous, and, as other exclusive things have come

to be, will some day be known in a wide circle. Space is altogether

wanting to make more than this passing mention here of them and

of their producer, who shares, in a remarkable manner, Blake's mental

beauties and his formative shortcomings, and possesses besides an

individual invention which often claims equality with the great

exceptional master himself.

Mr. W. B. Scott's two valuable contributions to Blake records—

his Catalogue Raisonné of the Exhibition of Blake's Works , as held at

the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1876, and his Etchings from Blake's

Works, with Descriptive Text —are both duly specified in the General Cata-

logues, existing in our Vol. II. We will say briefly here that no man

living has a better right to write of Blake or to engrave his work

than Mr. Scott, whose work of both kinds is now too well known to

call for recognition. Last but not least, the richly condensed and

representative essay prefixed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti to his edition

(in the Aldine series) of Blake's Poetical Works demands from all

sides—as its writer has, from all sides, discerned and declared Blake

—the highest commendation we can here briefly offer.

The reader has now reached the threshold of the Second Volume

of this work, in which he will be fortunate enough to be communi-

cating directly with Blake's own mind, in a series of writings in prose

and verse, many of them here first published. Now perhaps no

poet ever courted a public with more apparent need for some smoothing

of the way, or mild forewarning, from within, from without, or indeed

from any region whence a helping heaven and four bountiful winds

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might be pleased to waft it, than does Blake in many of the “emana-

tions” contained in this our Second Volume. Yet, on the other

hand, there is the plain truth that such aid will be not at all needed

by those whom these writings will impress, and almost certainly lost

upon those whom they will not. On the whole, I have thought it

best to preface each class of these Selections with a few short remarks,

but neither to encumber with many words their sure effect in the

right circles, nor to do battle with their destiny in the wrong. Only

it may be specified here, that whenever any pieces occurring in Blake's

written note-books appeared of a nature on the privacy of which

he might have relied in writing them, these have been passed by,

in the task of selection. At the same time, all has been included

which seemed capable in any way of extending our knowledge of

Blake as a poet and writer, in the manner he himself might have

wished. Mere obscurity or remoteness from usual ways of thought

was, as we know, no bar to publication with him; therefore, in all

cases where such qualities, even seeming to myself excessive, are

found in conjunction with the lyrical power and beauty of expression

so peculiar to Blake's style as a poet (and this, let us not forget,

startlingly in advance of the time at which he wrote), I have thought

it better to include the compositions so qualified. On the other

hand, my MS. researches have often furnished me with poems which

I treasure most highly, and which I cannot doubt will dwell in many

memories as they do in mine. But, as regards the varying claims of

these selections, it should be borne in mind that an attempt is made

in the present volume to produce, after a long period of neglect,

as complete a record as might be of Blake and his works; and that,

while any who can here find anything to love will be the poet-painter's

welcome guests, still such a feast is spread first of all for those who

can know at a glance that it is theirs and was meant for them;

who can meet their host's eye with sympathy and recognition, even

when he offers them the new strange fruits grown for himself in

far-off gardens where he has dwelt alone, or pours for them the wines

which he has learned to love in lands where they never travelled.

From the Poetical Sketches

[ Printed in 1783. Written 1768-77. æt. 11—20]

There is no need for many further critical remarks on these selections

from the Poetical Sketches, which have already been spoken of in

Chap. VI. of the Life . Among the lyrical pieces here chosen, it

would be difficult to award a distinct preference. These Songs are

certainly among the small class of modern times which recall the

best period of English song writing, whose rarest treasures lie scattered

among the plays of our Elizabethan dramatists. They deserve no

less than very high admiration in a quite positive sense, which cannot

be even qualified by the slight, hasty, or juvenile imperfections of

execution to be met with in some of them, though by no means in

all. On the other hand, if we view them comparatively; in relation

to Blake's youth when he wrote them, or the poetic epoch in which

they were produced; it would be hardly possible to overrate their

astonishing merit. The same return to the diction and high feeling

of a greater age is to be found in the unfinished play of Edward the

Third , from which some fragments are included here. In the original

edition, however, these are marred by frequent imperfections in the

metre (partly real and partly dependent on careless printing), which

I have thought it best to remove, as I found it possible to do so without

once, in the slightest degree, affecting the originality of the text.

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The same has been done in a few similar instances elsewhere. The

poem of Blind-man's Buff stands in curious contrast with the rest,

as an effort in another manner, and, though less excellent, is not

without interest. Besides what is here given, there are attempts in

the very modern-antique style of ballad prevalent at the time, and

in Ossianic prose, but all naturally very inferior, and probably earlier.

It is singular that, for formed style and purely literary qualities,

Blake perhaps never afterwards equalled the best things in this

youthful volume, though he often did so in melody and feeling, and

more than did so in depth of thought.



Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience



[ Engraved 1789]



Here again but little need be added to what has already been said

in the Life respecting the Songs of Innocence and Experience . The

first series is incomparably the more beautiful of the two, being indeed

almost flawless in essential respects; while in the second series, the

five years intervening between the two had proved sufficient for

obscurity and the darker mental phases of Blake's writings to set in

and greatly mar its poetic value. This contrast is more especially

evident in those pieces whose subjects tally in one and the other

series. For instance, there can be no comparison between the first

Chimney Sweeper, which touches with such perfect simplicity the

true pathetic chord of its subject, and the second, tinged somewhat

with the commonplaces, if also with the truths, of social discontent.

However, very perfect and noble examples of Blake's metaphysical

poetry occur among the Songs of Experience, such as Christian For-

bearance , and The Human Abstract. One piece, the second Cradle

Song , I have myself introduced from the MS. Note-book often referred

to, since there can be no doubt that it was written to match with

the first, and it has quite sufficient beauty to give it a right to its

natural place. A few alterations and additions in other poems have

been made from the same source.

Ideas of Good and Evil

In the MS. Note-book, to which frequent reference has been made

in the Life , a page stands inscribed with the heading given above.

It seems uncertain how much of the book's contents such title may

have been meant to include; but it is now adopted here as a not

inappropriate summarizing endorsement for the precious section

which here follows. In doing so, Mr. Swinburne's example (in his

Essay on Blake ) has been followed, as regards pieces drawn from the

Note-book.

The contents of the present section are derived partly from the

Note-book in question, and partly from another small autograph

collection of different matter, somewhat more fairly copied. The

poems have been reclaimed, as regards the first-mentioned source,

from as chaotic a mass as could well be imagined; amid which it

has sometimes been necessary either to omit, transpose, or combine,

so as to render available what was very seldom found in a final state.

And even in the pieces drawn from the second source specified above,

means of the same kind have occasionally been resorted to, where

they seemed to lessen obscurity or avoid redundance. But with all

this, there is nothing throughout that is not faithfully Blake's own.

One piece in this series ( The Two Songs) may be regarded as a

different version of The Human Abstract, occurring in the Songs of

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Experience. This new form is certainly the finer one, I think, by

reason of its personified character, which adds greatly to the force of

the impression produced. It is, indeed, one of the finest things Blake

ever did, really belonging, by its vivid completeness, to the order

of perfect short poems,—never a very large band, even when the

best poets are ransacked to recruit it. Others among the longer

poems of this section, which are, each in its own way, truly admirable,

are Broken Love, Mary, and Auguries of Innocence.

It is but too probable that the piece called Broken Love has a recon-

dite bearing on the bewilderments of Blake's special mythology.

But besides a soul suffering in such limbo, this poem has a recognizable

body penetrated with human passion. From this point of view,

never, perhaps, have the agony and perversity of sundered affection

been more powerfully (however singularly) expressed than here.

The speaker is one whose soul has been intensified by pain to be

his only world, among the scenes, figures, and events of which he

moves as in a new state of being. The emotions have been quickened

and isolated by conflicting torment, till each is a separate companion.

There is his “spectre,” the jealous pride which scents in the snow

the footsteps of the beloved rejected woman, but is a wild beast to

guard his way from reaching her; his “emanation” which silently

weeps within him, for has not he also sinned? So they wander to-

gether in “a fathomless and boundless deep,” the morn full of tem-

pests and the night of tears. Let her weep, he says, not for his sins

only, but for her own; nay, he will cast his sins upon her shoulders

too; they shall be more and more till she come to him again. Also

this woe of his can array itself in stately imagery. He can count

separately how many of his soul's affections the knife she stabbed

them with has slain, how many yet mourn over the tombs which he has

built for these: he can tell too of some that still watch around his

bed, bright sometimes with ecstatic passion of melancholy and crown-

ing his mournful head with vine. All these living forgive her trans-

gressions: when will she look upon them, that the dead may live

again? Has she not pity to give for pardon? nay, does he not need

her pardon too? He cannot seek her, but oh! if she would return.

Surely her place is ready for her, and bread and wine of forgiveness

of sins.

The Crystal Cabinet and the Mental Traveller belong to a truly

mystical order of poetry. The former is a lovely piece of lyrical

writing, but certainly has not the clearness of crystal. Yet the meaning

of such among Blake's compositions as this is may sometimes be

missed chiefly through seeking for a sense more recondite than was

really meant. A rather intricate interpretation was attempted here

in the first edition of these Selections. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has prob-

ably since found the true one in his simple sentence: “This poem

seems to me to represent, under a very ideal form, the phenomena

of gestation and birth” (see the Aldine edition of Blake's Poems,

page 174). The singular stanza commencing “Another England there

I saw,” etc., may thus be taken to indicate quaintly that the unde-

veloped creature, half sentient and half conscious, has a world of

its own akin in some wise to the country of its birth.

The Mental Traveller seemed at first a hopeless riddle; and the

editor of these Selections must confess to having been on the point

of omitting it, in spite of its high poetic beauty, as incomprehensible.

He is again indebted to his brother for the clear-sighted, and no

doubt correct, exposition which is now printed with it, and brings

its full value to light.

The poem of Mary appears to be, on one side, an allegory of the

poetic or spiritual mind moving unrecognized and reviled among

its fellows; and this view of it is corroborated when we find Blake

applying to himself two lines almost identically taken from it, in the

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last of the Letters to Mr. Butts printed in the Life . But the literal

meaning may be accepted, too, as a hardly extreme expression of

the rancour and envy so constantly attending pre-eminent beauty

in women.

A most noble, though surpassingly quaint example of Blake's loving

sympathy with all forms of created life, as well as of the kind of

oracular power which he possessed of giving vigorous expression to

abstract or social truths, will be found in the Auguries of Innocence.

It is a somewhat tangled skein of thought, but stored throughout

with the riches of simple wisdom.

Quaintness reaches its climax in William Bond, which may be

regarded as a kind of glorified street-ballad. One point that requires

to be noted is that the term “fairies” is evidently used to indicate

passionate emotions, while “angels” are spirits of cold coercion. The

close of the ballad is very beautiful. It is not long since there seemed

to dawn on the present writer a meaning in this ballad not discovered

before. Should we not connect it with the lines In a Myrtle Shade

the meaning of which is obvious to all knowers of Blake as bearing

on marriage? And may not “William Bond” thus be William

Blake, the bondman of the “lovely myrtle tree”? It is known

that the shadow of jealousy, far from unfounded, fell on poor Catherine

Blake's married life at one moment, and it has been stated that this

jealousy culminated in a terrible and difficult crisis. We ourselves

can well imagine that this ballad is but a literal relation, with such

emotional actors, of some transfiguring trance and passion of mutual

tears from which Blake arose no longer “bond” to his myrtle-tree,

but with that love, purged of all drossier element, whose last death-

bed accent was, “Kate, you have ever been an angel to me!”

The ballad of William Bond has great spiritual beauties, whatever

its meaning; and it is one of only two examples, in this form, occurring

among Blake's lyrics. The other is called Long John Brown and Little

Mary Bell , and perhaps the reader may be sufficiently surprised

without it.

The shorter poems, and even the fragments, afford many instances

of that exquisite metrical gift and rightness in point of form which

constitute Blake's special glory among his contemporaries, even more

eminently perhaps than the grander command of mental resources

which is also his. Such qualities of pure perfection in writing verse

as he perpetually without effort displayed are to be met with among

those elder poets whom he loved, and such again are now looked

upon as the peculiar trophies of a school which has arisen since his

time; but he alone (let it be repeated and remembered) possessed them

then, and possessed them in clear completeness. Colour and metre,

these are the true patents of nobility in painting and poetry, taking

precedence of all intellectual claims; and it is by virtue of these,

first of all, that Blake holds, in both arts, a rank which cannot be taken

from him.

Of the Epigrams on Art, which conclude this section, a few are

really pointed, others amusingly irascible,—all more or less a sort of

nonsense verses, and not even pretending to be much else. To enter

into their reckless spirit of doggerel, it is almost necessary to see the

original note-book in which they occur, which continually testifies,

by sudden exclamatory entries, to the curious degree of boyish

impulse which was one of Blake's characteristics. It is not improb-

able that such names as Rembrandt, Rubens, Correggio, Reynolds,

may have met the reader's eye before in a very different sort of context

from that which surrounds them in the surprising poetry of this

their brother artist; and certainly they are made to do service here

as scarecrows to the crops of a rather jealous husbandman. And

for all that, I have my strong suspicions that the same amount of

disparagement of them uttered to instead of by our good Blake, would

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have elicited, on his side, a somewhat different estimate. These

phials of his wrath, however, have no poison, but merely some

laughing gas in them; so now that we are setting the laboratory a

little in order, let these, too, come down from their dusty upper shelf.

Prose Writings

Of the prose writings which now follow, the only ones already in

print are the Descriptive Catalogue and the Sibylline Leaves. To the

former of these, the Public Address, which here succeeds it, forms a

fitting and most interesting pendant. It has been compiled from a

very confused mass of MS. notes; but its purpose is unmistakable

as having been intended as an accompaniment to the engraving of

Chaucer's Pilgrims. Both the Catalogue and Address abound in

critical passages on painting and poetry, which must be ranked without

reserve among the very best things ever said on either subject. Such

inestimable qualities afford quite sufficient ground whereon to claim

indulgence for eccentricities which are here and there laughably

excessive, but which never fail to have a personal, even where they

have no critical, value. As evidence of the writer's many moods,

these pieces of prose are much best left unmutilated: let us, therefore,

risk misconstruction in some quarters. There are others where even

the whimsical onslaughts on names no less great than those which

the writer most highly honoured, and assertions as to this or that

component quality of art being everything or nothing as it served

the fiery plea in hand, will be discerned as the impatient extremes

of a man who had his own work to do, which was of one kind, as he

thought, against another; and who mainly did it too, in spite of

that injustice without which no extremes might ever have been

chargeable against him. And let us remember that, after all, having

greatness in him, his practice of art included all great aims, whether

they were such as his antagonistic moods railed against or no.

The Vision of the Last Judgment is almost as much a manifesto of

opinion as either the Catalogue or Address. But its work is in a wider

field, and one which, where it stretches beyond our own clear view,

may not necessarily therefore have been a lost road to Blake himself.

Certainly its grandeur and the sudden great things greatly said in it,

as in all Blake's prose, constitute it an addition to our opportunities

of communing with him, and one which we may prize highly.

The constant decisive words in which Blake alludes, throughout

these writings, to the plagiarisms of his contemporaries, are painful

to read, and will be wished away; but, still, it will be worth thinking

whether their being said, or the need of their being said, is the greater

cause for complaint. Justice, looking through surface accomplish-

ments, greater nicety and even greater occasional judiciousness of

execution, in the men whom Blake compares with himself, still per-

ceives these words of his to be true. In each style of the art of a

period, and more especially in the poetic style, there is often some

one central initiatory man, to whom personally, if not to the care of

the world, it is important that his creative power should be held to

be his own, and that his ideas and slowly perfected materials should

not be caught up before he has them ready for his own use. Yet,

consciously or unconsciously, such an one's treasures and possessions

are, time after time, while he still lives and needs them, sent forth

to the world by others in forms from which he cannot perhaps again

clearly claim what is his own, but which render the material useless

to him henceforward. Hardly wonderful, after all, if for once an

impetuous man of this kind is found raising the hue and cry, careless

whether people heed him or no. It is no small provocation, be sure,

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when the gazers hoot you as outstripped in your race, and you know

all the time that the man ahead, whom they shout for, is only a flying

thief.

The Inventions to the Book of Job

These Inventions to the Book of Job, which may be regarded as the

works of Blake's own hand in which he most unreservedly competes

with others—belonging as they do in style to the accepted category

of engraved designs—consist of twenty-one subjects on a consider-

ably smaller scale than those in The Grave, each highly wrought in

light and shade, and each surrounded by a border of allusive design

and inscription, executed in a slighter style than the subject itself.

Perhaps this may fairly be pronounced, on the whole, the most re-

markable series of prints on a scriptural theme which has appeared

since the days of Albert Dürer and Rembrandt, widely differing too

from either.

Except The Grave, these designs must be known to a larger circle

than any other series by Blake; and yet they are by no means so

familiar as to render unnecessary such imperfect reproduction of

their intricate beauties as the scheme of this work made possible, or

even the still more shadowy presentment of verbal description.

The first among them shows us the patriarch Job worshiping

among his family under a mighty oak, surrounded by feeding flocks,

range behind range, as far as the distant homestead, in a landscape

glorified by setting sun and rising moon. “Thus did Job con-

tinually,” the leading motto tells us. In the second plate we see the

same persons grouped, still full of happiness and thanksgiving. But

this is that day when the sons of God came to present themselves

before the Lord, and Satan came also among them; and above the

happy group we see what they do not see, and know that power is

given to Satan over all that Job has. Then in the two next subjects

come the workings of that power; the house falling on the slain

feasters, and the messengers hurrying one after another to the lonely

parents, still with fresh tidings of ruin. The fifth is a wonderful

design. Job and his wife still sit side by side, the closer for their

misery, and still, out of the little left to them, give alms to those

poorer than themselves. The angels of their love and resignation

are ever with them on either side; but above, again, the unseen

Heaven lies open. There sits throned that Almighty figure, filled

now with inexpressible pity, almost with compunction. Around Him

His angels shrink away in horror; for now the fires which clothe them

—the very fires of God—are compressed in the hand of Satan into a

phial for the devoted head of Job himself. Job is to be tried to the

utmost; only his life is withheld from the tormentor. How this

is wrought, and how Job's friends come to visit him in his desolation,

are the subjects which follow; and then, in the eighth design, Job

at last lifts up his voice, with arms uplifted too, among his crouching,

shuddering friends, and curses the day when he was born. The next,

again, is among the grandest of the series. Eliphaz the Temanite

is telling Job of the thing which was secretly brought to him in the

visions of the night; and above we are shown the matter of his words,

the spirit which passed before his face; all blended in a wondrous

partition of light, cloud, and mist of light. After this, Job kneels

up and prays his reproachful friends to have pity on him, for the

hand of God has touched him. And next—most terrible of all—we

see embodied the accusations of torment which Job brings against

his Maker: a theme hard to dwell upon, and which needs to be viewed

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in the awful spirit in which Blake conceived it. But in the following

subject there comes at last some sign of soothing change. The sky,

till now full of sunset and surging cloud, in which the stones of the

ruined home looked as if they were still burning, has here given birth

to the large peaceful stars, and under them the young Elihu begins

to speak: “Lo! all these things worketh God oftentimes with man,

to bring forth his soul from the pit.” The expression of Job, as he

sits with folded arms, beginning to be reconciled, is full of delicate

familiar nature; while the look of the three unmerciful friends, in

their turn reproved, has something in it almost humorous. And

then the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, dreadful in its resist-

less force, but full also of awakening life, and rich with lovely clinging

spray. Under its influence, Job and his wife kneel and listen, with

faces to which the blessing of thankfulness has almost returned. In

the next subject it shines forth fully present again, for now God

Himself is speaking of His own omnipotence and right of judgment—

of that day of creation “when the morning stars sang together, and

all the sons of God shouted for joy.” All that He says is brought

before us, surrounding His own glorified Image; while below, the

hearers kneel rapt and ecstatic. This is a design which never has

been surpassed in the whole range of Christian art. Very grand too

is the next, where we see Behemoth, chief of the ways of God, and

Leviathan, king over the children of pride. The sixteenth plate,

to which we now come, is a proof of the clear dramatic sense with

which Blake conceived the series as a whole. It is introduced in order

to show us the defeat of Satan in his contest against Job's uprightness.

Here, again, is the throned Creator among His angels, and beneath

Him the Evil One falls with tremendous plummet-force; Hell

naked before His face, and Destruction without a covering. Job

with his friends are present as awe-struck witnesses. In the design

which follows, He who has chastened and consoled Job and his wife

is seen to bestow His blessing on them; while the three friends, against

whom “His wrath is kindled,” cover their faces with fear and trem-

bling. And now comes the acceptance of Job, who prays for his

friends before an altar, from which a heart-shaped body of flame

shoots upward into the sun itself; the background showing a distant

evening light through broad tree stems—the most peaceful sight

in the world. Then Job's kindred return to him: “every one also

gave him a piece of money and every one an earring of gold.” Next

he is seen relating his trials and mercies to the new daughters who

were born to him—no women so fair in the land. And, lastly, the

series culminates in a scene of music and rapturous joy, which, con-

trasted with the calm thanksgiving of the opening design, gloriously

embodies the words of its text, “So the Lord blessed the latter end

of Job more than the beginning.”

In these three last designs, I would specially direct attention to

the exquisite beauty of the female figures. Nothing proves more

thoroughly how free was the spiritualism of Blake's art from any

ascetic tinge. These women are given to us no less noble in body

than in soul; large-eyed, and large-armed also; such as a man may

love with all his life.

The angels (and especially those in plate 14, “When the morning

stars sang together,”) may be equally cited as proofs of the same

great distinctive quality. These are no flimsy, filmy creatures,

drowsing on feather-bed wings, or smothered in draperies. Here

the utmost amount of vital power is the heavenly glory they display;

faces, bodies, and wings, all living and springing fire. And that the

ascetic tendency, here happily absent, is not the inseparable penalty

to be paid for a love of the Gothic forms of beauty, is evident

enough, when we see those forms everywhere rightly mingling

with the artist's conceptions, as the natural breath of sacred art.

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With the true daring of genius, he has even introduced a Gothic

cathedral in the background of the worshipping group in plate 1, as

the shape in which the very soul of worship is now for ever embodied

for us. It is probably with the fine intention of symbolizing the

unshaken piety of Job under heavy affliction that a similar building

is still seen pointing its spires heavenward in the fourth plate, where the

messengers of ruin follow close at one another's heels. We may,

perhaps, even conjecture that the shapeless buildings, like rude pagan

cairns, which are scattered over those scenes of the drama which

refer to the gradual darkening of Job's soul, have been introduced

as forms suggestive of error and the shutting out of hope. Every-

where throughout the series we meet with evidences of Gothic feeling.

Such are the recessed settle and screen of trees in plate 2, much in

the spirit of Orcagna; the decorative character of the stars in plate

12; the Leviathan and Behemoth in plate 15, grouped so as to recall

a mediæval medallion or wood-carving; the trees, drawn always

as they might be carved in the woodwork of an old church. Further

instances of the same kind may be found in the curious sort of painted

chamber, showing the themes of his discourse, in which Job addresses

his daughters in plate 20; and in the soaring trumpets of plate 21,

which might well be one of the rich conceptions of Luca della Robbia.

Nothing has yet been said of the borders of illustrative design and

inscription which surround each subject in the Job. These are slight

in manner, but always thoughtful and appropriate, and often very

beautiful. Where Satan obtains power over Job, we see a terrible

serpent twined round tree-stems among winding fires, while angels

weep, but may not quench them. Fungi spring under baleful dews,

while Job prays that the night may be solitary, and the day perish

wherein he was born. Trees stand and bow like ghosts, with bristling

hair of branches, round the spirit which passes before the face of

Eliphaz. Fine examples also are the prostrate rain-beaten tree in

plate 13; and, in the next plate, the map of the days of creation.

In plate 18 (the sacrifice and acceptance of Job), Blake's palette and

brushes are expressively introduced in the border, lying, as it were,

on an altar-step beside the signature of his name. That which

possesses the greatest charm is perhaps the border to plate 2. Here,

at the base, are sheepfolds watched by shepherds; up the sides is

a trellis, on whose lower rings birds sit upon their nests, while angels,

on the higher ones, worship round flame and cloud, till it arches at

the summit into a sky full of the written words of God.

Such defects as exist in these designs are of the kind usual with

Blake, but far less frequent than in his more wilful works; indeed,

many among them are entirely free from any damaging peculiarities.

Intensely muscular figures, who surprise us by a sort of line round

the throat, wrists, and ankles, but show no other sign of being draped,

are certainly to be sometimes found here as elsewhere, but not many

of them. The lifted arms and pointing arms in plates 7 and 10 are

pieces of mannerism to be regretted, the latter even seeming a remi-

niscence of Macbeth's Witches by Fuseli: and a few other slight

instances might, perhaps, be cited. But, on the whole, these are

designs no less well and clearly considered, however highly imaginative,

than the others in the small highest class of original engraved inven-

tions, which comprises the works of Albert Dürer, of Rembrandt, of

Hogarth, of Turner, of Cruikshank in his best time, and some few

others. Like all these they are incisive and richly toned to a degree

which can only be attained in engraving by the original inventor,

and have equally a style of execution all their own. In spirit and

character they are no less independent, having more real affinity,

perhaps, with Orcagna than with any other of the greatest men. In

their unison of natural study with imagination, they remind one

decidedly of him; and also of Giotto, himself the author of a now

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almost destroyed series of frescoes from Job, in the Campo Santo

at Pisa, which it would be interesting to compare, as far as possible,

with these inventions of Blake.

Jerusalem

Of the pictorial part of the Jerusalem much might be said which

would merely be applicable to all Blake's works alike. One point

perhaps somewhat distinctive about it is an extreme largeness and

decorative character in the style of the drawings, which are mostly

made up of a few massive forms, thrown together on a grand, equal

scale. The beauty of the drawings varies much, according to the

colour in which they are printed. One copy, possessed by Lord

Houghton, is so incomparably superior, from this cause, to any other

I have seen, that no one could know the work properly without having

examined this copy. It is printed in a warm reddish brown, the exact

colour of a very fine photograph; and the broken blending of the

deeper tones with the more tender shadows,—all sanded over with

a sort of golden mist peculiar to Blake's mode of execution,—makes

still more striking the resemblance to the then undiscovered “hand-

ling” of Nature herself. The extreme breadth of the forms throughout,

when seen through the medium of this colour, shows sometimes,

united with its grandeur, a suavity of line which is almost Venetian.

The subjects are vague and mystic as the poem itself. Female

figures lie among waves full of reflected stars: a strange human

image, with a swan's head and wings, floats on water in a kneeling

attitude, and drinks: lovers embrace in an open water-lily: an eagle-

headed creature sits and contemplates the sun: serpent-women

are coiled with serpents: Assyrian-looking, human-visaged lions

are seen yoked to the plough or the chariot: rocks swallow or vomit

forth human forms, or appear to amalgamate with them: angels

cross each other over wheels of flame: and flames and hurrying

figures wreathe and wind among the lines. Even such slight things

as these rough intersecting circles, each containing some hint of an

angel, even these are made the unmistakable exponents of genius.

Here and there some more familiar theme meets us,—the creation

of Eve, or the Crucifixion; and then the thread is lost again. The

whole spirit of the designs might seem well symbolized in one of the

finest among them, where we see a triple-headed and triple-crowned

figure embedded in rocks, from whose breast is bursting a string of

youths, each in turn born from the other's breast in one sinuous throe

of mingled life, while the life of suns and planets dies and is born and

rushes together around them.

There is an ominous sentence in one of the letters of Blake to Mr.

Butts, where, speaking of the Jerusalem, he says, “the persons and

machinery entirely new to the inhabitants of earth ( some of the persons

excepted).” The italics are mine, and alas! to what wisp-led flounder-

ings of research might they not lure a reckless adventurer. The

mixture of the unaccountable with the familiar in nomenclature

which occurs towards the close of a preceding extract from the Jeru-

salem is puzzling enough in itself; but conjecture attains bewilder-

ment when we realize that one of the names, “Scofield” (spelt,

perhaps more properly, Scholfield, but pronounced no doubt as above),

was that of the soldier who had brought a charge of sedition against

Blake at Felpham. Whether the other English names given were

in some way connected with the trial would be worth any practicable

inquiries. When we consider the mystical connection in which this

name of Scofield is used, a way seems opened into a more perplexed

region of morbid analogy existing in Blake's brain than perhaps

Image of page 604 page: 604
Note: Typo: in line 2 of the second verse quotation on page 604, “Eng ish,” is printed rather than “English,”
any other key could unlock. It is a minute point, yet a significant

and amazing one. Further research discovers further references to

“Scofield,” for instance,
  • “Go thou to Skofield:
  • Ask him if he is Bath or if he is Canterbury:
  • Tell him to be no more dubious: demand explicit words:
  • Tell him I will dash him into shivers where and at what time
  • I please. Tell him, Hand and Skofield, they are ministers of evil
  • To those I hate: for I can hate also as well as they.”

Again (not without Jack the Giant Killer to help):—

  • “Hark! hear the giants of Albion cry at night,—
  • We smell the blood of the Eng ish, we delight in their blood on our altars;
  • The living and the dead shall be ground in our crumbling mill,
  • For bread of the sons of Albion, of the giants Hand and Skofield:
  • Skofield and Cox are let loose upon the Saxons; they accumulate.
  • A world in which man is, by his nature, the enemy of man.”

Again (and woe is the present editor!):—

  • “These are the names of Albion's twelve sons and of his twelve daughters:—”


(Then follows a long enumeration,—to each name certain counties

attached):—
  • “Skofield had Ely, Rutland, Cambridge, Huntingdon,
  • Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Essex, and his emanation is Guinivere.”(!!!)

The first of the three above quotations seems meant really as a

warning to Scholfield to be exact in evidence as to his place of birth

or other belongings, and as to the “explicit words” used by Blake.

Cox and Courthope are Sussex names: can these be the “Kox”

and “Kotope” of the poem, and names in some way connected,

like Scholfield's, with the trial?

Is the wild, wild tale of Scofield exhausted here? Alas no! At

leaf 51 of the Jerusalem occurs a certain design. In some, perhaps

in all, copies of the Jerusalem, as a whole, the names inscribed above

the figures are not given, but at least three examples of water-colour

drawings or highly-coloured reproductions of the plate exist, in which

the names appear. Who “Vala” and “Hyle” may personify I

do not pretend to conjecture, though dim surmises hurtle in the

mind, which, like De Quincey in the catastrophe of the Spanish Nun,

I shall keep to myself. These two seem, pretty clearly, to be prostrate

at the discomfiture of Scofield, who is finally retiring fettered into

his native element. As a historical picture, then, Blake felt it his

duty to monumentalize this design with due inscription. Two of

the three hand-coloured versions, referred to above, are registered as

Nos. 50 and 51 of the Catalogue in Vol. II., and the third version

appears as No. 108 in the Burlington Catalogue.

I may note another point bearing on the personal grudges shadowed

in the Jerusalem. In Blake's Public Address he says:—“The manner

in which my character has been blasted these thirty years, both as

an artist and a man, may be seen, particularly in a Sunday paper

called the Examiner, published in Beaufort's Buildings (we all know

that editors of newspapers trouble their heads very little about art

and science, and that they are always paid for what they put in upon

these ungracious subjects); and the manner in which I have rooted

out the nest of villains will be seen in a poem concerning my three

years' Herculean labours at Felpham, which I shall soon publish.

Secret calumny and open professions of friendship are common enough

all the world over, but have never been so good an occasion of poetic

imagery.” Thus we are evidently to look (or sigh in vain) for some

indication of Blake's wrath against the Examiner in the vast Jerusalem.

Image of page 605 page: 605
It is true that the Examiner persecuted him, his publications and

exhibition, and that Leigh Hunt was prone to tell “good stories” of

him; and in some MS. doggrel of Blake's we meet with the line,
  • “The Examiner whose very name is Hunt.”


But what form can the irate allegory be supposed to take in the

Jerusalem? Is it conceivable that that mysterious entity or non-

entity, “Hand,” whose name occurs sometimes in the poem, and of

whom an inscribed spectrum is there given at full length, can be a

hieroglyph for Leigh Hunt? Alas! what is possible or impossible

in such a connection?

more about The Seed of David
THE SEED OF DAVID
This picture shows Christ sprung from high and low, as united in

the person of David who was both Shepherd and King, and worshipped

by high and low (by King and Shepherd) at his birth.
The centrepiece is not a literal reading of the event of the Nativity,

but rather a condensed symbol of it. An Angel has just entered

the stable where Christ is newly born, and leads by the hand a King

and a Shepherd, who are bowing themselves before the manger on

which the Virgin Mother kneels, holding the infant Saviour. The

Shepherd kisses the hand, and the King the foot, of Christ, to denote

the superiority of lowliness to greatness in his sight; while the one

lays a crook, the other a crown, at His feet. An Angel kneels behind

the Virgin with both arms about her, supporting her; and other

Angels look in through the openings round the stable, or play on musical

instruments in the loft above. The two side-figures represent

David, one as Shepherd, the other as King. In the first he is a youth,

and advances fearlessly but cautiously, sling in hand, to take aim at

Goliath, while the Israelite troops watch the issue of the combat

from behind an entrenchment. In the second, he is a man of mature

years, still armed from battle, and composing on his harp a psalm

in thanksgiving for victory.
more about Scraps [I]
SCRAPS
more about Essays written in the intervals of Lock-jaw
Essays written in the Intervals of Lock-jaw, Elephantiasis, and Penal

Servitude.
more about [Title for comic journal]
Title for comic journal— Gas, or the London Luminary. Cover, a

large gas-lamp with the title on it, and dark view of London street

behind.
more about Irish Volcano
The “Cratur” of the Irish Volcano; a whiskey-bottle, with little

Irishmen swarming up it, and taking fire at the mouth.
more about [For plain scarlet]
For plain scarlet: try laying ground with Venetian or Indian red

and white, to the full depth of tone, and glazing with orange-ver-

milion.
more about The Return of Tibullus to Delia
THE RETURN OF TIBULLUS TO DELIA
The lines under the picture are taken from one of the Elegies of

Tibullus, where, on his departure for the wars, he writes to Delia

how he hopes to find her awaiting his return. The picture shows the

realization of his wish. The scene is laid in one of the bed-chambers

adjoining the atrium of Delia's house. She is seated on her couch
Image of page 606 page: 606
which she has vowed to Diana during her lover's absence, as is shown

by the branch and votive tablet at its head. At present she has heaped

all the pillows at its foot, and is resting languidly from her spinning

with the spindle still in one hand, while with the other she draws a

lock of hair listlessly between her lips. The lamp is lit at the close

of one of her long days of waiting, and she is listening, before she

lies down to sleep, to the chaunt of the old woman, who plays on two

harps at the same time, as sometimes seen in Roman art. Tibullus

has just arrived, and is stepping eagerly but cautiously over the black

boy who sleeps on the doorway as a guard. He has been shown in

by a dark girl who half holds him back as he enters, that he may

gaze at Delia for a moment before she perceives his presence. A

metal mirror reflects the light of the lamp opposite, and on each

side of the doorway are painted figures of Love and Night.
more about Sentences and Notes
SENTENCES AND NOTES
more about [Loveable Colours]
1866.—Thinking in what order I love colours, found the following:—
  • 1. Pure light warm green.
  • 2. Deep gold-colour.
  • 3. Certain tints of grey.
  • 4. Shadowy or steel blue.
  • 5. Brown, with crimson tinge.
  • 6. Scarlet.
Other colours (comparatively) only loveable according to the re-

lations in which they are placed.
more about [The true artist]
The true artist will first perceive in another's work the beauties,

and in his own the defects.
more about [Facile Enthusiasm]
There are few indeed whom the facile enthusiasm for contemporary

models does not deaden to the truly-balanced claims of successive

effort in art.
more about [The critic of the new school]
The critic of the new school sits down before a picture, and saturates

it with silence.
more about [Boors drinking]
If one painted Boors drinking, and even were refined oneself, they

would pardon and in some degree revere one. Or, if one were a drinking

boor oneself, and painted refinements, they would condone the latter.

But the refined, painted by the refined, is unpardonable.
more about [supreme perfection]
Picture and poem bear the same relation to each other as beauty

does in man and woman: the point of meeting where the two are

most identical is the supreme perfection.
more about [Poetry should seem]
Poetry should seem to the hearer to have been always present to

his thought, but never before heard.
more about [Elizabethans and Annians]
The Elizabethans created a style in poetry, and by misapplying

some of its qualities formed their prose. The Annians created a

style in prose, and wrenched its characteristics to form their poetry.
more about [Chatterton]
Chatterton can only be underrated if we expect that he should

have done by intuition all that was accomplished by gradual inherit-

ance from him half a century later.
more about [Invention absolute]
Invention absolute is slow of acceptance, and must be so. This

Coleridge and others have found. Why make a place for what is

neither adaptation nor reproduction? Let it hew its way if it can.
Image of page 607 page: 607
more about [Moderation]
Moderation is the highest law of poetry. Experimental as Cole-

ridge sometimes becomes, his best work is tuned but never twanged;

and this is his great distinction from almost all others who venture

as far.
more about [The sense of the momentous]
The sense of the momentous is strongest in Coleridge; not the

weird and ominous only, but the value of monumental moments.
more about [The deepest trait of nature]
The deepest trait of nature in fiction will appear as if nothing but

fact could have given it birth, and will yet show that consummate

art is its true source.
more about [Conceit]
Conceit is not so much the over-value of a man's own work as

the fatal capacity for abstracting, from his inevitable knowledge

of the value of his achievements, an ideal of his intrinsic power.
more about [gifted and powerful opposition]
It is bad enough when there is a gifted and powerful opposition to

the teachings of the best minds in any period: but when the best

minds themselves are on a false tack, who shall stem the tide?
more about Soothsay
As the waifs cast up by the sea change with the changing season,

so the tides of the soul throw up their changing drift on the sand,

but the sea beyond is one for ever.
more about [A woman may have some little mercy
A woman may have some little mercy for the man she has ceased

to love, but she has none for the memory of what he has been to her.
more about [Seek thine ideal]
Seek thine ideal anywhere except in thyself. Once fix it there,

and the ways of thy real self will matter nothing to thee, whose eyes

can rest on the ideal already perfected.
more about [No skunk]
No skunk can get rid of his own name by giving it to another.
more about [unjust insult]
In receiving an unjust insult, remember that you can afford to

despise it; while he who has been guilty of it can only despise himself

for his act. Thus the advantage is yours.
more about [extraordinary class]
He belonged to that extraordinary class of persons whom no amount

of intellect can prevent from being fools.
more about [how strange]
Could I have seen the thing I am to-day!
The same (how strange), the same as I was then!
Yet the time may come when to my soul it may be difficult, in such

old things, to tell which came first of all the days which now seem

so wide apart.
more about [little is their own]
I was one of those whose little is their own.
more about A Ground-Swell
A GROUND-SWELL
Ground-swell owing to a storm far out in mid sea. Sea quite calm

to horizon, except on the beach, where it rises, falls, and eddies, in

huge wrestling waves. Effect like the outer dying circle when a

pebble has been dropped in centre of a pool.
more about The Orchard Pit
THE ORCHARD PIT
Men tell me that sleep has many dreams; but all my life I have

dreamt one dream alone.
I see a glen whose sides slope upward from the deep bed of a dried-
Image of page 608 page: 608
up stream, and either slope is covered with wild apple-trees. In

the largest tree, within the fork whence the limbs divide, a fair, golden-

haired woman stands and sings, with one white arm stretched along

a branch of the tree, and with the other holding forth a bright red

apple, as if to some one coming down the slope. Below her feet

the trees grow more and more tangled, and stretch from both sides

across the deep pit below: and the pit is full of the bodies of men.
They lie in heaps beneath the screen of boughs, with her apples

bitten in their hands; and some are no more than ancient bones

now, and some seem dead but yesterday. She stands over them in

the glen, and sings for ever, and offers her apple still.
This dream shows me no strange place. I know the glen, and have

known it from childhood, and heard many tales of those who have

died there by the Siren's spell.
I pass there often now, and look at it as one might look at a place

chosen for one's grave. I see nothing, but I know that it means

death for me. The apple-trees are like others, and have childish

memories connected with them, though I was taught to shun the

place.
No man sees the woman but once, and then no other is near; and

no man sees that man again.
One day, in hunting, my dogs tracked the deer to that dell, and

he fled and crouched under that tree, but the dogs would not go

near him. And when I approached, he looked in my eyes as if to

say, “Here you shall die, and will you here give death?” And

his eyes seemed the eyes of my soul, and I called off the dogs, who

were glad to follow me, and we left the deer to fly.
I know that I must go there and hear the song and take the apple.

I join with the young knights in their games; and have led our

vassals and fought well. But all seems to me a dream, except what

only I among them all shall see. Yet who knows? Is there one

among them doomed like myself, and who is silent, like me? We

shall not meet in the dell, for each man goes there alone: but in

the pit we shall meet each other, and perhaps know.
Each man who is the Siren's choice dreams the same dream, and

always of some familiar spot wherever he lives in the world, and it

is there that he finds her when his time comes. But when he sinks

in the pit, it is the whole pomp of her dead gathered through the

world that awaits him there; for all attend her to grace her triumph.

Have they any souls out of those bodies? Or are the bodies still

the house of the soul, the Siren's prey till the day of judgment?
We were ten brothers. One is gone there already. One day we

looked for his return from a border foray, and his men came home

without him, saying that he had told them he went to seek his love

who would come to meet him by another road. But anon his love

met them, asking for him; and they sought him vainly all that day.

But in the night his love rose from a dream; and she went to the

edge of the Siren's dell, and there lay his helmet and his sword. And

her they sought in the morning, and there she lay dead. None has

ever told this thing to my love, my sweet love who is affianced to me.
One day at table my love offered me an apple. And as I took it

she laughed, and said, “Do not eat, it is the fruit of the Siren's dell.”

And I laughed and ate: and at the heart of the apple was a red

stain like a woman's mouth; and as I bit it I could feel a kiss upon

my lips.
The same evening I walked with my love by that place, and she

would needs have me sit with her under the apple-tree in which the

Siren is said to stand. Then she stood in the hollow fork of the tree,

and plucked an apple, and stretched it to me and would have sung:

but at that moment she cried out, and leaped from the tree into my

arms, and said that the leaves were whispering other words to her,
Image of page 609 page: 609
Sig. 39
and my name among them. She threw the apple to the bottom of

the dell, and followed it with her eyes, to see how far it would fall,

till it was hidden by the tangled boughs. And as we still looked, a

little snake crept up through them.
She would needs go with me afterwards to pray in the church,

where my ancestors and hers are buried; and she looked round on

the effigies, and said, “How long will it be before we lie here carved

together?” And I thought I heard the wind in the apple trees that

seemed to whisper, “How long?”
And late that night, when all were asleep, I went back to the dell,

and said in my turn, “How long?” And for a moment I seemed

to see a hand and apple stretched from the middle of the tree where

my love had stood. And then it was gone: and I plucked the apples

and bit them, and cast them in the pit, and said, “Come.”
I speak of my love, and she loves me well; but I love her only as

the stone whirling down the rapids loves the dead leaf that travels

with it and clings to it, and that the same eddy will swallow up.
Last night, at last, I dreamed how the end will come, and now I

know it is near. I not only saw, in sleep, the lifelong pageant of the

glen, but I took my part in it at last, and learned for certain why

that dream was mine.
I seemed to be walking with my love among the hills that lead

downward to the glen: and still she said, “It is late;” but the

wind was glenwards, and said, “Hither.” And still she said, “Home

grows far;” but the rooks flew glenwards, and said, “Hither.”

And still she said, “Come back;” but the sun had set, and the moon

laboured towards the glen, and said, “Hither.” And my heart

said in me, “Aye, thither at last.” Then we stood on the margin

of the slope, with the apple-trees beneath us; and the moon bade

the clouds fall from her, and sat in her throne like the sun at noon-

day: and none of the apple-trees were bare now, though autumn

was far worn, but fruit and blossom covered them together. And

they were too thick to see through clearly; but looking far down

I saw a white hand holding forth an apple, and heard the first notes

of the Siren's song. Then my love clung to me and wept; but I

began to struggle down the slope through the thick wall of bough

and fruit and blossom, scattering them as the storm scatters the dead

leaves; for that one apple only would my heart have. And my

love snatched at me as I went; but the branches I thrust away sprang

back on my path, and tore her hands and face: and the last I knew

of her was the lifting of her hands to heaven as she cried aloud above

me, while I still forced my way downwards. And now the Siren's

song rose clearer as I went. At first she sang, “Come to Love;”

and of the sweetness of Love she said many things. And next

she sang, “Come to Life;” and Life was sweet in her song. But

long before I reached her, she knew that all her will was mine: and

then her voice rose softer than ever, and her words were, “Come to

Death;” and Death's name in her mouth was the very swoon of

all sweetest things that be. And then my path cleared; and she

stood over against me in the fork of the tree I knew so well, blazing

now like a lamp beneath the moon. And one kiss I had of her mouth,

as I took the apple from her hand. But while I bit it, my brain

whirled and my foot stumbled; and I felt my crashing fall through

the tangled boughs beneath her feet, and saw the dead white faces

that welcomed me in the pit. And so I woke cold in my bed: but

it still seemed that I lay indeed at last among those who shall be my

mates for ever, and could feel the apple still in my hand.
Image of page 610 page: 610
more about The Doom of the Sirens
THE DOOM OF THE SIRENS

A LYRICAL TRAGEDY


Act I.—Scene 1



Hermitage near the Siren's Rock. A Christianized Prince, flying from

persecution in the latter days of the Roman Empire, is driven that way

by stress of weather (having with him his wife and infant child), and

succeeds in taking refuge in the Hermitage. The Hermit relates to

him the legend of the Sirens, and how they are among the Pagan powers

not yet subdued but still acting as demons against the human race.

The spell upon them is that their power cannot be destroyed until one

of them shall yield to human love and become enamoured of some one

among her intended victims. The Hermit has, therefore, established

himself hard by to pray for travellers in danger, and, if possible, to

warn them off in time, and he implores the Prince to pursue his voyage

by some other course. The Prince, however, says that he shall not be

able to do so, and trusts in Heaven and in his love for his wife to guard

him against danger. He dwells on his being a Christian, and therefore

beyond the power of Pagan demons, who had as yet destroyed only

those unprotected by true faith. The storm having subsided (this

scene occurs the morning after he had taken refuge), the Prince and

his family re-embark, leaving the Hermit praying for their safety.


Scene 2



The ship arrives at the Sirens' Rock, amid the songs of the three

Sirens, Thelxiope, Thelxinoe, and Ligeia. The first offers wealth, the

second greatness and triumph over his enemies, the third (Ligeia)

offers her love. Here a chorus in which the three contend and the wife

strives against them. The Prince gradually, in spite of his efforts,

succumbs to Ligeia and climbs the rock, his wife following him. Here

the choral contention is continued, the Prince clinging to Ligeia, rapt

by her spells into the belief that it is the time of his first love and that

he is surrounded by the scenes of that time. At last he dies in her

arms, as she sings, under her poisonous breath, calling her as he dies

by his wife's name, and shrinking from his wife without recognition.

The Queen makes a prayer begging God to make him know her. During

this he dies, and Ligeia then says,
  • “He knows us now; woman, take back your dead!”
The Queen pronounces a despairing curse against Ligeia, praying that

she may yet love and be hated and so destroy herself and her sisters.

The Queen then flings herself in madness from the rock into the sea.


Scene 3



The Hermit puts out in a boat to where the Prince's ship is still

lying, and takes the infant to his Hermitage. He soliloquizes over

him, saying how, if the faith prevails in his father's kingdom, he

will take him in due time to occupy the throne, but how otherwise the

youth shall stay with himself to serve him as an acolyte, and so escape

the storms of human passion more baneful than those of the sea.
Twenty-one years elapse between Acts I. and II.


Act II.—Scene 1



At the court of the Byzantine Prince. The courtiers are conversing

about the approaching marriage of the young Prince, now come to the
Image of page 611 page: 611
throne. One of them relates particulars respecting his being brought

there as a boy by the Hermit, who revealed the secret of his father's

and mother's death only to a trusted counsellor, the father of the girl

he is now about to marry. They also refer to the troubles of the time

when the former Prince had to fly from his kingdom on account of his

faith, and recall to each other the progress of events since, and the

establishment of Christianity in the country, after which the young

Prince was brought back by the Hermit, and seated on his father's

throne. Allusions are made to various omens and portents appearing

to bear on the mysterious death of the Prince's father and mother, and

on the vengeance still to be taken for it.


Scene 2



A grove, formerly sacred to an Oracle. The Prince and his betrothed

meet here and speak of their love and approaching nuptials, which are

to take place the next day. They are both, however, troubled by

dreams they have had and which they relate to each other at length.

These bear fantastically on the death of the Prince's parents, but without

clearly revealing anything, though seeming to prognosticate misfortunes

still unaccomplished, and a fatal issue to their love. The Prince

connects these things with the events of his early boyhood, which he

dimly remembers in the hermitage by the Sirens' Rock, before the

Hermit brought him to his kingdom; and he confesses to his betrothed

the gloomy uncertainty with which his mind is clouded. However,

they try to forget all forebodings and dwell on the happiness in store

for them. They sing to each other and together, but their songs seem

to find an ominous burden in the echoes of the sacred grove, and they

part at last, saddened in spite of themselves. The Prince goes, leaving

the lady, who says that she will stay there till her maidens join her.

Being left alone, she suddenly hears a voice calling her, and finds that

it comes from the Oracle of the grove, whose shrine is forgotten and

almost overgrown. She forces the tangled growth aside and enters

the precincts.


Scene 3



The Shrine of the Oracle. Here the Oracle speaks to her; at first

in dark sentences, but at length more explicitly, as to a great task

awaiting her lover, without accomplishing which he must not hope

for love or peace. It speaks of the evil powers which caused his parents'

death, and are doomed themselves to annihilation by the just vengeance

transmitted to him. It then tells her clearly how it is the

heavenly will that the Prince shall only wed if he survives the vengeance

due for his parents' death, but that he had been chosen now to fulfil

the doom of the Sirens, and must at once accomplish his mission.

Finally the Oracle announces that its function has been so far renewed

for the last time that it may be compelled to denounce its fellow powers

of Paganism; but that now its voice is silent for ever. At the end

of this scene the Bride's maidens come to meet her, and find her be-

wildered and in tears, but cannot learn the cause from her.


Scene 4



The Bridal Chamber on the morning after the nuptials. The scene

opens with a réveillée sung outside. The Prince and Princess are to-

gether, and he is speaking to her of his love and their future happiness;

but after a time, in the midst of their endearments, he begins to per-

ceive that she is disturbed and anxious, and presses her to tell him the

cause. She at last informs him with tears of her conference with the

Oracle on their last meeting in the grove. This (as she tells him) she
Image of page 612 page: 612
had not the courage to reveal to him before their wedding, as, if obeyed,

it must tear him from her arms, perhaps never to return; and she had

then resolved to suppress the terrible secret at any risk to herself;

but on the bridal night, while she lay in his arms, the Hermit, now a

saint in heaven, had appeared to her in a dream, with a wrathful aspect.

He had told her how by his means the Prince had been preserved in

infancy; had reproached her with her silence as to the charge she had

received; and had told her that if she did not now make known to

her husband the will of Heaven, some fatal mischance would soon

separate them for ever. All this she now tells him with many tears

and with bitter upbraidings of the cruel fate which compelled her to

avoid the certain wrath threatened to him by sending him on a mission

of such terrible uncertainty. Before telling all this she had consented

to speak only on his promising to grant the first favour she should

afterwards ask for herself; and she now tells him that this favour is

the permission to accompany him on his voyage. He endeavours in

vain to dissuade her from this, and at last consents to it.


Act III.—Scene 1



The hermitage near the Sirens' Rock, as in Act I. Arrival of the

Prince, accompanied by his Bride, who is prevailed on by him to

remain in prayer at the hermitage while he pursues his journey to the

rock. Before they part, a paper is found written, by which they learn

that the Hermit had died there a year and a day before, and that he

named the day of their present arrival as the one on which his hermitage

would again be tenanted, and yet on which its appointed use would

cease.


Scene 2



The Sirens' Rock. The Sirens have been warned by the evil powers

to whom they are tributary that this day is a signal one for them.

They are uncertain whether for good or ill, but are possessed by a

spirit of baneful exultation, and in their songs alternate from one to

the other wild tales of their triumphs in past times and the renowned

victims who have succumbed to them. As they reach the name of the

Christian Prince and his wife who died by their means, a vessel comes

in view, but almost before their songs have been directed towards it,

they are surprised to see it make straight for the rock, and the occupant

resolutely disembark and commence the ascent. As he nears them,

they exchange scornful prophecies of his ruin between the pauses of

their song; but gradually Ligeia, who has at first begged him of her

sisters as her special prey, finds herself strangely overpowered by

emotions she does not understand, and by the time he reaches the

summit of the rock and stands before them, she is alternately beseeching

him for his love and her sisters for his life. A long chorus here occurs:

Ligeia yielding to the agony of her passion, while the Prince repulses

and reviles her, and the other Sirens wail and curse, warning her of the

impending doom. The Prince tells Ligeia of his parentage and mission,

but she still madly craves for his love, and holds forth to him such

promises of infernal sovereignty as her gods afford, if he will yield to

her passion. He, meanwhile, though proof against her lures and

loathing her in his heart, is physically absorbed into the death-agony

of the expiring spell; and when, at his last word of reprobation, the

curse seizes her and her sisters, and they dash themselves headlong

from the rock, he also succumbs to the doom, calling with his last breath

on his Bride to come to him. Throughout the scene the prayers of

the Bride are fitfully wafted from the hermitage between the pauses of

the Sirens' songs and the deadly chorus of love and hate.
Image of page 613 page: 613


Scene 3.



Within the hermitage, the Bride still praying. The scene to com-

mence with a few lines of prayer, after which the Spirit of the Prince

appears, calling the Bride to come to him, in the same words with

which the last scene ended. She then discourses to him, saying many

things in gradually increasing ecstasy of love, he all the time speaking

to her at intervals, only the same words as before. She ends by

answering him in his own words, calling him to come to her, and so

dies.
In case of representation—supposing the hermitage and rock to

be visible on the stage at the same time—the conclusion might be that

at the moment of the Prince's death, when he calls to his Bride, she

breaks off her prayers; answering him in the same words, and dies.

Scene 3 would thus be dispensed with.
more about Walter H. Deverell--A Raffle
WALTER H. DEVERELL—A RAFFLE
It is projected to set on foot a raffle for the two following pictures

by the late Walter H. Deverell,—viz.:
  • 1. The Banishment of Hamlet.
  • 2. Irish Beggars by the Roadside.


The death of this artist occurred sixteen years ago at the age of

about twenty-five, and the promise he displayed remained unaccom-

plished. His works are the expression of original gifts struggling

with difficulties and not yet brought to maturity; but they have

a true interest for those who can discern mental qualities in art,

contributing as they do to illustrate the growth of English poetic

painting in the circle of men among whom he worked, many of whom,

more fortunate in longer life, have now arrived at eminence.
These two pictures display Deverell's qualities, especially the

Hamlet, a work which, when exhibited, met with appreciation for

its colour and dramatic expression.
The present raffle has for its important object the assistance of

the late artist's sister, to whom the pictures belong, and who is in

such straitened circumstances as to be compelled to make this effort

through her friends to obtain, by parting with them, the aid of which

she stands greatly in need.
The shares in the raffle to be a guinea each; the holder of the

first and second prizes will obtain respectively the pictures of Hamlet

and the Irish Beggars.
The drawing will take place three months from the present date,

when the subscribers will receive notice of the precise day and plan.
more about Silence. For a Design
SILENCE

FOR A DESIGN
She has in one hand the fruit of peach, by which the ancients sym-

bolized Silence—the fruit being held to resemble the human heart,

and the leaf the human tongue. With the other hand she keeps

closed the opening of a veil suspended in her shrine.
more about Ebenezer Jones
EBENEZER JONES

(FROM NOTES AND QUERIES, 1870)
I hope Mr. Gledstanes-Waugh may receive from other sources a more

complete account than I can give of this remarkable poet, who affords

nearly the most striking instance of neglected genius in our modern

school of poetry. This is a more important fact about him than

his being a Chartist, which however he was, at any rate for a time.
Image of page 614 page: 614
I met him only once in my life, I believe in 1848, at which time he

was about thirty, and would hardly talk on any subject but Chartism.

His poems (the Studies of Sensation and Event) had been published

some five years before my meeting him, and are full of vivid disorderly

power. I was little more than a lad at the time I first chanced on

them, but they struck me greatly, though I was not blind to their

glaring defects and even to the ludicrous side of their wilful “new-

ness”; attempting, as they do, to deal recklessly with those almost

inaccessible combinations in nature and feeling which only intense

and oft-renewed effort may perhaps at last approach. For all this,

these Studies should be, and one day will be, disinterred from the

heaps of verse deservedly buried.
Some years after meeting Jones, I was much pleased to hear the

great poet Robert Browning speak in warm terms of the merit of

his work; and I have understood that Monckton Milnes (Lord Hough-

ton) admired the Studies, and interested himself on their author's

behalf. The only other recognition of this poet which I have observed

is the appearance of a short but admirable lyric by him in the collec-

tion called Nightingale Valley, edited by William Allingham. I

believe that some of Jones's unpublished MSS. are still in the pos-

session of his friend Mr. W. J. Linton, the eminent wood-engraver,

now residing in New York, who could no doubt furnish more facts

about him than any one else. It is fully time that attention should

be called to this poet's name, which is a noteworthy one.
It may not be out of place to mention here a much earlier and

still more striking instance of poetic genius which has hitherto failed

of due recognition. I allude to Charles J. Wells, the author of the

blank verse scriptural drama of Joseph and his Brethren, published

under the pseudonym of “Howard” in 1824, and of Stories after

Nature (in prose, but of a highly poetic cast), published anonymously

in 1822. This poet was a friend of Keats, who addressed to him

one of the sonnets to be found in his works—“On receiving a present

of roses.” Wells's writings—youthful as they are—deserve to stand

beside any poetry, even of that time, for original genius, and, I may

add, for native structural power, though in this latter respect they

bear marks of haste and neglect. Their time will come yet.
more about Subjects for Pictures
SUBJECTS FOR PICTURES
more about Fortuna
For Fortuna .—A wheel, with a peacock and a raven seated on it.
more about Beatrice, her Damozels, and Love
Subject.—“Di donne io vidi una gentile schiera:” treated some-

thing like The Beloved , with Love in the foreground.
more about Fair Rosamund
Subject.—Fair Rosamond fastening skein to branch of tree.
more about Pietra degli Scrovigni'
Subject. —Pietra degli Scrovigni seated on a stone, holding glass globe reflecting fertile hilly landscape.
  • “Chè non la muove se non come pietra
  • Lo dolce tempo che riscalda i colli.”
more about Mandetta
Mandetta, of Thoulouse, “sweetly kirtled and enlaced,” with Love

in an architectural background, the Daurade, and Giovanna weeping

on the other side. Or, Giovanna and Mandetta together, developing

the likeness. (Guido Cavalcanti.)
more about Era in pensier
For the “Era in pensier” subject.—The two ladies to be very

uniform in action. The well and figures to be more at one side of

the picture, and the rest occupying a clearer space as large in size as

possible. The Church of the Daurade to be the background—ladies
Image of page 615 page: 615
issuing from the porch, among them Mandetta; to whom Love,

draped, should be introduced by another lady, and offer her the ballad

on his knees. Other ladies in galleries, etc.
more about Dante (to match Beatrice)
For Dante (to match Beatrice).—Background, Love in black;

and Beatrice in white walking away, back view.
more about Venus surrounded by mirrors
Venus surrounded by mirrors, reflecting her in different views.
more about Hymen and Cupid
Hymen and Cupid.—Door of marriage-chamber hung with gar-

lands. Hymen standing sentinel, and preventing Cupid from peeping

in at keyhole.
more about The Cruel Sister
Subject.—Last scene in The Cruel Sister. The Spirit standing by

the Harper, with her hands on the harp which plays alone, and

looking at the Lover, or the Sister. All the personages watching the

harp in astonishment without seeing the Spirit; except the Cruel

Sister, who sits upright looking at her.
more about The Cup of Water
THE CUP OF WATER
The young King of a country is hunting on a day with a young Knight,

his friend; when, feeling thirsty, he stops at a Forester's cottage,

and the Forester's daughter brings him a cup of water to drink.

Both of them are equally enamoured at once of her unequalled beauty.

The King, however, has been affianced from boyhood to a Princess,

worthy of all love, and whom he has always believed he loved until

undeceived by his new absorbing passion; but the Knight, resolved

to sacrifice all other considerations to his love, goes again to the

Forester's cottage and asks his daughter's hand. He finds that the

girl has fixed her thoughts on the King, whose rank she does not

know. On hearing it she tells her suitor humbly that she must die

if such be her fate, but cannot love another. The Knight goes to

the King to tell him all and beg his help; and the two friends then

come to an explanation. Ultimately the King goes to the girl and

pleads his friend's cause, not disguising his own passion, but saying

that as he sacrifices himself to honour, so should she, at his prayer,

accept a noble man whom he loves better than all men and whom

she will love too. This she does at last; and the King makes his

friend an Earl and gives him a grant of the forest and surrounding

country as a marriage gift, with the annexed condition, that the Earl's

wife shall bring the King a cup of water at the same spot on

every anniversary of their first meeting when he rides a-hunting

with her husband. At no other time will he see her, loving her too

much. He weds the Princess, and thus two years pass, the condition

being always fulfilled. But before the third anniversary the lady

dies in childbirth, leaving a daughter. The King's life wears on, and

still he and his friend pursue their practice of hunting on that day,

for sixteen years. When the anniversary comes round for the sixteenth

time since the lady's death, the Earl tells his daughter, who has

grown to her mother's perfect likeness (but whom the King has never

seen), to meet them on the old spot with the cup of water, as her

mother first did when of the same age. The King, on seeing her,

is deeply moved; but on her being presented to him by the Earl,

he is about to take the cup from her hand, when he is aware of a

second figure in her exact likeness, but dressed in peasant's clothes,

who steps to her side as he bends from his horse to take the cup,

looks in his face with solemn words of love and welcome, and kisses

him on the mouth. He falls forward on his horse's neck, and is

lifted up dead.
Image of page 616 page: 616
more about Michael Scott's Wooing
MICHAEL SCOTT'S WOOING
Michael Scott and a friend, both young and dissolute, are returning

from a carouse, by moonlight, along a wild sea-coast during a ground-

swell. As they come within view of a small house on the rocky shore,

his companion taunts Michael Scott as to his known passion for the

maiden Janet who dwells there with her father, and as to the failure of

the snares he has laid for her. Scott is goaded to great irritation, and

as they near the point of the sands overlooked by the cottage, he turns

round on his friend and declares that the maiden shall come out to him

then and there at his summons. The friend still taunts and banters

him, saying that wine has heated his brain; but Scott stands quite

still, muttering, and regarding the cottage with a gesture of command.

After he has done so for some time, the door opens softly, and Janet

comes running down the rock. As she approaches, she nearly rushes

into Michael Scott's arms, but instead, swerves aside, runs swiftly by

him, and plunges into the surging waves. With a shriek Michael

plunges after her, and strikes out this side and that, and lashes his way

among the billows, between the rising and sinking breakers; but all

in vain, no sign appears of her. After some time spent in this way he

returns almost exhausted to the sands, and passing without answer by

his appalled and questioning friend, he climbs the rock to the door of

the cottage, which is now closed. Janet's father answers his loud

knocking, and to him he says, “Slay me, for your daughter has drowned

herself this hour in yonder sea, and by my means.” The father at first

suspects some stratagem, but finally deems him mad, and says, “You

rave,—my daughter is at rest in her bed.” “Go seek her there,”

answers Michael Scott. The father goes up to his daughter's chamber,

and returning very pale, signs to Michael to follow him. Together they

climb the stair, and find Janet half lying and half kneeling, turned

violently round, as if, in the act of rising from her bed, she had again

thrown herself backward and clasped the feet of a crucifix at her bed-

head; so she lies dead. Michael Scott rushes from the house, and

returning maddened to the seashore, is with difficulty restrained from

suicide by his friend. At last he stands like stone for a while, and then,

as if repeating an inner whisper, he describes the maiden's last struggle

with her heart. He says how she loved him but would not sin; how

hearing in her sleep his appeal from the shore she almost yielded, and

the embodied image of her longing came rushing out to him; but how

in the last instant she turned back for refuge to Christ, and her soul

was wrung from her by the struggle of her heart. “And as I speak,” he

says, “the fiend who whispers this concerning her says also in my ear

how surely I am lost.”
more about The Palimpsest. (Subject for Tale or Humorous Poem)
THE PALIMPSEST

(SUBJECT FOR TALE OR HUMOROUS POEM)
The jealousies of two rival Scholars, a classical and a theological one,

respecting a palimpsest. The classical one takes years to decipher his

Pagan author, while the Theologian considers the only value of the

scroll to consist in the Early Father on the surface, whom he is to edit

in due course. The Theologian is in bad health, and expects to die

before the Classic has finished. This drives him to desperation, and

impels him at last to murder his rival; who in dying shows him in

triumph the scroll, from which the Early Father has been completely

erased by acids, leaving a fair MS. of the Pagan poet.
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more about The Philtre
THE PHILTRE
A woman, intensely enamoured of a man who does not love her, makes

use of a philtre to secure his love. In this she succeeds; but it also acts

gradually upon his life. She attempts to avert this by destroying the

whole effect of the philtre, but finds this is not permitted her; and he

dies in her arms, deeply loving her and deeply loved by her, while she

is conscious of being the cause of his death. As he yields his last breath

in a kiss, she knows that his spirit now hates her.
more about The Stealthy School of Criticism
THE STEALTHY SCHOOL OF CRITICISM

(FROM THE ATHENÆUM, 1871)
Your paragraph, a fortnight ago, relating to the pseudonymous

authorship of an article, violently assailing myself and other writers of

poetry, in the Contemporary Review for October last, reveals a species

of critical masquerade which I have expressed in the heading given to

this letter. Since then, Mr. Sidney Colvin's note, qualifying the report

that he intends to “answer” that article, has appeared in your pages;

and my own view as to the absolute forfeit, under such conditions, of

all claim to honourable reply, is precisely the same as Mr. Colvin's.

For here a critical organ, professedly adopting the principle of open

signature, would seem, in reality, to assert (by silent practice, however,

not by enunciation,) that if the anonymous in criticism was—as itself

originally inculcated—but an early caterpillar stage, the nominate too

is found to be no better than a homely transitional chrysalis, and that

the ultimate butterfly form for a critic who likes to sport in sunlight

and yet to elude the grasp, is after all the pseudonymous. But, indeed,

what I may call the “Siamese” aspect of the entertainment provided

by the Review will elicit but one verdict. Yet I may, perhaps, as the

individual chiefly attacked, be excused for asking your assistance now

in giving a specific denial to specific charges which, if unrefuted, may

still continue, in spite of their author's strategic fiasco, to serve his

purpose against me to some extent.
The primary accusation, on which this writer grounds all the rest,

seems to be that others and myself “extol fleshliness as the distinct and

supreme end of poetic and pictorial art; aver that poetic expression

is greater than poetic thought; and, by inference, that the body is

greater than the soul, and sound superior to sense.”
As my own writings are alone formally dealt with in the article, I

shall confine my answer to myself; and this must first take unavoidably

the form of a challenge to prove so broad a statement. It is true,

some fragmentary pretence at proof is put in here and there throughout

the attack, and thus far an opportunity is given of contesting the

assertion.
A Sonnet entitled Nuptial Sleep is quoted and abused at page 338 of

the Review , and is there dwelt upon as a “whole poem,” describing

“merely animal sensations.” It is no more a whole poem, in reality,

than is any single stanza of any poem throughout the book. The poem,

written chiefly in sonnets, and of which this is one sonnet-stanza, is

entitled The House of Life ; and even in my first published instalment

of the whole work (as contained in the volume under notice) ample

evidence is included that no such passing phase of description as the

one headed Nuptial Sleep could possibly be put forward by the author

of The House of Life as his own representative view of the subject of

love. In proof of this, I will direct attention (among the love-sonnets

of this poem) to Nos. 2, 8, 11, 17, 28, and more especially 13, which,

indeed, I had better print here.
Image of page 618 page: 618
LOVE-SWEETNESS
  • “Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
  • About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
  • In gracious fostering union garlanded;
  • Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
  • Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
  • Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
  • On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
  • Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
  • “What sweeter than these things, except the thing
  • 10In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
  • The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
  • And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing
  • Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
  • The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?”
Any reader may bring any artistic charge he pleases against the above

sonnet; but one charge it would be impossible to maintain against the

writer of the series in which it occurs, and that is, the wish on his part

to assert that the body is greater than the soul. For here all the

passionate and just delights of the body are declared—somewhat

figuratively, it is true, but unmistakably—to be as naught if not

ennobled by the concurrence of the soul at all times. Moreover, nearly

one half of this series of sonnets has nothing to do with love, but treats

of quite other life-influences. I would defy any one to couple with

fair quotation of Sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, 43, or others, the slander

that their author was not impressed, like all other thinking men, with

the responsibilities and higher mysteries of life; while Sonnets 35, 36,

and 37, entitled The Choice , sum up the general view taken in a manner

only to be evaded by conscious insincerity. Thus much for The House

of Life , of which the sonnet Nuptial Sleep is one stanza, embodying,

for its small constituent share, a beauty of natural universal function,

only to be reprobated in art if dwelt on (as I have shown that it is not

here) to the exclusion of those other highest things of which it is the

harmonious concomitant.
At page 342, an attempt is made to stigmatize four short quotations

as being specially “my own property,” that is, (for the context shows

the meaning,) as being grossly sensual; though all guiding reference

to any precise page or poem in my book is avoided here. The first of

these unspecified quotations is from the Last Confession ; and is the

description referring to the harlot's laugh, the hideous character of

which, together with its real or imagined resemblance to the laugh

heard soon afterwards from the lips of one long cherished as an ideal,

is the immediate cause which makes the maddened hero of the poem a

murderer. Assailants may say what they please; but no poet or

poetic reader will blame me for making the incident recorded in these

seven lines as repulsive to the reader as it was to the hearer and be-

holder. Without this, the chain of motive and result would remain

obviously incomplete. Observe also that these are but seven lines in

a poem of some five hundred, not one other of which could be classed

with them.
A second quotation gives the last two lines only of the following

sonnet, which is the first of four sonnets in The House of Life jointly

entitled Willowwood :—
  • “I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
  • Leaning across the water, I and he;
  • Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
  • But touched his lute wherein was audible
  • The certain secret thing he had to tell:
  • Only our mirrored eyes met silently
  • In the low wave; and that sound seemed to be
  • The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
Image of page 619 page: 619
  • “And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
  • 10 And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
  • He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
  • Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
  • And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
  • Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.”


The critic has quoted (as I said) only the last two lines, and he has

italicized the second as something unbearable and ridiculous. Of

course the inference would be that this was really my own absurd

bubble-and-squeak notion of an actual kiss. The reader will perceive

at once, from the whole sonnet transcribed above, how untrue

such an inference would be. The sonnet describes a dream or trance

of divided love momentarily re-united by the longing fancy; and in

the imagery of the dream, the face of the beloved rises through

deep dark waters to kiss the lover. Thus the phrase, “Bubbled

with brimming kisses,” etc., bears purely on the special symbolism

employed, and from that point of view will be found, I believe, per-

fectly simple and just.
A third quotation is from Eden Bower , and says,
  • “What more prize than love to impel thee?
  • Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!”


Here again no reference is given, and naturally the reader would

suppose that a human embrace is described. The embrace, on the

contrary, is that of a fabled snake-woman and a snake. It would

be possible still, no doubt, to object on other grounds to this concep-

tion; but the ground inferred and relied on for full effect by the

critic is none the less an absolute misrepresentation. These three

extracts, it will be admitted, are virtually, though not verbally,

garbled with malicious intention; and the same is the case, as I

have shown, with the sonnet called Nuptial Sleep when purposely

treated as a “whole poem.”
The last of the four quotations grouped by the critic as conclusive

examples consists of two lines from Jenny . Neither some thirteen

years ago, when I wrote this poem, nor last year when I published

it, did I fail to foresee impending charges of recklessness and aggres-

siveness, or to perceive that even some among those who could really

read the poem, and acquit me on these grounds, might still hold

that the thought in it had better have dispensed with the situation

which serves it for framework. Nor did I omit to consider how far

a treatment from without might here be possible. But the motive

powers of art reverse the requirement of science, and demand first

of all an inner standing-point. The heart of such a mystery as this

must be plucked from the very world in which it beats or bleeds;

and the beauty and pity, the self-questionings and all-questionings

which it brings with it, can come with full force only from the mouth

of one alive to its whole appeal, such as the speaker put forward in

the poem,—that is, of a young and thoughtful man of the world.

To such a speaker, many half-cynical revulsions of feeling and reverie,

and a recurrent presence of the impressions of beauty (however

artificial) which first brought him within such a circle of influence,

would be inevitable features of the dramatic relations portrayed.

Here again I can give the lie, in hearing of honest readers, to the base

or trivial ideas which my critic labours to connect with the poem.

There is another little charge, however, which this minstrel in mufti

brings against Jenny , namely, one of plagiarism from that very poetic

self of his which the tutelary prose does but enshroud for the moment.

This question can, fortunately, be settled with ease by others who

have read my critic's poems; and thus I need the less regret that,
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Note: There is a typo on page 620, line 13 up from the bottom: “atempted” is printed rather than “attempted.”
not happening myself to be in that position, I must be content to

rank with those who cannot pretend to an opinion on the subject.
It would be humiliating, need one come to serious detail, to have

to refute such an accusation as that of “binding oneself by solemn

league and covenant to extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme

end of poetic and pictorial art”; and one cannot but feel that here

every one will think it allowable merely to pass by with a smile the

foolish fellow who has brought a charge thus framed against any

reasonable man. Indeed, what I have said already is substantially

enough to refute it, even did I not feel sure that a fair balance of

my poetry must, of itself, do so in the eyes of every candid reader.

I say nothing of my pictures; but those who know them will laugh

at the idea. That I may, nevertheless, take a wider view than some

poets or critics, of how much, in the material conditions absolutely

given to man to deal with as distinct from his spiritual aspirations,

is admissible within the limits of Art,—this, I say, is possible enough;

nor do I wish to shrink from such responsibility. But to state that

I do so to the ignoring or overshadowing of spiritual beauty, is an

absolute falsehood, impossible to be put forward except in the

indulgence of prejudice or rancour.
I have selected, amid much railing on my critic's part, what seemed

the most representative indictment against me, and have, so far,

answered it. Its remaining clauses set forth how others and myself

“aver that poetic expression is greater than poetic thought . . .

and sound superior to sense”—an accusation elsewhere, I observe,

expressed by saying that we “wish to create form for its own sake.”

If writers of verse are to be listened to in such arraignment of each

other, it might be quite competent to me to prove, from the works

of my friends in question, that no such thing is the case with them;

but my present function is to confine myself to my own defence.

This, again, it is difficult to do quite seriously. It is no part of my

undertaking to dispute the verdict of any “contemporary,” however

contemptuous or contemptible, on my own measure of executive

success; but the accusation cited above is not against the poetic

value of certain work, but against its primary and (by assumption)

its admitted aim. And to this I must reply that so far, assuredly,

not even Shakspeare himself could desire more arduous human

tragedy for development in Art than belongs to the themes I venture

to embody, however incalculably higher might be his power of dealing

with them. What more inspiring for poetic effort than the terrible

Love turned to Hate,—perhaps the deadliest of all passion-woven

complexities,—which is the theme of Sister Helen , and, in a more

fantastic form, of Eden Bower —the surroundings of both poems

being the mere machinery of a central universal meaning? What,

again, more so than the savage penalty exacted for a lost ideal, as

expressed in the Last Confession ;—than the outraged love for man

and burning compensations in art and memory of Dante at Verona;

—than the baffling problems which the face of Jenny conjures up;—

or than the analysis of passion and feeling atempted in The House

of Life , and others among the more purely lyrical poems? I speak

here, as does my critic in the clause adduced, of aim, not of achievement;

and so far, the mere summary is instantly subversive of the pre-

posterous imputation. To assert that the poet whose matter is such

as this aims chiefly at “creating form for its own sake,” is, in fact,

almost an ingenuous kind of dishonesty; for surely it delivers up

the asserter at once, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of

contradictory proof. Yet this may fairly be taken as an example

of the spirit in which a constant effort is here made against me to

appeal to those who either are ignorant of what I write, or else belong

to the large class too easily influenced by an assumption of authority

in addressing them. The false name appended to the article must,
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as is evident, aid this position vastly; for who, after all, would not

be apt to laugh at seeing one poet confessedly come forward as aggressor

against another in the field of criticism?
It would not be worth while to lose time and patience in noticing

minutely how the system of misrepresentation is carried into points

of artistic detail,—giving us, for example, such statements as that

the burthen employed in the ballad of Sister Helen “is repeated

with little or no alteration through thirty-four verses,” whereas the

fact is, that the alteration of it in every verse is the very scheme of

the poem. But these are minor matters quite thrown into the shade

by the critic's more daring sallies. In addition to the class of attack

I have answered above, the article contains, of course, an immense

amount of personal paltriness; as, for instance, attributions of my

work to this, that, or the other absurd derivative source; or again,

pure nonsense (which can have no real meaning even to the writer)

about “one art getting hold of another, and imposing on it its con-

ditions and limitations”; or, indeed, what not besides? However,

to such antics as this, no more attention is possible than that which

Virgil enjoined Dante to bestow on the meaner phenomena of his

pilgrimage.
Thus far, then, let me thank you for the opportunity afforded me

to join issue with the Stealthy School of Criticism. As for any

literary justice to be done on this particular Mr. Robert-Thomas,

I will merely ask the reader whether, once identified, he does not

become manifestly his own best “sworn tormentor”? For who

will then fail to discern all the palpitations which preceded his final

resolve in the great question whether to be or not to be his acknow-

ledged self when he became an assailant? And yet this is he who,

from behind his mask, ventures to charge another with “bad blood,”

with “insincerity,” and the rest of it (and that where poetic fancies

are alone in question); while every word on his own tongue is covert

rancour, and every stroke from his pen perversion of truth. Yet,

after all, there is nothing wonderful in the lengths to which a fretful

poet-critic will carry such grudges as he may bear, while publisher

and editor can both be found who are willing to consider such means

admissible, even to the clear subversion of first professed tenets in

the Review which they conduct.
In many phases of outward nature, the principle of chaff and grain

holds good,—the base enveloping the precious continually; but

an untruth was never yet the husk of a truth. Thresh and riddle

and winnow it as you may,—let it fly in shreds to the four winds,—

falsehood only will be that which flies and that which stays. And

thus the sheath of deceit which this pseudonymous undertaking

presents at the outset insures in fact what will be found to be its

real character to the core.
more about Hake's Madeline, and Other Poems
HAKE'S MADELINE, AND OTHER POEMS
Above all ideal personalities with which the poet must learn to identify

himself, there is one supremely real which is the most imperative

of all; namely, that of his reader. And the practical watchfulness

needed for such assimilation is as much a gift and instinct as is the

creative grasp of alien character. It is a spiritual contact, hardly

conscious yet ever renewed, and which must be a part of the very act

of production. Among the greatest English singers of the past, perhaps

four only have possessed this assimilative power in pure perfection.

These are Chaucer, Shakspeare, Byron, and Burns; and to their

names the world may probably add in the future that of William

Morris.
We have no thought of saying that not to belong to this circle,
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widest in range and narrowest in numbers, is to be but half a poet.

It is with the poetic glory as with the planetary ones; this too has

satellites called into being by the law of its own creation. Not every

soul specially attuned to song is itself a singer; but the productive

and the receptive poetic mind are members of one constellation; and

it may be safely asserted that to take rank in the exceptional order

of those born with perfect though passive song-perception is to be

even further removed from the “general reader” on the one hand

than from the producer of poetry on the other.
But some degree, entire or restricted, of relation to the outer

audience, must be the test of every poet's vocation, and has to be

considered first of all in criticizing his work. The book under notice

has perhaps as limited a reach of appeal as can well be imagined,

and the writer's faculty of rapport seems on the whole imperfect;

yet there are qualities in what he has written which no true poetic

reader can regard with indifference.
The best and most sympathetic part of Dr. Hake's volume is decidedly

its central division—the one headed Parables. Had one poem of

this section, quaintly called Old Souls, come first in the book, the

favourable impression on opening it must have been immediate and

conclusive. The poem is a symbolic expression of the humility of

Christ in His personal ministering to man's needs and renewal of

fallen humanity; and the subject is carried out with great complete-

ness as regards the contrast between Christ Himself and His earthly

representatives, His relation to all classes of men, and the deliberate

simplicity of His beneficent labour in the soul. The form of expres-

sion adopted in this poem is of the highest order of homely pathos,

to which no common word comes amiss, and yet in which the sense of

reverence and appropriateness is everywhere perfect. The piece is

so high in theme, and so utterly good of its class, that we shall not

attempt to extract from it, as its unity of purpose and execution

throughout is the leading quality without which no idea of its merit

can be conveyed.
Two others among the four Parables,— The Lily of the Valley and

The Deadly Nightshade —though somewhat less perfect successes than

this, rival it in essential value. They are contrasted pictures; the

first, of poverty surrounded by natural influences and the compensa-

tions of universal endowment; the other, of poverty surrounded in

the life of cities by social rejection only, and endlessly instigated to

snatch some share of good by the reiterated scoff, “This is not for thee.”

In the first poem a young forest-bred girl, in the second a boy reared

in the fetid life of courts and alleys, is the medium through which

the lesson is developed. Here, again, we are at some loss to express

the poems by extract; but with this proviso we may take from the

Lily of the Valley a few sweet stanzas of simple description:—
  • “The wood is what it was of old,
  • A timber-farm where wild flowers grow:
  • There woodman's axe is never cold,
  • And lays the oaks and beeches low:
  • But though the hand of man deface,
  • The lily ever grows in grace.
  • “Of their sweet loving natures proud,
  • The stock-doves sojourn in the tree:
  • With breasts of feathered sky and cloud,
  • 10And notes of soft though tuneless glee,
  • Hid in the leaves they take a spring,
  • And crush the stillness with their wing.
  • “The wood to her was the old wood,
  • The same as in her father's time;
  • Nor with their sooths and sayings good
  • The dead told of its youth or prime.
  • The hollow trunks were hollow then,
  • And honoured like the bones of men.”
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This simple story of parable has great beauties, especially at the

point where the first acquaintance with death among those she loved

causes the child to wander forth bewildered, and at last, weary and

asleep in the wood, to find the images of terror and decay hitherto

overlooked in nature assume prominence for the first time in her

dreams. This is very subtle and lovely; but it must be added that

even this poem, which is among the least difficult in the book, needs

some re-reading before it is mastered, and leaves an impression—if

not of artificiality, to which the author's mind is evidently superior—

yet of a singular native tendency to embody all conceptions through

a remote and reticent medium. This, however, is much less apparent

in the Deadly Nightshade, which approaches Old Souls in clearness

and mastery, though not essentially finer than its companion poem,

the Lily. The description here of the poor beggar-boy's drunken

mother is in a vein of true realistic tragedy; and the dire directness

of treatment is carried on throughout:—
  • “Then did he long for once to taste
  • The reeking viands, as their smell
  • From cellar-gratings ran to waste
  • In gusts that sicken and repel.
  • Like Beauty with a rose regaled,
  • The grateful vapours he inhaled.
  • “So oft a-hungered has he stood
  • And yarn of fasting fancy spun,
  • As wistfully he watched the food
  • 10With one foot out away to run,
  • Lest questioned be his only right
  • To revel in the goodly sight.
  • “Lest justice should detect within
  • A blot no human eye could see,
  • He dragged his rags about his skin
  • To hide from view his pedigree:
  • He deemed himself a thief by law,
  • Who stole ere yet the light he saw.
  • “His theft, the infancy of crime,
  • 20Was but a sombre glance to steal,
  • While outside shops he spent his time
  • In vain imaginings to deal,
  • With looks of awe to speculate
  • On all things good, while others ate.
  • “No better school his eyes to guide,
  • He lingers by some savoury mass,
  • And watches mouths that open wide,
  • And sees them eating through the glass:
  • Oft his own lips he opes and shuts,—
  • 30 With sympathy his fancy gluts.
  • “Yet he begs not, but in a trance
  • Admires the scene where numbers throng;
  • And if on him descends a glance,
  • He is abashed and slinks along;
  • Nor cares he more, the spell once broke,
  • Scenes of false plenty to invoke.”
The fourth Parable, called Immortality, deals with the course of

an elevated soul in which thwarted ambition is tempered by resig-

nation, and which looks into the future of eternity for free scope

and for a reversed relation between itself and antagonistic natures.

This, however, is somewhat obscurely rendered, and must be pro-

nounced inferior to the other three. Of these three, we may say that,

if they are read first in the book, the fit reader cannot but be deeply

moved by their genuine human and spiritual sympathy, and by

their many beauties of expression; and will be prepared to look
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Note: There is a typo in paragraph 7: the poem title “On the Widow” has been printed as “ On the Window.”
thenceforward past his author's difficulties to the spirit which shines

through them, with a feeling of enthusiastic confidence.
We may turn next to the last section of the volume—the series

of sixty-five short poems entitled in the aggregate The World's Epitaph.

Many of these reveal the same tender thought for human suffering

which is the great charm of the Parables, and it is sometimes expressed

with equal force and beauty. Such pre-eminently are those On the

Outcast and On the Saint; the last conveying a picture which has

something startlingly imaginative, of a member of the communion

of saints presenting before the supreme Tribunal, as an appeal for

pity, some poignant personation of the anguish endured on earth.

However, here again the order of the poems seems unfortunate, the

series opening with some of the weakest. Many of the “epitaphs”

have appended to them an “epode,” which appears to be, generally

or always, the rejoinder of the world to the poet's reflection; but

perhaps these do not often add much to the force of the thing said.

Such a scheme as this series presents is obviously not to be fairly

discussed in a brief notice like the present; but we may note as inter-

esting examples, in various degrees, of its plan, the epitaphs On the

Sanctuary, On Time, On the Soul, On the Valley of the Shadow, On

Life, On the Seasons of Life, On the Window, On Early Death, On the

Deserted, On Dissipated Youth, On the Statesman, On Old Age, On

Penitence, and On the Struggle for Immortality. As a specimen of this

section of the book we extract the following brief poem On the Soul:—
  • “Free as the soul, the spire ascends;
  • Heaven lets it in her presence sit;
  • Yet ever back to earth it tends,—
  • The tranquil waters echo it.
  • So falls the future to the past;
  • So the high soul to earth is cast.
  • “But though the soul thus nobly fails,
  • Not long it borders on despair;
  • It still the fallen glory hails,
  • 10Though lost its conquests in the air.
  • While truth is yet above, its good
  • Is measured in the spirit's flood.
  • “Though not at first its holy light
  • Is figured in that mirror's face,
  • It scarce returns a form less bright
  • Than fills above a higher place.
  • The one was loved though little known,
  • The other is the spirits' own.”
This little piece, in spite of some uncertainty in the arrangement of

its last stanza, has the dignity and ordered compass of a mind naturally

empowered to deal with high things; and this is often equally evident

throughout the series. Still we have to regret that even complete

obscurity is a not uncommon blemish, while imperfect expression seems

too often to be attributable to a neglect of means; and this despite

the fact that a sense of style is certainly one of the first impressions

derived from Dr. Hake's writings. But we fear that a too great

and probably organic abstraction of mind interferes continually with

the projection of his thoughts; and we are frequently surprised to

meet, amid the excellence and fluent melody of his rhythm, with

some sudden deviation from the structure of the metre employed,

which can be attributable only to carelessness and want of watchful

revision. It needs such practical and patent proofs as this to convince

one of neglect where the instinct of structure exists so unmistakably;

and it is then that we begin to perceive the cause of much that is

imperfect in the author's intellectual self-expression. This is no

doubt the absence of that self-examination and self-confronting with

the reader which are in an absolutely unwearied degree necessary
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Sig. 40
in art; and the question only remains whether the poet's nature

will or will not for the future admit of his applying at all times a

rigorous remedy to this mental shortcoming.
The same difficulty meets us in excess when we come to the poem

which stands first on Dr. Hake's title-page— Madeline. With this

our remaining space is far from permitting us to deal at such length

as could alone give any true idea of its involved and somewhat bewilder-

ing elements. Its unexplained form is a puzzle at the outset. It is

delivered in a kind of alternating recitative between Valclusa, the

name of the personified district in which the action is laid, and a

Chorus of Nymphs. The argument may be summed up somewhat to

this effect. Hermes, a beneficent magician and poet, has been enam-

oured of Daphne, who has since died and become to him a ministering

spirit and his coadjutress in the hallowed exercise of his art. He

has been made aware of the seduction of a young girl, Madeline, by

the lord of the land, and has in vain laboured to prevent it, but now

calls Daphne to his aid in consoling the outcast. This angelic spirit

conveys her to the magician's home, where a sort of heavenly encamp-

ment is formed, in the midst of which Madeline lies in magic slumbers

watched by her protectress. Glad and sad visions succeed each

other in her sleep, varied but not broken by conference with Daphne,

who urges her to forgiveness of her betrayer. But she has been

chosen by a resistless power as the avenger of her own wrong; and

as this ever-recurring phantom of vengeance gains gradual possession

of her whole being, the angelic comforter, who has taken on herself

some expiatory communion in Madeline's agony, is so wrung by the

human anguish that she undergoes the last pain of humanity in a

simulated death. Madeline then fulfils her destiny, and makes her

way, still in a trance of sleep, by stormy mountain passes to the

castle of him who had wrought her ruin; passes through his guards,

finds him among his friends, and slays him. She then returns to the

magic encampment, and lying down by the now unconscious Daphne,

is in her turn released by death. The poem closes with the joint

apotheosis of the consoler and the consoled, together with a child,

the unborn fruit of Madeline's wrong.
This conception, singular enough, but neither devoid of sublimity

nor of real relation to human passion and pity, is carried out with

great structural labour, and forms no doubt the portion of the volume

on which Dr. Hake has bestowed his most conscientious care. But

our rough argument can give no idea of the baffling involutions of

its treatment and diction, rendering it, we fear, quite inaccessible to

most readers. The scheme of this strange poem is as literal and

deliberate in a certain sense as though the story were the simplest

in the world; and so far it might be supposed to fulfil one of the

truest laws of the supernatural in art—that of homely externals

developing by silent contrast the inner soul of the subject. But

here, in fact, the outer world does not once affect us in tangible form.

The effect produced is operatic or even ballet-like as regards mechanical

environment and course of action. This is still capable of defence

on very peculiar ideal grounds; but we fear the reader will find

the sequence of the whole work much more difficult to pursue than

our summary may promise.
The structure of the verse is even exceptionally grand and well

combined; but the use of language, though often extremely happy,

is also too frequently vague to excess; and the employment of one

elaborate lyrical metre throughout a long dramatic action, only

varied by occasional passages in the heroic couplet, conveys a certain

sense of oppression, in spite of the often felicitous workmanship.

Moreover a rigid exactness in the rhymes—without the variation of

assonance so valuable or even invaluable in poetry—is apt here to

be preserved at the expense of meaning and spontaneity. Never-
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theless, when all is said, there can be no doubt that the same reader

who at one moment lays down a poem like this in hopeless bewilder-

ment might at another, when his mind is lighter and clearer, and he

is at a happier juncture of rapport with its author, take it up to much

more luminous and pleasurable results, and find it really impressive.

One point which should not be overlooked in reading it is, that there

is an evident intention on Dr. Hake's part to make hysterical and

even mesmeric phenomena in some degree the groundwork of his

conception. The fitness of these for poetry, particularly when

thus minutely dealt with, may indeed afford matter for argument,

but the intention must not be lost sight of. Lastly, to deny to Made-

line a decided element of ideal beauty, however unusually presented,

would be to demonstrate entire unfitness for judgment on the work.
We have left ourselves no room to extract from Madeline in any

representative way; but the following two stanzas (the second of

them extremely fine) may serve to give an idea of the metre in which

it is written, and afford some glimpse of its uniquely fantastic elabora-

tion. The passage is from the very heart of the poem: where

Madeline is overshadowed in sleep by the vision of her seducer's castle,

rousing half-formed horror and resolve; till all things, even to the

drapery which clothes her body, seem to take part in the direful over-

mastering hour.
  • “The robe that round her flows
  • Is stirred like drifted snows;
  • Its restless waves her marble figure drape,
  • And all its charms express,
  • In ever-changing shape,
  • To zephyrs that caress
  • Her limbs, and lay them bare,
  • And all their grace and loveliness declare.
  • Nor modesty itself could chide
  • 10 The soft enchanters as they past her breathe
  • And beauty wreathe
  • In rippling forms that ever onward glide.
  • “Breezes from yonder tower,
  • Loosed by the avenging power,
  • Her senses hurry and a dread impart.
  • In terror she beholds
  • Her fluttering raiment start
  • In ribbed and bristled folds.
  • Its texture close and fine
  • 20 With broidery sweeps the bosom's heaving line,
  • Then trickles down as from a wound,
  • Curdling across the heart as past it steals,
  • Where it congeals
  • In horrid clots her quivering waist around.”
We have purposely avoided hitherto any detailed allusion to what

appear to us grave verbal defects of style in these poems; nor shall

we cite such instances at all, as things of this kind, detached from

their context, produce often an exaggeratedly objectionable impression.

Suffice it to say that, for a writer who displays an undoubted command

over true dignity of language, Dr. Hake permits himself at times

the most extraordinarily conventional (or once conventional) use of

Della-Cruscan phrases, that could be found in any poet since the

wonderful days when Hayley wrote the Triumphs of Temper. And

this leads us to a few final words on his position as a living writer.
It appears to us then that Dr. Hake is, in relation to his own time,

as original a poet as one can well conceive possible. He is uninflu-

enced by any styles or mannerisms of the day to so absolute a degree

as to tempt one to believe that the latest English singer he may have

even heard of is Wordsworth; while in some respects his ideas and

points of view are newer than the newest in vogue; and the external

affinity frequently traceable to elder poets only throws this essential

independence into startling and at times almost whimsical relief.
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Note: There is a typo on page 627, line 9 of DGR's “Maclise's Character- Portraits”: a period is printed after the word “pursuits” instead of a comma.
His style, at its most characteristic pitch, is a combination of extreme

homeliness, as of Quarles or Bunyan, with a formality and even

occasional courtliness of diction which recall Pope himself in his most

artificial flights; while one is frequently reminded of Gray by sus-

tained vigour of declamation. This is leaving out of the question

the direct reference to classical models which is perhaps in reality

the chief source of what this poet has in common with the eighteenth

century writers. The resemblance sometimes apparent to Words-

worth may be more on the surface than the influences named above;

while one might often suppose that the spiritual tenderness of Blake

had found in our author a worthy disciple, did not one think it most

probable that Blake lay out of his path of study. With all his pecu-

liarities, and all the obstacles which really stand between him and

the reading public, he will not fail to be welcomed by certain readers

for his manly human heart, and genuine if not fully subjugated powers

of hand.
more about Maclise's Character-Portraits
MACLISE'S CHARACTER-PORTRAITS
There is much in the function of criticism which absolutely needs

time for its final and irreversible settlement. And indeed some

systematic reference to past things, now at length presenting clearer

grounds for decision, seems a not undesirable section in any critical

journal, which finds itself necessarily at the constant disadvantage

of determining the exact nature of all grain as it passes with dazzling

and illusive rapidity through the sieve of the present hour. Thus

it might be well if a certain amount of space were willingly granted,

in such journals, to those who, in the course of their own pursuits.

find something special to say on bygone work, perhaps half if not

wholly forgotten, yet which, for all that, may have in it a vitality

well able to second any reviving effort when that is once bestowed.
Maclise stands, it is true, in no danger of oblivion; though he has

lately passed away from among us with infinitely less public recog-

nition and regret than has been bestowed, and that in recent cases,

on painters infinitely less than he. His was a force of central fire whose

conscious abundance descends at will on many altars, and has some-

thing to spare even for feux d'artifice; and it is fortunate that, after

the production of much which, with all its vigour and variety, failed

generally to represent him in any full sense, his wilful and somewhat

scornful power did at last culminate in a perfect manifestation. His

two supreme works—the Waterloo and Trafalgar in the House of

Lords—unite the value of almost contemporary record with that

wild legendary fire and contagious heart-pulse of hero-worship which

are essential for the transmission of epic events through art. These

are such “historical” pictures as the world had perhaps never seen

before; bold as that assertion may appear in the face of the trained

and learnedly military modern art of the continent. But here a

man wrought whose instincts were absolutely towards the poetic,

and yet whose ideality was not independent, but required to be

exercised in the service of action, and perhaps even of national feeling,

to attain its full development. These two splendid monuments of

his genius, thus truly directed, he has left us; and we may stand

before them with the confidence that only in the field of poetry, and

not of painting, can the world match them as realized chronicles

of heroic beauty.
However, my desire to express some sense of Maclise's greatness

at its highest point is leading me away at the outset from the im-

mediate subject of this notice, which has to do merely with an early

and subordinate, though not ephemeral, product of his powers. I

allude to the long series of character-portraits—chiefly drawn on
Image of page 628 page: 628
stone with a lithographic pen, but in other instances more elaborately

etched or engraved—which he contributed (under the pseudonym of

“Alfred Croquis”) to Fraser's Magazine between the years 1830

and 1838. Some illustration of Maclise's genius, in the form of a

book ready to hand, and containing characteristic work of his, would

be very desirable; and I am not aware that any such exists at present.

If unfortunately the original plates of these portraits have been

destroyed, they are exactly such things as are best suited to repro-

duction by some of the photo-lithographic processes, and I cannot

doubt that by this means they might be perfectly and permanently

recovered and again put in circulation. I suppose no such series of

the portraits of celebrated persons of any epoch, produced by an

eye and hand of so much insight and power, and realized with such

a view to the actual impression of the sitter, exists anywhere; and

the period illustrated possessed abundant claims to a worthy personal

record. Pre-eminent here, among literary celebrities, are Göthe,

Walter Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, and Thomas

Carlyle. Each produces the impression of absolute trustworthiness,

as in a photograph. The figure of Göthe alone, though very vivid

as he gazes over his shoulder with encountering unreleasing eyes,

is probably not derived from personal observation, but reproduced

from some authority—here surpassed (as one cannot but suspect)

in clear directness of rendering. The portrait of Scott, with its un-

flinching enjoyment of peculiarities, gives, I have no doubt, a more

exact impression of the man, as equipped for his daily life, than any

likeness that could be met with. The same may be said of the

“Coleridge”—a mournful latter-day record of him, the image of a

life subdued into darkness, yet survived by the soul within its eyes;

and of the “Wordsworth,”—beneficently enthroned, as if for the

distribution of some order of merit to encourage the forces of Nature;

while Lamb, on the contrary, is shown to us warmly ensconced, sucking

at his sweet books (and some other sweets) like a bee, and only con-

scious of self by the thrills of that dear delight provided. As for our

still living glory, Carlyle, the picture here given of him, in the simple

reserved strength of his earlier life, convinces us at once of its priceless

fidelity. Fortunately this portrait is one of those most carefully

modelled and engraved, and is a very beautiful complete piece of

individuality. This, no doubt, like some others, is a direct portrait

for which the original actually stood; while many, on the other

hand, are reminiscences, either serious or satirical, of the persons

represented.
It would be vain, in such space as I have at disposal, to attempt

even a summary of the numerous other representatives of literature

here gathered together; from the effete memorial effigy of Rogers,

to Theodore Hook, jauntily yet carelessly posed, and with a twink-

ling, self-loving face, which is one of the special masterpieces of the

collection. But I may mention, almost at random, the portraits

of Godwin, Leigh Hunt, Cruikshank, Disraeli the elder, and the

Arctic voyager Ross, as presenting admirable examples of the series.
To convey a correct idea of the manner of these drawings to those

who have not seen them would be difficult. Both in rendering of

character, whether in its first aspect or subtler shades, and in the

unfailing knowledge of form which seizes at once on the movement of

the body beneath the clothes and on the lines of the clothes them-

selves, these drawings are on an incalculably higher level than the

works of even the best professional sketchers. Indeed no happier

instance could well be found of the unity, for literal purposes, of

what may be justly termed “style” with an incisive and relishing

realism. A fine instance, though not at all an exceptional one, is

the figure of the poet Campbell, leaning back in his chair for a few

whiffs at his long pipe, amid the lumber of an editor's office. The
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whole proportions of the vignetted drawing are at the same time

so just and fanciful, and the personage so strongly and unflinchingly

planted in his place, that the eye and mind receive an equal satisfaction

at the first and last glance. Kindred instances are the figures of

Jerdan and Galt, both equally admirable. Of course, as in all cases

of clear satisfaction in art, the gift of beauty, and no other, is at the

bottom of the success achieved. I have no room to point to many

instances of this, but may refer to one; namely, the rendering—whim-

sical, as in the spirit of the series, yet truly appreciative—of that

noble beauty which in Caroline Norton inspired the best genius of

her long summer day. At other times the artist allows himself to

render character by playful exaggeration of the most obvious kind;

as in the funnily-drawn plate of Miss Landon, where the kitten-like

mignonnerie required is attained by an amusing excess of daintiness

in the proportions, with the duly charming result nevertheless. The

same may be said of the “Count D'Orsay,” that sublime avatar of

the eighteen-thirties, a portrait no doubt as intensely true to impres-

sion as it is impossible to fact.
I have already spoken of the literary leaders represented. Here

too are the kings of slashing criticism, chiefs of that phalanx of ram-

pant English and blatant Scotch mediocrity: insolent, indolent

Maginn; Lockhart, elaborately at ease; Croker, tasteless and shame-

less; and Christopher North, cock of the walk, whose crowings

have now long given place to much sweet singing that they often

tried to drown, and who, for all his Jove-like head, cloud-capped in

Scotch sentiment and humour, was but a bantam Thunderer after

all. Not even piteous inferiority in their unheeded successors can

make such men as these seem great to us now. There they lie—

broken weeds in the furrows traced by Time's ploughshare for the

harvest which they would fain have choked.
It may be doubted whether Maclise saw clearly the relative impor-

tance of all the characters he portrayed in this gathering. His

instincts were chiefly those of a painter, not of a thinker; and more-

over he was doubtless, as a young man then, a good deal under the

influence of association with the reckless magazine-staff among whom

he worked in this instance. Accordingly some of the satire conveyed

by his pencil is now and then not in the best taste; though perhaps

the only really strong instance of this is the laughable but imper-

tinent portrait of Miss Martineau. Many are merely playful, as the

“Siamese” version of Bulwer-Lytton at his shaving-glass; or that

flush of budding oriental dandyism here on record as the first incar-

nation of Benjamin Disraeli.
But one picture here stands out from the rest in mental power, and

ranks Maclise as a great master of tragic satire. It is that which

grimly shows us the senile torpor of Talleyrand, as he sits in after-

dinner sleep between the spread board and the fire-place, surveyed

from the mantel-shelf by the busts of all the sovereigns he had served.

His elbows are on the chair-arms; his hands hang; his knees, fallen

open, reveal the waste places of shrivelled age; the book he read, as

the lore he lived by, has dropped between his feet; his chap-fallen

mask is spread upward as the scalp rests on the cushioned chair-back;

the wick gutters in the wasting candle beside him; and his last

Master claims him now. All he was is gone; and water or fire for

the world after him—what care had he? The picture is more than

a satire; it might be called a diagram of Damnation; a ghastly

historical verdict which becomes the image of the man for ever. This

is one of the few drawings which Maclise has signed with his nom-

de-crayon at full length; and he had reason to be proud of it.
But I must bring particulars to a close, hoping that I may have

roused, in such readers of the Academy as were hitherto unacquainted

with this series, a desire to know it and an interest in its possible
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reproduction. This, I may again say, seems easy to be accomplished

by photolithography, though I do not know myself which of the

various methods more or less to be classed under that title is the

best for the purpose. The portraits should be accompanied in such

case both by the original magazine-squibs necessary for explanation,

and by some competent summary of real merits and relative values

as time has shown them since. And before concluding, I may men-

tion that in the Garrick Club there is a sketch of Thackeray by

Maclise, in pen or pencil (I forget which), evidently meant to enter

into this series. It is Thackeray at the best time of his life, and ought

certainly to be facsimiled with the rest in the event of their revival.
more about Hake's Parables and Tales
HAKE'S PARABLES AND TALES
The quality of finish in poetic execution is of two kinds. The first

and highest is that where the work has been all mentally “cartooned,”

as it were, beforehand, by a process intensely conscious, but patient

and silent,—an occult evolution of life: then follows the glory of

wielding words, and we see the hand of Dante, as that of Michelan-

gelo,—or almost as that quickening Hand which Michelangelo has

dared to embody,—sweep from left to right, fiery and final. Of this

order of poetic action,—the omnipotent freewill of the artist's mind,—

our curbed and slackening world may seem to have seen the last.

It has been succeeded by another kind of “finish,” devoted and

ardent, but less building on ensured foundations than self-questioning

in the very moment of action or even later: yet by such creative

labour also the evening and the morning may be blent to a true

day, though it be often but a fitful or an unglowing one. Not only

with this second class, but even with those highest among consum-

mate workers, productiveness must be found, at the close of life, to

have been comparatively limited; though never failing, where a

true master is in question, of such mass as is necessary to robust

vitality.
That Dr. Hake is to be ranked with those poets who, in striving

to perfect what they do as best they may, resolve to have a tussle

for their own with Oblivion, is evident on comparison of his present

little volume with its predecessor of a year or two ago. A portion

of its contents is reproduced from that former book, but so remoulded

by a searching self-criticism as to give the reader the best possible

guarantee of its being worth his while to follow the author in his

future course. We believe, on the whole, that Dr. Hake will do well

in cultivating chiefly, as he does here, the less intricate of his poetic

tendencies. His former poem of Madeline,—a tragic narrative

couched in a metre, and invested with an imagery, which recalled

the Miltonic ode or the Petrarchian canzone,—presented, amid much

that was unmanageable, some striking elements of success. But

there were other compositions in the same volume to which some

readers must have turned with astonishment, after reading Madeline,

and wondered that the writer who had so much genuine command

over the heart as these displayed should be at pains to put his thoughts

elsewhere in a difficult and exclusive form. Such a book does not

get rapidly abroad, yet the piece called Old Souls is probably already

secure of a distinct place in the literature of our day, and we believe

the same may be predicted of other poems in the little collection just

issued.
The finest new poem here is The Blind Boy, which gives scope to

all the poet's sympathies by summoning the beloved beauties of

visible nature round the ideal of a mysterious exclusion and isolation.

Speaking of the aim alone, we may say that perhaps there is hardly

in Wordsworth himself any single poem of equal length which from
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so central a standpoint interpenetrates the seen with the unseen,

bounded always in a familiar circle of ideas. The blind boy—heir

to the lands and sea-coast which are dark to him alone—has their

beauties transmitted to him by description through his loving sister's

eyes and lips. Some of the opening stanzas, wherein the poet spreads

the scenery before us, are very direct and spacious:—
  • “Clouds, folded round the topmost peaks,
  • Shut out the gorges from the sun
  • Till midday, when the early streaks
  • Of sunshine down the valley run;
  • But where the opening cliffs expand,
  • The early sea-light breaks on land.
  • “Before the sun, like golden shields,
  • The clouds a lustre shed around;
  • Wild shadows gambolling o'er the fields,
  • 10Tame shadows stretching o'er the ground.
  • Towards noon the great rock-shadow moves,
  • And takes slow leave of all it loves.”
The descriptions become yet more beautiful, and assume an under-

current of relative significance, when the sister and brother are the

speakers:—
  • “She tells him how the mountains swell,
  • How rocks and forests touch the skies;
  • He tells her how the shadows dwell
  • In purple dimness on his eyes,
  • Whose tremulous orbs the while he lifts,
  • As round his smile their spirit drifts.
  • “More close around his heart to wind,
  • She shuts her eyes in childish glee,
  • ‘To share,’ she said, ‘his peace of mind;
  • 10To sit beneath his shadow-tree.’
  • So, half in play, the sister tries
  • To find his soul within her eyes.
  • “His hand in hers, she walks along
  • And leads him to the river's brink;
  • She stays to hear the water's song,
  • Closing her eyes with him to think.
  • His ear, more watchful than her own,
  • Caught up the ocean's distant moan.
  • “‘The river's flow is bright and clear,’
  • 20The blind boy said, ‘and were it dark
  • We should no less its music hear:
  • Sings not at eventide the lark?
  • Still when the ripples pause, they fade
  • Upon my spirit like a shade.’
  • “‘Yet, brother, when the river stops,
  • And in the quiet bay is hushed,
  • E'en though its gentle murmur drops,
  • 'Tis bright as when by us it rushed;
  • It is not like a shade the more
  • 30 Except beneath the wooded shore.’”
The second stanza here has much of that colossal infancy of ex-

pression which we find in William Blake. Such touches, sometimes

quite masterly, as here, sometimes striving with what yet remains

but half said, are characteristic of this poet.
The blind boy—blind early but not from his birth—speaks again:—
  • “‘The waves with mingling echoes fall;
  • And memories of a long-lost light
  • From far-off mornings seem to call,
  • And what I hear comes into sight.
  • The beauteous skies flash back again,
  • But ah! the light will not remain!’”
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The stanzas which follow are perhaps the most subtle and sugges-

tive in the poem:—
  • “Awhile he pauses; as he stops,
  • Her little hand the sister moves,
  • And pebbles on the water drops,
  • As it runs up the sandy grooves;
  • Or to her ear a shell applies,
  • With parted lips and dreaming eyes.
  • “‘That noise!’ said he, with lifted hand.
  • ‘The sea-gull's scream and flapping wings.
  • Before the wind it flies to land,
  • 10And omens of a tempest brings.’
  • She tells him how the sea-bird pale
  • Whirls wildly on the coming gale.
  • “‘And is the sea alone? Even now
  • I hear faint mutterings.’ ‘'Tis the waves.’
  • ‘It seems a murmur sweeping low
  • And hurrying through the distant caves.
  • I hear again that smothered tone,
  • As if the sea were not alone.’”
Less elevated in tone than The Blind Boy, but perhaps still more

complete from the artistic point of view, in the clear flow of its

familiar observation and homely pathos, is the poem entitled The

Cripple . We have given The Blind Boy the higher place on account

of its more ideal treatment; but a careful reading of The Cripple

will show it to be nothing less than a masterpiece in its simple way,

and so blended together in its parts that it is very difficult to extract

from it so as to convey the emotional impression which the verses

produce when read in sequence. The cripple is the helpless son of

a poor village widow, charwoman or washerwoman as the chance

presents itself.
  • “As a wrecked vessel on the sand,
  • The cripple to his mother clung:
  • Close to the tub he took his stand
  • While she the linen washed and wrung;
  • And when she hung it out to dry
  • The cripple still was standing by.
  • “When she went out to char, he took
  • His fife, to play some simple snatch
  • Before the inn hard by the brook,
  • 10While for the traveller keeping watch,
  • Against the horse's head to stand,
  • Or hold its bridle in his hand.
  • “Sometimes the squire his penny dropped
  • Upon the road for him to clutch,
  • Which, as it rolled, the cripple stopped,
  • Striking it nimbly with his crutch.
  • The groom, with leathern belt and pad,
  • E'en found a copper for the lad.
  • “The farmer's wife her hand would dip
  • 20Down her deep pocket with a sigh;
  • Some halfpence in his hand would slip,
  • When there was no observer nigh;
  • Or give him apples for his lunch,
  • That he loved leisurely to munch.
  • “But for the farmer, what he made,
  • At market table he would spend,
  • And boys who used not plough or spade
  • Had got the parish for their friend:
  • He paid his poor-rates to the day,
  • 30 So let the boy ask parish-pay.
  • “Yet would the teamster feel his fob,
  • The little cripple's heart to cheer,
  • Himself of penny pieces rob,
  • That he begrudged to spend in beer.
  • His boy, too, might be sick or sore,
  • So gave he of his thrifty store.”
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All this is a good deal lost without the aid of the preceding intro-

ductory picture of village life. The above passage is succeeded by

a charming brookside description of the cripple's favourite haunt.

What follows we must pursue to the close, though the extract be

rather a long one:—
  • “There with soft notes his fife he filled—
  • A mere tin plaything from the mart,
  • With holes at equal distance drilled,
  • To which his fingers grace impart,
  • While it obeys his lips' control,
  • And is a crutch unto his soul.
  • “At church he longed his fife to try,
  • Where oboe gave its doleful note,
  • Where fiddle scraped harsh melody,
  • 10Where bass the rustic vitals smote.
  • Such music then was all in vogue,
  • And psalms were sung in village brogue.
  • “His cheerful ways gave many cause
  • For wonder; nay, his very joy
  • To others' mirth would give a pause:
  • His soul so like his body's toy,
  • So childish, yet with face of age,
  • Beginning at life's latter stage.
  • “Dead is his crutch on moping days—
  • 20'Tis so they call his sickly fits,
  • When by his side his crutch he lays,
  • And in the chimney-corner sits,
  • Hobbling in spirit near the yew
  • That in the village churchyard grew.
  • “Ah! it befell at harvest-time—
  • Such are the ways of Providence,—
  • That the poor widow in her prime
  • Was fever-struck, and hurried hence;
  • Then did he wish indeed to lie
  • 30 Between her arms and with her die.
  • “Who shall the cripple's woes beguile?
  • Who earn the bread his mouth to feed?
  • Who greet him with a mother's smile?
  • Who tend him in his utter need?
  • Who lead him to the sanded floor?
  • Who put his crutch behind the door?
  • “Who set him in his wadded chair,
  • And after supper say his grace?
  • Who to invite a loving air
  • 40His fife upon the table place?
  • Who, as he plays, her eyes shall lift
  • In wonder at a cripple's gift?
  • “Who ask him all the news that chanced—
  • Of farmer's wife in coat and hat,
  • Of squire who to the city pranced—
  • To draw him out in lively chat?
  • This flood of love, now but a surf
  • Left on a nameless mound of turf.
  • “Some it made sigh, and some made talk,
  • 50To see the guardian of the poor
  • Call for the boy to take a walk,
  • And lead him to the workhouse door:
  • With lifted hands and boding look
  • They watched him cross the village brook.”
Old Morality is a poem differing much from the two already dwelt

upon, as being a kind of light satirical allegory, yet having an affinity

to them by its rustic surroundings, and producing much the same

impression as the old verse-inscribed Emblems of a whole school of

Dutch and English moralists. We hardly think it possible to extract

from this piece; nor, though full of thoughtful perceptive whimsi-
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cality, does it quite possess that consequent clear-headedness which

must be the first principle of all allegory, whether serious or humorous,

whereof twilight is the true atmosphere, but fog the utter destruction.

Nevertheless we may refer the reader to the poem itself, as one char-

acterized by flashes of genial wisdom and by delicate and pleasurable

execution. The sound of its title recalls rather awkwardly Scott's

Old Mortality (a kind of trivial obstruction by no means beneath

artistic notice); and for the symbolism of the poem it seems to us

that another representative name— Old Veracity for instance—would

have been actually more to the purpose than the word Morality,

which men have long conspired to beset with endless ambiguities.
We have not yet noticed the poem entitled Mother and Child which

stands first in the volume, and which has a more distinctly dramatic

aim than appears in its other contents. We must admit that this

poem is far from satisfying us. Its subject is this. A young lady,

leaving the Opera, sees suddenly in the street a mother and infant

whose aspect—that of the child especially, which seems confused in

her mind with the face of her affianced lover,—continues to haunt

her memory most painfully. Meeting them again by accident, she

makes inquiry and finds that the child is in fact her lover's illegitimate

offspring; whereupon she expresses by words and by good deeds

the gratitude due to the unconscious agents of her own rescue from

the hands of him who had ruined and abandoned another. This

invention is striking and certainly not impossible; but to reconcile

us to its exceptional features, it requires much more individuality

in the working out, and much more space for the purpose, than are

here bestowed upon it. Its steady abruptness in disposing, one after

another, of incidents sufficiently surprising to give us pause, recalls

somewhat the pseudo-ballads of a past generation, and its execution

is certainly stiffer and more prosaic than is the case with any other

piece in the series. However, it has, like all its author puts forth,

the genuine charm of human sympathy, and on a wider canvas its

conception might probably have been developed to good purpose.
The present writer has on a former occasion spoken elsewhere of

several poems here reproduced from the earlier volume,—notably

of Old Souls and the subtly exquisite Lily of the Valley. He will

here only note that—with the exception of Old Souls, which needed

and has received hardly any modification—every piece which Dr.

Hake has presented for the second time has been made his own afresh

by that double of himself, the self-critic, who should be one always

with the poet. We do not venture to say that harmony of sound and

clearness of structure have been everywhere equally mastered

throughout the present collection; but so much has been done that

to doubt further progress in fresh work would be unjust to the author.

Though disposed to encourage him to the pursuit chiefly of the path

in poetry which this volume follows, we should not regret to find

his thoughts clothed sometimes in more varied and even more adven-

turous lyrical forms.
Though much has been said concerning the matter-of-fact tenden-

cies of the reading public which poets desire to enlist, it must we

think be admitted that the simpler and more domestic order of themes

has not been generally, of late years, the most widely popular. In-

deed these have probably had less than their due in the balance of

immediate acceptance. It would be easy to point to examples,—for

instance, to the work which Mr. Allingham has done so well in this

field,—above all, to his very memorable book, Laurence Bloomfield

in Ireland ,—a solid and undeniable achievement, no less a historical

record than a searching poetic picture of those manners which can

alone be depicted with a certainty of future value,—the manners of

our own time. Yet such a book as this seems yet to have its best

day to come. Should Dr. Hake's more restricted, but lovely and
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sincere, contributions to the poetry of real life, not find the immediate

response they deserve, he may at least remember that others also have

failed to meet at once with full justice and recognition. But we will

hope for good encouragement to his present and future work; and

can at least assure the lover of poetry (but indeed we have proved

it to him by quotation) that in these simple pages he shall find not

seldom a humanity limpid and pellucid,—the well-spring of a true

heart, with which his heart must mingle as with their own element.
Dr. Hake has been fortunate in the beautiful drawings which Mr.

Arthur Hughes has contributed to his little volume. No poet could

have a more congenial yoke-fellow than this gifted and imaginative

artist. The lovely little picture which heads the Lily of the Valley

must satisfy even the most jealous admirer of the poem, and that to

the Blind Boy leaves nothing to desire, full as it is of a gracious and

kindred melancholy. The illustration to Old Morality is another

decided success, except perhaps for the too plump and juvenile sexton;

and that to the Cripple has great sweetness, only the poor widow

here is hardly “in her prime” as described in the text, and her son

thus looks more like her grandson. We should be glad to find the

poet and the artist again in company.
more about Proserpina. For a Picture
PROSERPINA

FOR A PICTURE
The picture represents Proserpina as Empress of Hades. After

she was conveyed by Pluto to his realm and became his bride, her

mother Ceres importuned Jupiter for her return to earth, and he

was prevailed on to consent to this, provided only she had not partaken

of any of the fruits of Hades. It was found however that she had

eaten one grain of a pomegranate, and this enchained her to her

new empire and destiny.
She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the

fatal fruit in her hand. As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall

behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, admitting for a moment

the light of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it,

immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as the

attribute of a goddess. The ivy-branch in the background (a decora-

tive appendage to the sonnet inscribed on the label) may be taken as

a symbol of clinging memory.
more about Scraps [II]
SCRAPS
more about [Mum as a Muffin]
“The Press-gang—a Satire.” The Verminiad. A Foul Fool.

Mum as a Muffin.
more about [Fuseli and Michelangelo]
Fuseli and such painters are the vultures to Michelangelo's eagle.
more about [an inspired bagman]
Dickens was an inspired bagman—an articulate counter-jumper.
more about [heaps of gag]
Dickens must needs be not a good author only, but a bad actor

of his own parts too. Having created something remarkable, he

cannot leave it to itself, but goes on to smother it in heaps of gag.
more about [To the anonymous]
To the anonymous, pseudonymous, and caconominous—to the

Ancient Order of Vermin in highest and lowest places—another volume

is now consigned.
more about [The memory of past pleasure]
The memory of past pleasure, in pain, brings a sting at first, but

afterwards a salve.
Image of page 636 page: 636
more about [Christina]
Christina—the isolation of a bird, remote, minute, and distinct;

shy like a bird.
more about [Thackery]
Thackeray is the valet of Society, to whom not one of his masters

is a hero. He lives upon small advantages, which he exacts from

all alike.
more about [An artist often hate]
An artist often hates his own best work in the same way as the

better works of others: it is equally a perpetual self-reproach.
more about [Why should]
Why should an inventor usurp the critics' share of function by

replying to them? or refuse to admit, as they practically assert, that

he was born to do work which they were born to talk about?
more about Cavalier Standing Before A Woman's Portrait
Picture —Cavalier standing before full-length portrait of lady.
more about [The approach of death]
The approach of death wraps us in clouds of contention.
more about [dawn of a new day]
As one who falls asleep on a hill, and, waking, sees sunset (as he

thinks) in the sky, and forebodes a darkling night to travel further;

but, as the light widens, finds that it is the dawn of a new day.
more about [Bill and Coo]
Bill and Coo—Lovers' names.
more about Perlascura
Perlascura : a twelve-fold Portrait, autotyped from the Studies

of D. G. R.—(or) One Portrait in twelve Studies autotyped from

the Drawings of D. G. R.
more about The Cup of Water
For “ The Cup of Water .”— All that he might do rushed through

his soul—passion and wrong-doing and desperate will; as, with wide

eye fixed, and his proud and scarcely quivering mouth half-hidden

in his beard, he acted it through in his soul, and cast it out.
more about [scavengers]
Whether they be scavengers literary or literally.
more about [Real names]
Real names.—(Woman's christian name) Pharailde. (Surnames)

Malombra: Fina Buzzacarina.
more about The New Ibis
The New Ibis, a Satire: by Anon or Ibid.—Motto—“Anon, Anon,

sir.”
more about Down Stream
A slanderous Satirist should indeed have a deal of contempt in

his nature; since he has to find enough for others, over and above

the amount he must secretly allot to himself.
more about [La misanthropie]
Tâche de pleurer le plus que tu pourras: on ne pleure jamais assez.

La misanthropie est faite des larmes qui sont restées au fond du

cœur.
more about [En un moment]
En un moment il lui dit mille paroles insensées, avec la rapidité

d'un torrent qui bondit entre des rochers, et répète le même son sous

mille formes différentes.
more about [La fitigue du bonheur]
La fatigue du bonheur, cette délicieuse mélancholie du corps.
more about [La Nature chante]
Les poètes sont les échos de la Nature. La Nature chante, et les

poètes répètent ses chansons.
Image of page 637 page: 637
more about Samuel Palmer (1875-81)
SAMUEL PALMER

(1875-81)
There is an inevitable sense of presumption on the part of a junior

like myself (though certainly a ripe one enough) in venturing to say

thus cursorily what remains in my mind as the result of our conversa-

tion relating to Samuel Palmer's genius. Such a manifestation of

spiritual force absolutely present—though not isolated as in Blake—

has certainly never been united with native landscape-power in the

same degree as Palmer's works display; while, when his glorious

colouring is abandoned for the practice of etching, the same exceptional

unity of soul and sense appears again, with the same rare use of mani-

pulative material. The possessors of his works have what must grow

in influence, just as the possessors of Blake's creations are beginning

to find; but with Palmer the progress must be more positive, and

infinitely more rapid, since, while a specially select artist to the few,

he has a realistic side on which he touches the many, more than Blake

can ever do.
I know that you were one of those who were most attached to the

good man as well as to the good painter. His works are clear beacons

of inspiration, which is a point very hard to attain to in landscape

art; but in him one may almost say that it was as evident as in Blake.
more about Scraps [III]
SCRAPS
more about [certain passionate phases]
There are certain passionate phases of the soul where to know a

thing true, and to believe it, are found two separate things.
more about [He who knows]
He who knows how much too late it is forbears to look at his watch.
more about [Aura and Aurora]
Aura and Aurora. Descriptions of both. Both belonging to one

man. Which did he cherish, and spurn the other? A question

most fitly answered by the scornful lip of a Devil in hell.
more about [In refined natures]
In refined natures of humble birth breeding seems to have preceded

it in a former existence, and the peasant-woman looks and is born

a queen.
more about [noun of multitude]
If Man be a noun of multitude, let me sue in formâ pauperis, for

alone am I.
more about Judith and Holofernes
Subject: Judith displaying head of Holofernes—background all

of crowded faces.
more about [hat band]
He wore a hat-band, and his nails were also in mourning.
more about [ancestor and descendant]
I shall be an ancestor, and he is a descendant.
more about [Robert Burns]
Whosoever be of all men the most a poet, Robert Burns is of all

poets the most a man. His enormous identity—the lowly labour

united to the plumed and crested intellect—thus shoots up as in over-

whelming vigour, and makes his presence a mountain among the hills

of Poesy.
more about [Leighton's impasto]
Leighton's impasto is scented soap, and his surface violet-powder.
more about [Uglimugli]
Uglimugli, a Chinese Magician.
Image of page 638 page: 638
Note: Typo: in the last line of the thirteenth paragraph on page 638, the word “exclamation” is followed by a comma, instead of a period.
more about Caius Between Statues of Castor and Pollux
Subject for Picture: Caius standing between the statues of Castor

and Pollux, to be adored by the people. ( Merivale's Roman Empire ,

vol. vi., p. 62.)
more about [Terra Verte]
I know the green earth only in the form of Terra Verte.
more about Predella for a picture of the Magdalene
Predella for a picture of the Magdalene:—On one side Magdalene

anointing Christ's feet at table; and on the other, clinging round his

feet while taking down from the cross.
more about [Fat and Fate]
Fat is Beauty's Fate.
more about Life is a coin]
If an isolated life has any sting, it is felt in the absence of those

friends who made for years unneeded avowals of obligation and grati-

tude. Still, this will come, in time, to pass and be forgotten, if not

emphasized by momentary visits once or twice a year. Life is a coin

which we once shared together, but which has now quite passed from

my pocket into yours—doubtless rightly enough. Only I desire

no half-farthing of its small change.
more about [moments of Truth]
There are moments when Truth must come not as serene dawn, but

as jagged lightning.
more about [tempest in the outer air]
To find that an unknown man hates you is but a tempest in the

outer air: but to find that your friend has turned against you——
more about [small amount of quintessential work
Devoted as my time has necessarily been to another art, I have

never hoped to produce in poetry more than a small amount of quint-

essential work. Thus the intervals between poetic effort have lasted

for years at a time; and of these the present is not the longest.
more about [To the Reader of The House of Life]
To the Reader of The House of Life. The “life” involved is

neither my life nor your life, but life representative, as tripled with

love and death.
more about Michelangelo Unburying the Laocoon
Subjects for Pictures. Michelangelo unburying the Laocoon.—
more about Michelangelo at the Deathbed of Vittoria Colonna
Michelangelo at the deathbed of Vittoria Colonna.
more about [Coleridge]
Coleridge had to endure through life the self-preserving attacks of

relentless mediocrity in high places.
more about [Autumn Anemones]
A Title for Poems: Autumn Anemones (or Winter Anemones).
more about [Endymion]
Endymion is a magic toy, fit for the childhood of a divine poet.

The man, however, already appears in the interview with Diana

(part 2). Nothing but humanity would do here; and this it is that

the poet employs, artfully entwining it with supernatural exclamation,
more about [Milton]
Milton at a relative's in St. Martin's Lane, when his first wife

appeared, and implored his forgiveness. They mingled their tears,

and were reunited.
more about Notes Upon a Life of David Scott
NOTES UPON A LIFE OF DAVID SCOTT
P. 46.—D. Scott describes his outlines, published towards 1831,

entitled, Of Man, Six Monograms: No. 5 is “ Of Power.” Rossetti's

Comment.—These Monograms are perhaps the finest of all his abstract

works; the style a little faint and timid, but more correct than much

that he did later. No. 5 is a very grand composition.
P. 87.—D. Scott's Text.—Between the mode of the old Masters
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here [Florence], I mean before Buonarroti, in producing their intel-

lections, and that of the older poets, there is much in common: in

both much individuality of imitation united to great abstractedness

and symbolic remoteness, with all the vagaries of an early day. Both are

full of features the manner of the formation of which is accidental,

rising out of their freedom from and ignorance of critical rules. The

ideas and separated portions of their works hang together by a con-

nexion often perfectly unforeseen; or are separated in a way that

mere inventors ( makers, I should call them in this view) of tales, poems,

and pictures, do not often venture upon; or rather do not dream of.

Shakespear is like them at times. Rossetti's Comment.—He sees truly,

but does not admire! (So says Rossetti, but some not inconsiderable

spice of admiration appears to be implied in Scott's words.)
P. 89.—D. Scott's Text.—A large oil-picture by himself (Michel-

angelo), painted on wood; the subject, The Virgin with the Child and

Saints . It is dreadfully incorrect in drawing. It puts me in mind

of some of my own attempts of years since—I mean in the sort of

blundering; uniting parts wrong and suppressing some, to the exag-

geration of others. In some portions there is great strength of imi-

tation; and in some of the faces etc. the colour is good and the

style formed, but the execution is feeble and restrained. Rossetti's

Comment.—Too true all David Scott's life.
P. 100.—D. Scott's Text.—Generally, when Rubens comes in

contact with Titian and Giorgione, he looks grey, red, and brown:

but his genius in design and general fertility as often again repays

this with scornful superiority. Rossetti's Comment.—Stuff. Rubens's

design, though fertile, is always united with bad taste.
P. 106.—D. Scott's Text.—Guido's Aurora, one of the finest

productions of Italian art. Guido is a great painter. Rossetti's

Comment.—Not the current view, but worth considering.
P. 117.—D. Scott's Text.—Buonarroti is of a strong low character,

rather than exalted or great: he could do nothing pure or grand in

beauty. Rossetti's Comment.—The devil he couldn't! What could

you do? Strumps and lumps.
P. 127.—A passage in which D. Scott passes rapidly from one

notion to another. Poetry, painting, all appears weak stuff. Raphael,

like nature, everywhere defective. Caravaggio's Entombment, nothing

comes up to its strength. In his own work, Sappho and Anacreon,

he is ashamed of its prettiness: some previous works more his true

line. Rossetti's Comment.—Thinking in all directions after this kind

is ruin. He puts a ! to the term “prettiness” as applied to a picture

by Scott, whose defect did certainly not lie in that direction.
P. 143.—D. Scott's Text.—Praise of pictures in the Naples

Museum by Spagnoletto and Caravaggio. Could I meet such men

in life, I would surely be happy. Rossetti's Comment.—Happy! They

were horrid ruffians. Yet he never yearns for Michelangelo.
P. 146.—D. Scott's Text.—An excursion to Capri. Little thought

has passed across my mind to-day. Rossetti's Comment.—Horrible

self-consciousness. What the devil did it matter?
P. 156.—D. Scott's Text.—An early visit from Rothwell. Praised

my other pictures, but not my large one. Why did I stake my own

self-opinion by bringing so much to the bar of Roman or any other

criticism? Running myself into inconvenience to gain misconception and

neglect. Rossetti's Comment.—Or to learn completeness necessary.
P. 157.—D. Scott's Text.—Giovanni Bellini's last work, finished

by Titian, is a curious stiff production. Rossetti's Comment.—Why,

this must be the lovely Feast of Gods.
P. 166.—D. Scott's Text.—Evening, for the last time with Buonar-

roti's Moses. Phidias and Praxiteles are the great sculptors. Rossetti's

Comment (on the Moses).—Which he doesn't like; and right too

about this one work of Michelangelo.
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P. 167.—D. Scott wrote in verse a Farewell to Rome, containing

the following lines:
  • “Briefly then, I cast
  • My hat upon my head. ‘Ye men of Rome,
  • Farewell; and ye fair donnas kindly haste
  • Your long addio, else it will not come
  • More strongly on my ear than would a grey fly's hum.’”


Rossetti's Comment.—There's the rub: he had no joy in life.
P. 187.—W. B. Scott's Text.—A living artist has said in a short

autobiography, “It is good to have no more thoughts than we can

express.” Rossetti's Comment.—Etty? And yet his works are great

lessons in ways where one might look in vain to David Scott.
P. 192.—W. B. Scott's Text.—Some minds, the most catholic

it may be, seem to be the media through which Nature speaks. Raphael

is a higher example than Shakespear—for this reason only, that the

sphere of his operation was accidentally nobler; the christian mytho-

logy and the sacred history of redemption include higher humanities

than the secular drama of England could possibly touch. Rossetti's

Comment.—Stuff.
P. 193.—W. B. Scott's Text.—Raphael reached nearer to the

expression of the character of Christ than (it may be) any other man

has done in art or poetry. Rossetti's Comment.—No.
P. 235.—D. Scott's Text.—The Elgin Marbles show irregular

but flesh-expressing folds of skin and muscle. The Apollo [Belve-

dere], in its higher aim, does not admit of these particulars, but simply

adopts form as its necessary means of medium. Rossetti's Comment.

—And is much the worse for it.
P. 243.—D. Scott's Text.—The remains in Herculaneum and

Pompeii are copies of the commonplaces of the ancients in painting

and sculpture—inferior specimens. Rossetti's Comment.—What does

he mean? Some are extremely fine, if not originals.
P. 267.—W. B. Scott's Text.—At this time he [David Scott]

was occupied on Richard III. Receiving the Children of Edward IV.

from their Mother. This picture is strongly defined in all its parts.

To the last words Rossetti puts a ! and proceeds: With all sincere

respect for David Scott, such a picture as this Richard is, by its utter

carelessness, neither more nor less than a jumbled daub, such as no

other painter would have dreamed of putting forth. There must

have been some unexplained languor of head or hand.
P. 268.—W. B. Scott gives an anecdote of Turner and Constable:

that the latter looked at a picture by the former, and told him “he

had never seen anything resembling it in Nature”; when Turner

replied: “Very likely you haven't, but don't you wish you could?”

Rossetti's Comment.—Constable doubtless thought, No.
P. 279.—W. B. SCOTT'S TEXT.—Every face he [David Scott]

painted is soul-informed; and the beauty resulting from the soul

shining through the countenance was within his range. Rossetti's

Comment.—He felt it doubtless; he gave it perhaps never.
P. 280.—W. B. SCOTT'S TEXT.— Peter the Hermit Preaching the

Crusades [a picture by David Scott] was the last picture in this depart-

ment he painted, and in all mechanical qualities the best. Rossetti's

Comment.—It is full of the most inconceivable deformities. The

Alchemist picture is incomparably more complete.
P. 281.—W. B. Scott describes some figures in the Peter the Hermit

picture. The old enthusiastic widow presses her reluctant son into

the service of the cross; the warrior and the bearer of the papal

banner—and so on. Rossetti's Comment.—Oh such figures! four

feet high!
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Sig. 41
P. 282.—W. B. SCOTT'S TEXT.— The Triumph of Love is a mar-

vellous piece of colour. Time and Love, and some few other pictures,

might be mentioned as secondary instances. Rossetti's Comment.—

In some of his sketches his colour is worthy of Tintoret. He was a

fine colourist, but constantly at fault.
P. 284.—The picture of The Triumph of Love being “received with

great derision,” David Scott wrote on the back of it some words

intended as ironically embodying the popular sentiment. “View

nothing abstractly or directly. View things in the light in which

they are seen by the majority, with the eyes of other men, and work

in accepted modes.” Rossetti's Corollary.—Also have a sane sense of

style.
P. 289.—D. Scott's Text.—Many of our English plays, Lillo's and

others, leave a heavy and useless impression: suffering, in them, is un-

supported by elevated relations. This kind of writing, however, especi-

ally in connexion with the common circumstances of social life,

makes forcible work of a kind. Such is Lockhart's Adam Blair.

Rossetti's Comment.—Why discuss such utter rot at all? To Adam

Blair he puts a !.
P. 294.—D. Scott's Text.—Made a discovery. There is a species

of interchange between animal and vegetable nature that makes it

impossible to divide them as we try to do. Vegetable becomes animal

matter, in decay, and constantly. Man is the maggot not of a rose-

stalk but of a country; or rather a country is the rose-stalk of the

maggot man, who is always vegetating in hair, skin, nails. Rossetti's

Comment.—One wishes he would tell one some discoveries about

methods in painting, instead of this sort of stuff. Difficult to paint

man if too much thought of as a maggot.
P. 294.—D. Scott's Text.—Coleridge constantly refers to principles,

and intends in certain instances to state them, but does not. He

asserted certain religious doctrines which he could not evolve in

connexion with his whole philosophy, without which they are useless.

This has always been the difficulty. Rossetti's Comment.—All such

stuff as this of Coleridge etc. is bosh enough for a poet, but final

ruin to a painter.
P. 298.—D. Scott's Text.—He [Bailey in Festus] calls “America

half-brother of the world.” Speaking of America in my poems, I

call it “broad-breasted demi-world.” Rossetti's Comment.—

Very different and much subtler meaning in Bailey.
P. 371.—D. Scott's Text.—There is something about this As-

sumption [Titian's] strikes one may have originated from Raphael's

Transfiguration, in competition with which Piombo painted his princi-

pal work, now in London, The Raising of Lazarus; which is inferior

to any of them in distinct power, although in intention it is much

higher than either Veronese's [ Marriage of Cana] or Tintoretto's

[ Miracle of St. Mark]. Rossetti's Comment.—That is, the Lazarus:

the rest is stupid to excess.
P. 372.—D. Scott's Text.—The picture from the Flood. Rossetti's

Comment.—By Girodet: a violently morbid but striking picture,

which may have considerably influenced David Scott.
P. 372.—D. Scott speaks of the Venetian Accademia, mentioning a

picture by Palma Vecchio and one by Bonifazio. Rossetti's Comment.

—Never a word anywhere of Carpaccio: strange this, in an original

mind.
P. 406.—D. Scott's Text.—Raphael united the study and care of

the advance of art with the facility of its maturity, in the different

stages of his career. Michelangelo also did so. Luini, and before

him Leonardo, reached the highest summit of the elder age of art.

Rossetti's Comment.—He never does full justice to the superior position

of Leonardo.
P. 411.—D. Scott's Text.—Church del Carmine. The frescoes of
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Masaccio are here: the Adam and Eve, and the figure Raphael bor-

rowed. The general arrangement of Masaccio's work has been studied

by Raphael—his style of drapery, and mode of clothing his figures.

The character of his heads too afterwards shone forth in Raphael.

Rossetti's Comment.—The proportions much finer than in Raphael,

and sentiment on the whole probably higher.
P. 422.—D. Scott's Text.—Barberini Palace. The Fornarina by

Raphael. The original picture, full of fidelity: the bare trueness

of the hands, their defective paw-like attitude, and the same quality

in the face—all is transcribed. Fine eyes: she must have been a

beautiful animal. Rossetti's Comment—which is meant, I think, for

verse, though its cramped position in the margin huddles it together:
  • “A Fornarina, David,
  • Is much better than nothing at all:
  • A lodging in her oven
  • Would have made you a warmer soul.”
P. 432.—D. Scott's Text.—Academy of St. Luke. Albani:

A Virgin, very feeble. He was scarcely a painter; at least not one

to rank with Guido, the Caracci, and others with whom he is associated.

By intercourse with art and such men as these he effected some pictures

which have been too much praised. He is a composite painter, of a

productive class, made up, like the mass of artists of the present time.

Rossetti's Comment.—True.
P. 437.—D. Scott's Text.—Naples Gallery: Niccolò dell' Abate.

The Virgin with an Angel, etc. very deep, strong, and true, of the Leo-

nardo gusto, but richer in the draperies. This picture is exquisite

in its style, which is possibly the noblest for high dramatic works.

Rossetti's Comment.—i.e. the style of Leonardo: true.
P. 440.—D. Scott's Text.—Naples Gallery. Raphael: The

Madonna . A most beautiful face: no one but himself ever painted

this Madonna beauty. Rossetti's Comment.—Rot: a low order of

beauty.
more about Scraps [IV]
SCRAPS
more about Round Tower at Jhansi
Subject for Picture—Round Tower at Jhansi.
more about [Articles]
Articles:—1, Marlowe and Chatterton. 2, The Poems of Nero, and the latest French Muse.
more about [tract of lifeless land]
As, in a tract of lifeless land, the scattered pools of rain-water that

for a moment catch the sky as the traveller passes, so are the far-

apart intervals of living labour in the life of an idle man. After death,

if these brief intervals be worthy, will all be sky-brimmed water, or

all a desert of sand?
more about The Virgin and Child
To paint Virgin and Child. Child climbing up mother's bosom.

Angels behind might hold branches of the Tree of Life and Tree of

Knowledge. In distance might be seen Eden and flaming sword.
more about Note on Rossetti's Boyish Ballad-Poem, Sir Hugh the Heron
NOTE ON ROSSETTI'S BOYISH BALLAD-POEM,

SIR HUGH THE HERON
I make this note after a conversation with a friend who had been

reading in the British Museum a ridiculous first attempt of mine in

verse, called Sir Hugh the Heron , which was printed when I was fourteen,
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but written (except the last page or two) at twelve—as my family

would probably remember. When I was fourteen, my grandfather

(who amused himself by having a small private printing-press) offered,

if I would finish it, to print it. I accordingly added the last precious

touches two years after writing the rest. I leave this important

explanation, as there is no knowing what fool may some day foist

the absurd trash into print as a production of mine. It is curious and

surprising to myself, as evincing absolutely no promise at all—less

than should exist even at twelve. When I wrote it, the only English

poet I had read was Sir W. Scott, as is plain enough in it.
more about For the Predella of the Picture. Dante's Dream
FOR THE PREDELLAS OF THE PICTURE, DANTE'S

DREAM
No. 1.—Dante, being sick and crying out in a dream of his lady's

death, is bewept by his near kinswoman; whom other ladies lead

thence, by reason of her grief, and awaken him.
No. 2.—Dante recounts his dream to the ladies who have awakened

him; whereto his grieving kinswoman also hearkens apart.
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Note: blank page
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more about this work
NOTES BY WM. M. ROSSETTI
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Note: blank page
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Note: Typo: in paragraph 3, “Commedia” is misspelled as “Comedia”.
NOTES BY W. M. ROSSETTI
P. 3.— The Blessed Damozel.— As has often been mentioned,

this poem was written by Dante Rossetti before he was fully nineteen

years of age, i.e., before May 12th, 1847. I would not say that it

was composed “in order” that it might figure in a small manuscript

magazine for family produce and consumption named “Hodgepodge,”

but there it did figure. I know we all admired it, but do not with any

precision remember the attendant circumstances. The very first

form of the poem appears to have been lost: it was seriously revised

in printed shape more than once before it appeared in the volume of

1870. A great deal has been written about this poem here and there

—far more than I can now attempt to summarize. It appears possible

that, if Rossetti is to be known at a future time as “the poet of so-

and-so,” it will be as “the poet of The Blessed Damozel.” The earliest

reference of his own which I find to the composition is in a letter of

June 1848, where, in consequence of something which Leigh Hunt had

said to him by letter, he speaks of it as “written in a kind of Gothic

manner which I suppose he is pleased to think belongs to the school

of Dante.” So we can see that “Gothic” was a keynote with Rossetti

as far back as 1847. He painted “ The Blessed Damozel” twice—

besides making some drawings applicable to the poem. The first of

the two oil-pictures was executed in 1876-7, for Mr. William Graham:

he it was, I think, who actually proposed the subject, although Rossetti

had some previous idea of painting it at some time or other. The

second picture, which omits the groups of re-united lovers in the

background, dates in 1879. Some other painters also have painted

from this poem. “ The Blessed Damozel” has been translated into

Italian by Signor Ettore Ciccotti. I have seen also some versions in

French; but not, I think, in verse, as the mode of contemporary

French translators is to use delicately touched prose. Moreover, a

Cantata of “ The Blessed Damozel” has been composed by Mr.

Reginald Clarke, and another by Debussy.
P. 6.— Dante at Verona.—The commencement of this poem

dates very early, perhaps even before 1848. It may have been sub-

stantially completed towards 1852; but was modified in various

regards prior to 1870, the year of its first publication. In 1861 Rossetti

must have looked upon it as about his chief work; for in the volume

“ The Early Italian Poets” appeared an advertisement of the forth-

coming publication of “ Dante at Verona, and other Poems. ”
P. 6.—“For years had made him haggard now.” A phrase trans-

lated from Dante's “Comedia”: so also the beginning of the ensuing

stanza. This poem by Rossetti is full of references to Dante's writings,

or to the narratives of events in his life. The slight notes appended by

my brother to the poem itself make the details tolerably plain: but it

may be said in general that a thorough relish for “ Dante at Verona”

can only be attained by readers who come to it well imbued with the

subject-matter.
P. 17.— The Bride's Prelude.—A good deal of this uncompleted

poem was written at a very early date, say 1848-9. This portion may

have extended up to about p. 27, “Not the guilt only made the shame,”

etc.; and the poem was then named “Bride-chamber Talk.” The

date of the remainder is less definite to me; perhaps towards 1859-60
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for the most part; and in the earlier portion considerable changes

in diction, etc. were effected about the same time. My brother

found it convenient to introduce the composition into his modified

volume “ Poems” of 1881: otherwise he had practically laid it aside

for many years before his death, and would probably never have

completed it, even in a longer term of life. I find a memorandum in

his handwriting of the contemplated conclusion of the poem, written

perhaps towards 1878. “ Urscelyn has become celebrated as a soldier

of fortune, selling his sword to the highest bidder, and in this character

reports reach Aloÿse and her family respecting him. Aloÿse now

becomes enamoured of a young knight who loves her deeply; this

leads, after fears and hesitations, to her confessing to him the stain

on her life; he still remains devoted to her. Urscelyn now reappears;

his influence as a soldier renders a lasting bond with him desirable

to the brothers of Aloÿse, much as they hate him; and he, on his side,

is bent on assuming an important position in the family to which he

as yet only half belongs. He therefore offers marriage to Aloÿse,

supported by the will of her brothers, who moreover are well aware

of the blot they have to efface, which would thus disappear. At a

tournament Urscelyn succeeds in treacherously slaying the knight to

whom Aloÿse has betrothed herself; and this death is followed in

due course by the bridal to which the poem relates. It winds up

with the description of the last preparations preceding the bridal

procession. Amelotte would draw attention to the passing of the

time. Aloÿse then says: ‘There is much now that you remember;

how we heard that Urscelyn had become a soldier of fortune, and how

he returned here, etc. You must also remember well the death of

that young knight at the tourney.’ Amelotte should then describe

the event, and say how well she remembers Urscelyn's bitter grief at

the mischance. Aloÿse would then tell her how she herself was be-

trothed secretly to the young knight, and how Urscelyn slew him

intentionally. As the bridal procession appears, perhaps it might

become apparent that the brothers mean to kill Urscelyn when he has

married her. I believe that this last effective incident was suggested

by Swinburne.—There is a little memorandum by my brother to this

effect: “It has been written so many years, and is so much less

tempting to take up than a new thing, that, if I venture to follow

the perilous precedent of Coleridge, and to print it as it has long

stood” (the sentence remains unfinished).
P. 26.—“Thine own voice speaking unto thee.” Rossetti has

somewhere mentioned that his design “ How They met Themselves”

was suggested by a passage in “ The Bride's Prelude.” I think this

must be the passage: but am almost sure that it was originally followed

by a stanza (which he did not print) extending the idea. I seem to

remember, as the first line of that stanza,
  • “In places of deep water at night.”


There is something of like kind in “ The Portrait” (p. 169),
  • “And your own footsteps meeting you.”
P. 26.—“An hour's remaining yet.” For profusion and passion of

pictorial detail I do not think that Rossetti ever wrote anything more

noticeable than “ The Bride's Prelude”, early as the commencement

of it was. The defect of the poem, it has always appeared to me, is

that the narrative proceeds too slowly, and with particulars too minute:

see especially the stanzas, further on, about a pack of cards. If only

an hour was remaining yet, the heart-sore bride would surely have made

more haste towards her conclusion.
P. 29.—“The Prince was fled into the west.” If my brother
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intended this part of the poem to have any sort of historical back-

ground (probably enough not), he may have been thinking of the

Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., who headed the “Praguerie,” an

unsuccessful coalition against the project of a standing army, in 1439.
P. 36.— Jenny.—This much-discussed poem was begun at an

extremely youthful age—may even have been before the end of 1847,

or in Rossetti's twentieth year. The portion then written was short,

and was merely in the nature of general reflection—not (as now) of

semi-dramatic monologue. The composition was finished towards

1858, but again revised late in 1869. It has been translated into

Italian under the name of “Gentì,” by Luigi Gamberale. The passage

“Like a toad within a stone,” etc. belongs, I think, to the first draft

of the poem.
P. 37.—“And from the wise unchildish elf.” This is certainly a

reminiscence from the early boyhood of the author. He and I used

to walk down Regent Street to and from King's College School: and

to him it fell to serve as the “schoolmate lesser than” some boy, his

companion at the moment.
P. 44.— A Last Confession.—This was written at much the same

time as the commencement of “ The Bride's Prelude,” etc.; and,

though not a little modified before publication, is essentially its original

self. The reader may opine that the form of the poem is partly derived

from Byron's “Giaour,” and that its style and method show a trace of

Browning. This would, I think, be a fair comment, yet hardly such

as to trench upon the personal individuality of the poem. An unfair

comment was that of Mr. Robert Buchanan, that it “positively reeks

of morbid lust.” Where is the reek apparent? An Italian translation

of the “Last Confession” was made by Antonio Agresti (my son-in-

law), and published in Florence, in a volume with other translations

and a prefatory essay, in 1899. There had been a previous translation,

1881, by Luigi Gamberale; also a later one, by Professor E. Teza.
P. 44.—“Our Lombard country-girls along the coast.” Every one

except Dante Rossetti knows that Lombardy has no coast: however,

the “Regno Lombardo-Veneto” (named in the heading of the poem)

has a coast in its Venetian section. My brother was reckless, and also

ignorant, in matters of this kind. The place-name “Iglio,” further

on, is an invention.
P. 55.— The Burden of Nineveh.—Written in the autumn of

1850; and then, I think, brought to completion, but an attentive

revision was made later on. The poem was first published anony-

mously in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine , 1856, and roused

the strong admiration of Ruskin before he knew its authorship.
P. 59.— The Staff and Scrip.—My brother found the story of this

in the “Gesta Romanorum,” and schemed out the poem in September

1849. Its actual composition came somewhat later. It was first

published in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine , 1856, and is one of

the compositions which Agresti translated into Italian. Canon Dixon,

himself a poet, has written thus: “‘The Staff and Scrip’ is, in my

judgment, the finest of all Rossetti's poems, and one of the most

glorious writings in the language. It exhibits in flawless perfection

the gift that he had above all other writers—absolute beauty and pure

action.” Whether this is “the finest” of my brother's poems may

be disputed: but I certainly think that it yields to none. The tale

which he found in the “Gesta Romanorum” is numbered twenty-five,

with the title “Of Ingratitude.” Rossetti wholly transmuted it in

sentiment and significance. The tale, which is briefly narrated without

descriptive or other amplification, runs thus. A noble lady was

oppressed and despoiled by a tyrannical king. A pilgrim visited her,

and remained in her house some while. He offered to fight on her

behalf, on condition that, were he to die, his staff and scrip should

be preserved in her private chamber. She promised this: he fought,
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conquered, and died, and the staff and scrip were preserved as stipu-

lated. The lady being now again in high prosperity, three neigh-

bouring kings, agreeing among themselves, offered that she should

choose any one of them as a husband. She issued forth gorgeously

habited: then, reflecting that the staff and scrip would look shabby

in her chamber, she had them removed, “and thus forgot her vows,

and plainly evinced her ingratitude.” The tale is followed by “The

Application.” The Lady is the Soul: the Tyrant, the Devil; the

Pilgrim, Christ; the three Kings are the Devil, the World, and

the Flesh. These we receive “into the chamber of our souls, and

put away the memorials of our Saviour's love.”
P. 64.— Sister Helen.—This poem was first published in 1854

in the English form of the Düsseldorf Annual , at the invitation of the

editress, Mrs. Howitt. It had been written a couple of years before.

It reappeared with some improvements in the volume “ Poems” of

1870; and again in the partly modified re-issue of that volume in 1881.

Mr. Buchanan appraised it as “affected rubbish”: but this is not

the universal estimate. The stanzas regarding the bride of Keith

of Ewern are additions proper to that ultimate form of the poem.

“ Sister Helen” (like two other poems) was translated into Italian

by Antonio Agresti, along with some minor lyrics. In the Düsseldorf

Annual , the only author's signature was H. H. H., the designation

of a very hard lead pencil; because (as Rossetti said) people alleged

that his style was hard.
P. 74.— The House of Life.—The dates of the various sonnets

which make up this series are extremely various. The earliest of

them dates in 1847. The latest comes in 1881, in the Autumn of

which year the series was published in its completed form. One

positive line of demarcation between the various sonnets separates

those which appeared in the volume “ Poems,” published in the Spring

of 1870, from any others. I know a good deal as to the true dates of

the sonnets, and in the Table of Contents I supply the requisite in-

formation.
The “ Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ” the work of the

friend of his closing days, Mr. Hall Caine, shows that the author

regarded “ Stillborn Love,” “ Known in Vain,” “ Lost Days,” and

“ The One Hope” (Nos. 55, 65, 86, and 101), as about the best of

the series.
In a book of mine entitled “ Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer

and Writer ” I have called attention to twelve of the sonnets which

bear upon the question of the destiny of the soul. Of these, eight

indicate a belief in immortality; three a sense of uncertainty; one

does not point clearly in either direction.
Mr. Joseph Knight, in his biography of Rossetti, goes so far as to

say that, “taken as a whole, this series of sonnets constitutes, in its

class, the greatest gift that poetry has received since the days of

Shakespear.” Madame Duclaux (then Miss Mary Robinson) exalted

“ The House of Life” above all Rossetti's other poems, remarking—

“Here, for the first time since Milton, the English language is used

with a sonority and power rivalling the natural harmonies of Italian

or Greek.” Some critics, on the other hand—notably Francis Hueffer

and Watts-Dunton—have expressed the opinion that the best work of

Rossetti is not to be found in these and other sonnets, but rather

in those poems which are more or less in the ballad manner.
My book above-named contains, besides its main subject-matter, a

prose paraphrase of “ The House of Life:” not that I myself deemed

this work to be particularly in need of such an explanation, but I was

aware that some persons pronounced it to be partly obscure, some-

times doubtfully intelligible. I shall here reproduce, as I find occasion,

some of the observations made in that book.
Besides the charge of obscurity, an objection which I have some-
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times heard raised against “ The House of Life” is its want of absolute

cohesion; the series, it is averred, does not form one consecutive poem,

but only so many sonnets of sufficiently diverse subject-matter, grouped

together. Now this is abundantly true as a fact: whether it forms a

solid objection either to the sonnets regarded as a series, or to the act

of the author in thus combining them, is a question which readers will

decide for themselves. The sonnets are mostly of the kind which we

call “occasional”; some incident happened, or some emotion was

dominant, and the author wrote a sonnet regarding it. When a good

number had been written, they came to form, if considered collectively,

a sort of record of his feelings and experiences, his reading of the

problems of life—an inscribed tablet of his mind: then, but not

before then, he began marshalling them together, and entitled them

“The House of Life.” This is apparent enough on the face of his

published books. In the “ Poems” of 1870 there was a section

termed “ Sonnets and Songs towards a Work to be entitled The

House of Life ”: in his subsequent volume, “ Ballads and Sonnets,”

1881, all the “songs” were excluded from “ The House of Life,” and

the series was completed by additional sonnets. Rossetti certainly

never professed, nor do I consider that he ever wished his readers to

assume, that all the items had been primarily planned to form one

connected and indivisible whole. The first part of the series, named

“ Love and Change,” has clearly some considerable amount of inter-

dependence; the second part, “ Change and Fate,” is wider and more

diversified in its range, but it may reasonably be maintained that

(to put the question at its lowest) the several sonnets gain rather than

lose in weight of thought and in artistic balance by being thus associ-

ated.
There is, I fancy, a prevailing impression that the tone of “ The

House of Life ” is one of constant and little-mitigated gloom. I do

not perceive this to be correct. The tone is almost invariably solemn

and exalted: the scale includes melancholy which hardly eludes

despair; but it also includes happiness rising into rapture. I have

been at the pains of inspecting the sonnets one by one in relation to

this question; and I find 42 sonnets the essential tone of which is

happy; 35 the essential tone of which is unhappy; and 26 which,

though certainly not unemotional, may be termed neutral in regard

to happiness or unhappiness. These figures make up the total number,

which (including the proem-sonnet and No. 6A) is 103.
I am not aware that any question has been raised as to the meaning

of the title “The House of Life”; nor did I ever hear any explanation

of it from my brother. He was fond of anything related to astrology

or horoscopy—not indeed that he ever paid the least detailed or

practical attention to these obsolete speculations; and I understand

him to use the term “The House of Life” as a zodiacal adept uses

the term “the house of Leo.” As the sun is said to be “in the house

of Leo,” so (as I construe it) Rossetti indicates “Love, Change, and

Fate,” as being “in the House of Life”; or, in other words, a Human

Life is ruled and pervaded by the triple influence of Love, Change,

and Fate. See also a note printed on p. 638.
As sonnets (not alone in “ The House of Life”) form so large a pro-

portion of the poetic product of Dante Rossetti, it may be interesting

to give here some remarks of his in a letter addressed to William Bell

Scott in August 1871.—“In what you say of my sonnets I agree

absolutely as to principles, and partially as to application. I hardly

ever do produce a sonnet except on some basis of special momentary

emotion. But I think there is another class admissible also, and that

is the only other I practise; viz. the class depending on a line or two

clearly given you, you know not whence, and calling up a sequence

of ideas. This also is a just “raison d'être” for a sonnet; and such are

all mine when they do not in some sense belong to the “occasional” class.
Note: The final closing quotation mark of the last sentence on the page is missing.
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P. 74.— Introductory Sonnet.—The design which Rossetti made

to illustrate this sonnet appears as one of the plates in more than one

publication. He inserted the design into a copy of David Main's

“Treasury of Sonnets,” and sent the book as a present to our mother

on her eightieth birthday, 1880. He described the drawing thus:—

“The Soul is instituting the ‘memorial to one dead deathless hour’;

a ceremony easily effected by placing a winged hour-glass in a rose-

bush, at the same time that she touches the fourteen-stringed harp

of the sonnet, hanging round her neck. On the rose-branches trailing

over in the opposite corner is seen hanging the Coin, which is the

second symbol used for the sonnet. Its ‘face” bears the soul, ex-

pressed in the butterfly; its ‘converse’ the Serpent of Eternity

enclosing the Alpha and Omega.”
P. 76.— Nuptial Sleep.—In the first printed form of “ The House

of Life, ” which was (as already stated) the “ Sonnets and Songs to-

wards a Work to be entitled The House of Life, ” forming part of

the “ Poems” of 1870—this sonnet occupied the same position which

it holds in the present volume, between “ The Kiss” and “ Supreme

Surrender. ” I do not remember that any particular objection was

raised against it by any critic from the Spring of 1870 to the Autumn

of 1871. At the latter date Mr. Robert Buchanan, in his pseudonymous

article in The Contemporary Review , denounced the sonnet as impure.

It remained in the successive editions of the “ Poems” of 1870: but

in 1881, when “ The House of Life” in its final form was included in

the volume “ Ballads and Sonnets,” this particular item disappeared:

it was not there reproduced, and nothing was said about it. Similarly,

when I issued “The House of Life” in the “ Collected Works” of

Rossetti, 1886, and in some subsequent reprints, this sonnet was

omitted.
It was first re-inserted in 1904, and again now. The reader may

ask why. My answer is that, after all this interval of years, I think

it ought to be regarded as an item in Rossetti's literary performance,

and re-judged upon its own actual merits. The controversy about

“ The Fleshly School of Poetry ” is an old affair—better forgotten in

the interest of Mr. Buchanan himself, who publicly proclaimed in 1881

that his attack upon Rossetti had been entirely erroneous and mis-

judged, and therefore wrongful—Rossetti's “purpose” being in fact

“pure,” and his song “blameless.” Some persons, on now seeing

the sonnet, will concur in Mr. Buchanan's opinion of 1881: it may be

that some others will prefer his opinion of 1871, but, even if they do

so, it will be without any such feeling of suspicion and repulsion against

the general tone of Rossetti's poetry as “Thomas Maitland” then

endeavoured to impose upon the credulous.
As I have stated, my brother, in his volume of 1881, withdrew this

sonnet: but I do not think that he did so because he was convinced of

its peccancy, but because he was willing to concede the point to the

timorous-minded. Soon after the “Fleshly School” article had

appeared in 1871 he published in The Athenæum a rejoinder named

“ The Stealthy School of Criticism ” (reprinted at p. 617 of this

volume). The reader can see what Rossetti there stated about “ Nuptial

Sleep ”; contending that it could not rightly be regarded as an isolated

utterance complete in itself, but only as one item in a series of sonnets,

which might practically count as so many stanzas of a single poem.

He said: “I will direct attention (among the love-sonnets of this

poem) to Nos. 2, 8, 11, 17, 28, and more especially 13.” [These numbers

are correct for the “ Poems” of 1870—not for the later forms of the

series. The sonnets in question are “ Love's Redemption” (now

called “ Love's Testament”), “ Passion and Worship,” “ The Birth-

bond, ” “ The Love-Moon,” “ Stillborn Love,” and (No. 13) “ Love-

Sweetness. ”]
My own comment on this sonnet, in the original preface to the
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“ Collected Works” from which I omitted it, ran as follows: “‘ Nuptial

Sleep ’ appeared in the volume of ‘ Poems’ 1870, but was objected

to by Mr. Buchanan, and I suppose by some other censors, as being

indelicate; and my brother excluded it from ‘ The House of Life’

in his third volume. I consider that there is nothing in the sonnet

which need imperatively banish it from his Collected Works. But his

own decision commands mine: and besides it could not now be re-

introduced into ‘ The House of Life,’ which he moulded into a

complete whole without it, and would be misplaced if isolated by

itself—a point as to which his opinion is very plainly set forth in his

prose paper, ‘ The Stealthy School of Criticism. ’” As I now hold that

“ Nuptial Sleep” ought to be “banished” no longer, I have inserted

the item in its original sequence; I number it 6 a, leaving the numera-

tion otherwise unaltered.
I will mention one other point. Tennyson, it is well known, was a

resolute adversary of anything even tending towards the licentious

in poetry. What was his opinion of “ Nuptial Sleep?” We find

it authentically recorded by his old friend Professor Francis T. Pal-

grave in the “Memoir of Tennyson” by his son, vol. 2, p. 505: “The

passion and imaginative power of the sonnet ‘ Nuptial Sleep’ im-

pressed him deeply.” I know that, in attempting to bolster up the

abusive Buchanan-Maitland of 1871 against the contrite Buchanan of

1881, Tennyson's opinion has been represented to a very different

purport: but Professor Palgrave's account of the matter cannot be

other than true, and his statement claims acceptance as final upon

this point.
P. 77.— Passion and Worship.—The central idea of this sonnet

may be thus defined: When love has passed from the stage of desire

to the stage of fruition or possession, and when passion is the dominant

emotion, that feeling of lowly homage which characterized the earlier

stage of love still continues to subsist: it has its place, though it has

become secondary to passion.
P. 81.— Love-Sweetness.—This is the sonnet which Rossetti, in

his “ Stealthy School of Criticism, ” cited as showing that, in “ The

House of Life, ” “all the passionate and just delights of the body are

declared—somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmistakably—to

be as nought if not ennobled by the concurrence of the soul at all

times.” I presume that the figurative element of the sonnet, in its

conclusion, is reasonably plain. Lest any one should say that it is

not plain to him, I will add that the phrase as to the wing of the spirit

which “feels the breath of kindred plumes against its feet” is to be

interpreted as indicating the two loving souls, with their interchange

of thought and emotion.
P. 85.— Venus Victrix.—I think the charge of some obscurity

may properly attach to the close of this sonnet. I understand: My

Lady is in herself the co-equal of Juno, Pallas, and Venus. But to me

she bears a still sweeter name, that of Helen. She is as if Venus,

transforming herself into Helen, became mine.
P. 87.— The Love-Moon.—It is clear that in the last line of this

sonnet the name Love is applied not to any earthly passion, to emotions

controlled by any “Cupid,” but to Deity. “God is Love.” The same,

more or less expressly, may be noted in Sonnet I. of this series, and in

the penultimate stanza of “ The Portrait.”
P. 88.— Through Death to Love.—No doubt the allusions at the

close are to some passages or incidents in the Bible. Of angel-greeted

doors several are recorded, and it may be difficult to say which is more

particularly meant. The “wing-winnowed threshing-floor” must be

that of Ornan (I Chronicles, xxi. 15). The angel, who was stayed from

destroying Jerusalem after David had numbered the people, “stood

by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.”
P. 88.— Hope Overtaken.—The Lover, now united to his Lady,
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refers here to the untoward delay which took place before the union was

effected. He speaks of his “Hope,” which may at starting be under-

stood as meaning the hope that he entertained for union with the

Lady; but this idea merges in the idea of the object hoped for, the

Lady herself, and the imagery used develops accordingly. The next

ensuing sonnet is a direct sequel to this, and the following one prolongs

the theme.
P. 90.— Death-in-Love.—In this sonnet the imagery is distinct,

and the apologue is narrated unambiguously. The thing signified,

however, may be less tangible, and open to some difference of inter-

pretation. The title, “Death-in-Love,” must serve as our guide. It

intimates that Earthly Love partakes of the nature of Death. Death

dominates and concludes Earthly Love; Love is the thrall of mor-

tality.
P. 91.— Willowwood.—Rossetti has thus described this quatrain

of sonnets, more particularly the first of them: “The sonnet describes

a dream or trance of divided love momentarily re-united by the longing

fancy; and in the imagery of the dream, the face of the beloved rises

through deep dark waters to kiss the lover.”
P. 91.—“Soul-struck widowhood,” etc. I cannot but consider it a

grave defect in versification that the word “willowwood” should

have been treated as if it constituted a dactylic rhyme, chiming

(only too imperfectly) with “widowhood” and “pillow could.”

Clearly, the only true rhyme-syllable is the final “wood,” which,

in other lines, is, with moderate correctness, rhymed with “wooed”

and “food.”
P. 92.— Love's Fatality.—The leading idea of this sonnet appears

to be as follows: Love is in himself free and happy. But Loving

Desire, enchained by the necessities and prohibitions of Life, is a

dismal captive, and brings Love himself into the same fetters and the

same misery.
P. 93.— Stillborn Love.—Briefly stated, the meaning of this

sonnet stands thus: A man and a woman love, but the moment when

their love might find actual fruition occurs not in this world nor in

time—only in the realm of eternity. That moment is, as it were, a

child which, totally secluded from them in time, hails them in eternity

as its parents.
P. 93.— True Woman.—These three sonnets were written towards

September 1881, and are (I think) the latest-composed of all Dante

Rossetti's published work.
P. 93.—“The heart-shaped seal of green,” etc. This image will be

clear to any one who has looked with ordinary attention at a snowdrop,

and it needs no explanation. But it may be worth observing that

shortly before the time when Rossetti wrote this sonnet he was paint-

ing the picture entitled “ The Day-Dream.” In that picture the flower

now depicted is the honeysuckle; but it had originally been the snow-

drop, and no doubt his recent careful observation of the snowdrop, for

the purpose of his painting, was what prompted this image of “the

heart-shaped seal of green.”
P. 94.— Her Heaven.—The Seer, named in line 2, is Swedenborg.
P. 94.— Transfigured Life.—This sonnet sets forth (what Rossetti

profoundly believed to be the truth concerning good poetry) that

“the song”—i.e., a poem—is the “transfigured life” of its author;

his essential self developed into words under the control of art. The

“abundant rain” of the conclusion of the sonnet is not, I think, merely

“tearful emotion,” but also “fertilizing and purifying influence.”

Tearful emotion, however, is clearly indicated in Sonnet 61, which

follows on with Sonnet 60. I suppose it can hardly be requisite to say

to English readers that the “abundant rain” etc. form a Biblical

allusion. After the three years' terrific drought, Elijah announced to

Ahab that there was “a sound of abundance of rain.” He then sent up
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Note: Typo: on page 655, in the fourth sentence under the note for the poem “Known in Vain,” the word “January” is mis-spelled “Jaunary.”
his servant to the top of Mount Carmel, to watch; the servant saw “a

little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand,” and it was followed by “a

great rain” (I Kings, ch. xviii.). The accomplished French translator

of “ The House of Life,” Madame Clémence Couve, had evidently not

perceived the allusion.
P. 95.— The Song-Throe.—As this is an important affirmation

of Rossetti's view concerning good poetry, it may be well to note that

it comes very late in his career, April 1880.
P. 95.— Inclusiveness.—I question whether the word “Inclusive-

ness” quite indicates to the reader what the author meant to convey

in this sonnet. The uncouth word “many-sidedness,” or “divergent

identity,” might be more apt. The gist of the sonnet—emphasized

more especially in its conclusion—is that one same thing has differ-

ent aspects and influences to different persons and according to

different conditions.
P. 96.— Known in Vain.—The essential point in this sonnet

requires reflection rather than explanation. The idea is that of a man

who in youth has been feeble in will, indolent and scattered, but who,

when too late, wakes up to the duty and the privileges of work. With-

out insisting overmuch upon its value in an autobiographical relation,

one can scarcely doubt that this sonnet was written by its author

in a moment of some self-reproach—with a sense of faculties untrained

and opportunities slighted. The date of the sonnet is quite early,

Jaunary 1853. This was the month in which a purchaser for the oil-

picture of “ The Annunciation,” painted and exhibited in 1850, was

at length secured, and was a full year before my brother made ac-

quaintance with Mr. Ruskin. From the date of that acquaintance his

professional prospects became less uncertain; but meanwhile there

had been a period of no little dimness and anxiety, aggravated at times

by a feeling that more earnest efforts ought to have been made. People

who see that youthful work of his in the National British Gallery may

incline to condone his laxities.
P. 96.— The Heart of the Night.—This sonnet, evidently a very

intense personal utterance, seems to belong to something of the same

mood of mind as the preceding one. It is however far later in date,

1873.
P. 98.— The Hill Summit.—In its immediate primary meaning,

this sonnet manifestly describes a resplendent day nearing its close,

and the poet, on a day-long journey, contemplating the sunset from

a height: and I have no doubt the sonnet was a direct outcome of such

an incident. On the other hand, the implied or analogous meaning

is likewise intentional—that of a career which, having reached its

shining culmination, has thereafter to decline into the shade, and

close in the night of the tomb. A letter from my brother, September

1869, speaks of his having made a change in the sextett, whereby “the

symbolism” has become more distinct than before.
P. 98.— The Choice.—I need scarcely point out to the reader that

in this trio of sonnets, “ The Choice,” three theories of human life are

presented. Each of the three theories is based on one simple and

irrefragable consideration, “To-morrow thou shalt die.” In Sonnet 1,

the deduction is “Eat and drink”—the theory of physical enjoyment.

In Sonnet 2, the deduction is “Watch and fear”—the theory of re-

ligious asceticism. In Sonnet 3, the deduction is “Think and act”—

the theory of self-development. These sonnets were written at a very

early age, in 1848, or when the author was nineteen or twenty years of

age, at a time when
  • “The world was all before him, where to choose.”


From the tone of the sonnets it will be obvious that he gave, in antici-

pation, the preference to “Think and act”; in performance he gave the

same preference. But this was never because he ignored the other
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two theories; he only refused them co-equal rank. It is rather curious

that, when Rossetti was preparing his privately printed poems, he

boggled a good deal at including “ The Choice”: I assured him that

it ought to go in, and he consented—first relieving the sonnets of some

juvenilities of expression, but leaving all their essential meaning as it

stood. In his “ Stealthy School of Criticism ” he was able—most

justly—to cite “ The Choice” as express proof that he was not a member

of any “Fleshly School of Poetry.”
P. 99.— Old and New Art.—This trio of sonnets forms a mani-

festo—perhaps the best manifesto that it ever received in writing—

of the Præraphaelite movement, begun in the autumn of 1848. Nos.

2 and 3, were written in 1848; No. 1, in 1849. This sonnet, “ St. Luke

the Painter, ” was intended to illustrate a picture (never painted) of

St. Luke preaching, having beside him pictures, his own work, of Christ

and the Virgin Mary. No. 3 was at first entitled “To the Young

Painters of England, in memory of those before Raphael”—a name

sufficiently savouring of the P.R.B.
P. 100.— Soul's Beauty and Body's Beauty.—These two sonnets

were written respectively for Rossetti's pictures entitled “ Sibylla

Palmifera ” and “ Lilith”. They embody—more especially the

“ Soul's Beauty”—some particulars which are strictly indicative

of details to be seen in the pictures. In 1870 these sonnets were

published with their original titles, among the “ Sonnets for Pictures.”

This was not however their first appearance. They were printed in

1868, along with the sonnet “ Venus Verticordia,” in a pamphlet on

the Royal Academy by Mr. Swinburne (I wrote a different section of

the pamphlet): and thus they marked the first move towards poetic

publicity which had been made by Dante Rossetti since the death of

his wife.
P. 100.— Body's Beauty.—Rossetti's picture of “ Lilith” repre-

sents a beautiful woman in modern dishabille, combing out her profuse

golden locks. His poem of “ Eden Bower” presents Lilith as a serpent

who had been changed into the form of woman, and had been the wife

of Adam prior to the creation of Eve. These points should be borne

in mind as one reads the sonnet, “ Body's Beauty.” Nor should the

reader forget a passage in Göthe's “Faust”—I give it as translated by

Shelley. On the Walpurgis-night Mephistopheles points out to Faust
  • “Lilith, the first wife of Adam.
  • Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
  • All women in the magic of her locks;
  • And, when she winds them round a young man's neck,
  • She will not ever set him free again. ”
P. 101.— The Monochord.—Of all the sonnets in “ The House of

Life ” this is the one which seems to me the most obscure. It was pub-

lished in the “ Poems” of 1870; not as forming part of “ The House of

Life, ” but as a separate sonnet, the last in the volume, with the addi-

tional heading “Written during Music.” The first line stood at that

time thus—“Is it the moved air or the moving sound.” In that form

the sonnet would naturally be understood as indicating, in very figura-

tive language, the power of music over the human soul. The question

arises—When Rossetti substituted the present opening, “Is it this

sky's vast vault or ocean's sound,” did he intend to retain the idea

of music under a metaphor, or did he discard that idea, and truly deal

with the vast influences of nature, sky and sea? I fancy the latter.

If so, I understand the general purport of the sonnet to be this: There

is an unspeakably mysterious bond between the universe and the soul

of man (macrocosm and microcosm): the phenomena of nature search

the inmost recesses of the soul, inspiring awe, administering solace.
The musical term “Monochord” is defined as “an instrument of
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Sig. 42
one string, used to ascertain and demonstrate the several lengths

of the string required to produce the several notes of the musical scale.”

Evidently, however, the word “Monochord” is not (even in the

original form of the sonnet) applied in this literal sense; it may now

rather indicate the mysterious bond above-named, unifying nature and

the soul.
P. 101.— From Dawn to Noon.—This sonnet is not, I think, difficult;

but it requires a certain amount of reflection, which may best be

condensed into a free paraphrase.—When a man's thought, some

act of creative or inventive thought, has attained its full development,

the man remains dubious whether the tentative stage, when the thought

still remained obscure to himself, or the realizing stage, when the

thought assumed express and definite form, was the more important

factor in the result. This is like the experience of a child now grown

up, who in childhood does not analyse any of his impressions as to the

persons and objects that surround him, but in adult age can recall

the impressions, and can through these analyse the motive causes of

them.
P. 101.— Memorial Thresholds.—This doorway is associated with

my past life on earth: this same doorway—the events of my life re-

lated to this doorway—must fashion my fate in eternity. See, for a

cognate thought, the close of Sonnet 63, “ Inclusiveness.”
P. 103.— Vain Virtues.—The drift of this sonnet is no doubt clear

enough. But it may be worth while to call attention to its double

character—(1) as an ethical meditation, and (2) as an apologue, or

spiritual impersonation.—(1) The ethical meditation is to the effect

that the damnation or eternal condemnation of sin is not so dreadful a

thing to reflect upon as the fact that a soul, sinful at last, may have

been virtuous at first, and thus, when the soul is finally condemned,

its virtues may be regarded as damned along with its sins.—(2) The

apologue can be presented thus. A virtuous deed, the offspring of

a human soul, is a fair virgin, who, were the Soul then to pass out of

earthly life, would become a saint in heaven. But the Soul after-

wards commits a mortal sin—links itself to Sin. The destiny of the

Sin is that, when the Soul dies, she shall become the bride of the Devil:

but, even while the Sin is “still blithe on earth,” the fair virgin, the

virtuous deed, has her prospective sainthood forfeited, and is sucked

down helpless into the pit of doom.
P. 103.— Death's Songsters.—The application of this sonnet is

not entirely clear to me. It will be observed that, except for its last

two lines, the sonnet consists entirely of a reference to two acts of

heroic self-discipline recorded of Ulysses. Then in the last two lines

comes the application. This application, as I apprehend it, is an

appeal of the poet to his own moral conscience, and relates to the

question of a noble or degrading tone in the poetry which he affects, as

writer or reader. Will he, like Ulysses, disregard and disdain the

blandishment of the song of the Sirens, and of the wiles of Helen?
P. 104.—“Nor shames her lip the cheek of victory.” “Her lip”

might grammatically mean either “the lip of Death,” or “the lip of

Victory.” I think, with some dubiety, that the former is intended.
Note: The line referred to in this paragraph actually appears on page 103 of this volume.
P. 104.— Retro Me, Sathana!—This (as indicated in my note to

p. 74) is a very early sonnet: the earliest of all those which form “ The

House of Life .” It was written in 1847, when Rossetti was painting,

under the same title, an oil-picture which did not proceed very far.
P. 105.— Lost on Both Sides.—One has to conjecture the applica-

tion of this sonnet, a comparatively early one. I think it refers to

my brother's aspirations for attainment as painter and as poet, partially

baulked as yet.
P. 106.— Michelangelo's Kiss.—The incident here referred to is

recorded by Condivi, a scholar and biographer of Michelangelo—the

“true heart” of line 4.
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P. 106.—“O Buonarruoti—good at Art's fire-wheels,” etc. Rossetti

here takes the surname Buonarruoti, and assumes that it is com-

pounded of the words “buon-a-ruote”—i.e., “good at wheels.” I

think this is decidedly incorrect. The true derivation of the name

Buonarruoti—or Buonarruoto, for it would be preferable to consider

the name in its singular number—must be “Buon-arruoto,” which

means “Good adjutant”—the primary meaning of the word “arruoto”

being “addition, supplement.” According to the constitution of the

Florentine Republic, the sixteen Gonfalonieri were assisted, or supple-

mented, by eighty citizens of the plebeian class, who had to supervise

suffrages and elections, and declare their result. These eighty men

were termed “Arruoti,” or Adjutants. It seems more than probable

that some ancestor of Michelangelo Buonarruoti may have distinguished

himself by probity in this employ, and may have hence earned the name

of “Buon-arruoto,” which devolved upon his descendants.
P. 106.— The Vase of Life.—This sonnet is made up entirely of

imagery, and requires a little scrutiny preparatory to our reading it

off.—1, Human Life is figured as a vase sculptured with a bas-relief:

the bas-relief represents a youth running a race, which he wins, and

stands crowned. 2, A certain person, whom we may regard as a man

rich in faculty and bold in enterprise—a man of genius—does not, like

other less finely-endowed men, creep around this vase; but turns it

from side to side, and masters its imaged significance. 3, He fills it

with the rapid and ardent experiences of his career, and it is finally to

receive his own ashes.—These are the principal contents of the sonnet:

some details are rather obscurely expressed.—I never knew whether my

brother was thinking of some particular “man of genius” when he

wrote this sonnet: but have always suspected that he had in his eye

his own early colleague in the race of life and of art, the illustrious

painter Sir John Millais.
P. 106.—
  • “And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
  • With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
  • With watered flowers for buried love most fit.”


The use of the word “for” in these lines is not quite clear to me. In

the first line “for” appears to mean “instead of,” and so perhaps in the

earlier instance in the second line: wine instead of blood, and blood

instead of tears. The next “for” appears to mean “on account of,”

or “by way of”: spice by way of burnt-offering. In the last line

“for” has its natural primary sense, following the adjective “fit.”
P. 107.— A Superscription.—The subject of this sonnet is “the

Sense of Loss.” Chiefly, the sense of loss in the death of one supremely

beloved would be referred to; but we should not wholly exclude

from the purview the sense of loss in any lost opportunity, any duty

irrecoverably neglected, and the like (compare Sonnet 86, “ Lost

Days ”). In the present sonnet the Sense of Loss is spoken of as

remaining comparatively dull and passive, under the ordinary con-

ditions of life; but as re-asserting itself with direful force at moments

when the soul feels beguiled into happiness or contentment. Then

comes the re-action—the feeling of what “might have been”—the ache

of unforgiving memory.
P. 107.— He and I.—People, I fancy, have often “given up” this

sonnet as an insoluble riddle: and yet its meaning appears to me very

plain, when one analyses it. The sonnet, I consider, exhibits the

dismal surprise with which a man finds that he is no longer himself,

and yet is himself. He used to be youthful and buoyant: how is it

that he is now ageing and dejected? I offer a paraphrase.
Whence came his feet [the feet of this new and melancholy occu-

pant] into my field [of life], and why? How is it that he sees all so
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drear? How do I see his seeing (i.e., How do I see some object—any

and every object—under the same aspect in which he sees it?) and how

do I hear it named or designated accordingly, although he, in his

bitter silence, leaves it unnamed? This was the little fold of separate

sky whose pasturing clouds, within the soul's atmosphere, drew living

light from one continual year. How should he find it lifeless? Is it

he who finds it lifeless, or is it I? Lo, this new Self now wanders

round my field, with plaints for every flower, and for each tree a moan,

the sighing wind's auxiliary; and he weeps over sweet waters of my

life, which yield to his lips no draught save only tears unsealed—even

in my place he weeps. He? No, I—not he.
P. 107.— Newborn Death (I).—This is the utterance of a man

who feels himself growing old, or for some other reason nearing the

close of his career. My brother never grew old; he wrote the verses

in December 1868, when his age was forty. Death is figured as the

child of Life. The child is as yet an infant—it is only incipient Death:

Life sets it to dally with the man, so that they two may familiarize

themselves one with the other before they depart together from this

world. When the moment for departure comes, will Death be still

a mere child, or will she be full-grown, and welcome to the man like a

helpful daughter? In other words—is he to die soon, or only after

a long interval of decadence, by the end of which he shall wish for

death?
P. 108.— The One Hope.—This final sonnet seems to me clear.

Still, the imagery is a little complex, and may bear some words of

exposition. The poet first asks himself the question: “When I die,

the puppet to the last of desire and regret, how will my soul stand in

relation to these feelings?” He looks forward to final peace of soul—

not annihilation; but he queries whether this peace will be attained

soon, or after long delay. Then comes (occupying the residue of

the sonnet) the image under which he figures the possibility of an

early attainment of peace. He imagines the Soul, in its new con-

dition, stooping “through the spray of some sweet life-fountain,” and

culling a flower inscribed (as the Greek fancy assumed the hyacinth to

be inscribed) with some lettering, indicating what is to be the boon

accorded to the Soul as its portion in eternity. What he longs to find

inscribed upon the flower is “the one Hope's one name”—that is,

the name of the woman supremely beloved upon earth. It surprises

me that two translators—Madame Clémence Couve for French, and

Herr Otto Hauser for German—should have been wholly abroad as

to this meaning of “The one Hope”—they translate as if mere hope,

the simple emotion or the theological virtue, were intended.
P. 109.— Eden Bower.—I suppose that the ancient legend of

Lilith, the first wife of Adam before the creation of Eve, is sufficiently

present to readers to enable them to understand the structure and

imagery of this ballad.
P. 114.— The Stream's Secret.—This poem was written partly at

Penkill, in 1869, and mostly in Sussex (Scalands, a house belonging

to Mrs. Bodichon) in March 1870. The stream is (as Mr. William

Sharp has recorded) “the brown-pooled, birch-banked Penwhapple

in Ayrshire, that gurgles and lapses from slope to slope till it reaches

Girvan Water.” Hard by is a cave named Bennan's Cave, after a

covenanter of the seventeenth century; here some of the verses were

written down. The rhythmical arrangement of this poem is, I pre-

sume, my brother's own. After the first experimental years of youth

were past, he was opposed to innovations in rhythm and metre; think-

ing that the established and recognized forms are generally the best.

In the present instance, however, I conceive that he made a very

successful essay.
P. 119.— Rose Mary.—In a letter Rossetti called it “a story of my

own; good, I think, turning of course on the innocence required in
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the seer.” This poem was written in the early autumn of 1871. The

“Beryl-songs” are a later addition, say 1879. The very general opinion

has been that they were better away; I cannot but agree with it, and

indeed the author did so eventually. I have heard my brother say that

he wrote them to show that he was not incapable of the daring rhyming

and rhythmical exploits of some other poets. As to this point readers

must judge. It is at any rate true that in making the word “Beryl”

the pivot of his experiment, a word to which there are the fewest

possible rhymes, my brother weighted himself heavily. Also the

“Beryl-songs” have a certain semi-tangible impressiveness, which

tends to elevate the calibre of the poem as a whole.
P. 131.—“With him thy lover 'neath Hell's cloud-cover to fly.”

The reader of Dante will readily perceive that this passage implies a

reference to the Hell-circle of Paolo and Francesca.
P. 138.— The White Ship.—This is the first of two important

historical ballads written by Dante Rossetti, the second being “ The

King's Tragedy. ” He projected later on writing one upon Joan of Arc,

but barely a few lines of this are extant. “ The White Ship” was com-

posed mostly in 1880, ending towards the close of April: some scraps

of it dated “long before.” I have always regarded this ballad as

second to nothing that my brother produced. “Every incident,” as

he said in a letter, “including that of the boy at the end, is given in one

or other account of the event.” Mr. Hall Caine has supplied the follow-

ing particulars:—“Dinner being now over, I asked Rossetti to re-

deem his promise to read one of his new ballads. He responded

readily, and, taking a small manuscript volume out of a section of the

bookcase that had been locked, read us The White Ship. It seemed

to me that I never heard anything at all matchable with Rossetti's

elocution. His rich deep voice lent an added music to the music of the

verse. It rose and fell, in the passages descriptive of the wreck, with some-

thing of the surge and sibilation of the sea itself. In the tenderer passages

it was soft as a woman's, and in the pathetic stanzas with which the

ballad closes it was profoundly moving.” To this account I may add

that my brother's reading of poetry, his own or that of others, had a

certain tendency to the “intoning” quality (and so had Tennyson's

reading, in a higher degree), giving a wholeness to the entire composi-

tion, and bringing out the rhythmical sequence. It did not ignore the

dramatic element in the subject, the play of dialogue, etc.: but he

was quite alien from anything partaking of stage-effect in reading. I

can recollect his once reading out, many years earlier, at the request

of Mrs. Dallas-Glyn the actress, some short passage from Shakespear;

and her bantering reference to his un-actor-like delivery of it. To him

a poem was always, first and foremost, a poem: its light and shade

were important, but its detachable “nuances” were left in strict

subordination.
P. 145.— The King's Tragedy.—The poem by James I. of Scotland,

“The King's Quair,” and the history of this sovereign, were not

known to Rossetti in his earlier years. His first detailed acquaintance

with them may have dated in 1868, when he saw, in Penkill Castle,

Ayrshire, the series of wall-paintings from the poem done by William

Bell Scott. After that (as is traceable in this ballad), the virtues of

the King in vindicating the common people against oppression, and

his interesting combination of poetry with kingship, took a strong

hold upon my brother's feelings, resulting in the ballad, which was

completed early in 1881. He thought it “really a success.” The work

was composed with much tension of feeling, and he said to Mr. Caine,

“It was as though my own life ebbed out with it.”
P. 165.— My Sister's Sleep.—This is a very early performance;

still earlier, I apprehend, than “ The Blessed Damozel.” It was first

published in “ The Germ,” 1850; and was there intended to commence

a series, “Songs of One Household,” but no other member of that
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series was written. Later on Rossetti regarded this poem with more

than due disfavour; and he would probably have omitted it from the

volume of 1870, but for the fact that Mr. Harry Buxton Forman,

writing an article in Tinsley's Magazine, had spoken of it, and this

with high praise. My brother, therefore, thinking that it would get

about in its original form, altered it not a little, and printed it. In

my opinion it should not under any conditions have been excluded.

The poem is written with an air of truth-telling; and I have sometimes

found that readers suppose it to record a real death in the family.

This is an error—the composition having no relation to actual fact.
P. 166.— For an Annunciation, Early German.—This is an early

sonnet, 1847—the first of all his “ Sonnets on Pictures.” My brother

saw the painting in an auction-room.
P. 167.— Ave.—Of all Rossetti's poems, this is the one which seems

most to indicate definite Christian belief, and of a strongly Roman

Catholic kind. Such an inference would, however, be erroneous; his

training was not in the Roman but the Anglican Church, and by the

time when he wrote “ Ave” he was more than vague in point of religious

faith. That time was very early, 1847: “ Ave” was no doubt one of

the compositions which—under the general designation of “ Songs of

the Art Catholic ”—he sent at a venture to William Bell Scott in

Newcastle-on-Tyne in November of that year. As to this designation I

have expressed myself elsewhere as follows:—“By ‘Art’ he decidedly

meant something more than ‘poetic art.’ He meant to suggest that

the poems embodied conceptions and a point of view related to pic-

torial art—also that this art was, in sentiment though not necessarily

in dogma, Catholic—mediæval and unmodern.” When in 1869 my

brother got his poems privately printed, as a convenient preliminary

before settling for publication, he put a note to “ Ave” thus: “This

hymn was written as a prologue to a series of designs. Art still identi-

fies herself with all faiths for her own purposes: and the emotional

influence here employed demands above all an inner standing-point.”

Indeed he rather hesitated about including “ Ave” in his collection;

but very properly decided upon doing so. The poem, from its first

draft to its published form in 1870, was subjected to a great deal of

alteration. In its first shape it was named “ Mater Pulchræ

Delectionis, ” and ran as follows:—

Mater Pulchræ Delectionis

  • “Mother of the fair delight,
  • From the azure standing white
  • And looking golden in the light;—
  • With the shadow of the Heaven-roof
  • Upon thy hands lifted aloof,
  • And a mystic quiet in thine eyes
  • Born of the hush of Paradise,
  • Seated beside the Ancient Three,
  • Thyself a woman-Trinity—
  • 10 Being the dear daughter of God,
  • Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
  • And wife unto the Holy Ghost;—
  • Oh, when our need is uttermost,
  • And the sorrow we have seemeth to last,—
  • Though the future falls not to the past
  • In the race that the Great Cycle runs,
  • Bethink thee of that olden once
  • Wherein to such as death may strike
  • Thou wert a sister, sisterlike.
  • 20 Yea, even thou, who reignest now
  • Where the Angels are they that bow,—
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  • Thou, hardly to be looked upon
  • By saints whose steps tread thro' the Sun,—
  • Thou, the most greenly jubilant
  • Of the leaves of the Threefold Plant,—
  • Headstone of this humanity,
  • Groundstone of the great Mystery,
  • Fashioned like us, yet more than we.
  • I think that at the furthest top
  • 30 My love just sees thee standing up
  • Where the light of the Throne is bright;
  • Unto the left, unto the right,
  • The cherubim, order'd and join'd,
  • Slope inward to a golden point,
  • And from between the seraphim
  • The glory cometh like a hymn.
  • All is aquiet,—nothing stirs;
  • The peace of nineteen hundred years
  • Is within thee and without thee;
  • 40 And the Godshine falls about thee;
  • And thy face looks from thy veil
  • Sweetly and solemnly and well,
  • Like to a thought of Raphaël.
  • Oh, if that look can stoop so far,
  • Let it reach down from star to star
  • And try to see us where we are;
  • For the griefs we weep came like swift death,
  • But the slow comfort loitereth.
  • Sometimes it even seems to us
  • 50 That we are overbold when thus
  • We cry and hope we shall be heard;—
  • Being much less than a short word,—
  • Mere shadow that abideth not,—
  • Dusty nothing, soon forgot.
  • O Lady Mary, be not loth
  • To listen,—thou whom the stars clothe!
  • Bend thine ear, and pour back thine hair,
  • And let our voice come to thee there
  • Where, seeing, thou mayst not be seen;
  • 60 Help us a little, Mary Queen!
  • Into the shadow thrust thy face,
  • Bowing thee from the glory-place,
  • Saint Mary the Virgin, full of grace!”
P. 167.—“The sea Sighed further off eternally.” When the pri-

vately-printed volume was preparing I pointed out to my brother that

this would not quite do, as there is no sea at all near Nazareth. His

reply was highly characteristic: “I fear the sea must remain at Naza-

reth: you know an old painter would have made no bones if he wanted

it for his background.”
P. 168.—“Or washed thy garments in the stream.” In 1855

Rossetti painted “ The Annunciation,” in a water-colour, from this

point of view: Mary steeping clothes in a rivulet, and the announcing

angel upright between two trees.
P. 168.—“When the twilight gone Left darkness in the house of

John.” This also was treated in a water-colour, one of Rossetti's

best,—named “ The House of John”—1858. It is now, I believe,

in America.
P. 169.— The Portrait.—In printed notices of my brother's poems

I have often seen the supposition advanced that this poem was written

after the death of his wife, in relation to some portrait he had painted
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of her during her lifetime. The supposition is very natural—yet

not correct. The poem was in fact an extremely early one, and purely

imaginary,—in the first draft of it, as early as 1847; it was afterwards

considerably revised.
The first draft was entitled “ On Mary's Portrait, which I painted six

years ago. ” The “six years ago” would be 1841, when Rossetti was

aged thirteen, and there was no “Mary.” One stanza from this early

endeavour may be quoted here:—
  • “So, along some grass bank in heaven
  • Mary the Virgin, going by
  • Seeth her servant Raphaël
  • Laid in warm silence happily;
  • Being but a little lovelier
  • Since he hath reached the eternal year.
  • She smiles: and he, as though she spoke,
  • Feels thanked, and from his lifted toque
  • His curls fall as he bends to her.”
P. 171.— For our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da Vinci. —

Several years ago, towards 1890, Mr. W. M. Hardinge published in

“Temple Bar” an interesting and thoughtful article “On the Louvre

Sonnets of Rossetti”, including this one on the Leonardo. There is a

slight mistake here; for, in fact, the sonnet does not relate to the

picture in the Louvre, but to the nearly similar one now in the National

Gallery. Rossetti wrote it “in front of the picture in the British

Institution many years ago”.—i.e., many years before 1869. Mr.

Hardinge most truly observes that the real and manifest subject of the

picture is the infant Jesus blessing the infant John Baptist; and that

the ulterior mystical interpretation put upon it by Rossetti (“the Shadow

of Death—Blesses the dead,” etc.) is Rossetti's affair, and not Leonardo's.

Not indeed that Mr. Hardinge aims to undervalue this camera-obscura

exercise of Rossetti's transmuting imagination—far from that. He

points to it as symptomatic and observable.
P. 171.—“Whose peace abides,” etc. It may be questioned whether

the antecedent of “Whose” is “Lord,” or “each spirit.” Mr. Hardinge

thought the former: I queried it at the time, but acknowledged that

he may be right.
P. 171.— At the Sun-rise in 1848.—We have here one of Rossetti's

few compositions bearing upon national or political matters. It shows

that he shared the aspirations and exultations of the year of vast

European upheavals.
P. 172.— Autumn Song.—This lyric was set to music by Mr. Edward

Dannreuther during my brother's lifetime, and was published in that

form—perhaps not otherwise. It is the utterance of a dreamy or indeed

morbid mood of desolation to which the youth of our modern genera-

tions is prone. With my brother, at the moment of composition (Sep-

tember 1848), it was even a factitious mood; for, in sending this lyric

to our mother, he termed it “a howling canticle,” and declared that,

“if snobbishness consists in the assumption of false appearances, the

most snobbish of all things is poetry.” At that date the verses were

entitled “The Fall of the Leaf.”
P. 172.— The Lady's Lament.—Remained unpublished during

Rossetti's lifetime. It is of much the same tone as the preceding item,

and was written in the same month.
P. 173.— Mary's Girlhood.—The picture to which these sonnets

relate was (apart from two portraits) the first oil-painting, 1848-49,

completed by my brother. The concluding lines of sonnet 1, “She

woke in her white bed,” etc., have a more direct connection, however,

with his second picture, “The Annunciation” (or Ecce Ancilla Domini)

now in the National British Gallery. Sonnet 2 was inscribed by my

brother on the frame of his first picture: he never published it other-
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wise. Of the picture itself, Rossetti entertained in after-years an

opinion by no means unfavourable. He got it back for re-framing in

1864, and found it “a long way better than he thought.” He wrote

further—“It quite surprised me (and shamed me a little) to see what

I did fifteen years ago.” At a much earlier date he wrote with truth:

“My religious subjects have been entirely independent in treatment of

any other corresponding representation, and indeed altogether original

in the inventions.”
P. 174.— The Card-Dealer.—This was first published in The

Athenæum of October 23, 1852, in a form not identical with the present.

It was stated to be “From a Picture”; and a note set forth that—

“The picture is one painted by the late Theodore von Holst; and

represents a beautiful woman, richly dressed, who is sitting at a lamp-

lit table, dealing out cards, with a peculiar fixedness of expression.”

The poem was then named “ The Card-dealer, or Vingt-et-un,” and it

contained some phrases applicable to the second title. Like “ Sister

Helen, ” it bore the signature “H.H.H.”
P. 175.— Vox Ecclesiæ, Vox Christi .—Written in 1849. My

brother wrote it to serve as a pendent to a sonnet of my own composi-

tion which was published in “ The Germ,” under the vague title “The

Evil under the Sun“ (“How long, O Lord,” etc.). That title was

vamped up to appease the publisher's nervousness; the sonnet being

in fact written by me as a sorrowful commemoration of the collapse—

the temporary collapse, as we now know it to have been—of various

revolutionary movements in Europe, especially that of Hungary. My

own title for the sonnet was “On the General Oppression of the Better

by the Worse Cause, October 1849.” The sonnet has of late years

more than once been republished, finally under the title “Democracy

Downtrodden.” I mention these facts solely in order to bring out

the more clearly the precise point of view which marks my brother's

sonnet.
P. 175.— On Refusal of Aid between Nations.—This sonnet

refers to the apathy with which other countries witnessed the national

struggles of Italy and Hungary against Austria. When Rossetti was

getting the sonnet printed in 1869, he asked me whether I should

be in favour of altering the title thus—“On the Refusal of Aid to

Hungary 1849, to Poland 1861, to Crete 1867.” It is odd that he

failed to name Italy: this I can only regard as an oversight having

no significance. He certainly condemned the refusal in the case

of Italy at least as much as in other cases: though the old watch-

word, “L'Italia farà da sè,” may have been attractive to him in the

abstract.
P. 176.— A Trip to Paris and Belgium.—In the autumn of 1849

my brother undertook this trip along with Mr. Holman Hunt (see the

note to “ World's Worth”). He wrote the verses mostly while actually

travelling by rail, etc., and sent them in his letters to me. The sonnet,

“ Place de la Bastille, Paris” (p. 179), belongs to this series; it is the

only one of the set which my brother published in one of his volumes

(“ Ballads and Sonnets”). I hardly know what amount of poetry may

by this time have been written, recording the aspects of railway-

travelling. This blank-verse “Trip” must have ranked among the early

ones, and I suppose it would still be among the best. This is rather

curious, as Dante Rossetti was so very little of a traveller, whether by

rail or in any other way.
P. 179.— The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris.—As this sonnet

was written in 1849, it bears some trace of the problems of that period,

succeeding the great year of European revolution, 1848.
P. 180.— Sonnet to the P.R.B.—The reference here to Mr. Woolner

seems to imply that he was culpably lazy as a sculptor. This is a joke.

He was not lazy; but, having no commissions, nor definite prospect

of such, he was often unoccupied in those days.
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P. 181.— Last Visit to the Louvre.—The reader must make some

allowance for the irrational excess of early P.R.B. opinion evident

in this sonnet. My brother wrote as he then, in essentials, thought:

but he was no doubt conscious that he clothed his thought in terms of

burlesque exaggeration.
P. 181.— Last Sonnets at Paris.—These sonnets, in respect of

their comparison of things French with things English, are as irrational,

and consciously so, as the preceding one. But it is true that Dante

Rossetti was, and not only in 1849, a good deal of a John Bull in

sentiment. The companionship of Mr. Holman Hunt did not tend

to attenuate any feelings of this kind.
P. 185.— On the Field of Waterloo.—In sending this sonnet in a

letter to me, October 18, 1849, my brother wrote: “One of the great

nuisances at this place [Brussels], as also at Waterloo, is the plague

of guides, from which there is no escape. The one we had at Waterloo

completely baulked me of all the sonnets I had promised myself, so that

all I accomplished was the embryo bottled up in the preceding column.

Between you and me, William, Waterloo is simply a bore.” This is a

petulant outburst, not representing my brother's real sense as to the

important issues brought to the test at Waterloo.
P. 188.— For a Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione. —This sonnet

was published in “ The Germ,” terminating thus—
  • “Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,—
  • Silence of heat and solemn poetry.”


I liked that conclusion, and wrote so to my brother when he was

putting the sonnet, with the last line as now altered, into his privately

printed poems. He replied as follows, and I think very rightly so as

regards the general principle involved:—“I remember you expressed a

preference once before for the old line, which seems to me quite bad.

‘Solemn poetry’ belongs to the class of phrase absolutely forbidden, I

think, in poetry. It is intellectually incestuous—poetry seeking to

beget its emotional offspring on its own identity. Whereas I see

nothing too ‘ideal’ in the present line. It gives only the momentary

contact with the immortal which results from sensuous culmination,

and is always a half-conscious element of it.” Taking the couplet as

it now stands, I understand “Nor name this ever”—to mean “Nor

name this picture ever,”—be contented with the vague designation of it

always hitherto current: and therefore the picture itself is termed

“Life touching lips with Immortality.” Mr. W. M. Hardinge, how-

ever, considers that the “Life touching lips” etc. applies to the moment

of sated enjoyment which the personages in the picture have attained

to.
P. 188.— For an Allegorical Dance of Women, by Andrea

Mantegna. —This picture is entitled “Le Parnasse,” and represents

beyond a doubt the Muses (or other Deities) dancing to the music of

Apollo, while Vulcan is at his forge. Rossetti appears not to have been

aware that the picture bore a definite title, settling its meaning fairly

enough; for he wrote in “ The Germ”—“It is necessary to mention

that this picture appears to have been, in the artist's mind, an allegory,

which the modern spectator may seek vainly to interpret.” Then,

starting from this idea of a quasi-allegory not readily interpretable, he

says in the sonnet that the emotion of the artist, which produced the

picture, is manifest, but not the particular thought which governed it.
P. 189.— For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres.—Few of Rossetti's

sonnets have been more popular than these, written in 1849, and

published in “ The Germ.” He knew that this had been and would

be the case; and wrote in 1869—“I still have rather a grudge . . .

to the two on Ingres's picture, which are merely picturesque, and which

stupid people are sure to like better than better things.”
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P. 189.—“Now the Dead Thing,” etc. When Rossetti wrote this

he had forgotten his Ariosto. The sea-monster does not become a

“dead thing” through the prowess of Ruggiero. The latter, after

a certain amount of fighting with the monster, stuns him with the

intolerable glare of his magic shield, and the monster survives to be

afterwards exterminated by Roland.
P. 190.— For a Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmelinck. —Rossetti

wrote on October 25, 1849: “The Royal Academy here [at Bruges]

possesses also some most stupendous works of Memling—among them

one of a Virgin and Child, quite astounding.”
P. 190.— For a Marriage of St. Catherine, by the same.—

Speaking of the triptych which includes this composition, my brother

wrote:—“I assure you that the perfection of character and even draw-

ing, the astounding finish, the glory of colour, and above all the pure

religious sentiment and ecstatic poetry, of these works, is not to be

conceived or described. . . . The mind is at first bewildered by such

Godlike completeness.” These are very strong expressions, testifying

to the early “Præraphaelite” enthusiasm: but Rossetti's admiration

of Memling always continued vivid.
P. 191.— World's Worth.—This is one of the rather numerous

pieces which Rossetti wrote in the autumn of 1849, during his short

French and Belgian trip with Mr. Holman Hunt. It was first pub-

lished in “ The Germ,” with the title “Pax Vobis”—a version not

identical with the present one.
P. 192.— Sacrament Hymn.—This poem, so little consonant with

the tone of other poems by Rossetti, was spoken of by him thus in a

letter which he addressed to William Allingham on November 22, 1860:

“I never meant, I believe, to print the hymn; which was written

merely to see if I could do Wesley, and copied, I believe, to enrage my

friends.”
P. 193.— Dennis Shand.—Rossetti included “ Dennis Shand” in

his privately printed volume 1869, but he withheld it from publication,

from a motive which he expressed thus in a letter addressed to Mr. Hall

Caine in 1880:—“It deals trivially with a base amour (it was written

very early), and is therefore really reprehensible to some extent.”

When I was compiling the “ Collected Works” of Dante Rossetti in

1886 I thought it right to conform to his decision, and I too omitted

this piece. But it appears to me that, as time goes on, and as more

and more of a directly literary interest attaches to an author's pro-

ductions, the force of any such consideration wanes not a little; and I

therefore now treat “ Dennis Shand” like other compositions, and

consign it to the public verdict. If the public agree with me, they will

say that the “reprehensible” quality in the ballad, though not

absolutely “nil,” is really slight; and that Rossetti's action in with-

holding it, while commendable on the ground of dignity and scrupulo-

sity, went beyond any positive requirement in the case. If he had in

fact been a member of a “Fleshly School” of Poetry or of Poets, he

would have “made no bones” of publishing “ Dennis Shand.” His

preference would have been in the direction of publication.
P. 194.— The Mirror.—My brother never published this snatch of

verse, but he had a certain liking for it. I believe some people have

found its meaning obscure. I have no doubt that its purport is this:—

A man is in love with a woman, without declaring himself, and without

her appreciating the fact. This state of things he assimilates to the

case of a man who might see several persons reflected in a mirror, and

might suppose one of them, obscurely discerned, to be himself; but,

making a movement, and finding that that reflected figure makes

no similar movement, he knows that he must look elsewhere for a

response.
P. 195.— A Young Fir-Wood.—A MS. of these verses is marked

by my brother, “Between Ightham and Sevenoaks, November 1850.”
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He had gone to that neighbourhood to paint a landscape-background

for a picture which, left uncompleted for several years, was in 1872

finished and named “ The Bower Meadow.”
P. 195.— During Music.—Written in 1851. I do not know to whom

the verses were addressed: not I think Miss Siddal, who had small or

no skill in music.
P. 196.— Wellington's Funeral.—In one of my brother's jotting-

books I find the following entry: “When printing in 1870, I omitted

the piece on Wellington's Funeral as referring to so recent a date;

but year by year such themes become more dateless, and rank only

with immortal things.” He published it in 1881.
P. 196.—“Be no word Raised of bloodshed Christ-abhorred.” The

sentiment in this stanza is much the same as in something written by

Wordsworth on the Battle of Waterloo. It may be a reminiscence—or

perhaps only a coincidence.
P. 197.— Sonnet to Thomas Woolner.—At this date, February

1853, Woolner was in Australia, having quitted England in July 1852.
P. 198.— The Church-Porches.—The first of these two sonnets was

published by my brother in the volume “ Ballads and Sonnets.” He

never published the second; but this was done soon after his death.

The sonnets were addressed, No. 1 to our sister Maria and No. 2 to

Christina. My brother accompanied one or other to an Anglican

church occasionally towards 1853. The sonnets might seem to relate

to an ancient and stately Roman Catholic Church, but, so far as this

goes, the terms can only be regarded as ideal.
P. 200.— On the Site of a Mulberry Tree, etc.—My brother never

published this sonnet except in “ The Academy” for February 15, 1871.

In the last line he substituted (in MS.) the word “Starveling's” for

“tailor's”; and I remember he once told me that his real reason for

not publishing the sonnet in either of his volumes was to avoid hurting

the feelings of some sensitive member or members of the tailoring craft

who might dislike the line in its original wording. This point is referred

to in a letter addressed by my brother to Mr. Hall Caine, and published

in that gentleman's “ Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ” The

phrase applied to Shakespear, “The world's enfranchised son, Who

found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,” has always appeared to

me a felicitous and comprehensive laconism.
P. 205.— Dawn on the Night-Journey.—Dante Rossetti was not

addicted to night (nor even to day) journeys. In the present instance

he speaks of “beyond the hills upon the sea”: so the sonnet may

perhaps apply to his return to England from France in September 1855,

after he had been a few days in Paris with Miss Siddal, then on her way

to Nice for health's sake. I regard this sonnet as a good one: my

brother did not publish it—possibly because the rhyme-structure is

somewhat defective, as having the rhyme “past” etc. in the sextett as

well as the octave.
P. 205.— The Woodspurge.—This “occasional poem” expresses,

I have no doubt, some actual moment, in my brother's life, of distressful

experience and harrowing thought. I do not know what it may have

been—perhaps some crisis of Miss Siddal's ill-health.
P. 205.— After the French Liberation of Italy. —This sonnet

was written in 1859, after Napoleon III., seconded by the Piedmontese

army, had expelled the Austrians from Lombardy, and had concluded

the peace of Villafranca, whereby Venetia was left unenfranchised from

the Austrian yoke, and all the rest of Italy had to shift for itself as best

it might, while France secured Savoy and Nice, and garrisoned the

Pope in Rome. Rossetti had of course no objection—quite the con-

trary—to Napoleon's action in liberating Lombardy: but he objected

to the other features of his Italian policy, and wrote this sonnet to

commemorate his forecast of bad times for Europe generally. The

sonnet was printed in 1869, along with the privately printed poems,
Image of page 668 page: 668
Note: Typo: on page 668, in the third sentence under the note for the poem “The Passover in the Holy Family,” “F. J. hields” is printed instead of “F. J. Shields.”
but it was not published until 1904; the reason for withholding it

being, not anything involved in its real subject-matter, but the strong

form of imagery and words in which this is clothed.
P. 206.— Even So.—To the third stanza in this lyric, Mr. Coventry

Patmore has awarded high praise, saying that it “seems scratched with

an adamantine pen upon a slab of agate.” He coupled the praise how-

ever with an observation that “in Rossetti, as in several other modern

poets of great reputations, we are constantly being pulled up, in the

professedly fiery course of a tale of passion, to observe the moss on a

rock or the note of a chaffinch.” I never could perceive the relevance

of this objection, so far as Rossetti is concerned. To me it seems that

there are very few passages of that kind in his poems. I should be curious

to see a list of all such that could be picked out, but have never been at

the pains of compiling one.
P. 208.— On Certain Elizabethan Revivals.—I am not sure

as to the date of this sonnet—perhaps towards 1860—nor as to the

particular Elizabethan plays which had been revived on the stage.

In early years—say 1848 to 1850—my brother often went to Sadler's

Wells Theatre under Phelps's management, and witnessed and en-

joyed the acting of such tragedies as Webster's “Duchess of Malfi.”

The sonnet would not apply to any drama of so high a rank as that.
P. 208.— Dantis Tenebræ.—Possibly no explanation of this sonnet

is needed: but, lest some reader should say that it is not intelligible,

I may observe that the general purport of it is that our father Gabriele

Rossetti was a diligent explorer of Dante's writings, and that Dante

Gabriel Rossetti became the like. Our father, it is true, hunted for

inner and covert significances, which my brother was far from doing:

he looked to the primâ facie meaning of the works, and their poetic

glory. Gabriele Rossetti died in 1854: the date of this sonnet is

more like 1861.
P. 209.— The Seed of David.—These lines form a concise explana-

tion of the dominant intention in Rossetti's picture, painted for the

reredos of Llandaff Cathedral. He wished to have them inscribed on

the stone-work round the picture, a triptych, but I doubt whether this

has been done. The lines appear to be the first that he wrote after

his wife's death in 1862.
P. 209.— Aspecta Medusa.—The drawing was intended to be

carried out as a picture, and was even commissioned as such, but the

project failed.
P. 210.— The Passover in the Holy Family.—The design was

produced in 1855, and purchased by Mr. Ruskin when only partially

completed. In that state it remained—highly valued by Ruskin, in

whose possession it continued up to his death. The design re-appears

in a stained glass window, the work of Mr. F. J. hields, in Birchington

Church, as a memorial to Rossetti, who lies interred in the churchyard.

The subject of the design had been fixed upon as far back as 1849. It

was projected as a portion of a triptych: one of the other subjects

being “ The Virgin planting a Lily and a Rose,” and the second

“ Mary in the House of John.” The latter alone was painted.
P. 211.— A Sea-Spell (for a Picture). —The sonnet, without the

picture, may seem somewhat obscure. The idea is that of a Siren, or

Sea-Fairy, seated in a tree, whose lute summons a sea-bird to listen,

and whose song will soon prove fatal to some fascinated mariner.
P. 212.— English May.—This sonnet was not published in Rossetti's

lifetime.
P. 214.— Mary Magdalene.—The design was projected or begun

in 1853, finished in 1858: Ruskin wrote of it as “magnificent to my

mind in every possible way.”
P. 214.— Michael Scott's Wooing.—My brother made two or three

drawings of this subject of invention, diverse in composition. He

contemplated carrying out the subject in a large picture, which was
Image of page 669 page: 669
never executed; I am not certain whether a water-colour of it was

produced or not. He took some pains over the wording of the illustra-

tive verse, but never published it. See also the prose narrative under

the same title, p. 616.
P. 214.— Troy Town.—My brother, upon writing this ballad in

1869, called it “my best, I think.” But he, like other poets, was rather

prone to fancying, at the first blush, that the last performance was the

best. The legend—that Helen dedicated to Venus a cup moulded

upon her breast—is an ancient one.
P. 217.— After the German Subjugation of France. —This

energetic sonnet, a sequel to the one upon the French Liberation of

Italy, was first published at the same date, 1904.
P. 218.— Down Stream.—This was written in a punt on the Thames

(near Kelmscott) in 1871, and was at first called “The River's Record.”

Madox Brown was asked to produce a design for a magazine named

The Dark Blue, to serve as an illustration for something to be got out

of my brother: so the latter, though not enamoured of magazines

of a consumptive habit, consented to the insertion of this ballad.

Writing to our mother, Dante Rossetti said: “I doubt not you will

note the intention to make the first half of each verse, expressing the

landscape, tally with the second expressing the emotion, even to

repetition of phrases.”
P. 219.— The Cloud Confines.—Rossetti wrote this poem (in

1871) in a highly serious mood of mind: he intended it to be a definite

expression of his conceptions, indefinite as they were, upon problems

which no amount of knowledge and experience can make other than

mysterious and unfathomable. In writing to me he said that the

lyric was “not meant to be a trifle”; and he consulted me as to

whether it might be better to leave the last four lines as they stand,

or to substitute other lines “on the theory hardly of annihilation but

of absorption.” He also wrote to Mr. W. Bell Scott in the same

connexion, saying: “I cannot suppose that any particle of life is

‘extinguished,’ though its permanent individuality may be more than

questionable. Absorption is not annihilation; and it is even a real

retributive future for the special atom of life to be re-embodied (if so

it were) in a world which its own former identity had helped to fashion

for pain or pleasure.” Franz Hueffer, who edited the Tauchnitz

Edition of Rossetti's “ Ballads and Sonnets,” thought “ The Cloud

Confines ” “his highest effort in the field of contemplative, not to say

philosophic verse.”
P. 220.— Sunset Wings.—This is one of the poems which show that

my brother could take note of the appearances in nature when he chose

and when they interested him. As usual, he at the end of the verses

makes the appearance subserve an emotional purpose. The poem was

written in August 1871, at Kelmscott Manorhouse, Oxfordshire. “It

embodies,” (as he wrote in a letter) “a habit of the starlings which

quite amounts to a local phenomenon, and is most beautiful and in-

teresting daily towards sunset for months together in summer and

autumn.”
P. 221.— Soothsay.—Three verses of “ Soothsay” (at first entitled

“Commandments”) came into Rossetti's head during a walk at

Kelmscott in 1871: most of the poem was however much later, 1880-

81. Mr. Walter Pater has written: “One monumental lyrical piece,

‘ Soothsay,’ testifies—more clearly even than the ‘ Nineveh’—to the

reflective force, the dry reason, always at work behind his imaginative

creations, which at no time dispensed with a genuine intellectual

structure.” Some further trace of this Poem will be found among the

“Versicles and Fragments.”
P. 221.—“Let thy soul strive,” etc. This stanza on early friend-

ship not ultimately maintained is worthy of note in relation to Rossetti's

career. Most of his early friendships were severed: some indeed
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by death, but others by the course of events. In more books than

one I see the blame laid constantly on my brother. In certain instances

this is just: not by any means in all, as I think I have shown in my

Memoir of him, prefixed to his Family letters.
P. 222.—“To God at best,” etc. This thought, or it might rather

be said this emotion, was often present to Dante Rossetti. He has

worded it very tersely in a fragment—
  • “Would God I knew there were a God to thank
  • When thanks rise in me!”
P. 223.— Untimely Lost—Oliver Madox Brown. —It is perhaps

needless to say that Oliver was the son of Ford Madox Brown; and, in

his brief life of less than twenty years, had given promise of excep-

tionally good work as both painter and novelist, and in some degree as

poet.
P. 224.—“This hour like a flower expands.” Reverberation of

sound, such as this, is very frequent in Rossetti's poems—as the reader

of them will not proceed far without observing. He was fond of the

chiming—perhaps overmuch so.
P. 225.— Three Shadows.—This lyric has been rather frequently

set to music—more frequently, I think, than any other poem by its

author. The next in order might be “ Love-Lily.”
P. 227.— Chimes.—Some readers, it appears, vote this poem un-

intelligible, and others trivial. It may, however, less censoriously, be

regarded from two points of view. 1, It is clearly an exercise in

alliterative verse: if several l's or several h's can be got together with

a fair amount of sequent significance, its end so far is attained. 2, It

represents, rather than aught else, a number of thoughts and images

passing through the writer's mind in dreary dimness, when he was

only too prone to gloomy impressions. The title itself, “Chimes,”

prompts us that sound, as truly as sense, has been the guiding clue here.

Sections 3, 4, 6, and 7, about the butterfly, love, the breakwater, and

the hurricane, must mean very much what they say, and present no

real difficulty. Sections 1 and 2, about the bee and the honeysuckle,

must adumbrate love-making followed by desertion. Section 5, a trifle

more intangible, suggests “the fatal gift of beauty,” with its perils

and its mortality. It would be a mistake to expect, in a poem of this

description, anything closely knit and reasoned; and again a mistake

to think that, lacking that, the poem is mere jingling incoherence.
P. 228.— To Philip Bourke Marston.—This sonnet was printed in

Mr. William Sharp's book, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Record and a

Study.” In line 4 he gives the word “sight.” In the MS. in my

own possession I find “light” instead; but I incline to think that Mr.

Sharp's version is correct. I need hardly add that Mr. Marston was

blind from a very early period of childhood—a point which the sonnet

emphasizes.
P. 229.— The Last Three from Trafalgar.—A lady well known

to me by correspondence told me an incident (which pleased me much,

and which I venture here to reproduce) regarding this sonnet. She

read it to a celebrated General, now a Field-Marshal,—I ought not

perhaps to mention the name: it struck him powerfully, and he ex-

claimed: “I did not think there was any poet of these days who would

or could write such a sonnet.”
P. 229.— Mnemosyne.—This couplet was inscribed on the frame

of Rossetti's picture “ Mnemosyne, or the Lamp of Memory.”
P. 230.— John Keats, etc.—I may make a few remarks applicable

to the five sonnets collectively upon the “ Five English Poets” (Ros-

setti's heading). 1. Chatterton: His writings (as I have said in my

Preface) were known to Dante Rossetti to some extent at a very early

date: but it was only in his closing years that my brother paid minute
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attention to these writings, and then he admired them enormously,

and felt a remarkable degree of sympathy with Chatterton, his per-

formances and his personality. Mr. Watts-Dunton coöperated actively

to this end.—2, Blake: I need hardly dwell on my brother's early love

and study of Blake's work in poetry and design, and on the part he

took in connexion with Gilchrist's “ Life of Blake.” The design by

Mr. Shields, referred to in the heading of the sonnet, was reproduced

in The Art-Journal in 1903. The sonnet refers to two several cup-

boards, but I can only see one in the design.—3, Coleridge, in certain of

his poems—not many amid the entire number of them—was always

most deeply admired by Rossetti, and, as years passed, increasingly so.

Towards the close of his life he would perhaps have exalted a few of

Coleridge's poems above all others produced in that period of our

literature. The sonnet testifies to his love of Coleridge: I am not sure

that it goes very far towards defining the quality of his excellence.—4,

Keats 's poetry became first known to Rossetti in 1844, or perhaps 1845.

He delighted in it then, and ever afterwards; not however ignoring

the imperfection of a large percentage of Keats's work. Perhaps, in

his last few years, the poetry of Keats was more constantly present to

my brother's thoughts than that of any one else, hardly excepting even

Dante.—5, Shelley: According to its heading, this sonnet is an “in-

scription for the Couch, still preserved, on which he passed the last

night of his life.” The couch in question is in my possession: it came

to me from Edward John Trelawny, and to him from Barone Kirkup

of Florence. That Shelley passed the last night of his life on this

couch was distinctly affirmed by Trelawny. My brother, even before

reading Keats, had read Shelley with the profoundest admiration—a

feeling which it would not have been possible for him ever to lose.

He was not however so unswervingly loyal to Shelley as to Keats;

resenting at times those elements in Shelley's poetry where the abstract

tends to lose sight of the concrete, or where revolutionary philanthropy,

rather than the world of men and women, is the dominant note. In all

poetic literature, anything of a didactic, hortatory, or expressly ethical

quality was alien from my brother's liking. That it should be more or

less implied was right, but that it should be propounded and preached

was wrong: such was his view.
P. 231.— The Day-Dream. (For a Picture).—The picture of “ The

Day-Dream, ” one of my brother's latest works, is in the Ionides be-

quest to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
P. 231.—“Still bear young leaflets half the summer through.” It has

often been alleged that Rossetti's poems show no interest, and no

observation or understanding, for the facts and appearances of external

nature—landscape, vegetation, and the like. The whole beginning of

this sonnet might be cited in disproof of the allegation: and I could

point out many other instances passim, were they wanted. The fact of

the matter is that he constantly saw some appearance in the light of an

idea, or in relation to human interest: but still he took count of the

appearance.
P. 232.— For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli.—My brother wrote:

The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is evidently

the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the Pourtalès collec-

tion in Paris. This portrait is inscribed “Smeralda Bandinelli.”—

My brother bought the portrait in question. He afterwards sold

it to Mr. Constantine Ionides, from whom it passed to the Victoria

and Albert Museum. Leading critics will now have it that the portrait

is not the work of Botticelli himself, but of some one for whom they

have invented the name “Amico di Sandro.”
P. 233.— Tiber, Nile, and Thames.—Was at first named “ Cleo-

patra's Needle in London. ” Was written in January 1881, and sent by

Dante Rossetti to Christina, with the message, “With me, sonnets

mean insomnia.”
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P. 233.— “ Found.” —The facts about the picture named “ Found”

have often been stated. The work shows how a young woman, inured to

vice and sinking into penury, was “found” in the streets of London by

her old rustic lover, a drover on his way to market. The subject was

designed perhaps as early as 1852, and the painting of it begun in 1854,

but never brought to entire completion. The sonnet, on the other

hand, is quite a late composition—February 1881.
P. 239.— God's Graal.—Rossetti must have projected writing a

somewhat long poem thus entitled. The verses come in a notebook

in connexion with several pages of prose detail abstracted from the

“Mort Arthur.”—The Versicles and Fragments generally are also col-

lected out of notebooks etc. I need not dwell upon them beyond

saying that I think them worthy of preservation on one ground or

another.
P. 239.— The Orchard-pit.—This is all that I can find written of

a poem which was long and seriously thought of: the argument of the

poem is printed among the prose works.
P. 241.—“‘I hate’ says over and above, etc.”—This stanza, and the

one which follows, must have been at first intended to figure in the

poem “ Soothsay.” Likewise the verses “The bitter stage of life etc.”

correspond to a passage in the same poem.
P. 242.—“The winter Garden-beds, etc.”—This is used, but with

very different diction, in the sonnet “ Winter.”
P. 243.—“Thou that beyond thy real self, etc.”—Is versified from a

prose phrase, p. 607.
P. 245.—On the Two Bridal-biers.—Such is the title, although

“bridal- bed” comes in the couplet itself. There may have been an in-

tention of writing other couplets wherein the death-bier would figure.
P. 245.— Joan of Arc.—These three stanzas are all that I find

written of my brother's projected ballad upon the glorious heroine

of France.
P. 245.—“Or, stamped with the snake's coil, etc.”—Probably this

fragment had been intended to be embodied in Rossetti's sonnet on

“ The Sonnet.”
P. 246.— Dîs Manibus.—Flaubert became so bloated latterly that

he could hardly move, and had to wear a special loose costume.—D.G.R.

—This sardonic epitaph for Flaubert was written by Rossetti in full

consciousness of the literary greatness of the deceased author. He

had read “Salammbô” with strong admiration, but with a sense of

its being so steeped in cruelty and horror as to be an abnormal and a

hardly permissible effort of the historic imagination.
P. 246.—“No ship came near, etc.”—The peculiar rhyme-structure

of this stanza shows that it was intended to come into “ The Bride's

Prelude. ”
P. 249.— Motto to the Card-dealer.—In the first published

version of “ The Card-dealer,” 1852, this quatrain was supplied as a

motto. Though I cannot speak with absolute certainty, I fully believe

that the quatrain is Rossetti's own invention. Am not aware that

there is any such book as the “Calendrier de la Vie, 1630.”
P. 249.— Messer Dante a Messer Bruno.—This sonnet, sent to

Madox Brown in a letter of October 24, 1867, is simply a joke—not

perhaps a very good one. Brown had written an Italian letter to

Rossetti, speaking of Mr. Henry Treffry Dunn, Rossetti's art-assistant;

and taking the surname as if it were “Done,” he translated it into

“Fatto.” Rossetti replies, joking on Brown's name, Ford Mad-ox

Brown, and Italianizing it as “Guado Pazzobue Bruno.” He also

speaks of Mr. Dunn as a “dun,” a creditor; possibly with truth, or

possibly for the mere pun on the name.
P. 249.— Con manto d'oro, etc. —This Italian triplet, and the French

couplet, with their translations, were written for a portrait of Mrs.

Frederick Leyland painted by Rossetti.
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Sig. 43
P. 250.— For a Portrait of Mrs. William Morris. —The portrait

is the one which hangs in the Tate Gallery at Millbank. Rossetti

knew Latin up to a certain point, but I am not wholly sure that he

could have indited this couplet. Possibly he obtained the assistance

of Mr. Swinburne.
P. 250.— Thomæ Fides.—Was intended to come into the dramatic

lyric, never executed, of “ The Doom of the Sirens.”
P. 250.— Gioventu e Signoria.—This so-called “Italian Street-

song” was really Rossetti's own composition—the Italian as well as

the English version. In all the instances in which he wrote a piece

in the two languages, the Italian was, I think, the first.
P. 253.— Proserpina.—“Afar away the light,” etc. It has some-

times been said that the light represented in the “ Proserpine” picture

is moonlight. This, I am sure, is wholly inconsistent with the general

tone and colour of the work: the phrase in the sonnet about “light”

seems also clearly to point to sunlight or daylight.
P. 254.— Et les Larmes, etc. —I am unable to say whether this

jotting of verse, which I find in my brother's handwriting, is his own

composition, or copied from some book. I assume the former. The

same remark applies to “ Il faut” etc., in which possibly a rhyme was

intended, but in vain; and to the French prose scraps.
P. 254.— Pro hoste hostem, etc. —See the Versicle, “I hate, says

over and above, etc.” This Latin line is evidently related to a phrase

in that small piece: it was written, I suppose, afterwards. It must

have been intended for a hexameter, but, as any one can see, it will

not scan.
P. 259.— Sacred to the Memory of Algernon R. G. Stanhope. —

This is a juvenile affair, bearing the date of September 1847; which

was however some few months later than the date of the original

“ Blessed Damozel.” It is about the only thing which my brother

wrote “to order”: i.e. he was requested by a family friend, Cavalier

Mortara, to write some verses commemorative of a youthful member of

the Stanhope family, known to Mortara but not to Rossetti, and he

produced these verses as an act of complaisance. The full composition

numbers 21 stanzas: I think that ten of them, but not more, may at

this distant period be allowed to figure among the Juvenilia of his

Collected Works. I am afraid my brother would not have approved

even this modicum of publicity.
P. 260.— An Epitaph for Keats.—The date of these verses may be

much the same as that of the Stanhope composition.
P. 260.— To Mary in Summer.—This also is a juvenile effusion. It

is a mere exercise of fancy, for in those early summers there was no real

Mary of any denomination. The composition was originally longer,

but was reduced by the author to its present dimensions. He did not

view it with entire disfavour: when he was compiling his volume of

1870 he seriously debated whether to include it or not, but he decided

against it.
P. 261.— The English Revolution of 1848.—This will readily

be understood to relate to the Chartist or pseudo-Chartist meetings

which formed a transitory alarm to Londoners in the early months of

1848. Readers whose memories go back to that date will appreciate

the references to Moses and Son, puny John (Russell), Cochrane, G. W.

M. Reynolds and “Reynolds's Miscellany,” etc: for other readers

they seem hardly worth explaining. It may be as well to say that my

brother had no real grounded objection to the principles of “The

People's Charter”—I dare say he never knew accurately what they

were: but he disliked bluster and blusterers, noise-mongers and noise,

and he has here indulged himself in a fling at them.
P. 263.— The Sin of Detection.—This is a sonnet written to

bouts-rimés: so are the thirteen sonnets which ensue. The rhyme-

words were given by me; and my brother then rattled off the sonnet
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as fast as he could—sometimes in five or six minutes—more usually

from eight to ten. He at the same time gave me rhyme-words, and I

acted alike. This practice went on actively in 1848: it may have

begun in 1847, and died out in 1849. I think his bouts-rimés sonnets

are clever things of their kind: each of them has its own point of view,

and suggests some sort of situation with a certain picturesque in-

tensity of notion and diction, and sometimes a degree of subtlety. But

one cannot demand from such a mere tour de force more than is per-

mitted by its very nature, which consists of slapdash at a moment's

notice.
P. 267.— “'Twas Thus.”—This quatrain is intended to be a

bombastic absurdity. “Hunt and I,” said a letter from my brother on

August 20, 1848, “went the other night to Woolner's, where we

composed a poem of twenty-four stanzas on the alternate system. I

transcribe the last stanza, which was mine, to show you the style

of thing.”
P. 268.— On Browning's Sordello.—This is the beginning of a

sonnet. I recollect the octave accurately, but cannot recall the

sextett, which was written from a quite contrary point of view—that

of a devotee of Browning and “Sordello,” as my brother was in all

those years. The reader may remember that “Sordello” begins with

the phrase “Who will may hear Sordello's story told,” and ends with

“Who would has heard Sordello's story told.” Hence my brother's

opening lines.
P. 268.— The Cancan at Valentino's.—This is one of the sonnets

which my brother sent to me from Paris. I have had to omit some

lines, not presentable in print. He was profoundly disgusted with

the coarse revelling at Valentino's dancing-hall, and recorded the

aspect of the danseuses in his sonnet.
P. 269.— At the Station of the Versailles Railway. —It will

be perceived that the opening lines are imitated from those of Tenny-

son's poem “Godiva.”
P. 269.— L'Envoi.—The phrase “It's copied out at last” relates to

the snatches of blank verse, “ From Paris to Brussels” and “ On the

Road to Belgium. ” “The sonnet at the close” is the one entitled

“ Returning to Brussels.”
P. 270.— Verses to John L. Tupper.—The nicknames which ap-

pear towards the close of this doggerel indicate—The Prince, George

Tupper; the Baron, his brother Alexander; Spectro-cadaveral Rex,

John (or Jack) Tupper; the Maniac, Holman Hunt. These rather silly

nicknames were not Dante Rossetti's invention. The occasion for

the doggerel appears to have been that he had received an invitation to

join with Hunt, Stephens, and the three Tuppers, in a brief country-

tramp.
P. 271.— St. Wagnes' Eve.—For this amusing trifle some explana-

tions are needed. Rossetti had taken a first-floor studio in a house

in Newman Street in which a dancing-academy was held: this he

terms “the hop-shop.” Hancock's “accents screechy” are not an

arbitrary make-rhyme to “Beatrice” (according to the Italian pro-

nunciation of that name), but a tolerably true definition of Hancock's

voice, which was small and high-pitched. He was now doing a statue

of Dante's Beatrice. The “engraving of his bas-relief” was an Art-

union engraving of a work of his, “Christ's Entry into Jerusalem.”

Bernhard Smith, another sculptor, was a very fine-looking young man.

North was William North, a somewhat eccentric young literary man,

of very extreme opinions, author of “The Infinite Republic,” etc.

The names of two painters, Collinson and Deverell, hardly require

explanation.
P. 271.— Parody on “Uncle Ned.” —The object here, as will be

seen, is to ridicule Mrs. Stowe's romance “Uncle Tom's Cabin”: a

book far from deserving of mere ridicule, and one which possibly my
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brother never read. “Uncle Ned” is a nigger song, perhaps still

well known, beginning “Dere was an old nigger and him name was

Uncle Ned, And him died long long ago.” My brother had no very

settled ideas about negroes, their rights and wrongs: he knew, and was

much tickled by, Carlyle's “Occasional Discourse on the Nigger

Question,” published in 1849.
P. 271.— Duns Scotus.—By the name Duns Scotus, Rossetti

designated the painter William Bell Scott. The notion that he might

“die of lotus” applied to his position as settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne,

isolated from the more strenuous movements in art and literature.

See some other railleries against Scott among the limericks.
P. 272.— MacCracken.—This parody of Tennyson's youthful

quasi-sonnet “The Kraken” refers to Mr. Francis MacCracken of

Belfast, a business-man who purchased, in the early Præraphaelite

days, some of the paintings of Holman Hunt, Rossetti, etc. Rossetti

really felt indebted to MacCracken for buying these works cheap, when

other people would not buy them at all: but in this parody, following

the titular and other wording, or sometimes the mere sound, of Tenny-

son's piece, he pretends that the Belfast connoisseur preyed insidiously

upon his artistic victims. The parody is a very complete thing in its

way: as the reader would find if he were to compare its lines and terms

with those of Tennyson's “Kraken.”
P. 272.— Valentine to Lizzie Siddal.—From 1852 to 1862

Rossetti lived in Chambers in Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge.

Hence the references in this Valentine to St. Paul's Cathedral and

the Thames.
P. 273.— Address to the Dalziel Brothers.—Rossetti, put out

by imperfect woodcutting of his designs for Tennyson's poems, scribbled

these lines in a letter which he addressed to W. B. Scott. He had pro-

bably some tolerable reason for being put out: though we may none

the less acknowledge that the Dalziels were very skilful craftsmen.
P. 273.— The Wombat .—Rossetti purchased a wombat (Australian

burrowing animal) which arrived at his house in London when he was

away in Scotland. He wrote this stave to express his eagerness to

see the beast.
P. 273.— Limericks.—A good deal has by this time been written

about limericks composed by Rossetti and by some of his acquaintances:

I need not repeat the substance of it. In my present compilation

Nos. 1 and 2 refer to Valentine C. Prinsep; No. 3 to Henry Tanworth

Wells; No. 4 to Arthur Hughes; No. 5 to the architect William

Burges; No. 6 to Lady Burne-Jones; Nos. 7 and 8 to Burne-Jones;

No. 9 to a painter, George W. Chapman, not now well remembered;

No. 10 to Whistler; No. 11 to the Bookseller and Publisher F. S. Ellis;

No. 12 to Charles Augustus Howell; No. 13 to J. W. Inchbold; No. 14

to Ford Madox Brown; No. 15 to Oliver Madox Brown; No. 16 to

T. and W. Agnew; No. 17 to Francis Hueffer; Nos. 18, 19, and 20, to

William Bell Scott; No. 21 to Arthur O'Shaughnessy; No. 22 to J. W.

Knewstub, a painter who had studied under Rossetti; No. 23 to

Rossetti himself; and No. 24 to Robert Buchanan. Every now and

then something is alleged in these limericks (or “nonsense-verses” as we

then called them) which has no relation whatever to fact. For instance,

in No. 6 there was the name Georgie: a rhyme being wanted, “orgy”

was stuffed in, and no one minded the absolute lie, because it was

known to be a lie. My brother must certainly have composed many

other limericks, which either I never knew of, or else they have lapsed

out of my memory.
P. 276.— William Morris.—This couplet was written one day at

Kelmscott when Morris did some fishing with no success. The name

“Skald” was bestowed upon him because, in a recent excursion in

Iceland, he had been set down in the inn-register as “William Morris,

Skald.”
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P. 276.— The Brothers.—This parody of Tennyson's fine poem

“The Sisters” was written soon after Rossetti had learned that the

adverse criticism of his poems, published in The Contemporary Review

with the signature “Thomas Maitland,” was the work of Mr. Robert

Buchanan. There are in the parody many ingenious imitations of

phrase and sound. A notion of printing it in The Pall Mall Gazette

was started, but not carried out.
P. 277.— Smithereens.—I don't know what may have prompted

my brother to write these verses, not highly Rossettian: possibly he

had heard of some incident of a like kind.
P. 277.— Couplet on Christina Rossetti.—Was the beginning of

a limerick, left uncompleted.
P. 310.—“An awkward intermezzo to the volume.” The term

intermezzo was correct when my brother wrote it; because his

introduction, regarding Dante and his friends, appeared in the middle

of the original volume entitled “ The Early Italian Poets, 1861.” On

republishing the book in 1874, my brother inverted the order of his

translations, and made those taken from Dante and his friends to

appear in the opening pages of the volume. The word “intermezzo”

ought then to have disappeared; it must have been left through

inadvertence.
P. 313.—“This sonnet is divided,” etc. It may be as well to men-

tion that the expositions (of which this is the first) appended to the

various poems of the “ Vita Nuova” were translated by me, not by my

brother. Several foot-notes are also mine. The translation of the

“ Vita Nuova” had been done by my brother at a very early date,

probably 1847-8; when he was more inclined to consult his own pre-

ferences in the way of translating than to be at the rigid beck of his

original. When he had to prepare the work, 1860, for publication, he

felt that he had taken too great a liberty, and asked me to supply what

was wanted in relation to these expositions, etc.
P. 359.— Of a Consecrated Image Resembing his Lady. —There

is not in this Italian sonnet anything to indicate that Cavalcanti con-

sidered the Image to resemble “his Lady”— i.e. the woman he was

in love with. He speaks of “la Donna mia,” which comes to the same

thing as “la Madonna,” the Virgin Mary. That the Image did really

represent the Virgin Mary is apparent from the reply which Guido

Orlandi returned to this sonnet.
P. 361.— Dante to Cavalcanti.—This sunny-tempered sonnet was

translated also by Shelley.
P. 367.— Bernardo da Bologna.—No other writing by Bernardo

appears to be known, nor any detail of his life. The original sonnet

is densely obscure, and a semi-creative effort was needed on Rossetti's

part for making what he has here made of it.
P. 410.—“Aguglino would be eaglet,” etc. Here again my brother

is at fault. Aguglino does indeed mean eaglet: it is the name of a

coin stamped (I presume) with the imperial eagle. There can be no

real doubt that Aguglino is the correct reading; and that the whole

of my brother's surmise about “Avolino” is gratuitous. I pointed

this out to him when the book was in course of reprinting. He then

admitted the fact; but (with perhaps pardonable weakness for what

he had many years before thought out with ingenuity, and argued with

plausibility) he ultimately decided not to interfere with the text as

printed.
P. 413.— Of His Last Sight of Fiametta.—The reader may notice

that this sonnet bears a certain relation to Rossetti's own sonnet,

“ Fiammetta,” as more especially to the picture which those verses

illustrate. Fiammetta, named in many of Boccaccio's writings, is

reputed to have been a member (not legitimate) of the royal family

of Naples.
P. 415.— Poets Chiefly before Dante.—In 1908 was published
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a very convenient little book—“Italian Poets chiefly before Dante:

the Italian Text, with Translations by D. G. Rossetti” (Shakespeare

Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon). I then for the first time compared

the translations minutely with the originals; knowing that I should be

sure to find some mistakes and some difference of tone—for my brother

certainly enhanced, beyond his originals, the qualities of romantic

richness and picturesque colouring. I made several notes on particular

poems or passages, and I here present a few of them.
P. 425.—“If by my grief thou couldst be grieved, God send me a

grief soon.” Rossetti has mistaken the “person” here. The true

meaning is—“Nay, wert thou in pain, and falling down in anguish.”
P. 426.—“Oh the rich dress thou worest on that day,” etc. The

Italian runs “ti vististi lo traiuto.” I suspect that the traiuto (or

traito, as in the next stanza—words which I cannot find in an Italian

dictionary) is quite the reverse of a rich dress, and is the habit of a

conventual novice, for there are clear indications in the poem that

the lady contemplates becoming a nun. All the expressions in the

ensuing stanza as to richness of her costume are not in the original:

which says: “Ah so much didst thou fall in love, down from the

traito, as if it had been purple, scarlet, or samite.”
P. 428.—“Going from bough to bough”—in the original “agli

albori.” This must mean “at dawn,” but Rossetti took it to mean

“in the trees”—which would be “alberi.”
P. 437.—“I would not have ye without counsel ta'en,” etc. The

rendering is considerably different from the original, which runs thus:

“I commend not beginning without deliberation; nor is it to my

liking to give praise to one who commits an offence. He who con-

descends to this falls under great reprehension: and he who is silent

is content not to outstep him who can give a good reason, for he acts

justly who comes when there is occasion for it. If the man confides

in good counsel, he goes upward; and he props himself upon folly,

going downward. The fruit approves the flower when the season

comes.” The “loud-voiced mime” is Rossetti's invention.
P. 442.—“And is there nothing else,” etc. The literal sense of the

original is this: “And therefore, if it were to appear to you that there

would not be any one else to gain your love, never lose your joy. Would

you then have friendship? Sooner would I die.”
P. 451.—“Yet, if any heart be a city,” etc. This is very paraphrastical,

or even incorrect. The original must mean: “If there is any one

who receives love, he maintains his heart in joy, he always lives in

blitheness.”
P. 455.—“But should go back against his proper will.” It should

be “ Nor should go back,” etc.
P. 457.—“His ill thought should withhold.” The original indicates

“ Her ill thought.”
P. 463.—“Ye blew your bubbles as the falcon flies.” Rossetti's

word “bubbles” stands for the Italian “bubbole,” but quite errone-

ously. “Bubbole” means “lapwings” and the line signifies “Ye

have turned lapwings into falcons.” I think too that the sextett of

this sonnet has been rather misapprehended.
P. 467.—“Gules, argent, or.” These heraldic terms are substituted

for the names of real flowers, “violets, roses, and flowers, to dazzle

all men.” I have no doubt that the Italian poet referred not to any

armorial devices, but to the actual flower-garlands (ghirlande, as in l. 11)

which the ladies would cast down.
P. 468.—“On each hand either ridge ye shall perceive.” The word

rendered as “ridge” is “terra”: but it is pretty clear that “terra”

bears here a sense which it often assumes in Italian—town, or

fortress.
P. 469.—“Gifts from man to man.” The word “gifts” represents

“dati,” and as such is admissible: but I think the real meaning is
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“dice”—“dadi” being the ordinary Italian word. The phrase stands

“star coi dati in mano.”
P. 471.—“Wednesday the day of Feasts.” The whole of this sonnet

relates, in my opinion, to feasting—not any part of it to sporting.
P. 472.—“As up and down you course the steep highway.” The

line does not really refer to the sportsman, but to the falcons—“to

swoop down, and to soar to a great height.”
P. 472.— To Love and to his Lady.—Lines 6 and 7 relate to the

assassins, or adherents of the Old Man of the Mountain—which Rossetti

does not appear to have observed.
P. 473.—“Still inmostly I love thee.” This represents “È l'amo

dentro,” which really means “The hook is inside me.” Rossetti

heedlessly supposed “amo” to be the verb “I love.”
P. 476.—“My lady and my lord.” The word translated “lady” is

“donn”—which does not here stand for donna (lady), but for donno,

master (i.e. Love).
Note: The page number here (476) is erroneous; this line appears on page 481.
P. 482.—“Even as the moon amid the stars.” Rossetti found the

word “diana,” which he supposed to be the goddess Diana, translated

“moon.” But the real meaning is “the stella diana,” or daystar.
P. 492.—“Him by mischance a servant of his own Hit with an

arrow.” This passage, relating to William Rufus, has the Italian

phrase “Ferito a inganno”—which certainly means “wounded by

treachery,” not “by mischance.”
P. 493.—“That he was frank and good [King Stephen].” The

Italian word is “franco”; which, though it does in some cases mean

“frank,” is often used to signify “brave, courageous”: and one may

be pretty sure that such is the meaning here.
P. 493.—“Leaving the Sepulchre to join his host.” Fazio's state-

ment, regarding Richard Cœur de Lion, is “Tornando dal sepolcro alla

sua schiatta”; which certainly does not mean “his host,” but “his

compatriots.” This is followed by “who being dead”: but the

Italian phrase “Costui fù morto” conveys the more precise sense

“He was slain.”
P. 494.—Franco Sacchetti (two Poems).—I find that the second

of these specimens has been attributed by some to Sacchetti, by others

to Ugolino Ubaldini.
P. 496.—“The nightingales that sing ‘Fly away O die away.’”

It may be interesting to some readers to know that in Sacchetti's

Italian the song of the nightingale runs “Più bel ve', più bel ve'”:

which may be rendered, ‘Still prettier—look:’ or else ‘Something

there is still prettier.’
P. 501.— Lenore, translated from Bürger. This appears to be

the earliest translation made by Dante Rossetti from any author: its

date is in or about June 1844, when he was just turned of sixteen.

The leading translators of an earlier date had been William Taylor of

Norwich, Walter Scott, W. R. Spencer, Pye the Poet Laureate, and F.

Shoberl. It is said too that Shelley towards 1817 made a translation

(A. Koszul, La Jeunesse de Shelley, 1910). Later than Rossetti's

rendering came those of Julia Cameron and John Oxenford. The

German Author, Gottfried August Bürger, was born in 1748, and died,

after an agitated career, in 1784: he published “Lenore” towards

1775.
P. 507.— Henry the Leper.—My brother learned German at home,

beginning towards 1843, under the tuition of an excellent teacher and

excellent man, Dr. Adolf Heimann, the Professor in University College.

He was soon fired with a wish to translate some German poems. He

Englished (as we have seen) Bürger's “ Lenore”; and, beginning in

1845, the earlier portion of the “ Nibelungenlied.” The latter transla-

tion has perished. He then took up the ancient poem by Hartmann

von Auë, “Der Arme Heinrich.” My brother was not dissatisfied

with it in later years, and more than once thought of putting it into
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print, but did not actually do so. Longfellow re-adapted “Der Arme

Heinrich” in his “Golden Legend,” published in 1851.
P. 535.— Two Lyrics, from Niccolò Tommaseo. —When Tomma-

seo's death was announced, Rossetti sent these versions (of an early

date) to the Athenæum (June 13, 1874), with the following prefatory

lines:—“In your late obituary notice ( Athenæum, May 16), of Niccolò

Tommaseo, a passing allusion is made to his earlier lyrical poetry.

Any countryman of his, looking, years ago when it appeared, into the

slender collection of these verses, must have been struck by their not

being chiefly concerned with public events and interests; inevitably

a rare exception in those dark yearning-days of the Italian Muse.

Perhaps the two translated specimens which I offer of their delicate

and romantic tone may not be unacceptable to some of your readers.”
P. 537.— Lines from the Roman de la Rose. —The original

begins “Tendre eut la chair comme rousée, Simple fut comme une

épousée.” Rossetti, in translating “une épousée” as “a wife,” certainly

made an error: the word must mean “a bride,” or more probably “an

affianced damsel.” To say that a certain woman was “as simple as

a wife” conveys no distinct sense; for a wife is not any more simple

(rather less so) than an unmarried woman.
P. 537.— Poems by Francesco and Gaetano Polidori. —This

article was published in The Critic for April 1, 1853. Gaetano Polidori

was our maternal grandfather, and was still alive, aged about eighty-

nine, when this notice appeared (as its own terms indicate). My

brother has, in his translations in this article, improved—such at

least is my opinion—upon the originals.
P. 541.— A Doctor's Advice.—My brother found some verses,

in ill-spelled French, scratched on the pane of a window at the New Inn,

Winchelsea. They were signed “N.B., Queen Square, 1771,” and

began “Mon Médecin me dit souvent.” He made this translation of

the verses.
P. 541.—“My lady, as God made you,” etc. I presume that these

lines are translated from something. They must certainly, in one

way or another, be the doing of Rossetti, as he has altered in his manu-

script the word “thee” into “you.”
P. 541.— Lilith, from Goethe.—When my brother was projecting

his picture of “ Lilith,” towards 1866, he asked me to copy out for

him the lines from the Brocken-scene in “Faust,” along with Shelley's

translation of them. I did so. I find my transcript pasted into one

of his note-books, along with this quatrain as translated by himself.

As it has some interest of association, I reproduce it here.
P. 544.— The Leaf.—Leopardi.—Thus entitled in my brother's

own volume. But the lyric, as given by Leopardi, is only a translation

from the French of Millevoye.
P. 549.— Hand and Soul.—This story—which, brief though it is,

may rank as the most considerable prose-writing by Rossetti apart

from what appears in “ The Early Italian Poets”—was written in

December 1849, almost entirely in one night, or rather earliest morning

(see Mr. Caine's “ Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “ p. 134).

It is purely a work of imagination; there never was a Chiaro dell'

Erma, nor a Dr. Aemmster, nor the rest of them. The story was

published in The Germ ; and I have heard of more than one admirer

of it who made enquiry in Florence or Dresden after the pictures of

Chiaro—of course with no result save disappointment. The state-

ment on page 555, “In the spring of 1847 I was at Florence,” is also

fictitious, though it has sometimes been cited as showing (contrary

to the general and correct statement) that Rossetti had once at least

been in Italy. Rather fanciful constructions have at times been put

upon this story—its central significance etc. Rossetti gives us to

understand that the proper business of a painter is to “paint his soul”:

and this, I think, means simply that he should act upon the promptings
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of his own mind and feelings in selecting his themes and in the mode of

treating them. If he faithfully follows his own genuine inspirations,

he will be fulfilling his pictorial duty.
P. 557.— St. Agnes of Intercession.—This fragmentary tale forms,

I think, no unworthy pendent to “ Hand and Soul.” It does not seem

to be intended to bear an equal weight of moral or spiritual significance;

but is not less imaginative, and its style of writing, if simpler and less

resolutely sustained, seems to me fully as noticeable and individual.

My brother intended to publish it in The Germ ; and would doubtless

have done so, had that magazine been less short-lived. He began an

etching to illustrate it; but threw this aside in disgust at his failure in

technique. Sir John Millais then undertook to execute the etching.

His production was included in the great Millais Exhibition at the

Grosvenor Gallery in 1886, and manifestly represents the hero of the

story painting the portrait of his affianced bride during her mortal

illness. This, therefore, is clearly shown to be the intended finale of

the tale; as indeed one might readily divine from that portion of it

which was written. At a later date Rossetti himself painted the like

incident, in its mediæval phase, under the title of “ Bonifazio's Mis-

tress. ” The written portion of the tale may be surmised to constitute

less than half of the projected whole: my brother, according to Mr.

Caine, indicated, in talking to that gentleman, that it would only be

about a third. At some much later date, perhaps towards 1870, my

brother turned his thoughts again to this tale, and transcribed the

earlier pages of it; and he again paid some attention to it in the last

two or three months of his life, but without writing anything additional,

or even revising the extant portion. The reader may observe that the

name in the title, “St. Agnes of Intercession,” does not re-appear in

the course of the story, where the picture itself comes to be spoken

of: it was only adopted towards the time when the beginning of the

tale was transcribed. My brother also intended to substitute the

name “Davanzati” for “Angiolieri”; but (in order to avoid tamper-

ing with an untranscribed passage printed on page 562) I have found

it requisite to retain “Angiolieri.” Something in the nature of actual

reminiscence may be traced in the opening details; as that of our

father singing old revolutionary and other songs, and of the author

leaving school early to study the painter's art. The motto from

“Tristram Shandy” would not, I believe, be discoverable upon the

most diligent turning-over of the pages of that now too seldom read

classic, which fascinated my brother greatly at a date not much earlier

than the commencement of this tale: I regard it as his own.
The first draft of “ St. Agnes of Intercession” begins with the follow-

ing paragraph—discarded when my brother made his transcript to-

wards 1870. I preserve it here, as being, in its dim way, a true sketch

of our father. Where I write “Italy,” my brother wrote “Poland,”

or afterwards “France.” “ My father had settled in England only a

few years before I was born to him. He was one of that vast multitude

of exiles who, almost from lustrum to lustrum for a season of nearly a

century, have been scattered from Italy over all Europe—over the

world indeed. Few among these can have less of riches than he had,

wherein to seek happiness; but I believe that there are still fewer

who could be so happy as he was, without riches, in exile and labour.”
P. 570.— Exhibition of Modern British Art at the Old Water-

Colour Gallery. —In the earliest days of my brother's professional

career as a painter, it occasionally happened to him to write a notice

or critique of some particular picture. The main incentive was that I

was in 1850 the art-critic of The Critic , and, for some years from the

autumn of the same year, of The Spectator : and my brother felt

minded now and again to express some opinion of his own, which was

inserted into an article of mine. In December 1850 he wrote for The

Critic the preliminary remarks, here reprinted, on an exhibition of
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sketches at the Old Water-colour Gallery. Again, in August 1851,

while I was out of town, he obliged me by writing for The Spectator an

exhibition-review (on some pictures at Lichfield House) which

happened then to fall due. The last-named article was followed by

another on an Exhibition of Sketches and Drawings, in Pall

Mall East.
P. 572.— Frank Stone: Sympathy, 1850.—I have here collected

the few notices of individual works by particular artists which my

brother included (as mentioned in the previous note) in articles of

mine published in The Critic and The Spectator . Some of the works,

and even of the artists, are now forgotten: in one instance (that of

Mr. Lucy) my brother's estimate may have been a little biased by

friendly good-will. I may be allowed to add that although he contri-

buted these notices bodily to articles of mine, he never had any hand

whatever in my own critiques; they were written without any sugges-

tion or concurrence or pre-discussion on his part; also that he by no

means contemplated any general plan of reviewing his professional

brethren in the tone of a literary free-lance. The notices here repro-

duced belong to the very early years of 1850 and 1851, with a single

exception, that of Palmer. This last-named notice consists of two

scraps written towards 1875 and 1881, which were eventually published

by Mr. L. R. Valpy (to whom they were addressed) in his critical

catalogue of a series of Palmer's works. Of the artists thus individually

reviewed by my brother, five were then known to him personally,—

Anthony, Lucy, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, and Palmer; the

others were unknown,— Frank Stone, Hook, Branwhite, F. R. Pickers-

gill, C. H. Lear, Kennedy, Cope, Landseer, Marochetti, and Poole.

C. H. Lear must, I presume, have died early: he is not to be con-

founded with Edward Lear, the landscape-painter and traveller,

author of “The Book of Nonsense.”
P. 583.— Madox Brown.—The observation that Mr. Brown adopted

for the head of his Chaucer “a portraiture less familiar” etc. deserves

note. The fact is that Rossetti himself sat for the head of Chaucer;

which head is really a good likeness of Rossetti, although the painter

took care that it should also bear some sufficiently recognizable resem-

blance to the accepted type of Chaucer's countenance. The picture, a

very large one, is now in the Public Gallery of Sydney, Australia.
Note: The passage that WMR refers to in this paragraph is on page 584, not 583 as indicated.
P. 586.— Deuced Odd.—This fragment stops short before the story

gets fairly started. The tone of writing, proper to the supposed author,

a “legitimate” actor, seems to be well sustained. I forget what the

gist of the story was to have been: certainly the devil was to bear

some part in it. I consider that my brother's incitement towards

writing a tale about an actor and the devil arose partly from his reading

some years previously, in Hood's Magazine, a very effective story

about the devil acting his own part in some piece of diablerie such as

“Der Freischütz.” We never knew who the author of that narrative

may have been.
P. 587.— Lancelot and Guenevere.—In this scrap we find five sub-

jects from the tale of Lancelot, Galahad, and the Holy Grail. Except

the first subject, Rossetti painted or designed all these in one form or

another. Perhaps he made his jotting with a view to combining the

whole series in some mode of publication.
P. 587.—William Blake.—These observations are taken from the

“ Life of Blake” by Alexander Gilchrist, edition of 1880: the large

majority of them appeared also in the original edition, 1863. I need

only say here that my brother knew, and had a very sincere regard for,

Mr. Gilchrist, who died in 1861, as he was nearing the close of his

excellent and now widely appreciated labours on the “ Life.” Rossetti

supplied him with some important materials, but not with any con-

tributory writing of his own. After Gilchrist's death, his widow also

worked to very good purpose upon the task; but she thought it
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desirable to avail herself of my brother's assistance in certain defined

portions of the subject, especially the arranging and editing of the

poems. I here give the remarks of my brother upon the poems;

preceded by his “supplementary chapter” to the “ Life,” and followed

by his comments upon the Designs to the “Book of Job,” and upon

certain points connected with the designs to the “Jerusalem.” Part

of this last section (“Jerusalem”) belongs only to the edition of 1880.

In the “supplementary chapter” a few of the opening phrases must,

I consider, be Mr. Gilchrist's own: I have not been at the pains of

detaching them. Nothing else of any substantial bulk or importance

was written by my brother for Gilchrist's book. The present owner of

the copyright handsomely made me free in 1886 to reproduce my

brother's contribution.
P. 605.— Scraps.—I give here four casual jottings, noted down in

a writing-book of my brother: the date of 1866 may apply more or

less nearly to the items. No. 1 is a skit upon the title, “Essays written

in the Intervals of Business,” of a book then much in vogue, done

by Sir Arthur Helps.
P. 605.— The Return of Tibullus to Delia. —This memorandum

describes a picture painted by Rossetti towards 1866; water-colour,

and I believe oil-colour as well.
P. 606.— Sentences and Notes.—Picked out passim from my

brother's note-books. The only date which I have given, 1866, may

be about the earliest date of any of these jottings. They go on till to-

wards the close of his life. Other sentences etc., of much the same

kind as those published in 1886, follow on in the present edition.
P. 607.— A Ground-swell.—Another jotting from a small note-

book. Possibly written when Rossetti was at Penkill Castle, near

Ailsa Craig, in 1869, or 1868.
P. 607.— The Orchard Pit.—This is the prose narrative written

with a view to the composition of a poem: see p. 239.
P. 610.— The Doom of the Sirens.—My brother, I am sure, schemed

out this “lyrical tragedy” with a feeling that it might really be made

to constitute the words ( libretto) of a musical opera. He regarded the

project indeed with some eagerness at one time: he had not, I fancy,

any clearly defined idea as to a musician to co-operate with him, but

thought vaguely of our friend Dr. Franz Hueffer. The date of the

composition may be nearly the same as that of “ The Orchard Pit,”

but rather later.
P. 613.— Pictures by Deverell—A Raffle. —As Deverell died

in 1854, which is here stated to be sixteen years prior to the proposed

raffle, the notice must have been drawn up in 1870. I think the raffle

came off, but do not recollect the result.
P. 613.— Silence—for a Design.—“Silence” was one of Rossetti's

best chalk-drawings, the sitter being Mrs. William Morris. He meant

to paint the subject, but did not succeed in so doing.
P. 613.— Ebenezer Jones.—From Notes and Queries , February 5,

1870. This was an answer to a question asked by Mr. Gledstanes-

Waugh.
P. 614.—Subjects for Pictures.—I here give various jottings

written in my brother's note-books. Towards 1870 may be something

like their approximate date. I think the only one of these subjects

which he ever actually took up, and that only in an initial stage, was

“ Pietra degli Scrovigni” (from Dante). The subject of “Mandetta”

will be better understood upon reference to the poems of Guido

Cavalcanti.
P. 616.— Michael Scott's Wooing.—See the note (p. 668) to the

verses bearing the same title. The present project of a poem, or per-

haps rather of a prose-story, is entirely different in its incidents from

any of the designs which Rossetti made of “ Michael Scott's Wooing”—

so far at least as my knowledge of them extends. From the character
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of the handwriting I judge this skeleton-narrative to be two or three

years later than “ The Orchard Pit,” etc.
P. 617.— The Stealthy School of Criticism.—This article, a

reply to “ The Fleshly School of Poetry, ” was published in the Athenæum

for December 16, 1871. “The Fleshly School of Poetry” was (as

observed in my Preface) an article in the Contemporary Review , written

by Mr. Robert Buchanan, and published under the pseudonym

“Thomas Maitland.” Subsequently to the printing of my brother's

rejoinder, the Contemporary article was enlarged by its author, and re-

issued in pamphlet-form. Mr. Buchanan has since publicly admitted

that it was totally unjust to Rossetti: whether it was or was not

(even apart from its pseudonymity) a profligate act of literary spite

under the disguise of moral purism is a question which I leave to the

judgment of others. Having been revoked, be the act condoned—

so far at least as I am concerned. My brother refers prominently to a

sonnet in “ The House of Life” named “ Nuptial Sleep”: this point

also is touched upon in my Notes. Later on in the article he adverts

to sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, and 43. In the present arrangement

of “ The House of Life,” these are sonnets 63, “ Inclusiveness,” 65,

“ Known in Vain,” 67, “ The Landmark,” 85, “ Vain Virtues,” 86,

“ Lost Days,” 87, “ Death's Songsters,” and 91, “ Lost on Both Sides.”
P. 621.— Hake's Madeline, and other Poems.—This critique

comes from the Academy of February 1 1871 . The ensuing critique,

of the same author's Parables and Tales, is from the Fortnightly

Review , April 1873 .
P. 627.— Maclise's Character-Portraits.—Printed in the Aca-

demy for April 15, 1871 .
P. 635.— Proserpina.—Relates to the oil-picture completed towards

1874. See the sonnets on the same picture.
P. 635.— Scraps.—These come from note-books which must have

been in use from 1871 to 1875. No. 3, on Dickens, is somewhat harshly

expressed. But it should be understood as meant epigrammatically

rather than abusively, for Rossetti was in fact a very hearty admirer

of Dickens. No. 9 is utilized in “ Soothsay.” No. 15 shows that,

when he wrote this, he thought of bringing out an autotyped series

of his heads drawn from Mrs. William Morris: he did not do so.
P. 637.— Scraps.—The note-book from which these extracts come

was in use towards the close of 1879, and no doubt rather earlier and

rather later.
P. 637.—“There are certain passionate phases,” etc. This prose

axiom is embodied elsewhere in a verse.
P. 637.—“Whosoever be of all men,” etc. Versified (the first

phrase, but not the rest) at p. 239.
P. 638.— Notes upon a Life of David Scott, R.S.A.—The book

here in question bears the following engraved title: “Memoir of

David Scott, R.S.A., containing his Journal in Italy, Notes on Art, and

other papers. With seven illustrations. By William B. Scott.—

Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1850”.—My brother read this

book as soon as it came out; but his notes are of a far later date,

say 1878-79. David Scott was a remarkable painter, a man of in-

tellect and a very capable writer, born in October 1806, and deceased

in March 1849. The biographer, William Bell Scott, was his brother.

Most of Rossetti's notes (I only print the more important of them) are

hostile to something done or written by David Scott: but in fact he

entertained a very hearty admiration of him from some points of view,

intellectual as well as pictorial. As to this see p. 591. In my present

text I quote several passages written by David Scott, some of them

in a condensed form, followed by the comments of Rossetti. His

comments are arbitrary and offhand, and often expressed in terms

which he would have modified, had he been writing for publication.

I think them however worthy of preservation, especially on the ground
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that they mostly relate to matters of fine art, as to which not very

much appears in the writings of Rossetti generally, painter though he

was. Here we have some observations (I name them in the order

which they happen to occupy in the text) on the Florentine painters

before Michelangelo, Rubens, Guido, Michelangelo, Spagnoletto,

Caravaggio, Giovanni Bellini, Etty, Raphael, the Apollo Belvedere,

Pompeian paintings, Turner, Tintoret, Sebastian del Piombo, Girodet,

Carpaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Masaccio, and Albani—not to speak

of David Scott himself. Some other artists are named in those notes,

mostly very slight, which I have not considered to be adapted for

reproduction in the text.
P. 642.—Subject for Picture—Round Tower at Jhansi.—It

was probably owing to Christina Rossetti's short and moving poem

on this theme (a terrible incident in the Indian Mutiny) that my

brother thought of it as a subject for a picture.
P. 642.— Note on Ballad, Sir Hugh the Heron.—I think the

friend mentioned at the beginning of this note was Mr. Hall Caine.

My brother wrote in terms somewhat exaggerated, and not wholly

accurate. Long before the age of twelve he had read various poets

besides Walter Scott: I need only name Shakespear and Byron.
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PRINTED AND BOUND BY

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,

LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
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